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Collars

By: odubhslaine



I put my key into the door lock and I hear the faintest sound of a bell jingling. In my mind's eye I can see you smoothing down your outfit to make sure you're flawless for me. For the millionth time since we met I thank my lucky stars that I met you.

I remember that first day as if it was yesterday. You a gawky nineteen year old looking for a summer job, me fast approaching thirty and instantly captivated by you. I was entranced by your eyes behind your glasses and the hint of your womanhood under your baggy clothing stirred feelings in me that I had never felt before for any woman let alone one so young.

Against my better judgement I gave you the job and what followed was a glorious summer of me working as closely as possible with you under the thin veneer of giving you guidance.

Every moment we spent together left me breathless. You aroused me like no other before and it took all my willpower and an Oscar worthy performance not to let others see the desire I had for you.

I push our past glories to one side and concentrate on the present. Knowing you'll be impatient for my love and attention. And turn the key in the door.

I step inside and as instructed you're kneeling on the cushion I bought for that purpose. As always you're impeccably turned out, every detail followed to the letter from the shoes on your feet to the collar on your neck, the little bell giving the slightest of jingles as your breathing increases when I close the door and say "Hello Princess, Daddy is home."

You half raise your head, not fully breaking your kneel but just enough so that I can see the joy in your eyes and the smile on your face. My heart swells with the love I have for you. At times it feels like it will burst in my chest such is the depth of emotion it holds for you.

I instruct you to stand so I can inspect you properly. I know it's not required but Daddy has to make sure standards are upheld and this includes the standard of care I have towards you. If I'm anything less that the perfect Daddy there's room for you to be less than the perfect girl.

I slowly circle you, looking you up and down to ensure you're clothed exactly as instructed.

The collar is the same one I put on you before I left for work this morning, dainty and made from patent leather. You've been a good girl lately so I've given you a break from the thick leather collar that I prefer you to wear. Besides, I like the little bell attached to it. I enjoy how it jingles with each movement you make.

It never ceases to amaze me how you manage to keep your clothing wrinkle free despite waiting for me in your kneeling pose. There's not one imperfection in the sheer fabric of the gown you're wearing and the short skirt is smoothed perfectly over your thighs. Your bodice is still exactly as it was when I tied you into it this morning so I nod and smile my appreciation and admiration at the fact that you managed to wear it even though I tied it tighter than normal. I can see your breasts almost spilling out and I know that it's difficult for you to breathe when kneeling but then Daddy has to push his Princess to her limits.

The toes of your shoes are a little scuffed but that's to be expected given that you've been posed in your kneel waiting for my arrival so I simply make a note of this in case I feel like punishing you later. I've learned over the years to always have a ready supply of misdemeanours at hand so I can punish you even on the rare occasions that you're not being an impertinent girl.

Impressed as always I lean in and plant a delicate kiss on your cheek.

You take this as your signal that you've passed inspection and throw your arms around my neck and kiss me chastely on the lips before you breathlessly tell me about your day. I listen intently as always. Daddy should always pay attention to his Princess and not just in the bedroom.

When you finish your account of your day I head for the master bedroom, telling you that I'll start dinner as soon as I've showered and changed.

I turn on the lights and sit on the edge of the bed to take my boots off. I hate wearing my boots but sometimes when on site I can't avoid wearing them. As I'm undoing the laces I notice a shadow in the middle of the bedspread.

I don't even have to look closer to know what it is and I feel my anger stir. I pull the bedspread off the bed to inspect it more closely. The shadow I saw is in fact a small stain. I brush my fingers against it in order to confirm my suspicion but it's already dried into the fabric. Undaunted, I simply raise it to my nostrils and inhale.

Immediately the smell of your cunni hits me and my anger rises to it's full potential. I calm myself and fix the bedspread back in place. I bend and retie my laces.

I call to you, summoning you to our room. I can hear you hum a tune as you cross the floor to the bedroom door, the bell hardly making a noise such is the grace of your stride. I feel pride begin to replace my anger but I brush it aside, rules are rules after all and you need to be taught a lesson.

"Yes Daddy?"

"Come sit beside me on the bed Princess."

You sit beside me and I can tell immediately that you're aroused at the prospect of me taking you before I change. A faint flush has risen on your cheeks and now the bell is audibly mirroring your increased breath rate.

"Princess, I have a question for you and I need you to tell me the truth."

"Yes Daddy, of course Daddy."

"Were you a good girl today?"

"Yes Daddy."

Your whole body contradicts your words, you're unable to make eye contact and your face is glowing beet red. This only serves to anger me more.

"Then can you explain the stain in the middle of the bedspread?"

Instantly your eyes dart to the cover and your jaw drops as you see the evidence of your crime.

"I I I I'm sorry Daddy, I just had a little play."

"What did I tell you this morning before I left?"

"That I wasn't to play."

"And why weren't you to play?"

"Because we were going to have special dinner then have special Daddy & Princess time."

"And yet you disregarded my instructions and behaved like a little whore."

"But but but Daddy I only had a little play and I didn't even orgasm."

"I don't care! Do you think that all those years ago I could have said that I only fucked her a little when I finally gave into your teasing?"

"No Daddy."

"Exactly, rules are rules and when you break them you must be punished now remove your knickers and kneel before me."

Without hesitation you stand and hitch your skirt. You slowly ease your panties off and let them drop to the floor. You step out of them and smooth your skirt down as you kneel before me.

"No slut, leave it hitched up, I want you to kneel with your legs parted."

Wordlessly you hitch your skirt up and kneel open legged in front of me. I stand and walk over to the locked chest that sits at the foot of the bed. I carefully make my choices and return, placing one foot between your legs. The toe of my boot mere millimetres from your tight cunt.

I reach down and undo your collar and throw it across the room. "You'll not need that one ever again, the slut collar is all you deserve" and I replace it with the thick heavy collar with the large buckles, tightening it a little more than is necessary but you need to be aware of the gravity of the situation. I roughly pull down on the front of your bodice so your tits are exposedto me. I clamp your left nipple first then loop the chain through the metal ring attached to your collar before I fasten the other clamp to your right nipple. Again it's tighter than normal and I can see your nipples stretch and your eyes beginning to water.

"Ok so you wanted to have your cunt played with, have at it you filthy slut, fuck my boot."

"But Daddy the leather will be too rough for me."

Of course you're right, I've cut away a circle at the front to expose the steel caps and the edges are rough.

I place my hands on your shoulders and push you down onto my toe.

"Ride it whore, you're not even worthy of my cock."

You press down and tentatively press against the leather.

I grab a handful of your hair and pull your head back, your nipples stretched all the more now, tears welling in your eyes.

"Harder slut, faster, fuck it like you mean it."

You stare back at me, defiance in your eyes even through the tears and you commit fully to the task at hand, feverishly rocking back and forth against the thick leather. I can feel your weight on my toe and I know you're not holding back.

Out of your line of sight I undo my fly and release my cock and without warning I ram it into your open mouth as you gasp for air against your exertions on my boot. You gag at the unexpected onslaught but quickly regain your composure and without breaking the rhythm of your hips your lips slide greedily along the thick shaft of my cock.

I redouble my efforts, determined to teach you a lesson and by your hair I roughly pull you onto my cock again, this time pushing deeper when I feel you gag, holding it there in spite of your eyes widening like saucers and your hips ceasing their movement.

"Don't you dare stop you filthy slut, take what Daddy has for you and keep fucking my boot!"

Only when your eyes roll in your head and you're on the verge of passing out do I slide my cock back out. Streams of your saliva are now coating my cock, thick and from the back of your throat.

I lift my toe and press it harder against your cunt.

"Ride it whore."

"Ugghh... Ugghh... Ugghh yes Daddy." is your hoarse reply as you rock your hips once more, redoubling your efforts against my toe as you take my cock in your mouth again and greedily suck the tip.

Over and over I make you gag as you ride, over and over you take what I give you without hesitation and with your normal gusto. Yet another reminder of how lucky I am to have met such a perfect slut.

I can feel your breathing reach its familiar pitch. Looking into your eyes I warn you not to orgasm. You disengage your mouth from my cock and reply "Too late Dadddddy! I'm coming! I'm coming!!"

There's no shame, no remorse on your face despite the fact that this is the second time you've defied me today so I roughly grab you up by your hair and throw you face down onto the bed, your moans as your orgasm continues to roll over you only increasing with my ire towards you.

"Princess needs to be taught a sterner lesson" I say as I force your legs apart and ram my cock into your unprepared ass. No lube, no easing as normal, just animal force pushing my cock deep into your tight slut ass. I grab your hair and press your face into the bedspread.

"Smell it bitch, smell the reason I'm gonna fuck your ass till it bleeds."

"Yesssss Daaaadddyyyy," you sob and I know now that you've learned your lesson. I relax so that I can empty everything I have deep into your tight hole.

Afterwards when we're lying on the bed, my semen still dripping from your ass and my arms protectively wrapped around you, I look into your red rimmed eyes and kiss your cheek and whisper "Happy anniversary Princess."

Collateral



“Get out of the bed lazy bones!” Erin shouted as she yanked the sheets from my body. As I lie there rubbing my eyes and squinting at the clock I could tell it wasn’t even 7am yet. The “6” was pretty clear but the other numbers couldn’t be read through my kaleidoscope eyes. 

The morning coolness in the room was familiar. Like every other day of her life Erin had just returned from her morning run and, as usual, had left the door wide open, allowing the cool outside air to sprint in with her and nibble at my now exposed body. As my eyes focused to the room and the light, I could now read that the clock said 6:46am. Looking at Erin I could only wish for half the energy she had. 

Acting out the rest of what had become a morning ritual for us I grumbled a bit as I grabbed the sheet and pulled it back over me, flipping quickly as I wrapped it back over me. On my stomach now, Erin, as usual, pounced onto my back and started with her chirpy, upbeat prattle. Over the time that we had been together I had learned to filter out her words (which were always about all the things she saw while running that morning) and use it as a chance to lie there and give my other senses a workout. The feeling of her warm, toned body. 

The sight of her well-conditioned form. The unmistakable smell of blended fragrances and sweat. All of these things were the real pleasures I enjoyed as her 125 pounds straddled me and urged me from my warm bed. 

“How far did you go today?” I finally asked. 

“Three miles,” she replied. “But we took Lockerman Hill in record time.” She proudly added. Lockerman Hill was a killer hill with a steep grade. Athletes got a true litmus test when they ran its mile-long path. 

“We?” I asked, surprised that her new running partner would be able to tackle it so soon after beginning running with Erin. 

“Yeah,” Erin replied, “Jim struggled a bit but he used to run before he moved here. I’m whipping him back in shape pretty quickly!” She said the last part with a sexy impish grin on her face as she shadowboxed the open space in front of her. 

Starting to get up from the bed, I sunk back down and relaxed as Erin began getting ready to shower by stripping her clothes off. In seconds, she was standing a few feet away from me, completely naked. Continuing her conversation with me, Erin continued talking without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. Truth be told, she had no reason to be. She has a stunning form; tall, lean, and toned, she exemplifies the ideal female form. Well-shaped muscles and tight skin cover her 24-year-old body from head to toe. With a flat stomach and firm perky breasts that seem to defy gravity, its hard to find a flaw in Erin at all. As she went to the bathroom I made my way up and into the kitchen. Closing the door Erin had left open, Erin started talking again from inside the shower.

“Freddie, do you want to go out to dinner tonight?” She asked. 

“I guess so,” I replied as I made my way to the refrigerator. “Why do you ask?"

"Well,” Erin said, “Jim’s sister is in town and he is taking her out but he is kinda new to town too and he asked if we wanted to suggest a place to eat tonight. I thought it would be a good idea; we could help him out and you can meet him too."

"Sounds fine to me. Go ahead and pick a place. I’ll be sure to be home by five.” I said. After eating a quick breakfast and hitting the shower, I dressed and left for work.

When I returned home that evening Erin was almost ready to go out already. “Hurry up and get ready hon,” she said as I entered the door, “I had to make reservations at Gurraco’s at seven in order to get a table."

"Gurraco’s?” I questioned in a surprised tone, “My, My! We are certainly treating the visitors well, aren’t we?"

"Just hurry up!” she said again as she pushed me towards the bathroom. I rushed to get ready and we made the trip across town with about ten minutes to spare. I could understand Erin’s urgency though. Gurraco’s was a very ritzy place to enjoy a meal and they didn’t hold reservations very long for us commoners when we didn’t show on time. Jim and his sister were in the lobby when we entered. The waitress escorted us to our table immediately and we introduced ourselves to one another as we walked towards the back of the restaurant. 

After a quick handshake with Jim, he and Erin led the way with Jim’s sister and I falling in behind. We shook hands as we walked and she spoke first. “Hi, I’m Heather, but you can call me ‘Collateral’.” She said with a humorous smile on her face. 

“Freddie. Nice to meet you Heather.” I said, all the while thinking to myself, “Did she just say Collateral? What kind of name is that?” 

After being seated and ordering appetizers the introductions proceeded further but Heather never mentioned her unusual nickname again. Jim had leaned over and whispered something to her as soon as they had sat down and I figured she was just cracking a private joke or I had heard her wrong. 

The four of us chatted for a while, sharing some personal history with one another and Jim and Heather both seemed to be very nice people. Our dinner arrived and, as advertised, it was great. We ordered desserts and Erin excused herself, saying that she had seen an old friend and wanted to go say hello. Jim, Heather, and I continued talking and were getting along very well when Jim’s pager went off. 

“You’ll have to excuse me for a minute. This must be fairly important or I wouldn’t have been paged; I’d better check it out.” He said as he was standing up. 

“So,” Heather said. “Kinda like getting voted off the island, huh?” she said as she smiled.

“Yeah!” I said with a real chuckle. During the evening I had come to appreciate Heather’s youthful demeanor. She was about as old as Erin but during the evening had made use of some words and phrases that had led me to believe she had a younger circle of friends. 

We continued talking and I completely lost track of the time until I glanced down at my watch and saw that Erin had been gone for nearly thirty minutes. Heather looked at her watch and then at me with a “What?” expression on her face. I began scanning the restaurant with no sight of Erin anywhere. I stood up to get a better view but Heather broke in by placing her hand on mine and pulling me back down to the table. 

“Umm, Freddie?” She said without waiting for a reply. “I need to tell you something. They’re gone."

"What?! What do you mean, who?” I blurted out. “Jim and Erin. They’re gone…together.” She said as she raised her eyebrow in a way that begged me to understand.

“What do you mean gone? And what do you mean together Heather? What the hell are you talking about?” I asked rapidly, all the while standing from the table and becoming angrier by the second as I was quickly assuming her answers. Again, Heather pulled me down and this time she left her hand on top of mine.

“Ok, this is weird because I thought you knew but obviously you don’t so let me try to explain.” She said. Realizing I was clueless but having a very good sense at what had just happened I sat there and asked her to go on. What she told me next was just unreal. 

She said that Erin and Jim had become very attracted to one another and that they wanted to be with one another but never had. They had planned the evening’s events and had asked Heather to go along with the idea. Heather had, at first, thought that I knew what was going on but Jim had told her when they arrived at the restaurant that they had not told me. 

“I thought it was just a swapping, open relationship or something Freddie. I didn’t know it was like this.” She told me at one point. 

“And you were going to just go along with it if it was?” I asked her. 

“Yeah,” she replied with a smile, “I’m open to new ideas. I’m not a prude.” 

Although her candid and casual speech was lightening the mood, I was still furious and beleaguered. 

“So what do we do now?” I asked her. 

“Well,” she said, “Do you remember when I introduced myself as “Collateral” earlier this evening?"

"Yes,” I replied. 

“Well, at the time I thought you knew all about this and I was trying to break the ice. I’m the collateral.” She said. 

“I don’t understand.” I told her. 

“Erin told me that she didn’t know if she could actually go through with all of this but if they left the restaurant and didn’t return after 20 minutes that my part was to stay with you until she returned. They had joked about it yesterday and had started calling me the collateral, that you would keep me until Erin came back. That’s why I said that.”

Suddenly, things were clearing up. This had been a planned out event, only I was not informed of the plans. The biggest thing that kept popping up in my mind was how Erin had become willing to act like such a slut. This was not like her at all. She was by no means conservative but this was extreme. As angry and furious as I was, I had to admit it was working out quite nicely. Jim had enjoyed a great dinner with Erin this evening and was now getting ready to lay her down and give her a good fucking and my girlfriend was all for it! 

Heather was obviously not objecting and the strange events had a way of stirring some odd emotions in me as well. Sure, my girlfriend was probably somewhere sucking another man’s cock right now but at least she had left me with a hell of a consolation prize. At some point after ordering another nightcap and swigging it down I decided to be a good boy and play my part. After all, the alternative was to go home alone and be furious all night. 

“What do we do now Heather?” I asked with a smile, trying to let her know that I wasn’t going to do anything brash. 

“Why don’t we go to your place?” she said with a grin similar to the one Erin had flashed at me earlier that morning. “I think it would serve your little slut right to come home tomorrow and see that you hadn’t been lonely tonight.” 

Sensing that things were definitely improving, Heather and I left. Jim had even been nice enough to pick up the tab before he left.

Pulling out into the street, I glanced over to the passenger seat and really began to look at Heather closely for the first time. I had already noticed that she was a very attractive woman, very different from Erin in her looks, but still, very attractive, but I had not really looked her body over. Noticing me, Heather picked up playing the part perfectly. “Like what you see, baby?” she asked. 

“Yes, very much.” I responded. 

“That’s nice baby,” she purred, “Because I’m going to make you forget all about how your girlfriend is sucking my brother’s cock tonight.” Her play on words were drawing me between anger and arousal. “Is she a good cock sucker Freddie?” she asked as she slid closer to me and placed her hand on my crotch and began rubbing my cock through my pants. “Does that slut suck you like you like to feel when you have your dick in a woman’s mouth?” 

My dick was quickly responding to her nasty words. She unzipped my pants and wrapped her fingers around my cock. As she spoke she would tighten and loosen her grip with her tones as she slowly stroked me. “What’s the matter baby? Why are you so hard? I’ll bet I know what it is. I’ll bet Erin is a little goody two shoes, isn’t she? She probably hasn’t been sucking your cock at all, has she?"

"Well my brother won’t go for that,” she said as she quickened her strokes. “By the time he’s finished making her swallow his big prick tonight she’ll be eager to give you what you need every day.” Throbbing harder now, my cock began leaking pre-cum onto Heather’s fingers. Noticing, she pulled the side of her index finger up to her lips and tasted it. “Mmm!” she said, “I think I need to take your mind off of your girlfriend. I hope we’re not too far from your house.” 

A few minutes later we pulled into my driveway. I got out of the car and she slid out on my side also. Closing the door behind her, she pushed me back into the fender of the car and began a long and wet kiss. As her tongue raced inside my mouth I could feel her lips pressing firm against mine and then the rest of her body followed suit as her tits and hips pressed into me. Her hands were at my waist as we continued kissing until she began tugging at my pants. Unable and not wanting to stop her, Heather slid my pants and underwear down my legs. 

Breaking from our kiss, she immediately descended until she was on her knees in my driveway with her hot, wet mouth on my cock. I briefly tried to come to my senses, wandering what the neighbors would think if they saw me standing in my driveway getting my dick sucked by this hot blonde but she broke my will to resist her as her tongue raced up and down my throbbing cock, unashamedly making lewd slurping noises as she took me in and out of her mouth. 

My balls began constricting as I watched her long blonde locks splash back and forth over my cock. Her blonde hair was very different from the view I normally enjoy when Erin’s jet-black hair is in that position. As she threw her head back I caught a view of her lips as they brushed against my pubic hair, trying to go even deeper. Beginning to feel an inevitable orgasm coming, I grunted, not knowing what Heather wanted to do. She quickly stood and turned me towards my car and began jacking me off furiously. Within seconds I started blasting streams of cum across my car hood. I was still cumming as Heather pulled me towards the house. 

“I bet we have some catching up to do!” she said as we stumbled past the door and through the house towards the bedroom. 

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“Well, knowing my brother, he’s probably already fucked your girlfriend’s little pussy two or three times by now. We don’t want to be left behind do we?” 

Before I could answer we had made it to the bedroom. Eyeing the bed she began helping me out of the rest of my clothing. Kicking off her shoes, she jumped to the center of the bed and, on her knees, began drawing me towards her. My hands found the outside of her thighs as we kissed and I began pushing her dress up to her waist. 

“You know baby,” she panted as she slid her panties down until they rested on her right ankle, “I really enjoyed sucking your cock for you out there in the driveway. But I’m going to enjoy giving you the best fuck of your life right here on your and Erin’s bed.”

My cock was already beginning to feel sore and red from the intense blowjob Heather had given me on the way home but it had begun hardening again, as I was eager to screw this young beauty’s brains out. Pulling her top down, she was now wearing her skirt like a belt. A moist blonde patch of wet hair was sitting in the spot where I normally fucked Erin and her aroma caused my dick to twitch and stir even more. 

Grabbing her by the waist I quickly pulled her to me, holding her waist with one hand while grabbing a handful of her large, round tit with the other. This was not going to be gentle or caring. Heather’s actions and words had gotten me worked up into a sexual craze. All I could think about at the time was Jim fucking my girlfriend over and over and me doing the same to Heather. Heather’s tits were much larger than Erin’s. 

Grabbing one roughly I began kneading it firmly as I put my tongue to her nipple. She let out a gasp of excitement as I licked and sucked on her and then another as I ran my other hand through her pubic hair very quickly and split her wet pussy lips. Running two fingers inside her and being covered with her hot cunt’s juice, I decided I had to fuck her right then. Pulling her up, I pushed my thick, swollen head past her lips and buried my cock deep inside her on the first push. She responded by wrapping her arms and legs around my body and pulling closer. 

Still sitting in the middle of the bed she began riding my cock as I moved up and down until she was practically bouncing up and down on my cock like a pogo stick. Faster and harder, the room was overtaken by noises of our bodies slapping together in a wet, smacking sound, my grunts, and her rhythmic “Oh’s” and “Ughn’s”. 

“That’s it baby!” she screamed. “Fuck me…fuck my little pussy baby…fuck my little cunt real good!"

"Oh God! Oh God! I’m gonna cum!” was all she could get out as she started slowing down, arching her back more. Lying her on her back, I raised to my knees, grabbed her ankles, and spread her legs wide. Her pussy was gaping now like it has just passed a tennis ball, wet and red but begging for more. Fully stuffing my cock into her again, she gasped as I felt her hot little muff squeeze my cock. Holding her legs spread wide as I resumed pumping in and out of her I began kissing her ankles and feet, my tongue licking and darting up and down her foot and leg. 

“Play with your clit,” I told her. “Rub it while I fuck this little pussy.” Obeying immediately, she shamelessly began pinching and rubbing her little button in a lewd manner, writhing as my strokes became outright pounding. Her large tits rolled back and forth as I watched her eyes roll back and forth as she gasped for air when I would withdrawal. 

“You like that, baby?” I shouted. “You like getting fucked by my big hard cock, don’t you?” 

A series of “Ahs”, “Mmms” and “Eees” was all she could muster, not able to catch her breath to speak as I relentlessly hammered her with my dick. Her squeals became higher pitched as she approached her orgasm until she finally caught enough breath to speak.

“You’re making me cum!” she hissed. “Yeah, fuck me! Fuck me! That’s so good! God, I’m cumming!” 

My prick stiffened even more as I felt her body begin to shake. “I gonna cum, baby!” I managed. “Close. Gonna cum! Gonna…cummmm!” I could see her flat stomach still twitching as line after line of white sperm splattered across it. Wiping her stomach clean as best she could with a sheet, we lie back on the bed and dozed off for what seemed like minutes.

At 6am the alarm went off that Erin set each morning for her runs. After taking a few moments to become coherent, I realized that Erin wasn’t there and fumbled to turn it off. The sound had woken Heather and she rolled over and began rubbing her hands up and down my side and stomach. I was starting to come back to my senses and become angry as I came to terms with what Erin and I had done last night but Heather reeled me back in before I could do anything. 

Without saying a word she sat up in the bed across from me and began rubbing her feet up and down my legs. The farther she crept towards my groin, the more my flaccid cock began to stir. By the time her toes made their way up to my balls, I was solidly erect and horny. Just then the telephone rang. Heather began running her painted toes up and down my prick as I answered.

“Hello.” I said.

“Good morning honey.” said the weary voice on the other end. It was Erin. 

“Did you have a good time last night?” I asked in a pseudo angry tone. 

“Oh yes dear. It was everything I hoped it would be. Jim is insatiable. He didn’t stop fucking me until about an hour ago.” Erin said calmly. “Does it run in the family?” she asked cheerfully. 

“Yes it does,” I replied as I watched Heather continue stroking my cock with her toes. 

“Is she still there?” Erin asked. 

“Yes, she’s getting ready to give me a wonderful blowjob." I replied. Taking the cue, Heather smiled as she rose up and buried her mouth over my cock. 

“Well, I’ll let you go then,” Erin replied. “I’m sure Jim is going to want to fuck me again before he turns me loose. Oh, by the way dear, Jim shaved my pussy last night before he fucked me but don’t worry, I’ve got everything on tape! Bye Honey!” 

Click.

As I hung the phone up I returned my attention to Heather. She was being very attentive to my cock as her tongue and mouth moved up and down my long shaft. I held her long blonde away from her face as I watched her lips slowly work their way up and down my prick. I lie back and enjoyed her rhythm as I visualized what it must have been like for Jim to shave Erin’s pussy bald and then fuck her perfect little body all night long.




Collateral



It was my first time, I had never really needed it before, perhaps it was just me but when I moved past the fine carved doors and stepped onto the marble floor my first inclination was to turn and run away. I probably would have followed that inclination if an attractive older woman hadn't immediately stepped forward, held out her hand and graciously welcomed me.

Taking her hand in mine I was surprised first by the firmness of her grip and then by the incredible softness of her skin. After shaking her hand, I took a better look at her, noticing the slight tint in her blonde hair as the gray had just started to appear. Actually the appearance of the gray seemed to lend an air of confidence to the woman, she was obviously comfortable with herself, unafraid of her age, in fact quite proud of her maturity.

Her face was attractive, the hint of crow's feet at her eyes and the few small wrinkles around her mouth seemed to lend an feeling of accessibility to her. She was not an untouchable porcelain model, so beautiful and self-worthy that only the richest and most powerful men could dare even to talk to them, no, it was more like she was almost encouraging you to reach out and touch her cheek, her hair and perhaps more.

Her words cascaded elegantly from her lips as I glanced first at her dark brown eyes and then down to her lips. She wore makeup, but not very much and was it not for the sheen on her lips, I might have thought she wasn't wearing any lipstick. Finally letting my attention slip from her face, I tried to make sense of what she was saying, "...help you?"

"Ah, excuse me. I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

Smiling she started again, "Welcome, I'm Rebecca Montreau, how can I help you?"

"Oh yes," I replied nervously, "I've never done this before and..."

"Surely you've been in a place like this before," she interrupted, tilting her head slightly.

"Yes, but I've never... well I've never ah, ugh, I've never taken out a loan before," I stuttered, glancing down at the floor noticing the wavy reflection of her dress.

"Oh there's nothing to it," she whispered, reaching her arm around me and pointing to an office. "Come into my office and we can talk about getting you a loan Mister....?"

"Bewson, William Bewson, but my friends call me Bill."

"Well Bill, can I call you Bill?" she said, pausing until I nodded. "Well Bill, have a seat there and tell me what kind of loan you need."

"Well Ms. Montreau..."

"Call me Rebecca," she said closing her door and then gracefully settling into her chair.

"Okay Ms. Rebecca Ma'am, I work on cars a lot, I'm head mechanic at Revy's Auto Specialist on Third Street, but I've wanted to open my own shop. My granddaddy has a big garage and seems with a little work I can fix it up. We'll need some equipment though, I made up a list Ms. Rebecca," I said, reaching into my shirt pocket and handing her my folded up list.

Smiling, she reached out for the list and said, "Just call me Rebecca, like you would one of your friends." Unfolding the list she continued, "Do you know how much this equipment will cost, how much you'll need to borrow?"

"Well Rebecca, I think it's about twenty-five thousand, maybe a little bit more?"

"Okay, you'll need to fill out a loan application, do you have any collateral"

"Collateral?"

"Yes, something of value that we can use to guarantee the loan? Since you haven't taken out a loan before you won't have any credit to speak of. "

"Well the equipment, could that be collateral."

"Some of it we might be able to use, but what about your grandfather's garage, could you use that as collateral?"

"No, I wouldn't want to do that."

"Well here's the load application, but I am not sure what we can do without some other collateral," she said, standing up and walking around the desk. She placed the paper in front of me and pointed, "See right here on page one, after your address, they ask about your credit history. If this is your first loan, well you don't have any so they'll want some collateral."

As she leaned over me, I could smell her fragrance and when her breast accidentally brushed against my shoulder, I could feel my pants tighten in my crotch. I tried to concentrate on the form in front of me, the loan application form, not Rebecca's, as I grabbed the pen and began filling in blanks. She remained beside me, her arm around the back of my chair, making recommendations in areas where I paused, not sure what the best answer would be. By the time I finished the form I was so aroused by her that I had a full erection.

Hoping to get it under control before I stood up, I leaned back in the chair and moved my legs to conceal the obvious tent in my pants. I had expected to see Rebecca move around to her desk to do whatever it was she needed to with my application, but apparently she had noticed the form to, the form of my cock in my pants, not the application form. When I glanced up at her I could see her face was flushed and I noticed she was not looking back at my face, instead her gaze was fixed on my lap.

Uncomfortable with the intensity of her stare, I squirmed a bit and said, "Well is there anything else?"

Without moving her gaze from my cock she whispered back, "You tell me, do you have anything else you want to comment on?"

"Ah, well I don't think so. Is there something important I left out?"

"From here I'm not exactly sure, it could be important or it might be no big thing," she said, reaching down toward my lap. Wrapping her hand around my aching rod she asked, "So, what do you think? Should we take a peek and find out?"

Completely entranced by Rebecca all I could do was nervously grasp the arms of the chair and lean back as she unfastened my belt, unzipped my pants and reached a hand under the elastic band of my underwear. She gripped my cock with the same firmness that he shook my hand with earlier. The soft skin of her fingers and palm wrapped me in her silken grip and she began to slide up and down.

The sensation was magnificent as the softness of her skin coupled with her firm grip moved over my cock. I began to raise my hips, thrusting my cock up into her hand in unison with her movement. Just as the pleasure rose in my cock and I was about to explode she stopped, pulling her hands away as I arched my back and pumped my cock up into the air.

I looked up into her eyes and moaned, "Please."

She smiled seductively, kneeled down and spread my legs further apart as she moved between them. Her hand gripped me again but she also leaned forward and I watched as the head of my cock disappeared between her lips. Her hand began moving up and down and she slid her mouth down over me with such incredible suction that it seemed to lift me off the chair. As close as she had me to coming with her hands, it was just seconds before I felt the electric jolt of pleasure run through my groin.

Lifting my ass up off the chair and arching my back I raised my cock up to her mouth and came, shooting my cum as she sucked and slurped loudly on me. She held me firmly in her mouth as my cock spurted again and again. After a few moments she pulled her head back, then licked the last bit of white jism oozing from me. With the last of my cum cleaned from my cock, she stood up, moved over to her chair on the other side of the desk from me, grabbed a facial tissue and dabbed her lips, wiping away the last bit of cum and saliva.

I zipped up my pants and smiled confidently asking, "Does that mean I get the loan?"

She pulled her chair up to the desk, grabbed my application and said, "All things considered I can't recommend the loan for approval at this time."

"But what about what just happened?"

"Quite frankly Bill, you're simply too short..." she paused, looked down at my lap and then continued, "of collateral. You need to find a co-signer, preferably with some more collateral," she said, slowly raising her gaze from my lap to look me in the face. "Bring a friend with ample collateral and come back and see me in my office. I think we might be able to work something out."

Nodding I stood up, reached out my hand and said, "Thank you for your time," savoring the feel of her firm handshake. I walked out of her office remembering the feel of her firm grip.

I spent the following weekend getting in touch with Jackson, and old high school friend of mine, one who amazed me and most of the other guys in PE when we hit the showers. The way word got around so I think he also amazed a lot of the girls in our class too. Anyway, when I finally got in touch with Jackson, it took a little bit of convincing, but after offering him a piece of the business and explaining the type of collateral that Rebecca was really looking for, Jackson agreed to meet me at the bank. I made an appointment for us to meet with Rebecca on Thursday around ten in the morning. 

I pulled up to the address Jackson had given me and was shocked to find a very expensive looking two story house. Once in the driveway I was unfastening my seat belt when I saw my old friend step out of the front door and then turn around to kiss an attractive blonde haired woman. He turned, waved to me and headed to my car.

"Hey Bill," he said opening my car door, "how long has it been?" He reached his hand out to me and when we shook I noted how rough his hands were.

"You didn't tell me you were married. If I knew I wouldn't have asked you about the collateral."

"Oh Janey? Yeah, we're just friends. I'm doing some handyman work around her place and well, it saves time if I spend the night," he said, pulling down the sunshade and looking at the mirror. He pulled his hand across his scruffy face, "I didn't get a chance to shave, I hope that's not a problem. It does make me look a bit older I think."

"Nah, shouldn't be a problem as long as you haven't worn yourself out taking care of Janey there."

"Oh no, don't worry about that. Her husband is home so all I'm doing is working and sleeping downstairs on the couch."

I smiled at him, looked into his dark eyes and asked, "And when her husband is gone?"

Grinning, he ran his hand through his jet black hair and replied, "Well, that's another story."

"I can't wait to hear it but we better talk a bit about this loan. You do understand that she will have you sign some papers basically covering the loan if something happens to me."

"Look man, I have some money I need to invest, so hey, you said you'd give me a piece of the company, so I'm ready to buy in and sign up with you," Jackson replied. Moving his hand to his crotch he said, "Now tell me about that other collateral."

"It's like I told you the other night. I went in and filled out the paper work and while I'm working she's leaning over me, her hair brushing my shoulder, her breast bumping into my arm. And she smelled so good, damn I had a hard on the whole time I was filling out the paperwork."

I looked at Jackson and then glanced down at his lap, confirming to myself he still had what we needed. Continuing I said, "Now I finish up and figure she'll walk over and sit at her desk, but instead, she grabs my cock. In no time she has my pants open and is jacking me off with the softest hands and fingers I've ever felt. I damn near shot my wad then, but she suddenly stops, kneels down and gives me an incredible blow job."

"After which..."

"Yeah, after which she tells me I'm too short..."

"Of collateral," Jackson finished for me.

"Yeah, how's that for a slap."

"Hey man, you still got a hell of a blow job and who knows, we might get this loan yet."

I pulled up to the bank, put my car in park and we climbed out. I noticed Jackson pausing a moment to adjust himself and I couldn't help but wonder what it might be like to be endowed like him. Yeah he had to fight off the women, but hell it has just got to be a nuisance sometimes.

"We goin'?" he asked me, waiting at the front of my car.

"Let's do it," I replied, heading to the entrance to the bank and stepping in through the door Jackson was holding for me. I then grabbed the inner door, held it open for him and followed into the lobby. We headed over to the main desk to announce our arrival when I saw Rebecca step out of her office and motion to me. I waved, nodded my head and walked across the lobby and entered her office.

"Hello again Bill, I see you brought along a friend, your partner right?"

"Right, Rebecca, this is Jackson Hewitt, Jackson, this is Rebecca Montreau," I said, stepping back as they shook hands.

"It's nice to meet you Jackson, please have a seat, you too Bill," she said, closing and locking the door.

Rebecca sat down at her desk, opened a draw and pulled out a small stack of papers. She then stood up, walked over to the other side of her desk where Jackson and I were sitting and leaned back against her desktop. Placing the stack of papers in front of Jackson she said, "Okay, I have highlighted the information you will need to provide. Once I have that I can get one of my assistants to handle the rest." She then put both of her hands on the desk and boosted herself up and sat on the desk.

I noticed that Jackson was intently filling out the paperwork but I also noticed how Rebecca was sitting, her legs enticingly open, as if begging for one of us to slip a hand up under her dress. I think Jackson did notice her too, because I saw a big smile appear on her face and when I followed her gaze, I could see she was focused on his, now surging, cock. She began to fidget a bit and her breath seemed to deepen and she finally reached over, pulled the pen out of Jackson's hand and said huskily, "Just skip those last two pages, we don't need them anyway."

Then all I could do was watch as she took his hands and pulled him up to stand in front of her, her knees pinching against his hips. Without a word she unfastened his belt and pants, pulled down his zipper and then tugged his pants down over his hips. She then pulled the elastic band on his underwear out around his fully erect cock and then pushed them down his legs, letting the pants and underwear fall to his ankles.

I stared as she took both her hands and began working them all along his enormous cock, starting at the faintly blue head, sliding down the long, thick shaft and then gently down to his balls. Jackson's eyes were closed as he began moving his hips back and forth in response to the sensation on his cock. I figured she'd move to kneel in front of him and I wondered how she'd ever wrap her mouth around him, when she moved her hands and pulled up her dress, exposing her garter belt and then her naked pussy.

Taking in the incredible sight, I saw her take three fingers and open herself, exposing the light pink inside her pussy. She then pulled his cock with her other hand and guided his massive member slowly into her. Jackson then pushed quickly forward and I saw Rebecca wince and say, "Slow down a bit baby, just a little at a time."

He withdrew a bit and then slowly pushed forward. I watched as her lips stretched open, sticking to his cock for a moment and then slipping over him as he pushed and gently withdrew. Bit by bit he entered her, each push a little further and with each withdrawal I could see her glistening juices covering more and more of him. It was a good minute or two before he had pushed his cock entirely into her, but it was worth the wait. The sight of him, pushed to the hilt, his dark black pubic hair intermingling with her furry, light hair was enticing, but the sight of her pussy stretched open, her clit exposed and firm, grinding against him, and the juices trickling out with just the slightest of motion had me about to go nuts.

I reached to my cock and began squeezing as Jackson's cock began to piston in and out of Rebecca's pussy. Just as I was about to pull my cock out and jack off, Rebecca leaned back onto her desk and moaned, "Bill, come over here, I want your cock in my mouth."

I moved quickly around the desk, opening my pants and presenting my cock to Rebecca. She eagerly took me in her mouth and immediately began sucking me with the same intensity as she had several days before. I knew if she continued much longer, I'd be filling her mouth with my cum once again, but she suddenly pulled her mouth away. Looking down I could see her rubbing it all over her face, over her nose, her closed eyes as she opened her mouth and groaned, "Fuck me Jackson, I'm coming, I'm coming..."

Her hand squeezed my cock hard as her entire body tensed up and then released as she fell back onto the desk, gasping for breath. She continued pushing her pelvis up with each of Jackson's thrust, grinding her clit against him. Slipping my cock back into her mouth she hungrily sucked me, with an intensity even greater than before. In just moments I arched my back and came, spurting into her mouth as she gasped for air and swallowed. Even with the furious sucking and swallowing, my cum spilled out of her mouth and ran over her cheek down onto her neck.

Rebecca didn't notice the spilled cum as she tensed her body again, grinding hard against Jackson as she released my cock and grabbed his hips, pulling him hard against her. Glancing up at Jackson's face, I could see he was on the edge, so I moved to get a better look as he wildly thrust his cock in and out, in and out, in and out of her until finally he arched his back and drove himself so deep that the desk actually moved some from the force. 

From my vantage point I could see his balls tighten with each spurt as he came again and again, filling her cunt as I had filled her mouth. When he finished, he quickly pulled back out of her, leaving her pussy gaping open, suddenly empty except for the cum that dripped from her. Jackson fell back onto the chair as Rebecca remained on the desk catching her breath. I simply watched in silence as her beautiful pussy slowly closed and her flowing lips became a single slit, seemingly incapable of taking anything as large as Jackson's cock. 

Finally the silence was broken when Rebecca asked, "Bill, could you go over to my gym back there and pull out a towel. I think I have some cleaning up to do."

I grabbed the towel from the bag and watched as she dabbed the cum from her desk top and then from her thighs and pussy. In the meantime, Jackson and I were getting ourselves together, wondering if anyone else in the bank had any idea of the "loan processing" that was going on in Rebecca's office. Rebecca finished cleaning herself off, slipped down off her desk, grabbed the paperwork Jackson had finished and moved back into her chair at her desk. She placed the papers in her outbox and said, "Excuse me while I send my assistant an email. I'm directing her to finish up the paperwork so we can get it ready for final approval. While one of the bank directors will need to give final approval, I can pretty much guarantee the loan will be approved within a day or so."

She had smiled seductively when she guaranteed the loan would be approved, so I was sure it was a done deal. Continuing, she said, "Once it is approved I can either mail you the check or give you a call and have you come pick it up. If you come in, I'll need you to come into my office and sign off. So what do you think, should I mail..."

"I'll come pick it up," I quickly said.

"Okay Bill, I'm looking forward to it, and say, why not brink Jackson along just in case we need to work a little more on that collateral."

Jackson and I shook her hand and headed out to my car. Once we passed through the doors and stepped outside Jackson looked at me and said, "Thank goodness for collateral."

"Yeah," I replied, "Big or small, thank goodness for collateral." 



Collateral



It wasn't such a big crime in the scheme of things. As a bookkeeper he could have stolen so much more. He only took enough to cover his mother's debts after she passed away. He planned to pay it back slowly covering his tracks along the way. Its not that the mob didn't pay well they most assuredly did but Jeff was over extended in ways a bookkeeper shouldn't be. There were flashy cars and an out sized house. The kids went to an exclusive school. His wife had expensive tastes and nothing seemed to be easily trimmed from the budget. In short Jeff was living large and feeling the pinch. Still it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. That is until his employer hired a second bookkeeper to check his work. Jeff was found out immediately. Rather than denial or subterfuge Jeff threw himself on the mercy of his boss, confessing everything. His boss simply replied. "Mr. Gardner. We will discuss this over dinner at your house tomorrow." 

Big Sal did not look angry. He did look hurt. Jeff understood instinctively that his boss took this as a personal affront. Somehow he did not fear for his life. Big Sal preferred humiliation and revenge over a simple hit. Not that he didn't employ those against his enemies. Jeff had seen it himself a courier who lost a shipment might get off with some broken bones for a first offense. If he redeemed himself on later assignments Big Sal rehabilitated him. If he screwed up again, Big Sal wrote the shipment off and the courier ended up being nabbed by some of Sal's friends enforcement. This kept the reach of lady justice at bay and had the effect of making Sal look much cleaner than he actually was 

Big Sal was more genteel than most of his kin but he was nonetheless a thug through and through. Jeff understood exactly what he was getting into. Laundering the money and making it clean was something he never contemplated the ethics of. To him it beat slaving away for a bank or insurance firm and taking decades to earn the kind of money he was taking home with Sal from day one. It had been a good life thus far. 

He knew he would have none of the things he currently possessed if not for Big Sal. His wealth had attracted Emma. Even after bearing two daughters she was still a stunner. 5 foot 6 with long brown hair, a trim figure, modest bust, terrific legs and a flawless complexion. She looked at least a decade younger than the 37 that the calender said she was. Their daughters aged 17 and 15 were virtual clones of their mother. In all the years of their marriage Jeff had never confided in her where his income came from. As far as she was concerned her husband worked in the city for a corporation. It was a fiction Jeff felt was harmless. Now he realized that his carefully constructed world was about to collapse. 

That night he went home and tried to explain things to Emma.

"Emma, there is something you must know."

"What is it dear?" replied Emma.

"I don't work for the Trident Corporation. That is I DO work for them but they are a dummy corporation a shell. In reality I work for Big Sal Maglini the mobster."

In a halting, difficult confession, it all spilled out of Jeff. The fact that their lives were the rewards of criminality. That her wardrobe, house and cars came from ill gotten gains. That he had done a bad thing by crossing Sal. And that he should be fearing for his life. 

Emma was not sympathetic. She was the sort of woman who put airs over others and liked to point out how perfect her life as Jeff's wife was. Her anger was intense. 

"I should divorce you, Jeff!"

"If you did that ALL of us would go to jail. There is nothing that we own that isn't connected to mob money. Even if they did not send you to jail, you and the girls would be left penniless. Are you prepared to live off food stamps and food bank left overs? Imagine the girls going to the lousy local high school, No you and the girls are not that type. I don't think that Big Sal is going to kill me, that's not his way. I'm sure what he has in mind is not fatal but no doubt is rather humiliating. He may even let me keep my job after extracting his vengeance. He can't afford to kill me. The new guy he hired is smart but only I know the books so thoroughly. I know where all the bodies are buried both figuratively and literally."

Jeff explained that Big Sal was coming to dinner tomorrow. He wants to meet the entire family. Emma eventually cooled down. She helped the girls with their homework and even made a late snack for Jeff. Jeff was still consigned to the couch for the night.

Jeff went to work the next morning to find the new bookkeeper looking like the cat that ate the canary. God how Jeff hated the guy. Still if he were in the same position as the new guy he would have done the same thing. There was no better way to ingratiate himself to Big Sal. Jeff was blunt with the new guy. The books told only part of the story, Jeff knew the ins and out of big Sal's operation to a detail that the new guy could never hope to understand right away.

"We can either work together," said Jeff, "Or we can be a loggerheads and Sal's operation starts springing leaks."

The new guy was sharp as a tack but he understood that the only way to become Big Sal's right hand man was through Jeff's knowledge. They settled into an uneasy truce and checked and rechecked each others work. 

Jeff left work as early as he could. He found Emma working on a fancy dinner. The girls were home in their school uniforms helping their mother. Jeff could tell that she was cool to him but she put on a false front for the girls sake. Emma cooked phenomenally well and made an impressive dinner of pasta and steak, something she instinctively knew that Sal would enjoy. It looked like there would be plenty of leftovers as well.

Emma was dressed in one of her finest dresses, a short blue number that always got Jeff hard. The girls were told to put on nice clothes and that their father's boss would be coming to dinner. Faith and Paula whined at first but did as they were told. 

Even though he was their father Jeff really had to appreciate his daughters beauty. Faith had been dating for a year and Jeff had to field phone calls for her from all sorts of boys when he was home. Paula would not be allowed to date until she was sixteen but Jeff could tell that he would have his hands full with her as well. 

Sal's big car pulled into the Gardner's driveway right at 8:00 P.M. Jeff was surprised to see Sal's youngest son Geno exiting the car as well. Geno was indulged by his father in everything. Despite this he was not spoiled. He shared his father's ruthlessness and was the most reliable of Sal's sons. Once Sal retired or was eliminated by a rival Geno would inherit the bulk of his father's operation. Geno stood six one, towering over his father. He also had a taste for the ladies and the high life. Most women found him devilishly handsome. Jeff had no idea why he was accompanying his father on what was essentially a nothing operation. 

Big Sal entered the house with a nod and kissed Emma's hand. He introduced Geno as his protegee. After the preliminaries the six people sat down to dinner. Both Sal and Geno complimented Emma on her cooking and on her looks. The girls were practically flirting with Geno. However, to his relief, Jeff noticed that Geno didn't seem to be reciprocating his girls' flirtations. 

After everyone had eaten. Sal told Jeff that it would be a good idea if the girls left the room now so that the remaining three of them could discuss some private business. The girls excused themselves and went to their rooms.

"Now we can talk Mr. and Mrs. Gardner," said Sal. "As you are probably aware of by now Mrs. Gardner, may I call you Emma? You husband has been caught stealing from my operation. It is not so much the size of the infraction but the principle which makes me angry. No one wants to get me angry. It is not good for their health. I'm not sure what your husband has told me about our operation but I have the power to make people disappear or suffer sudden injury. I also have to power to achieve certain ends if I desire. Now that your daughters are out of the room I can tell you that If I set my mind to it, I could reach them at the Cadwaller School they attend and have them hooked on drugs and turning tricks to fund their habit in a matter of weeks."

Emma's face drained of color and her hands balled into fists.

Sal noticed these changes and the bulge in Jeff's throat and the red anger of Jeff's face.

"I tell you these things, not to anger you. but to explain my abilities. As I said these are things I COULD do to punish your husband not necessarily things I WILL do. I have something quite in store for your husband. Something that involves you."

Emma's jaw dropped and Jeff felt a very queasy feeling in his stomach.

"My protegee Geno here has a taste for the finer things in life. One of those fine things is as he so succinctly puts it is 'Milfs.' I can't interest him in women his own age. He claims that he likes the experience and beauty that these women provide. He also likes total control. You see, you Mrs. Gardner, will be a form of collateral. If you agree to be Geno's slave for ten days your daughters will never know that I and my organization exist. I feel that ten days is the optimal amount of time for your husband to and daughters to be deprived of your wonderful company. Your husband will be so sufficiently chastened that he will never steal from my organization again. 

Of course if you opt not to be collateral against your daughters' virtue then I shall be forced to exploit them. "

"Oh my God!" Gasped Emma.

"Now see here Mr. Maglini!"

"You are in no position to complain Mr. Gardner! If not for you Mrs. Gardner would not be in this position. You, of all people, must know that I like to use incentives that differ from most of my brethren. I break your leg -- you heal and may learn nothing. I Break your arm -- you can't work for me for weeks and, despite your malfeasance, I continue to need your services. Break your heart, break your desire to rebel and you become more valuable to me than you are now and will never stray again. Working for me has given you a very nice life. I can take it away, I can eliminate you for instance but that is not my way.

Sal looked at Emma and asked. "What do you say, Emma?" 

Jeff's wife took a few moments to catch her breath and contemplate the enormity of her predicament. At last she sputtered, "What choice do I have? I must protect my girls."

Emma shot a look of utter contempt at her husband and turned to Geno and asked. "What would my duties entail?"

Geno, who had been quiet most of the evening suddenly became animated. He had a look of sheer delight as he eyed Emma up and down and replied.

"You will be my plaything. You will be at my beck and call. I will decide what you wear or what you do not wear. I will make love to you in every way imaginable. I'm not into violence as I like to be gentle. I do have a few kinks but nothing too weird. You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen Mrs. Gardner, it would be an honor to keep you as a willing slave for ten wonderful days."

Emma took a long look at Geno and said. "I can agree to that." She turned to her husband and said, "You will be lucky to get to even sniff my panties for a very long time if EVER!"

Sal said, "My driver will pick you up next Saturday as Noon. This gives you over a week to clear your schedule."

Geno interjected with, "I'd like you to stop shaving immediately. I like my women hairy, temporarily!"

After working out the final details Sal and Geno pulled away in their huge car. 

As soon as they were gone, Emma broke into tears and retreated to the master bedroom. The girls asked their father what had happened. He hugged them close and told them the truth. Their mother's tears were the result of something stupid he had done. Jeff didn't need to be told. That night he slept on the couch. 

For Jeff, the time until Saturday passed very slowly both at home and at work. Emma decided that it didn't look good to the girls for Jeff to spend every night on the couch she allowed Jeff to share the marital bed again. However, the bedroom was one large ice cube. Emma wore her dowdiest, thickest flannel nightgowns and refused to get undressed in front of her husband. She erected a wall out of spare pillows down the center of the bed and made it very clear to Jeff that he was not to even think of letting his hands stray over to her side. 

Emma really hated to stop shaving. Her body hair was thick and grew quickly. She had begun shaving at age twelve. She had to shave her legs every day to keep them smooth. By the time Saturday rolled around she would look like a woolly caterpillar under her arms and below her waist. She cleared her schedule for the necessary ten days. Emma was barely able to conceal the contempt she felt for Jeff from the girls. As a cover story Jeff and Emma had decided to tell the girls that their mother was going on a little vacation because she was under so much stress lately. The girls said that they hoped that their mother had a good time. 

For Jeff the week was sheer torture. The new guy was constantly on his case and Sal had started giving him the silent treatment. Every bit of information he had to relay to Big Sal had to pass through the new accountant. It was maddening and humiliating. To make things worse every day Geno sent Jeff an email of pictures from a calendar counting off the days until Emma was Geno's plaything.

At last Saturday arrived. Not knowing how to dress Emma put on a conservative beige pantsuit. She packed a few things in an overnight bag. She hugged Grace and Paula with an intensity that belied a simple vacation. "You girls will never know how much I love you." Said Emma. 

"Oh mom," said Grace, "You're just going away for ten days. Its not like we won't see you again."

At noon Big Sal's limo pulled into the driveway. Purely for appearances sake Emma kissed Jeff goodbye. It was the first time that his lips had met his wife's in over a week. As she left the door the last words she heard was Paula's comment, "Wow a limo mom! This must be one terrific vacation." With tears in her eyes Emma slid into the back seat of the limo and tried to keep herself from breaking down in tears. 

The drive was uneventful. Wine and cheese were provided, so Emma sought some liquid courage. A consolation, she thought was the fact that Geno was at least handsome and not a troll like his father. In short order the limo pulled up in front of the Maglin's sprawling, immense house. A servant led Emma into the house. 

Geno was waiting, dressed as a police officer.

"Mrs. Gardner, so nice of you to come. Our adventure begins now."

Geno withdrew a pair of handcuffs and before Emma could even react, her hands were cuffed behind her back. 

I will lead you to my playroom, Mrs. Gardner. Geno gathered up Emma's purse and overnight bag and led her along a hallway and down a flight of stairs. 

The room was medium sized and starkly white. Emma was able to process that in one corner was what looked like a prison cell!

"We will begin your intake now," said Geno. He walked over to a desk near the cell and beckoned Emma to follow.

Geno began to empty Emma's purse, speaking into a recorder he noted each item in her purse and then placed the contents in a large manila envelope. There was a safe next to the desk and Geno opened the door and placed the envelope and the empty purse inside it. He opened the overnight bad and cataloged the contents. These were also placed in envelopes in the safe as was the bag.

He walked up to Emma and unfastened her handcuffs. He stood in front of Emma and said. " You will address me as Master. You are now number 27 whoever you were as a free woman is immaterial. You are mine for the next ten days and all of your desires should be in pleasing your master. You will now remove, one item at a time, everything you wore as a free woman."

Emma realized, with dread, what Geno wanted. She began to unbutton her blouse. She slid it off her slim frame and handed it to her captor. Geno noted the color and size into the recorder and folded the blouse into a small square. Emma removed her shoes and then her slacks and handed them to Geno who folded the pants into a neat square. Knowing that nudity was inevitable, Emma steeled herself and unfastened her brassier. Her breathtaking white breasts spilled out. Geno's hard on was quite noticeable.

At last Emma slipped off her panties. Involuntarily she shivered. Geno let out a low whistle. "You are very beautiful number 27. I also see that you have stopped shaving as I requested. That will go in your favor. Now you need to surrender your jewelry." 

Emma quickly removed her earrings and watch. Next came her necklace. Emma realized that the last items she possessed were her wedding ring and engagement ring. She slid these off realizing now that they were empty symbols. She knew that she would stay married to Jeff but she would never sleep with him again. "When all of this is over," she told herself, "I am finding myself a lover. He will be the antithesis of Jeff and he will get the sex that Jeff will never again receive."

After cataloging her jewelry, Geno placed it all in an envelope. Emma's clothes and jewelry joined the envelopes and purse and overnight bag already in the safe. With finality Geno shut the safe and spun its dial. "These items will be returned when your sentence is over."

Geno took out a camera and took full length photos of Emma from the front, the back and each side. He also took closeups of her face from the same angles. All the while Emma was forced to hold up a board with the number 27 on it. 

Geno donned a pair of latex gloves and approached Emma. Instinctively she knew what would come next. Geno's gloved fingers explored her womanhood and her anus. After removing the gloves Geno also checked Emma's mouth and ran his fingers through her hair. 

Geno led Emma to stand over a drain in the floor. He brought forth a hose and Emma was deluged with warm water. At one point Geno gave Emma some soap and ordered her to lather up her entire body after which he hosed her off again.

"Here is a towel number 27. You may dry yourself." Said Geno

While Emma was luxuriating in the enormous towel, Geno took something from the desk. He approached Emma and had her turn around. Emma felt a tightness around her throat and heard a click. Instantly She realized that she had been collared! Emma's hands went to her neck.

"You won't be able to remove it. Its on a time lock. You will be able to remove it in ten days. You can't see the front. It say number 27 in very large print. After servicing me you will spend the rest of the night behind bars. I find that loosens up my slaves and that they will do just about anything to avoid returning here. Number 27, kneel before me, undo my pants and give me a blow job. You WILL swallow every drop."

Picturing her daughters Emma wadded up the towel to make a pad between her and the tiled floor. She got on her knees and opened Geno's pants. His phallus was enormous, far larger than her husband's. With a bit of difficulty Emma wrapped her mouth about it and went to work. In a few minuets Geno moaned and grasped the back of Emma's head. He came in copious waves straight down her throat.

After pulling up his pants Geno said. "You have done well number 27." Tomorrow we will defuzz you and begin to explore you in every way possible sexually but now it is time that you cool your heels for a while. Emma was led to the cell and locked in. 

Geno left the room and Emma threw herself upon the cot in the cell and began to cry spasmodically. Hours later, her tears completely spent, Emma rose from the cot and began to explore her cell. There was a toilet and a sink. There was toothpaste, a toothbrush, and toilet paper. Above the sink a mirror showed Emma her entire collar for the first time. It was leather and metal with the 27 prominent in the middle above the depression between her clavicles. 




Collateral



She paced her cell a few times and then heard someone enter. It was Geno, dressed casually. He had a tray of food in his hands. He approached the cell and told Emma to stand away from the door. Geno entered the cell and placed the food tray on the cot.  

"I know that you are a smart woman. You will eat every morsel of food or you will be punished. After you have eaten I will take the tray away. I will give you a blanket for the night. Now start eating."

Emma realized that she was famished. The food was very good. After eating Geno took up the tray and got a blanket out of the desk. Emma could not wait to wrap it about herself. Geno also handed her a sheet of paper.

"This is tomorrow's schedule. You will be expected to preform all the listed tasks. Most of them are easy. I will tell you that your day starts with reveille at 7:00 A.M. You will start each morning by giving me a blow job and swallowing every drop. You will not be given clothing for at least a few days so get used to nudity. I don't expect you to memorize the schedule but I do expect you to prepare yourself mentally for the tasks at hand. I love to receive and give oral sex. A good blow job makes me happy and, believe me, you want me happy. If you would like to know why I selected you the answer is simple. I saw your picture on your husband's desk one day. You are without a doubt the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. At first I thought you were his young trophy bride. But then I did a little investigating. The fact that you were older and a mother made me desire you immensely. When your husband got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, I asked my father if I could have you. My father spoils me rotten. He gives me what ever I want. Mothers make the best lovers, the best cock suckers, and the most responsive slaves.

If you decide to not be cooperative and obedient my father was deadly serious about turning your daughters into crack whores. He has done it in the past and he can do it again. Your girls look just like you. It would be a real shame if we had to spoil their looks and destroy their futures. Consider them and you should do fine."

Now it is time to service your Master again. I want a blow job number 27." Emma squatted on the floor and fished out Geno's erect penis. A short time later he was coming and Emma was doing her best to choke down every drop. After she choked it down Geno said. "Now thank your Master for his cum." The words took a long time in coming to Emma's throat but at last she said. "Thank you for your cum Mm...Master."

With that Geno left the cell and slammed the door shut behind him.

"Lights out is at 9:30 P. M." He said as he left the room. Emma heard the door close and the lock click fast.

Emma read the schedule. "7:00 A.M Reveille. 7:15 Morning blow job of your Master. You will swallow every drop and thank your Master for the privilege of sucking his cock afterwards. 7:30 a half hour on the treadmill followed by jumping jacks for five minuets. 8:05 breakfast. You will clean your plate and then lick it clean with your tongue. 8:35 hair removal of every inch of your body below the neck. This is an elaborate process that may take more than several hours to complete. Noonish. Mid day blow job of your Master as in the morning you will swallow every drop and thank you Master for allowing you to be his cum receptacle. followed by a light lunch. (Most of your meals will be vegetarian. This is not because I am not a carnivore but because I like to be the only meat in your mouth and because I like my cum being a source of your protein.) 2:00 we enter my bedroom. You should mentally prepare yourself for vaginal and anal intercourse. From 2:00 P.M or thereabouts until around midnight I will be fucking you every way imaginable. There will be a break for dinner. When I am finished with you for the evening your collar will be fastened by a leash to my wall and you will be put to bed for the evening. Your will receive the next day's schedule at that time. 12:30 Lights out."

Emma read and reread the schedule. She was glad that her tubes had been tied when her youngest was born. Somehow she had the feeling that Geno did not believe in condoms. It would be hard to call him Master as she was almost twenty years older than him but she knew that she could do that. 

Since there was nothing else to do Emma paced her cell for a while. She brushed her teeth and washed her face and then settled down upon the cot an wrapped the blanket around herself. The time passed very slowly until the lights went out on their own at 9:30 P.M. Emma did her best to try and fall asleep on the uncomfortable cot. She knew that tomorrow would be a long day. Her last thoughts were of protecting her girls.

A bugle call over a loudspeaker woke her. She stumbled off the cot and forced her eyes to focus. Geno entered the room an opened the lock to the cell. He was dressed all in black which had the look of making him look sinister. "Wake up number 27! Time to rise and shine. You may use the toilet then it will be time to suck my cock and thank me for my cum." 

With embarrassment Emma voided her bowels and wiped herself as Geno watched. She took the blanket and knelt in front of Geno. After a few moments Emma's throat was assaulted with Geno's seed. With difficulty Emma swallowed it all, even licking her lips to nab stray strands of semen. 

Geno moaned and said. "Very good number 27. Now thank me for my cum." 

"Thank you Master for your cum."

"You are welcome number 27. Now prepare yourself for a workout."

Geno led Emma to another basement room that had some exercise equipment in it. Geno had Emma mount the treadmill and set it for a difficult run. Emma felt awkward and uncomfortable as she ran on the treadmill. As her breasts bounced around, Emma really wished that she had at least a sports bra and sneakers. Emma watched her run with a huge smile on his face. He held a video camera and recorded much of her run. 

She was completely spent by the time the treadmill work was finished. The jumping jacks were difficult to finish without stopping for breath but Emma managed it. Emma kept herself in excellent shape through spinning and swimming with her daughters. She did not like treadmills or calisthenics at all.

While Emma was drenched in sweat and gasping for breath Geno led her upstairs to the kitchen. To her chagrin the kitchen was occupied. There was a maid and some other young men who bore a striking resemblance to Geno. Emma assumed that the young men were Geno's brothers. She seemed to recall that Jeff had said that his boss had a rather large family.

Their eyes took detailed tours over Emma's flesh and stayed fixed upon her as Geno led her to a seat at the table. A plate of pancakes, a glass of orange juice, some fruit and a mug of coffee were placed in front of her. 

"Eat everything number 27. Lick your plate when you are finished." 

Emma ate everything. As she ate the men in the room talked as though she was not even there. Emma realized that the presence of women such as herself must be a common occurrence in the Malgini household. She was just glad that Big Sal was not present. She picked up the plate and, as daintily as she could, she licked up the syrup and remains of the meal. Despite her caution she ended up with syrup on her face and fingers. 

"Well look at you number 27". Said Geno, "We need to get you cleaned up. Follow me." 

Geno extended his hand. Assuming that ignoring the gesture would not go in her favor Emma took the proffered palm. Geno led her to the second floor.

"These are my rooms. We won't be disturbed here. Nor will there be prying eyes." The first room was a bedroom not unlike, in some respects, her Daughters' rooms. There was a large bed but there were hooks upon the walls and a mattress on the floor. The ceiling was mirrored. There were dressers and cabinets of various sizes and shapes. 

The second room was a large bathroom. There was a tub with lions feet, a shower stall, a sink, a toilet and a bidet. Several full length mirrors lined the walls. Geno turned the taps on in the bathtub and took his shirt off. Emma was struck by how muscular he was. Jeff had developed a bit of a paunch since their oldest daughter's tenth birthday. To be honest he no longer turned her on and the marriage had been coasting on inertia for quite some time. Despite that Emma had remained faithful since her wedding. Now she believed that she should have started an affair years ago.

"This object," Geno indicated a mechanism attached the tub, "Is a highly refined filter. I will be bathing you and shaving you. The filter will capture all of your hair. I will later add this to my collection. Get in the tub now number 27." 

Emma stepped into the tub, The water was hotter than she liked it but at last she settled into the water. Starting with her feet and legs Geno, very slowly and deliberately, washed her, then he shaved every part of her with a variety of trimmers and razors. Emma noted all of the floating hair in the tub. When Geno was satisfied He had Emma stand up and he rinsed her off and had her exit the tub. The mechanism began humming and the water slowly drained from the tub. Involuntarily Emma ran her hands over her skin. She never felt smoother and she considered herself excellent with a razor. She was happy to say goodbye to the caterpillar look. However, to Emma's disappointment Geno had shaved off her bush. Emma kept it trimmed close but full. She just did not like the bald eagle look but she knew better than to protest. The last time she had been shaved down there was as a birthday present to Jeff on in the tenth year of their marriage. While Jeff would have liked for Emma to keep her sacred grounds bare, Emma disliked the look so much, that she started growing it back the next day. She ran her hand over her mons. The sensitivity was striking . A large towel was provided, Emma wasted no time in wrapping it about herself and drying her hair and body.

"Ordinarily I would expect a blow job now. I will expect one in a few moments but your pussy looks so inviting that I am going to go down on you now."

Geno knelt before Emma and brushed the towel aside. Without ceremony Geno's tongue entered her. Emma was floored by Geno's technique. His tongue was the most talented she had ever encountered. Emma went through a string of boyfriends before she had married Jeff. None of those men compared. Her husband Jeff was good at cunnilingus but Geno was on another plain entirely. Her newly shorn pussy was amazingly sensitive. Before Emma realized what was happening she began moaning with pleasure. 

A delighted Geno stood up and embraced Emma. "Number 27, you are wonderfully responsive." He kissed Emma who was too startled to to react. "Now it is my turn to receive pleasure. He pushed down gently on Emma's shoulders. Understanding what was wanted Emma knelt before Geno, opened his pants and set to work on Geno's huge member. He certainly seemed to have quite the capacity as he came in torrents. Diligently Emma swallowed every bit she could. 

"You need to thank me Number 27."

"Thank you for your cum Master," replied Emma.

Geno led Emma back to his bedroom. He had Emma sit at a desk and he opened a small refrigerator. Out came a salad, bread, and some wine. "It is past noon and time for lunch, I have several dressings for you to choose from. When You are finished eating we will begin to make love."

Emma chose blue cheese dressing and began to eat. The salad was a rather large one. While she ate Geno opened the wine and "encouraged" her to drink several glasses. She was quite buzzed by the time she had finished eating.

Geno led Emma to the bed. Naked he was an amazing specimen. He was built like a fitness model from a magazine. True to his worked he fucked her every way imaginable. He entered her anus, her mouth and her vagina. As expected, Geno did not seem to know about the existence of condoms. There were positions that Emma had never tried before. She was glad for the alcohol blur because it made everything easier. The bed was coated with cum by the time Geno took a break.

Emma used the bathroom and washed up. Geno led her downstairs to the kitchen. Emma had no idea what time it was, just that it was very late. The kitchen was empty while Geno made a meal of tofu and rice. Emma found that she had worked up an amazing appetite. Geno turned out to be a very talented cook and Emma ate till she was full.

After dinner it was back upstairs and the bed once more. Geno was indefatigable in the sack and had amazing recovery speed. Even in college when Emma had spent weekends seeing how many times she could fuck her boyfriends, she had never had this much sex in one day. True to his word, Geno was amazingly gentle. For anal sex, he progressed slowly, yet determinedly. With his tongue Geno gave Emma more orgasms than she could count. His large penis was quite pleasurable as it went to work on her nether regions.

Simply because she remembered it from the schedule, Emma guessed it was around midnight when Geno led her to the bathroom, handed her a toothbrush and had her prepare for bed. He gave her the next day's schedule. Emma saw that it would be more of the same. 

After Emma finished preparing for bed, Geno led her to the mattress on the floor and with a leather leash, lashed her to a hook on the wall. Emma realized that she could move only a few feet in any direction. She could kneel but not stand up. The length of the leash allowed her to lay down comfortably. The mattress was very soft and inviting. Emma stared up at her hairless form in the mirrors on the ceiling and shivered. Emma's last thoughts as her eyes closed and the world vanished into a peaceful dreamland was the realization that there were far worse ways to spend ten days.



Collateral



As my orgasm subsided, my girlfriend Annie held her mouth completely still around my cock, waiting until patiently until my cock stopped twitching, before gulping her mouthful of semen down. After a few moments, she took my cock out of her mouth, exaggerating the audible "pop" sound for effect, and said, "Ahhhhh.," as she crawled up next to me in bed to snuggle. 

"You are amazing..." I whispered into her ear. 

"And don't you forget it..." Annie said, contentedly. 

We lay there without speaking for a few minutes, and then she said, "You know, you *do* have a birthday coming up... Do you have any idea what you'd like for your birthday this year?" I could practically hear the smile on her face when she spoke. Annie and I had a tradition of giving each other sexual presents on our birthdays. 

We were both 24. Annie and I first met at the end of college, and we had been dating since. As a pair, we were the odd couple, except for our sense of humor. I was definitely the more straight-laced of the two of us. I was a young engineer WITH a big firm. To most of the world, I looked like a pretty white-bread all-american type. 

When Annie and I started to get involved in college, she was delighted to find that under the surface, I had my kinks, and she seemed to take particular pleasure in coaxing me to explore them. 

Annie was an artsy type, and an empowered, radical feminist. I came to know that even with her public persona, she got an incredible sexual charge from her desire for things that "good girls" are not supposed to desire. For her, feminism meant that she had the choice not to be confined to a particular role in life. In the bedroom, she seemed to take equal pleasure from being put into a subservient, submissive role, and from acting as the aggressor, and controlling her partner. She fully embraced her kinks, and turn-ons. Nothing got her sopping wet faster than being told what a bad, dirty girl she was for craving the things she craved.

As we lay there in bed that afternoon, I was silent for a few moments, conflicted, and wondering whether I dared to answer her question. There was something that I had wanted for a long time, but I didn't know if I had the courage to ask for it. 

Annie knew I loved my porn. My personal favorite was amateur facials. There is something transgressive about being invited into the most intimate moments between other men and their wives and girlfriends, seeing girlfriends, wives and mothers in their most private, debauched moments, giving loving, sensuous blowjobs, right up to the inevitable raunchy conclusion, and watching them enjoy having their seeing pretty faces spattered with outrageous amounts of thick, salty cockslop. The bigger the mess, the better. 

My favorite sex acts with Annie were the acts that had a visual element to them. She knew it very well, and played to my desires. She loved to prop me up on pillows so that I could look down on her while she sucked me off, spending lots and lots of time making eye contact with me while her mouth stretched lewdly around my cock. 

I had a mental storehouse of images of her; eyes opening wide in surprise as I began to ejaculate into her mouth, her pretty face spattered with the biggest loads of sperm I had ever produced, and even other wonderful mental images of her, slowly pushing back onto me as I slid my cock up her ass for the first time. Just doing those things with such an enthusiastic partner should have been enough, but is wasn't. I was greedy - I wanted more; I wanted pictures. 

Annie was about as porn-forward as they come. She had made it her mission to seek out the things that really got me going, even if I didn't yet know what they were, and fulfill them. It occurred to me that every single one of the thousands of boyfriends and husbands had to screw up the courage to ask to take out a camera for the first time. I figured if I couldn't ask Annie, I would never be able to ask anyone. 

After a few moments, I summoned up the courage, and said, "Actually, yes. For my birthday this year, I was thinking I'd like to take some... pictures... of you." 

She rolled over got up on one elbow, and raised one eyebrow, looking right at me. She was very beautiful, with her dark hair in a page-boy style, with a tinge of red in it, beautiful clear, pale skin, and big hazel eyes. Her breasts were not particularly large, but she had beautifully rounded hips, and she was very, very flexible. 

"Oh, really..." she said, "That wasn't what I expected. What kind of... pictures were you thinking of?" she asked. Her tone was relaxed, and interested. In her teasing way, as she almost always did, she coaxed me to share more. 

"For starters, I've always wanted to have some pictures of "the mirror'..." I said. "And you, afterwards."

"The mirror" was our pet expression for birthday sex we had one time, which had become a regular part of our repertoire. Annie usually stripped down to nothing but a pair of her skimpiest panties, and then got on her knees in front of me, right next to her big full length mirror. On her knees, looking up at me, she made a performance of worshipping my cock, licking me, sucking me, teasing my shaved balls with her fingernails, and whispering the filthiest things until I was right at the edge. Then, she would stop for a few minutes to tease me even more. She did this until I was practically begging her to put me out of my misery and let me ejaculate. When it was finally time, she sat back on her knees, tilted her head back, and let me finish into her open mouth, knowing full well that as soon as I was done, she would enthusiastically swallow the hot mouthful of thick semen I had just given her. 

"Oh, really..." she said, as though she was thinking it over my birthday wish in her head. 

"Pictures of me... on my knees?"

"Yes" I responded. 

"My, my, my..." she said. She rolled back over onto her side into our spooned position. She was quiet for a few minutes, and I was thinking that I had totally botched this, and that she was stewing about how angry she was with me. 

Then she simply said, "You know, that is a very intimate gift, sweetie. Pictures like that last forever. It takes a lot of trust... " 

"I know," I sighed, thinking my idea was shot, and that I had overplayed my hand. We both dozed off, and I stayed clear of the subject, not wanting to pursue it any further when we got up and finished the day. I figured I'd overplayed my hand, and I was just as happy not to bring it up again. 

The next time I saw her was to meeting her for a quick lunch on her break near the Gap store she was running. 

I was in the middle of a bite of cheesesteak when she said point blank, "So... About those pictures... How much do you want them?" 

I almost choked, "You want to talk about this here? " I asked.

"Why not?" she answered. " I am still a bit nervous taking those kinds of pictures, but I have to admit, the thought of being so "compromised" to you is a bit of a turn-on for the subby side of me," She said. "And you know, I was born to perform."

I smiled. That was truth. 

Annie continued, "I did think of one way I could let you take pictures of me like that," Annie said. "I trust you, and I have faith in you, but it's a big risk having pictures like that get out of control. I would need assurance that even if our relationship goes sideways someday, You would still keep those pictures with care and discretion. But... I think I could be comfortable letting you take pictures of me if I had some collateral."

"Collateral?"

"Collateral. If you want pictures of this pretty face covered in your spunk, you need to give me something in return."

"I'm not sure I'm following," I said.

"If you want pictures of me covered in your cum, first, I get to take pictures of you, covered in cum. That way, if I *ever* find out my pictures get lost, stolen or posted, you will know you can expect the same treatment with photos you give to *me*."  

"Uhhh, Annie..." I said, a little startled. 

"I know, I know. You happen to be straight... although I've had my doubts on occasion... We'll call you straight-ish. So how about this? For my collateral pics, I will settle for pictures of you covered in your own cum. I've got this all figured out," she continued, "If you lean over the edge of my bed, I can stroke you off until you come on your own face". Then Annie added with a smirk, "I looked it up on the internet."

I was still too dumbfounded to speak, and surprised we were actually talking about this, even in quiet voices, in the mall food court. 

She leaned back a bit and said, "So, I guess you just have to ask yourself...how badly do you want these pics? If you want them bad enough to do this for me, then I'll be your little glazed donut." 

If there was one thing about being with Annie, it was that she liked to find where the edge was, and push a little farther. 

"Okay, I'll do it." I said, right on the spot. 

"Then you have yourself a deal. I'd suggest you walk right over to that Best Buy behind you and find yourself a nice camera!" she said wink. "Shall we say Friday night?" 

"Deal" I said. 

"Oh..." Annie said, as she was wrapping up the trash from her lunch, "One more thing. If we're doing this, we are doing this *right*. This is going to be my first time *giving* a facial, and I want it to be a good one. I'm sure you can relate to that, can't you?" she teased.

I smirked. 

"You are not allowed to come until Friday. You can edge yourself all you want, but I'm serious. No coming. Impress me. You always do." 

That Friday, I left the office, went for an early evening run, and then started to get ready. She was off work in the afternoon, and the asked me to give her a chance to clean up, and come by around 7:30. 

When I got to her apartment, I pushed the little ding bell, and she quickly opened the door, and kissed me hello. Her short hair was still damp from the shower. All she was wearing was that very short black silk bathrobe. 

I put down my bag and my brand new digital camera. It was the first one I had ever bought. It wasn't a DSLR, but it was a pretty nice point & shoot, with very high resolution. 

I handed it over to her. 

"Wow." She said. "Fancy! All I do is turn it on, and point and shoot? Awesome." 

She led me back to her bedroom. Next to her bed was a pillow on the floor. 

"This is where it's gonna happen." she said. There was a very long pause between us. "Are you ready?" She asked. 

She turned around, and sat down on the bed, pulling her robe open just a bit, so I could see the curve of one of her breasts, and then she crossed her legs seductively. 

I was still standing in front of her, and she said, "Why don't you get undressed for me, sweetie."

I slowly took off all my clothes, and before long I was standing before her, completely naked. She looked me up and down, and then her gaze stopped on my cock, which was already starting to swell, from this embarrassing attention. From the edge of the bed she slunk down to her hands and knees, and crawled over to me. 

My cock swelled as I watched her slink across her floor towards me. When she reached me, she looked up at me and said "You're supposed to be the one performing for me, my sweet, but I just can't resist." 

She got up to her knees, kneeling right below my engorged cock. Without touching it, she brought herself up so her face was level with my cock, and then looked up at me and smiled. She brought her lips to the head of my cock, just barely touching me in this incredibly teasing way she had.

"I was hoping maybe I'd get to use my mouth to get you going, but that doesn't seem to be... necessary." She teased, looking at my now fully erect cock with a smirk. 

"Still, I thought you might need a little reminder why you're doing this" she said. 

She wrapped her hand around my cock, which was huge at this point, and rubbed it lovingly against her cheek. "Is this what you would like pictures of?" she asked coyly, "Your great, big, thick cock on my pretty little face? Me, worshipping this beautiful dick? Is this what you want to be able to remember, forever?"

I just nodded. 

"Just think. You only have to do one teensy little thing, and then you get to take all the pictures you want of me doing every filthy thing I can think of, including some very messy finale scenes. So... do you think you're ready to pay up?"

"Yes," I whispered, thinking again about what I was willing to do for pictures of her. Seeing her teasing me, with her mouth so close to me was very arousing. I could definitely feel the fact that I had not come in a few days. 

Even though I was doing this to get what I wanted, the way she had turned this all around, I felt something very arousing that I had never felt before, submitting to her in this way.

She stood up, took me by the hand, and led me to her bed, then helped me arrange myself against the bed so that I was upside down, with my back leaning by the edge of the bed, with most of my weight supported from big piles of pillows under my calves. 

After she arranged me the way she had planned, she crawled back up onto the bed, between my legs, and looked down at me, smiling sweetly. I was a bit uncomfortable, but it wasn't as bad as I would have thought. 

My legs were spread wide open, and she got on her knees between them. 

"I'm not used to seeing you as wide open as this, sweetie. I kind of like it..." she said, as she leaned down, and put her face right next to my balls. Then she gently cupped them in one hand, and I felt her breath on my anus.

"It's very sweet of you to keep yourself shaved down here for me" she said, and then I felt the teasing tip of her tongue on my anus, which made my entire body shudder, and my cock twitch involuntarily.

She chuckled a bit. Then she got back upright, and looked down at me again. 

Looking up, I my swollen cock was only a few inches away from my face. Just behind that was Annie's beautiful face. She squirted some astroglide onto her hands, and then encircled the base of my cock with a firm grip, and began to stroke the entire length of my shaft firmly and insistently. It felt indescribably good. I could tell this was not going to take very long. 

As she stroked, I could see she was working out her aim, trying to figure out just how to hold my cock once I started to ejaculate. 

She cupped my balls in her other slippery hand, and before too long at all, she could feel my scrotum tightening up into my body.

"Oooh. That right, sweetie" she said, "You getting ready to come for me, aren't you?"

She carefully aimed the head of my cock down at my face, stroking it firmly, and more quickly now in her slippery hands. As she stroked, I began to feel my orgasm approaching. She was clearly enjoying this.

"...That's it, honey, you're almost there..." she cooed. "Open your mouth for me, my obedient boy..."

I complied, and opened my mouth for her. It was both arousing and humiliating to watch my girlfriend stroking a cock down at my face. She was loving this. I knew what she wanted, and all I wanted was to please her. 

"Have you ever thought about me, about what it's like, about what I feel, what goes through my head when I'm taking everything you give me, right on the kisser? Well, you're about to find out, my darling, aren't you? For just a few moments, I'd like you to pretend you're me, sweetie, and experience what it's like to take a facial from a big, beautiful cock. It is some that cannot be described. It can only be experienced." She whispered.

She knew I had often wondered what it was like. I thought about the position I had put myself in, and the perverse pleasure Annie was taking in this. Tonight, the cock she was stroking was *her* cock, and this was her chance to give as good as she got. 

"Tell me you're my little bitch," she cooed. "I know it's true. But I want to hear it. Tell me you're my little bitch."

She stroked me powerfully with her slippery hand. 

"I'm your little bitch," I whimpered. "I'm your little cum craving bitch. Please don't make me beg. Please, please, just give it to me. Cover me in cum. Make me drink it," I begged.

As I said those words, she cupped my balls in her other hand, and gently raking her fingernails across them. 

"That's right, my little cumslut. Own it. Own your desire." She encouraged.

That sent me over the edge. 

I could feel the waves of the orgasm start to well up from deep in my body. When she felt my cock starting to pulsate in her hand, she slowed and strengthened her strokes, carefully aiming her cock at her target. As I began to orgasm, my body began to convulse powerfully. My cock swelled even more in her hand, as it ejaculated jet after jet of thick milky white spunk.

She squirted the first two powerful spurts into my open mouth, and I instantly tasted that salty, spicy alkaline taste that she had grown to savor. Then she and then began to spray my face. It seemed like my orgasm would never end. Spurt after spurt of hot ejaculate splattered my face, my cock twitching uncontrollably. I completely unprepared prepared for how hot it was when it hit my face. 

Finally, my orgasm subsided, my cock still twitching violently, strings of semen stretching down to my face. And there I was. A couple of tablespoons doesn't seem like much, but I my eyes were glued shut, and my face felt almost completely covered. 

I tried to remain motionless, still propped up for a few moments, and then I felt Annie gently remove her hands from around my cock. 

After an awfully long silence, I heard Annie whisper, "Oh... my... fucking... God..."This may be the hottest, dirtiest fucking thing I have ever seen. Don't you dare move an inch."

She slowly eased my body down so that I was lying flat on her floor, being careful not to upset the thick, oozing dollops and spatters of semen covering on my face. 

As I was laying on my back with my own spunk pooled on my face, afraid to move, I felt Annie carefully straddle me. As she straddled my chest, I could feel her grind down onto me a little bit, and I could feel how sopping wet she was between her legs. She leaned over, and grabbed the camera, and I heard her turn it on. 

Kneeling on top of me, she took picture after picture of my face. I could feel the sperm cooling and oozing down my face as she continued to take photo after humiliating photo. She started grinding her slick, wet pussy harder and harder against my hip bone, grnding out an orgasm of her own as she continued to snap away with my new camera. 

As her body stopped shuddering from her climax, I felt her lean down very close to my face. 

She whispered into my ear, "Courageous men get the prize, sweetie. Thank you so much for having the courage to expose yourself like this. I just... I just didn't count on how hot this was going to be for *me*. I have a new appreciation for the pride that boys take in giving facials. It really is a primal, isn't it? Covering the object of your desire in your come?... Oop! Sorry - shhhh... don't' answer that... you're an absolute mess, aren't you, my little cumslut? Let me see if I can help a bit." 

She knelt closer, continuing to whisper, "Seems like a shame to let all this sperm go to waste..." she trailed off, then she began to slowly and methodically lick and slurp the oozing cockslop off of my face, as I lay there, motonless,silent, humiliated, and still aroused. 

When I could open my eyes, I saw her looking down on me, obviously still very aroused, with her mouth full of all the spunk she had just licked off my face. She closed her eyes, and slowly pressed her lips to mine. She opened her mouth into mine to give me a passionate kiss, filling my mouth with my own seed. We shared a long, passionate kiss, sharing a mouthful of thick salty sperm, until we both swallowed it down. When we stopped kissing snd she pulled away, she smiled down at me lovingly, and sighed, "That was awesome... Do you need a towel, sweetie?" 




Collateral



I got up onto my elbow and grabbed the golf towel she handed me. As I was wiping my face dry, the taste of my own semen still strong in my mouth, she picked up the camera, and started to scroll through her new photos, smiling to herself. 

She was certainly true to her word. For the next few months, there was hardly a thing we did in bed that I don't still have pictures of. My favorites of all are the pictures from an evening when I tied her down and ejaculated all over her face just to take pictures of it, and the many, many beautiful smiling finishes in her waiting mouth, and across her beautiful face. 

Every set of photos we took we shared, so that each of us had copies of everything.

Every computer I have had ever since has had a hidden subdirectory, containing folder after folder of photos of my time with the kinkiest girl I've ever met, alongside the file folder of my own "collateral" photos. 

Within a year or so of that "Collateral" night, Annie and had both moved on, and we were out of contact for years. When we did re-connect, we began to email a bit, and it wasn't long before she asked if I still had my "Birthday photos." I told her I did, and assured her that nobody else had ever seen them.

She revealed that someone else had indeed seen hers; her husband Stu. Annie is a strong believer that it is the journeys we take make us who we are. She considered that the healthiest way to start a marriage was to start it with a man who could embrace her past. Anyone who was too jealous to deal with her past was not likely to be a match for her. So she shared all of her photos of us with her husband. 

The way she tells it, that stash of photos of his wife from before he met her is one of her loving husband's favorite posessions, and he never seems to tire of hearing her tell filthy stories about the predicaments she found herself in, or of looking at crystal clear digital photos of his beautiful, laughing wife's face covered in her ex-boyfriend's cum. 

It is as Annie whispered in my ear; courageous men get the prize.



Collateral Damage



Assembling the bomb:

Thinking back to my younger years and vacations by the ocean, I can remember the sounds in the middle of the night; the small waves lapping softly at the shore and on occasion, a larger wave would wash up, followed again by the smaller ones. That was how my stomach felt that Friday morning; small waves of nausea interrupted by an occasional larger one. Not quite causing a gag reflex or the need to empty the contents; I had done that already a couple of times. I swiveled around in my desk chair and looked out my second floor office window. It was another idyllic May morning; the sun shining, a few white puffy clouds scattered across the azure sky, the flowers rampant in our building's carefully tended gardens. It should have been a sight of great comfort and pleasure and yet I was unable to grasp the scene in any positive way. I saw it all and yet I saw nothing. 

Peter Dennison had set these sensations in motion earlier during our brief meeting. The baby-faced investigator had presented me with his second and probably final report on the activities of my wife, Caroline. I had been steeling myself for this meeting and I thought I was prepared for the inevitable tragedy that would spill from his compactly typed account. I was wrong. Nothing could prepare me for what he revealed. I sat in shock, first with the written report, then the photographs and finally the audio tapes. Neither of us had said a word since he had handed me the six pages of the printed document that would change my life forever. I remember standing and offering my hand to Peter and thanking him for his thoroughness and the speed with which he had conducted the investigation. He must have shown himself out because I have no recollection of him leaving. 

I couldn't bring myself to listen to the tape recordings again and I tried once more to read the report, but the words just blurred and I was unable to concentrate. Instead, I just stared at the eight by ten glossy photos; ten of them; each more destructive and demoralizing that the others. I'm not sure how long I sat there after Peter left, but gradually I became aware that I needed to act. I needed someone to talk to and that someone had to be my brother Bob. I slowly picked up the telephone and punched the preset for his office number. 

"Bob Thorpe here." was his ever pleasant greeting. Bob was one of those wonderful people who actually answered his phone without screening, caller I.D. or voice mail classification.

"Hi Bob, it's Mark." I said in a soft voice.

"Mark ... what's up ... you sound awful." I could hear the concern in his voice. We were close and each was in tune with the other's voice tones.

"Can you meet me for lunch today? It's really important or I wouldn't ask on such short notice."

Bob probably had a lunch appointment but he clearly understood the meaning of 'really important'.

"Yah, of course. Anyplace special?"

"How about 'The Snug' at 12:30?"

"Sure."

"See if you can find a booth in the lounge that's private, away from the usual crowd." I asked.

"Sure, I'll get there a little early. Do I need to bring anything?" 

"No, I'll look after that." I said cryptically. "And Bob ... thanks."

I sat back in my chair and stared again at the items on my desk. Six neatly typed pages, three audio cassettes, ten photographs and a plain manila envelope. It might have just as well been the components to a hydrogen bomb. I gathered the items together and slipped them in the envelope and then into my soft leather brief. I took a sip of water from the glass on my desk, stood up, took my jacket from the coat rack and walked out of my office, closing the door quietly behind me. 

"I'll be gone for the rest of the day, Elizabeth. If it's absolutely urgent, call me on my cell. I may not answer, but leave a message." I said quietly to the elegant woman who truly controlled my business life.

Elizabeth looked at me and heard the tone of my voice and asked, "Are you all right, Mark?" Only this wonderful sixty something year old woman called me by my first name. She was the dean of the executive assistants and probably knew me almost as well as Caroline. She too understood the hidden meaning of my words. 

"I may or may not be in Monday, Elizabeth. I'll call you and let you know what's go ... uh ... what's happening."

"Take care Mark." she said sincerely. I was conscious that she hadn't wished me a 'good weekend'. Perhaps that special radar of hers had already concluded that it wasn't in the cards.

As I walked into the lounge of 'The Snug', I spotted Bob sitting in the furthest corner booth. While there were people in the adjacent booths, the seat backs were very high and afforded a reasonable amount of privacy. The noise level was moderate and it would mean we wouldn't have to raise our voices to be heard. I slid into the seat alongside Bob and shook his hand. I'm sure my expression was dark and Bob didn't waste any time with unnecessary pleasantries. The waitress was nearby and stopped at our table. We both ordered a double single malt scotch, Bob's on the rocks and mine with a side of water. We passed the time in small talk until the drinks arrived. I silently held mine up toward him and he responded. He looked at me questioningly and I knew the time had come.

"Bob, I've discovered Caroline is having an affair."

"Oh god, Mark ... I'm sorry. I would never have thought ... I mean ... she never hinted that she was unhappy ..." his voice trailed off.

"No, I'm just as shocked and bewildered by it all myself. I didn't have any hint that she was involved with anyone." I replied.

"How did you find out?"

"About six weeks or so ago, I got an anonymous phone call that went something like 'Did I know what my wife did on Friday afternoons?' It was a man's voice and that was just about all he said and then hung up. I guess I dismissed it as a crank call and almost forgot about it. We were having a dinner party with some of her Real Estate friends the next weekend and on Friday I knew I had forgotten to do something, but I couldn't remember what it was. I had to call her on Friday afternoon. I never called her on Friday. She made it clear she didn't want to be disturbed because that was the day she got ready for the big weekend open houses and showings. Anyway, I called her office and asked for her and her sales assistant said she was gone for the day. I thought that was kind of strange, so I asked her when she left and the girl said she left about 1:30, just like she did every Friday. It didn't register right away, but a few minutes later I remembered the crank call. I phoned home, but no one answered. I called back to her Real Estate office and asked her assistant if she had gone to one of the show homes and was told that no, she didn't work on Friday afternoons. I was buffaloed and suddenly, I was getting an ugly feeling that something else might be happening." I had stopped at this point and took a pull at my drink, looking at it like it might contain some undiscovered truth. No such luck.

"What the hell did it mean?" Bob asked. "Where would she go?" He hadn't spoken since I'd begun and was intently listening to my story.

"When she got home that afternoon I asked her how her day had gone and she said it was fine but it was a shame to have to spend all day in the office when the weather was so nice. I have to tell you Bob, the bottom fell out of my guts when she said that. It was a lie. I had a hard time holding myself together for a while. I kept hoping and praying that there was a logical explanation for everything. On Saturday, she was out before nine on her way to work and I was on my own. The thing I had forgotten to do was to get some flowers for the table for tonight's dinner party, so I headed out to the florists to look after that and stopped for a latte at the Espresso Shack on the way home. I was really starting to obsess about this business of where she was and maybe who she was with. I remembered that Caroline kept a planner on her home office computer and when I got home, I had a look at the past few Fridays. There were lots of notes for the mornings and a few lunches at noon, but nothing for the afternoons but one strange symbol. On some Fridays, there were the letters aK and on others the letters bK. They sort of alternated on each Friday, but not always. I checked back to the beginning of the year and I think almost every Friday had one of those two letter codes."

"I've got to admit, Mark. I'd be damn suspicious too if it were me." Bob offered. "What did you do about finding out?"

"I did something I thought I would never do. I hired a private detective to find out what she was up to. I'll tell you Bob, I felt sick about that decision too."

"I guess you would." 

"Anyway, I hired this young guy from the firm that looks after our corporate work, but I made sure no one knew he was working on a personal matter. We use this outfit for internal problems like theft and drugs and the like. I gave him all the information that I've just described to you plus a picture of Caroline, her car and license number and her cell phone number. I also gave him permission to bug our phone and if necessary, set up audio and visual equipment in the house. All perfectly legal as long it's in our home and I give permission. It took him two weeks to get back to me that indeed Caroline was leaving the office before two on Friday afternoons and either going home or going to another house. He said that another person was meeting her at our house around two thirty and staying for a couple of hours and then leaving. He followed the other person and they went to another house where they obviously lived. He was reluctant to give me any more details at that point but said he had set up some of the equipment in our house and I should know that it was monitoring the living room, master bedroom, guest room and her office. The phones were also set up to record both outgoing and incoming calls by anyone. I was really sick now. I didn't know how I was going to face Caroline and not lose my temper or reveal what I knew."

"Jesus, Mark. I can't believe this. I wouldn't know what the hell to do in this situation." Bob said, shaking his head. 

"Well, I had pretty well moved too far down the road not to see it out, so I had to suck it up and wait for the big finale." I continued. "That came this morning. Peter confirmed she was having an affair and had audio and visual proof to give me. It was worse than I could have possibly imagined."

"Christ Mark, can it get any worse than this?" Bob said looking forlornly at me.

"I'm afraid it can, Bob." I took the manila envelope out of the leather brief and passed it to Bob. He looked at me and slowly reached inside and pulled out the contents. The report and the photos beneath it followed by the audio tapes were set in front of him. He started to read the report but his curiosity got the better of him and he pulled the pictures from the bottom of the pile. I've seen shock on the face of people before, but I don't think it could equate to the look on Bob's face as he first saw the photographs. He lost all color and had sucked his breath in at the first sight of them.

"It can't be. It's not possible. This is a trick!" he looked at me pleading for confirmation.

"I wish it was, Bob, I really wish it was." 

The pictures were graphic and clearly depicted two lovers in the throes of passion in our bed. The two lovers were Caroline and Bob's wife Karen. Bob was stunned into a frozen mask of white horror at the sight. I was sure he was going to faint or even, as I had earlier that morning, empty the contents of his stomach. Somehow he got a semblance of control over himself and flopped back in his seat, staring blankly at the pictures.

I took another sip of my drink and Bob quickly downed the rest of his; his eyes never leaving the photos before him. He had a bewildered look of a man lost with no idea of how to find his way home. His eyes were wide and he seemed to be breathing in small gasps and holding them in for a few moments. I put my hand on his and took the photos from him and put them and the report back in the envelope. 

"Bob, let me tell you what's in the report." I began. He sat there looking at me, nodding almost imperceptibly.

I started by telling him that the audio tapes were as graphic as the photos. The liaisons between the two women were completely sexual and included various equipment including dildos, vibrators, strap-on, handcuffs, blindfolds, anal plugs, nipple clamps and almost any other device you could imagine. Peter had discovered where these were hidden in our house and listed them in the report. He didn't know if everything in this 'toy box' was being used or not. 

"For what it's worth Bob, the audio tapes indicate that Caroline was the dominant person and Karen was her subordinate. It would seem that Karen may have been coerced or seduced into this relationship and wasn't strong enough to resist Caroline. I can't prove that, but listening to the tapes and knowing both Karen and Caroline's personalities, I think it's a strong possibility."

"It doesn't make me feel better, Mark. I'm sick and I can't come to terms with this. I can't believe she would get involved in this. It's just not like her. There must be some reason for it." Bob was searching for answers that only Karen could provide. 

I told Bob that I thought the code in her calendar was K for Karen and a or b was the house code. I thought a was our house and b was his, but I wasn't sure. 

"If I'm right, Bob, Karen will be going to my house in about half an hour to be with Caroline. I've been thinking about this all morning and I've decided I'm going to be there and confront them. You can come with me or not. It's up to you. I'd completely understand if you chose not to be there."

There was silence at our table for some time. Bob was clearly trying to decide what he should do and how he should react to Karen in this situation. I let him think it through.

Finally, he looked up at me. "I think I'd better be there when this all goes to hell. She may be a mess and I may have to get her home."

OK, Bob, I understand. Listen, why don't you leave your car here and I'll drive you to the house. If I'm wrong and they're at your place, I'll still need a car to get home. I don't plan on being around Caroline after this."

"What do you mean?" Bob looked up surprised.

"I mean I've decided our marriage is over. I won't have her in my house unless she gets a court order and if that happens, I'll move out. She's destroyed the best thing I've ever known and I can't forgive her." 

I'm not sure exactly when I had come to that decision, but it was now set in my mind. I knew there would be no way for us to reconcile; the photos alone were seared into my memory forever. She had deceived me, shattered our marriage vows and betrayed my trust. There would be no coming back from this. 

I paid the bill and we slowly walked out to my car. Bob was silent and still looked to be in shock. I gave him a copy of the report with the photos and tapes. He held it in his hands, just staring at the envelope. He didn't say a word during the fifteen minute drive to my house. When we arrived, Karen's car was parked in the driveway and Bob groaned and his head flopped back to the headrest and his eyes closed. 

"Bob, it's not too late. You don't have to do this. Just wait here and I'll come and get you when things have settled down." I offered.

"No, I have to face this too. I just hope it isn't as bad as those pictures." he said sadly.

Plunging the detonator:

We got out of the car and quietly walked around the side of the house to the back door. I unlocked the door and we entered the laundry room. I peeked in to the adjacent kitchen, but the lights were off and there was no sound. I turned to Bob and motioned him to stay there while I checked the living room. I crept down the hall toward the living-dining area. The reflection from the glass on a large print hanging on the hallway wall gave me a good view of both rooms and it was clear no one was there. I turned back toward Caroline's office and noticed the door was closed. I listened at the door but I could hear nothing. I carefully turned the knob and quietly pushed the door open a couple of inches. The light was off and no one was in the room. That left only the upper floor. It was unlikely they would be in the unfinished basement. I motioned to Bob to join me and we quietly ascended the stairs to the upper floor. As I climbed the steps I began to hear sounds; more like low murmurs and an occasional exclamation. I ducked down low to make sure we weren't spotted from the hallway and listened to see where the sounds were coming from. It didn't take long; it was obvious they were from our master bedroom and it was even more obvious it wasn't two people having a polite conversation. 

Bob could hear what I could hear and the look on his face was troublesome. I knew my brother well and we all have a breaking point past which we can behave in an irrational manner. I could tell Bob was close to this point. I wasn't a lot better. I had concentrated on getting this far and I knew what to expect, but I still didn't know exactly how I would react. I stood up as I reached the top of the stairs and quietly moved toward the door. I looked between the edge of the open door and the door frame but my view was obstructed by the Armoire. I could see some of what was happening, but I would have to move into the room to see it all. I stood there for a few moments; gathering my courage and trying to control my breathing. Finally I turned and looked at Bob and then walked slowly into the bedroom.

Caroline was face down on the bed with her ass stuck up in a position suitable for rear entry sex and that was exactly what she was having. Karen was behind her and was stroking a sizeable black penis shaped dildo in and out of my lovely wife. What caught my immediate attention was she was driving this large device into Caroline's ass; previously know to me as the 'No-Go-Zone'. I could hear Caroline moan and then a moment later she spoke in a demanding tone:

"Harder, I want it harder! Fuck me harder you useless bitch!" 

"Yes Caroline." was Karen's meek reply. 

Both of them were facing away from me and I looked around at Bob. He was standing just inside the door. His mouth was open and his eyes wide with disbelief. I turned back to the scene on the bed and that's when the shit hit the fan. Caroline turned her head to look back at Karen and immediately saw Bob and then me.

"Oh shit, No!" was Caroline's first reaction.

Karen rose up and looked back in the direction of Caroline's eyes and saw Bob and me. She screamed a blood curdling scream and fell off the bed, hitting the Armoire on the way down. At least it stopped her screaming. Bob stood frozen in place while I walked to the end of the bed. Karen had begun to pick herself up and was bizarrely trying to cover her large breasts and pubic area with her hands and arms. Caroline had rolled to the other side of the bed and was scrambling for her clothes. 

"A bit late for that don't you think girls?" I was in sneering mode suddenly and spoiling for a fight; at least a verbal fight. I looked back at Bob; he was crestfallen and a pitiful sight.

"Bob, why don't you go downstairs? Karen, get dressed and Bob will drive you home." It was the most sensible thing I could think of saying and it seemed to be appropriate. Karen was crying quietly and moving around picking up and putting on her clothes. Bob turned and slowly walked out of the bedroom and went downstairs. 

"I'll see you in the kitchen when you've got yourself together Caroline." I said in my best no nonsense voice. I turned and followed Karen down the stairs to the Living Room. She handed Bob her keys and they let themselves out the front door. Not a word had passed between them. 




Collateral Damage



Riding the shock wave:

I walked back to the kitchen, opened the liquor cupboard and poured myself a stiff Scotch. I sat in a chair at the kitchen table and waited for Caroline's arrival. I was collecting my thoughts and wondering just how the next few minutes would go when Caroline slowly walked into the kitchen. She stopped a few feet from the table and looked carefully at me. I suppose she was worried I might strike her or attack her, but my calm demeanor must have partially allayed those fears.

"Sit down Caroline!" I used my authoritative voice for effect.

She looked cautiously at me and moved toward the table. She chose a chair as far away from mine as possible.

"I suppose I owe you an explanation." she offered quietly; barely able to look at me.

"I have no interest in your explanation." I snapped back.

"You have to understand, Mark. I love you. I didn't want to hurt you." she pleaded.

"You have a funny way of expressing love, Caroline. However, that's neither here nor there. Allow me to tell you what the consequences of your ... tryst ... if that's the right word ... will be." I was working myself toward High Dudgeon quite nicely.

"Mark, this didn't mean anything. It doesn't change how I feel about you ..." 

I cut her off. "Don't bother, Caroline! Your lies and deceit speak for themselves. Infidelity is infidelity; period!"

"Mark, can't you find it in your heart to forgive me?" she pleaded. 

"My god, Caroline, can't you come up with a better cliché than that?" My distain for her pleas was clearly showing. "You've betrayed a sacred trust; your wedding vows. Do you understand that much?" I demanded.

"Yes ... I'm so sorry ... I never meant to ... I would never ..." She finally ran out of steam.

"As a point of interest Caroline, how long has this affair been going on?" I really was curious about two things. How long had she been deceiving me and whether she would tell me the truth in the first place. 

"Not long ... a while."

"How long is that?" I demanded.

There was a long pause. "Since last fall." she answered in almost a whisper.

"My god Caroline! Last fall is over six months ago!" That takes it out of the 'fling' category and puts it into a full blown affair, I thought. Now I was really pissed off.

"Why do you hate me so much?" she suddenly asked.

"I don't hate you Caroline. I'm past hate. That came before being sick to my stomach and disbelief. It came before anger and disillusionment. It came before sadness and resignation. I've gone through every ugly emotion in the book and back again. There is very little feeling for you left. You have destroyed me Caroline. You have destroyed me as surely as if you'd driven a sword through my heart. I loved you with everything I had for every one of our 23 years. I never dreamed of cheating or betraying you; it would be inconceivable. But you didn't feel that way and now ... now it's over." I had said everything that needed to be said about my emotions and I didn't need to explain myself further. 

"No please, Mark, please ... don't do this ... please!" She was beside herself with fear. 

"Sorry Caroline, the wheels are already in motion. You will be served with divorce papers; probably on Monday. The grounds will be infidelity.

"No! Mark! No! Please, please don't do this. I can't ... what will I do without you?" She had deteriorated into begging with no rational argument to support her. "What about the children?"

I had been waiting for her to play this card. Our children were on the verge of adulthood. Catherine, or Cat as she preferred, was a 20 year old Junior at the district college and was destined to be a teacher. She was one of those rare people that believed teaching was a sales profession. Her responsibility was to sell her charges on the concept of learning; to instill a desire to absorb knowledge. She would either become one of the great teachers of our time or live in academia, collecting degrees and marrying an associate professor. 

Michael, her 18 year old brother, was a freshman at the same college. His interests were more business related and he too was serious about his education. At the same time, he was popular with both his male peers and the lovely young ladies that populated the campus. He was enjoying every minute of his post secondary education. Both of them lived on campus because we could afford it and because they were unprepared for the seventy mile daily round trip to and from the college. 

"I will tell them that I am divorcing you for infidelity. I will tell them that there is no hope of reconciliation. I will also tell them, if pressed, that your infidelity was planned and took place over several months. Beyond that, I will tell them nothing. I will not tell them who the other party is, but be aware that as you well know, they are very close to their Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen. I cannot and will not control what they choose to disclose. So, as the saying goes, the ball's in your court. What you choose to tell them is up to you."

Caroline had buried her face in her hands and was sobbing quietly. I felt a passing moment of sympathy and remorse, but then the memories of the last few hours resurfaced and I returned to my cold demeanor. 

"I'm sure I'll hear from both our parents, Caroline. I will tell my parents only what I will tell our children; the grounds, the time frame and the planning and that there will be no getting back together. As for your parents, I'm sure they will be upset that I'm not giving you a chance to reconcile and will want to know why. If they press me, thinking that I'm the problem and not you, I will tell them everything and I do mean everything. Therefore, I suggest you be quite frank with them to head that eventuality off at the pass."

Then I began to spell out the truly uncomfortable issues that the divorce would produce. I suggested she should think about some other consequences. This is a small town. As a prominent real estate agent, she travels in wide circles and her membership in the Chamber of Commerce puts her in contact with the town power base. The news of our divorce will undoubtedly raise questions. When answers aren't forthcoming, the rumor mill will kick in. I advised her to remember that my brother Bob was on the selection committee for the Chairmanship of the Chamber of Commerce; a post to which Caroline aspired. In addition, she had hinted that she might try a run for City Council. An ugly divorce and any hint of sexual impropriety would put paid to that ambition. 

I reminded her that so many people knew both of us and thought of us as having an ideal marriage that questions would be asked and when no information followed, people would come to their own conclusions. One day we were the perfect couple and the next we were divorced. Since I was a responsible and significant employer in the community, I could ill afford to have doubts cast on my reputation and so, if asked, I would once again rely on my standard reply; the grounds were her infidelity. 

Caroline was now clearly reeling from my verbal assault. I had bombarded her with one negative consequence after another and she had been given no time to recover. It was time I gave her a break and one for myself as well. I wanted to remain calm and rational; even if I was angry and disgusted. I went back to the liquor cabinet and poured myself another scotch. I looked over at Caroline and asked her if she wanted something. She shook her head and didn't look up at me. I had truly demoralized her with the litany of disaster awaiting her. I stood at the end of the kitchen and just watched her as I sipped my drink. 

"It isn't the same, you know." she said finally in a monotone.

"What isn't the same?" 

"Being with a woman. It was always better with you. I would never have cheated on you with a man."

"Is that supposed to comfort me?"

"No ... it's just the truth. It was always better with you. I love you Mark. I always will. That won't change no matter what happens to us."

"I suppose I will always love you too, Caroline ... at least in my memories of the times before ... before this." I was slipping into the maudlin and morose and I had tried manfully not to let that happen. I needed to get myself back in control of the conversation; or maybe it was a lecture. Whatever, I needed to get back to where I was. 

"Your personality when you were with Karen wasn't very nice from what I could hear. You treated her like a sex slave. Is that the way you saw her?" I was curious about the relationship of two women who I had always thought were good friends.

"It was role playing. It wasn't how were really were with each other. It let us play like actors and be someone we weren't in real life." She said all this with her head in her hands and looking down at the table.

"Well, you fooled me, Caroline. It sounded pretty authentic to me. It sounded pretty authentic to Bob as well. In fact, it sounded so authentic that Bob might have the idea that you coerced or maybe seduced Karen into your little game. Is that how it was?" I wondered if she would tell the truth this time.

She looked up at me and stared at me for what seemed to be a minute. Her head dropped again and she said nothing.

"You should be aware that if Karen tells Bob that you did just that, he will have grounds to sue you for Alienation of Affection. That would really be messy." Bang! Another nail in her emotional coffin.

"Just one final thing, Caroline. I want my grandmother's engagement ring back. It was given to me by her to give to you. It's a family heirloom."

"No, please ... not that too!" she pleaded.

"Caroline, I have never raised a hand to you in all our years together and I can't even recall raising my voice to you until today. But I swear to God, if you don't give me that ring I will take it from you."

I watched her as she slowly pulled the ring from her finger and pushed it across the table toward me.

"Thank you."

"What happens now?" she asked weakly.

"Good question. I suggest you go to work tomorrow and Sunday. You're going to need an income when you're on your own. I've packed a bag and I will be living elsewhere for the time being. I suggest you get a lawyer for your own protection. You're definitely going to need one. He can contact my lawyer through my office." 

I did not tell her that the groundwork had already been done with my lawyer and he would do everything possible to minimize what she could take from this marriage. We lived in a no-fault jurisdiction and I would need to protect my assets. I would hope that her income records and the cause of the marriage breakup would cancel the possibility of support payments; but I was not hopeful. Unfortunately for Caroline, the house was mine by family inheritance from before our marriage and wasn't up for grabs. In addition, I had contacted my friend and bank manager Frank Colletti and he had agreed to look after transferring money from our joint and savings accounts and cancelling joint credit cards as well as retrieving my family items, insurance policies, jewelry, will and other valuable papers in the Safe Deposit box. Frank would make himself available to me tomorrow morning to head off any pre-emptive strike by Caroline. I would change my will on Monday at the lawyer's office as we finalized the divorce paperwork. 

It was time to go. I had said everything that needed to be said and I was worn out from the stress and strain of this ugly, ugly day. It would forevermore be burned into my memory as Black Friday.

"Is there anything you want to say before I go?" I asked.

She looked up at me with nothing but despair on her face. She seemed to be trying to form her words but they didn't come. Finally, she lowered her head and I heard her quietly say, "I love you Mark. I'm sorry. I love you."

At that was that. It wasn't very satisfying and I gained no feeling of victory from this confrontation. She was broken and beaten and we both knew it. I had given her a verbal thrashing without having to raise my voice or threaten her in any other way than the possible consequences of her actions. There would be no joy in this for anyone. 

Standing in the wasteland:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's Newton's Third Law of Physics. In the past three years, the aftershocks from the detonation on Black Friday have almost subsided but the damage has been catastrophic. I don't suppose I will ever know what caused Caroline to initiate her deception and this bizarre episode in her life. Perhaps she doesn't know herself. I wondered if Karen might have revealed anything about the origins to Bob, but I suspect not and I doubt that Bob would be anxious to know as he tried to repair his life.

Bob tried manfully to undo the damage done to his relationship with Karen in that single afternoon. They continued to live together and Bob told me that they resumed sexual relations shortly afterwards, but he knew almost right away that they were doomed. The special comfort that comes with unconditional love and trust had been lost. Bob still loved Karen deeply and she had never for a second not loved him, but the damage was irreversible. The dark shadow that had been cast over their marriage never left and less than a year after that momentous day, Bob filed for divorce, citing Irreconcilable Differences. Karen knew in her heart that they could not recover from her actions and left without protest. She briefly stayed with Caroline in her apartment, but was gone again in less than two weeks and went home to her parents. She became virtually invisible. Bob would send her support cheque to her parent's home and at first they would be cashed as much as a month later. In the past six months they weren't cashed at all. When he phoned to ask her mother about it, she simply said she had gone and wouldn't be back. She said they didn't know where to contact her. Bob felt great sorrow for Karen. He knew she was the victim as much as she was the participant, but he could not cope with the visions that were etched into his psyche. 

I talked to Bob a few weeks ago and he mentioned that a large national grocery chain was putting together a proposal to buy his two well placed grocery stores; one on each end of town. Bob has told me that their proposal would mean that he would never have to work again if he didn't want to and he would probably sell. He had no idea what he would do with his time and that was the one thing that would keep him from signing on the dotted line. I talked to him again last week and he told me he had signed the papers and was going to work in a garden centre. He was an avid gardener and loved the soil and it was the kind of thing that would occupy his time and keep his thoughts from dwelling on Karen and the past. We see each other now and then for a beer or a sandwich when time permits. We're still close, but the events of the past have spoiled that special relationship we had become comfortable with. I hope we get it back sometime in the future. I love my brother and I want him to find someone with whom he can live the rest of his life in comfort and trust.

Our Children are now both adults and on their own. Catherine is teaching in a nearby town and I see her about once a month or so. She has somehow accommodated both her mother and me without judgment it seems. I have no idea what her mother has told her about the reason for the divorce, but I have kept my end of the bargain. Cat, for her part, has not pressed me for more. Both she and her brother were greatly saddened by the breakup of Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen's marriage. There is a man in Cat's life, but I don't think she's emotionally ready for marriage quite yet. 

Michael, on the other hand, is very bitter toward his mother and refuses to see or talk to her. I'm not sure if he knows from Caroline, Catherine or some other source what the circumstances surrounding our breakup were, but certainly he knows more that just the basics. Cat tells me his attitude toward young women of his age has also changed for the worse. He has become quite cynical in his conquests and his reputation among them has not been enhanced by his actions. He is just finishing his senior year in Business Administration and tells me he will probably move to the 'Big City' when he begins his career. I don't see him as often as I would like and I sense he is uncomfortable around me, but I'm not sure why. I feel badly for him and I hope he can get past this unhappy period in his life and find someone to love and honor. 

Caroline is still in town and struggling to maintain her clientèle. As predicted, the rumors were rampant in short order and she suffered the indignation and humiliation of not only not being considered for the chair of the Chamber of Commerce but also being ostracized from her social group at her office. She has become a loner and my daughter tells me she is a bitter and hardened woman. She moved out of our house almost immediately and rented a small apartment near her real estate office. I had heard recently that she had dated a couple of men but had incinerated the relationships almost immediately. Her reputation has been bandied about the community and it wouldn't surprise me to see her move away for a fresh start. She is a talented sales agent and should be able to make a decent living; but only without the burden of local rumor and gossip. 

As for me, I'm living in my overlarge house by myself with occasional visits from our kids. I haven't had the impetus to look for a companion yet, but perhaps that will come in time. I have immersed myself in the job and tried to have a normal relationship with my employees, but it hasn't been easy. Despite the facts, rumors about me undoubtedly move around and there isn't a thing I can do about it. I didn't find it necessary to tell any of these strangers all the facts of the dissolution of my marriage, but the questions on the faces of those who did ask were plainly written. 

I've gone through all the stages anyone who has this happen to them would go through, I guess. There was a period of self-doubt when I wondered if I could have handled things differently. If I hadn't told Bob and just confronted Caroline; would that have ended it? Should I have tried to work through it with her and put it behind me? No matter what scenario I painted, the images of that afternoon and those photographs were permanent and I knew it would have been futile. I had been angry when I met with my lawyer and learned how much Caroline would be entitled to from our estate despite her faithless behavior. I now have a low opinion of no-fault divorce. It should be called no-responsibility divorce. It hasn't stripped my assets, however, and I'm not stressed financially in any way. I send Caroline a small cheque each month and I noticed that it's cashed promptly. The settlement was based on her last three years earnings before the divorce and unfortunately for her, they were banner years. The judge correctly surmised that she didn't need much of my economic help to get by. Her economic circumstances have changed dramatically and she is now living a very modest life. 

My elegant and talented Executive Assistant, Elizabeth, has retired and I miss her more that I could have imagined. She was like a second brain and another heart. She was the only person I ever told the whole sordid story from beginning to end. Even my lawyer didn't have all the gory details. Her counsel kept me sane and her unconditional friendship was my life preserver for several months. She knew me like we were twins and her replacement, a very nice middle-aged woman named Florence is very competent and dependable; but she's not Elizabeth. 

I've never discovered from whom the anonymous phone call came. Perhaps a nosy neighbor or someone at Caroline's office; I'll probably never know. 




Collateral Damage



A larger competitor is sniffing around, wondering if I'd be interested in selling. I'm torn from walking away from the past completely and staying in the business I had started and in the past, loved. I suspected the acquisition would likely result in the closure and consolidation of the business into one of their larger operations. The over one hundred and fifty employees would be abandoned and I wouldn't be able to live with that. I have contemplated putting a 'No Closure' clause in any sale agreement, but even if the buyer agreed, they would immediately look for ways to circumvent it. 

I haven't decided what my life will look like tomorrow. I know that as a responsible adult, I am the author of my own misfortune. I alone assembled the bomb from the simple components; the report, the photographs and the audio tapes. I alone detonated the bomb when I chose to enter my home and confront the scene. I alone rode the shock wave as I sat at my kitchen table and cast the die of our inevitable future. And now I stand alone in this wasteland and look about me at the devastation. In the end, we have all become victims of collateral damage. 



Collateral Damage



 (Note: this story is a part of my "Greenies/A Perfect World universe and was written a full two years before we were even thinking about going to war in Iraq, so please, spare me your comments about any parallels. It's just a story, people. The background is just a setting. The Chinese are just a likely foe under the circumstances I've envisioned.)

*

April 11, 2013

Roseville, California

The Roseville High School cafeteria was particularly crowded with students during the lunch period on this day. Every table was full and a few kids were even forced to sit in the corner, in plastic chairs usually reserved only for official assemblies. The crowding — while unusual — was not because of the special announcement Principal Bauer was going to make. Everyone already knew what the announcement was going to be, had been through such announcements many times before, and had little or no interest, other than a morbid one, in the words he would speak. No, the real reason everyone happened to be inside today was an unseasonable rainstorm that had been pounding the Sacramento region all that day. The students who normally ate outside had been forced in.  

Principal Bauer knew this but didn't really care. His enthusiasm for such announcements had faded long before as well. They were all too common these days, especially in the last two weeks, since the Asian Powers' spring offensive against the Western Hemisphere Alliance had begun. Still, it was a part of his job and he walked with dignity to the podium at the front of the room where he asked for, and eventually received, the relative attention of the early lunch students, most of whom were juniors and seniors.

"It is my sad duty to announce," he said into the microphone, "that another member of the Roseville High School alumni has given his life for his country on the active front. May I draw your attention to the Wall of Remembrance?" He nodded in the direction of the south wall, which was covered with framed 8x10 photographs taken from yearbook files. Each one was of a Roseville High graduate who had been killed in action. With this latest addition, there were now 93 of them up there — 78 males and 15 females. And these were only the official KIAs. They did not include the 124 alumni who were listed as missing in action. Nor did they include the 84 who had been killed in training accidents or in non-combat situations. Nor did they include the 345 who had been wounded in action severely enough to be discharged and put on a lifetime disability pension.

"Newly unveiled on our wall today," Bauer continued, "is the image of John William Ringwell, Class of 2012. He was a member of the United States Army assigned to the 12th Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed on the active front in southwest Idaho. He was killed in combat two days ago during a tank battle with Chinese forces. Let us all bow our heads for a moment of silence in his honor."

Everyone dutifully bowed their heads and kept their mouths shut as asked. When the moment was up, Bauer invited them to pay their respects to the photograph as they left the cafeteria that day. He then made his leave, hustling back to his office to continue working on the budget reports for the next fiscal year.

At a table near the rear of the cafeteria, Eric Rowley sat with a group of friends. Eric, a senior, had turned eighteen three weeks before. He was technically old enough to be drafted now but, like any high school student, was still covered under the Primary Education Deferment that forbade the United States Selective Service from compelling him to go to war while he was still in school. The moment he graduated or dropped out of school, that deferment would expire. "Anyone hear how Ringwell bought it?" he asked his friends as he shoveled processed lunchmeat into his mouth.

"The dumb fuck was in a tank," said Tyler Bentley, another senior. "They burned his ass to a crisp. That's how the tankers always go."

"That's a fuckin' retreat," said Matt Smith, who was munching on a microwave burrito. 

Tyler simply shrugged contemptuously. "That's what he gets for going low-pro," he said, which meant that Ringwell — who they all remembered as a shy, somewhat nerdy senior while they had been juniors — had chosen to go "low profile," which meant he had not volunteered for the service upon graduation, instead waiting for the draft board to call him. Low-pro was considered a pussy thing to do among the 16 to 19--year-old crowd. And it was also nothing more than a delaying tactic. Internet statistics showed that a graduating senior going low-pro would get nailed by the draft within six months anyway.

The statistics also showed that a disproportionate number were assigned as crewmen on tanks, which everyone knew was the most dangerous place to be in an extremely dangerous war. Ringwell was a perfect example of the statistics in action. He had been drafted three months after graduating and had been assigned to tanks in southern Idaho — the most active portion of the front line, where more than three million soldiers from the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, and Brazil were faced off against more than four million soldiers from China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea. And now Ringwell was dead, burned to death by a Chinese-designed, Japanese manufactured anti-tank missile, just one of nearly a million Allied soldiers killed since the war had started a little over two years ago.

"I'm tellin' you," Matt said. "Put me on the fuckin' line with a rifle. I'll kill all the chinks they want and take my chances against the artillery. Fuck that tank shit. Can you imagine? Being stuck inside one of them death traps and burning to death? The dumb fuck probably never even saw it coming."

"That ain't propaganda," Eric said solemnly, sipping out of his milk carton.

Matt gave him a sour look. "What the hell do you care about it, Rowley?" he asked. "You're Mr. Valedictorian, aren't you? You and your goddamned 3.9 GPA. You ain't gonna be going to the line when you graduate. You get to kick it in some college for four fuckin' years and if the war ain't over by then they'll just stick you in the rear somewhere."

Eric blushed a little at this jibe. It was true that he was set to graduate with a GPA higher than 3.8, which, under current Selective Service Rules, would qualify him for one of the rare college deferments from the draft as long as he actually attended an institute of higher learning. Among his friends he was the only one with a high enough GPA, something that caused a considerable amount of resentment at times. "Hey, sarge," he said, utilizing the generic monicker that had recently replaced the word 'dude'. "Just because I get the college deferment doesn't mean I have to take it. I can still volunteer, you know."

"Yeah right, like you would do that," Matt said.

"I'm just keeping my options open," Eric said. "You think I want to be some pussy college student while all my friends are on the line? Fuck that shit."

This appeased Matt, Tyler, and the rest of the seniors at the table. Among the adolescents of the day — all of whom were constantly bombarded with patriotic songs, television shows, and armed forces recruiting commercials — signing up for the service was the "static" thing to do, what everyone strived for. Not even the 93 pictures on their cafeteria wall could dissuade them.

"You the commander, Rowley," Tyler told him, holding up his hand for a high five. "Fuck that college shit. Let's go kill us some chinks."

Eric slapped hands with him and then did the same with Matt. They all left the cafeteria a few minutes later, walking by the Wall of Remembrance on the way. None of them so much as glanced at it.

+++++

The rain was still coming down as he rode his bicycle home after school that day. His body was covered with a vinyl rain slicker decorated with the winter camouflage scheme so popular among teens these days. He kept his head down as the drops pattered onto him and his wheels sluiced through puddles in the middle of Cirby Boulevard. Every once in a while he would look around in wonder at the six-lane road he was on, trying to remember what it had been like before the war when automobile traffic had choked every intersection and the smell of exhaust had permeated the air.

There were no automobiles on the road now. With the gasoline ration set at one gallon per household per month, and with that one gallon costing 125 dollars, only the very rich could afford to operate their motor vehicles. Most of the cars these days were either rotting away in garages or had been sold for scrap iron at a hundredth of what they had originally cost. The Asian Powers — who had captured the Middle East, Siberia, and Alaska in the first few months of the war, and who still held them — had put a serious kink in the American commute. All of the domestic oil production from California, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and all of the remaining foreign oil production from Mexico, Nigeria, and Venezuela, was being used to make fuel for fighting the war. The American economy had nearly collapsed in those first few months and was still quite far from recovery. If not for the suspiciously timely development of practical cold fusion to generate electrical power, there might very well have been mass starvation.

Cirby Boulevard ended at the intersection of Foothills Boulevard. Eric turned right here and was now riding alongside the Roseville Train Yard — the largest freight switching facility west of the Mississippi River. Miles of track stretched along the western edge of the Sacramento suburb, with hundreds of freight cars and flat cars parked or slowly moving from place to place. The war had made the yard a very busy place. The boxcars were full of artillery shells, tank rounds, machine gun bullets, rifles, and, of course, reloads for the AT-9 launchers — the laser-guided, shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon most responsible for the bloody stalemate that had developed on both the American front in the Pacific Northwest and the European front where the Brits, Germans, French, Spanish, and South Africans were pitted against three and a half million Indian soldiers. The flatcars all contained armored vehicles — M2A1 main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, half-tracks, self-propelled 155-millimeter artillery guns, and mobile surface-to-air missile launchers. On the flatcars heading north or east, the armor was brand new, the protective covers still in place. On the flatcars returning from the front, the vehicles were smashed and burned, in some cases completely unrecognizable, on their way back to the southern California area for recycling. 

The train yard itself was a frequent target of Chinese bombers operating out of bases in Southern Washington. At least twice a week Chinese pilots flying American designed F-15s or A-6s or Russian designed MiG-27s or SU-34s would come in low, using the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east to hide from radar before swooping at rooftop level along the Sacramento Valley floor. Their weapon of choice were unguided 500 pound free-fall bombs that, when scattered among the parked trains, could disrupt the vital railhead for days, sometimes even weeks if they managed to hit some of the fuel tankers or the munitions cars. To counter this threat, the train yard was absolutely lousy with anti-aircraft weapons. Riding over the overpass that crossed a section of the tracking, Eric could see three fixed SAM sites, more than a dozen mobile SAM launchers, almost thirty heavy caliber flak guns, and about a hundred 23-millimeter AA guns within the boundaries of the yard. Despite all this firepower, the Chinese got their bombs through a depressing amount of the time, as was evidenced by the shattered remains of train cars stacked off to the southern portion of the yard.

Eric continued down the other side of the overpass and followed Foothills for another mile before turning left onto a two-lane street that led into the residential neighborhood where he lived. The houses here were all modest tract homes built in the late 1990s or early 2000s. All of the lawns were now overgrown and shaggy since there was no gasoline available to mow them with. Since it was a bit chilly today, many of the fireplaces had smoke coming from them because the cost of natural gas had more than quintupled since the beginning of the war. Many of the houses were just plain deserted, the occupants who could afford it having fled to safer living quarters. What made the neighborhood unsafe was not the crime rate — that was at its lowest level in history in the US since most of America's youth was now fighting the war — but the proximity to the rail yards. The Chinese did not go out of their way to drop their bombs in the middle of the residential zone, but it happened by mistake quite often. More common was that a bomber would be shot out of the sky by one of the yard's anti-air weapons and crash down into the neighborhood, wiping out a few houses or a strip mall.

In the last year, since the Asian Powers forces had pushed into Washington and Idaho and gotten themselves into bombing range of Central California, more than fifty homes had been destroyed, more than a hundred had been damaged, and nearly two hundred people had been killed in the five square miles of residential neighborhood adjacent to the yards. There was talk of condemning the rest of the homes and forcing the residents out for their own safety — talk that was met with sometimes violent protest by the residents themselves because they would be ineligible for any kind of compensation if the resolution were to pass. Eric tried not to think about what would happen if they were forced to leave. He and his mother were barely hanging onto their home as it was. They would literally have no place to go if they were forced out. Nor could they even hope a bomber would come down on their house one night and damage or destroy it so they could collect the insurance money. Such destruction was a direct result of an act of war and, therefore, not covered under the homeowner's policy.

The house where Eric lived with his mother was a two-story purchased nineteen years before, during much happier times when Roger and Elizabeth Rowley were young parents of a two-year old girl and Eric was a two month fetus in his mother's womb. That had been during the beginning of the dot-com boom when everyone was getting rich and mortgage companies were practically giving home loans away. These days, the house was a bit ramshackle, its paint peeling in many places, tiles missing from the roof, the chimney sagging. It was also almost completely worthless since it was in a neighborhood that would likely be condemned soon. His mother literally wouldn't be able to give it away, yet the mortgage company still insisted on receiving their $1148.43 on the first of every month. That was not a terribly high mortgage payment in this day and age, but it was somewhat steep for a widowed mother on top of her daughter's college tuition and books and all the other bills. Eric's sister, Megan, who was a junior at the University of Santa Barbara, helped out when she could, but most of the money she earned from her job as a waitress went for her own living expenses. Eric, too, helped out when he could. He had a part-time job as a clerk at a nearby hardware store. He turned over to his mother half of his weekly salary to help make ends meet.

Eric parked his bike in the garage and entered through the back door. The house was chilly because the furnace had been permanently shut down to save money and their firewood had long since run out. The aroma of cooking was in the air. It smelled like stew, one of the staples of their diet. Sure enough, when he came into the kitchen, his mother was standing before a pot on the stove, slowly stirring her concoction of jarred beef cuts and vegetables grown in her backyard victory garden.

"Hi, Mom," he said as he came up behind her and took a sniff. "How's it advancing?"

"About the same as always," she said tiredly, dumping a few pinches of salt into the pot. "How was your day?"

"It wasn't too much of a retreat," he told her. "Could've done without the rain, though."

She nodded, having barely heard him. Her attention often wandered these days, as if she wasn't quite sure where she was from minute to minute. The loss of her husband — Eric and Megan's father — six months before seemed to have taken much of the life out of her. Roger Rowley had been one of the civilian casualties of the war. A mid-level accountant, he had been standing on a loading platform one day with a hundred or so other people, awaiting the light rail train that would return him to the suburbs after a hard day of bean counting. Suddenly he had collapsed to the ground in a heap, the back of his head a mush of blood and brains. The police investigation and the autopsy would reveal he had been struck by a 23mm anti-aircraft round that had been fired more than twenty miles away, nearly five minutes earlier in response to a flight of Chinese planes streaking toward a fuel storage facility in the suburb of Rancho Cordova. The shell had missed the plane and come down in a ballistic arc, burying itself in his skull. He never knew what hit him. And, like the homeowners insurance, the life insurance company did not pay for claims caused by an act of war.

"You working again tonight?" Eric asked her, noting she was dressed in the ragged blue jeans and sweater that were the favored attire for the job she had taken after his father's death. She worked in what had once been a soup factory in South Sacramento but what was now one of the primary manufacturing points for the MREs the front-line soldiers consumed for their daily rations. It was a menial, low-paying job for a woman who held a bachelor's degree in Business but it was all she had been able to get.

"That's right," she said. "I'm working a double."

"A double? Jeez, Mom, you're gonna burn yourself out doing that."

"When they offer overtime, I don't turn it down," she told him. "We need the money. You know that as well as I do."

"I suppose," he said doubtfully. "Did you get any sleep?"

"I got enough," she assured him. "If I get tired I'll catch a few minutes on my lunch periods. How about you? Did they offer you any overtime down at the hardware store?"

He shook his head. "No, I'm barely able to keep the twenty-four hours a week they give me. Not too many people buying hardware these days."

"No," she said with a sigh. "I don't suppose there are. You haven't heard back from the Saving Center?"

The Saving Center was a huge food market that employed dozens of bicycle delivery boys to bring groceries to the elderly and the war widows with children in the absence of vehicles. It was a highly sought after job because it paid well, included tips, and, rumor had it, the young war widows were sometimes more than a little friendly with the young boys who brought them their groceries. "I'm on their waiting list," he told her, "but they probably won't be hiring again until summer, when the seniors they have working for them head off for basic training."

"Well, that's only a few more months," she said. "Maybe you can get three months work in before you head off to college."

"Yeah," he said vaguely. "Maybe I will." He didn't tell her that he was seriously considering being one of those seniors who would be heading off to basic training. After all, college would still be there after he did his four-year commitment, wouldn't it? And he would still have that 3.9 GPA on his record. He could do his part to help push the Chinese out of North America and then use the money he earned to start working on his dream of one day becoming a doctor. But his mother didn't need to know about this just yet—not while she still had two and half months to try talking him out of it.




Collateral Damage



"Anyway," she said, "I need to get myself down to the light rail station if I want to make it to the factory on time. You know how long it takes to get across town these days. Let the stew simmer for about two more hours and then you can eat it. And be sure to put what's left in the refrigerator. I put a lot of sweat into those goddamned vegetables."

"Okay, Mom," he said.

She picked up a plastic Tupperware bowl. "And fill this up and take it over to Victoria," she told him. "I told her I'd send some over for her."

"Sure," he said, unable to keep the sour tone from his voice. Victoria was their 26-year-old next-door neighbor. She was unemployed, spending all of her time taking care of her debilitated husband, who had been injured in the Battle of Viola. Since her only source of income was the paltry disability pension the government gave her, Eric's mother frequently helped her out with food donations. Eric had a hard time being sympathetic toward Victoria's plight since he and his mother barely had enough food to last between paydays themselves, but his mother — who loved to feel sorry for people — insisted on sharing what they had.

"Don't you give me that tone," she warned. "You know Vickie only gets her check once a month. If we didn't help her out from time to time she wouldn't be able to make it from one paycheck to the next."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, unimpressed, as always, with her plight.

"And don't you go giving her mostly broth either. Lots of meat and lots of vegetables. I'll check."

"Yes, Mom," he sighed. "I'll give her the cream of the stew, I promise."

She looked at him for a moment, as if wondering whether to make further comment and then decided not to. She picked up her purse, clipped her personal computer — or PC, which served as a combination cellular phone and pocket computer — to her waist, and headed for the door. She walked out into the rain toward the electric bus stop half a mile away.

+++++

Two and a half hours later, after eating three bowls of the fragrant stew and four pieces of the homemade bread, Eric packed up the Tupperware bowl with as much broth and as little meat and vegetables as he thought he could get away with and went next door to Victoria's house. It was one of the smaller models in the subdivision, a single story, three bedroom — the kind referred to in happier times as a starter house.

The front door swung open to his knock and Victoria herself stood there. Though the stress of the past few years had aged her a bit, and though Eric harbored a considerable amount of resentment toward her, he could not deny that she was still an attractive woman. Her hair was a rich brunette and her body was well formed, with feminine curves in all the right places. Her breasts, while not particularly large, were not small either. Her face was pretty in an innocent sort of way, with rounded cheekbones and a dainty nose, the sort of features women had once paid top dollar to have a plastic surgeon mold for them. Eric, despite his annoyance, couldn't help but admire her form as she stood there in a pair of gray sweat shorts and a plain white T-shirt that didn't quite cover her belly.

"Hi, Eric," she said, a smile coming to her face as she saw him standing there. "What brings you over here today?"

He pushed the Tupperware container toward her. "My mom made some stew today and she wanted me to bring some over to you."

"Oh, that was awfully sweet of her," she said, taking the container. "And it's still hot, too. You two always help me out so much. Are you sure you can spare it? Believe me, I know how tough things are these days."

He bit his tongue against the reply he wanted to give. "We can spare it," he grunted.

"Well, thank you so much," she said. "And thank your mother, too."

"I'll do that," he said, catching one last glance of her legs and then turning to go.

"Oh, Eric," she said in her patented can-you-do-me-a-quick-favor voice.

He turned slowly back to her. "Yeah?" he asked, not bothering to completely mask his annoyance.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You do so much for me and I know I'm a bother sometimes, but the ceiling fan in the living room is making this ticking noise. You're good with your hands. Could you maybe take a look at it for me?"

He sighed and considered just telling her to turn the damn ceiling fan off if it was bothering her but knowing his mother would be pissed if he did and word got back to her (as it almost certainly would — the two of them gabbed to each other almost every day). "Sure," he said, resigned. "I'll come in and take a look at it."

He followed her into the house and through the formal living room to the family room, staring at her ass the entire trip. She really did have an attractive derrière. And no one was even touching it these days. Men were scarce in the landscape and the one she had was certainly in no shape to do anything for her. Or for anyone for that matter.

John Massley — Victoria's husband — had been a civil engineer before the war, an employee of Sacramento County whose specialty was traffic-flow projects. His background and schooling had earned him a commission in the army once the war started. He had been a lieutenant in charge of a combat engineering platoon during the Battle of Viola, the decisive battle named for the small town in Southern Idaho where the Western Hemisphere forces had finally — after being ground backward for more than a year — halted the advance of the Chinese armies and stabilized the North American front into the bloody stalemate it now was.

During the most vicious fighting of this two-month battle, Lieutenant Massley had been frantically directing his platoon to wire a bridge for destruction when a one inch piece of jagged shrapnel from a Chinese 155mm artillery shell had lanced through the side of his head, destroying his optic and olfactory nerves as well as tearing out most of his frontal lobe. Incredibly, he survived his injury, despite having been triaged as "expectant," or "dead in sixty seconds" by the medics who rushed to his side. But he hadn't died in sixty seconds, instead, he continued breathing and moaning for the better part of thirty minutes before they decided to re-designate his status and put him on the dust-off chopper to the MASH unit.

Once there, the combat surgeons gave him the lowest possible priority, not wanting to waste time treating a dying man. He had lain on a stretcher for hours while they'd treated every other casualty that had come in and still his respiration and heartbeat had chugged on. Finally, with nothing else to do with him, they closed all of the bleeders in his head and stitched him up, expecting him to expire within hours. He didn't. He hung in there for six more days before — again with nothing else to do — they'd shipped him off to the VA hospital at Travis Air Force Base. The neurosurgeons there patched him up a little bit more but they told Victoria he wouldn't live a week, that the crude lobotomy would surely not be compatible with survival. They too had been wrong. It had been more than a year now and he was still hanging in there, although there were many who would say he really had died that day in Idaho and his body simply didn't know it yet.

He was sitting in his wheelchair before the television set as Eric entered the room, his sightless eyes facing the evening newscast. As always when looking at John Massley, Eric had to suppress the urge to wince. He fought hard to keep his eyes cast away but it was impossible not to stare at what had become of the man who had once helped a younger Eric fix his bicycle when it was broken, who had once owned sophisticated model airplanes he would cruise at the park around the corner. There was a jagged, zigzagging, Frankenstein-like scar on the side of his head and his forehead had a curious, sunken appearance. His eyes were clouded over, pointing in different directions, staring sightlessly forward without comprehension, without blinking. His mouth hung open, a sheen of drool perpetually running down his chin and along his neck to soak into a bib tied there. Installed in his neck was a tracheostomy tube that was always clogged with whitish yellow mucous and that made a disgusting slurping sound with each breath he took. His arms and legs hung limply in place, rarely moving, the once powerful muscles now slack and emaciated with atrophy. A urine bag connected by a rubber hose to a permanent incision in his abdomen hung from a hook on the bottom of the chair. Protruding from the top of his pajama bottoms was a blue diaper that Victoria had to change at least twice a day. Though he still had his hearing, he gave no indication that he had heard Eric enter the room. He reacted to no stimulation whatsoever, at any time. He was, in fact, a living, breathing piece of meat and little else. He was fed a liquid diet through a feeding tube installed in the top of his abdomen.

As she led Eric over to the ceiling fan, Vickie moved him out of the way as if he were no more than a piece of furniture, with no more emotion than if she had been moving the coffee table. She didn't talk to him, caress him, or even touch him. "This is the one," she told him. "Do you hear it?"

He put John Massley out of his mind (the best he could anyway) and tuned his ear into the rotating fan blades. Sure enough, there was a steady ticking noise and the entire assembly was wobbling in rhythm with the rotation. "I hear it," he said. "Go ahead and turn it off."

She flipped off the switch and the fan slowly revolved to a halt. He reached up, standing on his toes, until he could touch one of the blades. He wiggled it back and forth, finding it was loose in its mounting, a victim, no doubt, of not receiving any maintenance since the man of the house had gone off to war.

"Can you fix it?" she asked hopefully.

"I think so," he said. "Do you have a stepstool and a screwdriver?"

"Yes," she said. "I'll go get them."

She left the room, Eric staring at her buttocks and sexy legs until they disappeared around the corner. Once she was gone he turned his attention to the television set to avoid having his attention recaptured by the gurgling, living-dead respiration of Vickie's husband. 

"There was heavy enemy air activity over the Sacramento region last night and in the early morning hours of today," an attractive, late-twenties woman told him and the rest of the viewing audience. Behind her, on the graphic screen, was a generic image of an F-15 Strike Eagle laden with bombs and Chinese markings on the tail. "Chinese bombers struck at Executive Air Base in South Sacramento at around 8:30 PM and again at 11:45, dropping anti-runway munitions throughout the former civilian airport. More bombers struck at McClellan Field in North Highlands at around 2:30 AM, again, utilizing anti-runway munitions in an apparent attempt to put the field out of commission. Both runways at Executive were heavily damaged and one of the runways at McClellan was slightly damaged in the raids. These two bases, as you know, are where planes of the 325th California Air Guard are based. Since these planes are the primary air-to-air defense against Chinese incursion into Sacramento area airspace, military analysts warn that a larger air raid is probably on the way, either tonight or tomorrow morning. Such an air raid would be directed against a high value strategic target, such as Sacramento International Airport, where the EA-12 AWACS aircraft are based, or the fuel storage tanks in Rancho Cordova, or, most likely, the Roseville Rail Yards, where supply and fuel trains bound for the active front in Idaho or the inactive front in the Portland, Oregon region are assembled."

"Wonderful," Eric grumbled. "Nothing but good news."

"Civil authorities tell us that old advice is good advice," she continued cheerfully. "When you hear the air raid siren, proceed as quickly as possible to your designated shelter. If you have no designated shelter in your neighborhood, remain indoors until at least five minutes after the all-clear is signaled."

"I'll do that," he grumbled, deciding that Vickie's husband was actually more cheerful to look at.

Vickie returned a few minutes later, a flat-blade screwdriver in one hand, a small stepladder in the other. She handed them across to him and he went quickly to work, arranging the ladder in the proper place and then climbing to the top step. The fan housing was now only slightly above eye level. He quickly tightened up the loose screws that held it in place and then did the same for the screws that held the blades themselves to the housing. He gave the whole thing a shake, noting with mute satisfaction that it no longer wiggled under the pressure.

He looked down at Vickie, who had been standing next to the ladder during the operation, and took in a sharp intake of breath. Her T-shirt had come away from her body and he found himself looking directly down it. Her breasts, encased in a lacy white bra, were plainly visible and the sight was more than a little appetizing.

"Is everything okay, Eric?" she asked softly, seemingly unaware of the view she was giving him.

"Uh... uh... well, yeah," he stammered, feeling himself blush. He cast his eyes away reluctantly. "Go ahead and... uh... turn it on."

She smiled. "Sure," she said, turning and walking to the wall switch. She turned the control knob and the blades whirred to life.

Eric turned away from her and looked up at the fan. It was spinning silently along, just like brand new. "I think I got it fixed," he told her, climbing back down to the ground.

"Yay," she said cheerfully, walking over to him again. "You're such a sweetie." 

She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly, her breasts pushing into his chest. While he was still trying to adjust to this, she leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek, her soft lips lingering for several seconds. He felt the blood rush to his face again, and another burst rushing to his penis, which stirred in interest inside of his pants. Annoying or not, needy or not, her body felt nice against him and her lips felt even nicer.

She pulled her face back, her brown eyes gazing up at him, a sparkle in them he'd never seen before, her arms remaining around his back. "That's for being such a good friend," she said. "Thank you so much."

More blood rushed into his penis. In a moment it would develop into a bona fide hard on. "Uh... you're... uh... you know... you're welcome," he blurted, his own hands reaching up and just barely touching the back of her shoulders, which technically, he supposed, completed the hug.

She held the embrace a moment longer and then released him. Her face was now whimsical, almost melancholy. "John used to take care of stuff like that," she said. "He used to take care of lots of things, if you know what I mean."

He looked at her for a moment, wondering if she meant what he thought she meant. His experience with the opposite sex was somewhat limited, particularly with members of the opposite sex who were older than him. No, he finally concluded, he was probably just imagining things. "I... uh... guess so," he finally said.

An awkward silence developed, the two of them staring at each other, Vickie with that melancholy look, Eric with a growing sense of nervousness. Finally he told her that he had better get going.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay for a little bit?" she asked him. "I could make us some ice tea. Or maybe you'd like a beer? I have some in the fridge."

"Uh... no, I've got some studying to do," he said. "I'd better get going."

She looked a little disappointed but she nodded. "Okay," she said. "Studying is important these days, isn't it? You don't keep those grades up and you'll end up on the line."

"Right," he said. 

They exchanged awkward goodbyes and a minute or two later he was back outside. The rain was still coming down. It didn't look like it was going to stop anytime soon.

+++++

It didn't stop. At 9:30 that night, it was still pouring down from the overcast sky in a steady stream. Eric was in his bedroom upstairs, sitting before his computer terminal, hearing it patter against the window behind him. On the screen was the text from his microbiology CD. He had a test in the subject the next day and was trying to study but his mind kept wandering to the thought of Vickie's breasts pushing against his chest, or the way they had looked when he had seen down the front of her shirt, or the way her lips had felt touching his cheek. And then there was her offer for him to stay for a little while. What exactly had she meant by that? Why would a 26-year-old woman want to hang out with a high school senior? Did she just miss having company that much? It stood to reason that John, who never spoke or communicated in any way, probably got a little boring after a while, but was she so desperate she would want to chat with her friend's son? Or was there maybe something else implied in her offer, something a little more intimate?

As much as he wanted to believe the latter was the case, he simply could not convince himself it was true. He had no illusions about what he represented to the opposite sex. He was not exactly unattractive, but he was certainly no sex god either. He was a tall and somewhat gangly, awkward in the way of teenagers. His face was still young looking — the kind of face that aunts loved to pinch — and a smattering of adolescent acne still made a regular appearance. True, he had had a few girlfriends. He had even managed to get himself laid a few times earlier in his senior year. But those girls had all been younger than him and only marginal in the physical attractive department themselves. Vickie — despite her annoying traits — was a very attractive woman, the kind of woman he masturbated thinking about but knew he would never have. In the universe as Eric saw it, hot twenty-six year olds did not toss sexually provocative innuendo at awkward eighteen year olds.

Nevertheless, the very thought, coupled with the views and tactile sensations he'd experienced earlier, now had his cock as rigid as steel and demanding some sort of release. Every few moments he would let his hand stray down to the bulge it had caused in his jeans and he would rub it a little, making it even harder and more demanding. Finally, unable to take anymore, he put his microbiology text in the background on his computer screen and stood up so he could close the blinds on his window and then lay down and lube his missile to the thought of Vickie's naked body. Before he got halfway across the room, however, there was a warning chirp from his computer.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, looking over at the screen. Sure enough, it was now showing a warning screen sent to it by the Placer County Department of Civil Defense.

AIR RAID WARNING, the text read. FEDERAL CIVIL DEFENSE RADAR STATIONS REPORT A LARGE FLIGHT OF ENEMY PLANES EMERGING FROM THE SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS NEAR GRASS VALLEY AND MOVING SOUTHWEST TOWARD THE ROSEVILLE/ROCKLIN/LINCOLN AREA. TARGET UNKNOWN. ALL CIVILIANS REPORT TO DESIGNATED SHELTERS OR TAKE COVER IF NONE AVAILABLE. REMAIN UNDER COVER UNTIL AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE ALL CLEAR IS SOUNDED.

No sooner had he finished reading the text than the sound of the air raid sirens began, swelling up from the north and east, the relatively slow speed of sound making the cyclic rise and fall of the various transmitters uncoordinated.

"Static," Eric muttered, continuing his walk to the window. He opened it up, letting in the cold wind and a few raindrops. His view faced to the west, toward the rail yard. At the moment, nothing was visible, but that would probably change. The Chinese were bombing the rail yard again. There was no other target in the vicinity that a "large flight of enemy planes" would be going after. He had been through this many times before and had no plans to leave his bedroom. There were no designated air-raid shelters in the neighborhood. They were just a little too expensive to build. The nearest one was at the high school, more than three miles away. The planes would be overhead in a matter of minutes. He was just as safe in his bedroom as he would be anywhere. If it was his time to die, than it was his time to die. His attitude was quite typical of those who lived near frequently bombed targets.




Collateral Damage



The sound of jet engines began to fill the air a moment later, rising up from the south and gradually becoming louder and louder until they drowned out all other sounds. They passed almost directly overhead and began to fade. Those, Eric knew, would be American F-22s of the California Air Guard, flying from their base at McClellan Field and heading to intercept the incoming Chinese planes. Typically they would shoot down a few of them (sending them crashing into some residential neighborhood or a strip mall) but their effectiveness was limited by the difficulties in finding an enemy who was flying at 500 miles per hour less than 500 feet over the rooftops.

Just as the sound of the planes faded completely away, the hollow thumping of AAA guns somewhere off to the east filled the night. These were the flak guns, which sent up 37-millimeter shells that burst in front of the enemy. Their effectiveness was somewhat limited as well, usually only accounting for a plane or two each raid. The booming was punctuated by occasional bursts of the smaller caliber AA guns, which were either radar, infrared, or optically guided. It was one such gun that had fired the bullet that had killed his father.

From out the window a bright flash of light suddenly rose up from the direction of the rail yard and streaked out across the sky. It was a surface-to-air missile, fired from one of the many launchers aligned to protect the yard. It was followed by another and then two more in rapid succession. They were gone from view long before the roar of their rocket engines thundered into the house, rattling the windows.

There were a few moments of relative silence and then the AAA guns in the yard itself opened up all at once. Dozens of heavy caliber shells flew over the top of the neighborhood, bursting over the houses in spectacular red blooms, putting a virtual curtain of flak in the path of the enemy planes. The booming of the exploding shells was a deep, almost ominous sound, and was followed by the pattering of shell fragments that fell like rain over the roofs and sidewalks, that plunked into swimming pools and even came down chimneys on occasion. It was an experience both beautiful and terrifying, like a thunderstorm or a tornado.

Suddenly, a bright flash lit up the entire sky for a second or two. It was followed a few seconds later by a huge explosion from the south — an explosion large enough to shake the house in its foundation. A plane had just been shot down somewhere fairly close by, within a block or two by the sound of it. Whether it was an American plane or a Chinese one, whether it had been an air-to-air missile or a flak gun that had felled it, Eric didn't know and didn't care. His only concern was that it hadn't hit his house and snuffed out his life.

The sound of multiple jet engines began to swell up again from the south. Eric had been through enough air raids to identify them as F-15s by the sound alone. The old American designed fighter/bombers the Chinese used had a higher-pitched whine than the more modern F-22 engines. The sound grew louder and louder until once again the entire house was shaking from the vibration. From the direction of the rail yard, dozens of red tracer streams suddenly erupted, probing upward into the night, waving back and forth, seeking out the offending aircraft. Some moved smoothly with the mechanical precision of radar or infrared guidance. Most moved jerkily, bespeaking a human hand guiding them.

The planes passed almost directly over the house, climbing upward toward their attack altitude. Eric caught the barest glimpse of a few of them before they disappeared into the rainy night. The jet sounds began to fade just as the flashes of multiple explosions lit up the western sky. This was followed by a few huge fireballs that blew upward over rooftop level—obviously tanker cars or ammunition cars blown up by the bombs.

"Here comes the fun part," Eric said, holding onto the window frame and bracing himself for the concussions he knew were on the way. Experience told him it would take about twenty seconds for them to arrive.

They were right on schedule, solid thumps that slammed into the house at the speed of sound, shaking it as if an earthquake were going on, rattling windows, knocking loose objects from shelves. One after the other they slammed in, occasionally punctuated by larger, heavier concussions created by the secondary explosions at the yard. They reached a furious peak for a few moments, hammering into his chest with nearly enough force to drive the breath from his lungs. Behind him, on his desk, a stack of CD cases fell over and clattered to the floor, as did the glass of ice water he'd been sipping. Then, abruptly, they fell off, becoming sporadic and then ceasing entirely except for the occasional secondary explosion. The AA guns stopped firing and the flak stopped pattering on the roof. The sound of jet engines faded. Except for the continued glow of some horrendous fire off to the west, the night went back to its normal self.

As if to make this point, the computer chirped again and the message proclaiming the air raid warning was at an end flashed on the screen. The sirens began to sound again, this time with the all-clear signal. While they were still cycling upward the sound of the doorbell began to chime from downstairs, not just a single chime, but over and over, in a frantic manner.

"What now?" he said, annoyed. It would have to be Vickie. No one else would ring the doorbell at night, especially not with that panicky, frantic pushing. She probably had a window that had jammed from the concussions, or a fucking light bulb that had burned out and needed to be changed. And just as he had thought he was going to be able to settle down and start whacking off.

He went downstairs, passing a few loose objects that had fallen off shelves and making a note to pick them up later so his mom didn't have a goddamned bitch-fit about it when she got home tomorrow. The doorbell was still ringing away like mad and, unmindful of the consequences, he yelled out, "I'm coming, for God's sake! Quit ringing the goddamned bell!"

The ringing stopped and he finished his trek to the front door, undoing the deadbolt lock and throwing it open. "What's..." he started, and then stopped as he saw the state of his visitor. It was Vickie all right, just as he'd figured, but she was dressed in nothing but a short robe that was tied loosely and carelessly around her waist. The top of the robe was flapping open, allowing him to see most of her bare breasts. He couldn't quite make out the nipples but he knew if she turned her body one way or the other he would. She was soaking wet from the rain and had wet plaster dust smeared across her face and arms and in her hair. 

Before he had a chance to get properly aroused by her appearance, she screamed a sentence at him that chilled him to the bone. "There's a bomb in my living room!"

"A... a bomb?" he asked, his eyes widening. "You mean... like from an airplane?"

"Yes," she said, terrified. "It came crashing through the ceiling while I was taking a bath. It buried itself in the living room floor!"

"Jesus," Eric said, feeling real fear now. Unexploded bombs were as much a problem in Roseville as they had ever been in London during The Blitz. They fell from shot down aircraft, or were dropped and failed to detonate for whatever reason. Most of the time they were successfully defused by the Placer County Sheriff Department's bomb squad. But sometimes they detonated before the bomb squad could get there. If Vickie indeed had a 500lb bomb sitting in her living room, every neighbor within 500 meters was in imminent danger. "Did you call 911 and tell them?"

"No," she said, shaking her head wildly. "I just ran out of the house. Oh my God, I didn't know what to do!"

"John is still over there with it?" he asked.

"Yes... I mean... well... yes," she blubbered. "Oh God, Eric. We need to get rid of it."

"We need to get your husband out of there first," he said, stepping out onto the porch. "Come on."

"But... but..."

"He's your fucking husband!" Eric yelled at her. "Come on. Let's get him out of there and then we'll call 911 from over here." And then get the fuck on down the road, he didn't add.

Reluctantly she followed him across the wet, muddy lawn and up to the front door of her house. The door was still standing wide open and he approached it carefully, peering inside, expecting to be obliterated at any instance. He saw immediately the ordinance of which she spoke. It was a gray, cylindrical object, about ten feet in length, although it was hard to be sure since the first third of it was buried in the floor. It was maybe six inches wide. Fins, which had been bent and distorted from its fall, adorned the tail end of it, as did a section of what appeared to be the mounting bracket that had held it onto the plane. On the cover was an American flag. Stenciled in black was AIM-9J. Eric breathed a big sigh of relief as he saw this. "It's not a bomb," he told Vickie, who was pushing nervously up against his back.

"What do you mean it's not a bomb?" she yelled. "It came crashing through my fucking ceiling and buried in my floor."

"Its an air-to-air missile," he said. "It came off one of our planes."

"I don't give a shit whose fucking plane it came off of, it's in the middle of my goddamned living room!"

"Yes," he said patiently, "but it's not a bomb. It's a missile designed to shoot down other planes. It doesn't have that much explosive in it, just some fuel and a small warhead."

"Can it blow up my fucking house or can it not blow up my fucking house?" she screamed, approaching hysterics now.

He had to concede that she had a point. "Well," he told her, "it could make a pretty good hole, I suppose. Let's get John over to my house. We'll call the cops from there and they'll come and take it away."

"I'm not going in there," she said, shaking her head.

"You're husband is in there," Eric hissed at her. "We need to get him out."

"He's not my husband," she spat. "He's a piece of meat that the fucking government threw into the meat grinder and then sent back to me to take care of. A piece of meat that shits himself twice a day and has to have his fucking neck tube suctioned every hour!"

Eric was appalled by her words, too young to understand the contempt that caregivers often develop for their family — no matter how much they once loved them — when forced to nurse them with no hope of recovery. He resisted the urge to slap her across the face and tried a different verbal argument instead. "He's a war hero," he told her. "If you leave him in there to die, they'll arrest you. Now let's go get him out of there."

This seemed to get through. "Okay," she said, her eyes looking at the missile in terror. "Let's do it quick."

They did it quick, easing past the missile in the living room and under the hole it had caused in the ceiling. They went into the back bedroom where a cheap hospital bed, provided by the VA, had been set up. John was snoring away, sleeping the sleep of a man who had been given sedatives so his wife wouldn't have to get up in the middle of the night to deal with him. He was naked except for the blue diaper. They wrestled him into his wheelchair and Vickie threw a blanket over him. She grabbed his suction machine and, together, they wheeled him back through the living room and out into the night, going down the sidewalk and up Eric's driveway. Once in the house they parked him in the living room, where he continued to snore away.

Eric went to the phone. "I'll call the cops," he said. "They should be here in a few minutes to get rid of it."

"Thank God," Vickie snorted, sitting on the couch. 

Eric had to swallow as he caught the briefest glimpse up the hem of her robe as she sat down. He saw most of her sexy legs and had the fleeting impression that he might've seen a patch of black pubic hair. He tore his eyes away and picked up the cordless phone to dial 911.

An automated machine answered his call for help, telling him that all dispatchers were currently busy and his call would be answered as quickly as possible. He muttered curses for the better part of three minutes before a faceless, monotone woman finally asked him what the emergency was.

"My neighbor has an air-to-air missile in her living room," he explained. "It came down on the..."

"Okay," she interrupted. "Let me transfer you to the bomb disposal unit."

There was a click, followed by a recorded voice imploring him to buy war bonds for the good of the country. This was followed by another voice asking him to volunteer his time with one of the many civic groups in the greater Roseville area. At last a male voice, gruff and businesslike, came on the line. "Sergeant Jenkins," he said. "Placer County BDU. I understand you are calling to report some unexploded ordinance?"

"Yes," Eric said. "It's a..."

"I'm showing you at 3405 Hickory Avenue in Roseville," he cut in. "Is that correct?"

"Yes, but..."

"Is that where the bomb is?"

"No, it's next door, at 3407, but it's not a..."

"What does the bomb look like, son?" he interrupted again. "I need to know if it's intact, broken into pieces, still burning, or what?"

"Well, like I was trying to say, it's not a bomb exactly, it's a..."

"What the hell do you mean, it's not a bomb?" he said, almost angrily. "Boy, this is the bomb disposal unit, you understand that? Now do you got a bomb or don't you?"

"It's a missile," he said. "A Sidewinder. It came down in my neighbor's living room during the air raid."

"A Sidewinder?" he asked. "Are you sure, boy?"

"I'm sure," he said. "It has an American flag and says AIM-9J on the side of it."

"That's a Sidewinder all right," Jenkins said, his voice softer now. "It's not on fire or anything, is it?"

"No," Eric told him. "It's just sticking out of the floor."

"All right," he said. "I've got you logged down on the list. Evacuate that house and we'll have somebody over there either tomorrow or Saturday to defuse it and get it out of there for you."

"Tomorrow or Saturday?" Eric said, wondering if he'd heard correctly. The BDU was one of those public service agencies with legendary status, like the police and fire department. They were supposed to drop everything and respond immediately when called.

"That's correct, son," Jenkins told him. "Now if there's nothing else, I've got some other calls pending."

"Well... uh... you mean you just want us to leave the missile there for two days?" he asked incredulously.

"It's only an air-to-air missile, son," he said. "It has about eighteen pounds of explosive in it. That poses a danger only to your neighbor's house and nothing else. Meanwhile, as I'm sure you noticed, we just had a major air raid pass over Roseville and plaster the train yards. We shot down five Chink planes while they were on the way to the target, all of which had a full load of bombs that needs to be dealt with. Those bombs threaten entire neighborhoods so they have to get priority, you understand?"

"I guess so," he said.

"I'm glad we're on the same page," Jenkins said. "Now you keep everyone out of that house until we get there and everything will be just fine, okay?"

"Okay," he said. "But what about..." He never got a chance to finish his sentence. The moment the "okay" had come out of his mouth, Jenkins had hung up. "Asshole," Eric muttered, putting the phone down.

"They're not going to come tonight?" asked Vickie, who had been listening in from the couch.

"No," he said. "They say it's not a priority since it's only an air-to-air missile." He shook his head. "I should've pretended I didn't know what it was."

"That's okay, Eric," she said with a sigh, wiping at the plaster dust on her face. "It's not your fault. But what am I supposed to do now? There's a hole in my ceiling and a missile in my living room. I can't go back to my house."

Eric looked over at her. She had crossed her legs at some point but she was still showing a lot of thigh. "I guess you can stay here until they get rid of it," he told her, the idea suddenly not seeming as repugnant as he might have thought earlier.

She didn't even bother with token protests. "Thanks, Eric," she said gratefully and then looked down at herself. "My God, look at me. I'm a mess. And I don't have anything to wear but this filthy robe. And John doesn't have any of his clothes either, or his medicine."

"Why don't we just put John in the spare bedroom," he suggested. "He can... uh... sleep in a regular bed, right?"

She nodded. "He doesn't move around much, especially not when he's juiced up on the Haldol."

"We'll find some way to get him some clothes tomorrow. It looks like maybe he'll fit into some of mine." His old ones, he did not add. There was no way in hell that he was going to volunteer his newer clothes.

"What about me?" she asked. "What am I going to wear? I don't have any bras, any underwear, nothing."

That one was going to be a little harder. His mother was a large woman, standing 5-10 and nearly sixty pounds overweight. None of her clothing would fit Vickie's petite frame. "We'll have to get you something new tomorrow," he suggested, knowing, even as he said it, that his mother would volunteer to buy it for her. "In the meantime... well... maybe you can wear some of my clothes too. You know, like a shirt or something?"

She smiled. "I guess that will get me through the night," she said softly. "Do you think that maybe I could take a shower? I'm filthy."

"Sure," he said. "Let's get John set up in the spare room and then you can use the downstairs shower."

+++++

Eric felt somewhat dirty after tooling around in the rain and helping wrestle John into the spare bed. So, after finding Vickie a shirt to wear — he had reluctantly given her one of his longest ones instead of a shorter version that would have showed more leg — he took the time to take a quick shower himself, utilizing the upstairs bathroom. When he emerged into the living room, now wearing a clean pair of sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt, he heard the water still running in the downstairs bath. He spent a pleasant moment envisioning Vickie's nakedness behind the door but stopped when it started to produce an erection. Instead, he sat down on the couch and turned on the television, flipping through the channels until he found a rerun of Idaho Platoon, the teen-oriented war drama series that followed the adventures of the fictional Lieutenant Mike Smith and his men on the battlefront.

Vickie emerged from the bathroom about fifteen minutes later, his San Francisco 49rs shirt covering her body. He lost all interest in the television when he saw the braless jiggling of her breasts. The hem of the shirt fell to about mid-thigh on her, allowing him to see her sexy legs as well. Her hair was wet and falling over her shoulders. She was carrying one of his mother's brushes in her hand. She came and sat next to him on the couch, ignoring the easy chair that sat right next to it. Eric felt the stirrings of an erection again as his mind continued to remind him that she was completely naked beneath the shirt. Nothing but skin!

"I hope your mom doesn't mind me using her brush," she told him as she began to run it through her hair.

"Uh... ummm, no, I... uh wouldn't think she would," he stammered, his eyes now locked onto the junction of her arm and her shoulder. As she brushed her hair the armhole of the shirt would open up at the top of each stroke, allowing a quick flash of her left breast.

"Are you okay?" she asked, looking at him with concern.

He nodded quickly. "Yes," he said. "Perfectly fine."

She smiled and went back to brushing. He continued to look at her exposed breast out of the corner of his eye. He caught brief glimpses of the actual nipple twice, when she raised her arm for a particularly high stroke. He finally forced himself to look away when the front of his sweats actually began to tent outward. What would Vickie think if she saw he was getting a hard-on from looking at her? She would probably call him a sick pervert, stomp off to bed, and then tell his mother when she came home tomorrow evening. Eventually, grudgingly, the blood left his penis and returned to other duties in his body. He breathed a sigh of relief mixed with just a hint of regret.




Collateral Damage Pt. 01



I hated Teri Lee. I hated her because she was a smug bitch who said horrible things behind your back. I hated her because she was the company brown-noser who climbed past others more qualified than her using flattery and obsequiousness rather than skill and determination. I hated her because she was more than willing to dump on someone else if it made her look better. And, I hated her because she hated me. 

And she hated me, mostly I suppose, because rather than falling in line with the other office lackeys in their sickening efforts to ingratiate themselves with her, I was more than willing to call her on her shit. I didn't go out of my way to cause a problem, but more than a few times I put her in her place. Of course, as a fellow manager, I was in a better position to push back than some of the other guys, and so I did.

We argued about office policy. We disagreed on hirings and firings and promotions. She accused me of favoring my friends and I returned the favor. And, we had completely different styles of management. She was an anal retentive perfectionist, endlessly evaluating and correcting the staff, always looking for a problem even if there wasn't one. She was more than willing to belittle or marginalize anyone that, somehow, didn't make it into her little circle of sycophantic friends. I believed in a more relaxed environment and had a tendency to ignore rules that I didn't think mattered and while I didn't particularly like some of the people in the office, I think I made a good faith effort to be fair. 

And so, there'd been a sort of cold war between us for a long time, endless little disagreements, snide remarks and, at least on her part, low level backstabbing. But this was all pretty small stuff before the real war finally erupted between us.

The whole thing started when I got an e-mail that had also gone to HR about an unfortunate joke that Gabriel Prince, one of the actuaries, had told during office hours. It was a crude little story about a woman who became more interested in a man when she found out he was 'half donkey', and of course, Gabe, who had a history of relating ribald stories, foolishly elected to tell it to a large audience at lunch-time. Naturally a couple of the more uptight women, protégé's of Teri, saw an opportunity to get upset, and immediately informed Teri of the incident.

Right away, Teri demanded a formal reprimand, at least, and possible reassignment. I was pretty sure he wouldn't get reassigned, but knowing how a reprimand would cause issues for him when his yearly review came up, I strongly argued against it. E-mails were shot back and forth and then phone calls and, finally, some face to face conversations and group meetings, some of which became fairly heated. But I thought reason would eventually prevail and I was pretty sure I had control of the situation.

All that changed at a monthly divisional review meeting that all the various managers and some of the higher level associates, including Gabriel Prince, attended. We were reviewing practices and policies and, as usual, Teri had essentially commandeered the meeting to endlessly critique behavior and to point out how we were technically in violation of corporate policy when the strictest interpretation of the rules was taken into account. Her goal, it seemed, was to make everything we did subject to company rules, with her playing the role of a sort of Orwellian enforcer. But, this was nothing new and we listened to her drone on in relative boredom until she dropped a bomb.

As part of her 'concern' for the loose way we'd been following policy, she brought up and described, in general terms, the 'joke incident' and then, actually used the Gabe's name, at which time several people in attendance made furtive glances over to a now bright red Gabriel Prince. She went on to talk about how that sort of thing compromised the 'working environment' and that every person's emotional comfort must be valued and respected. She finished her little diatribe with an explosive statement.

"This sort of violation of corporate policy must be taken seriously and I'm bringing this issue up now, so that we can act as soon as possible. I believe we should hold an emergency meeting of the personnel committee and ask for a suspension without pay until HR's review is finished and when HR's review is out, consider any disciplinary action they suggest to be the minimal punishment we apply."

Her last statement sucked all the air out of the room leaving a dead silence. I was so taken aback that I found myself simply replaying her last statement, and its implications, over and over again in my mind, too stunned to offer any kind of an immediate rebuttal. Finally, though, when it became clear no one else was going to speak, I cleared my throat and began to talk as carefully as possible.

"Look I'm pretty familiar with the situation and I think this is an easily correctable issue and I'm pretty sure it can be handled without going nuclear here. I think we can wait for HR to gather all the facts and act after they've got some sort of a recommendation."

She rolled her eyes, shook her head and with a disgusted, pinched look, spit out her venom.

"Mr. Prince's actions were way over the line and what he said amounts to de facto sexual harassment and makes it a very uncomfortable working environment for the rest of the women here."

A few of her closest allies grunted in support, nodding their heads together like life sized bobble dolls in business dress. I grit my teeth in response and glanced over to Gabe, raising my eyebrows. I'd told him before the meeting to apologize publically and he recognized my signal, swallowed hard and started to speak.

"Look, Teri, I'm sorry, it was just a joke-a bad joke- that I admit was inappropriate..."

Teri's face clouded immediately. "That's Ms. Lee to you Mr. Prince..."

Gabe's face turned even redder and he stammered out another apology.

"L...L...look...Te...Ms. Lee, I'm sorry about the joke but I guess I thought..."

"That's the problem Mr. Prince. You didn't think. You simply added to an uncomfortable working environment. I'm not going to allow the women in this department to be subjected to this kind of abuse."

I was trying to look neutral, stay above the bickering and maintain a dispassionate demeanor, but I'd had enough, more than enough, and broke in with a little more force than I'd intended.

"Abuse? Really? He told a joke, and, as far as I was informed, most everyone there, the men and the women, thought it was funny enough to laugh at even though it was crude. They couldn't have been too offended."

Teri turned quickly and gave me a furious look. "I don't care who thought it was funny Grant..."

I held a hand up to stop her, trying as hard as possible to keep a serious look on my face without smirking. "That's Mr. Simmons to you..." 

She took a deep breath in, her nostrils flaring with poorly concealed anger as her face turned a fiery shade of pink.

"Well...Mr. Simmons," she said using a clipped tone, spitting out my last name as though it was an epithet. "The problem isn't whether it's funny to some people or not. The problem is that some...many...of the women I work with did find it offensive and debasing. I personally talked to every woman in my division after the incident and they were nearly unanimous in their objection."

I sighed loudly. "Of course they were. They're all afraid to cross you and so they gave you the answer you wanted to hear. Let's face it, some of those very women laughed at that joke and probably repeated it, but none of them want to get on your bad side so now they claim it upset them."

Teri was still shaking her head. "Your...reluctance...to face up to the situation here is disturbing, Mr. Simmons. The women in this company deserve..."

"The women in this company," I interrupted forcefully, "are about as likely to tell an off colored joke or make some sexualized observation about the men as the men are about the women."

Teri laughed derisively. "Don't be ridiculous. The problem here, and everywhere with regard to sexual harassment, is men. Women simply don't contribute to this problem here or any other workplace, for that matter."

I was utterly flabbergasted that she'd make that kind of an assertion and found myself unable to speak for a moment. 

"Are you saying that men are the only ones that ever create these kinds of issues? That they are the only ones that violate corporate behavioral standards?"

"The facts speak for themselves." She said grandly as she motioned toward Gabriel and then let the gesture carry over to all the other men seated at the table, implying, to me at least, that she held us all in contempt. 

----@----

I went home that night in a sour mood. Rosie, my wife, sensed it immediately and tried to smooth things out. We had a nice dinner and she let me play with our two boys while she cleaned up. After they were in bed, we watched TV for a while until she snuggled up to me, licked my ear and asked if I wanted to talk about what was bothering me.

I denied anything was wrong, but she laughed at my obvious evasion and I eventually explained about the tension at the office and how Teri had turned a relatively harmless joke into a major problem. 

She made me tell her the joke and she groaned and laughed and then shook her head.

"Well, that certainly leaves me with an interesting...visual. I guess I can see how someone who is a little conservative might find that pretty offensive, but..."

I felt a surge of frustration and interrupted her petulantly. "Great, now my wife's signing up with my worst enemy."

Rosie's face took on an expression of disappointed surprise. "Come on Grant..."

I took in a deep breath and raised my hand to stop her. "Sorry, I guess this thing's got me on edge. I didn't mean that."

She cocked her head and looked me over, like a doctor musing on what could be bothering a patient. 

"Why do you let that up-tight bitch get to you? What difference does it make?"

"I know...I know, I shouldn't care, and usually I don't. But, now, her issues are starting to really hurt morale. Honestly, I think this might become a major problem for Gabe."

"Well, Gabe's not here right now, so I can't help with that, but maybe I can do something for you."

She bit her lip, raised her eyebrows suggestively and then leaned over and kissed me, letting her hand slip down to my crotch. 

"Just so you know," she whispered breathily, "I'm glad you're half donkey. It may be socially embarrassing when you start braying and kicking in public, but it makes it a lot more interesting in the bedroom."

I laughed and she smiled at me, unzipped my pants and used her lips, her tongue and her hands to make me feel a whole lot better.

----@----

At work, over the next few weeks, a running battle between Teri and I continued, fought with quips and smirks and wry observations, both sides quick to point out any little inconsistency in standards, any behavior toward the opposite sex that might cross, or even approach the line of good taste and appropriate behavior.

Memos were sent, stories were told, and exaggerated. Everyone was on edge and morale was reaching a new low. The entire staff seemed to be walking on eggshells and nobody was happy.

Not surprisingly, our productivity faded and some questions were asked. I got a couple of e-mails from Jim Gompers, the Vice-President who was in charge of our division asking what was going on. I tried to downplay the interpersonal issues and predicted that the division would pick up again shortly, but he wasn't convinced and ended up sending over couple of the guys who check on efficiency and someone from HR to sort things out.

As can be expected, getting a checkup from the big bosses didn't help the atmosphere at all and, when questions were asked, the staff didn't exactly exude a feeling of kum-ba-yah teamwork. People started pointing fingers and taking potshots at each other, tensions increased and by the end of the month, one fairly important staff member resigned and two others hinted, very strongly, that they were looking for employment elsewhere. 

After a fair amount of soul-searching, I faced the fact that I was, to some degree at least, part of the problem and I arranged for a couple of sit down talks with Teri to try and get some sort of a truce that would allow the office to function on a reasonable level. Not unexpectedly, though, her interpretation of what the issues were and what to do about them was radically different than mine. Her stance was that the office lacked discipline and that we needed to get tough, maybe even fire some people, rather than to try and make it a more relaxed place to work. I tried to see things her way, politely at first and then with a little less diplomacy. We ended up arguing heatedly and our positions ended up hardening, rather than softening. By our final meeting, she had become insistent that we lay down the law to the associates and that we move to terminate, rather than reprimand Gabe. I made it clear in no uncertain terms, that I wouldn't tolerate any kind of a purge and that I'd block her in any way possible. 

Shortly after our last sit-down, Teri fired the next shot in her 'get tough' policy, sending out a general e-mail detailing her intention to get HR involved for even the smallest infraction of the corporate rules and to evaluate, more thoroughly, workplace efficiency, with an eye toward disciplining anyone who seemed to be lagging. She also sent e-mails to me and the other managers reiterating her intention to clobber Gabe and a couple of other employees that she thought were slacking.

Productivity picked up some, but the work atmosphere continued to tank, and another staff member resigned. The philosophical gap between Teri and I had become an unbridgeable chasm and I was convinced something had to be done.

----@----

Around this time, some of the guys invited me out to shoot some pool one night. Normally, I didn't do much socializing, but given the circumstances at work, I was more than a little interested in any activity that would boost morale and I figured I could use a little bit of fun myself so I called Rosie to make sure it was ok if I came home late and to let her know I'd be eating out.

We went to a local place that had 3 tables and a pretty good bar and grill, so in between games, we sat around to eat and drink. I was having a pretty good time, shooting the shit with the guys, talking football and golf and the stock market when the subject of women, inevitably, came up. Guys started talking about who they thought looked good and then shifted over to who they'd like to bed and then, in low, whispering voices, started mentioning who had actually gotten into the sack with whom.

Now, there was this young kid by the name of Devin Tinian that worked in shipping who had a reputation for being very popular with the ladies. He listened to some of the other stories for a while, but then started to brag himself. He talked about the women he'd bagged and how easy it was and, egged on by the nodding, smiling guys surrounding him, eventually started to spout off about how he was sure that he could get just about any girl in the sack given enough time. He wasn't shy about it or particularly discreet either. He named places, named times, named techniques and named names, and some of his spiel became more than a little hard to believe. 

After a while of listening to this, I gave him some shit back, telling him that he though way too much of himself. He snorted back at me in annoyance and, continued on, every now and then glancing at me to see if I'd heard his latest claim. He seemed intent on making sure I knew about all of his exploits. After a while, I didn't want to listen any more, but didn't feel like challenging him to stop, so I slipped away to a corner table, ordered some French fries and started to munch away by myself.

The group started to break up and play some more pool and Devin, uninvited, plopped into the seat next to me.

"Hey, it sounded like you thought I was bullshitting back there."

I took him in for a minute. "Seriously, kid, I'm sure you've tapped a lot of pussy, but I'm just not buying the idea that you've never struck out or that you can seduce any woman you want. It's just pure crap, ok? So don't try and feed me that kind of a line. I'm just not buying."

"Look, man, just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean I can't do it."

His confidence and arrogance was galling. I folded my arms and contemplated him a minute, eyeing him dubiously.

"So, you're saying that you can get any woman...any woman at all...into bed?"

"Yep."

"So, if I pointed out a woman...not some hag or some grandma...someone you'd be able to bed without having to shut your eyes, you're absolutely sure you could fuck her? Not make out or get handsy, but actually fuck her?" 

"Yep, given enough time." He looked thoughtful for a second. "And she has to like guys. Dykes don't count."

Keeping my arms crossed, I continued to look at him skeptically, pursing my lips as I considered what he'd said and the confidence with which he'd said it. I decided to challenge him.

"Would you be willing to lay some money on that?"

"Like a bet?"

"Yea, exactly. A bet. We pick out some girl. You win if you bed her. I win if you strike out after a reasonable amount of time."

"How much time?"

"Say, a month or so."

"Are you good for the money? I don't want to go through a lot of time and trouble to get some girl into bed and then have you pretend it was some sort of a joke or something...""

"Of course I am. Ask around if you want. But you'd have to furnish some sort of proof. I'd have to see a cell phone picture or something. I'd have to be sure it wasn't photo shopped. But...I'll lay 5 bills that you can't within a month."

He leaned back and thought about the wager and I studied him again for a few more moments, trying to decide if he might be able to pull it off. He seemed like the kind of guy that women would like. Tall with an athletic build and the mandatory 3 day growth a facial hair, he had the kind of a look that got men parts in movies and on TV. His appearance, coupled with his obvious confidence and the gift of gab made it easy to believe that he'd been a successful Romeo. But, I still had my doubts he could get any woman, especially the one I had in mind. 

Maybe he was thinking the same thing, because his face showed a trace of doubt, that dissolved quickly back to his overly confident baseline. 

"Ok...you're on. I'm up for it. But...who's the chick?"

I leaned back and looked at the ceiling, pretending to think. After a couple of minutes I leaned forward and looked at him with a smirk.

"You know who Teri Lee is?"

He wrinkled his brow and shook his head a little.

"She's in accounting. Wavy brown hair, maybe five and a half feet. A few freckles. Sort of bitchy..."

A look of recognition flashed across his face. "Kind of big tits, ok butt, wears pants mostly, kind of uptight?"

"Yeah, that's more or less right..."

"Oh, yeah. I know her. She's pretty good looking really. Isn't she the one that's busting everyone's balls about workplace sensitivity and shit?"

"Yeah, is that a problem? I mean if she sounds too hard and you want to back out..." I raised my eyebrows, daring him to say no.

"No way man...no way. She's probably different away from work and tough chicks are a hell of a lot more fun to crack than sluts."

I laughed at his arrogance. "OK then. We're on?

He gave me an insufferably confident grin, held out his hand and we shook. "We're on." 

"Teri Lee it is. You've got a month."

So, there I had it, the classic win-win situation for me. If he failed, he'd have to eat crow and pay me 500 bucks. If he succeeded...well...then I'd have something to counter Teri's ongoing argument that all men were pigs and that any violation of workplace rules had to be dealt with as forcefully as possible. I'd have something incontrovertible. And personal.




Collateral Damage Pt. 01



----@----

I went home that night in a very good mood, and found that Rosie was in an even better one. 

Rosie wasn't a big girl by any standard; at 125 pounds, she was essentially half my weight and a little over a foot shorter than me. But she'd been a little down on herself because of some minor flab that wouldn't go away after our second child 6 years before, so, after discovering she wouldn't fit into an old, favorite pair of jeans, she went on the warpath to lose weight and started working hard to get back to her 'original shape'. Just that morning, she had managed to squeeze into the jeans, an act that resulted in a triumphant shout that I'd heard all the way in the kitchen.

Rosie had also gotten a bump to her already good mood when she got a great job review. She was a conscientious worker and had been able to complete a difficult, fairly complex project on time. Her bosses had noticed and made it clear she'd done well and had put herself in line for a raise.

So, between fitting into her jeans and killing it at work, she was very excited about her great day and she met me at the door with a huge smile, a tight hug and a big kiss followed by an invitation to celebrate in the bedroom once the kids were down.

I didn't hesitate to accept.

Now, despite her small size, Rosie could be a pretty physical girl in bed and she was more than willing to take things over. She could ride me like a cowboy or buck back at me like she was a rodeo horse, and when she wrapped her legs around my waist, it felt like I'd been gripped by an anaconda. By the time we were done on any given night, we'd both be completely out of breath, covered in sweat and saliva, and barely able to catch our breath. 

But, that night, she was particularly energetic and really took complete charge right from the beginning. She pushed me on my back, tore my pants off and attacked my cock with her hands and her mouth until it was a throbbing erect spear on which she aggressively impaled herself. She threw her pelvis at me savagely and gave me little chance to hold back on my orgasm, which erupted, along with hers, within a few minutes. 

She wasn't going to let me rest much after one go around, though, and after a very short intermission, began aggressively using her mouth to call me back to attention. The second I was stiff enough to mount, she was on me again, her teeth clenched in determination, letting out a long hiss as she lowered herself onto me.

I always take a long time to orgasm the second time around, and Rosie took full advantage, getting herself off a couple of times on top of me before insisting I take her from behind and then on her back. She kept encouraging me the whole time, shouting my name in combination with any number of endearments and epithets, screaming that she loved me, loved my technique, loved my body, loved my cock. By the time we were done humping and pushing and driving ourselves into each other, I was wrung out like a wet rag. 

I lay next to her, breathing heavily, trying to keep my eyes open, feeling about as contented as a man could feel. Rosie nuzzled in close to me and whispered soft, obscene little compliments about how well I'd done and that she hoped I could say the same. I turned to her, stoked her face a couple of times and laughed gently.

"Yea, I think it's fair to say that you did a pretty good job there too."

----@----

Things around the office remained strained with a near palpable sense of anxiety and anger that resulted in an atmosphere of abysmally poor cooperation punctuated with low level arguments that threatened to boil over into outright shouting matches on any given day. It seemed everyone was on edge, dreading the ramifications of Teri's newly proposed policy changes.

I managed to short circuit some of Teri's plans for at least a little while by asking HR to perform a formal review of any new policy suggestions by management that could result in any disciplinary action. This, I knew, would buy time, but unless Teri changed her mind, Gabe and a couple of other guys on her shit list were in trouble sooner or later.

A couple of weeks into this uneasy cease-fire, I was eating lunch outside, trying to enjoy a few minutes of sunshine alone, when Devin plopped himself down beside me with a grin that the Cheshire cat would have considered excessive.

"I've got a little something that I think you should see."

He was obviously itching to show off what he'd been able to do, so I held up a finger to indicate I couldn't talk, chewing as slowly as possible, trying my best to aggravate him. Eventually I had to stop my passive aggressive mastication and look at the evidence.

"Are you saying that you got Teri Leigh in the sack?" I asked flatly.

"Oh, yeah." He said, without breaking his impossibly annoying smile. "In fact, I tapped that ass twice."

He patted his shirt pocket that held his cell phone. "And I've got the proof right here. 500 bucks worth of proof."

I leaned back and crossed my arms, looking at him dubiously.

"It's got to be good. No vague pictures that might have been lifted from a porno site."

"Oh, it is. It's very good, very clear."

He pulled out his phone with a flourish, pressed a couple of icons and started scrolling through his pictures. 

"How about this one?" He handed me the phone with his eyebrows raised in expectation.

The picture was about as explicit as any porn I've ever encountered and if I hadn't seen it, I might have had trouble believing it. There was Teri Leigh, on her knees and elbows, her head down, her teeth clenched and her eyes closed while Devin crouched behind her, his cock obviously shoved to the hilt. She was wearing a fancy red garter belt with stockings and had a red high heeled shoe on the foot that was visible in the picture. The image showed Devin holding his cell phone and the picture had evidently been taken using a well-positioned mirror. His expression was pure mockery with his tongue lolling out and his eyes open wide in fake, conspiratorial surprise.

"Hmmm." I said.

He laughed. "There's more. Go ahead, and flip through the pics."

There were probably 10 pictures of him fucking Teri and 3 or 4 of her sucking his cock. The pictures were...an education. At work, Teri was proper and stuck up and a by-the-book bitch that acted like she had an icicle shoved up her ass. But, she was totally out of control in these pictures. Her makeup was smeared, her hair was wild and her expression bore no resemblance whatsoever to what she sported in the office. She looked like the personification of lust and I had to wonder at Devin's ability to recognize and unlock the whore that evidently lived somewhere deep in Teri Lee's heart.

When I looked up, Devin was still grinning, his hands open in an expectant gesture.

"I think you owe me..." He said with a wink.

I nodded my head slowly and smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do." I admitted reluctantly, drawing my words out slowly, trying my best to sound casual.

I took a couple of minutes to congratulate him and to concede that I'd lost the bet and underestimated his ability. I had to give him the win because, after all, he'd earned it apparently fair and square. So I faced the music and groaned out loud as I opened my wallet and pulled out a couple of hundred bucks that I counted out into his open palm while he smiled like a triumphant Caesar. I was going to pay him the rest the next day, but I figured I might as well complete the capitulation right away, so I took him over to an ATM in the office lobby where I got another 3 bills and gave it to him. I shook his hand, smiled and congratulated him again, doing my best to be gracious. 

Losing hurts, it always does, but this loss was hedged against the fact that it made it possible for an even greater victory in a more important setting down the road.

I'd eaten crow and lost 5 hundred bucks on a bet, but I was smiling when I went back to work.

----@----

I found that knowing about Teri's 'indiscretion' and actually doing something with it were two different things. As I thought of the various ways the information might become a useful workplace weapon, I recognized that, no matter how the information was used, it essentially amounted to a form of blackmail. There was just no way around the fact that I'd be holding something over her head to make her do things my way.

I considered talking to Rosie or someone from work about my dilemma, but I was certain they'd think less of me if I went into the details of what I'd already done, let alone what I was thinking about doing with the information I now had. So, I kept my own counsel and agonized a couple of nights and days about it, looking for answers as I stared at my office door or the ceiling of my bedroom. Gradually, the better angels of my nature took over and I decided to shelve the whole idea of strong- arming Teri with what I knew. 

My new resolution to ride on the moral high road didn't last long, however. On the day after I'd finally decided to 'do the right thing', she brought out her big guns again at yet another highly contentious staff meeting, announcing that she'd been working closely with HR and that they were starting to see things her way. She trotted out a list, headed by Gabe Prince, of at least 10 staff members that she intended to discipline regardless of the inclinations of anyone else in the room. The usual arguments ensued, but this time I simply stewed quietly while the idea of confronting her about the tryst rapidly became more attractive.

At the end of the meeting, everyone dumbly shuffled out of the room leaving Teri and me alone.

I just stared at her while she gathered up her papers until she started to feel uncomfortable.

"What's wrong Grant? Nothing to say? Finally recognizing the behavior issues around here?"

I cleared my throat and started to speak slowly, almost formally.

"I noticed, Teri, that everyone on that list is a man and that the main complaint against most of them is that they are in violation of some sort of harassment policy.

"Well, let's be honest Grant. Look at what's been going on. Men in this company have been treating women in the workplace like they are some sort of decoration for their own pleasure, rather than as valuable colleagues. That's totally unacceptable. And, frankly, since women simply don't violate sexual harassment policies like men do, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the list is just men. Face it, this sort of bad behavior is written on the Y chromosome."

"Really?" I said, raising my eyebrows incredulously. "You honestly think women are immune to sexual harassment issues?"

"The vast majority of them. I mean, come on now. Men are generally barely in control of their libidos and it ends up making them act like a bunch of college boys on the make. This is a business, Grant, not some frat house where any kind of behavior is in bounds. You have to know..."

I'd had enough and raised my hand up to interrupt her.

"Holy shit, Teri, you sure make a lot of accusations about men's uncontrolled libido for a woman who's been fucking around herself."

She pulled away from me like she'd been threatened with a gun, her face a combination of outrage and fear. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"Well, yeah, I guess I am. I'm accusing you of extreme hypocrisy I suppose. I mean, you've been spending all this time calling out some of the men for their boorish behavior, lording your superior morals over guys like Gabe and I, yet all this time you've been more than willing to take an off limits roll in the hay with an associate like Devin Tinian."

She squinted at me, trying to kill me with her glance before hissing back. "Whatever Devin said is bullshit. He's like the rest of you, making up pure crap to get a slap on the back from the other rednecks around here."

I laughed at that. "You know, you might be able to make some of your little followers believe that, but I've seen the pictures." That statement clearly shook her and she looked stunned but a little dubious. I leaned in closer. 

"The pictures on Devin's cell phone. Pictures of you and him, taken at the Drury Inn." She was shaking her head slowly, still in denial. "Honestly Teri, I never thought of you as a garter belt kind of a girl. But, hey, I guess I never thought you'd jump in the sack with someone from work either, what with the endless moralizing you do around here about professionalism and all."

For the first time since I'd known her, Teri was simply speechless. She stared at me furiously, her brow wrinkled and her nostrils flaring in anger, but no sound at all came out from behind her clenched teeth. I simply smiled back as smugly and triumphantly as I could, trying my best to enjoy her discomfort.

I could see the wheels turning and knew that she was thinking carefully about what I'd said, about what I knew, and what the ramifications of that knowledge might mean to her. For the next few moments, I watched as that understanding was reflected in her facial expressions that went from surprise to contempt to anger and then, finally, to something I'd never seen in her before in her, a kind of sadness or regret borne out of fear. 

Her chin started to tremble, her eyes got wet and she bit her lips nervously, opening her mouth a couple of times without saying anything. Finally, she gave out a cry like a little child and actual tears began to run down her face. She stood up abruptly and backed away from me for a couple of steps, shaking her head and pointing a shaking finger as though she'd just discovered I was the anti-Christ , before turning and literally running from the room.

I thought I might feel some sort of satisfaction at this little victory, at gaining the upper hand in this strange chess game we'd been playing. But somehow I just felt empty and more than a little ashamed.

----@----

I'll never know for sure how much the threat of my knowledge about her trysts with Devin had to do with it, but Teri throttled way back on her campaign to punish Gabe. She finally agreed to a compromise in which he'd have a probationary letter put in his file that would be removed after 6 months if he attended sensitivity classes and if he kept his nose-and his jokes-clean.

But, Teri isn't the kind of person to take a defeat lying down, so I knew there'd some attempt at retribution and I figured it would be directed at me personally. 

It wasn't particularly long in coming.

The counter-attacks began within a week of the time I'd confronted Teri about her 'missteps' with Devin. At first I thought maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, maybe I was looking too hard for a trap. But gradually it became evident that something all too real was happening. 3 or 4 of the younger gals at work, all friends of Teri, were suddenly wearing relatively provocative clothes, low necklines, high skirt hems, borderline trashy stockings. And there suddenly seemed to be a lot of things for them to pick up on the floor around my work area, because they were all bending to expose copious amounts of cleavage, nicely tanned legs and well developed rear ends pressed tight against jeans or skirts. 

Now don't get me wrong, I was more than willing to look a little. But I was very sensitive to the game that was being played, so I made sure that I didn't look 'a lot' and was damn sure I didn't actually say anything about it at all. In fact, it became so clear that her underlings were on alert to catch me in any kind of a compromising situation that I watched virtually everything I did or said so that nothing could be misconstrued as an inappropriate invitation, innuendo or suggestion.

After a couple of weeks successfully weathering the low level stuff, I was exposed to a series of full on frontal assaults. 

The first came when I was grabbing a late sandwich in the lunch room by myself. One of the secretaries, a very pretty young brunette with sparkling eyes and a plump, but very well developed body, sat next to me and started eating an ice cream cone.

Only she wasn't eating it so much as making love to it. She was licking the heaped up vanilla like it was an erect phallus and when she took an occasional bite, she did it with her lips only, like she was half kissing, half sucking the ice cream. I had a general idea of was coming next, but I was curious to what her approach would be.

"Mmm, this is really, really good." She purred with a sort of lascivious grin, a bit of vanilla ice cream forming a large, creamy white drop on her lower lip.

"Yes, well, you do seem to be enjoying it." I said, stating the obvious as dispassionately as possible. She smiled more broadly.

"My name is Kim Johnson and I'm kind of new here. Aren't you Grant Simmons?"

"Yep."

"Would you like a lick?" She asked, offering the cone to me while leaning forward herself until her face was less than a foot from mine. "It's really, really good. I promise you'll like it."

I almost laughed at that point. This was the kind of invitation that any unattached, and most attached, red blooded American men dreamed about, but I saw it for what it was. I leaned in fairly close and in a low voice whispered back.

"You know what you should do with that ice cream?"

"What?"

"Give some of the cone to Teri for safekeeping; she's cold enough to keep it from melting even if she held it in her mouth." I pulled back, smiled at her and walked out of the lunch room, waving to the security camera as I left.

A couple of weeks after that I was leaving the office after closing up late when I noticed one of the secretaries still at her desk, long after everyone else had gone. She was quietly weeping, her head buried in her arm that was folded across her desk. 

I was going to give her some privacy and slip out quietly, but she seemed so upset that I felt compelled to ask what was wrong. She jumped a little at my voice and raised her head, revealing tear tracks and bloodshot eyes. She shook her head when I asked if I could help, but she was so distraught that I sat down and tried to find out what was wrong and cheer her up.

She seemed completely broken hearted and reluctant to talk through her sobs, but gradually she calmed down and warmed up a little and I slowly got the story out of her. Her boyfriend, a guy she thought she was going to marry, turned out to be an asshole who'd abruptly left her and said some pretty nasty things on the way out to hook up with a 'better piece of ass', just that morning. Evidently he'd never been a particularly nice guy and some of the things she related about him seemed almost over-the-top cruel and I kept feeling worse and worse for her.

Almost an hour into this conversation she was still weeping and borderline inconsolable and I found myself reaching to give her a hug. She didn't resist at all and essentially melted into my arms, laying her head on my shoulder. Her body was full and soft and I could feel her breath on my neck, coming in quiet little gasps. Her vulnerability was nearly palpable and I felt myself responding to it by pulling her closer.

But, as I held her, she settled into my arms and moved herself against my body in a subtly sensuous way that caused a distant alarm to go off, pricking my memory of something my grandfather, a family practice physician, had told me about being careful with female patients.

"Nothing," he had said, "is more seductive than a woman's tears."

The memory caused me to stiffen and I reconsidered the odd coincidence that I would find myself alone with an attractive, disconsolate girl whose vulnerability had resulted in close physical contact and brought me dangerously close to a violation of workplace rules at a suspiciously inopportune time. Suddenly I knew I was being set up again and firmly pushed her back away from me and looked carefully at her face. She bit her lip anxiously and sniffed while I smiled and nodded to her.




Collateral Damage Pt. 01



"You are really a top notch actress."

The vulnerability instantly transformed to a look of puzzlement, her mouth falling open and her eyes opening wide.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'd give you an Oscar for your performance if I could. Let Teri know it's not your fault that I didn't bite. Really, you were very good."

She tried for a moment to recapture a vulnerable look and then gave up, pressing her lips together in frustration and then a faint smile.

"Well, hell. I gave it my best shot. I thought I had you for a minute."

I laughed softly to myself at her admission. "Try community theatre." I said as I walked out, shaking my head slowly. "Really, you're a natural." 

----@----

Things seemed to settle down over the next few months and, in the absence of any other real attempts to make trouble, I came to the conclusion that Teri had decided to call off the dogs and live with the situation as it was. 

I was wrong.

Roughly 3 months after the day I'd confronted her about the affair with Devin Tinian, Teri Lee asked for a staff meeting that included half a dozen of the other managers. The meeting was fairly successful, efficient and productive without any real conflict. 

When it was over, Teri asked me to stay on with her to go over some personnel issues. To my surprise, things went smoothly and for the first time in as long as I could remember we made decisions together easily and without rancor. By the time our meeting was over, I felt the need to say something positive, hoping maybe that this would be a new beginning.

"Listen, Teri, I know we've had our differences and I'm sorry things got a little out of hand in the past, but I think we've been productive lately. I know we don't' see eye to eye on everything, but I'd like to think we're moving in the right direction here."

She looked at me mysteriously. "Well, Grant, that's one of the reasons I wanted this meeting. To move things forward." She paused a moment and I caught a glimpse of an enigmatic smile that gave me pause.

"And, I just wanted to let you know that, in the end, I think you were right."

I was hoping for a thaw in our relations, but something was very wrong here and her casual admission confused me to the point of near speechlessness. I had no idea how to handle what she'd just said and I began to stammer.

"You...uh...you...thought I was right?"

"Oh, yes. I thought about the disagreements we've had and, after looking over all the information available, I think you were definitely right about some things."

"About...some things? What things? About relaxing the rules a bit to boost morale? What?"

"Oh...no. Not that." She eyed me carefully and a look of smug malevolence spread slowly over her face. My confusion was replaced by a sudden surge of suspicion laced with a kind of dread. 

"About what, then?"

"Oh...about the idea that women can be just as duplicitous in their relationships as men can."

For a moment I thought she was referring to her own indiscretions, tacitly admitting that her personal failures had played a part in changing her mind. But her increasingly self-satisfied smile put an end to that thought process and I knew that something else had happened, something that I didn't know about. Something bad. 

She was waiting for my response patiently, clearly enjoying the increasing discomfort that her mysterious behavior was creating. I didn't want to play along, but I didn't see a way out and, against my better judgment, I asked the question that was hanging in the air.

"So...uh...what exactly was it that made you change your mind then?"

"I thought you'd never ask." She said with a wink and started rummaging through her work satchel until she produced a standard legal sized manila envelope and pushed it purposefully across the table to me. I just looked down at it, not really wanting to see what was inside.

"What's this?"

"Oh...just some information I thought you'd be interested in. Go on. Take a look. I think you'll find it very...illuminating."

With a deliberate casualness I opened the envelope and pulled out half a dozen sheets of paper. They were photographs, printed off a digital camera or cell phone, taken in what appeared to be a massage room in a gym. There, in all his arrogant glory was Devin Tinian, sweaty and smug and smiling into the camera, as he took his latest conquest from behind. 

But, it wasn't Devin that caught my attention. It was the woman, situated in front and under him while leaning against a massage table, her elbows holding her up a half foot off the surface. She was naked, wearing only a thin film of sweat, her breasts hanging down freely, partially obscured by her arms and her long brown hair tied in a pony tail falling off to one side of her perfectly recognizable face. Her eyes were closed and she wore an inscrutable expression, a cross between a grimace and a sad smile and the vision of her struck me like a knife to the chest.

It was Rosie.



Collateral Damage Pt. 02



With a deliberate casualness I opened the envelope and pulled out half a dozen sheets of paper. They were photographs, printed off a digital camera or cell phone, taken in what appeared to be a massage room in a gym. There, in all his arrogant glory was Devin Tinian, sweaty and smug and smiling into the camera, as he took his latest conquest from behind. 

But, it wasn't Devin that caught my attention. It was the woman, situated in front and under him while leaning against a massage table, her elbows holding her up a half foot off the surface. She was naked, wearing only a thin film of sweat, her breasts hanging down freely, partially obscured by her arms and her long brown hair tied in a ponytail falling off to one side of her perfectly recognizable face. Her eyes were closed and she wore an inscrutable expression, a cross between a grimace and a sad smile and the vision of her struck me like a knife to the chest.

It was Rosie.

--@--

I honestly don't remember much of what happened for quite some time after I'd seen the pictures. I know I didn't say anything immediately and I do remember Teri looking at me triumphantly for a moment and then becoming suddenly nervous when she saw my expression. I know she abruptly gathered up her things and left quickly after that, leaving me to sit, not moving or thinking or, perhaps, not even breathing much for quite some time, staring numbly at the offending photos. 

But, I don't remember picking up the prints, leaving the office, walking to my car or even the drive home. I have no idea if I went straight home or not. If someone had told me I'd run a dozen red lights or that I'd stopped at an intersection for a half hour I'd have believed them. 

My recollections only started again when I found myself sitting in my car, parked in my driveway nearly 2 hours after Teri had dumped the pictures on me. My fists and my teeth were clenched tight and my eyes were stinging and unfocused, apparently from unnoticed tears. I numbly got out of the car and made it to the house and through the front door, staggering like a zombie though the entry hall to our living room couch. I flopped on the couch and stared at the large grandfather clock that was ticking out the only noise in the otherwise silent room. I felt like my family, my marriage and my happiness had all been given a death sentence, and I was just waiting for the execution.

Time ticked by-it could have been a few minutes or even a few hours-until Rosie came home with the boys, who, thankfully, ran out to play without noticing that I was home. 

Rosie normally came home with a lot of energy, but she'd talked about a rough time at work lately, and hadn't been in a very good mood, so it wasn't a surprise that she didn't call out for me in her usual excited tones . Instead, she entered the house quietly, slowly and I could barely make out the sounds of her opening the closet door to put her coat away and hear her walk to the den where my computer was set up, evidently looking for me. I heard her call my name softly and then a little louder but I didn't answer, unsure if I even wanted to talk to her at this point. She checked the bedroom and knocked on the door of the bathroom, still calling out my name without result until she came into the living room and finally noticed me, lying with eyes wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Grant? Are you ok?"

I still didn't answer and she approached me quickly and her maternal fever-checking-reflex took over as she put her hand to my head. Her touch somehow brought her betrayal into clear focus to me and I roughly pushed her hand away as I sat up, looking at her harshly.

"Don't touch me Rosie."

She fell back a few steps as her mouth fell open and her eyes narrowed in puzzlement and concern. She looked at me for a few moments, apparently too surprised or worried to ask any questions. I looked back, quietly fuming, nostrils flaring, trying my best to burn a whole in her forehead with my gaze. It must have been clear I wasn't going to speak and, so, finally her mouth started to move.

"What...what's wrong Grant? Are you...are you ok?"

I answered with a bitter, angry, hiss, my mouth barely opening, my teeth clenched together.

"No, Rosie I'm not ok. I'm not ok at all and I probably never will be."

She moved toward me again, her arms starting to open as if to give me a hug when I raised my hand and stopped her short with another declaration.

"I said don't touch me Rosie. I don't want you ever touching me again."

Her eyes started to well up with tears and she began to nervously shake her head. I wasn't sure, but I think it was that moment that she began to worry that somehow I knew about her affair.

"Grant...Grant I'm sorry..."

I snorted bitterly, sarcastically, shaking my head in disbelief while she continued on.

"...sorry for whatever...whatever I've done to make you so...so angry and upset. What...what have I...what have I done?"

With abrupt, angry movements, I lifted the manila folder and reached inside, pulling out several of the photographs.

"I think you know what you've done." I said as I balled up the first copy and threw it at her, striking her midsection before falling to the floor. She looked down at the wad of paper with fear in her eyes and then more tears. She didn't move to pick it up, looking at it fearfully, like it was a poisonous snake.

"You're just a lying, cheating bitch..." Another wad, another throw, this time striking her in the chest. "...who couldn't keep her legs closed..." A wad to the face. "...for the first guy that made the moves on her." 

Her look had turned into one of abject horror, sorrow and disbelief, tears running down her face while her chin wrinkled up with her already swollen lips pressed together. Somehow her discomfort made me even angrier and I picked up the last photo, one of Devin smiling at the camera , fully penetrated into Rosie from behind while she clenched the sheet on the massage table, her eyes shut and her expression, again, inscrutable. I stood and held the picture up, less than a foot from her face, spitting my words out like bullets.

"Or maybe he wasn't the first guy...maybe he was just the most recent one of many..."

Rosie screamed as she looked at the picture and fell to her knees, sobbing and choking. 

"No...no...no...no...oh God...no..." 

Looking at her, I felt a brief surge of compassion, but I fought off the urge to comfort her and easily replaced the tender feelings with the anger and disgust that her infidelity had created. I moved away from her and, without saying anything, walked purposefully to the bedroom, pulled down a suitcase and started throwing clothes into it. 

When it was almost full, she appeared at the doorway, still crying, still only marginally coherent.

"Grant...please...Grant...no...please, no..."

I continued to pack wordlessly, filled the suitcase and an overnight bag and then brushed by her to gather a few things from the bathroom. She tried to reach for me, but I firmly pushed her away and she started sobbing even louder. Within a few minutes, I was at front door, getting my coat out of the closet before leaving. She'd followed me out and braced herself at the front door, blocking my exit.

I looked at her shaking my head slowly and bitterly spit out a single word.

"Move."

"No...please Grant...no...you can't do this..."

"Oh yes, Rosie, I most certainly can. I can do this just like you could cheat on me with that asshole."

She started babbling and I shouted over her.

"Grant...I'm sorry...I...I don't understand how I let it happen, I love you and I never intended..."

"You let it happen because you wanted to fuck someone other than your husband and you ended up fucking both of us."

"...to cheat on you...I was just trying...trying to comfort him and...and...and, things just got...out of hand."

We both paused a moment, breathing quickly and deeply. Her earnestness and dejection more than matched by my anger.

"Comfort him? That looked like a hell of a lot of very personal comfort you were giving him."

"Oh, please Grant...please...he was so, so very sad because of his wife, she'd passed away a few months ago and he was so sad and he told me I was the only one...the only one he could talk to. And...and I gave him a hug and then...then I don't know how I let it happen, but I didn't...I didn't plan on it."

"Wait...that asshole told you his wife just died?"

She looked at me, puzzled.

"Well, yes. She was the love of his life and she...she had some sort of cancer and she...she died very quickly and he...he...he couldn't..."

I laughed mirthlessly.

"God Rosie. You're not only a cheater, but you're dumb as fuck. I know the guy who screwed you, in fact, I work with him. His name is Devin Tinian and, just so you know, he nailed you so that bitch Teri Leigh could rub it in my face. He's never been married you dumb ass. He made all that shit up to get you to spread your legs and now you're just another notch on his conquest belt."

Rosie's mouth fell open and she was stood there, her arms limp to her sides, shaking her head slowly. She could only weakly get out another plea for me to stop as I pushed past her through the door and to my car.

--@--

That night was the worst of my life. I checked into a dingy motel, unpacked my bags and without pulling down the covers, collapsed headfirst onto the lumpy, musty smelling bed. My mind obsessively and chaotically played back the pictures of my wife with Devin and my body responded with extreme nausea and a deep chest pain that I recognized as a kind of anxiety reaction. I tried to sleep, but there was no chance that would come, and I spent the night torturing myself with Rosie's betrayal, literally going through most of the stages of grief like there's been a death, feeling denial and anger and even bargaining with God, but never, somehow, anything approaching acceptance.

By the next morning, a Saturday, I'd settled on anger and decided the first person to face it would be Devin. I wanted a piece of his flesh and I would have been happy to remove it with my own teeth.

I knew I couldn't assault him at work and I didn't want to break into his place, so I figured I'd have to get to him outside, maybe in his apartment's parking lot. I figured he'd be out on the town on Saturday night, so I bought a throw away cell phone, and called him around 10 o'clock, pretending to be a neighbor. I told him water was pouring out from under his door.

Within 30 minutes he barreled into the parking lot, driving a beaten up old Ford. He parked haphazardly and jumped out of his car, jogging across the lot to his apartment building. I was waiting by the main entrance and when he reached for the door, I moved quickly out of the shadows, grabbed his right wrist with one hand, his left shoulder with the other and spun him around so his back struck the wall with a thud. I let him see my face clearly for a second and then smashed my forehead into his mouth and hit him in the gut as hard as I could. He doubled over and went to the ground and I knelt by him and grabbed him by the hair to yank his head up while I snarled.

"You fucking little shit. You think you could tap my wife and I'd just laugh it off? MY WIFE?"

He was grunting in pain and he licked his bloody lips and started to talk.

"Look, man..."

His voice enraged me and slammed my knee into his face and pounded his ribs a couple of times. He grunted again, taking in air in agonizing gasps.

"Oh, God..."

"You think God is going to help a shit like you? I should probably just castrate you. Fucking put you out of business forever."

"Shit man, I didn't want to do I, but I had to. She was going to screw me over if I didn't."

I was about to hit him again, but that statement caught me a little by surprise. I took a knee beside him and caught his eye, trying to tell if he was lying.

"What do you mean she was going to screw you over? Are you talking about Teri? What?"

He looked up at me in the dim lamplight, dazed eyes barely focusing, a little rivulet of blood trickling down over his lips from his nose.

"Yes, that bitch Teri. Said she was going to have my job if I didn't play ball. She showed me some reports that talked about what a crappy worker I was and that she had it in her to make sure I wouldn't get any kind of employment anywhere. She even said she had some evidence that they'd found drugs in my locker."

"Did she?"

He looked a little sheepishly at me and shrugged his shoulders.

"It's possible."

"So you shit all over my marriage because you were afraid of her? Or was there something more? Did she offer you more ass, or what?"

He gave me an angry look.

"I fucking can't stand that bitch. In fact, I've been trying to figure out how to beat the shit out of her myself without getting pinched, but I know she'd nail me if I did. I'm pretty sure she'd nail you too if you tried to get even. She's a fucking schemer and the cunt's got all her bases covered."

I gave him a dubious look. He continued to talk, blood and spittle occasionally spraying from his mouth while he spoke.

"Look, man. I'm sorry about all this shit, but I didn't know what the hell to do. I've been trying to get the hell out of Illinois and I finally got a job lined up with a branch in San Diego and she was going to ruin it for me."

He stopped and wiped his mouth, looked at me again and his expression took on an element of anger in place of some of the fear.

"I'm sorry about your wife, I guess I didn't really think about what she was going to do with the pictures, but shit man, you totally fucked me over in the first place by telling Teri you knew I tapped her ass. Seriously man, as far as I can tell, you started this whole shit-storm. Maybe you should think about that before you pound on me, huh?"

I looked at him carefully and thought about what he said, reluctantly admitting to myself that he was right. If I hadn't tacitly threatened Teri about her tryst with Devin, she never would have used him to set up Rosie. I felt a sudden sense of extreme frustration and shame. 

I reassessed Devin in light of what I'd just realized and considered his part in this whole farce. He wasn't really good or bad. He was just an amoral actor, a young kid that could fuck anyone he wanted, so he did. And if someone wanted to steer him in a certain direction, to bed a specific woman for whatever reason, he wasn't going to say no. Beating him up any more wasn't going to help me gain satisfaction. I needed a time machine for that.

I eyed him for a couple of moments more before speaking.

"All right, fine, I'm done, now, OK?"

He shrugged.

"So, I won't be expecting any more trouble from you since you're leaving town, right?"

He nodded numbly.

"You leaving right away?"

"As soon as I can." He answered with a hint of disgust. "I want out of this fucking asylum."

True to his word, less than a week later he'd quit work and I never saw him again and assumed he'd moved to California. As far as I know, he never told anybody that I beat him up. I think maybe he figured he deserved it, at least a little.

--@--

Within a week after leaving, I found an apartment near work and tried to settle in. I saw a lawyer and got a message through to Rosie that I was looking into a legal separation. She tried talking with me on and off for the first few days, calling me, texting me any number of times, but I aggressively avoided her. It wasn't just because I wanted her to suffer. I was having a tough time coping and I feared that the sound of her voice might make things worse, especially when the conversation was over. 

But, I was desperate to see the boys and needed to get some more of my clothes so, eventually, I had do some basic communicating. When I finally called, I tried to keep things cold and professional, but the sound of her voice, vulnerable and soft, made my heart beat so hard I thought it would push through my chest. Somehow, through force of will, I managed to keep my voice and actions in check, arranging a visitation schedule for the boys and picking up my things without letting on too much that I was hurting. I barely spoke to her when I picked up my stuff and she just stood in the living room after sadly greeting me at the door, morose and silent, a study in dejection. I didn't take too long and I didn't dare linger because I wanted to keep my anger intact, undiluted by any feelings of compassion or love.

At work I never let on to anyone that Rosie and I were having problems and I avoided Teri at all costs. I'd thought long and hard about how I could get back at her, considering everything from violence to falsifying records to get her fired, but I knew that Devin was right when he said Teri was hoping that I'd retaliate and that she'd be prepared to fry me over any attempt to get even. After considering all the possibilities, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and opted to simply ignore her, which wasn't particularly easy given the sense of extreme frustration I felt. In the end, I was borderline successful, barely tolerating her smug smile and quite literally biting my tongue anytime I had to interact with her about anything.

--@--

I got the boys the first weekend after we sorted out the visitation schedule. I picked them up after school and brought them to my apartment and because it was new and different, they thought it was the greatest thing they'd seen, somehow making it out to be some sort of an upscale clubhouse than an actual second home. I wanted them to look forward to seeing me, so I didn't do much to dissuade them of that impression and told them we'd always try and have a lot of fun whenever they were over.

We went to a pizza place that night, rented a Disney movie and played some X-Box. The boys were all smiles and I had a great time until I was tucking them in and Sam, my 8 year old, asked me when I'd be coming home.

"Sam, I...uh...I am home." I stuttered out. "Your Mom and I, well, we've decided to live in two different places, so now you have two homes. Two places to stay."

Sam looked at me thoughtfully. 

"Dad, I don't think Mom likes it this way."

"Well, bud, I'm not sure I like it this way either, but it sort of has to be like this. I have this place and I live here and your Mom has her place and she lives there and you and Tommy get to live in both places."

"I think it would be better if we all lived at both places. Can't you stay at home during the week and we could all come here to have fun on the weekends?"

I tried to explain to him that Rosie and I just couldn't live together any more, but the conversation kept moving in the kind of verbal circles innocent 8 year olds tend to construct out of the half truths and euphemisms adults feed them when they don't want to expose them to the ugly side of life. In the end, I had to tell him it was just something I wouldn't be able to explain completely, kissed him on the forehead and told him to get to sleep.

I went to bed that night thinking about how terribly unfair the mistakes parents make can be to their innocent children. 

The next morning I was woken up by the doorbell followed by a loud knock. I pulled my robe on and stumbled through the hall to the living room, pausing in front of the door to ask who was there.

"Police officers, Mr. Simmons. We'd like to ask you some questions."

When the Police are at your door, a thousand things go through your mind. Did you pay remember to pay the parking tickets? Would they go this far to check out your cache of pirated DVDs? But I quickly dismissed these possibilities and decided their visit must be about the divorce, maybe a restraining order or something similar.

I cracked the door and peered outside and there stood two genuine looking cops, sporting neutral expressions, one on the short and pudgy side with his arms folded across his chest and a somewhat taller and more muscular one with his hands on his hips.




Collateral Damage Pt. 02



"Can I help you?"

"We'd like to come in and talk with you for a few minutes Mr. Simmons."

"What...what's this about?"

"Can we come in please?"

I suppose a savvy man might have asked for a search warrant but I just dumbly opened the door and let them in without saying anything. They shuffled in quickly and took positions on either side of me, both of them glancing around the room bit and then back at me a couple of times before the tall one started asking more questions.

"OK, Mr. Simmons, really just a couple of questions about last night, if you don't mind..."

"Last night?"

"Yes. Where were you last night?"

"I was...I was here last night...for most of the night. I took my boys out for pizza, but otherwise we hung out here."

"Can you...uh...prove that?"

"Huh?"

"Can you prove you were here last night?"

"Well...I guess you could ask my boys. I still have the receipt for the pizza place, I think."

"Can we see that?"

I went to the closet and rummaged through my coat and managed to find the receipt. I handed it to the tall officer who looked over it for a few minutes and then handed it to the pudgy one who glanced at it, shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head.

"Time says 7:43."

"Yeah. " Tall cop answered as he wrote something in a notebook. I was starting to come out of my daze and became curious again. 

"Hey look, what is this...what is this about?"

The cops gave each other a questioning glance and the pudgy one shrugged and nodded his head. Tall cop turned back to me and started talking again.

"There was an assault last night and the victim was beaten up pretty bad. We're just checking into..."

His indication that I was somehow a suspect in a serious crime was so shocking that I couldn't help interrupting.

"Wait...what? I haven't been in a fight since high school. This is some sort of mistaken identity or something. I had..."

Tall cop held up his hand to stop me.

"Look, Mr. Simmons, we have to check out all the leads, OK? It's our job. You're not under arrest; we're just asking some questions."

I spread my hands in acceptance, but I still felt that I'd been involved in some sort of a law enforcement screw-up and had to take a couple of deep breaths to get control of my frustration. When it was clear that I'd calmed down, they asked a few more questions about what I'd done the night before and verified my boys had been with me when they sleepily wandered out into the living room. Seemingly satisfied, they both wrote some things down after which pudgy cop whispered something to tall cop and he turned back to me.

"One more thing Mr. Simmons. Can I take a look at your hands?"

I held my hands out and he looked over both sides briefly and nodded his head. 

"Ok. Uh, I'd like to see you forearms, ok?"

Without answering, I pulled the sleeves up to my elbows and displayed my arms to both officers.

"Could you roll your sleeves up a little farther?"

Exasperated, I removed the whole bathrobe and stood before them in my boxer shorts, petulantly spreading my arms and legs out like the Saturday morning suburban version of the Vitruvian man.

"Ok?" I asked.

"OK Mr. Simmons." The tall cop said and then turned to his partner. "Do we need anything else?"

Short cop moved forward and opened up a small notebook as I put my bathrobe back on. 

"Yeah, just a couple of more questions I think." He cleared his throat and looked directly at me. "How are things at your place of employment?"

"I'm sorry...what, what do you mean?"

"I mean, what are things like at work? Any issues?"

"Wait, what? Did something happen at work? "

The two cops looked each other for a second and the tall one gave short a small nod, apparently giving the ok to provide me with more information.

"No Mr. Simmons, like I said it happened last night and it wasn't at your place of employment. It was one of your colleagues though."

I was suddenly worried that I'd beaten Devin Tinian up a lot worse than I thought and that he'd decided to turn me in, but I quickly dismissed that as an irrational fear, since I'd busted up Devin almost two week before and they were asking questions and checking evidence in a way that made it clear that they didn't know who'd committed the crime, which wouldn't have been remotely necessary if Devin had fingered me.

I bit my lip and hesitantly asked the question for which the answer I was almost afraid to hear, my voice sounding far more nervous than I would have liked.

"Who...who...uh...is hurt?"

The cops looked at each other again and exchanged another glance. Shorty looked back, caught my eye once more replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

"One of the executives in your office. I think you know her. A woman named Teri Lee."

I'm not sure, but I might have gasped a little when he said that and I know for sure that I suddenly developed an annoying twitch in my right hand, that I felt obligated to conceal in my bathrobe pocket. The cop continued on, evidently oblivious to my worsening discomfort.

"She's said to be somewhat...uhm...unpopular with some of the people in your office, including you. Can you shed any light on that? Can you think of anyone in your office that might have disliked her enough to assault her personally?"

I did my best to remain calm and swallowed hard a couple of times while I thought about how to answer the question. Yes, I knew some people that would have liked to hit Teri, plenty of them. But I didn't think any of them would do it. Except for maybe Devin Tinian himself. The words ' I've been trying to figure out how to beat the shit out of her myself without getting pinched', kept playing through my mind. Somehow, though, I didn't have it in me to suggest him as a suspect, and so I just numbly shook my head.

"No one?"

"Well, she wasn't well liked, but nobody that would beat her up." I croaked out.

They asked a couple of more questions, but I don't remember them being of any consequence, and then thanked me for my time and turned to go. As they were leaving, the tall guy turned and looked me directly in the eye for a minute.

"And, listen, Mr. Simmons. If you think of anyone that might have done this, for any reason, you have a duty to inform us. You understand?"

"Sure...sure, I understand." I said, biting my lip nervously as I slowly closed the door after them.

--@--

The office was a hornet's nest of gossip Monday morning. Virtually every person I talked to asked me what I thought about Teri and her gaggle of secretarial sycophants were abruptly stopping conversations and giving me the collective evil eye every time I walked by.

Around noon, the two cops from Saturday showed up and my heart sank, thinking I was going to be embarrassed at work with more questions. But they headed to a group of desks off to the side of my area and asked one of the clerks something and he pointed over to Gabe Prince's desk. I watched as surreptitiously as possible as they asked him some questions and I could see him get agitated off and on during the conversation. Toward the end they said something and he appeared to refuse and they said something again and I saw Gabe reluctantly roll up the sleeves of his shirt and display his forearms to the cops. After that, they took a few notes and asked some of the secretaries some questions before making their way out of the building.

Not a couple of minutes later, Benny Smith, one of the accountants, made his way over to Gabe and talked to him for a couple of minutes and then sauntered carefully over to my desk and slid himself, uninvited, into a chair facing me. He looked at me expectantly, a strange grin on his face.

"What?" I asked.

"So, did you do it?"

"Did I do what?"

"Oh, come on Grant. Are you the one that beat up Teri?"

"Hell no. Is that what everyone thinks?"

"Well, Teri thinks it was you."

"Wait, what? How could she think it was me? And, how...how do you know what she thinks?"

Bernie considered what I'd said for a moment and then leaned forward conspiratorially and began talking in a low voice.

"Look, can I trust you to keep a secret?"

I'm sure I gave him a doubtful look, but I nodded my head.

"I know it's against the rules to...uh...date the staff we supervise, especially in the middle of all this political correct sensitivity training, but I...uh..."

"What?"

"I've been seeing Debbie Perkins for a while, you know? And, she's in pretty tight with Teri."

I did remember that Debbie socialized a lot with Teri and I was more than a little surprised that one of her group would violate the corporate dating rules openly, but then I thought of Devin Tinian's experience with Teri herself and realized I shouldn't be surprised at anything. Bernie had stopped talking, apparently waiting for my reaction. Curious as to what he had to say, I nodded and motioned for him to carry on. He leaned even closer and continued on in an even lower voice.

"So, Debbie's been visiting Teri in the hospital and she's been passing along the scoop to me. I haven't...uh...told anybody anything, but I thought you might like to know what's up."

I leaned back in my chair, still not saying anything and waited.

"So...do you...do you want to know?" He asked with a little impatience.

"Well, yeah, I'd like to know. I mean, if she's accusing me of something I didn't do, I'd like to know why. Is she setting me up or something? Is this a frame up?"

Bernie looked around to see who might be watching and then leaned back toward me.

"No, I don't think so. You see, Teri never did get a look at the guy. She's not saying that it was you, she's just saying that you are likely." It didn't really make sense to me that Teri had no idea who assaulted her and I'm sure my expression reflected that. Bernie paused a minute and then started in again.

"Look, she was coming home on Friday and it was dark, maybe 8 o'clock or so. She'd been doing some shopping or something and was getting some bags out of her trunk when this guy grabbed her from behind and essentially tackled her, face down, onto the ground. He grabbed her hair and rammed her face into the asphalt a couple of times and then wrapped his forearm around her mouth so she couldn't scream. I guess he held her really tight and began ramming his knee into her crotch over and over again and every now and then he smashed the side of her face with his free hand." 

Bernie stopped to judge my reaction. From what he was saying, this sounded a lot more like a personal assault than a robbery and I suppose I could see how someone might think I'd have enough motivation to . I motioned for him to go on.

"Anyway, I guess Teri somehow managed to bite his forearm, really good. She claims she bit right through the guy's shirt and got to the point she was sure that she'd broken the skin. But even that didn't stop the guy. In fact, I guess that got him even more pissed and he pulled that arm away and smashed the other side her face a couple of times. Finally, Teri saw some headlights from a car entering the parking lot and the guy got off her and high tailed it away."

"Did he say anything?"

"Not a fucking thing. I guess he didn't even swear when Teri bit his arm. That's one of the reasons the cops figured it might have been someone she knows...you know, he didn't want her to identify the voice or anything."

"And she didn't get a look at him even when he was running away?"

"Not really. I mean she was beat up pretty bad and it was dark. And I guess the dude was wearing the usual bad guy stuff. Dark clothes and he had a ski mask or something on."

I let out a low, long breath, realizing I'd more or less been holding it as I listened to the story. "Wow," was all I could get out.

"So, yeah, the cops asked her who might have it in for her, and she mentioned you right off."

I felt a little panicky when he said that and briefly considered mentioning my suspicions about Devin In order to verify my innocence, but decided to keep my mouth shut instead. I answered him with a voice that I hoped sounded more indignant than nervous.

"Well shit, it wasn't me and the cops must know that. I was with my kids that night and, look." I rolled up my sleeves to show my arms "Nobody has been biting me." 

Bernie shrugged as he looked at my arms and then got up to go. "Well, somebody did it, and I think the cops are right if they think it's someone she knows." He smiled and winked enigmatically before returning to his desk.

--@--

I'd found it very, very hard to sleep with all the issues at work, the investigation and, probably most of all, the absence of Rosie. I couldn't get over the fact that she had betrayed me, given herself over to a man in a scheme that was deliberately intended to wound and humiliate me. I recognized that she wasn't an active part of the scheme, that, to some degree, she'd been maneuvered about like a pawn on a chess board, but there was no denying that she'd allowed herself into Devin's arms and more, effectively stabbing me in the back.

Still, I missed her.

I missed her quirky sense of humor, her mischievous smiles and her low throaty laugh that was so incredibly infectious. I missed our conversations, our jokes and her words of encouragement in tough times. I missed her affection, her kisses, and holding her while we watched TV or listened to music or long after we'd both fallen asleep. And, I missed having sex with her.

Tossing about in bed one night, I realized, not unexpectedly, that I was tremendously horny. I pulled up my laptop and looked through a little porn to try and get some inspiration, but somehow my mind kept drifting to experiences I'd had with Rosie.

I remembered our first kiss, taken in the middle of the dance floor during a slow number at a club that catered to college students. As we danced, her body seemed to melt more and more into mine, settling against me like everything she touched was becoming part of her. She claimed my neck with her arms, my chest with her breasts, my growing erection with her soft midsection and, when I pulled back to look at her, I felt she claimed me, as a person, with her clear, unblinking brown eyes and her easy, warm smile. I leaned forward and kissed her, tasting a bit of cherry from her lip gloss and she kissed me back and I realized at that moment I was hers if she wanted me.

I remembered the first time we made love, at a little lodge in northern Wisconsin while the other members of the group we'd come with had gone off to ski. We started to neck under a heavy comforter on one of the bunks, our kisses becoming more and more fervent and our bodies pressing together, rubbing each other sensually through our clothes. My hands started to roam and found their way under her top to cup and press her breasts and then down, below her waistband, slipping under her panties to rub against her soft wet folds and her hard little center. She began breathing deeply, kissing me harder and slowly began to moan. Then her hand slipped under my pants and began returning the favor, pulling and tugging on me until I could barely control myself. Abruptly, I pulled up her shirt, kissing down her chest and her belly until I came to her pants, which I pulled off quickly with some help from her, and then, nearly ripped her panties off. I planted my mouth on her wetness and licked and sucked and pressed my lips against her until her back arched, announcing her orgasm in long, low, satisfied moans. Then, almost without thought, I pulled off my clothes, took her in my arms and slowly entered her, my eyes locked to her the whole time. She was wet and tight and I'd never felt anything quite like the mix of physical pleasure and emotional fulfillment before. By the time we'd finished, I was completely and utterly spent and we fell asleep in each other's arms, covered only by the comforter, not caring in the slightest who might discover us.

I remembered our honeymoon, a week of balmy weather at a rundown hotel on a beach in Florida. There were days baking in the sun and nights enthusiastically making love, coupling our sweaty bodies against each other, oblivious of the poor accommodations, the inadequate little bed or the sub-par air conditioning. It seems like we tried every position and explored every part of each other's bodies, discovering different, sometimes unexpected erogenous zones with every new session. Sometimes we made love gently, languidly and other times we simply attacked each other, impossibly impassioned, nearly desperate to achieve and deliver orgasms. I particularly remembered our last night there spent on a towel, under the moonlight on the empty beach, the sounds of the waves softly breaking in the background while we wordlessly, earnestly, communicated our love and affection with touch and taste and sweat and smell . 

As I completed that last thought, I suddenly and almost unexpectedly, felt a strange, melancholy orgasm wash over me, realizing that I'd been nearly on the verge of tears as I stroked myself while reminiscing about Rosie.

I rolled over and went to sleep, thinking obsessively about the woman I loved and somehow hated so much at the same time.

--@--

Life went on, slowly, painfully.

At work, a lot of people, not just Teri's friends, were throwing questioning, accusatory glances my way and I was having a tough time concentrating. At that point, I was glad that I hadn't mentioned to the Police, or anybody else for that matter, how Teri had set up my wife to cheat on me. I don't think she'd said anything either, because nobody, not the Police, not Bernie, not anybody at work, ever suggested they knew Rosie had been unfaithful, let alone that Teri might have had something to do with it. I was glad for that little secret, because if that story got out, I'd move up even higher on the suspect list, and the suspicions and hassles from the police would only get worse.

At 'home', I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling, or the TV or a book without really seeing anything. My mind was foggy and I couldn't seem to get a grip on my emotions. Between the collapse of my marriage, the tension at work and being a 'person of interest' in an assault case, I was lonely, hurt, disoriented and more than a little depressed.

I thought things were going to get a lot worse when Jim Gompers called me up to his office the Thursday after Teri's assault.

I slowly made my way up to his office, feeling almost like I was moving to the gallows, placing one foot carefully in front of the other until I stood outside his open door, watching him work, head down, in back of a massive oak desk. After a few moments I cleared my throat to let him know I was there and he looked up, smiled and waved me in.

"Hey, Grant, close the door and have a seat, ok?"

I stepped into the room and pulled the door shut before cautiously taking a chair on the other side of his desk. He folded his hands in back of his head and leaned back in his chair, slowly chewing some gum as he looked me over for before speaking.

"Grant, I'll get right down to it." He said while unclasped his hands and leaned forward to this desk. "We were pretty alarmed about all the police rummaging around here the last few days and frisking down the employees. We don't like the optics and we really didn't like the idea that they figured Teri's assailant is probably working here."

"So, we looked into things a little to figure out what the hell is going on around here that the police would figure her attacker worked here. " He stopped talking and steepled his hands together, bouncing his fingertips off each other while he seemed to think about that he wanted to say next.

"To be frank, Grant, we think that there's a bad combination of workers down there. Kind of a toxic situation. "

His words seemed like the prelude to a demotion, or worse. My heart rate went up and I felt myself breaking out into a sweat while I waited for the axe to fall.




Collateral Damage Pt. 02



"So, Grant, we've reviewed everything about this division and we think we'd like to consolidate leadership. What we're going to do is move Teri over to marketing and have you take over her duties along with yours."

I had been so sure I'd be sacked that I wasn't quite sure I'd heard him right. When I didn't answer right away, he got a little nervous, adding some more words quickly.

"Of course, Grant, you'll get some extra compensation for the extra duties. I think you'll find it fairly generous." He gave me a hopeful, somewhat anxious look and I suddenly processed what he'd said and realized I needed to answer.

"Well, yes...yes, that sounds...it sounds great. I think I'm up to this and I think this should work out."

We spent the next half hour or so going over his expectations, my duties and the compensation package. I was feeling a little disoriented, but I managed to act business like through the whole process. At the end, he turned he shook my hand, offered his congratulations and I turned to leave his office.

"Uh...one more thing Grant." His voice had taken on a concerned quality and I turned to face him with a slight feeling of trepidation.

"Yes?"

"I...well, we...have to be sure that...we don't have to worry about any unpleasant surprises."

I gave him a questioning look and he cleared his throat and continued.

"Bluntly, Grant. You didn't have anything to do with the assault on Ms. Lee did you?"

I shook my head and gave my most sincere look. "No sir. No I didn't."

"And you...uh...don't know who did?"

"No sir, no I don't."

I left the room feeling much better than when I entered it and made it back to my apartment, musing about the odd way things had worked out. I'd been struggling for months, really for years, to decrease the influence Teri had in my division and, after trying all kinds of diplomatic maneuvers, I finally got what I wanted when some mystery man, almost certainly one of the workers themselves, maybe even Devin Tinian himself, had beaten her to a pulp. I tried to tell myself that 'it couldn't happen to a nicer girl', but somehow it felt wrong to gloat, even to myself, under these circumstances. 

But still, for the first time in weeks I felt something akin to happiness, that maybe things were going to be all right, that the tension at work would go away and life would be more bearable again. That feeling lasted until I checked my planner and was reminded that the next day I'd be meeting at my lawyers with Rosie to start the ball rolling on our separation.

--@--

My lawyer was a sharply dressed, balding, little man who wore wire spectacles and a three piece suit. He was sitting by me in his office, shuffling through papers, when Rosie came in alone. 

She was dressed modestly with a long skirt and a conservative peasant blouse and her hair was done up in French braids. It was hardly what anyone would consider sexy, but she looked beautiful to me and I fought the urge to say she looked great. She paused before the table and gave me a weak, hesitant smile.

"Hello Grant."

"Hey Rosie. Thanks...uh...thanks for coming."

My lawyer stood and shook her hand while introducing himself.

"Mrs. Simmons, I'm Lincoln Parker and I'm representing your husband. Why don't you sit here and we'll get started.

Rosie nodded and gave a half smile before carefully smoothing her skirt as she sat in the chair across from me.

"Ok now," Parker started as he began sliding papers across the desk to Rosie. "We just need you to look over some of this paperwork to be sure that..."

Rosie cleared her throat and interrupted.

"Look, I don't think...I don't think Grant and I have the same goals here. I'm only doing this because I feel I have to, not because I want to or because I think it's necessary."

Parker nodded to indicate he understood. "This is just to...uh...formalize your separation. It's not meant to be anything permanent. It will make things...easier, regardless of how you two work things out."

"But it is the preliminary step to divorce, isn't it Mr. Parker?"

"Yes, yes it can be, but it doesn't mean that the divorce is inevitable."

Rosie nodded sadly and picked up the papers, glancing over each page while she shook her head from time to time, occasionally letting out a melancholy sigh. Finally she looked up, her eyes somewhat glassy he lips pressed together in a bitter frown.

"I'm sorry, but, I just really don't want to sign off on this. I really want to work on our marriage. I don't think that..."

"Rosie, please." I tried to make my voice gentle but firm and unyielding. "I need time and space. We aren't going to be able to paper over this easily."

She chewed her lip pensively, evidently considering what I'd said before she replied.

"Will you work with me at least? Will you think about this? I know I messed up, I know that. But, Grant, please, I'm not a cheater. I didn't go looking for it and I won't go looking for it again. Deep down, I think you know that. I think you know I wasn't ever going to do it again whether I'd been caught or not."

I thought about that for a minute and felt, for the most part that she was right. She hadn't been looking to cheat, had been tricked into it to some degree, and I knew she didn't have the personality to be a serial cheater. Still, though, I was wounded, deeply, and her actions had been the principle weapon, so I cleared my throat and chose my words carefully.

"If somehow I can find a way through this, maybe. If I can find a way to trust you, some way to get around this...betrayal, I will Rosie. But, until then I don't see any way but to separate. I just don't."

For a moment, I thought she was going to argue, to tell me that I was wrong and that the separation was a huge mistake, but she seemed to swallow her own aggression and paused before speaking.

"OK." She finally said, meekly nodding her head while a small tear formed and dripped down her cheek. "OK, I'll sign."

Lincoln nodded and picked up a form. "All right, then, this is the official agreement. It will need both your signatures." He slid the form across the table to Rosie, for her to sign first. She picked up a pen, hesitated for a moment and then slowly inked her name at the bottom. She held the form for a moment and then picked up her purse and carefully filed it away.

"Uh, I'm sorry Ms. Simmons, but that's not for you to keep. Mr. Simmons has to sign that also and I'll be retaining it. You'll both get copies."

"Oh...ok, I'm sorry." She answered awkwardly and with some embarrassment and then took the form out of her purse, unfolded it and stood to hand the paper to me.

As she was reaching across the desk , stretching to hand me the paper, the sleeve of her blouse rode up her arm half a foot, and as quickly as it happened, she immediately snatched the sleeve and abruptly pulled it down to her wrist as she sat back down.

Now, the inadvertent passage of someone's sleeve up their arm is one of those things that occurs so commonly and is generally so utterly unimportant that it barely grazes the consciousness of anyone who observes it, an action lost in the million other little things that are happening at any given time. 

But, in this case, it completely fractured my state of mind.

In the moment her forearm was uncovered, I glimpsed a sudden flash of dark discoloration staining all of the exposed skin, a massive bruise that seemed to be painted on her arm like an ugly watercolor of blue and green and yellow, flowing away from a dark purple center and a gauze bandage. It was stark and it was painful looking and it was exactly what the police had been looking for when they asked to see my arms.

I sat there for a moment in stunned silence contemplating what I'd just seen and what it meant. I'd heard the stories about women who'd lifted trees or cars or some other impossibly heavy object off of their children in times of extreme stress, stories that spoke of untold fountains of strength that could be called on when absolutely necessary. But I'd never of such an attack borne out of anger, a pure, unadulterated desire to punish another woman who had set her up to sabotage her own marriage.

Still, I had seen it. Direct evidence that a woman half my size had summoned up enough strength and anger to launch a personal attack so fundamentally violent that the victim and the police never even considered the possibility that it was perpetrated by anyone other than a large, very hostile man. 

I must have been staring into space for a while as the implications of what I'd just seen continued to sink in, because Parker cleared his throat to get my attention and when I looked over at him, he gestured to the paper as though to say 'sign it so we can get out of here'. I looked down at the form, but my mind was so preoccupied with what I was just learning about my wife that I couldn't make myself understand what it said, couldn't even really see the words. 

I lifted my head up to look at Rosie again, and there was little doubt my expression was still one of incredulity and surprise, my mouth open and my eyes wide in amazement. Rosie looked back, at first with a look of anxiety or maybe even concern, but then an enigmatic smile spread across her face, a knowing, slightly mischievous Mona Lisa grin that affirmed to me everything I suspected.

We sat there, staring at each other for some time before Parker cleared his throat again. This time, I didn't even glance over to him, refusing to take my eyes off of Rosie, trying to decide what, exactly I should make of this strange new revelation.

Finally, Rosie broke the stalemate and began to move, standing lazily and then walking smoothly, like a cat, around the table to my side. She leaned into me and whispered, huskily and sensuously, into my ear and her breath made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

"You can sign the paper if you want, Grant. Or, you can put the pen down and follow me outside and try to fix our marriage. We could start tonight by celebrating the ass kicking the queen bitch got last Friday night. It's really up to you."

With that, she carefully moved out of the room at a slow, measured pace, looking back to flash a nervous, hopeful smile and raise her eyebrows as she shut the door, all the while I sat woodenly in my chair, still utterly stunned at what I'd just discovered.

I wasn't at all sure what to do. I'd been thinking for weeks, in the darkest terms, about the depth of betrayal and the destruction of trust that attached to Rosie's infidelity and I'd come to the conclusion that even if somehow I could let it go, that it would take time and separation before I could attempt to move forward with her again. But now what? What should I make of what Rosie had done?

I suppose a better man would have been horrified or disgusted by her actions, but, God help me, the image in my mind of her beating the shit out of our mutual tormentor somehow changed my entire outlook. She was a woman who was literally fighting for her marriage and had been doing it in an inconceivably dangerous and aggressive manner. How could I possibly let a woman like that go?

Parker cleared his throat one more time and I glanced over at him. "Well?" He said, holding his hands out in an exasperated, expectant gesture.

I slowly shook my head as I put the pen down, shrugged in a sort of surrender and began to stand.

"I'm sorry, but I can't sign. I just can't," I said, shaking my head in apology as he raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I really am sorry."

With my heart pounding and with a sense of relief and anticipation I turned away from him and moved quickly toward the door and to my errant, violent, lovely little wife.



Collateral



Knowing that my girlfriend had developed a taste for being another man’s slut had stirred some mixed feelings. Heather continued sucking me, paying special attention to the head of my cock. Sucking it harder, she would ‘pop’ it away from her lips and rub the head up and down her cheek before sliding it back into her mouth. After only a few minutes, I was ready to explode. Sensing I was close, Heather picked up the pace and the familiar wet, slurping sound filled the room. 

As I began cumming I placed my hands to the back of her head. Holding her by the hair, I shoved her mouth over my cock as far as I could, pushing my cock deep into her throat. As I began to cum she adjusted herself, tilting her head back farther as she swallowed a few hot shots of cum, looking at me the whole time. 

"Erin would never swallow when I came but all of that may have changed last night.” I thought to myself as Heather got up and went into the bathroom. A lot may have changed since last night and I think I am going to have fun finding out.