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Saying Stay Ch. 01

By: LingerieRobot



Author's Note: I'm filing this story under Group Sex, but as it goes on it's probably going to encompass just about everything under the (consensual) sun. If you have an allergic reaction to any particular kind of sex, you might want to avoid this. If, on the other hand, you've got an open mind and are looking for a fun ride, read on.

===

I guess it all starts with the house. Simon once told me that everything that happened, everything we became, was because of the house's mystic powers, an energy embedded in the walls. I think he was joking. Still, in a different time and a different place, who knows what would have happened? Could we ever have become more than the sum of our parts? So I'll start with the particular.

The house was a relic of an older, aristocratic age, Victorian as only some displaced Englishman feeling an ocean between him and Victoria could be. I wasn't much of an architectural expert, but I knew that much. It had definitely seen better days -- there was little paint remaining, and the porch sagged disturbingly under my feet. Still, it had survived successive eras of modern styles, so I thought it had to have some wiles within it.

Padma looked almost apologetic. "It's not much too look at, but it's a great location, and it's kind of huge."

"I kind of like it," I said.

Padma put on one of her half-smile half-frown expressions that she made when she was unsure how to respond. "Well, then you'll really like the inside. Come on in. And don't worry about the porch, it's been like thatfor years."

I had met Padma in my first year of university. I always had at least one class with her, usually two or three, and so I had a front row seat to a perplexing metamorphosis. In first year she hid in the back rows of lecture halls and at the far ends of tutorial rooms, never speaking a word and spending most of the time staring down at her paper. Second year she found her voice and became a champion of Eastern philosophy, excoriating all of us for our Western bias and pointing out that Kant and Heidegger were echoed by Indian philosophers more coherent and seven centuries older. She returned from the summer break after that year with a shaved head, her long raven river that had extended down to her waist no more. By the end of the four-year degree she was quoting queer theory at every opportunity and marching across campus for any number of political causes.

Still, all through this we were never really friends -- she was someone I watched like they were in a fishbowl, fascinated by her changes. Besides which, Padma and I had competely opposite personalities. Whereas she would swing passionately from one polemical pole to another, I could never make up my mind, always trying to find some point of compromise or moderation. She had called me a borgeouis liberal capitulator on numerous occasions. Still, we had ended up talking at the post-last-class night of drinks, and when I mentioned I was looking for a place she offered up a recently vacated room in the house she lived in.

I decided to give it a shot, given the prohibitive price or untenable distances of all the places I had looked at so far. Downtown Toronto was not a friendly place for an out-of-work student.

About halfway through the tour I began to realize that while Padma had described this place as huge, it wasn't really that big -- it just had a lot of rooms, rooms that were for the most part small and angly. When I mentioned this to her she laughed. "You haven't seen anything yet. Half of the bedrooms here are actually servant's quarters. They're more like walk-in closets."

"And one of those would be my room, right?"

Padma grinned. "You catch on quick."

Upstairs we found a skinny girl with dyed black-and-green hair staring into a computer screen. It looked like she was editing some kind of video. I waved at her. "Hi! My name's Mike, and..."

She only grunted in response.

Padma smiled, as if this was endearing behaviour. "That's Julia. She's a nice girl, believe me, just don't bother her when she's working or you're liable to get your head bitten off."

"Ookay..."

"Up here you have the three main bedrooms, belonging to Julia, Simon and Dawn. They were here first and started this whole thing, so I guess they get priority. It's not much of an issue, as the other three of us never sleep in our rooms anyway."

"Huh? Why?"

Padma stared up at the roof and whistled. "Oh! I haven't shown you the garden yet. You have to see this."

The house's backyard was almost entirely taken up by a sprawling vegetable garden. It was still spring, so nothing had really come up yet -- but judging from the near-forest poking out of the ground, complete with a couple young trees scattered around, it was sure to be a bumper crop.

I bent down to look at the tiny buds growing along a tomato vine. "So I guess you've got some eco-nuts in the house, huh?"

Padma laughed. "You could say that. This is the communal garden. I guess communality... communalness? Whatever the word is-- is kind of the rule around here. Everyone has their own bedroom, but we share everything else, and divide up the chores and cooking duties. Like, everyone has a turn once a week to cook supper, and it's usually a big meal where we can all unwind and shake off all the crap of the day."

"So it's some kind of hippy thing," I said, trying to keep the judgemental tone out of my voice. Still, this was all a bit much. I was looking for a place to live, not a family, and certainly not some kind of commune. "Well, I have to warn you, I'm not much of a cook."

"Oh, don't worry," said Padma. "Josh just orders take-out every week, so you'll probably have him beat."

Finally, Padma showed me to what would be my room. The loud sounds of some violent video game issued from the one across from mine. It was on a lower level and was indeed small and secluded, with only a small high window letting light in. It was easy to believe that this had been servant's quarters Still, it was kind of nice, and I had never needed that much space.

"Well, it's not exactly the Ritz," I said. "But I could live here." My mind was conflicted, my distaste for hippies dueling with my amazement at and desire for a cheap room close to downtown.

"There's one more thing you should know." Padma's voice was quieter, and she sounded a bit concerned. "People around here tend to be a bit, uh... sexually... you know, open. You don't have to participate in it if you don't want to, but you'll definitely be exposed to some pretty wild stuff."

I raised an eyebrow. I wasn't sure whether to be intruiged or repelled. "So when you said you do everything communally..."

Padma nodded sheepishly. She was suddenly back to the shy religous girl of freshman year.

"Wow." And here I thought free love had died out in the 70s. Padma had never talked much about her life, but I imagined a sweet monogamous relationship with a nice girlfriend, not a roving antiquarian orgy. Still, there was something attractive in the idea, although maybe it was just the male lizard-brain desire for free sex with multiple partners.

"Like I said, nobody would force you to do anything, but you should be aware that... well, that shit happens around here, and people aren't really that private about it."

I nodded, hoping it would shake loose the conflicted elements of my mind. It didn't. "Well, call me a romantic but I've always been a one-girl guy. Still, I like to think of myself as open-minded... live and let live, you know? So, uh, I don't have a problem with it." In other words: I don't want to be a part of your weirdo sex cult (although now I was wondering what Padma looked like naked), but I can't really say no to the cheap rent.

Padma grinned, a bit slyly. "Great. So, can I put you down as our newest servant?"

"Give me some time to decide," I said, wanting to hedge my bets in case I tripped over a better offer.

"All right, but don't think too long," Padma said. "Julia keeps trying to get one of her porno friends in here, and she can be ferocious."

"I'll try and be quick, then. Wait... porno friends?"

There was that sly smile again. "There are some... interesting people here."

--

Of course, nothing was that easy. After another week of fruitlessly searching for an equally cheap and well-located but more normal place to live, I gave Padma a yes. My student housing was about to evaporate under my feet, and the other option was going back to Bumfuck, Manitoba to live with my parents. That wasn't happening.

Then the trials started. First Julia, the intense girl with the colourful hair that I had been foolish enough to disturb on my first visit, called me and let loose a barrage of indirect insults before demanding I get tested and provide a clean bill of sexual health before she would agree to let me in. No matter how many times I repeated it, she didn't seem to grasp that I wouldn't be joining the orgy and certainly wasn't getting a needle up my dick. Padma finally got her to back off, I guess, because the matter was eventually unceremoniously dropped.

And then I had to meet with everyone who lived there, one-on-one, just to make sure they were okay with me. "Do we really have to go through all this shit just to admit a boarder?" I said to Padma over the phone. "I mean, I'm getting kicked out of my place in three days. Can we put some of the hoops away?"

"Stop whining," she said. "It's nothing. Most of the people here are really open-minded, so it's not like they're going to give you too hard of a time. They just want to meet you. After all, this is like a family... you don't want to admit people to your family without getting to know them first."

"From what you've been telling me, this is a pretty incestuous family."

She giggled. "You're going to fit right in. Trust me."

"See, you mean that as a compliment, but I'm kind of offended."

The interview was held in their dining room, which was probably the biggest room in the house -- a big salon intended for entertaining guests and celebrating in opulent style. Its current purpose was a bit more utilitarian than that -- the table was covered with the day's accumulated junk, and the most prominent decoration on the wall (wedged between some modern art) was a detailed chore chart delegating tasks amongst the group in the iron dictates of dry-erase marker. A small chandeleir hung from the ceiling, although the candles had been replaced with light bulbs.

The six housemates had lined themselves up on the other side of the table. I thought that this was really a bit much, and wondered if living in North York was really that bad after all.

As it turned out, Julia was the only one who was seriously interested in the inquisition. Padma had already given her stamp of approval, and the other four -- two guys and two girls -- all seemed easygoing and barely spoke at all. One, a frattish looking guy with long brown hair who had been introduced as Josh, spent most of the time looking down at his phone.

"So, what are your politics?" said Julia, hunched forward.

"Um, I think legally you're not allowed to ask me that. You know, as a landlord."

She practically hissed at me. "Look, we're a co-op. I'm not a lord of anything, much less land. But I mean, we've already got one guy here who's just here to get laid and not contribute to anything deeper, and we don't need another."

Josh raised his head. "Huh? Did someone call my name?"

"Aw come on Jules," said one of the girls, dressed in a tight-fitting tank top and sporting a long black ponytail. I thought her name was Dana or Dawn or something like that. "I know you're trying to get Trinh in here, but we've already got four girls... don't want things getting too imbalanced, huh?"

"Men and women are not opposite vectors or something. And I've told you not to call me Jules. Nobody calls me Jules."

"Well clearly someone does, and that's me."

Julia let out a long sigh. "Anyway. I guess what I'm trying to get at is... why do you want to live here, in a communal setting? The last guy who was here... he just holed up in his room the whole time, and that's why we ended up kicking him out. If you just want a place to sleep and keep your stuff, I dunno, rent a storage locker. What we're trying to do here is build community."

"Okay, but other than the sex thing, how do you do that?" I said, feeling the limb beneath me grow thinner. "I mean, you have that chore wheel up, rotating meals or whatever... we did all that stuff in my college dorm. What makes this so revolutionary?" 

"Well, I mean, obviously it's a work in progress -- but we're just trying to find a new way to live with other people, a freer and fairer way."

I decided to swallow my pride and appease the ideologue for a while. I did, after all, need a place to stay. "Hey, that's all fine with me. Things need to be freer and fairer."

"I'm just curious," said the ponytailed girl. "Why don't you want to play with us?"

"Play?"

"I mean, have sexy times. Sorry, I have to remember not everyone's up on the jargon."

I felt my cheeks growing warm. "Well, it's nothing against any of you, but I just have a policy about sleeping with roommates. It always makes things way too complicated, in my opinion. Besides, I think sex should be something you do with someone you really care about, and all of you... well, I don't know you right now.

She nodded. "Fair enough. Don't worry, we ain't gonna rape you or anything... although it's tempting." Her wink didn't make her comment much less frightening.

That debate aside, the rest of the questions were pretty standard inquiries into my habits and peeves. Other than Julia and Padma, I couldn't get a good sense of any of them as individuals -- they fused into one questioning, but accepting mass. Finally, one of the guys -- the one with shorter hair and earrings, not the frattish one -- stood up and leaned on the table, making the most imposing frame out of his five-foot-nine body.

"Well, I think we've heard enough." He smiled at me. "Sorry, Mike, but can you step outside for a moment while we, uh, deliberate."

I nodded and went into the living room, sealed off by sliding doors. The furniture looked vaguely modern but the room was old-fashioned -- a circle of chairs and coaches around a wide glass coffee table. Not a television in sight. I wondered if these people really sat around talking to each other as their only form of amusement. Well, I guess it wasn't just talk.

Somehow, despite all the political lectures and sexual weirdness, I found myself really hoping that the six in the other room would decide to accept me. It was partly just the cheap rent, but I found myself curiously attracted to the kind of community they promised -- hell, even the righteous anger of Julia. It always startled me when people cared so much about something seemingly so huge and implacable as our way of life. Not that I was at all sure about their commune, but... it had a kind of indefinable allure nonetheless.

There was a big grandfather clock in the corner of the room, and as it ticked on I felt my stomach fold in on itself. What could be taking them so long? I was thinking up more elegant answers in my head to their questions, kicking myself for dragging Julia into a debate when I could have just described myself as a feminist enviro-communist and left it at that.

Finally, one of the sliding doors was pushed aside, and Padma was there, beckoning me into the room. She flfashed me an almost blindingly white smile. "We've decided to take you in."

"On a provisional basis," Julia quickly added. "You get a one month trial period, and then we vote again."

"So I guess there's a slight chance of me being thrown out on the street," I said.

Padma grabbed me by the arm. "Don't worry. It's gonna be fine"

--

University ended anticlimactically. I didn't even have any exams -- I just handed in a thick research paper, walked out of class, and slowly let the realization dawn on me that I was done with that chapter of my life, and done with the comforting structure of school. I couldn't quite take it in, so I just drowned it in a week of celebratory shots at the college parties, once so plentiful, that were running through my fingers like the last grains of sand on the beach.

My parents visited -- by this point they were in the habit of popping down to Toronto at any opportunity to look on the big city with rural wonder-eyes. My father tried to woo me with stories of all the great jobs back home (they had just opened up a new mini-mall), but I just repeated that I had already found a place. Any questions about my career prospects was deflected with less grace.

I ended up enlisting my parents and a couple friends to help me move into the new place. My apprehension about the whole commune thing had seemed small at first, but now it was growing. I wondered if I had actually walked into some kind of cult that would poison the joint veggie stir-fry, or if I would be expected to service the harem queen Julia in exchange for room and board. No scenario seemed too ridiculous. I spent the night before the move tossing and turning, making my sheets into strange origami patterns.

I yawned as my friend Tim's truck pulled up to the house. He checked the address. "You sure this is the place?"

"Yeah, this is the place." My parents' Ford was a block behind us, harried by the traffic.

My dad was beaming as he emerged. "Looks great! I was expecting a slum."

"Old-school," said Tim, nodding. I had met him in philosophy classes, but he was one of those kids who had really only gone in to talk about The Matrix. Nice guy, though.

My mom held the door open as all of us burly men walked in with one of my heavy boxes of possessions. I could have sworn that I didn't have half this much stuff moving out last summer. The dark-haired girl -- Delia? Danni? -- was sitting on the living room couch and was in a flurry of motion as soon as we entered.

My mom went around to meet her. "Hi there. I'm Mike's mother." I stood there watching and the rest, following my lead, stood in the stalled train of boxes.

"Dawn," said the girl. (So that was it! I tried to commit the name to memory for good this time.) She offered a hand, but didn't get up.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. Make sure you take care of my boy, all right?" I flushed with a return of adolescent embarassment. "Say, do you hear something buzzing in here?"

Dawn went red for some reason. "It might be, uh, the pipes. You know how it is with old houses."

Tim nudged be in the back with my heavy box of books. I managed to get my feet moving again, and steered the box-train down the half-flight of stairs into the lower level. Padma was sitting in her room nose-deep in some Eve Sedgwick. I was stunned that she really read that stuff outside of class.

We ventured back downstairs with all the stealth of a bull run. While the others went out to grab some more boxes (okay, so I'm a bit of a pack rat) I stopped in to say hi to Dawn. After all, I wanted to at least get off on the right foot with her. Dawn was wearing a blue tank top and had a blanket strewn across her lower half.

"Hey," I said. She waved. "So what are you doing down here by yourself?"

She quickly pulled up the blanket. Underneath it was a bodice-ripper novel and her uncovered and unshaven legs. Black panties with a small bulge barely covered her unmentionables. For a moment I thought she might be trans until I noticed the lump was vibrating softly. At the time I didn't have much knowledge of sex toys, so I couldn't specifically identify it, but I got the gist from the naughty grin on her face.

"Dawn! My parents are here."

She shrugged. "Well I didn't know you guys were coming."

"So you were just sitting here half-naked with some... buzzing... thing in your panties? Is this what you usually do on a Sunday morning?"


Saying Stay Ch. 01



Dawn didn't seem nearly as stressed out about this situation as I was. "Honestly, usually I'm more naked."

There was the creak of the front door opening again, and I hastily cast the sheet back over Dawn's lap. "Hey Mike!" yelled my dad. "Don't stick us with all the work, 'ey?"

"Right." I hurried to help them with the last of the boxes. When we were done my small room had its floor covered in a pale brown labrynth of cardboard, but I was unpacked.

Tim slapped me on the shoulder. "So, you know any good bars around here?"

"Come on," said my dad. "I'm sure Mike doesn't want us hanging around his new house embarassing him in front of his roommates."

I didn't want to admit that he was more or less right, although they weren't the ones I would be embarassed for. "Well, I mean, you can stay if you want, but I'm not sure what we would do... hey, where's Mom?"

"Oh, I think she went upstairs to talk with that girl. I think those two really hit it off. Always nice to know that you're in good hands, eh?"

I rushed upstairs, worried about what scene of debauchery my straight-laced prarie mother might find herself in. Dawn was in the same position, sheet spread over her humming crotch, although she was starting to lose her composure. As Dawn was relating her background (city girl since birth, went to a small university, working as a freelance graphic designer), she kept breaking into inappropriate giggles. I headed in to try and salvage things.

"Uh, if you guys want something to eat, there's a nice deli place down on the corner..." I said.

Dawn suddenly broke into a low, undeniably sexual moan. Even in my stress I felt a pulse of attraction surge through me. My mom furrowed her brow. "Are you all right?"

"Mom, Dawn's, um, feeling sick. You know, it's that flu that's been going around. She should really get some bed rest." Dawn nodded, biting a quivering lip. The buzzing sound seemed louder and more rapid than before.

My apparently oblivious mother clapped her hands over her mouth. "Oh dear! Of course. If you need me to, I can make some of that chicken noodle soup you always had when you were sick as a kid..."

"No, I think we're fine," I said. I extended a hand to Dawn, which she grabbed onto and let me help her up. "I'll just help Dawn here to her room..."

She leaned on my shoulder as I practically carried her up the stairs -- it didn't seem necessary until I noticed how much her legs were shaking, her hips pumping against the air. I banged my head on the low ceiling, provoking a giggle from Dawn, and then she let out a throaty gasp.

"Oh shit--" I clapped a hand over her mouth as an obvious orgasm ripped through her. Dawn struggled against my grip like a slippery snake, lost in the madness of pleasure. Even muffled through my hands her cries seemed plenty loud, and I was sure my family would be running up to investigate any minute now.

Eventually she calmed down, although she was still breathing heavily and propped up on shaky legs. I helped her the rest of the way up the stairs, and into the room she pointed me to.

Dawn's room probably could have been mistaken for that of a 13-year-old boy's. The walls were decorated with posters from rock bands and comic books, most of them scantily-clad heroines striking alluring poses. Some amalgm of lines and shapes was sketched on a whiteboard that hung over her Mac laptop. A closet door had a juvenile paper sign taped to it reading "MISTRESS DAWN'S SHIT -- KEEP OUT!" A queen-sized bed took up most of the room, and Dawn allowed me to dump her on it.

Wincing, Dawn reached down to remove the still-buzzing sex toy -- whatever it was -- from her panties. "Jeez, that thing's really tough on you after you come and you're all over-sensitive."

"I bet."

She looked up to me, blushing for the first time. "Sorry about that Mike. I really didn't know when you were moving in and, well, I like to play around. I'm a bit of an exhibitionist, as you can see. I'm a bit of everything, really."

"Yeah, well I don't really care what weird shit you guys get up to around here, but my mother is not a part of your exhibitionist games."

There was a kind of alluring, kind of aggravating twinkle in Dawn's eyes. "You sure? For someone her age, she's pretty--"

"Please don't finish that sentence."

Dawn rolled onto her back and let out a long, contented sigh. She looked like a cat lying in a sunbeam. I turned to go back and leave the troublemaker here. "Hey Mike."

"Yeah?"

"You sure you want to go talk to your mother with that hard-on?"

I looked down to discover that I did indeed have a prominent erection tenting my jeans. It wasn't really that surprising, considering I had just been clinging to an orgasming girl who was, I had to admit, pretty easy on the eyes. Even now I had to stop myself from staring at her full, round tits rising and falling with her breasts...

"Hey, I can help you with that if you want."

I responded by storming out of the room. Dawn went into another giggling fit behind me. I tried to think of baseball, grandmothers, apple pie, the nubile girl shuddering and moaning in my arms...

This was perhaps going to be more difficult than I thought.

--

My arrival had fallen on Simon's day to cook, and he had gone all out, spending most of the day in the kitchen as a green apron-clad whirling dervish. I had spent most of the afternoon unpacking and shooting the shit with Padma, when we could hear ourselves over the crappy music emerging from Josh's room. I wondered how he fit into the big commune ideal. When we emerged for supper the compost in the back yard was topped with a rainbow of pepper and other vegetable husks, the grisly signs of the plant genocide that went into making Simon's vegetable lasagna. The kitchen was also a mess, but a great-smelling mess.

Padma breathed in deeply, pulling the fumes into herself. "I'm salivating over here, man."

Simon swatted her hands away from the jar. "It still has to sit for a couple minutes. You can do drinks."

The girl mewled like a starving kitten. "Mike, I'm subcontracting this out to you. Pour us some wine. Actually, ginger ale for Ellie, she doesn't drink... and you can get yourself whatever you want, I suppose."

"Wait, why do I have to do it? It's Simon's cooking night, isn't it."

Padma gave me an exaggerated sigh of condescension. "Don't be a child." She drifted off to bask in the aroma of the lasagna.

Resigned to my fate, I poured six glasses of white wine and one of ginger ale. I had to admit, the table looked nice, with the steaming main dish in the centre surrounded by covered mystery sides. For a bunch of weird hippies, they classed up real well. 

Julia, Dawn and Josh all drifted in, the first two practically salivating and the second looking like he was a kid at a boring family gathering. Simon served up his final dish, a big plate of brown rice, with a flourish of his apron. "Geez," I said. "I hope I'm not expected to do this once a week."

"You're not," said Padma. "We just thought we would have a big dinner to welcome you. That and Simon likes to show off." The show-off cook in question shrugged as he sat down to eat.

"Aren't we missing one?" I said.

"Ellie hasn't gotten back from work yet," said Simon. "I guess one of us has to have a real job."

Josh raised his hand to protest. "I have a real job!"

Dawn forked a pile of yams onto her plate while laughing sardonically. "Oh please. You're a professional work-out buddy."

"Trainer. The term is professional trainer."

I wasn't sure what I was expecting at that meeting -- more demanding interrogation, or maybe political dogma shouted in between forkfuls of falafel. But it was light and fun and somehow totally comfortable -- just friends getting together to have good food and make jokes, usually at each others' expense. And the food was excellent -- Simon managed to get flavours out of peppers I hadn't conceived of before.

Everyone was wiping their plates clean, with the exception of Josh. He was picking at his food like a fussy child, grabbing the carrots and pasta from the lasagna and leaving most of the other vegetables. He had a couple yams, but that was about it.

When he saw me inspecting his plate, he looked up with a sad smile. "You would not beleive how sick you get of vegetables living in this house. That's my one regret."

"Is it all vegetarian in here?" I said. I realized that I should have asked about this beforehand.

"Look, I'm vegan, Padma and Simon are vegetarians, deal with it," said Julia. "If you guys want to pollute your bodies with the flesh of living things, I'm not going to stop you, but be considerate of us and don't put it in communal meals, m'kay?" I felt like someone somewhere was about to splash fake blood on me.

Josh elbowed me conspiratorily. "Hey man, if you ever get cravings I have a stash of cold cuts in my room."

Any further debate was silenced by the opening of the door and the unmistakeable click-click of high heels on hardwood. A middle-aged blonde dressed in a blue suit and skirt quickly made her way to the dining room. I vaguely remembered seeing her at the earlier meeting, although she hadn't said anything in my presence. I presumed this was Ellie.

"Hey gang," she said, shucking her suit jacket off her shoulders. Underneath she wore a white blouse that looked as though it cost more than every article of clothing the rest of us were wearing combined. "Sorry I'm late, the subway got held up in the tunnel... some snafu. Smells good! Oh hi new guy, I'm Ellen Mor-- Ellen Hutcherson. Pleased to meet you." She stuck out a hand and I, somewhat hypnotized, shook it.

"Ellie is basically the mom of the group here," said Padma. "We saved you some food, but you'd better eat it quickly before Dawn snatches it all."

"Why do I get singled out?" Dawn whined.

"Because you eat everything!"

Ellie sat down and carefully served herself up a plate of food before eating it in polite small bites, making sure not to spill anything on her clothes. I had no idea how this person fit in with the rest of the group. Was she just bankrolling them? Someone's sugar mommy? Whatever the case was, she didn't give me any clues, staying distant from the casual, almost guttural conversation around the table. At one point Dawn launched into a dirty joke involving three sisters, a frozen hot dog, and their parrot, but she only got halfway through before Simon brought out some tarts for desert and distracted us all once more.

"I'm stuffed," I said, feeling my belt suddenly too tight.

"People say that a lot around here," said Padma. Everyone laughed -- even Ellie tittered a little. I started wondering if maybe this was going to be so bad after all. The people certainly were strange, but was that such a bad thing?

--

People sort of dispersed after the meal, with Simon relegated to washing dishes and the rest of us going in pairs or alone to our rooms. I had finally managed to get onto the house's shaky Internet connection and spent the next few hours surfing the web, hitting up all of my usual websites and blogs and getting caught up on my Facebook feed. I started to get that hollowed-out feeling I did after too much time online, when the feeling of triviality seeped into my skin. It was sort of like the taste in your mouth after a lot of fast food, that cheap taste of regret. I thought about loading up some porn and masturbating, but I didn't feel like it.

What else could I do? What else did I do? I had been so wrapped up in the school thing, caught between abstract contemplation and the imminent catastrophes of essays and exams, that I really didn't know what to do with my time now that I had it. I knew I had to get a job, but no one was returning my calls.

I drifted out into the hallway, looking for a distraction. There was no one in sight or sound -- even Josh's room was silent. I knocked on Padma's door just to be sure, but there was no answer.

I went up the creeking stairs, and realized that this house could be very spooky empty and at night. After all, the old house with plenty of dark corridoors is a classic horror set. I half expected to find a dangling corpse when I turned into the living room.

What I found instead was Padma, stretched out on the couch with Julia's hand in between her legs, naked save for her long black socks and a bra that still clung to her right arm. My legs locked up, and I couldn't do anything but stare. Here she was, the girl I had spent so many dull classes undressing in my mind, with her clothes on the floor and her soft brown skin, like earthen clay, all exposed for me to see. I couldn't help but fixate on her peach-sized breasts, topped with hard dark nipples that glistened with saliva shine.

Julia was still fully clothed, her eyes locked on the nubile young girl spread out before her. I couldn't really see all the movements of her hand between Padma's legs, but it was definitely moving back and forth, producing gasps of pleasure from my friend.

Padma threw her head forward, eyes snapping open, on a particularly forceful thrust and saw me for the first time. "Oh, um, hi Matt."

Julia turned her head around, never stopping the thrusting motion of her fingers, but giving me a cocky grin. It seemed almost like a challenge. I had no idea what to do. It wasn't like this was ever a situation I thought I'd be in. Padma looked equally alarmed, the proverbial deer in the headlights.

I gave the coupling girls a week wave. "Uh, hi. I have to, uh, do, er, go somewhere. Bye!"

I could hear Julia's caustic laughter as I beat a hasty retreat, running as fast as I could with a hardening cock. I hadn't had such trouble controlling my dick since puberty. Then again, I hadn't randomly seen as many girls in the throws of passion since... well, ever. I made it to my room without encountering anyone else and slammed the door shut.

Once again, my boner-suppression techniques failed me. I couldn't think of baseball scores or politicians for more than a second before my mind flashed back to the writhing, sweaty body of Padma. Somehow she seemed to get hotter every time I thought of her. Oh well. At least this time I was in a situation to deal with it.

I slid out of my pants and lay on the bed, cock pointing straight up. The grasp of my fist was familiar and I soon found myself pumping up and down in the usual steady rhythm. My spare hand ran along my balls, my thighs, occasionally up to my nipples. In my mind there was only Padma and her sweet dusky breasts, those round lips parting to issue a gasp of pleasure. Only in the fantasy it was me between her legs, thrusting into her tight passage, feeling her warmth envelop me.

"Hi Mike!"

I just about had a heart attack. I scrambled for a sheet to cover me, but they were all still packed, and my underpants were on the ground several feet away. In the end I ended up holding a pillow in front of my cock like a Chippendale's dancer or something.

It was Dawn who had barged into my room, and now looked to be on the verge of breaking out into hysterical laughter. "You could have knocked!" I said. I ended up shouting it, and was now aware that probably the whole house could guess what was going on. 

"Nah, this was way funnier," said Dawn. "I was going to ask if you wanted to play some Halo with Josh and I, but you seem to have your hands full so..."

"Give me a minute," I said. "I need to--" I stopped in my tracks, paralyzed by Dawn's hand on my arm.

"It's good to know that even the Great Abstainer needs to rub one out once in a while," she said, a soft purr creeping into her voice. "Let me guess, you ran into Julia and Padma in flagrante whatever in the living room, right?" I nodded. "See, I knew you were a sexual being like the rest of us."

I was growing irritated with her teasing. "Do these doors lock?"

"Of course not." Dawn put her other hand on my shoulder. Two hands, ten warm earthy fingers making soft touches against my flesh. I remembered my resolve not to get involved with whatever weird sexual cult these people had going on, but that seemed so irritating and abstract to the pressing need throbbing against the pillow. "Hey, don't feel bad. We've both caught each other wanking, so what's to be ashamed about?"

I tried to respond, but my conversational facilities seemed to have died, and I just stood there with my mouth open like an idiot. Dawn trailed her hand downwards, curling around my chest hair, until she grasped hold of the pillow and gently set it aside. My dick sprang up eagerly.

"My. I thought this looked big, but I wanted to check from close up..."

"Dawn, we shouldn't--" She leaned into me and pressed her lips against mine. My lips, already open for a rebuke, let her tongue slip past into my mouth. The feeling of her young body, the swell of her curves pressing against me. I stopped talking for a while.

She pushed me back on the bed, my shaky legs offering no resistance. With a few quick, casual motions, Dawn pulled her shirt over her head and unclipped her bra, leaving them in a pile on the floor. I couldn't help but stare at her breasts, those full half-globes mounted by big red aureolae and dusky brown nipples. Her body was voluptuous, the kind of classical curvy beauty that had (I was suddenly convinced) been unfairly discarded for twig-thin blondes. The all-over thickness was nowhere more concentrated then in her heavy, hanging breasts that swayed just a little as she strode towards me.

Dawn dropped down to a kneel suddenly and sucked my cock into her mouth. I sat straight up with surprise. There was no prelude -- she was eagerly bobbing her head up and down on my shaft, applying the sweetest of suction with her hot and talented mouth. There was a certain fine swirl of the tongue that she did as she withdrew that made me gasp out loud. Grinning, Dawn dove back down, swallowing most of my length and acquainting the underside of my cock with the rough texture of her tongue, then pulling off and doing that same move around the head. Once again, I cried out. I was, it seemed, an easy toy to play with.

With her hands Dawn ran over my thighs, stopping to cup my balls, but only shortly before moving onto other parts of my body. It was the same motions my own hand had been making moments before, but of course no matter how much of a maestro of self-pleasure I was, having this half-naked girl between my legs sucking along the side of my cock intensified the sensation incredibly.

Dawn spat onto my cockhead and rubbed the saliva up and down my shaft, lubricating it more. The motions of her hand were smooth but frantic as she jacked me off. With her other hand she scratched the underside of my balls, shifting a knuckle up towards my anal entrance. I felt as though I was going to blow any second now, spurting in the talented hands of my smug-looking but sexy housemate.

I shifted away, moving back onto my bed. Some kind of conscience, or reluctance, or desire not to flatter her by coming in her hands, made me retreat. "Dawn..."

"What's the matter? Not into ass play? That's cool, but you're missing out on a lot."

"That's not it. We... we shouldn't be doing this." It was hard to put together coherent, much less persuasive sentences, especially when my cock was screaming mutiny at me. But I remembered that there had been a reason I didn't want to have sex with her. If only I could remember what it was.

"You're right."

"I am? I mean... of course I am."

Dawn stood up and straddled my thighs. "Yeah. We should definitely be fucking." I wanted to protest further, but I would be speaking right into her chest, those heavy, full orbs dangling right in front of my face... it wouldn't hurt to touch them, I thought. Suck on one for a little bit. After all, it was only fair after what she had done to my unmentionables. What goes around comes around.




Saying Stay Ch. 01



I felt her shiver as I sucked her right breast into my mouth, or at least as much as my lips would permit. The warm flesh topped with spring sweat was like a delicacy to me, and I ran my tongue around her nipple, more stiff granite than a part of her soft swelling body, and those big veiny aureolae. Dawn hissed with appreciation at the oral attentions, and did the same when I moved to her other breast. Part of me just wanted to bury myself in the valley between her cleavage and rest there for hours, but Dawn had other plans.

My cock was brushing up against the rough denim of her pants, but she was quickly shifting, pulling the jeans down around her ankles. Of course, the two of us balanced at the edge of the bed was rather precarious, and we were soon tumbling down in a crazy twirl of body and limbs. Somehow she managed to get her remaining items of clothing off and wind up on top at the same down, pinning my arms down.

Dawn leered down at me like a lioness. Her nude body fulfilled all the promises her clothed one had made. Between her legs was a tuft of dark hair, marking the entrance of her womanhood and pointing straight at my erect cock. She drew a condom that she had in her pocket and rolled it down across my dick, raising a coy eyebrow as she did so. And then, in an almost matter-of-fact manner, she sank herself down on me.

Dawn let out a long breath as her pussy engulfed my cock, like she had been holding it until this moment. Maybe she only felt truly relaxed with a cock in her. Her cunt was warm and shockingly tight, seeming to almost mold itself to the contours of my cock. She slowly lowered herself more and more onto my shaft, each successive half-notch cranking up the pleasure in my body until I was about to burst. Finally, when our pelvises touched and I was fully inside her, I had to let it out.

I let out a long primal moan. "Aw fuck that feels good."

Dawn giggled. She was a short girl -- probably not much more than five feet -- so as our sexes entwined her head lay against my chest. "See, I told you we should be doing this."

"Dawn, from now on I'm going to do everything you say."

"Oooh, that sounds fun. I'm gonna hold you to it."

She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, squatting on my cock, and began to fuck me in earnest. Her humping motions were short but quick, and with every thrust her pussy clamped down on my cock and sent a jolt of pure ecstacy through my system. I tried to thrust back, but Dawn was firmly in the driver's seat, and enjoying every minute of it. As her hips pulsed against mine I could hear her whispering a stream of obscenities and occasionally quivering with the joy coursing through her.

She leaned back to ride me fully, sitting up on my cock. From this angle I penetrated even deeper within her, her warm and needy cunt swallowing up as much as it could. Dawn brought herself down upon me in desperate, forceful thrusts. Her heavy breasts bounced along with her ponytail, and her whole body in motion was almost hypnotizing. I lifted up a hand to grab one of those tits, then trailed it down her side to the junction between her legs.

When I strummed her clit she positively squealed. Her tight insides were rapturous, but somehow her cry of pleasure gave me a special, different kind of bliss. I continued rubbing her pearl, and she just kept bringing herself harder and harder down on my cock until she threw herself back further and let out a cry. "Oh fuck.... oh fuck, Mike, I'm gonna come..."

The view was gorgeous, looking up through the valley between her breasts to see her face pinched with pleasure. She let out a loud "FUCK!" grinding back and forth around my hardness as she quite visibly came. That was it. All of my hesitancy and passivity was gone, and I was a pure animal, one of two in that bed rutting barbarically.

I threw myself forward, pinning Dawn against the edge of my bed. The expression on her face was a mixture of shock and elation as her orgasm was still coursing through her. I pressed her legs back until they were almost over her head and just started madly thrusting inside her. I was addicted to the steaming feel of her cunt, and nothing was going to stop me from having it. Dawn certainly didn't seem to be in the mood to do so, grabbing my back and encouraging me to fuck her harder. And I did so.

My orgasm came on me suddenly, and then I was spurting into the condom, my frenzy replaced by pure elation. I thrust weakly into Dawn a few more times, her body seeming like just a balled-up pile of warm flesh beneath me, and fell back. Dawn promptly rolled forward into a sitting position, looking like she had just woken up from a good dream.

"Damn," she said. "Who'd have thought you had a good lay in you after all, Mikey?"

"Dawn."

"What, you don't like Mikey?"

"It's just..." I felt a kind of post-orgasmic guilt I hadn't had since adolescent masturbation, or at the latest spurting prematurely against a teenage girlfriend. "I mean, I don't know if we should."

She crawled back up to where I was laying, my head against the pillow, and put a shushing finger over my mouth. "Shh. We can talk about it in the morning. Right now, get some sleep."

And so I did. Maybe I was just exhausted, or maybe I really was getting in the habit of doing whatever she said -- that seemed like an easy way to drift. But the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was Dawn putting her clothes back on, her ponytail swinging back and forth behind her like a dog's tail wagging.

--

I was woken in the middle of the night by a press of warmth by my side, interrupting a dream about a house like this but with a labrynth in the basement full of cackling witches in station wagons. Once my senses began to slowly return, I wondered if Dawn had come back for another round. The arm across my chest felt different from hers... leaner and harder, somehow more masculine.

I forced my eyes open and saw Simon laying beside me, looking at me with a bemused expression. He had climbed into my bed naked from the waist up, with a set of pyjama bottoms his only apparel.

"Jesus," I said. "Nobody here has any concept of personal space."

"You seem to have enjoyed that earlier," said Simon.

I realized that I was still nude, having been too tired out by the athletics with Dawn to throw on a pair of boxers before vanishing into sleep. I rushed for sheets, but of course I still hadn't unpacked them yet. So I ended up turning over to try and hide my dick, which really only made things worse.

Simon giggled. "It's okay. It's just a cock, man." He ran his hand along my back, tracing my spine from my shoulderblades all the way down to...

"Simon," I said not moving. "I don't want this to come out wrong but... I'm not gay."

"Well, neither am I," he said, petting my ass. His touch brought up guilty flares under my skin. I didn't feel repulsed, just kind of anxious -- the pit in my stomach was nerves, not nausea.

I rolled over to face him, deciding that he had already seen my cock by now, and at this rate so would everyone else in the house. "I mean, I don't like men. I'm flattered, really, but..."

His warm fist closed abruptly around my soft cock. "It's just a handjob, Mike. Don't overcomplicate things. Everything's gonna be alright." His voice was soft and somehow convincing.

I wanted to say something, to pull away like I knew I should -- like I had always pictured myself doing in this circumstance -- but I didn't move. There was something entrancing about the slow tug of his hand, molding my cock like clay into a harder shape. In a way I was shocked when I began to feel myself haraden in his hands, but the soft caress of his gentle fingers was a genuinely good feeling, as much as it sent that kind of dark panicked guilt, that of the pubescent classroom erection, to my head.

Simon ran his hand along my shoulders and my sides, as though he was appraising me for auction. He muttered something unintelligible but positive-sounding under his breath. My legs were shaking. My cock was as stiff as a steel bar.

He smiled softly and began stroking faster and more forcefully. My cock, still slick with Dawn's juices, let his hand glide along smoothly. Simon seemed like he knew all the things I did on my own -- stopping at the head to tug it with just a few fingers, running his thumb along the foreskin to spread my precum around, alternating between tight and loose grip -- and was repeating it to me. Girls never did those things. Despite myself, jolts of unadulterated pleasure were shooting through me. It felt... fun. Not wrong or weird, just fun.

I looked at Simon, my eyes travelling down from his exhilarated grin to his hard chest, the supple muscles pulsing with a kind of feline strength. It was a body I thought I could get used to, and certainly wasn't repulsed by. Of course, that may just have been because his hand was picking up speed on my cock, now rubbing it up and down with a determined goal.

I was on the edge, and shocked to find myself there. It felt vaguely uncomfortable to be in this position with another man and so turned on, but my cock was unconflicted, and at the moment it was the tyrannical ruler of my body and mind. I felt my orgasm amassing at the base of my dick, and knew that at this point it was unstoppable.

"Simon..." I said, testing out the unfamiliar name on my lips. "I'm about to..."

He nodded and shifted in a little. He took a long, slow lick of my nipple, a glimpse of wet heaven that made me realize why girls liked it so much when I did it to them. And then I was jerking and spurting in his hand, a soft cry escaping from my body. The first jet of cum hit Simon's chest, and the others stained my sheets.

Simon kissed me on the lips. "See, now that wasn't so bad, was it?" He scooped up the cum that had landed on his chest and licked it off his fingers. "Tasty. I swear, with mister-manly-hetero Josh being the only guy around, I haven't been with a man in a while."

I opened my mouth to protest that I too was "mister-manly-hetero", but I thought it would sound hollow at the moment.

He rolled out of bed. I could see that his pants were tented, but he made no more advances. "Good night, Mike. See you in the morning."

And I fell back asleep, vaguely wondering if this had all been a dream.

--

In the morning, I was at first disoriented, finding myself in a strange bedroom with a too-low ceiling staring down at me. It took me a moment to remember the move, and a moment more to remember last night's activities. They were still behind the nocturnal haze in my mind, but they were real -- the wet and sticky spots on my bed testified to that.

I slid a t-shirt on and staggered out to the downstairs washroom, only to find it occupied, the sound of a shower running. My head was heavy and I felt completely unable to face anyone right now, but my bladder insistently needed emptying. So I trudged upstairs. I tried to be stealthy, but the creak of the floorboards ruined any attempt at that.

On the ground floor, half of the house -- Simon, Julia, Padma and Dawn -- were sitting around eating breakfast, meditating over bowls of cereal or frozen waffles. When I came into view, they all turned to me and smiled, like creepy children in a horror movie.

"What?" I said.

"You know," said Padma. "Everyone comes in here saying they don't want any part of our weird free love stuff. And everyone changes their mind eventually."

"But you," said Julia. "I think you backtracked so quickly you broke the sound barrier."

I flushed with embarassment, but in their laughter -- and even my embarassment -- was a kind of acceptance. And I was beginning to think that maybe my initial repulsion to their ideas was unfair. After all, last night had been many things, but the foremost among them was pleasurable.

"It's just like I told you," said Padma. "You're going to fit right in."



Saying Stay Ch. 02



I was, it should be said, not much of a vegetarian cuisine guy. Hell, I wasn't really much of a cuisine guy at all. My dorm meals had all emerged from plastic cartons, cardboard boxes, and tin cans, all with instructions on the side. That is, when I wasn't scarfing down a burger or pizza at the first fast food place I came across. But I had a feeling that my first dinner for the house shouldn't come out of the microwave.

So I found myself standing over the stove, staring at a pot of rice. I had done up a quick garden salad and had got some chicken (free range, natch) which I would grill, but not until a bit more time had passed. Which didn't seem to be happening.

Dawn bounded into the kitchen. "How's it going, chef?"

"All right." I checked my watch. "I have to keep an eye on this rice... make sure it doesn't burn. The last time I tried to cook rice I ended up setting off the whole building's fire alarms and ruined my roommate's pot."

"Yeesh, nothing worse than wasted bud."

"I was talking about the pot that I was cooking with, Dawn."

She giggled. "You know, just my usual stoner humour. But seriously, they say a watched pot never boils. Why don't we go do something else?" She tugged at the low neckline of her tank top suggestively. She was already showing off her mountainous cleavage, and any more tugging might expose those glorious mounds to open air.

"I swear Dawn," I said. "You're going to wear me out." She had warmed my bed for the first few nights, even invited me up to her own bedroom on Sunday. I had begun to grow quite fond of her curvy, earthy body and her enthusiastic thrusts. Although she had left me alone last night, perhaps going back to her regular lover. I tried to suppress the feeling of envy, but it didn't go down easy.

Another laugh. "I meant go watch some TV or something. Geez, your mind goes straight to the gutter, doesn't it?"

"What can I say? You've warped me."

She leaned in and kissed me on the lips -- but it was only a brief kiss, nothing like the long wet eternity of sucking that we had done before. "Flattery will get you everywhere. But back to work. I want to eat your food first."

With that Dawn walked out of the room, her bubbly ass bouncing up and down on its own rhythm. I was hard again. I really needed to get control over that thing.

I lifted the lid and peeked into the rice pot. Nothing but a tower of bubbles, stacked on top of one another, but quickly vanishing when exposed to outside air. I didn't know whether that was good or bad, so I quickly put the lid back in place.

I heard a few footsteps heading downstairs, and the familiar loud voice of Julia. "I'm just saying, I don't care if the guy is secretly a raging queen. If he says he's straight, that's a no, and it's not your job to go around converting people."

Another voice -- Simon's. "See, you're not really understanding the issue about men and homosexuality..."

"Oh, don't mansplain things to me. I'm bi, and I don't go around trying to seduce straight girls."

"It's not the same thing."

The two turned a corner into the kitchen, and stopped abruptly. Their lips were sealed. I realized they must have been talking about me, particularly my late-night encounter with Simon on the first night, which hadn't been repeated since. "Speak of the devil, eh?" I said, trying to turn it into a joke.

Simon ignored the comment. "Hey Mike. Whatcha making?"

"Nothing much, really. Rice, chicken, salad. The big challenge is making enough for seven."

Julia walked over and popped a leaf of the salad into her mouth. "Too dry."

"Well, we have like seven salad dressings here for a reason," I said. "At least I hope we do."

She shrugged. "It still tastes like something from a chain restaurant. I mean, no offence."

"How could I possibly be offended by that?"

Julia's constant barbs still got to me, but she had a point. When the meal finally got to the table the rice was soggy (my terror of burning made me take it off the stove too early), the salad was plain, and the chicken undercooked. Nobody else seemed to mind, but Julia was snarking her way through the meal like she was Anthony Bourdain.

"Don't mind her," said Padma as she got up to collect the plates. She leaned in to whisper to me. "Julia's like a kid. When she makes fun of you like that, you know she's got a crush."

Somehow, I wasn't so sure.

--

When you had been in the house for a while, the outside world started to seem like a strange and sort of frightening place. It was bright and sunny, and everyone walked around with their clothes on. The loud advertisements and petty conversations seemed almost aggressively hostile. But still, one couldn't hole oneself out in a Victorian basement forever. These people were not so progressive that they didn't charge rent.

And so it was out into the real world, to search for a job.

At a posh Annex clothes store: "We're looking for someone who really fits our image." I was a six-pack and a steely gaze short of that.

At a data entry job, amidst the thunder of clattering keyboards: "Well, we are looking for someone with a bit more experience..." You can guess how that ended up.

At a sprawling electronics store: "Where do you see yourself in five years?", followed by a long, awkward silence.

I returned to the house exhausted and battered, and collapsed on the nearest couch. I felt like digging a hole, crawling into it, and never emerging.

Padma came over to lick my wounds. "You know, there's no reason to be upset," she said. "They were crappy jobs anyway. And look at it this way: you were lucky to get that many interviews, the way things are today. People want you."

"Nobody wants me," I said. "I'm a twenty-one-year-old with a BA in something useless and a few years of fast food experience."

Padma was silent for a little while. "Mike, what do you actually want to do? I mean, you can't plan on working customer service all your life."

I shrugged. "Why not? People do that."

"Not happy people." Padma sat down and let me rest my head in her lap. It sounds pathetic, but it was really comforting. "Just so you know, this isn't a come-on. I'm still allergic to dick."

I smiled. "Come on, baby. You give me a chance, I'll take you to the moon." She pinched me hard. "Ow!"

I was starting to understand why these people were always joking: because it was easier than answering those questions about the yawning future, about the life I still couldn't choose.

"You should talk to Julia about this shit," said Padma. "She might seem a bit frigid, but she actually thinks really deep about everything. Despite you and me, I think she's the philosopher queen of this house."

I wondered if Padma had temporarily lost her mind. "Julia? She just about bites my head off when I ask her to pass the salt. I'm not about to go to her with something like this."

"Just ask if you can borrow a book. She's got a lot of wisdom up in her library too. And don't be so harsh on her. She's good people. We all are, around here."

I wondered if Padma would ever stop telling me how great everyone around here was. I was hoping that soon she wouldn't have to tell me, that I would see what she saw in this bunch, but I wasn't holding my breath.

--

Still, I found myself outside the hallway to Julia's room, just about wearing a hole in the carpet with my pacing. I wasn't sure how to approach her. I'd always had a hard time starting conversations, feeling as though I was forcing myself upon people. And I was sure she didn't want to see me, let alone lend me her stuff.

The door popped open, and Julia stuck her head through. "Are you going to come inside, or just hang out stalking me all night?"

"I wasn't stalking you!" I said quickly. "I was just heading back from the bathroom..."

"For the past ten minutes." She sighed. "It's okay. Come in."

At first impression Julia's room seemed to match the sophisticated impression she let on. The mature dark red walls poked out from the few gaps between the bookcases that lined the room. The nightstand was also covered with books, most of them with bookmarks sticking out of the middle of them. Most of the large room was taken up by a queen-sized bed and a meticulously clean computer desk. A subdued modern painting hang behind the computer.

All in all, a natural abode for an angry intellectual. Well, except for all the porn.

It took a moment to notice, but when you did it was staggering. Half of the shelves were made up entirely of smut, ranging from DVDs to magazines to racy erotic novels. Seemingly every combination of genders and sexual acts was represented -- sitting side by side were An Angel's Love written in a flowery font and Assman in Ass to the Future Part 3. It was enough to steam the glasses of even the most debauched person.

"Did you want something?" Julia said.

"You've, uh, got a lot of porn."

"A very astute observation," she said dryly. "Do you have an issue with that?"

I felt suddenly as though I was on trial, which I was beginning to register in my mind as the talking-to-Julia emotion. "Er, well, no... it's just unexpected. What with your, uh, political bent."

She shrugged. "Porn is the medium of our times. If we don't make our mark in it, we're abandoning it completely to the patriarchal assholes. And besides which, I like it -- watching it and making it."

"So they weren't joking about you and your porn friends."

Another shrug. I wasn't sure I had seen Julia seem so equivocal before. "I'm trying to break into the alt-porn world. I have a website, and I edit videos for other people... I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable." The last bit in a sarcastic, not-really-sorry tone I usually heard out of my teenage sister.

That was it. I said, a bit louder than I meant to, "No, it doesn't make me uncomfortable. Why does everything have to be a goddamn confrontation with you? I'm not trying to attack you or anything, but you feel this need to add in these little biting comments whenever I ask a question or say anything or breathe wrong. I'm just trying to learn about you guys and how you live, and I don't appreciate the sarcasm."

A brief pause. I felt bad, worrying that I had hurt Julia. Then she fired back. "Well jeez, I'm sorry, White Guy Mike. I'm sorry we haven't lined up to take your hand and carefully explain everything about ourselves to you. Clearly, we forgot our place."

"That doesn't have anything to do with--"

"I swear to Christ, what does Padma see in you? I mean, I know Dawn fucks anything that moves, but I expect Padma to at least have a little more sense."  "Jesus Christ!" Her face was red from yelling, and mine probably was too. "What did I ever do to piss you off? Do you just not like the way I look?"

"Basically, because to me you just look like another privileged slacker who's here to collect his free pussy. At least the last guy had a job."

Both of us had moved forward until we were right in each others faces, less than a foot between us. I theoretically towered over the petite Julia, but I was the one who seemed vaguely intimidated. We just stared at each other, trying to catch our breaths, and then we were kissing.

To be more precise, she kissed me, grabbing my head and pulling it down to meet her hot lips. Our bodies fell into familiar animal patterns and we stumbled over to the bed, our lips still locked. Her hands were rapidly unbuttoning my shirt.

"Wait," I said, breaking away from her. "I thought this only happened in movies."

"What, sex?" said Julia.

"No, the whole arguing-to-sex thing... I mean, who does that?"

Julia tossed off her shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra underneath it. Her torso was thin and lean, and her breasts small and pert, riding proudly up on her chest. I found myself holding my breath. "I do. Just because I'm mad at you doesn't mean we can't do it. Hell, it usually makes it better."

I was still hesitant. Some how I felt like I was giving into her. She threw herself onto the bed and opened her jean-clad hips wide, making the invitation as clear as she could. "Now Mike, you can fuck me, or you can go back to your room and jack off like a pussy. What's it going to be?"

That was it. I was discarding my clothes as fast as I could, and so was she. There was more skin than I could take in, all of it pale white save for the tattoos that littered her lithe youthful body. Her pussy was shaved clean -- a shame, as I had been wondering what her real hair colour was. As soon as I tugged my underwear down around my ankles my cock sprang up, hard as a steel bar.

Julia lay on the edge of the bed, still spread eagle, her cunt practically beckoning me inside. It was not a moment for foreplay. I approached her, my cock red and eager.

"Condom," she said. I gave her a wait, seriously? look. Julia pointed insistently at her bedside table. "Like I said, you should have got those tests."  Grumbling, I searched through the assortment of smut, sex toys and rare non-pornographic items that littered the nightstand until I found a big box of condoms, one of which I quickly applied to my erection. She didn't move, just kept her damp and eager pussy staring toward me. Still standing up, I sheathed myself in her with one sharp motion. She let out a long gasp.

"You think you can take this?" I said.

"Try not to cum too fast, loverboy," said Julia. Her taunt was probably more truthful. Her pussy was squeezing down on me in all kinds of wonderful ways, tight as a vice around my cock. Despite the abruptness of it all, she was warm and wet. As I stared down at her defiant expression, I knew that this girl could take -- and wanted -- the fiercest fucking I could give her.

So I gave it to her. I started thrusting hard and fast, and got harder and faster quickly. Every time I thrust in her pussy would grab at me with its warm hunger, not wanting to let go. I grabbed Julia's legs and pulled them back as I thrust forward, managing to impale her on the full length of my cock. Every time I felt my cockhead hit the end of her slippery cunt she would grunt out a small, aggressive "God!" or "shit!" or "fuck!"

Julia leaned back on the bed while thrusting her hips in the air, her body seeming to be just an extension of the motion of my cock. I saw the ripples through her skin as I thrust in and out, and she thrust back. At this angle the penetration was a bit shallower, so I picked up the pace, finally earning a squeal of pleasure out of her.

"You like that, eh?" I said, trying to keep a shit-eating grin off my face as I thrust into her quivering cunt.

She just muttered a vague noise of contentment began pulling herself horizontally along the bed. Confused, I moved with her, staying inside her as she dragged her way to her nightstand. She reached over and grabbed some kind of vibrator -- a white one plugged into the wall. With a flick of a switch it began to hum.

"What, am I not enough for you?" I said, half serious.

Julia pressed the bulbous shuddering head to her clit. "Just fuck me, asshole."

What else could I do. I grabbed her hips roughly and began slamming into her, trying to wring every ounce of pleasure out of her dynamite little body. I was insulted by the vibrator, but I had to admit that the tremors going through her pussy felt good even to me, and she was howling and moaning from the direct sensation.  We were both staring into each others' eyes as we thrust against each other faster and faster. The anger hadn't left us. If anything, it was intensifying, mixing with our arousal to form an edgy, narcotic sensation. The look on Julia's face was a challenging sneer only occasionally interrupted by her gasps of ecstasy. It was a war to see who would conquer the other, whatever that meant.

She came first, jerking and spasming as she pumped her hips around my cock and against the vibrator. "Fuck... fuck... fuuuck..." was her breathy litany. I was soon after, slamming my hips against hers with one last agressive grunt. My body physically shuddered as the thrill of release coursed through me and I filled the condom with my seed.

My legs felt as though they were about to give out, so I let myself fall on the bed beside Julia. In the post-orgasmic rush, I couldn't remember what we had been fighting about, but I was sure it was stupid. I draped an arm across her and offered her a genuine grin.

Julia backed up until her back was against the headboard and she was curled up into a little green-haired ball. She grabbed a box of cigarettes and a lighter from the mess at her bedside (seriously, what wasn't in there?) and started smoking.

"You smoke?" I said. I would have been less surprised if it had been pot, but tobacco was so uncool.

"Only after sex," Julia said. "I can be surprisingly old-fashioned sometimes."

We didn't say anything for a while. I guess I should be glad we didn't just pick up the argument where it left off. Instead, I looked at Julia, trying to take her in while she had her guard down. She looked kind of funny, smoke curling around her ridiculous sweat-soaked hair, her pale body stained red in several places from exertion. Her legs were jittery, and she was trying to keep a tight hold on them.

"What are you staring at?" she said.

"You. You look good."

"Yeah, well, so do you," said Julia through her cigarette. "You ever thought about being on screen?"

I was taken aback. "Wait, are you trying to recruit me for one of your movies?" She nodded. "What was this, an audition?"

"Nah, the audition comes later." She had a mischievous glint in her eyes. I gulped.

--

I was getting kind of cold. It was one of those chilly days you get in spring as a bitter reminder that winter will one day be back again. The house was poorly insulated, so all in all it was a poor environment to spend a long time lying on my bed naked.

"Are you almost finished?"

"Just a second," said Julia, adjusting the camera settings for the umpteenth time. "This thing is kind of fiddly."

I groaned and wondered how she had ever talked me into this. It sounded so simple when she described it, not really a big deal at all. Just jerk off on camera. What could be easier? But now that I was actually here, nude in my room in front of a fully clothed Julia armed with a handheld camera, I was starting to get cold feet. Cold dick might be more accurate. Cold everything, really.  "You know, I just remembered I was supposed to borrow a book from you."

Julia ignored me. "Okay, now the series is called 'Confessions'," she said. "So this is gonna be framed as a candid, personal moment."

"That I'm sharing with the entire Internet?"

"Yes. So, what I want for you is to confess something at the start. Something sexy, but also honest. Like a fantasy you've had for a long time but been afraid to admit, or something."

I blinked. I really didn't have any secret fantasies, at least not any that I was aware of. "Um.... I've always wanted to have a threesome. Like, with two girls."

"Mike, that's really, really boring."

I rolled my eyes. "Alright. I've always fantasized about eating a lemon tart off a Fijian lady's shoulder while we were both dressed in lime-green PVC catsuits."

Julia was not amused. "Okay, maybe the fantasy thing isn't working. How about your first time?"

I thought about it, then winced. "My first time. Me and Cindy Richards. It was in this old abandoned house that the whole school used for sex. It was the first time, for both of us. On my 16th birthday. We both got our clothes off and I just stared at her naked for a while. It's like, I'd spent the past three years watching porn every night, but I had never thought that kind of thing could happen on the other side of the screen. Then we both got kind of cold so we cuddled up together and I just kind of shoved it in her. She was dry and it hurt her, hurt me a bit too, but I kept going until I came a minute later. We broke up a couple weeks after that."




Saying Stay Ch. 02



Julia mouthed "perfect" and made a jerking motion with her hand.

"What, you want me to jerk off after that?"

She nodded fervently. I grabbed my soft cock between my legs and started pumping. In its diminished size it could still fit entirely in my fist, although soon it would bloom into a much larger beast. As usual I ran my other hand around my body, rubbing my nipples and then my balls. I wondered if that would make me look effeminate on camera.

My usual fantasies cropped up. A threesome, then a foursome, then a full on orgy full of bouncing nubile girls. Old crushes, actresses, impossible biological freaks with tits bigger than their heads. The first porn video I had ever watched, more vivid and erotic in my head than it had ever been on my computer screen. The hazy memories of conquests passed. A nubile girl chained to the bed and at my mercy.

By this point I would usually have been squirting, but I was only half-erect in my hands, and getting softer. I tried to focus on all of the familiar stimuli, and yet...

The camera with its blank black stare. The memory of poor Cindy and her squeaks of pain. Julia and the wry look on her face, like I was some kind of vaguely entertaining viral video.

I stroked my cock faster and faster, trying to put the circumstances out of my mind. I closed my eyes and more recent images popped into my head. Dawn, quivering from her secret orgasm on the first day, and then bouncing up and down on my cock. Simon demurely jacking me off. Julia fucking me with all the anger she could muster. But nothing worked.

"I can't do this."

I expected Julia to yell at me, or make some snide joke about my impotency. But instead she just turned off the camera and set it aside. "Okay."

"You're not mad at me?"

"Mike, I have plenty of reasons to dislike you. Most recently I've discovered I dislike you because you own the Goo Goo Dolls' greatest hits CD and three Tom Clancy novels."

"Hey, the books were presents from my right-wing uncle."

A faint smile crossed Julia's face. "Sure they are. But I will never dislike you because you don't want to do something sexual. We're all about consent around here."

I seemed to remember a lot of pressure, although maybe from another perspective that was seduction. Still, I was glad to hear the promise. Maybe Julia wasn't such a monster after all.

"Thanks. You aren't going to put this video online or anything now, right?"

Her grin grew wicked. "Not unless I get really mad at you."

I gulped.

--

It was a quiet Saturday morning. Most of the others had gone out pub-hopping the night before, but I had opted out, feeling a little sick. It was a quiet morning, with that soft morning-after haze occupying the whole building. It was actually quite enjoyable.

I ventured upstairs for breakfast. I passed by the living room, where Dawn, Josh, Julia, Simon, Padma and a few people I didn't know were all asleep in a nude tangle of limbs. The room reeked of sex. I wasn't sure whether to regret or be glad I hadn't gone out with them.

In the kitchen Ellie was sitting over a cup of coffee. She was wearing sweatpants and an old university T-shirt -- the first time I had seen her out of a business suit. I cautiously waved hello as I headed for the cupboards.

"Hey Mike."

I started pouring myself some cereal. "Looks like a wild night."

She shrugged. "Standard weekend, really. Tonight the heap of bodies will probably be about twice as big."

"I swear, you guys are like rock stars."

Ellie giggled. "I thought that at first too. But in the end, they're just normal people who get laid a lot."  There was a peaceful silence as I chewed on my cereal and Ellie sipped her coffee. "So," she said. "I heard you and Julia were trying to make a movie."

"Oh, god." I winced hard. "Is that all around the house now."

"There aren't really any secrets here," said Ellie. It was funny, because just about everything about her was a secret to me. She was a pinstripe wall, a bastion of professionalism that I just couldn't reconcile with the gang of libertines. The line about her being the mom wasn't enough for me. Still, I didn't want to pry.

What had we been talking about? The movie. "Well," I said. "I just couldn't do it. Physically and mentally."

"I know what you mean," said Ellie. "Julia keeps trying to drag me in front of the camera, but I won't do it. I imagine these long comment threads on the Internet about how old and ugly I am." She shivered. "And I guess for guys there's performance anxiety too. You can't fake it."

I felt like defending myself and my performance for some reason. "Well, you know, I read somewhere that there are only like a dozen male porn stars working, because so few guys can handle it."

"Have you seen Julia's video yet?"

"Which one?"

"The one she did of herself." My ears practically twitched with interest. "It was the first one of her Confessions videos. She said she thought it was only fair that she know what it was like on the other end of the camera -- put her money where her mouth is, so to speak. You should watch it. If you want to understand her, I mean."

Privately I doubted whether Julia would ever become comprehensible to me, and I severely doubted that watching her masturbate would help much. And it wasn't some magic key that opened up her mind for me and explained who she was and why in a neat schematic diagram. But it was a piece of a puzzle, a puzzle that probably had no defined sides or end point.

--

The video, as I watched it while clutching the arm of my chair and sporting a nervous erection:

Julia is laying nude on the bed in her room, albeit a sparser version of her room than the one I was used to. Her hair is dark red and hangs down to the nape of her neck. Her tattoos are absent, obviously not yet inscribed. The video is dated a couple years ago on her website, but despite all the changes its still clearly her. The camera shakes a little, but mostly stays still, at the same distance and angle. I feel like I'm in the room there with her.

"I grew up in a small religious community," Julia said into the camera. There was something different about her voice -- it was softer and meeker than I was used to. "We were like Mennonites, only douchier. I grew up in long prairie dresses from the 1800s, learning that girls were for sewing and cooking and that if you were good enough at those, a lucky man would marry you and do you the privilege of letting you wait on him for the rest of his life.

"I knew this girl. Let's call her Stacy. Stacy was the one who was always causing trouble. She would always wince whenever she sat down, because her ass was always sore from spanking. I was a demure little girl who followed the rules, but I liked Stacy. She had a sort of allure.

"When I was sixteen, they caught Stacy and I kissing out behind my family's barn. I got beaten so bad I could hardly see. That's where I got this."

Julia turned over to present her back to the camera. There was a long scar stretching along her lower back, an angry red line. When we had fucked, I had never noticed it -- she had been on her back the whole time.

"That night, as I lay on my front wondering if the pain was ever going to go away, I started thinking. I asked myself why it was that, if god thought kissing a girl was so sinful and wrong, he made it so enjoyable. And then I started wondering why we always had to suffer and deprive ourselves of things to be holy. And you know, once you start questioning what you've grown up with, it's hard to stop.

"Stacy and I ran away a few months later. We were together for a while as a couple, but we broke up. Too many memories and too much weight."

Another pause, as if Julia was trying to bring herself to a conclusion. "I still believe in God, and I'll tell you why. That feeling of orgasm... it's so perfect, and it's something that's so completely free. You don't need money to have sex -- you don't need anything, not even another person. There's no tyrant in the world that can take the pleasure of masturbation away from you. You just achieve bliss by yourself, so easily. You get something out of nothing. And that's the equation which capitalism can't deal with, which all of the terrified rulers over the course of time haven't been able to deal with. It's a miracle."

She licked her fingers and touched them to her protruding pussy lips. "These videos are my way of preaching, then. And this one is my communion."  Julia began to caress her cunt, ever so slowly, two fingers rubbing back and forth against her lips. Her other hand roamed across her body, taking gentle care to caress her from thigh to hip to shoulder, making only a momentary stop at her breasts. She experimentally clenched one tit in her hand, and then released it. The hand left a red mark on her pale skin.  It was almost glacially slow, moving to a rhythm that only Julia knew, but I couldn't look away from it. I didn't even want to masturbate, I just wanted to watch. Her fingers seemed to have picked up speed from the beginning, but it was so gradual that I hadn't noticed at the time. Her eyes were shut and her expression neutral. She slid the tip of her middle finger inside herself, the two fingers around it caressing the lips like palace guards. Her left hand had lost its earlier subtlety and was grabbing at her breasts like a teenage boy, handling them roughly and forcefully but sending shivers through the flesh around them.  And then, at last, almost reluctantly, a low moan of pleasure escaped her lips.  From there on it was less meditative and more frantic. Julia slid another finger into her pussy and began fucking herself with more and more force. With her spare hand she rubbed her clit fiercely. Her little breasts were red and hard, nipples pointed straight up toward the ceiling, and her skinny body was shaking with each thrust of her fingers. Her moans travelled the scale, getting more and more high pitch and transitioning into grunts and curses.  The orgasm came upon her like awakening from a dream. She sat straight up and yelled "SHIT!" with a tone of amazement in her voice. Her face was scrunched up as pure feeling shot through her, ugly yet beautiful.  Julia fell back and let out a long, heavy breath, as if trying to expel all that violent passion from within her body. She rolled onto her side and looked at the camera, which at last finally moved in to study her red, blissed out face. She wore a rare genuine smile.  "So remember," she said, still breathing heavily. "The next time you feel lonely or lost or afraid... just get on your back and pray."  And so I did.



Saying Stay Ch. 03



"I feel like I'm in gym class again," I said as I tugged the blue mesh vest over my t-shirt. In school we had called these weird holey garments "pinnies" for some obscure reason (there were never any pins involved), and I had no idea what the official name was, if there was one."

"I know," said Josh. "Isn't it awesome?"

I looked at him in disbelief. Of course, he would have been that most hated creature in the high school bestiary: the jock. He even managed to make the pinnie look not ridiculous as it barely managed to hold in his muscular frame.

"Oh come on Mike," said Dawn. "This will be fun. Besides which, we make such a big thing about being more in touch with our bodies, and this is another way to do that. I mean, not that the other ways aren't great, but..."

"You know," I said. "I think there are some parts of my body I could stand being out of touch with. Like the pain nerves."

Josh had a weird glint in his eye. "Those are great too! Come on, man, you're gonna love it."

Dawn clapped her hands together, as manic as usual. "All right! Let's play soccer."

It was a nice day to be outside. I'd give them that much. The early summer sun cast its benevolent rays down on the park, making every glade of grass that perfect shade of emerald, and every newborn leaf sparkle. If there was ever a perfect day for the co-ed weekend soccer league, this was it. I was the newly minted member of the blue team, which apparently changed its name every few months but was currently called the Kicking Zombies. Our opponents in yellow, the Golden Gryphons, stared across the field at us with smiling menace.

At first I just tried my usual gym-class tactic of hanging around in the back, claiming to be playing defense, but the actual defensive players all urged me forward, and soon enough I was exhausting myself chasing after that elusive black-and-white ball.

I stopped to squat and pant for a moment, sweat running down my face. My legs felt heavy and warm, like they had burning coals strapped to them. Everyone else around me was grinning. How were they happy? Did they find this fun?

And then the ball arrived at my feet, completely by accident. For a brief moment, that I'm sure was a lot shorter than it seemed in my mind, everyone from both teams looked at me, looked down at the ball, and then looked up at me again. And then they were all charging towards me, a surging mass of humanity, and I was running the other way.

My legs kicked the ball forward unwittingly, furthering the chase. I was rushing down the field, driving the all-important ball in front of me. The goal loomed in front of me. With a start, I realized that I was doing it, I was playing the game, and I was winning, I was about to score for my team! Pride shot through my veins like a drug.

"That's our goal!" shouted one of the blue-clad defenders.

"What?" I stalled in the middle of the field, the ball momentarily still. And then came a pixielike woman sliding in between my legs, propelling the ball forward and into our home net. I tumbled backwards over her and her momentum, rolling a couple times in a flurry of dirt.

Dawn bounded up to me, laughing. "Well, at least it wasn't quite an own goal."

There was a shooting pain in my ankle. Instinctively, I clutched it, which only made the injury hurt worse. The ground was hard against my back, and the sun shone directly in my face, but for all that I really didn't want to get up.

The other players began crowding around me, including the petite woman that had dropkicked the ball out from under me. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Ankle?" I said, gesturing to the offending body part.

"Okay, I think we might have found the world's worst soccer player," said Dawn as she offered me a hand up.

She and a couple of the others carried me ot the nearest bench. Josh pulled the shoe and sock off my hurt foot, a process that caused me to cry blue murder as pain shot through my leg. This was not exactly the kind of communing with my body that I had been hoping for.

"It's just twisted," said Josh. "Not too badly, either. Somebody get me some ice!"

"I am so sorry," said my inadvertent injurer. "I didn't mean to do anything, I just wanted to do something cool... I was thinking in the moment. I'm sorry."

"Dude, that was like a chop block," said Dawn. "What did you expect to happen?"

I held up one hand, begging for peace. "It's okay. It was an accident." Maybe I would have been more upset if it wasn't a cute girl who was the one at fault. Dawn scowled, but stayed quiet.

When Josh applied the ice to my ankle it was like a blessing from heaven. Cool comfort enveloped me. The pain was still there, but sort of abstract and far away. Josh still had a stern look on his face, the kind of look I hadn't seen on him before. "We need to wrap this up properly so that it doesn't swell. Maybe we should take you home."

"I guess I'm out of this game, then," I said, trying my best to look sad.

"Dude, you're gonna be off your feet for two weeks," Josh said. "Sorry, but the way the ankle crumbles. Now let me see if any of these jokers have a decent first aid kit."

Dawn went off with Josh, and most of the rubberneckers dispersed, leaving me with the petite girl who had knocked me over. She had close-cropped black hair and a nose stud that glinted in the spring sunlight. "Like I said, I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking, heat of the moment..."

"Nah, it was a cool move," I said. "If I wasn't in so much pain right now, I would probably be high-fiving you over it. Besides which, as just demonstrated, I know a thing or two about getting an adrenaline rush and doing something stupid."

"You're really good at acting nice," she said. "Even when I'm sure you must be pissed."

"Thank you. I've worked very hard at that skill over the years."

She looked relieved, and stuck out her hand. "I'm Nina by the way. I guess this is a pretty shitty introduction, huh?"

"Mike. And I've had worse."

Nina dug her cell phone out from her gym bag. "Here, I want to make this up to you. I'll take you out for drinks. All on me, of course. That's if you can stand being around me."

"I think I could hold my nose long enough for free booze."

"Hey, if you want you can kick me in the shin a couple times too. Just so we're even."

We exchanged phone numbers. I remember thinking that I had done much more embarassing things for the sake of a date in the past. Nina ran off to rejoin the soccer game. Josh and I were out, so she crossed over to the other team to even up the numbers. Dawn also reluctantly got back to playing.

Josh came back with a fistful of medical wraps. "Got 'em. Now try and hold still, 'cuz this might hurt a bit."

"Josh? I am never making fun of your Kinesiology degree again."

He started looping the wrapping around my foot. "I'm gonna hold you to that, you know."

--

And that was how I found myself laid up in bed all week. Josh had procured some crutches for me that got me around the house when I needed to -- mainly at meal times -- but the old place wasn't exactly accessible to the disabled, a realization that caused my progressive-minded housemates no end of dismay.

I spent most of the week in bed with my laptop, killing time on the Internet, perhaps the best method of time-killing ever invented. In the back of my mind I was glad to have an excuse not to go out looking for a job. Everyone stopped in to pay their respects, so to speak. Padma and Julia mainly made fun of me for my athletic mishap, while I tried to swipe at them with my crutches. Julia did leave me some good porn, though, so I guess she meant well. Ellie made me chicken soup, and I didn't have the heart to explain to her the difference between a twisted ankle and a stomachache.

The strangest came when, in the midst of a riveting YouTube video, I heard my door being roughly and awkwardly pushed open. It was Josh, and he was on his hands and knees, scraggly brown hair hanging down and casting a shadow over his face. He was also entirely naked save for a leather collar around his neck, which was attached to at least that was currently being held by Dawn. She was wearing a black leather corset that clung tightly to her voluptuous body, her heavy breasts threatening to spill out. Her hair was done up in a bun and she had a stern look on her face that I had never seen in her before.

"Uh... hi guys," I said.

Dawn put a big leather boot on Josh's rear end, and he scurried forward across my bare floor until he was at my bedside. From here I could see the beads of sweat on his back and the tense quivering of his body that betrayed a mixture of fear and arousal. There was also a layer of criss-crossing fresh red welts that stood out on his back. I was completely baffled.

"Joshua here would like to say something to you," said Dawn in a cruel, condescending and entirely uncharacteristic tone. "Isn't that right?"

Josh bowed his head down even further. "Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, Mike. I let you get hurt. I've been a bad boy and I deserved to be punished."

It seemed to me that he hadn't let me get hurt any more than Dawn had, and she was holding the leash. "Um... it's okay Josh. All is forgiven."

"Oh it most certainly is not," said Dawn. "Joshua is going to receive quite the punishment for his failure."

Josh bowed his head like a dog. "Yes, ma'am."

Dawn put her foot on his back and ground the heel of her black leather boots into one of the welts. "Did I ask you a question, Joshua?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then why did you speak?"

Joshua whimpered. Dawn grabbed his leash and steered him around until he was heading out of the room. I could vaguely make out his erect cock hanging down between his naked legs. "I am so sorry for my servant's behaviour," said Dawn in that imperious voice that seemed so unlike her. "I promise you, it won't happen again. I will make it up to you somehow."

With Josh's back turned, Dawn gave me a wink and mouthed a thanks for playing along. The strange duo headed out of the room, leaving me at least momentarily distracted from the pain in my leg.

Before the door could even close Simon caught it and headed into my room, shaking his head. The injury had made me very popular indeed.

"Did you see those two?" I said, hoping that I hadn't hallucinated the whole thing.

"Who, Dawn and Josh?" said Simon. "Yeah. They mostly keep that kind of stuff down in the basement, but every once in a while they'll come up here. It's harmless enough, although I think Dawn's in it mainly for an excuse to wear black leather and not get laughed at."

"I don't understand it," I said. "I mean, I just can't see getting off on some girl insulting me and treating me like shit."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"Well, I've had plenty of girlfriends treat me like a slave, and I've never popped a boner from it, so I think that's one kink I don't have."

Simon sat on the edge of my bed, grinning warmly. "Oh yeah? As opposed to the kinks you do have?"

"Um..." I was frantically wishing for a way to take back the last couple lines of the conversation. "What did you come in here for anyway, Simon?"

He took a long stiff of my fermented aroma and wrinkled his nose. "Well, I was thinking you could use a sponge bath. Considering you can't use the shower, and it's been a few days and, well, the aroma is kind of wearing down our sympathy."

"Sorry, but the shower isn't the easiest in crutches."

"That's why I brought you this." Simon reached into his pocket and produced a disgusting dried-out sponge. He had a completely serious look on his face. Did he actually want to sponge-bathe me? How would that even work?

I tried to roll away and save myself from this degrading fate. Simon laughed. "Relax, Mike. It was only a joke."

I turned over to find that Simon was now laying down in the bed, disturbingly close to me. Everything was pressed together -- our chests, our noses, our knees. I was suddenly out of breath. "You know, you have a hell of a deadpan," I said, trying not to let the shakiness enter my speech.

"Thank you," said Simon. I could feel his hot breath on my cheek, provoking a strange mixture of discomfort and excitement. Suddenly that first night came back to me, that strange dreamlike handjob from the nymphish Simon. It hadn't been repeated, and I had halfway dismissed it as just a dream. But here he was, his face -- his lips -- inches from mine, and there was that disquieting arousal that pulsed within my ribcage, something that felt wrong but irresistible.

When I went to speak, I found my throat suddenly dry. "So, what did you really want?"

"Do I need to want something to come see you?" said Simon. He ran a hand across my short hair and under my ear, the latter spot suddenly seeming like the most sensitive spot on my body. "Surely you don't think I'm that mercenary." I couldn't stop staring at the soft pinkness of his lips, of the small strand of saliva that he broke when he opened them to talk.

In a way it was a natural position -- I had been here with girls numerous times before, a couple times in this very bed (although mostly that was with Dawn, who never dragged out the teasing this long -- or seemed to be teasing me so effectively just by her presence). There was an instinctual part of me that wanted to lean in and kiss Simon, to wrap my arm around him the same way he was doing to me. But then I felt the hardness of his muscled chest, dropped my eyes just slightly and saw the prickly field of a five 'o clock shadow, and felt something stiff swelling against my thigh through our clothes. 

I shifted back. "You're making it hard to stay in bed, you know."

Simon chuckled. "Really? That's not what people usually say."

I folded my arms across my chest, as if making a glyph to protect me from Simon and his strange magic that made me question things I had always known about my sexuality. He kept his distance, but continued talking. "Seriously man, you stink. If you want to take a shower, I could help you out."

"Like I said, I'll have to pass on the sponge bath."

There was a twinkle in Simon's eye that made some unknown organ inside me do flips. "Nah, I can just help you in and out of the stall, and keep you standing. Be a physical support as well as a moral one. Just think of me as a human crutch, one that's not going to get all soaked and soggy."

I weighed the idea. There was a part of my mind that was screaming at me for even considering the idea, insisting that I wasn't a fag and this wasn't something that I did. Of course, that part of me -- the superego, to crib from Freud -- was pretty much constantly indignant lately, and usually to little effect. I still wasn't sure about the strange mixture of attraction and repulsion I was feeling, but I could use a good shower. And despite his obvious fondness for seduction, I had a feeling that Simon wouldn't do anything that I didn't want.

It was just a question of what I wanted.

"Sure," I said, with a long exhalation, as if trying to purge all the uncertainty from me via the lungs. "I think Josh said that these bindings were waterproof."

"Cool," said Simon, trying and failing to contain his excitement. "I am at your service."

In a moment Simon was around the other end of my bedside, offering me a helping hand up. Being vertical rarely over the past couple days, the sudden shift brought a round of dizziness to me, but I was able to steady myself by leaning heavily on Simon, draping my arm over his opposite shoulder. I held my injured ankle, wrapped up in a virtual shoe of bandaging, up while I stood on one leg and let Simon lead me to the bathroom. I had been in here before, on my crutches to use the facilities, but I didn't want to see how the wooden instruments warped under the shower's water.

"All right," said Simon, all business. "Let's get you undressed."

"I knew you had an ulterior motive," I said. Simon bent down and let me sit on the edge of the tub.

He reached down and unbuttoned my jeans. "I can do it myself," I said.

"Just sit back and let yourself get helped already," said Simon. He instructed me to lift my legs up, which I did with some difficulty, and tugged my pants and boxers down in one smooth motion. It felt strange, like I was a little kid being helped into (or out of, as the case may be) his big boy pants.

"Wait," I said. "I need to pee."

Simon helped me limp over to the toilet. My dick, half-erect but shrinking, sat their like a useless piece of vestigial flesh. Simon stared at it, a faintly amused look on his face.

"Well, I can't do it with you watching me."

"All right." Simon turned his back. His presence was still disruptive, but I managed to get a trickle of the pressure in my bowls out. I turned my head to find that Simon was disrobing in the meantime. His shirt was already on the floor, and he was slipping out of his pants as I watched.

I opened my mouth to say something, but what got out was only a weird strangled noise, as that happened to be the moment Simon turned around. He was a slender guy, but he had a surprisingly well-developed chest, and abs you could bounce a quarter off. I reasoned in my head that I didn't have to be gay to appreciate an attractive guy when I saw him -- I mean, appreciate that he was attractive, as in knowing it, not as in appreciating his body in a sexual way. Of course.

"What, you didn't think I was gonna go in the shower with you and get my clothes wet?" Simon said as he peeled off his underwear. His cock was thick, heavy, and uncircumcised -- it didn't seem to belong on Simon's sleek, almost effeminate body. Despite this, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. He caught me staring with a wry grin. "I know, it's pretty, but we need to focus on cleanliness here."

"You know, maybe I should see if Dawn or someone can do this."

Simon sidled up to me and helped me up off the toilet as I undid my shirt. His naked skin against mine was like an electric shock. "Dawn's too busy disciplining a naughty slave. Now come on. Let's get in the tub."

Getting my injured foot over the edge of the tub was a challenge, which required Simon to lift me up practically like he was carrying a bride over the threshold. Like I said, the guy is surprisingly strong. The blast of cold water that greeted us only calmed our fervour for a moment, and then that strange nervous crackling feeling between us was back. As the water turned warmer I could feel my cock stir, and thought I saw Simon's doing the same. (Once again, I told myself to stop looking at his cock, but my eyes wouldn't listen.)

Simon moved around behind me, still somehow supporting my weight. His cock pressed up against my ass cheek, making me shiver. I realized that I had perhaps never been as close to another man before, and certainly not while the both of us were naked. It wasn't really comfortable, but I couldn't push away without falling and hurting my ankle more.

How did I keep getting into these situations?

Simon's hand emerged from behind me lathered up in liquid soap, and at that moment I wished I had gotten the bar kind. His hands roamed all over my chest and into my armpits, up to my neck and face, down to my stomach. Simon practically massaged the soap into my skin and watched as the shower water cast it away. I couldn't help but appreciate the sensation. Simon seemed to take especial care in soaping up the area around my nipples.

I tensed up as I felt his hands going lower, now armed with more soap. Simon carefully cleaned my thighs, but instead of going for my now stiff erection, he went down further. I found myself moaning -- with pleasure? With disappointment? -- as he ran his hands over my legs, letting the sudsy water drip down onto my bandaged foot. Simon kept me propped up by ducking down and throwing my arm over his shoulder. Our bodies were wet and hot and slid together with great ease.




Saying Stay Ch. 03



"There," said Simon, his voice husky. "I think I've washed everything."

"You missed one thing," I said quietly. I wasn't talking about my back.

"Oh? What did I miss?"

I didn't want to respond to his coy voice, didn't want to identify my desire. Somewhere in my mind there was a difference between a guy jacking you off in the shower and asking a guy to jackk you off in the shower. As much as I begrudged Simon for his advances, it was much easier going along with him than vocalizing the desires I had a hard time admitting to myself.

"Well, I can't help you out if you don't tell me what I missed."

I couldn't say it. I just couldn't.

"Is it your cock?" Simon was hard against me now. I could feel it.

I nodded, slowly but unmistakably.

"Well why didn't you say so? We've got to keep that clean." The first few strokes were with the addition of soap, actually cleaning the foul-smelling organ. But that pretence could only last so long. The soap fell away into the warm water and then there was just me and the guy who was briskly stroking my cock.

It was an exhilarating sensation, the kind of quick and dirty pleasure that was utterly addictive. Simon's grip was different than mind, but he seemed like he had the same experience with stroking my cock (or at least a cock), and his devotion to onanism was paying off with incredible sensations. Of course, this was so much more than masturbation, with the independent hand and the feel of another man at my back constantly surprising me. And when Simon pinched the head of my cock between his fingers... I almost came right there.

For the moment, my anxieties about my sexualities were banished, and I was a creature of sensation alone. The water made Simon's increasingly agressive strokes a little uncomfortable, but it was that slight amount of pain that seemed to multiply the pleasure. He leaned into me closer, somehow still supporting my weight, and licked the side of my neck.

That was it. I shuddered as cum spurted out of my cock, landing in white streaks across the wall of the shower. Simon kept slowly milking it as it deflated, drawing out every ounce of pearly white juice he could. He then held out his hand palm-up, as if making an offering to the carnal gods, and watched my cum dissolve and race into the shower drain.

We were all over each other as we staggered out of the shower. Orgasm hadn't dimmed my fervour, although I was starting to feel those old anxieties beating at the walls again. I pressed my body against Simon as we kissed, and it was as though our forms were meant to be together, the grooves of our chests falling into complete alignment, our cocks almost intertwining. He tasted good -- wet and juicy, like summer fruit. I separated him briefly, and almost fell, but Simon caught me by the arm and pulled me back up. I felt a twinge of pain in my ankle, and was sure that Josh would be scolding me later, but at the moment I didn't care.

We stumbled back into my bedroom, and he guided me back to my bad. And there we were again, minus the clothes, leaving a dripping trail all across my room. Our bodies were wet and slippery as we grappled on the bed. I was going to do it, I realized. I was going to have sex with another man.

No, not just some abstract other man. Simon, this gorgeous young specimen that I felt privileged to have my hands on.

I found myself kissing my way down his torso, flicking my tongue into his belly button. It was like with a girl, save for the breasts. And then I reached the major difference.

Simon's cock stood erect inches from my face. It shouldn't be a big deal, I knew. I should just stick it in my mouth. By logical standards, I was definitely past the point of stringent heterosexuality. But the cock loomed enormous and unappetizing in front of me. And then suddenly the doubts crashed through the mental walls built up by Simon's touch, and this other man's penis was revolting.

I tried to rally myself around, but my previous state of mind was gone, and I was now finding even Simon's earlier attentions disquieting. He was looking down at me, my head hanging still between his legs, his anticipation slowly transforming to confusion, and then to disappointment.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I can't. I just... I can't."

Simon drew up his feet and sat cross-legged on the bed. "It's okay." His cock throbbed insistently, but he was doing his best to be understanding. "We can take it slow."

I stared intently at the bedspread. "You must think I'm so selfish right now."

"I don't. I think you're trying hard to get over something, and right now you haven't done it yet, but you're working on it... and when you get past that wall, I'll be on the other side waiting for you."

It was clear as mud. Simon redressed both of us and left, giving me a pat on the shoulder and telling me to get better soon. My ankle, which I had been more or less ignoring in all the confusion, was throbbing hard and recriminating me for my reckless activity. I wasn't sure what I had been thinking. I mean, I was straight. I had always been straight. It wasn't that I had anything against gay people, I just hadn't even thought about being one of them.

In other words, I was a confused, pained, and generally miserable form laying prone on my bed for a good long while.

--

Once again, the Internet's seemingly endless wonders had been exhausted, and I found myself watching once-funny YouTube videos for the tenth time in a row. If there was a hell, then I was certainly going to it, and I was afraid it might look a bit like this -- boredom, malaise, but nowhere to go and no way to go there. Or maybe that would just be purgatory.

I mentioned the boredom once in an off-hand conversation with Padma, and the last thing I knew Josh was barging into my room, with a big flatscreen TV cradled in his arms. "Hey man. I heard you were going stir-crazy in here, so I thought I would set up my entertainment centre in here."

I've never liked people who called their TV-setup an "entertainment centre", but I wasn't about to split hairs here. At this point, any kind of amusement was like water in the desert. "You don't have to do all this," I said, hoping that he would be unconvinced.

"Nah, this is nothing," said Josh. "Hang on, I'm gonna grab some games. I'll get you set up on some Mass Effect and you won't be moving from here even after your leg gets better."

A minute later Josh came back in carrying his Xbox, a tangle of cords hanging off the back and a small stack of games perched precariously on the top of the console. I felt a little bad watching him labour without helping, but my ankle felt like lead at this point.

"I will warn you," said Josh. "I'm gonna be in here watching the UFC special on this thing tonight. Other than that, it's all yours."

"Is this the only TV in here?"

"Yeah, I own it from my last place," said Josh. "Julia doesn't want the idiot box in the house, but don't think I don't hear her watching Mad Men on the computer in her room. And then there's her whole porno thing, which is apparently less uncouth than watching a TV show. It actually works out pretty well for me... anytime someone wants to watch something, they have to barter with me. I haven't done dishes in months."

"And now you're giving me this power?" I said.

"Ah, but with great power comes great responsibility. Do you accept a handjob from Dawn for letting her watch Real Housewives of Wherever, knowing that it'll torture you later? What happens when Simon and Padma both want the TV at the same time? These are the dilemmas that are gonna torment you."

I couldn't help but laugh. "You should be thanking me for taking it off your hands."

"Let's not get carried away here."

I paused. As much as I liked joking around with Josh, there was a four-hundred-pound elephant in the room dressed in leather. "Um," I said softly. "Can I ask you about something?"

"Is it the dom/sub thing?" he said, without even looking up from the tangle of wires he was trying to thread through to their appropriate mates.

"Yeah... your relationship with Dawn. It's not... it's like, I'm okay with it, I just don't get it. I never imagined a guy like you enjoying being abused and ordered around." After I said it I held in my breath and hoped fervently I hadn't offended him.

Josh grinned just a little bit. "I don't get it either."

"Huh?"

"It's like... I guess if you want to play shrink you can come up with all kinds of reasons for why I like being Dawn's sub. Like, Julia says to me that since I'm such a brute in real life I enjoy having that power taken away... although I dunno if I'm really a brute. Maybe it has something to do with my mother. But I don't worry myself about shit like that. I mean, having Dawn call me scum and whip me is hot as hell, and I don't know why and I don't really care. You can really freak yourself out worrying why you are who you are."

He said all of this casually, without the confessional pretensions that Julia had when she was talking about her sexuality. I wasn't sure how to respond. "I guess so. Is it just with Dawn?"

"Well, Padma doesn't want to touch me, Jules does but doesn't like to admit it, and Ellie's too sweet and wholesome to hold a flogger. So right now it's just a thing between me and Dawn." Josh finished shoving all of the pins and other metal attachments into the right sockets and triumphantly turned on the TV. The bright blue screen made him frown. He quickly turned it off and went back to fumbling with the cords.

"I mean, were there girls before her? Doms, I mean." I was still getting used to all the strange terminology these people used.

Josh cast me an askew glance over his shoulder. "What is this, the porno interview?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm just... curious, you know. But you don't have to answer. We can talk about sports or games or whatever you want."

"Nah, I just find it kind of funny. Maybe you want to get in on this."

I actually gave it some consideration. I didn't think I would like being dominated -- or doing the dominating -- but then again, I was discovering new vistas of my sexuality all the time. The shower encounter with Simon had certainly demonstrated that. Maybe, in the heat of the moment, I would find a taste for black leather after all.

"Like I said. I'm just curious."

"Well, tell you what," said Josh. "Dawn's been wanting to work you into a scene with us, and I think your curiosity will be satisfied a lot more if you get to see it up close and personal. You mind if we stop by a little later on?"

"You already did."

Josh whacked the top of the television set, as if hoping to abuse it into working. "That was just a visit. This would be more like... playtime."

"Uh huh. Mind getting more specific?" I said. It wasn't that a little curious -- hell, I was a lot curious -- but I didn't want to end up in a gimp suit.

"Kind of a cuckold scenario, I guess," said Josh. "You would be the other man. I would take most of the punishment -- all you really need to do is fuck Dawn, and I know for a fact you like doing that."

"How could you be a cuckold? Isn't it like, free love around here?"

Josh finally gave the television set enough smacks in the right place to get it working. A crystal-clear image of some dumb manly man show popped in. "Success! And I dunno. It's like, sometimes it's hot to pretend things, even if it wouldn't be hot to live things."

"You know Josh," I said. "I used to think you were a big jock that was just here for the sex. But you're a bit deeper than I realized."

He shrugged. "Nah, I'm still a dumb jock here for sex. Liking weird sex doesn't make you any more complex or whatever. But don't tell that to Julia, okay?" Josh turned his head to the TV. "Aw sweet, I love this show. There's a clip of a guy getting his head blown off -- just wait a minute, they'll show it at the end..."

And that's how I spent a very pleasant afternoon with someone I wouldn't have given the time of day a month before. Josh wasn't really a secret genius, but I thought there was something to admire in him -- the brazen brute desire, the simplicity and the honesty. Even with my recent scarring sports experience, I was beginning to wonder if maybe the jocks didn't have it figured out after all.

Oh, and I agreed to his and Dawn's "scene". I figured that, if nothing else, it would be an experience.

--

A few days later, I was able to tentatively walk again, although my injured ankle was still encased in some kind of strange sock-brace, and Josh instructed me to take it easy. I used that as an excuse to continue my reclusive and frankly lazy lifestyle. One couldn't pound the pavement in that condition, after all.

I had almost forgotten about agreeing to be a part of Dawn and Josh's fantasy, when they came into my room one evening, much the same as they had entered that strange time before. Josh was now clothed, in a polo shirt and jeans (although he still had a black collar around his neck, while Dawn was back in the black leather corset. My throat dried as soon as I saw her. She looked like she might burst out of it at any moment, the way it clung tightly to her torso while leaving her delicious limbs exposed.

"I have decided," said Dawn. "That Joshua has not been punished enough for the grievous harm he has done you. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, ma'am." Josh got down on his knees by my bedside. "I am so sorry, Mike."

Dawn produced a thin but stiff leather strap from the valley of her cleavage. Almost experimentally, she snapped it through the air, producing a shockingly loud crack. She ran the edge of the strap along Josh's back. "From now on, you will address Michael as Sir. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Josh. He bowed his head down even lower. "I apologize, Sir."

"Well, apologies are all well and good." Dawn was bouncing the end of the strap in her hand in a way that made me a little scared. "But we're talking about punishment here. You can be as sorry as you want... doesn't mean we can't make you sorrier."

Dawn paced around the room, a completely uncharacteristic air of menace coming off her. It was as if some demonic spirit had possessed the usually bubbly girl. I was starting to wonder if maybe I should back out, if this might be one step too far out of my comfort zone. "Now, boy... what am I going to do with you? I've already given you some beatings, but I'm not sure you learned your lesson. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect you even enjoy the beatings, being the little man-whore that you are." She scoffed a bit under her breath.

She sat down next to me, and ran her hand along the length of my leg, as though she was evaluating a piece of furniture for sale. We all knew what was coming next, but Dawn was making it seem spontaneous, and I even almost bought into it. "I have an idea. What if you had to watch as your precious treat -- your lovely mistress -- got fucked by this stud in front of you? If Michael made me come and come, and you just had to sit there, and watch, realizing slowly how much more of a man he is than you? Would you like that, Joshua?"

"No, ma'am," came the obedient answer. I assumed that Joshua was still there on the floor, but all my attention was taken up by Dawn and her imminent, leather-clad body, constantly creeping closer to me.

"Well then," said Dawn, nuzzling at my neck. She had done a lot more before, but suddenly I felt vulnerable in a way I hadn't during my previous encounters. Every ounce of brain power I had was focused on that tiny patch of air between her lips and my skin. "That would make it a good punishment, wouldn't it."

"What?" I had completely lost the plot here.

Dawn threw her legs over my torso and straddled me. My overhead light gleamed off her leather outfit enticingly. She felt strangely smooth and even as she ground herself against me. "Joshua, boy, find a seat will you? And pay close attention. It would do you good to see how a real man makes love. And if you look away for a second, or start to touch yourself... well, you'll regret it." There was a hammy, theatrical cant to this persona, and in a detached part of my mind that didn't quite realize there was a girl squirming on top of me, I thought it might be fun to play such a character.

"Yes, ma'am." Josh stood up and walked over to my computer chair, where he sat down firmly. His awkward gait and the distinct tent in his pants betrayed his arousal. His presence weirded me out a bit, but there was a kind of nervous erotic energy inside that anxiety. It felt a bit like when I was with Simon earlier.

Of course, Dawn was taking up most of my attention. She swayed on top of my body, our clothed groins rubbing together, and her black-clad tits jiggling back and forth. Then she swooped down and kissed me hotly. There was a kind of desperate arousal to her motions, as her tongue instantly shot into her mouth, and I followed suit. Our bodies rubbed spastically against each other. For a long moment there was no weirdness, because there was nothing outside our tongues endlessly exploring each other, our bodies contorting to take each other in, and the light touch of her hair, down loose for once, touching in a ring around my face.

Dawn broke away from me to take a big breath. "Phew. Hold on big boy, we're just getting started."

"If memory serves, you're the one who needs to hold on," I said, running a hand along her leather-clad ass. The black material was hot to the touch.

I sat up to discard my shirt, and it was then that I saw Josh again, silent and stiff as a board. Dawn leaned into me and nibbled at my shoulder, but I knew she was constantly performing for him. I went to undo her corset, but couldn't make much sense of all the strings and ties, so I just set back and let her lick her way down my chest, leaving a number of kisses on my nipples. Dawn knew how to reward every part of my body, not just the obvious ones, delightfully massaging my arms and stomach with her spare hands.

"Now," said Dawn. "Why don't we show the boy here what a real man's cock looks like?"

The nerves returned again, but I wasn't stopping. It was foolish, I thought, to think that Josh would be evaluating me and scoffing at my dick... but I suddenly realized that I had become as much a part of this performance as Dawn was. "I... I think that would be a good idea."

I swear that Dawn deliberately fumbled with my fly, teasing my now fully-erect cock with the promise of release. Finally, she had it open and peeled off my jeans, taking care with my wrapped ankle. Dawn paused to theatrically lick her lips at my tented boxers before tugging them down and letting my cock snap free.

"Now there's a real cock for you," I said as my member stood straight up. I was looking right at Josh and trying to find the right words, the kind of words Dawn had been saying. "I'm sure it, uh... puts this little boy's pea-shooter to shame." It sounded awkward on my tongue, and I had a hard time not bursting out laughing, but Dawn and Josh seemed to take it perfectly seriously -- at least if the strain on Josh's face was any indication.

"It certainly does," said Dawn as she nuzzled up against my erection. The warm touch of her cheek against my cockskin practically made me jump. And when she licked her way up to the top, then swallowed me deep into her mouth... well, no matter how many times we did it, I was sure that sensation would never stop being startlingly wonderful.

Dawn moved to the side so that Josh could get a full view of us, and then started sucking me off with gusto. Her hair formed a black curtain that stopped me from really seeing what she was doing, which just made the sensations more intense, her sudden bursts of movement and slow, teeth-scraping sucks taking me by surprise. Her tongue was all over my cock, coating it in a thick layer of warm saliva that ran down my cock and pooled at its base.




Saying Stay Ch. 03



She had a weird way of making me feel like giving head was an ecstatic gustatory sensation for her, the way she kept eagerly bobbing up and down on my cock as if she was mainlining some kind of strange drug she couldn't get enough of. She turned her head and captured the head of my cock sideways in her mouth, a strange but not unpleasant sensations. I couldn't see for sure but I knew that Dawn was glaring at Josh, taunting him with her eyes over the oral treatment he couldn't have.

I found myself getting into it too. The words slipped out easier this time. "You like seeing your mistress suck my cock? Are you getting hard seeing her drool over another man's dick?"

Dawn broke off so she could join in the verbal battery. "I think he is. Our sick little boy has an erection. Don't you, Joshua?"

Josh lowered his head. "Yes ma'am."

Dawn got up off the bed and put one of her big black boots on Josh's knee. She was a short girl, but damn if she didn't seem intimidating at that moment. "I want to see it. I want to see how hard you got."

Josh stood up and, looking genuinely ashamed of himself, slowly removed his pants. His half-erect cock hung heavily between his legs. I could see our teasing didn't have much basis in fact -- he was packing a monster, long and thick even now when it wasn't fully hard and it certainly put me to shame. (In the back of my mind I thought that maybe this was why all the girls wanted Josh around.)

Dawn looked down at Josh's member disdainfully. "Leave it out there for everyone to see. But don't touch it. If I catch you playing with yourself... well, let's just say that going blind will be the least of your worries." She spun around, presenting me with a view to die for: Dawn's glimmering, leather-clad visage complete with a cruel, masterful look on her face. "Now be a dear and untie this thing, boy. I think Michael here would like to experience more than my mouth, if you know what I mean."

"Yes, ma'am." Josh got up and fiddled with the spiderweb of cords at the back of the leather corset with practiced expertise. There was a faint snapping sound, and the front of the outfit sagged forward. Dawn's bountiful breasts at last slipped out of it and were exposed to my ravenous eyes. Hard scarlet nipples hung off those mounds of flesh that I couldn't wait to get my hands on. Josh tugged the whole piece down around Dawn's ankles, and she stepped out of it. Wearing nothing but a glowering look, she looked just as authoritative as she had in the leather.

"Thank you, boy. I knew you were good for something. Now sit down and don't move." Joshua obeyed, his cock getting stiffer by the minute. Dawn sat down on the end of the bed and lay back. There she was, spread eagle for me and lewdly fingering her clit. The expanse of her body seemed like an endless paradise. "Come and get it," she whispered in a sultry tone.

I was on her in a flash, capturing one of her tits in my mouth and sucking on it firmly. Dawn gasped and through her head back as I ravished her breasts. One of these days I swore I would take it slow with Dawn, but her decadent body just drove me into a frenzy. It was all the mental effort I could stand to manoeuvre my way to those wet lips between her thighs and thrust my eager cock into her.

"Fuck!" Dawn yelled at the first penetration. She exhaled and wrapped her legs around me. I didn't mind -- I wasn't going anywhere. I began quickly thrusting into the wet warmth of her pussy. Dawn muttered little obscene notes of encouragement as I did so.

She rolled her head back. and I immediately leaned in to lick at her neck. She was looking at Josh, focusing only on him and his discomfort, but I had more or less forgotten our observer and our context. It was just me and this heavenly cunt demanding my fiercest pounding. So I kept fucking her and watching as i did the ripples of my thrusts pass through Dawn's buxom body, making those glorious tits bounce back and forth. Her gasps were now-getting more high-pitched and urgent.

"Stop that, boy!"

I didn't know what had happened, but I stopped moving, my hard cock still sheathed within her. But it wasn't me she was talking to. I looked up to see Josh sitting there with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, wrapped into a fist around his cock. Dawn's cunt tensed around me.

Josh looked sheepish. "Sorry, ma'am. I was just..."

"Just what?" she yelled. She started to shift away, and I obliged by pulling out of her. Dawn almost fell off the bed, but managed to swing herself around to her feet with a modicum of grace. She stood up and loomed in front of Josh, all the more intimidating for her brazen, slightly sweaty nudity and the patch of sticky arousal between her legs. "What were you just doing, Joshua? Because it looked to me like you were jacking off."

Josh stammered like a schoolchild. "Well, I was, but you just looked so sexy ma'am and..."

Dawn grabbed him by his curly brown hair and shoved him facefirst into her scruffy black bush. "Sorry, care to make excuses again?" Josh said something muffled into her pussy, but I couldn't make it out. "I didn't think so. Get in position to receive your punishment."

Dutifully, Josh turned around and bent over, placing his hands on his former seat and proffering up his pale ass. Dawn grabbed the leather strap she had discarded earlier and whipped it menacingly through the air. "What do you think, Michael? Does he deserve ten lashes or fifteen for this disobedience?'

"Um... ten?" I said. I had just been sitting there, watching the two interact like some kind of strange theatre, a museum diorama from an alternate history. I didn't really want to see Josh get hurt, but I couldn't tear my eyes away.

Dawn chuckled. "You are lenient." She ran the tip of the strap along her sopping pussy. "I was thinking fifteen myself, but I guess we can compromise. Let's say twelve. Count them off for me, will you."

She ran the now-damp end of the strap along Joshua's taint, making him shudder. With one swift motion, Dawn snapped the piece of leather up into the air and down hard onto Josh's ass. I could see the bright red streak across his skin and the snap of leather against flesh almost deafened me. Dawn looked in my direction. "Um.... one," I said.

Dawn brought the strap up again and smacked it against the pale ass once more. I could see her put her whole body into the motion, the a ripple travelling through her body's curves, up her arm and down to the end of the whip. This one was in the opposite direction, forming a red X on Josh's butt cheeks. "T-two." Dawn kissed the leather and continued with the punishment.

"Three." Dawn was really getting into the rhythm now, and I could see her body moving in a strange kind of dance as she continued the whipping. "Four." Josh cried out in pain for the first time as the whip revisited a previously struck spot. "Five." This time, I found myself wincing along with him.

And so it went for another half-dozen strikes, each one building on the previous damage and drawing out an increasingly agonized cry from Josh. Ugly red welts blossomed on his ass I felt queasy. I had always hated being around people in pain -- as much as I had been able to shrug off my own injury and play cool, if it had been someone else I would have been going far away to sit down and take some deep breaths. Something in the back of my mind told me that I should stop this, that I stood stand up for Josh and myself. But I just kept counting, having suddenly shifted from co-master to co-slave.

And then, just as my counting became automatic, I began to notice some things that scrambled my sympathy. For one, there was Josh's huge cock, now rock hard, at its intimidating full length, and bashfully red. This was all without any direct contact. Each strike of the whip made that prick bob up and down as if nodding encouragement. And wasn't there a pleasured -- maybe even ecstatic -- undertone to Josh's cries of pain? Weren't there some moans mixed in with the cries?

"Eleven," I found myself saying. Dawn brought up the strap above her head for the final blow, then sliced through the air with it. The whole house must have heard the smack when it finally made impact. Josh shook with that strange mixture of pleasure and pain. My throat felt as dry as sandpaper. "Twelve," I managed to get out.

"Why don't we make it a baker's dozen?" Dawn brought the strap down quickly against Josh's back, making him swear under his breath. "What's that? You didn't say a bad word there did you, Joshua?" He slumped forward, letting out a sigh of contented defeat.

Dawn was now covered in sweat from the exertion of her forceful whipping, but she still managed to maintain her intimidating demeanour. She walked around Josh, clinically inspecting his bruises. She ran a hand along one particularly prominent welt, causing him to flinch.

"Now," Dawn said. "Are you going to touch yourself again?"

"No, ma'am," he managed to choke out.

Dawn turned to me, although she was really speaking to him. "You know, Michael, I don't believe him." She paced over to the bed and sat down, crossing those plump legs. After all this time, my cock was still hard and ready to go, shiny with Dawn's juices. "I think he needs to be restrained. Don't you?"

"Huh? Uh, yeah, I guess. Maybe."

Dawn chuckled. "My companion is more charitable than me, but that won't help you Joshua. Why don't you go to the basement and get me that special rope you like so much? Then we can keep those naughty hands of yours out of trouble."

"Yes, ma'am." Josh went for his clothes, and Dawn snapped the strap down across his wrist. I swear, she was a crack shot with that thing.

She tut-tutted in mock disappointment. "No, Joshua. You're going to have to let everyone in the house see what a naughty little boy you've been. Now get going."

With a gulp, Josh turned and limped out through my bedroom door, still buck naked. The second he was gone, it was like Dawn's whole persona melted, and she was back to being the sweet oversexed girl I knew. She kissed me on the lips, almost apologetically.

"How are you doing with all this?" she said, concern in her voice.

"It's... strange," I admitted. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it's kind of exciting... but I don't understand how you can treat someone you care about like that. I mean, I barely know Josh, and even I felt sorry for him."

"It's not really cruel," said Dawn. "In fact, it's probably harder on me than it is on him. He loves this stuff."

"I don't get how you can love being insulted and mistreated."

Dawn sighed. I noticed that she had started giving me a slow handjob, keeping me hard for the next round. "I don't really understand it, but from what Josh says to me, it's like... pain is a part of the human experience, you know? You can never get rid of pain, so you may as well embrace it. It's like the soccer thing. It's all about embracing your body and all the things it can make you feel."

"When I twisted my ankle, there wasn't any pleasure to that pain."

Dawn tossed her hair over her shoulder and jutted out her delectable breasts confidently. "No, but you didn't have the Dawninatrix doing it to you."

"The Dawninatrix? Really?"

At that point we both collapsed in a fit of giggling. It was a welcome relief.

"But seriously," Dawn said as she struggled to recover. "It's not like I would ever actually hurt Josh. It's all surface-level pain. I think that's part of the appeal -- it's like, you're in danger, but you're not in so much danger that it's not sexy. At least I think so. I'm not much of a psychologist, I'll admit."

I heard Padma laughing in the kitchen and rapidly creaking floorboards. "It sounds like he's coming back," said Dawn. "Quick, get hard again."

"It doesn't just go up and down like that," I protested. "It's not like I can flip a switch or something." But before I could even finish my sentence, Dawn was bent over, taking my flaccid prick into her marvellous mouth. With her hyperactive tongue she restored my laughter-slain erection to health. It turns out that sometimes it does just go up and down like that.

Josh limped into the room while Dawn was facedown in my lap, her activities hidden by a waterfall of hair, but her obscene sucking sounds making it no secret what she was doing. He was carrying an armful of silk rope, which he almost dropped. The poor boy looked genuinely uneasy.

Dawn broke off from my cock. A thin strand of precum trailed between her mouth and my instrument, but she broke it off with one strong stroke of her tongue. "Try not to tarry so much, Joshua," she said, instantly back in persona. "A little intermission is all well and good, but my meal was getting cold. Now, sit down in the chair with your hands behind your back."

He did as instructed, although the contact of his raw ass with the hard seat made him clearly wince. Dawn began doing up the rope in some kind of intricate pattern that left Josh completely immobile, but with his cock still fully accessible to anyone but him. The half-erect prick limped down in front of him as if in shame.

To my surprise, Dawn bent down and started quickly stroking Josh's cock, which responded to her touch by inflating to its usual massive proportions. The view from my spot on the bed, of Dawn's round ass sticking up in the air with her slick sex gleaming underneath, was more than enough to keep me hard. She leaned in to whisper something to him, and Josh just gulped and muttered "Yes ma'am."

Dawn waltzed back over to me. "Now there, where were we before our little miscreant distracted us?"

I suddenly found myself willing to go with her into this strange baroque drama. I grabbed Dawn by the shoulder and dipped her down onto the bed as though we were dancing. My hard cock fell perfectly in the wet cleft of her lips, her girl juice tickling the underside.

She scrambled onto her hands and knees, pushing that glorious ass against me. "I want Joshua to see exactly what he's missing," she said. "Sit down." I followed her instructions, coming off my haunches and spreading my legs out as far as was comfortable. My cock stood straight up, askew from the rest of my body, like a tribute to a lusty goddess. Dawn climbed on top of me, her back to my chest, squatting obscenely. And then she slowly began to lower herself onto my rod.

Dawn drew out the process, making me feel each inch of her slippery and red-hot cunt as it slowly parted for my cock. She was letting out one long, slow breath as she took myself into her. Her head was nestled against mine, and I could feel the vibrations of her trembling. And then, finally, she reached the bottom, and I was fully inside that tremendous channel.

After a brief pause she began raising and lowering herself on my cock, a slow motion which quickly developed into full-on riding. I could do little except support her weight and thrust up into her weakly, but judging from the gasps and titters from Dawn she was doing fine enough on her own. And it felt damn good from my end too.

I had seen this position before in porn, but never actually done it before. It felt strange, but good, and I loved having her head right next to mine, emitting those cute little Dawn noises. But I knew that for Josh, this was the best possible view, meaning the most torturous one. Dawn was splayed out before him like a medical specimen, everything available for view just a few feet from his hungry eyes. He could doubtlessly see her drooling pink pussy lips as they engulfed my cock, her tremendous breasts as they heaved with the rhythm of her equestrian bucking, and the ecstatic look on her face as another man brought her closer and closer to the edge.

Even though Dawn's pussy pumping up and down on my cock was blowing my mind, I never forgot about Josh, sitting there with his hard scarlet cock straining towards us. It was sending a strange tingling mixture of stage fright and glee up my spine, making me pay attention to everything. Usually during sex I fell into a kind of instinctual rhythm, but here my mind was here to revel in all the sensations and have its own fun.

"Oh fuck," Dawn yelled. "I'm gonna come. Mike's gonna make me come with his big, fat cock and. .. ugh!" She errupted into orgasm, grinding her bubbly ass against me. I could feel her release gushing down my shaft and coating her balls, and hear her high, breathy climactic cries, cries that almost sounded like laughs. I screwed my eyes shut and tried my hardest not to come. I knew that if I saw those big tits bouncing up and down with her that would have been the end, and I wanted to make a greater show of my masculine virility.

She finally settled down, slumping against my chest, my hard cock still embedded in her wet cunt. I ventured one eye open to see Josh standing there, a cocktail of agony and desire on his face. Where the ropes touched him there were deep red marks on his skin from him straining against them. A large drop of precum glistened on top of his rigid cock, begging for attention.

"Phew," said Dawn, whipping her hair back casually (and into my face, but I tried not to mind). "Now that's what I call an orgasm. What about you, Joshua?"

"Please, ma'am..."

She shifted forward and loomed over the jock, now looking like a hapless dork cornered in the playground. The shadow of her breasts fell across his dick. Somehow, she managed to stay on my throbbing shaft. "Please what?"

"Can I please come already?"

Dawn laughed hard, and I could feel the rumbling around my cock. "You know what? Go ahead. Come as much as you like. As long as you don't move, of course."

Joshua paused for a moment, as if he was actually trying to psychically stroke himself off. Dawn started slowly he bowed his head even further and barely managed to squeak out his next request. "Well, could you... stroke it?"

Dawn turned to me briefly just to display the excellent shit-eating grin she had on. "I'm sorry? I couldn't hear you, Joshua."

He seemed to shrink into the chair. "Could you stroke it?"

"Now, I must have misheard you," said Dawn. "Because it almost sounds like after I was nice enough to give you permission to come, you asked me to actually touch your disgusting little penis. Is that what you said?"

Josh's head bobbed once again in ashamed agreement.

"Hmmm," Dawn said, making a show of deliberation. My cock was still hard inside her, but for the moment I was caught up in this psychodrama. "Well, you can't ask for too much. How about this. You pick one. You can come, or I can touch your cock. But only one."

It wasn't a choice at all, of course, and the pinched expression on Josh's face showed that he knew that. "...stroke me."

Dawn pointed her ear towards him condescendingly. "Speak up."

His face was now as beet red as his ass had been after the flogging. "I said I want you to jack me off."

Dawn leaned forward, drawing me ever closer to the edge of the bed. She was balanced precariously in my lap, and it seemed as though the two of us would topple over embarrassingly onto the floor any minute now. But somehow we stayed there, and Dawn extended her legs to grab Josh's cock in between her feet.

"Is this okay with you?" she said, her voice simultaneously coy and sultry. "I don't want to get off this big fat cock after all." She rubbed the edges of her feet up and down on Josh's shaft, and he fervently nodded.

It turned out that Dawn was as good at footjobs as she was at seemingly everything else sexual. She deftly batted Josh's cock between one foot and the other, rubbing his cock between both of them, and then capturing the head in between her big toe and the one next to it, jacking Josh off with that tight little ring. The rhythmic motion of her feet made her move slowly up and down on my cock. It was shallow penetration, but it seemed to work for her, as her ragged gasps -- not entirely from exertion -- attested to.




Saying Stay Ch. 04



Saturday, June 9 - 1:37 AM

Another early-summer night whose very air seemed to throb with possibility. A power-rock song playing faintly somewhere in the background, probably from Josh's room. Me, and Dawn, stuck together by our sweat, our bodies and minds sluggish as they were mired in afterglow. Those blushing breasts with their straining crimson nipples that I couldn't take my eyes off. Another Friday night of debauchery.

"So Mike. You're allegedly a philosopher dude. You want to lay some philosophy on me?"

"I'm not a philosopher. I just needed something to study in between parties, and preferably something that didn't involve numbers."

"Oh come on. You must have deep thoughts rattling around that head of yours."

"Right now I'm a little distracted."

"You know, Padma's been known to take a break from eating me out to go into a lecture about the abject and the uncanny."

I still needed to adjust to that -- not the having of other lovers, but it being open and a topic of humour. I was even briefly affronted, but I don't think it showed.

"I dunno. I was never really on any real philosophical side -- like, I wasn't one of those kids who had one guy or one school of thought that they were sure was right and everyone else was an idiot. I learned things, but I guess I didn't get caught up in them. Sometimes I played devil's advocate. But really, I don't think there's one theory that you can fit the whole world into."

"There's gotta be a name for that."

"Maybe. But I think I missed that class."

"Ooh, I know! You're a nihilist!"

"Oh come on. I haven't gone bowling in years."

"What? I don't think we can be friends anymore!"

"Oh. Can we still have sex?"

"Is that really all you think I'm good for?"

She looked at me, and for a moment I thought she had taken my joking callousness seriously. Panic flitted through me. This was the problem with all the teasing and the games.

"Of course not. If it weren't for you I'd be stuck hoping I can find a nice cardboard box before Julia decides to evict me." That was a circumstance I didn't really want to think about right now, but making light of it helped take the sting away.

"Given the circumstances, that's not really a rebuttal."

"Sorry. Then let me say this: you may in fact be the best Mario Kart player on planet Earth."

I kissed her on the hand. What was wrong with me, that I couldn't give a sincere compliment? That I couldn't tell her that she was one of the most joyful people I had ever met, and that being around her brought a little of that joy to me?

"Eh. I'll take it. But I get to be on top this time."

"Hump away."

--

Thursday, June 7 - 7:48 PM

I have to admit that I hadn't been in a concert in ages. I liked music, but what I didn't like was everything else -- the pressing crowds that were always slamming into you and elbowing you, the overpriced shitty drinks, the moments of awkward waiting, the persistent smell of pot, and the rumble of the bass through your bones like you were having a heart attack. Well, that and the fact that I could hardly afford ticket prices on a student budget. I know, I sound like a real fun guy.

But even if I had gone to concerts -- or "shows" as everyone else now seemed to refer to them -- I probably wouldn't have picked ones like these. The underground venue was hazy and looked like it might cave in at any moment. Beneath my table, I tried to count the pieces of gum (at least I hoped it was all gum) stuck to the underside, but I quickly lost track. On the wall a poster advertised Saturday's bands, a double bill of Cannibal Abortion Theatre and Rape All Cops.

"I have to admit, the names seem a little immature to me," I said. Julia snorted, but held back her retort for once.

Fortunately, Julia and Dawn had been kind enough to take along an additional innocent. Ellie held her purse in a white-knuckle grasp and her eyes were constantly darting to the various geometrical hair styles and patchwork clothes. "Um, where's the, uh, bathroom?"

Dawn smiled knowingly. "You don't want to use that bathroom."

Julia put a hand on Ellie's shoulders. "Don't worry. The punks don't bite. Well, most of them don't."

"Hey, don't blame her," I said. "When she was young, this was actually the cool dangerous counterculture." I hadn't intended to insult all three of them, but the trio of sharp looks I got made me want to shrink in my seat.

"I dunno, personally I think it still has some meaning." Dawn gestured to a hulking mass of piercing and tattoos. "I mean, look at that guy. He's altered his whole body to make a statement."

"And that statement is 'I'll never work a regular job again'?" I said, taking a look to make sure none of the punks were listening too closely.

Julia jabbed a finger into my face. "Careful, Mike. You're sort of coming off as a capitalist stooge." I rolled my eyes.

"I don't have a problem with it," said Ellie to her drink. "I just don't see why I have to be here when I have a nice book and some nice people at home I could curl up with."

"Because it's a Thursday night and spending it at home is lame," said Dawn. She checked her purse. "Hey, let's step outside and pregame a bit."

I glanced at my watch. "Isn't it supposed to start soon?"

"Dude, have you ever been to a show before?"

We exited the building, making sure our cheap plastic admission bands were secure around our wrists. Dawn quickly lead us to a patch of abandoned field behind the club where she had obviously been many times. The scent made it obvious what this place was primarily used for, as if the two or three groups of concertgoers gathered in clouds of smoke weren't a dead giveaway.

Surprisingly, Ellie was the first one to take the joint after Dawn had given it an inaugral puff. Julia looked at her in admiration, and Ellie just shrugged. "I was young once too."

I received it last, and looked at the burning roach with some trepidation. I had done pot a couple times before, but hadn't really liked it. Still, I was able to inhale without hacking up a lung and making a complete fool of myself, so that was something. Everyone else looked vaguely amused at my obvious nervousness, but I think there was some affection in there too. Or maybe it was just the weed kicking in early.

After we returned to the show it still took ten or fifteen minutes for the first band to come on. In that period I contemplated how I was surely now one of those smelly people, bearing that strange rotten-cheese reek, that I had mocked earlier. The nerves were getting worse. I was sure I would do something to reveal myself as a poser, an outsider, and the crowd would swarm on me in a mass of metal and denim.

But then the music started, and nobody cared much about anything else but the angular, emaciated people on stage screaming into microphones. I could only make out patchy fragments of lyrics, mostly swearing. I seemed to swing back and forth between two states of mind. In one the music was a chaotic lifeblood pumping through me, opening me up. The rhythm was the rhythm that was already present in all humans, the vicious tempo that was engraved in us, but needed these guitar-wielding sages to crack open. The other half of the time I felt miserable and alone in the sea of sweat, the music almost as much an assault as the elbows which continually caught me in the head.

Bands came on and off, names and appearances superficially changing, but it was all one experience. I felt like two mortal enemies bound in one body, like in that really confusing Star Trek episode. One group in the middle was different -- competent with their instruments, their music almost catchy. They were booed off stage, and the lead singer narrowly ducked a bottle thrown at her head.

It wasn't until we were all on the sidewalk outside, in that bracing late-night air, that I realized it was over. I felt vaguely dazed, like when you wake up and haven't quite realized that you were dreaming. Dawn was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. "That was fun!"

Julia smirked. "I knew you weren't going to the bathroom to adjust your hair."

"Julia," said Dawn in a mock offended tone. "Are you accusing me of taking recreational pharmaceuticals?"

"Yep. And you really shouldn't mix drugs like that."

"Come on, I know my stuff. And you can't just be on weed for a show. You'd just drift around sweating like Mike here."

I suddenly realized that this conversation was on the same plane of reality as myself. "Wha?"

"Exactly."

To be fair, my mind was slowly returning to its normal state, at least enough to remember what Dawn had showed me the earlier day. "You," I said with the same mock dramaticness. "Have a drug problem."

"No, what I have is a drug solution."

Ellie was smiling placidly. "I really liked the show. I bought two CDs!"

Dawn pumped her fist. "We'll have streaks in your hair before the week is out."

"Actually, that doesn't sound half bad. Maybe we could have a girl's night -- all do each others' hair?"

As I looked at Dawn's smile, I realized that it could not be overstated: she always got what she wanted.

--

Friday, June 8 - 11:00 PM

I sat in the corner with my hands folded in my lap. Around me, the acts of debauchery were getting more and more public. A chubby red-headed girl was sprawled out nude across the table while assorted partygoers drank liquor off her body's plentiful folds. Men in dark clothes tugged scantily-clad girls around by short chain leashes, showing them off for the assembled masses. It all seemed so tacky and sleazy to me, like a decrepit bingo parlour.

How could Dawn do something like this? And for me, who she had barely known a month? It was disturbing, and I felt like I was responsible -- like I was a low-rent pimp. But she had said it would be all right. She might have done it before, now that I considered it -- for money, or for drugs, or for whatever she had needed. But none of these ideas made me feel any less guilty.

A girl in a tight blue dress walked over to me. "You look glum."

I looked up at her skeptically. She was a very pretty girl, whose minimal dress highlighted her flawless dusky skin, which clung tightly to her visible clavicle and shoulder bones. Her short hair was done up in ringlets which spiralled down just past her ears. She looked vaguely South-East Asian -- maybe Vietnamese or Thai. She also looked quite interested in me, and although I wasn't quite in the mood, it was still an enticing proposition.

"You going to say anything, or just gawk at me?"

And here I thought I was getting better at the gawking. "I'm sorry. But it's hard not to stare."

The girl shrugged, a motion I found hypnotic. "Hey, I was staring at you quite a bit before I got the guts to come over. So what's got you so down on such a decadent occasion?"

"A friend of mine is doing something for me," I said, careful to use the vaguest terms possible. "And I'm worried it's going to hurt her."

"Was this the friend in the corset?"

Dawn really did like that corset. "I... I shouldn't say."

This new girl smiled. "It's okay. I think I know what's going on. Just remember that it was a decision she made, and even if it's not one you agree with, you should respect that."

"Why? Because it involves sex?"

"No, because it was her choice." She was starting to sound testy.

"Even if I was the one who put her into the situation?"

The girl in the blue dress was about to make a rejoinder when she paused. "I'm sorry, but I was about to go into a full-on argument with you and I realized I hadn't even asked you your name."

"I'm Mike. Feel free to argue away now."

"Nah, that's not what I came here for. And I'm Sadie, by the way."

I shook her hand, although the gesture felt comically tame considering that some guy was getting his dick sucked in a shadowy corner not five feet from us.

Sadie leaned in to whisper in my ear, and did so in such a way that her thin gown the only thing that was separating the flesh of her breast from my face. "You want to go upstairs and try to forget about your problems?" What could I do but nod?

The staircase was claustrophobically tight and I always seemed to be turning dark corners, but there was always Sadie with her hand in mine guiding me upwards like a fleshy angel. And then we emerged on the third floor, with its yellow-brown flickering light, and the echoes of many different moans from all of the occupied rooms. They were marked with a hairband hung on the door, a borrowed college trick. They could have just locked the doors, but it would have gone against the spirit of the event: each coupling was open to all. I knew that Dawn was in one of those rooms now, but I tried not to think about it.

"I gotta say," I said to Sadie as we searched for an unmarked door-handle. "This club is a lot less glamorous than I thought it would be."

"Well, it certainly ain't Eyes Wide Shut. But I think the seediness is kind of sexy."

"To each their own."

We found a room, a tight little room mostly consumed by a king-sized bed. It was still pretty sleazy, but I had stayed in hotels that were worse. Sadie turned her back to me. "Unzip me, please." I pulled down the zipper and that tight blue dress just fell away. Sadie divested herself of her few remaining pieces of clothing with businesslike efficiency.

My eyes struggled to take in the full expanse of her bronze skin. It wasn't flawless, as I had originally thought -- she had a cute little dimple on the small of her back, and I immediately focused on that, not the subtle curves of her ass or her small conical breasts, in order to keep myself from going insane.

Sadie climbed onto the bed and stretched out on all fours. She gave my motionless body a bored look. "Come on, get comfortable."

I was taking off my pants, and then my shirt, but it felt like I was a million miles away. I joined Sadie on the bed and she promptly rolled over and drew me into her. I took one of her breasts into my mouth and savoured her small and soft nipples. The immediacy of bodily contact took me away from my thoughts.

I found my lips moving upwards, to that collarbone that had originally entranced me, and soon I was licking her neck. Sadie had stripped me of my underwear and was now slowly stroking my cock to hardness. She sighed.

"Have you ever tried to fuck someone who's distracted?" she said.

"Pardon?"

"I'm going to assume that was a joke." Sadie grabbed me by the hair and pulled me up until my eyes were locked with hers. Her eyes, I noticed just now, were a strange arresting shade of green, like verdigris. "Mike. You're here with me now, not your friend in leather."

I felt like shit. I was letting down this girl who I hardly even knew. "I'm sorry. Really sorry."

Apparently Sadie didn't want apologies. She rolled over onto all fours again. "Okay, different approach. All your anger, all your frustration. Take it out on me. I'm the one who's responsible for everything, and the only way you can make things right is by giving me the hardest fucking you can muster."

It wasn't so much what she said as the way she looked and felt beneath me -- so much like Dawn just a few nights ago, opening herself up for me, her back quivering with every thrust. It made me a little mad at her for being such an obvious facsimile. I was suddenly rock hard, and only hesitated to roll on one of the condoms provided on the bedside table. Without saying another word, I grabbed Sadie by the hips and thrust into her cunt.

She was still a little dry, but the friction felt good -- this shouldn't, I thought, be entirely pleasant. Sadie let out a long breath as I withdrew and slammed into her again. I did it again, just to enjoy the masculine power of my movements, watch her body shift forward in involuntary reaction. She thrust back against me, rubbing her ass up against my curly pubic hair, and then we were immediately fucking wildly, throwing everything we had at each other.

There was one thin pillow on the bed, and Sadie buried her face into it as I vigorously fucked her from behind. Even through the pillow I could hear her moans. But that wasn't enough. There was something vicious inside of me, something that wanted to really and truly possess her. Hammering into her cunt, as great as it felt, was not enough to relieve the anger I felt.

I slapped her ass, almost experimentally, and her hot tunnel clenched around my cock. She looked back at me hungrily. "Harder." I did it a bit harder, this time leaving a bit of a red mark. "Harder!" This time I put all my force into it, and Sadie positively squealed. That perfect skin was now marked my the red imprint of my hand.

I hit the other ass cheek, and felt the purr travel through her own body. I was thrusting into her steadily at this point, but the rush of sex had been overtaken by that of exploration. On a whim, I grabbed her hair, and she cried out -- but not in pain.

With a fistful of Sadie's hair I pulled her back into a position that let me penetrate her even harder. I grabbed at her breasts roughly, scratching at the skin and pulling her nipples taut. The aggression felt as good as her cunt.

Finally, I grabbed her by the throat, and used that as a hand hold as I threw myself into her with everything I had. She cried out, the sound of her orgasm only slightly throttled by my hand on her neck. I was totally out of control, and it was exhilarating. When I felt my orgasm coming on, I didn't even try to restrain it, just cried out and exulted in the feeling.

We both fell face-down on the bed, panting. Guilt instantly flooded me. I looked at Sadie and the red hand-print wrapped around her neck. "Shit. Are you okay? I didn't mean to--"

"It was great," she said. "I like it like that."

I wasn't sure I did. It felt sort of nasty, like I had just used this girl as a container for my anger. I had treated Sadie, I realized, about as respectfully as the condom currently wrapped around my deflating cock. But maybe that was the point of parties like this.

I peeled the cum-slick condom off and tossed it towards the nearest trash can. It didn't quite get there, but I was sure these people were used to cleaning up gross things in the morning. I turned back to Sadie. "Can we cuddle now, or do you want to go see someone else?" After I said it I realized how needy it sounded.

She laughed. "Sure. I could use a little tenderness after a fuck like that." And then our bodies were pressed together again, but it was different. Her warmth, instead of an incendiary challenge, was now like that of a familiar bed loaded with blankets on a winter day.

We didn't say anything, because what was there to say? We didn't even know each other. Odds were that even if we tried to go out or be friends we wouldn't really get along. But we had been there for each other at this one random moment in time, and maybe that was something.

I heard a door down the hallway open and close. Dawn was saying something -- I couldn't hear what it was, but I knew that it was her voice. I immediately leapt up from the bed and started throwing my clothes on.

Sadie turned over and looked at me askance. "What, did you just feel a crab bite?"

"No, I just need to meet with a friend," I said. "This was, uh, fantastic. Wait, the crabs thing was a joke, right?"

"Yes, it was a joke. I did not infect you with crotch bugs," said Sadie, sounding genuinely annoyed. "Go on. I'll be up and about in a couple minutes."

Leaving her there, I felt like the worst guy in the world. There's only so much that a month of free love can deprogram you, and I still felt as though I was taking advantage of Sadie. Hell, maybe I was. But Dawn was out in the hall, and I needed to be with her.

Dawn was in the middle of the hall, talking quietly with Her. The one whose appearance suddenly made me sick to my stomach, especially her freshly-fucked radiance. It stood in sharp contrast to Dawn's shrunken, scared form, as if someone had stuck her with a pin and all the usual courage and bravado had drained out.




Saying Stay Ch. 04



I walked over to the two of them. "Hey Dawn."

She gave me her best attempt at a smile. "I see someone else got lucky tonight. Who with?"

"Are you okay?"

That woman smiled. "I should say she's better than okay. By the way, welcome to the store. Can you start on Monday?"

"Yeah, uh, I guess." I grabbed Dawn by the wrist. "Do you want to go home now?"

"She doesn't need a boyfriend to rescue her," She said.

But Dawn nodded, and I held her hand as we walked away.

Outside the club, anonymous from the outside, I broke the silence. "You really did not have to do that for me."

"Whatever." Dawn sounded downbeat and a little sarcastic -- in other words, distinctly un-Dawn-y. "You're gonna take the job, right?"

"I dunno if I should."

"Do it."

It was then that I noticed a large red welt around her neck, one that still looked blisteringly raw. The welt snaked down her shoulder and beneath her halter top. Something dark was clinging to the sides of her dress. "Is that blood?"

"Don't."

I didn't say anything, but put my arm around her shoulder. For a moment I feared that this was the wrong thing to do, that she probably didn't want to be touched right now, but instead she clung to my body as if scared of drowning.

"Mike?"

"Yeah?"

"When we get home, can you fuck me until I forget about all of this?"

An hour ago I would have doubted the efficacy of this cure, but I remembered how clear-headed and warm I had felt after venting my anger onto Sadie (whose last name I still hadn't learned). So I said "What are friends for?" and gave her as chaste a kiss as I could muster.

--

Friday, June 1 - 8:20 PM

Dinner and a movie. It was so conventional it was a little weird. Nina had waited for me to call her, and did her best to sound unsure over the phone, but once she went through the motions of being won over she immediately had a pretty strict idea of what our date -- and possibly the ensuing courtship -- would be like. She picked the restaurant (a sleek, modern-looking sushi bar) and the movie (some European movie with a lot of sex playing at the Lightbox) and basically dictated what I ordered through a series of sharp "suggestions". It was okay. Sometimes it was nice to be freed from the burden of making decisions.

And Nina was fun. She was smart, and had an acid wit that betrayed an inability to take shit from anyone. We talked about everything from preferred brands of potato chips ("Doritos probably contain more chemicals than your average industrial run-off, but damn if I can't stop eating them") to the latest political scandal ("Just once I want the wife to stand up there and be like 'Eh, I've done worse'"). While I was struggling with chopsticks, Nina grabbed the sushi with her fingers and stuffed it into her mouth, ignoring the looks as she licked stray grains of rice off her lips. I hadn't had so much fun just talking to someone in a long time.

But all the same, something felt just a little bit off. A little bit dull, maybe. Maybe it was just that I had grown too used to the women in the house, but Nina was remarkably unadventurous. I don't know what I was expecting -- a handjob in the movie theatre, a collar affixed around my neck, a bathroom threesome with an attractive waitress -- but it didn't happen. In the end I headed home with nothing more than a peck on the cheek.

It wasn't fair to think this way, I knew. Maybe having all this access to easy, casual sex had ruined the usual dance of dating for me. I liked Nina, but I wanted her to be more like... I don't know, Dawn.

I realized then, on the subway ride home, that I should probably have told Nina about my sexual situation. Oh well. She had said she wanted to meet me again. I would break the news to her next time.

--

Tuesday, June 5- 10:35 PM

"You want me to fuck you where?"

"In the ass." Dawn slapped the fat of her plump butt, and I couldn't help but watch it jiggle. "The butt. The Hershey Highway. The poop chute."

"Okay, can you please not give it any more synonyms before I have to vomit." The first rule of sex, after all, is that you never want to think about what comes out of the hole you're going into. Unless you get off on that, I suppose, but I didn't.

We were in Dawn's room, nude as the day we were born. This was rapidly starting to become a routine. Well, as much as mind-blowing sex can become routine. We hadn't done much yet -- just the sensual undressing of each other and some heavy petting. After I unwrapped Dawn I liked to hold her in my arms for a while and just be amazed at what life had dropped into my lap.

And now she was on all fours, offering her puckered butt to me. I looked her voluptuous form up and down from her plump and eager ass to the wide smile on her face and thanked a couple of gods. "Are you sure? I mean... I haven't done anything like that before." The depraved voice in my head was cursing me out for being a pussy, but despite my raging hard-on I was still feeling a bit of trepidation.

Dawn looked back at me and giggled, her loose black hair draped like a curtain over her shoulder. "What, you're telling me that you and Simon still haven't--"

"No," I said, forcefully cutting short that particular line of conversation.

"Well, this'll be some good practice for your future boy-on-boy loving. Hey, once you two are finally doing it, can I watch? I used to be one of those slash fanfic girls, you see..."

"Dawn, I'm not gay."

"Not according to Simon..." she said in a sing-songy, taunting voice. That was it. I tackled her to the bed and dug my fingers into her ribs, tickling her for all she was worth. Dawn kicked and tried to get free, but eventually she started tickling back, and soon we were wrestling back and forth all while giggling until it hurt.

I don't know how -- everything was a mess of horizontal and vertical and tumbling bodies -- but somehow she ended up sitting on my face. A still-laughing Dawn put her hands on my chest to pin me down. "Ha ha! I am victorious"

"I surrender," I said into her cunt. I think it ended up too muffled to hear.

"Ooh, that felt good. Say something else."

"Four score and seven years ago..."

Dawn laughed, and then moaned as I swiped my tongue across the length of her opening. As much as we like to play, it's hard to laugh too much with an erection -- maybe the old saying about the blood not being able to go both places at once is true. In any case, we were soon locked in a languid 69 position, the room silent except for the soft smacking of our mouths.

I found it hard to concentrate on Dawn's pussy as she bobbed up and down on my cock, which was as usual like a hurricane around my member. It ached in ecstasy in its bath of saliva and breath.

Dawn pressed up, simultaneously pulling her mouth of my cock with a wet pop and grinding her pussy into my face. I could feel a long, warm lick on the skin of my cock, as though she was taking the first tentative licks at an ice cream cone. I quivered with the sensation, and had to make a mental effort not to come right there.

Then she sat up further, shifting her pussy off my face and leaving my cock alone and hungry. Instead she properly say on my lips, the globes of her ass resting gently on my face. "You want this hole too, Mike? You see how tight it is? Maybe you could flick your tongue up there, give it a good feel."

I did hesitate, but not for as long. That actually surprised me a bit. If you had asked me before about sticking my tongue up someone's butt, I would have been disgusted. But maybe the past month had worn down every sexual resistance I had once had, so that when someone suggested something new and strange I just shrugged and went along with it.

Dawn's asshole was tight and dry, and it quivered around my tongue in a strange, forceful way. It was less messy than I would have thought. (Dawn later told me that she had cleaned up thoroughly back there before she sprung her anal ambush on me.) As I began licking her ass more thoroughly, she began emitting soft, almost vulnerable moans. This wasn't so bad, I thought.

But my face was starting to protest about her weight, so I grabbed her by the legs and rolled her back onto her front. With a firm grip on her thighs, I held her diagonally, her face buried in a pillow, her ass up in the air for me to do as I will. I dove right back in with gusto that surprised even myself, pressing my lips right to the crack of her ass and lapping at the pink rosebud opening inside.

I sort of lost myself in the simple activity, and didn't even notice Dawn's muffled groans getting louder and more desperate. Finally, she pulled her head off the pillow and looked back at me. Her voice was breathy and she had a crazed look in her eyes. "My clit..."

"What?" I said, jarred out of my rimming reverie.

"Just rub my clit goddamnit!" And I did, and she let out one more long desperate moan and exploded into orgasm. I kept a hold of her hips as she bucked against me and kept my lips firmly pressed to her ass. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Her voice was a mixture of wonder and fury, as if her body had taken up arms against her.

Finally, Dawn calmed down and managed to prop herself up with her arms as the last echoes of orgasm coursed through her. I bade her puckered asshole goodbye with a friendly kiss and climbed up to hug her awkwardly from behind. We both let the afterglow have its moment."

"Fuck," Dawn said. "That was good."

"I was a little surprised you came," I admitted. "It was kind of out of nowhere."

"You did good, kid," said Dawn. "So are you ready to fuck me in the ass now?"

And there we were again: her on hands and knees, proudly offering her puckered butt to me, me trembling but still rock-hard.

"Okay," I exhaled.

Dawn produced a big jar of lube from her nightstand and offered it to me. I dipped my fingers into the clear viscous liquid and spread it on my cock. It was a nice smooth sensation, and I idly thought that I might try masturbating with this stuff later.

"Put some in my ass as well," said Dawn. I dipped another finger in the lube and slid it into her asshole, generously applying the liquid to her back passage. God, it was tight. I had no idea how my cock was ever going to fit in there.

Dawn moaned as I applied the lube to her rosebud. "Mike, can you just hook your finger and rub a bit... like that... ohh." Dawn looked and sounded like she just might melt into a puddle of happiness. "That's great. God, I want you to fuck me now."

I carefully got up on my haunches, like I was going to take her from behind, and at first I almost did. I missed the angle and my cock slid along the wet gates of her pussy. But on the second attempt I successfully positioned it at her anal entrance. Of course, then it was still askew and ended up poking up through her buttcheeks, but the third time was the charm.

Her ass was a guarded tight ring, pulsing to allow me entry and then tightening on her cockhead again. I had to stop, as all my brain was taking in the sensation. It felt as though the powerful muscles of Dawn's ass were attempting to crush my cock within them. It was a bit painful but also kind of amazing.

Showing surprising flexibility, Dawn managed to reach behind and slap my ass. "Get moving, bronco."

"Aren't you the bronco, since I'm riding you?"

"Shut up. Not good with metaphors right now."

I slowly slid my cock further into Dawn's ass, with every half-inch swearing under my breath about the vicelike passage. But it didn't come to an end like a pussy -- it just kept going until it had swallowed all of my cock, and my balls were resting against Dawn's taint.

I tried to pull back and fuck her, but my dick felt stuck. I panicked a bit, imagining that I was stuck inside her ass forever -- but then, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Her tight ring of muscles relaxed just enough for me to pull back and then shove my way back in, an exquisite physical sensation. Dawn let out a lungful of air at the short thrust.

"You okay?"

She nodded. "God, you're so big inside of me."

"Well you're so tight around me."

We both grinned as I began to slowly fuck her. It was a delicate operation, but an extremely enjoyable one. The warm muscle of her butt tried to milk me for all I was worth, and every time I slammed into her there was an ecstatic groan. I set a slow, steady place to begin, but eventually Dawn began rocking back, begging me with her cute little mews to fill her more. I took ahold of her fat buttcheeks and began thrusting into her faster, which produced amazed gasps from both of us.

It was an unreal sensation, like vaginal sex with all the sensations multiplied by a factor of ten. No, that's not quite right. It was its own beast, a raw savage sensation. I could barely hear our increasingly loud moans, or the slap of my balls against her skin, or see the amorous redness take hold of Dawn's skin. I could only feel that pocket of amazing that I was plowing into.

I pulled Dawn closer to me, pressing my chest to her back. I could hear her muttered prayers from her as I continued to fuck her asshole mercilessly. I grabbed hold of one breast and rolled the hard nipple around between my fingers. Her torrent of obscenities was music to my ears. Playfully, I reached the hand down between her legs to stroke her clit, and that was all she needed.

It was one long "FUCK!" loud enough to be heard not only through the house, but probably the rest of the neighbourhood. And then she was gyrating against me as she shuddered through a monster climax. Her asscheeks clamped down on my dick, pinning me to her and completely blowing my mind. I think I was screaming too -- I can't be sure. I didn't even realize I had orgasmed until a moment later when I felt the stickiness of my cum around my deflating cockhead.

My cock popped out of Dawn's ass as if it was being forcibly expelled. She fell forward and I fell back, both of us completely spent. I sat there, dazed, watching my cum begin to trickle out of her ass. I did that, I thought numbly. That's mine.

"Jesus," Dawn said into her pillow. "It takes you a while to warm up, but you sure know how to ride a girl. I'm not going to be able to sit down for a week."

"Sorry," I said, still not in my right mind.

Dawn managed a flirty smile. "I'm sure I'll find some way to forgive you."

We spooned, exhausted bodies hugging each other. Instead of the active, excited bliss of sex a calmer kind of bodily joy crept over me. I realized that I had always kind of wanted to try anal, but never had the guts to ask any of my girlfriends about it. With Dawn, it wasn't a question of courage . It was all just play, and what could be more harmless than a new form of play? With dreams of further experiments in my head and the sweet scent of her sweat in my nose, I began to drift off.

--

Friday, June 8 - 8:23 PM

The TTC bus made its usual leisurely way among the forgotten sidestreets that seemed to split off from downtown Toronto like bits of unfortunate body hair. I was squirming in my seat, while Dawn was practically dancing in hers, earbuds pumping hip-hop beats to her and her immediate vicinity.

"So," I said. "What kind of place is this... er... party at?"

"The sex party?"

I glanced around, to see if anyone was listening in on our conversation. Of course, it wasn't like you could tell just by looking. Dawn didn't seem to mind providing a little titillation to the rest of the bus, but I liked to keep these things private. Call me a prude if you will.

"It's in this old warehouse," she said. "This guy Greg from the scene bought it for a song and turned it into this weird bar slash apartment building. It's sort of like our house. Well, not all of the people living there are into the scene, but they know about Greg's parties and know to keep their heads down and their doors locked."

I wondered about this scene that Dawn was referring to. Was there a whole subculture that lived like this? Some kind of organization? Was I a part of the scene? I had imagined that this weird little free love experiment didn't go beyond the walls of my house, but I was slowly becoming aware of a whole world of promiscuity and strangeness out there, lurking just beneath the face of normality.

"There are probably going to be a lot of kinky people there," said Dawn. "But if you're not into that, it's fine. If you feel uncomfortable, you don't have to do anything at all. The downstairs is more of a bar type environment with maybe a little bit of making out, fondling, some light play... but if you're going to actually fuck somebody you'll want to take them upstairs." In front of us, a shrunken grandmother was turning scarlet.

"Uh, got it. Any other finer points of etiquette?"

"Well, I would say don't try to pressure anyone into anything, but you're not a douchebag so you don't need that kind of warning. Um, be careful about gender pronouns. People won't mind if you slip up once or twice, but if it becomes a habit..."

I wondered once again how Dawn had talked me into going to this party with her. I just didn't have a backbone, I decided. A sweet grin, especially when accompanied with some naked breasts, could get me to do anything.

The actual place was less intimidating than I had built it up to be. In fact, it was kind of cheap-looking. On the outside it was a rusted industrial building, absolutely nondescript. The inside was dark, candlelit, and with the kind of tacky furnishings (crimson carpets, dark and morbid paintings) that seemed more suited to a Vampire: the Masquerade LARP than a cool sex party. The people were another matter, a dizzying array of alternate beauties, every step on the scale from femme to butch, kinky to vanilla, gay to straight, male to female. Occasionally they would gather in corners, expose each others breasts, place nipple clamps on some mortified collared creature. There was a vibrating uncertainty in the air, as if something great or terrible was about to erupt.

Dawn was talking to seemingly everyone in the room, greeting them with hugs and inside jokes. I stood by silently and made the occasional introduction, but nobody seemed very interested in me. It was like those unfortunate times you end up hanging out with a clique of friends that doesn't include you. Of course, I guess for me that was most of the time. Going back, I had always felt that all my best friends had better friends, and while I was fairly popular I always seemed to be at the vortex of many outer circles, never able to penetrate some inner emotional core. It was like that at the house too: as much as everyone tried to welcome me with bodies and minds, there was still some long-established social dynamic weaving between Dawn and Julia and Simon that I couldn't equal.

It was weird the things you thought about at a sex party.

A pale blonde was giving me a detailed review of the latest sex toy when Alexis walked in. She was tall, taller than me, a broad-shouldered woman with bowl-cut hair and masculine clothes that only highlighted her sexuality more. She looked like a strange Amazonian permutation of Anne Hathaway. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to recognize her.

Dawn pressed herself to me. "That's Alexis. I would avoid her if I were you. She has a reputation for... well, let's say playing too rough."

That alarmed me. "I didn't know there was such a thing as too rough around here." Dawn didn't elaborate.

We soon fell into another conversation I didn't understand, as Dawn traded jargon with a middle-aged couple and made references to previous encounters. Some troglodytic part of my brain wondered nastily just how many people she had fucked, and whether she had any sort of standards.

She then headed over to the makeshift bar to get drinks, and proceeded to chat up the bartender (who surely had to be used to such things by now). I noticed Alexis approaching her. Dawn looked up, and even from across the room I could tell she was uncomfortable as Alexis's large shadow fell across her. It was one of those conversations you can get the gist of just from body language -- Alexis stretching out her body, looming to her full length, while Dawn smiled but shrunk up against the bar.




Saying Stay Ch. 04



It seemed to keep going on, and I wondered what on Earth they could be talking about. I was distracted by a petite girl in a leather collar and not much else tapping me on the elbow.

"Excuse me, sir," she said. "My master asks if you would like to play."

She was cute, and if I was feeling more adventurous and less concerned I might have said yes. "Sorry, not right now."

"I understand," she said, practically bowing to me. "Sorry for disturbing you." I still didn't know how people could behave like that, but I guess I could understand the attraction from the dominant partner's perspective. When I turned back around, Dawn was heading towards me, weaving through the crowd with drinks in hand.

"Hey," I said. "I see you got cornered by the ogre up there."

"She's not that bad," Dawn said. "Anyway, she was saying -- well, Alexis runs a gay bookstore over in Kensington. It's an attic, but it's a well-established attic. Well, she needs a new cashier, and she wanted it to be me -- she has this monster crush on me -- but I said that you would probably be better at it, since you're all smart and bookish and shit. It took a little convincing, but long story short you're starting on Monday."

"Wait, really? You got me a job?"

Dawn nodded, a bit morosely, and I knew something was wrong. "Yeah. It's only part time, but it should be enough for your share of the bills. Anyway, I need to -- I'm gonna go upstairs with her. You gonna be all right on your own down here?"

"Hold on," I said. "I thought you said that she was -- you know, that I shouldn't do anything with her."

Dawn said nothing.

"Hold on a sec. Is this, like, some kind of deal?" My stomach turned.

"Not in so many words," she said. "I mean, even Alexis isn't that crude. But... it was kind of understood. I don't wanna piss her off. And she's really hot for me."

"Listen, Dawn," I said. "I don't want you getting yourself in danger for me, and I sure as fuck don't want you whoring yourself out for me."

"Don't call me a whore."

"That's not what I--"

"It'll be fine. Half an hour and it'll be done. I've done worse for less."

Dawn leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. I tried to give her a hug -- whether to reassure her or hold her in place, I didn't know -- but she shrugged my arms aside and went over to Alexis, putting on a big Pan-Am smile. Alexis grabbed her firmly by the arm and tugged her upstairs. The two women vanished from my viewpoint, leaving me alone in a room full of strangeness.

Half an hour later, she still hadn't come down, and I was the only unhappy man at the sex party.

--

Saturday, June 9 - 2:01 AM

Afterwards, in bed with Dawn, I wondered as to why she had been so insistent about sex with me afterwards. Maybe she needed something loving with me for comfort, or maybe she just always buried her sadness under carnality. Before we did it she had vanished into the bathroom with a few lip-gloss bottles of strange powders I assumed were drugs. Maybe that would explain why she was so responsive under me, mewling nymphomatically at every touch, or why the conversation afterwards got so abstract.

After our second go-round, she started in again. "Is there a philosopher of hedonism?"

"Huh? Oh, sure. You can go back to the Greeks where you have Democritus and to an extent Epicurus, or the Cyreniacs, or I think some ancient Chinese guys. But I'm not sure anyone seriously considers it any more." There was some name tickling the back of my brain, but I think I had only heard it in passing, and I was not really at peak mental capacity now.

"Well, why not now?" Dawn said. "There's so much pleasure to be had today."

"I guess," I said. Once again, I was in no shape for ethical debates, but sex only seemed to energize instead of exhaust Dawn.

"I think that's my philosophy," she said. "Just focusing on the sensations of the body at that moment -- that's the closest thing to truth there is. Feeling good right now -- everything else is bullshit."

"You chose to feel bad today for a larger goal," I said. "That's not a very hedonistic thing to do."

Dawn paused to consider it for a moment. "I guess that's true. That's why I'm a lousy philosopher. So, you up for round three?"



Saying Stay Ch. 05



Julia and I had just finished making love. Well, that wasn't really true. We never quote-unquote made love. We fucked, maybe, but there was very little love there -- our frantic thrusts and loud cries were more a way of getting out our mutual aggression. I was pretty sure the whole house could hear the strain on the bed as we angrily thumped against it. Oh well. It wasn't like anyone here had a right to be scandalized.

I rolled off of her after my massive climax subsided and I had blasted Julia's cunt with what felt like a gallon of my cum. She growled as she felt the last tremors subside. Sweat had pooled between her peach-sized breasts. Julia sat up and began stretching, as if she was in the midst of an exceptionally lewd workout video.

"What are you doing?" I said, my brain still cloudy.

"Gotta stay limber," she said, and I had no idea if she was being serious or not.

The scene was too weird for me, and I had work in half an hour. I rolled out of bed and pulled on my hastily-discarded pants. I hadn't even bothered to get out of my shirt, which was now damp with sweat. I left Julia alone to her exercises.

The minute I was out of her room I bumped into Simon. He had a slightly nervous look on his face. "Oh, um. Hi," I said.

"Hi," said Simon. It was awkward. There was the usual thing of running into someone who's just heard you trying to drive a girl through the mattress, but it was more than that. Since the last time I had rebuked Simon, balking at the last minute, we had been dancing around each other, always pleasant but clearly not knowing what to do. It was like there was a wall between us -- or not a wall, but that weird slippery field of magnetic repulsion when you try to push two north poles together.

"Simon!" Julia called out from here room, sounding as cheery as I had ever heard her. "I was just thinking I needed another gentleman caller. Come on in and keep me company."

Simon shrugged and gave me a goofy grin. "Duty calls." He stepped into Julia's room and closed the door, doubtlessly beginning to make out with her with my cum still dribbling from between her legs. How had I gotten involved with these people again?

In the kitchen Dawn and Ellie were sipping their morning coffee. They both gave me a smug grin as I walked in. "Having a good morning?" Dawn said.

"I was," I said. "Now I gotta go to work."

"First day on the job?" said Ellie. "That's always a tough one."

I scrutinized her facial expression, trying to figure out how much she knew about the circumstances of my recent employment, but it was hopeless. "Yeah," I said.

I looked up towards the silent ceiling. "Okay, do Simon and Julia just not make any noise? And the whole house hears me?"

"Simon knows about some things called tenderness and subtlety," said Dawn.

I grabbed a granola bar from the cupboard as an emergency breakfast. "Whatever, Dawn. You know you like it." Ellie giggled and Dawn just smirked.

"You're an okay distraction," Dawn said. "Now go off to your boring retail job."

Unfortunately, that was exactly what I had to do. As I left the house, I still couldn't hear a peep from upstairs.

--

"You're late," said Alexis the moment I walked in the door.

I tapped my watch. "9:55. You said my shift started at 10."

"Yes, but I also said you were supposed to be here half an hour early," she said. "You have to stock the shelves, clean the video rooms, and double-check the balance on the computer system. This place doesn't run itself."

I bit my tongue and took up my position behind the desk. Alexis stood over me, looking upset, but there was kind of a strained quality to her anger. I thought she might have been spoiling for a fight that I was failing to give her. Finally she snorted and walked out of the store. "Craig will come in at 6 to relieve you. Till then, try not to burn the place down."

With Alexis gone I could get a fuller picture of Differance Books & Gifts. The location was clandestine in a way that had perhaps once been necessary, but now just seemed difficult. I had circled the block three times before finally noticing the stairwell that lead up to the small storefront above a comic shop. The walls were tightly packed with books that ranged from queer theory to pathos-drenched memoirs to sexual how-tos. A small collection of sex toys and videos sat in the back corner, which I was to learn was actually the main source of revenue for the store. Sunlight filtered in through windows high above, but otherwise the store seemed dark and secretive. It was the opposite of the sunny sex shop with flowers painted on the wall that Dawn had once dragged me to, but this store had its charms too.

Business was slow. A couple people an hour came in, some of which were obviously expecting to chat with Alexis or someone else who worked here and quickly turned away in dismay. A blushing man in a heavy coat came in, lurked around the fringes of the store for twenty minutes, and came to the register with a big stack of books. That amounted to most of my sales for the day. Other than that guy I only moved a couple jars of lube and a lesbian romance novel. I wondered how this place stayed in business. Maybe it was on the way down.

I was perfectly fine to have some nice quiet time to myself. I had a long text conversation with Nina in which we both joked about our jobs and then agreed to meet up for another date on Saturday. After that I relieved my boredom by perusing some of the zines and pamphlets up at the front, and idly wondering how long it might take me to read the entire store's inventory.

Halfway through my shift and two-thirds of the way through the enlightening Fucking Transwomen the cheery bells attached to the door jingled. I looked up to see Alexis carrying a brown paper bag from which she produced a tin foil-wrapped burrito. (After four years of college I could identify such a treat by the shape and the hint of smell alone.) She tossed the burrito to me. I caught it with the edge of my hands, fumbled it, and then managed to catch it again before it hit the ground. Alexis snickered.

"Thought I would bring you some lunch," she said. "You know, in case you didn't pack your own. And even if you did, this is probably better."

"Um... thanks," I said as I unraveled the gift. It was, in fact, delicious, a big spread of food and flavour concentrated and packed into a fairly small package. Alexis had got one for herself, and bit into it while she stood there in front of me.

"I know you probably haven't heard good things about me," said Alexis. "But I'm not a complete monster." Was that what she wanted me to learn from this?

I stayed quiet, eating my lunch. Alexis paced the floor, leaving a small trail of rice in her wake. She pivoted on her boot-heel and turned to me. "You know, I have to say, I never thought I'd hire a straight white boy to work here. I'm sure you're great, I mean, but it doesn't really fit the vibe of the place."

I stiffened. "I'm not --". I stopped myself.

"You're not what?" said Alexis, cocking her head to one side.

I had been about to say that I wasn't straight. But it seemed like saying that out loud, in what could pass for casual conversation, would change something about me. Was I not straight? Was I gay? Bi? But if so, why did I balk at Simon's cock, and why had I been avoiding the subject and avoiding him since then?

"I don't know," I said.

Alexis rolled her eyes. "Well, when you've sorted out your shit, let me know. I can give you a pin." She laughed as she left the store, and I wondered if anything she had said had been serious.

The thing was, thinking about fucking a dude wasn't that bad -- I had done it a lot recently, sometimes finding myself hard as I tried to envision the details. But thinking about myself being bisexual just seemed strange. I had always thought of myself as a normal guy -- the straight white man, as Alexis had bluntly put it, who never had to think about their identity or see themselves as any kind of minority. If I started fucking other men, would I have to make a big scene of coming out over Thanksgiving dinner? Would I have to start worrying about the religious zealots and bigoted thugs that some of the others discussed in hushed tones? Would I have to start going to pride marches and acting faintly effeminate, or worry about how I was representing queer men?

I was beginning to feel a headache coming on, and I still had half my shift left. I groaned and tried to remember a time when all of this had seemed simple -- living in the house, fucking whoever I wanted and not having to worry about maintaining a delicate relationship. But now it was all just too complicated.

One thing was for sure: I had to talk to Simon. I couldn't let this thing hang over us any longer. But I knew that getting rid of that thing -- the air of awkward uncertainty that sprung up whenever we crossed paths -- might mean going through something much more painful.

--

When I got home dinner was on the stove and Simon was enmeshed in some sort of card game, so I let matters be. And then after dinner I had to do dishes, and my lethargic body could barely bring itself to scrub, let alone do so with any speed or urgency. Maybe I was killing time, making excuses. I could already feel my resolve starting to weaken.

No, I said to myself. I have to deal with this thing with Simon. I had avoided confronting it -- confronting my sexuality, really -- for months.

I left the dishes half-done, some sitting in the sink, some spread chaotically on the countertop. In the living room I found Padma with her feet up, reading a book.

"Hey," I said. "Have you seen Simon."

"He's out back," she said, not looking up from the book."

I stepped away to find him before realizing that Padma probably knew exactly what I was going through. "Um, can I ask you something?"

"You just did."

"How did you -- I mean, when you knew you were gay... what did you do? I mean, how were you sure?"

She looked at me askew. "Well you see, one day I was a nice little straight girl, then I woke up and discovered I had a shaved head and a shelf full of Sleater-Kinney albums."

I shrank. "Sorry, it was a dumb question."

"No, I know what you're thinking," said Padma. She straightened up and patted the seat next to her. "Sit down". It was a maternal, or maybe a big-sister gesture, and I obeyed. And suddenly a heart-to-heart was upon us.

I told her about Simon, about Alexis's remark and all of the weird internal debates it had stirred up inside of me. She listened patiently, nodding softly along. And then she broke out into a grin.

"What's so funny?" I said.

"Jesus Christ, you are hell bent on torturing yourself."

Once again, I felt kind of like an idiot. "Are you telling me you were never uncertain about liking girls? That you never felt tormented about it?"

"Of course I was," said Padma. "Because we live in a shitty world that tells little girls that kissing other little girls is evil, unless it's to get the attention of a dude. But being queer just wasn't something I could choose not to do."

My chest tightened up. "See, that's the thing. I feel like... I could just not do anything with Simon. Or with any other guy, really. I've been straight for twenty some-odd years and I could do it for another twenty."

Padma smiled. "But you don't want that."

The moment she said it, I realized it was true. "I don't."

Padma leaned in towards me. Her voice had dropped to a kind whisper. "If there's one thing that everyone in this house can agree on, it's this: if you want to fuck someone, and they want to fuck you, then for God's sake the two of you should just do it already and spare the rest of us the anguish. And if at any point you feel uncomfortable, you can stop. But if you don't... well, you just might discover something awesome about yourself that you've been repressing for years."

"Thanks," I said as I felt a smile inexorably grow on my face. "I... needed someone to talk me into it."

"Nah, you just need me to let you talk yourself into it." And then Padma kissed me. Her lips were soft and tasted faintly of peach. It wasn't a romantic or lustful kiss -- she wasn't into boys, after all -- but more an act of friendly affection. I felt warmer afterwards.

"Now knock'em dead."

Propelled by an inexorable energy, I made my way out to the back porch. Simon was out on the deck, sipping a beer and watching the sunset. With the orange light hitting his face, I noticed for the first time how beautiful he was. His face had a kind of Grecian elegance to it, and his skinny body now seemed sleek and (dare I say it?) sexy. I wasn't used to finding beauty in men's faces, but it was definitely there.

Simon turned to look at me. "Can I do something for you."

"A lot of things, actually," I said.

He rolled his eyes. "You're going to have to be more specific."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, um... I think I want to fuck you."

Simon sat back and fanned his fingers. "I thought you weren't into cocks."

"I never said that. I just... needed some time to think about it."

Simon looked away at a orange-purple streak of sky. "Well, you certainly are a romantic. You just have a way with words."

I was growing increasingly frustrated. "Okay, I'm sorry. Look, I just don't want things to be awkward between us. We can be together or not, it's up to you -- but I hate this weird, in-between state."

Simon stood up and stared me in the face. His eyes were a pale, almost haunting blue. He stepped in a little closer. He was about an inch shorter than me, but somehow when he stepped up in my face he felt intimidated.

As he spoke, I could feel his breath on my neck. "If you're so decided, then kiss me already."

I felt that strange mixture of aversion and temptation again, like magnetic repulsion. For a moment I was sure I would back away and chicken out again. But then, without consciously deciding to do it, I grabbed Simon by the back of the head and pressed his lips to mine.

It was different from kissing a girl (and I had kissed one moments ago, so I had a frame of reference). Simon's lips were drier and harder, and he pressed more forcefully against me. It felt a little jarring for our chests to be so close together, no soft breasts in between, but it wasn't unpleasant.

The kiss hung in the summer air like a swarm of cicadas. Neither of us wanted to move, our bodies locked as firmly as our lips. But eventually Simon pulled away. He looked at me appraisingly. "Okay. Come inside."

I realized that we were holding hands. Simon lead me through the kitchen and up the staircase to his bedroom. Along the way I heard a chorus of giggles -- Padma, and maybe Dawn too, doubtlessly making light of our dalliance. I didn't really care.

We stepped into Simon's room, and he immediately shut the door. I had never been in here before. The walls were egg-shell white and covered with black-and-white posters of various bands, mainly alternative groups from the 80s. I recognized The Smiths, Joy Division, Devo, and Wire, and a couple others looked familiar. A queen-sized bed sat on the far side of the room. Simon let go of my hand and almost immediately flopped down on the bed. He rolled over and patted the space next to him.

"Let's lie down," he said. "We can just talk for now." It sounded reasonable, so I joined him in bed.

"I never knew you liked all this stuff," I said, motioning to the posters.

"When I was a teenager, I wanted to grow up to be Morissey," said Simon. "Still do, if we're being honest."

I laughed. "Was it hard for you? Growing up, being... well, you know..."

"Was it hard for you?" he said.

I bit my lip. "Okay, good point. But you seem so much more, you know... sure."

"I figured out that I was bi when I was fifteen," said Simon. "I didn't tell anyone for four years, not until I was in college and far away from my hometown. Well, I guess the guy I drunkenly slept with during frosh week knew I was bi, but I never *told* him per se. I tried to suppress it, only date girls. I figured that if I was still attracted to women I could just ignore the fact that I was into guys too. But after a while that just started seeming ridiculous. So I started coming out to people. And some of them were dicks about it, but most of them accepted it. Hell, I think most people kinda knew already. And you know what? After I did it, I felt so much... I dunno, lighter. The proverbial weight was off my chest."

"Well, you're braver than I am," I said.

Simon shrugged. "Bravery is overrated. You just have to do what makes you feel comfortable."

"Now you're sounding like Dawn."

"What can I say? She's rubbed off on me. In more ways than one."

The two of us lay there for a while, staring at the bedroom ceiling. Our bodies were in comfortable contact with each other, arms interlinked, but neither of us seemed to know what to do next.

Simon spoke again. "I don't want to act like I have it all figured out. I mean, it's like this: I've only been in one long-term relationship in my life. It was with a girl named Val in college. I loved her -- still do, in fact. But after a while it was just stifling. Like I was denying part of myself -- by not fucking boys, by not fucking other girls, and by making myself so dependent on one person. I can't imagine being in a relationship with anyone, man or woman, where that wasn't the case. So what the fuck am I supposed to do with my life?"

"It sounds like what we have here is just about perfect for you," I said.

"It is, for now. But come on Mike. Do you really think this is going to last?"

I hadn't considered the question before. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, am I going to be living in a polyamorous fuck-house when I'm forty? When I'm sixty? What if I want to have a kid? Not to mention that, with the personalities we have around here, you know that one day things are just going to explode."

I couldn't help but laugh. "Simon, I don't know what I'm going to be doing in twenty minutes, let alone twenty years. We can burn those bridges when we come to them." And then I kissed him on the cheek. It was just a peck, a little gesture of affection. It felt natural.

He gave me a sly smile. "I think I know what you're going to be doing in twenty minutes."

I raised an eyebrow. "Twenty minutes? You think you're going to last that long?"

"I'm up for it if you are, cowboy."

We started kissing, at first soft and leisurely, and then with added fire. Simon wrapped a hand around the small of my back and pulled me in closer to him. I could feel his hardness through his jeans, and feel my cock starting to stir, longing to meet his.

His hands were on my shirt. "You ready?" he said, nibbling at my chin.

I had the proverbial butterflies in my stomach, but I still nodded. "Mm-hmm."

And then he was pushing up my shirt, and I was letting him, and I was exposed to him once more. Simon ran his hands down my flank and kissed the nape of my neck, creating an almost ticklish sensation. He pinched and rolled my nipples between his thumb and forefinger. That smarted, and I told him as much.

"Just go with it." Simon had a weird twinkle in his eye that made it impossible for me to protest.

He wound his fingers through my chest hair and began to suck on the nipples he had just abused. The sensation was incredible. I writhed under him, not believing that a simple lick of the chest could make me feel this good, almost as if he was licking my cock. I said writhing, but perhaps a more accurate term would be "bucking". But Simon stayed on top of me, pinning me down with his weight, pressing his hardness insistently into my crotch. It felt halfway between love and combat.

Simon undid my shorts and tugged them rudely off. My cock, hard and just beginning to get moist with precum, sprang out. Simon grabbed ahold of my cock and began rubbing it as he straddled my legs. He had an almost defiant look on his face as he jacked me off. It was great, but his scratchy, summer-bloated skin was not what I wanted to feel right now.




Saying Stay Ch. 05



"Simon..."

"What is it?"

I instinctively choked back what I had been about to say.

He stopped rubbing me and just held my cock steady. "What do you want me to do Mike?"

"I want you to..." Again, my voice was failing me, the last dregs of my shame and uncertainty clogging my airway.

He tilted his head to the side, looking like a confused puppy. "Mike, I can't help you out if you don't tell me what you want." This game again.

"I want you to suck my cock," I blurted out.

"Oh!" Simon acted surprised. "Well, of course." And before I knew it he was splayed out across the bottom of the big bed, burying my dick in his mouth. The second I entered his moist mouth I wondered what had taken me so long. Simon was an insistent and energetic cock-sucker, bobbing up and down on my shaft with so much speed and enthusiasm I was slightly afraid he might rip the thing off. But the inside of his mouth, and the feel of his tongue sliding around the head of my cock, was so nice I wasn't really concerned.

I let out a moan, longer and higher-pitched than I was used to. Simon was playing with my balls as he swallowed his cock as if it was food to a starving man. He briefly came up for air, gasped, and then went right back to gulping down my meat. At about the same time I felt his other hand press into my ass.

It was a bit uncomfortable – I was used to my ass being strictly exit-only – but, in the spirit of trying new things, I eased up and let Simon slide a finger inside me. It felt strange, being penetrated, or more precisely having a part of somebody else's body inside you, wiggling around beyond your control. But it kind of felt nice too. And then I felt Simon's finger curve and begin rubbing a sensitive spot of my inner walls and it went way beyond nice.

And of course, he was slurping and sucking on my dick this whole time. I felt the familiar sensation of orgasm approaching and tried to fight it off. It would be too much, and too soon. "No," I muttered.

Simon looked up at me quizzically. "I don't want to come just yet," I said. "And besides, I... I want to do you."

He smiled and sat up. It was only then that I noticed that he had somehow lost his clothes while I had been soaking up his oral pleasure. I looked over Simon's body once again. It was a better body than mine, if we're being honest – and it was strange to even make that comparison. He was lean, but muscular, with a quiet strength radiating from his pale skin. Other than a couple tufts above his cock, his body was hairless. And that cock? It was still at half-mast, but it seemed looked smooth and attractive... almost cute.

So there the two of us were, sitting facing each other, nude mirror images. We kissed a bit more, to bridge the gap in between us, and then Simon leaned back. His cock suddenly seemed much more imposing. This was it. Time to put up or shut up.

I leaned over, bending myself almost in half. The cock loomed before me, and I felt the same wave of uncertainty that had stopped me before. But this time I fought through it. I felt I had to. I gently kissed the head. I didn't burst into flames. In fact, it kind of excited me. So I nervously parted my lips and took Simon's soft cock into my mouth.

My first response was to try and bite down on it, but thankfully I restrained myself from eating my friend's penis. Instead I just held his cock in the warmth of my mouth for a moment. It was a strange texture on my tongue, to say nothing of its warmth and the gentle throb of life.

Okay, Mike, I said to myself. Focus. What do you like in a blowjob?

I slid my tongue along the head of Simon's cock and began bobbing up and down on the shaft. It was an awkward moment, and the first time I shifted forward I accidentally took the whole thing in my mouth. It hit the back of my throat and I almost puked.

Simon petted me on the head. "Shhh. Take it slow. And watch your teeth a bit."

I did my best. I pulled my lips around my teeth and began slowly shifting up and down. My drool ran down to Simon's balls, and I was amazed that there was so much saliva in my mouth. Gradually I felt the half-erect dick in my mouth begin to stiffen and lengthen. Simon let out a shuddering moan. He was getting hard for me. I was making Simon feel good.

This sent an unexpected spark of pleasure to my brain, and I began eagerly bobbing up and down, trying to elicit more groans from Simon. There wasn't very much technique in my work – just the best suction I could manage. The sensation of cock in my mouth was no longer quiet so alien, and was even becoming enjoyable. I suddenly wanted to get more cock in my mouth. I was even starting to appreciate the taste.

"Ah shit," said Simon as he buried his hands in my hair. To my surprise, he pulled my head off of his cock. I looked up at him, surprised at my feeling of disappointment.

"If you keep doing that," said Simon in between pants. "I won't be able to give you a proper fucking."

I pursed my lips. "And here I thought I was going to be fucking you."

There was a cruel twinkle in Simon's eye. "I think in order to know how to top you have to bottom first. You know, just to be aware how it feels, and how far you can go."

"So you're saying this is for my own education?"

"Something like that."

"And you wouldn't just be saying all of this to get in my ass?"

"Scout's honour. Now lie back and let me get you warmed up."

I lay down on the bed, getting nice and comfortable, as Simon rummaged around in his nightstand. His erect cock hang tantalizingly close to my head. I couldn't help but reach out and give it a good stroke. "Be patient," Simon said as he pulled out a bottle of lube.

Simon applied a generous layer of lube to the entrance of my ass, then coated his right index finger in the stuff. The liquid felt strange and cool as he rubbed it into my asshole, a not unpleasant sensation. Then Simon slid the one finger inside of me and things really got going. His finger rubbing my inner walls was like the ultimate scratching of the ultimate itch. I began to melt into the bed.

"I'm going to put another finger in now, Mike," said Simon.

I felt his middle finger joining the other one, but it quickly began to feel like one thick digit probing my insides. I groaned and unconsciously spread my legs, allowing Simon deeper access. My cock had gone down a bit from lack of attention, but the anal stimulation was making me grow hard with a new urgency.

"I'm going to put a third finger in now."

I was suddenly aware of the smallness of my anus. Even with all the lube, it felt like a tiny passageway, and certainly not big enough to take something the size of Simon's cock. The three fingers thrusting within me were nice, but they were also kind of brutal, and my groans were not entirely pleasant. My ass was getting stretched out, and I didn't know how much more it could take.

"I'm going to enter you now."

It wasn't a question, really – more of a confident statement I couldn't bear to protest. I felt Simon's cockhead at my entrance. If there had been any barriers left, taking a dick up the ass was certainly one of them. But if I was a little worried about the pain, all thoughts of sexuality and masculinity were now gone from my mind. I breathed in deep and braced myself for penetration.

Simon frowned. "You're too tense. You have to relax."

"I am relaxed."

"Well, relax harder."

That got me smiling, and distracted me a bit from what was going on. The next thing I knew I felt the thick head of Simon's cock passing through my anal rosebud. I felt a flash of pain. This wasn't going to work. This was going to tear me apart.

After the head it all slipped through pretty easily, and Simon's cock was suddenly buried to the hilt inside me. I was splayed out across his lap, asscheeks touching his thighs as he looked down at me. I bit my lip to stop from crying out from the pain. There was a large, hard, foreign object inside of me, and I didn't like it. I wondered if this was how women felt during sex with men, and if so why they ever put up with it.

"Are you okay?" he said.

I decided to fight through the pain. I didn't want to ruin this, after how far we had come. "Keep going."

Simon was shifting inside me. The thought of someone being inside me, of his cock being in my ass, sort of blew my mind. At first the feeling of his cock's skin rubbing up against my insides was painful, but gradually that started to fade away. Simon was moving back and forth inside me very slowly, penetrating me with short, soft thrusts. It was actually beginning to feel pretty good.

Once Simon saw that I was no longer in pain he began to fuck me a little harder. He pulled halfway out of my ass and slid forcefully inside. That jarred my entire body, and it jarred me again when he repeated the motion. I found myself shaking along with my thrusts. I was no longer in control of my body – it had been invaded.

And that was the revelation of penetration – Simon wasn't just fucking my ass, he was fucking all of me. And all of me was rocking back and forth on his dick in response to his thrusts. And the bolts of pleasure that hit me coursed through my entire body.

"Oh god," I moaned. Simon just grinned.

Simon pulled me further onto his cock, laying my lower back across his knees and putting me at an angle where he could penetrate me even more deeply. I found myself beginning to move with the rhythm and push back onto his hard shaft. Simon just held on and fucked me harder. I could feel his nails digging into my back. I ran a hand over his chest and could feel his chest shivering. Maybe this meant as much for him as it did for me.

But in a few minutes meaning was forgotten. Simon was vigorously thrusting in and out of me. Sweat dripped off his skin and fell down onto my stomach. I was overcome with sensation. It felt as though he was some raw driving force tearing me apart, but in a beautiful way. I felt like he was fucking not my ass but the very core of my being.

"Oh god... Simon..." I panted.

He leaned down and gave me a sloppy kiss as we fucked. My hard cock pressed in between our bodies. Simon grinned as though he had just became aware of that organ, and then grabbed it and began stroking it quickly. It was too much sensation. I clawed the sheets and thought I might go mad.

A blinding white light overcame me. That was it. I was melting. Dimly I saw my cum shooting out of my cock, and felt the hot spurts land on my stomach, but I was in another world.

My skin was still tingling when, a few minutes later, Simon thrust into me with one final grunt. I could feel him spasming in me and imagined his cum shooting deep into my bowels. How was he so deep inside of me? How had I been opened up to this incredible degree?

Our bodies were both sticky and frankly a little gross, but I had no qualms about quietly cuddling with him afterwards. His body still felt a little hard and bony, but no more so than Julia's. We gave each other little kisses and waited for our hearts to slow down a bit. It was the same tranquility as I always felt after sex.

"Wow," I said.

"I agree," said Simon.

I ran my hand along his shoulderblades. "I... I think I'm gonna do that again. I don't care what that makes me."

"Not right now."

"Why not? You not up for the task?"

"No, because you're already going to have trouble sitting down tomorrow."

It was true – my ass was starting to feel less blissed out and more sore. But I could tolerate it. Even the pain felt like a badge of pride.

The next day didn't go so bad either. When I went to the store in the morning, I smiled at a private joke. Alexis gave me a weird look, but that day she didn't question my right to be there. I didn't either.



Saying Stay Ch. 06



Ellie was easy to forget. She was the type of quiet, unassuming person that never registered on your mind: the polite woman behind the check-out counter, the wallflower at a house party. The oddity of having a respectable, seemingly "normal" middle-aged woman in a freaky-deaky sex house made her stand out when I first moved in, but it was hard to pay attention to her over the outsized personalities and even more outsized sexual appetites of Dawn and Julia. So two months after I moved in, I had not only never had sex with Ellie, but I had never had much of a conversation with her.

All of this made it very awkward when it was just me and her at the dinner table one night. I had spent much of the afternoon making a three-course banquet with all sorts of meats and vegetables, only to discover that almost everyone was bailing on the nightly meal. Dawn and Simon were going to a show, Josh had to pick up some emergency hours at the gym, Julia was away at some sort of conference or convention, and Padma was out on a very mysterious date.

"Well, I hope you're hungry," I said to Ellie when she got home. She had just gotten off work and was still done up in a full suit.

"Oh, I'm starving. I worked through lunch, and all I had to tide me over was a bag of chips."

"You need to eat more," I said. This was not the first time that Ellie had come to the table without having much for breakfast or lunch.

She pinched some of the flab around her waist. "I don't think so. If anything, I need to be less of a pig." Before I could argue, she went upstairs to change.

Fifteen minutes later, we were staring out at a vast smorgasbord of food, and listening to an uncomfortable silence. We both heaped our plates with chicken and risotto, hoping that chewing would be an adequate substitute for talking. After all, if our mouths were full, who could blame us? But even if we would have both been content to sit in silence, there was this kind of strange obligation to talk.

Ellie dabbed at the side of her mouth with a napkin. "So Mike. You've probably told me this sometime, but why did you decide to move in here?"

I shrugged. "I needed a place to stay, and the rent was reasonable. Plus there are... perks. What about you?"

Ellie blushed. "Oh, the same, pretty much."

There was something there, perhaps something buried. I didn't want to pry. "Well, I'm glad you're here." Lame.

We talked a bit more, about the news and how the Blue Jays were doing this year (about as lousy as ever). I told a dirty joke that Dawn had taught me, and even though Ellie had probably heard it from the same source, she still went beet red and laughed nervously.

"You know," I said, as I tried to find room for another spoonful of carrots. "We should really sleep together."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, I'm just saying that it's kind of weird we haven't yet... you know, with the house being the way it is."

Ellie dropped her fork and let it clatter against her plate. "Oh, well of course, since we live together you're absolutely entitled to my body."

"I didn't mean it like that-"

Ellie gave me the stern gaze of a disappointed mother. "Yes you did. You just didn't want me to realize it." She got up and shoved her plate towards me. "I'm not hungry any more. Can you pack it up?"

I felt like I had just been caught up in a tornado and deposited in a wheat field somewhere in the Prairies. "Of course," I managed to say.

Ellie did not storm off to her room. A woman her age does not storm to her room and slam the door. Instead she calmly walked up to her bedroom, shut the door gently, and did not emerge for the rest of the night.

-

The most frivolous four of the house's occupants (read: me, Dawn, Josh, and Padma (but don't tell her I said that)) were playing Super Smash Brothers. Our fingers were in a rapid frenzy as we unleashed cartoon carnage on each other. I was playing Samus, like any reasonable person, while Dawn was constantly picking the "Random Character" option and moaning when Ganondorf or that weird new Pokemon came up.

We were having one of those conversations that begins in smack talk and eventually, through some mysterious alchemy, turns into a serious discussion. Maybe the game distracted me from apprehension and I accidentally said what was really on my mind. I told them about my short and disastrous conversation with Ellie the night before. There was a good bit of laughter at my expense, and then Dawn took me out with a hammer just to add insult to injury.

"So, I guess it's only fair to call you the modern Casanova," said Dawn. "I mean, with an approach like that you could talk any girl into bed."

"Shut up, Dawn."

"I don't think Mike was really out of line," said Padma. "I mean, he let Ellie knew he was interested, and didn't press her when she wasn't interested. I think that we would be better off if people were more direct."

"You're just saying that because you don't have to sleep with him," said Dawn. "It would be different if he was being direct all over you every day of the week."

"Is that an euphemism?" I said.

Josh, playing Bowser, knocked Dawn into the stratosphere. "That's the cool part about living here in this house. You can just be like 'yo, let's fuck' without worrying about all that romance bullshit."

"Have you had sex with Ellie, Josh?"

"Only about a million times." There was just a little of the frat-boy smirk in Josh's voice. Just a little.

"Well, what did you say to her?" I said. "'Let's fuck?'"

Josh shrugged as he grabbed the star and went on an invincible rampage. "I dunno. I don't remember the words we used - it was too long ago. I just remember the moment she walked in the door, she saw me and her body was all 'Woah' and mine said 'I don't normally go for older women, but this one is a fox'. Of course, there were a couple days of flirting and shit. I don't remember the words, but I remember the tension, you know?"

"You know," I said. "I think there's some wisdom in that."

"Nah," said Dawn. "Josh is a moron. Why do you want to fuck Ellie, anyways? You figure if you do all of us you can send the box-tops off and get a prize?"

I paused, allowing Samus to be hurled off the edge of a cliff once again. "I don't know. You're right, it was stupid of me."

"Well, I guess we're all morons around here," Josh said with a bit of a glower.

"I guess I just thought... maybe she could teach me something."

"If you wanna get taught something, you should just go to Julia," Josh said. "She knows every weird sex thing there is. Hell, she probably even has the video."

"You know," I said to him, "You don't have much room to talk about 'weird sex things', considering I've seen you in a dog collar and assless chaps."

Josh got flustered. "That was one time!" His rosy-cheeked state allowed Dawn to hit him with a bomb from behind and win the match.

Dawn sprung up and pumped her fists in the air. "All right! Lucario reigns supreme!"

"I was distracted," Josh said. "We need a rematch, without Mike talking about his goddamn relationship problems."

"All right, rematch," said Dawn. "But let's add some stakes. Whoever gets knocked out first has to go down on the winner."

Josh jerked a finger towards me. "I'm not going down on this guy."

"Then don't lose, slut-boy." Dawn smiled wickedly and hit the start button. 

It was, to use a cliche that I've never quite understood, the dog days of summer. The muggy air felt like a liquid that we had to wade through in order to get anywhere. The old house was naturally lacking in central air, and the two old air conditioners that Simon had hauled out of the basement were not doing much to alleviate the situation.

Julia was stretched out on the sofa in her underwear. It would have been a turn-on, but it was so hot that the thought of such physical exertion as sex was almost revolting. "Can't move," Julia said, mimicking my thoughts. "Moving is too hot."

"I shoulda gone out West with Nina," I said. My girlfriend, if one could still use the term, was spending the month visiting some relatives and enjoying Vancouver's constant rain.

"You still haven't told her about us?"

"I'm waiting for the right time."

Julia buried her face in the arm of the couch, but her hectoring voice was still pretty clear. "You need to stop leading her on. It's unethical otherwise. As much as I hate it, monogamy is the default option in our society, so if you don't let her know that you're treating this as an open relationship..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"You know, but you're not doing anything about it."

I looked at my sweaty palms. "Maybe I'm just being a sexual radical, like you're always talking about."

Julia looked at me, her head askew. "I've always been open and honest with all my lovers. There's nothing radical about cheating."

Before this uncomfortable conversation could proceed any further, Ellie walked into the room. She wasn't quite at Julia's level of non-modesty, but she was clearly wearing the thinnest tank top and the shortest shorts she owned. I couldn't help but notice her heavy breasts threatening to break loose from the thin white material, to say nothing of her luscious thighs and plump ass. I tried to tear my eyes away - it was evident that she didn't want my attentions. Dawn also bounded into the room. She was wearing her underwear, and looked as hot as ever (in multiple ways), but for some reason I was still fixated on Ellie. Thrill of the unknown, maybe.

"Hi all," said Ellie. "Dawn and I were talking, and this is going to sound corny, but..."

"Water park!" Dawn proclaimed.

"What are we, six?" said Julia.

"It'll be a lot of fun," said Ellie. "And if nothing else, it'll give us a chance to cool off."

I was all for it, and said so. I was very curious as to what kind of swimwear the women of the house would have. It might even redeem this hellish weather.

"Today's a Saturday," Julia said. "The park will be packed. With kids, especially." Julia hated kids.

"I only have weekends off," said Ellie. "You know I bring in the most money around here. So why not let me have my fun."

Julia rolled over, allowing the sweat to pool in her navel. "You always have to throw that around."

Ellie flushed. "I don't think I, uh, usually do."

Dawn slapped Julia on the ass. "Come on. We can all go in Ellie's car."

"That gas-guzzling suburb-mobile? I thought I told you to get rid of it."

Dawn made a sour face. "Julia's always such a spoil-sport. Don't mind her, Ellie. This trip is going to be awesome! Hey, what swimsuit should I bring?"

Ellie and Dawn bounded upstairs to get ready. Julia rolled over and gave me an askew look.

"I'm going to tell Nina about us," I said. "Just as soon as she gets back from Vancouver." Julia still looked skeptical. "Really. I am."

Ellie's car was every bit the typical soccer-mom mini-van that Dawn said it was. I had seen it parked on the street outside the house before, but I didn't make the connection that one of us actually owned it. I had assumed that we were all too poor and bohemian to afford such a car. But no matter how much of an affront it may have been to Julia's environmental and aesthetic sensibilities (and mine too, if we're being honest), it was awfully convenient for getting all seven of us from one place to another.

The van was abuzz with chatter as we turned onto the highway. "This is nice," said Ellie, in the driver's seat. "All of us together. It seems like we don't do this enough."

"This is why I'm saying that Tuesday night should be Orgy Night," said Dawn.

"Seconded," said Josh from the back seat.

The water park was about ten minutes outside the city limits, an elaborate and sprawling structure of concrete and plastic. It was, as Julia had predicted, swarming with kids, but also with a fair amount of adults and teenagers just looking to cool off. I remembered why as soon as we stepped out of the moderately air-conditioned car, and the full musty force of August hit me in the face.

"Ow," I said. "Let's get into the water as soon as we can."

Of course, first we had to wait in line to get tickets, and then we had to listen to Julia complain about how overpriced the tickets were. Then we had to wait in line to use the changing rooms. All three of us men got in at the same time, and we quickly shed our sweaty clothes in exchange for our swimsuits.

I couldn't help admiring Simon's bubbly ass as he bent over to slide his shorts on. His cock dangled out enticingly, and if it wasn't for the crowd of strangers I probably would have dropped down and sucked him off. That thought was a little weird to me, so I turned around. There was Josh, his muscles taut and his body honed from years of athletics, and his thick cock hanging loose in the summer air. There was no question of anything happening between us - Josh was about as straight as it gets - but it was a nice to momentarily fantasize about that thick cock plowing into me. And past him was another hunk with a classic beach body - bulging muscles, a nice tan, and not a bad package either. I was having to fight to stop from getting hard.

And all of these men were totally oblivious that I was ogling their naked bodies. (Except for Simon, who gave me a covert wink and a shake of the ass.) Shit. Maybe this was one of the advantages of being bi.

I left the changing room in a haze of sexual confusion, trying to stop my nascent erection from fully blooming. That got much more difficult when we ran into the girls.

I had seen most of these women naked before, but there was something about the swimsuit and its small modesties that made their bodies impossible to look away from. Dawn was dressed in a skimpy red bikini that barely contained her curvy body. I could see her nipples, the same nipples I had licked and played with countless times, poking out through the red fabric. As she turned around, as if modelling the outfit, I could see that the bottom part of the suit was a thong, and her bubbly asscheeks were exposed to the open air for anyone to look at.

Padma was dressed a little more conservatively, but not much. Her black swimsuit seemed almost to blend into her dark brown skin, creating an impression of total nudity. Her tits had never seemed quite so large as they did now, pushing forward in rebellion against the bikini top. I could see just a bit of her black pubic hair poking out from the edges of her bottom, hanging between her tanned thighs and luscious legs. Her midriff beckoned like an oasis in the desert.

Julia was wearing a black one-piece that wouldn't be out of place at a swimming competition. Despite its strictly utilitarian appearance, she still looked ridiculously sexy. The suit was a bit tight, and hugged the contours of her skinny body perfect. Standing a few feet away, I could see every tight muscle, to say nothing of the distinctive "V" of her pelvis and the vague impression of her pussy lips. And when she turned to the side to whisper a comment to Padma, I could see her tight little ass in all its glory.

And then there was Ellie. If there was any doubt in my mind that a middle-aged woman could be as much of a knockout sexual vision as a twenty-year-old pin-up model, that was gone now. She wore a yellow bikini, not particularly revealing as far as these things go. But even some of Ellie's bounteous cleavage was a sight to behold - and it teased me of the idea with what lay below that tight yellow suit. Her short-style bottoms hugged her thighs perfectly, and her bare belly called to mind the classic hourglass figure in all its glory.

"Upon seeing our Medusa-like images, the boys were turned to stone," said Padma. It was true - Josh was just as gobsmacked as me, and even Simon was reduced to little more than your typical ogler.

Dawn snickered. "Or at least part of them was."

"Perverts," Julia said, as though she hadn't spent a good long time staring at the Speedo-like suit Simon wore, and the gentle bulge his cock made. "We're here to swim."

"Well, we've got to wait in line for a while anyways," said Dawn. "So we may as well have something to look at while we do so. And if you don't mind me saying so, you are SMOKING hot Jules."

"Didn't we already wait in line?" Josh said, without taking his eyes off Ellie's boobs.

"There are always more lines to wait in," Padma deadpanned.

And so we all lined up for the big waterslide, the park's main attraction. Dawn leaned in and whispered to me. "You think you're pretty lucky, but I got to see them all naked." And then she scampered off somewhere with a mischievous look on her face.

It wasn't just the women of our house who were strutting their stuff. The whole park was filled with women of all colours, shapes, and sizes, with one universal constant - they weren't wearing much. I found myself gawking at a pair of stacked blondes in bikinis that appeared to have just strolled out of the pages of the Swimsuit Edition, and then at a svelte woman with dusky skin who regarded me with a raised eyebrow. I also began to admire the young men with tight surfer bodies and perilously short trunks. Julia grabbed me by a finger and yanked me along in line. She muttered something about roving eyes that I didn't even register. It wasn't as though I had never been to the beach before - but for some reason, I seemed more attentive to the bodies around me and their sexual possibilities than I had ever been before me.

At the same time as my eyes were taking in more flesh than they could handle, the whole park was baking in the August heat reflecting off the park's white-hot concrete. There were lots of children too, often tugging at the ankles of the men and women that I was ogling. The water park was supposed to be a treat for kids, but the long lines and unbearable heat meant that most of the children transformed from cute visions of innocence into raging imps that cried, screamed, and in at least one case puked into the nearest trash can. So if the water park on this day was a little bit of heaven, it was also a little bit of hell.

Whatever eschatological state we were in, the line did eventually slowly move. (So maybe it was purgatory?) And, after half an hour of waiting, we were at the top. And suddenly I wasn't sure why we had come up so high. I looked down on the slide, a seemingly endless tube that snaked around itself in ways that were seemingly geometrically impossible. I felt a wave of nausea as I looked down. Ellie evidently felt worse.

She clung to the railing, her knuckles white. "I can't do this. I'm sorry guys."

"Why not?" said Josh.

"It's just... look, I've always had a problem with heights, and I'm feeling a little faint..."

It seemed bizarre to me that Ellie, the most sensible and adult out of all of us, would turn into the scared kid perched at the edge of a diving board. I reached out and touched her shoulder. "It's okay. We can go down together."

Ellie nodded in mute compliance. I sat down in the thin lane of water leading up to the slide, and Ellie sat in front of me. She leaned back against me, her plush body melding into mine.

I looked up at the gawky ride attendant. "Hey, can me and my girlfriend go at the same time?"

"Well, the regulations say-"

"Great," Ellie said, and pushed us both forward and down into the slide. We were instantly sucked into a dark vortex of motion, whipping around and around until we know longer knew where we were and what we were doing. I held Ellie close to me with my arm that was wrapped around her bare stomach, pressing her ass against my pelvis. Somewhere in the midst of all this, I found time to get an erection.

We finally landed in the pool with a massive splash. We kept together. Ellie whispered to me "Your girlfriend?"

"What, would you have preferred I called you my mom?"

"'Friend' would have been acceptable." But at this point Ellie was rubbing her ass against me in a distinctly non-friendly manner. I wasn't exactly resenting the attention, although it did have me a little confused. But I soon found my other arm wrapping around Ellie, and the hand starting to wander towards her breast. I let out a long, hot breath that snaked around her collarbone. I softly kissed the skin of her shoulder, and for a moment the rest of the world faded away.




Saying Stay Ch. 06



But that was when Josh came barreling down the slide, his flailing legs almost decapitating the both of us. We ended up in a pile of limbs, and for once it wasn't the sexy kind. I was momentarily ducked underwater, trying to untangle myself from Josh's legs. I broke through the surface just in time to see Julia splashing down on all of us.

"Jesus," Julia said, as I was coughing up heavily-chlorinated water. "Can't you guys read? You're supposed to get out of the lane in front of the slide."

"I didn't know slides had lanes," Josh said.

The four of us let the pool's soft, artificial waves carry us away from the dangerous opening. "Sorry, Julia," said Ellie. "I guess I just got kind of distracted. Won't happen again." And then she winked at me. I realized that I still had a huge tent in my shorts, and it wasn't going away any time soon.

-

Ellie and I found a few moments to be together in that hazy summer afternoon. We came together in the corners of the pool or behind the burger stand and kissed and touched. It never went further than adolescent skin games, although I did manage to slip my hand under Ellie's top long enough to feel a hard nipple before we had to go stand in another line. There was a kind of magnetic pull that had suddenly sprung up between us - no, not magnetic, something warmer and wetter, like the maple syrup that makes your fingers stick together after a big breakfast. An addiction, maybe. Before we left, Julia found the two of us making out behind the changing rooms, and smacked me on the back of the neck. "Break it up, lovebirds. We have to get out of here before my brain breaks."

"Fine," I sulked.

"And no sex in the van," Julia said, wagging her finger at the two of us.

"It's my van, and I can do what I want to," said Ellie. But of course, she was in the driver's seat on the way home, and I didn't want to try my luck in the middle of the QEW. So instead I spent the whole time turning the affair over in my heat-addled brain. It was as though that slide had flipped a switch, and Ellie had turned from the responsible matronly figure who saw me as nothing more than a young troublemaker into a sex kitten that couldn't keep her hands away. Why were women always so baffling? Then again, men had been confusing me a lot lately too.

In the backseat, Padma snuggled up with a badly sunburnt Dawn. Maybe they had intended some hanky-panky, but both girls quickly fell asleep. Josh and Simon were nodding off as well, while Julie was obviously struggling to read whatever had popped up on her tablet. The day's exuberance had combined with the dry heat to sap us of all our energy. Only my confusion kept me awake.

-

When we got home, we all pulled ourselves out of the van like a haggard family after a three-week vacation. So much for our adventurous young lifestyle. It was Josh's day to cook, but he begged off claiming that he needed a nap, as did the rest of the group. They all vanished to their own rooms, although I was pretty sure that Dawn and Padma were sneaking off for a quickie. It was just me and Ellie in the kitchen, suddenly realizing that we were alone together.

"I should probably take care of food," said Ellie. "I guess we're ordering pizza again." In truth, that was probably what Josh would have done even if he was conscious.

"Please, let's not repeat the ordeal of having to find toppings that please all seven of us."

"Plain cheese pizza for all, then."

I didn't want to talk about pizza. "Ellie, I have to say... I wasn't expecting that all today."

She looked me up and down. "That all what, dear? Nouns are important."

"Well, I was pretty sure you never wanted to touch me, but then you were all over me..." I trailed off, trying not to sound lecherous or shallow.

She gave me a sunny smile. "Well, sweetie, that's what happens when you treat a girl nicely instead of just asking her if you want to... well, you know. Catch more flies with honey, you know."

"So, do you want to-" I caught myself. "-talk. We should talk. I want to know more about you."

"Nothing much to know about me. Mother of three going through a midlife crisis. When I get out of here, I'm planning to write a bestselling memoir about it. My book club would love it."

I leaned back against a cupboard. "See, that's one thing. I didn't know you had kids."

For a moment, Ellie's gaze was very far away. "I have the best kids in the world. Allie - she's thirteen, she's just turning into a women, and I'm shocked at how strong and beautiful a woman she's becoming. My son Evan is the smartest little boy you've ever met, although he doesn't apply himself well. And little Jacob - he just has so much light in his soul. I'm sorry, that sounds like a treacly New Age thing, but it's the truth. They're amazing, and I've done nothing but hurt them."

That last bit shocked me. "That can't be true, Ellie."

She turned away from me and faced the wall. "Of course it is. When everything's said and done, I'm selfish. The last years of my marriage, I fucked the mailman, the neighbour, my boss, random guys I met at bars - and I didn't think of the repercussions once. And when it all came out in the open, I ran away to join some sex commune filled with people half my age. I ruined my family. I haven't seen my kids in months. And the worst part is, on days like today, I don't even remember then."

Ellie was crying. All of a sudden the two decades between us seemed so vast - a whole lifetime, twenty some-odd years of scar tissue, endless layers of hurt and sorrow and maybe some pleasure as well. How the hell could I hope to understand what Ellie had been through, let alone the woman herself? How could we even converse?

So we didn't talk. I embraced her from behind. I was desperately hoping that somehow this half-hearted hug would be the romantic gesture needed to bridge the gap between me. She shook me off.

"Let me go," Ellie said. "I shouldn't be fucking around with kids like you."

I pulled away. I could see that Ellie was in pain, and I had no idea how to fix it. Maybe I couldn't - maybe thinking of other people's problems in terms of "fixing" was wrong. But I wanted to make Ellie feel better, just for a moment."

"Listen," I said. "I don't know much about what you did in your old life. All I know is the Ellie I've spent the last couple of months living with, and that Ellie is kind, open-minded, wise... just generally a good person."

Ellie shook her head. She turned to look at me with blood shot eyes. "You don't get it, Mike. There is no 'old life'. I don't get to just throw away everything I spent twenty years building because I feel bored. It's like they always say... there are no second acts in life."

"Whoever says that is a dumbass," I said. Ellie was not persuaded.

So I kissed her. Plain on the lips, no tongue, about as romantic as I could make it. I swear I felt her swoon a little bit. There was some quality to this silent kiss in our collective kitchen that made it seem so much more meaningful than those stolen minutes of necking at the water park. Maybe it wasn't the magic response that could break through the gap of years between Ellie and myself. But it sure felt that way.

"Come to bed with me," Ellie whispered into my ear.

"What about the pizza?"

"Screw the pizza." I chuckled, and let Ellie lead me by the hand downstairs to her room.

Ellie was still plainly vulnerable when we got down to her bedroom, so I took things slow. We had all night, and I had a new, amazing body to get to know.

There wouldn't have been enough room for the two of us to lie down side-by-side on Ellie's narrow single bed, but with me sliding on top of her, it was all right. She seemed hesitant now, biting her lip. "You still want to do this?"

"To be perfectly honest," said Ellie. "I've been wanting to... do this since the day you walked in the door." But she was still evidently nervous. Maybe she was still thinking that some divine moral authority would storm through the door and denounce her as a sinner. That kind of fear took a long time to break, and not everyone could emerge from their past with as much easy anger as Julia did.

Ellie evidently wanted me, but the tenseness of her body showed that she was having some internal difficulties. So I took things slow. We necked for a while, not even using much tongue, just tight innocent kisses. It was actually pretty great. As my lips intertwined with hers, I could feel Ellie's body soften before me - except for her nipples, which were poking through her thin T-shirt. I began to kiss her ears and lick that sensitive spot on her neck. Ellie groaned and arched her back.

"That's good, Mike," she said softly. "Just a little further down and - oooh."

I pressed my lips against her collarbone, Ellie's lowest unclothed part. I tugged at the neckline of her shirt with my teeth, and Ellie got the message. In one of those quick scrambles that seemed impossible outside of the narrow bubble of sexual physics, we both removed our tops. Ellie ran her hands along my chest lasciviously. I wasn't that fit, but I still felt a swell of pride as she looked at me like I was some kind of Greek God.

Ellie wasn't too bad herself. She wouldn't be on a magazine cover any time soon, but neither would I or anyone I knew. Her body was all curves, the beautiful rounded shape of a mature woman. I traced the bulge of her hips up along the light swell of her belly to her black bra, struggling to contain the mammaries within. And then she whipped her bra off, and I didn't have to imagine anything. Her breasts had obviously been weathered by the years, but they were soft and bountiful, and I couldn't ask for anything else.

She wrapped her legs around my waist and drew me in tighter. It was a very old-fashioned kind of intimacy, the electric shock of skin pressing against skin. I was pretty sure that if I flicked the light off, I would see Ellie glowing. I lavished more kisses on her neck, and caressed her breasts with the lightest touch I could muster. Ellie let out a high moan, and then reached down to pull off our last shreds of clothing.

I sank into her without further ado. It felt a bit like coming home after a long time away - strange, since this was the first time we had fucked. But there was a comfort to Ellie's body, a comfort that only augmented the tremendous pleasure of her wet pussy.

Ellie gave a long sigh of relief, and squeezed my hips. "Come on Mike. Make love to me."

I penetrated Ellie with long, slow strokes, taking time to languidly enjoy the sensation of her insides. We covered each other with kisses and caresses and tried to stay as close together as we could. It felt briefly as if we were about to melt into each other. And then the adrenaline of sex kicked in, and I realized that I was balls-deep in a beautiful woman who by all rights shouldn't have even looked at me.

I pushed my hips back and thrust forward harder than I had before. Ellie moaned, and I took that as a cue to pick up the tempo. We still held close, but increasingly we were having to hold onto each other for dear life. Ellie thrust her hips up to match mine with beautiful little grunts of exertion. We were locked in a deep, romantic embrace that was becoming increasingly filthy.

Ellie was rubbing up against me, grinding her clit against my hips, and suddenly she burst open with a flood of pleasure. I could hear her cry in my ear, soft and ladylike but still undoubtedly ladylike. I continued pumping my hips, although that motion had now become unstoppable. A minute later, blissful release crashed over me and I collapsed on top of Ellie.

I stayed lodged inside her as a post-coital warmth crept over my whole body. For a brief moment, everything was right with the world. Ellie beamed up at me with a warm smile. I don't want to describe her look as "maternal", because that conjures up all sorts of Freudian bullshit, and I don't think it's fair to think of Ellie in those terms just because of her age. But the feeling that came over me was not unlike when I was four years old and my mom would tell me how proud she was of me, and how she would always love me. What can I say? Maybe Freud wasn't such a crackpot after all.

I rolled off Ellie, although due to the lack of room on her bed I ended up laying awkwardly on my side, jammed between her body and the wall. Between a rock and a soft place, so to speak.

Ellie stared up at the ceiling with rosy cheeks. "You can call me a slut if you want, but I always feel a lot better after I... well, you know."

"Fuck?" I said.

I would have thought that a blush would have been invisible under that glow, but I could see it nonetheless. "You make it sound so vulgar," Ellie said

"Well that's what we did," I said. "You know, banging? Doing it? Snogging?"

"I think snogging is just kissing, actually," Ellie said.

Well, that made Harry Potter a lot less interesting. "Whatever the British one is, then. You don't have to be ashamed of it."

Ellie looked at me, clearly unimpressed. "Well aren't you the libertine? Believe me, I've heard all the lectures about free love and owning your sexuality, mostly from Julia. It doesn't change that voice at the back of my head. I guess it's not so much the sex I feel ashamed of, but enjoying it. I was raised to believe that men think all about sex, whereas women just lie back and think of England. That was all my husband expected of me, and it showed."

"He sounds like a tool."

Ellie sighed, and I could see that in her eyes I was still just a child. "Sweetie, one day you'll learn that being bad in bed doesn't mean you're a bad person. And visa versa."

"Vice versa."

"That's what I said."

Neither of us said much for a while. I don't know what was running through Ellie's head, but I was just enjoying all the pleasant little sensations kicking through my body. I glanced around Ellie's room, looking for something to tell me more about her or just start a conversation. Nothing. Her walls were bare, her bedside table had a picture of her children but nothing else, and half her clothes were sticking out of a duffel bag on the floor. It looked as though Ellie was still ready to leave at any moment.

"Are you happy here?" I said, hoping it wasn't too personal or abstract.

"Most of the time," Ellie said. "When the guilt doesn't catch up to me. I can't help but feel that one day you guys will wake up and realize I'm too old and ugly to be part of the party. All good things must come to an end, right?"

"I don't know about the policies of the house - you'd have to ask Julia about that. But I don't think there's an age limit. And for the last time, you're fucking beautiful."

Once again, my attempts at consolation bounced off Ellie. My only successful way through to her was physical. She went on. "I think that's why I'm always so nice to everybody. I'm afraid you'll get sick of me."

I wrapped my arms around her waist. "Is that what you're doing now? Being nice to me?"

Abruptly, Ellie turned over and swung her legs over my waist. Her dirty blonde hair hung in front of her face, and she looked clasically sexy, like an old pin-up girl or the raunchy part of a 1950s movie. Hello, Mr. President, and all that. "That's not what's happening."

"Then what is happening?"

"Boy, I'm making you a man."

Without further ado, Ellie popped her head down and sucked my cock into her mouth. I was still soft and a little sensitive from when we had made love not that long ago, but Ellie rolled her tongue around my fallen soldier until it was once again at full hardness. I groaned and dug my hands into the sheets. Ellie formed this perfect little "o" with her mouth and began bobbing up and down on my stiff cock. She kept her eyes trained on me the whole time. There was a level of vulnerability in them, but also a degree of pride. She was sexy as hell, she knew it, and she didn't mind showing it off.

Ellie let my cock pop out of my mouth and gave its underside a long, slow, loving lick. She was bent over on the edge of the bed, her ass cheeks pressing high in the air. Ellie smacked her lips and plunged down on my shaft again. It was all I could do to hold on for the ride. The woman knew what she was doing, perhaps more than anyone I had ever been with. Every press of her lips, every sensual coaxing turn of her tongue, was calculated to elicit the most pleasure possible from me. Waves of warmth travelled down my cock and made my whole body flush with sensation. I was sweating, and it wasn't from the summer heat.

She got on her hands and knees and began beating me off with a measured speed. I couldn't help but be hypnotized by the sway of Ellie's breasts as she pumped my cock with her soft hands. "Do you like that, sweetie?"

My eyes rolled back into my head. "Fuck yeah I do."

Ellie frowned. "No need to be vulgar."

For some reason, this sentiment made sense to me at that precise moment. "Sorry. I mean - I like it very much, ma'am."

"And I like doing it to you," Ellie said. "But would you rather take me from behind?"

It was a hard choice, but her hand was picking up speed, and I was worried that if I didn't get a respite I was going to blow my load all over her breasts. Not that that would've been the worst thing in the world, mind you. I nodded wildly, and Ellie laughed. "Well, come on up."

It was somewhat difficult to manoeuvre on Ellie's narrow bed, but that just seemed to make it all the more fun. We had to rub past each other and grapple for position in what could best be described as a crazy tangle of limbs. But somehow, I ended up behind her on my knees. Ellie had her face buried in her pillow, and her heart-shaped ass was sticking right up in the air. I ran a lascivious hand through her soft blonde pubic hair, and found plenty of dampness.

I grabbed onto Ellie's hips and sank my cock into her depths. She released a long and satisfied moan. It had only been minutes since I had last been inside Ellie's wonderful pussy, but it felt like way too long. I enjoyed the slick and warm sensation for a moment before we both began to move. Our movements were oddly synchronized, as if we were both listening to the same beat. I thrust forward as far as I could, and Ellie gasped with pleasure.

Ellie pushed herself up and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. She arched her whole body up and down, sensuously spasming around my cock. I had to stop and take it all in for a moment, letting Ellie do all the work. She was blowing my mind, and from the sounds she was making she wasn't feeling too bad either. I watched the sweat drip down Ellie's back as she writhed in front of me, and I was seized by an irresistable sexual energy. Keeping a firm grasp on Ellie's hips, I joined in her motions, thrusting in and out of her. Ellie's pendulous breasts swung with the flow of our fucking.

"Mike," Ellie panted. "Can you..." She trailed off.

I stopped. "What is it?"

Ellie seemed to have a hard time spitting it out, but she eventually worked up the nerve to do so. "Can you... do me in the bum?"

"Of course," I said, as if I was doing her a favour.

Ellie stared down at her pillow. "I know it's weird, but it just feels really good when Simon does it there..."

"Ellie, you are probably the least weird person I've talked to in several months, and I would love to fuck your beautiful ass." I kissed one of those gorgeous globes just to make my point clear.

Somehow Ellie's face turned redder. "Such language..."

"Do you have any lube?"

Ellie managed to open the drawer of her bedside table without pulling herself off my cock at all. She tossed me a small bottle of Astroglide over her shoulder. "Use a lot. I'm... pretty sensitive back there."

"Can do." I pulled out of her cunt and bent down to kiss her rosebud. Ellie gasped, and downright shrieked when I flicked out my tongue to run along her anal passage. I'd be lying if I said that rimming was my favourite thing to do, but the filthy nature of it gave me a certain thrill, and there are times when you just have to lick someone's asshole 'til they scream.




Saying Stay Ch. 06



After I had my fill, I poured some of Ellie's lube onto my fingertips and rubbed it into her anal passage. I curled my finger inside her, and she cooed at the penetration. From what she had said, I assumed Ellie had done this before, but I still wanted to take it slow. I slipped another finger in there and began thrusting back and forth. Ellie moved with me, sliding forward on her hands and knees, her breath ragged. She was ready.

My cock was already slick with her juices, but I rubbed some lube on it just to be safe. I could see the goosebumps on Ellie's skin and the flush in her cheeks and I was struck by just how sensual this woman was. Inside her den-mother exterior was a vixen hungry for pleasure. Her hard nipples hung low, her pussy positively dripped, and her ass quivered before me in anticipation. How could Ellie ever feel guilty about letting this side of herself lose?

I couldn't wait any longer. I mounted Ellie in a frankly bestial gesture, and slid the tip of my cock into her asshole. As in the few times I had done this with Dawn, there was resistance, but then abruptly the head popped into that most private and filthy of places. Ellie gasped and clawed at the sheets. I could barely believe the tightness of her ass and its quivering hunger. I grabbed firmly onto her buttocks and slowly slid further inside. Every inch was a miracle.

Ellie was trying to say something, but the sensations overwhelmed her, and all that came out was something like "Haaaaaaaaah". I'm not sure I could have been much more intelligent at that point either. It wasn't just the tight squeeze of Ellie's ass, but also the feeling of being inside such an intimate place, of having a woman so utterly surrender all her barriers to me. Or maybe it was just how sexy Ellie looked on all fours in front of me, shoulders rising and falling as she tried to keep herself together.

When I started moving, there was no keeping together possible. We both yelled, moaned, and gasped as we found our bodies taken over by the undeniable rhythm of fucking. There was none of the earlier gentleness. I felt as though I was riding a bull, and I desperately wanted to stay on. I roughly grabbed one of Ellie's big breasts and thrust faster and harder into her ass. She grunted and pushed back further onto my cock. Ellie was built for pleasure - a perfect ride, complete with cushioning and handholds.

In that haze of motion and unbelievable pleasure I snuck my other hand down to the delta between her legs. I stroked her pussy as I thrust inside her ass, and Ellie was gone. She seized up and then screamed. I was too drunk on pleasure, and the feeling of giving pleasure to her, to stop. I kept driving my cock into her ass and rubbing her sopping-wet clit. Ellie arched her back, turned her head to the sky, and shouted out her pleasure. She must have came twice, three times - or maybe it was just all one long orgasm.

There was only so much I could take. I tried to say that I was coming, but I'm afraid it just came out as meaningless monosyllables. An instant later, I felt cum running up my cock and spurting into Ellie's ass. It was less of a peak of pleasure than a shuddering relief. Still, stars danced in front of my eyes, and I heard myself crying out, although it seemed to be a mile away.

I stayed hard for a little while, lodged in her as we gradually came down from that peak of pleasure.

Ellie pulled herself off my dick and turned around to look at me. She was a mess - dank with sweat and other fluids, skin an exhausted red, and hair completely dishevelled. She didn't look a day younger than she was, and possibly she looked a little older. But she was also impossibly sexy.

"I should have listened to you," Ellie said. "We should have done this sooner."

"Nah. I was being a lunkhead."

"Well, if you keep doing things like that, you can be as much of a lunkhead as you want."

I leaned in and kissed her. I felt as though I had gained something more than another sex buddy on that day, but I couldn't get more specific.

We talked for a while after that, avoiding any really sensitive subjects. Afterwards we got out of bed and found that Julia had gotten up and ordered the pizza an hour ago. We dined on lukewarm vegetarian pie with the rest of the groggy stragglers. It was perhaps not our proudest moment, but we were a family.

And the great things about family is that you learn things from them. I don't want to say something as trite as "learning from others' mistakes", because that would imply that I was just treating Ellie as a cautionary example. She was a lot more than that, of course, but she was also someone who was haunted by past sin. I remembered her breaking down in the kitchen, and then going back to the behaviour that had wrecked her life but also given her a new, perhaps better life.

I didn't want to have that guilt in two decades' time. As we were eating, I got a text from Nina: "getting back into town on tuesday - hope to see you at the station!! xoxo". I realized, in one of those moments of sudden clarity that makes you feel like an idiot, that I had to be honest with her, and I had to be honest with her as soon as possible.



Saying Stay Ch. 07



You know those times when you tell yourself you have to do something as soon as possible, and then you mentally keep shifting "as possible" back and back, so that you can procrastinate while staying resolute in your own mind? Maybe that's just me. I know that I played the same mental tricks on myself when trying to ask out Cathy Chu in high school (I never did ask her out in the end), and on several college papers (most of which were just barely completed on time).

My current situation was a lot odder. I had to tell my girlfriend that I had been fucking three other women and one man (with two other people in peripheral roles) during the whole time we had been dating. Actually, when I put it that way, it makes me sound like a scumbag.

A scumbag was, in fact, what Nina was waving in front of my face right now. "Can you believe the looks a girl gets when she buys a box of these? I mean, it's the twenty-first century. Get over it." She raised one of her thin eyebrows at me and chuckled at her own story. It was, improbably, not the most blatant come-on I had received recently.

But really, when do you bring this type of thing up? It's not like what we had inside the house was an orthodox arrangement that any potential partner would know to ask about. When Nina and I were just hanging out on the first few quasi-dates, sipping ice drinks while she tried to explain the rules of baseball to me, it seemed foolishly premature to bring up such a big obstacle. And at any point afterwards, it was too late. My reticence had turned into infidelity.

Of course, I could have just stopped fucking Dawn and Julia and never started fucking Simon and Ellie. That would have been the honourable thing to do. And I've never thought of myself as a person who listens to his dick more than his brain. But I guess life among the hedonists had changed my ways. Monogamy seemed downright quaint, like a horse-drawn carriage or a VHS tape.

Nina's home was quaint in its way as well. She shared a duplex with two boys who were even bigger sports fan than herself. They had bonded over their love of an obscure German soccer team, whose symbol hung on a big flag on their wall behind a mismatched home entertainment system. Nina's room was a bit more homey, with crafts and other projects spilled across the floor and to-do lists taped to the slanted wall.

Apparently seeing me nonplussed by her condom announcement, Nina sat on my lap. It wasn't a lap dance - more like the way goofy high school friends sit on overcrowded buses. Then again, there was undeniably something sexual about her pert little ass settled right over my crotch. Nina pressed her head back against my body and looked up at me. "You seem distracted. What, are you bored?"

"I've got a lot on my mind."

"Well, try to forget about it." Nina gave me a flirtatious flutter of her eyelashes. "Here, let me help you." And she kissed me.

There was some kind of weird gravitational quality to her lithe body inside the hollow of my bulkier one. When I kissed her, my tongue was thrusting down, and it felt like I could fall forever. She swung around, relieving her neck and allowing her to look at me face to face. We kissed for many quiet minutes, her body rocking ever so slightly across my crotch.

I put my hand on Nina's waist to steady her. She grabbed it and moved it up under her shirt. Nina had that mischievous grin of a kid caught stealing cookies who just offered to share with you. I found her perky breasts, and discovered that Nina wasn't wearing a bra. Her pebbled nipples and the soft weight of those tits felt almost nostalgic to me. Where had I felt this before?

They were too small to be Ellie's or Dawn's, and too big to remind me of Julia's. Maybe... Sadie? There was another name to add to my list of transgressions. And here this girl was, making out with me in total ignorance that I was comparing her breasts to the other women I had been with.

I broke away from Nina's kiss, and pulled my hand out of her shirt. "I need to tell you something."

She looked up at me, curious. "Is this when you tell me you're gay?"

"No! Well, I think I might be bi, but that's not the point." I wasn't sure how to begin. But Nina seemed as though she was already weirded out. So I took a deep breath and the whole story of that lust-addled summer came tumbling out.

My last words - something like "just wanted to tell you" - hung in the air for an eternity. Nina had her hands folded in her lap, pensive. Then, when she did speak, it was with a strained and torn voice.

"I think you should leave."

I didn't know what to say to that. Despite my trepidation, for some reason I had been expecting forgiveness. "Look, Nina, I like you a lot. What I have going on in the house doesn't change that at all - I just want you to be part of it."

Nina looked up, her reddening face tight. "So what, you want me to be girl number four? Fuck you, Mike."

"It wouldn't be like-"

"And fuck you for thinking that you're some kind of visionary progressive for cheating on me. Because let me tell you, you weren't the first asshole to do that, but you're sure as hell going to be the last."

I felt panic rising to the surface. Why was she yelling at me like I was the bad guy? Was I the bad guy? I wanted to tell her that I wasn't an asshole, because I knew I wasn't, but somehow I couldn't think of anything to prove that. Should I even try to prove something? My brain was in a scramble.

"I'm sorry. You never said you wanted to be exclusive." I knew it was lame even before I said it.

Nina turned on me with tears in her eyes. "Get the fuck out. Or I'm gonna get Dan and Rick to throw you out."

What could I say to that? I muttered a few more weak apologies, and then left. The cool night air, the first sign of the long descent to winter, was a shock to my body. I felt my hands quivering, and couldn't get them to stop. What had I just done? And really, why hadn't I expected it to turn out this way?

-

Dawn and Josh were cuddling on the couch when I came home. Josh waved at me. "What's going on, man? Nina just cussed me out over voice mail."

Of course, every humiliation has its echoes. Staring at the floorboards, I said "I explained our arrangement to her. She didn't take it that well."

"Yeah, she's mad at me for not telling her," Josh said. He flipped his phone shut and shrugged. "I mean, whatever. You live here for a little while you forget that people outside try to make everything complicated. I mean, why can't we all just fuck?" 

"Truer words," Dawn said, nibbling at his neck.

I guess I should have been reassured, but I still felt guilt clawing at my ankles. It wasn't like Josh and Dawn were exactly moral compasses. "Nah, I should have told her earlier. I mean... she couldn't have known.'

"Don't worry about it," Dawn said. "She wasn't that hot anyways. Threesome to make you feel better?"

I shook my head. "Not tonight. I think I'm just going to go to bed."

I did go to bed, chaste for the night. It was not a good night's sleep. One of those endless nights filled with hot and arduous dreams that make you feel exhausted when you wake up. I half woke at one point to hear heavy thumping next door and Ellie's breathy cries of passion. I dug my fingers into my sheets and willed the next day to come.

I must have fallen back asleep at some point, as when I woke up Padma was sitting on the edge of my bed. She was dressed oddly formal - a silk shirt and dress pants. With her hair cut short, she was the image of androgynous chic. The whole image was so strange that, in my hazy state of mind, I thought it was a dream.

"Good morning," Padma said.

I sat up and tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. There had been a lot of strange morning-afters, but Padma was probably the housemate I would least expect to wake up in my bed. "What's going on?"

Padma kicked her heels up idly. "Well, I'm headed out for the interview this morning - that publishing position I was telling you about - and I heard about the shitstorm you were in last night. Thought I would make sure you were still in one piece."

"It wasn't really that bad," I said. "Well, I mean, it was bad, but it was mostly my fault."

Padma had nothing to say to that. "Do you want to have a normal relationship? I mean, not just monogamy, but dates at the bowling alley, holding hands in the park, vaguely thinking about marriage... Is that why you went out with her?"

"I dunno," I said. Padma was asking me to do an awful lot of soul-searching for 7 AM. "I mean, I guess I wanted that - but I want what I have here too."

"That's the problem, isn't it?" Padma had a wistful smile. "You can't have everything you want at once. And when you try to get it, you become a selfish jerk."

I didn't know what to say to that. I pulled myself out of bed and began searching the room for pants. Thankfully, I didn't have morning wood - that would have just made things more awkward.

"I think I'm going to move out," Padma said.

I turned around while pulling a shirt over my head, coming perilously close to choking myself. "Really? Why? Did something happen?"

"Nothing happened," Padma said. "But I don't think this is a good environment. With Dawn and Julia both around... it's just sex all the time. Which is great, but sometimes I want to spend an evening watching a bad movie on the couch or going out to a nice restaurant - you know, dating things. And those two are always rushing on to the next fling. Meanwhile, I'm stuck here listening to two guys fuck next door."

I tried not to blush. "Is that all? Padma, I can go to the movies with you. Any time I'm not working, we can go do whatever you want. If you need to pull me out of somebody, go ahead and do it. I know you don't like guys, but we're friends, right?"

Padma turned away from me. "It's not really that. I mean... I just feel like I'm standing in place. Like this is some kind of vacation house away from reality. Maybe it's time for me to grow up."

It was the opposite of what Ellie had told me, but seemed no less true. "Look, think this over. You're not going to find many other places like this."

"Places where empty sex is always available? Mike, have you ever been to a club?"

Now that sounded strange to me. When I thought of all I had experienced since coming here - Dawn gleefully jumping me that first night, Julia with her head tilted back in onanic bliss, Josh's endearing denseness, Simon leading me to appreciate the other half of the human race, Ellie bringing me into her world and her ass - I felt as though I had grown years in the past summer. Even if I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, it didn't seem like I was moving away from being a grown-up. But maybe that was different for Padma.

"What are you going to do?" I said.

"I want my own place," said Padma. "If I get this job, I can afford it. And then, I don't know, maybe get a nice girlfriend."

"Whatever happened to being queer and destroying society's norms?" I said. "Next thing you'll be telling me you want to get married."

Padma laughed. "I don't think so. But, I mean... there's a difference between your politics and your emotional desires." This, especially, didn't sound like Padma.

"I'll tell you what," I said. "I have the day off. Why don't we smoke weed and talk up a bunch of intellectual bullshit like we used to do?"

Padma gave me a slight, sad smile. "I told you, I have a job interview to get to. Maybe tonight."

"It's a date," I said. "You better not bail. That bullshit isn't going to talk itself."

Padma laughed. She got up off the bed and dusted herself off. "Thanks for listening, Mike. Whatever happens... we should still be friends."

Now that's the kind of thing that gets me worried.

-

Dinner that evening was not comfortable. For one thing, Josh was cooking his patented "steak and fries", which meant cheap cuts of meat barely cooked (Josh believed that real men have their meat rare, and he was not about to change his techniques for any of us non-real-men.) The fries had been left in the stove too long and were half burnt. Julia had thrown the meal away in vegan rage and had microwaved some tofu chicken nuggets that honestly looked more appealing than the bloody and tough meat on my plate.

But mostly it was uncomfortable because, one way or another, everyone had heard about Padma's inclination to leave. And if it had been an inclination in the morning, by the evening it had become a full-on decision.

"You of all people," Julia said. "I can't believe that you want to run away into some homonormative white-picket fence world."

"Is homonormative a word now?" Dawn said, idly chewing her hip steak. "Learn something new every day."

Padma, still dressed up for her job interview, glowered at the table. "Everyone's always with you or they're part of the machine, eh Julia?"

"If you don't want to be with us any more, that's fine," said Julia, crossing her arms in a way that let everyone know that it was distinctly not fine. "But I thought you believed in what we were doing here."

"For fuck's sake," said Padma. "Who you fuck is not a fucking political project. If you want to change the world, go dig a well in Guatemala or something."

Julia's face was scrunched up and she was obviously trying not to yell. It was the same look I had seen on Nina last night. "How could you say that to me? After all we've done together? Was it all a sham to you?"

"No," Padma said. "But maybe I've outgrown this place."

"Excuse me?" Ellie said. She had looked miserably confused all evening.

Simon put a hand on Julia's shoulder. "Maybe we should all calm down. This can't be easy for Padma to say to us, you know."

"Yeah, Judas did some pretty hard work too," said Julia.

Padma bit her lip, then shot up. "I don't have to sit here and listen to this. I was hoping you guys would be decent enough to support my choices, but I guess not."

I should have said something as Padma stormed out. At the time, it didn't even occur to me. It was like I was watching a TV show, not aware that I was part of the scene.

"What crawled up her ass?" Dawn said.

"I don't know," Julia said, with a sigh. "I always knew we would lose people. I mean, living opposed to society's norms wears on you. But I always thought Padma understood the stakes of what we were doing here."

"I think she understands fine," I said. Everyone looked at me in surprise, as if they had forgot I was there. That was becoming disturbingly common. "I mean... would it be so bad for her to step away for a while?"

"She can do whatever she wants," Julia said. It was one of those statements that meant the exact opposite.

Dawn clapped her hands together. "I know what we should do! Let's throw Padma a going-away orgy!"

"That's either the best idea or the worst idea I've ever heard," Julia said.

"I know, right!"

And somehow, this actually became a plan.

Toronto is a big city. Big enough to carve out your own little piece of space, populated by about a dozen people who matter at all, and ignore the other millions leading their own lives far away from your own mind. But in other ways it can seem very small - a frigid corner of the Earth with cosmopolitan pretensions where you keep running into people you'd rather avoid. And so it was with me and Nina.

The first time it was on the subway. She turned away from me, put her headphones on, and resolutely stared at the darkness speeding by. I made eye contact with her only as she got off. Then it was in line at a local Caribbean place we both frequented. I tried to say something to her, but she ducked under me like a boxer weaving away from a punch and made her way out. And then it was just brief glimpses, a face in the crowd at Yonge and Dudas square, a flash of brown hair on a passing streetcar. I was sure I was imagining half of it. I couldn't help but feel haunted.

I had drawn grocery duties for this week, which was mostly the task of whittling everyone's ill-conceived suggestions into an actual shopping list and then finding a grocery store who carried both Dawn's favourite flavour of ice cream and Josh's obscure energy drinks. Sadly, it would be the last week that Padma would scribble "curry mix - not the white people kind!" on the ticket.

I was looking down at the list and trying to remember what aisle they stocked the Pop Tarts in when I felt my cart collide with another coming around the corner. I backed up and began automatically apologizing, as did Nina. It was only then that I realized 

"Jesus Christ," Nina said, more to herself than anyone else. "You and I must be cursed. Or maybe just me."

"Okay, I deserve that," I said. "But hey, we should talk. I know I wasn't very honest with you, but... well, we can still be friends." I couldn't believe that I had actually said that last part.

Nina shook her head. She seemed a lot less burdened than she had the last time I saw her - as if she had finally passed out of a bad dream. "No, it's okay. I talked to Dawn and I did some reading and... well, I guess you just have a different lifestyle. And I don't want to put that down or make you feel like it's disgusting."

"I still should have told you."

Nina gave me a wry smile. I was looking for a forgiveness that was not forthcoming. "We just had different assumptions, I guess. But it didn't work out too bad."

Another woman rounded the corner, carrying a 24-pack of toilet paper carefully balanced on her shoulder. She had deep brown skin, a tall athlete's build and jet black hair that was shaved on the sides. "Hon, all of our pooping needs have been met."

Nina flushed and cleared her throat. "Mike, this is Jen. Jen, Mike."

It took a moment for the gears of recognition to turn in Jen's head, but when they did it was obvious by the half-pitying smirk on her face. "Oh yeah, Mike. How are you doing?"

"Um... okay."

Jen put her arm around Nina's shoulder. I'm not sure I could have imagined a more awkward situation. I quickly made my excuses and exited backwards through the meat aisle, pulling my cart along with me.

I guess it had all ended up all right. Nina had someone, I still had my housemates, and we were even on speaking terms now. But if that was so, why did I feel like shit?

Like all arguments, the one between Padma and Julia (and, in some obscure way, everyone else) was not so much resolved as it healed over, leaving a faint but visible scar. The everyday business of living together - preparing dinners, watching TV, haggling over shower time - brought Padma back onto seemingly normal terms with Julia and the rest of us. But all the while, she was making preparations to leave. She got the job, and came home bubbling over with the good news. Then she could be heard talking loudly on the phone with unknown landlords. And finally, she returned home with a half-dozen folded-up boxes under her arm, and we knew there wasn't long now.

I found her sitting out on the back stoop the night before the move. No one in the house tended to the backyard, and it had grown a thick carpet of weeds. When asked about it, Julia would respond by asking what was so bad about weeds anyway, and everyone else would shrug or mumble something about getting to it later. But it was what we saw out of the kitchen window every morning, and that alone gave the yard a kind of sentimental potency.

"How are you doing?" I said as I sat down beside her.

Padma shook her hair out. "Oh, I'm fine. I mean... well, I feel a little melancholy. You know, just thinking back on the old times."

"You think you're going to miss this?"

"Well, I'll be going to sleep by myself for the first time in a while," Padma said. "But I think I'll like having my own place. Doesn't all the chaos around here kind of wear on you after a while?"

I looked up at the dark orange sky and considered the question. "Not really. But then, you've been here longer than I have. When did you move in again?"




Saying Stay Ch. 07



"Last September," Padma said. "Just about a year ago - the start of my fourth year of university. I was so exhilarated at first. Ellie had just moved in as well, and we were like sisters, even if we never actually had sex with each other."

"Straight women suck like that," I said.

"Gay ones too. But it felt like all of the theory I read and political slogans I spouted were actually coming true. It was like when I first went to university and discovered that there were actually other people that thought like me in the world." I wondered if Padma counted me in that tally. At the very least, I could say that I knew her before she even knew who Judith Butler was.

"So what went wrong?"

"Nothing went wrong. Don't tell Julia, but she was kind of right. It isn't this place, it's me. I got so sucked into the orgy that I forgot about the world that existed beyond these walls. I dropped out of all my political groups, and I barely finished my degree. And then I guessed I burned out. And then the revolution of cheap anonymous sex suddenly seemed less appealing to me."

I kissed Padma on the forehead. It was an unusually intimate gesture for me, and it was definitely awkward and hesitant. But I felt like some physical display of affection was required. "I don't think it was ever anonymous here. We all love you, Padma."

Padma gave me a warm hug. "Thanks Mike."

"Anyway," I said, thinking back to what had crystallized in my mind as The Plan. "If you don't mind spending one more night with us perverts, come inside. We've got something for you."

Padma looked at me with uncertain eyes. I knew that she had a perennial anxiety, expressed to me first at a freshman pub night, that all of the men around her were secretly planning on "converting" her from lesbianism. It wasn't an entirely unfounded fear, as a table of frat types had confirmed later in the night by insisting that they were lesbians trapped in men's bodies. In the past, I had been respectful to a fault, despite how stunningly attractive Padma was. But hey, I hadn't come up with the plan for tonight.

"Please tell me no one's about to burst out of a cake," Padma said.

I took her by the hand and helped her up off the stoop. "That's not the surprise."

Padma opened the screen door and we both moved inside. She pursed her lips. "I was hoping my last night was going to be memorable."

"Josh suggested we all do paintball," I said. (This was true, although I'm still not sure if it was a serious suggestion.) "But we ended up deciding on something a little less painful. Unless that's your thing."

Padma followed my gentle grasp on her wrist. "I can't help but notice that we're going towards the big bedrooms."

"I always knew you were too clever." I pushed open the door to Dawn's room with a theatrical flourish.

The atmosphere inside was smoky and strange. The red flicker of candlelight provided the room's only glow. A halting, quasi-techno song played over unseen speakers, asking "If I gave you a party, would you come?" Simon, Ellie and Mike, sat on the edge of the bed, fully clothed. On centre stage, of course, were Dawn and Julia, draped in see-through nightgowns, Julia's green, Dawn's pink. Dawn was made up to the nines, while Julia's natural beauty was even starker in the dim light. They let Padma feast her eyes on them.

"Hi darling," Julia said. "Sorry I've been so cruel. But all six of us thought we would send you off in style."

"Orgy time!" Dawn squealed.

Padma sat down on the edge of the bed. I couldn't read her expression. Julia crawled over and put a hand on her shoulder. This was what I had worried about - how Padma would react to the surprise. Would she just yell that this was why she was moving out and slam the door? Or would she join in for one last night of frenetic bliss?

"The boys don't have to be here," Julia said, kissing Padma on her neck. "It can just be us dykes if you want."

It took Padma a long time to respond, but when she did it was with a silkiness in her voice that struck through to my core. "No, let them watch. We should all be together." She turned her head and kissed Julia on the mouth. Both women melted into the kiss with relief.

"Yay!" Dawn proclaimed. She promptly yanked her negligee over her head and tossed it aside, revealing her perfectly nude curvy body underneath. Dawn had never been one for long and slow seduction, or clothes for that matter. She promptly began undressing Padma. It wasn't easy, with the guest of honour firmly lip-locked with Julia, but somehow that autumn sweater got over Padma's head, and her skinny jeans slid down her delectable legs. She was wearing simple white underwear that contrasted with her dark brown skin. Padma looked good enough to eat, but I knew to keep my distance.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who enjoyed the sight. Josh had unzipped his jeans and promptly began stroking himself, his eyes glued to the three women. Simon was a little more circumspect, but was clearly hard underneath his pants. Ellie was just transfixed as Dawn plastered herself to Padma's back and snuck two fingers into Padma's panties.

Julia calmly lifted up her nightgown, revealing emerald green underwear that matched her hair. She put her hand on the back of Padma's neck and gently guided the other girl down her neck and to her chest. Padma let out a ragged gasp as she felt Dawn's ministrations, unseen by the rest of us but obvious by the jogging motion of Dawn's wrist. Perhaps a little overstimulated, my old friend doggedly pressed her mouth to Julia's thinly-clothed breasts. She popped one of those hard, pebble-like nipples out of Julia's bra and took to it with her soft lips.

I felt a hand on my wrist and reluctantly turned away from the sapphic scene in front of me. Simon smiled at me and guided my hand to his crotch. He slipped his pants down and his hard cock sprung up to meet me. At the same time, Simon tugged down my fly and began fishing for my erect dick. I got the idea quickly enough. We began stroking each other in a lose rhythm, all while staring at Julia, Padma and Dawn kissing and touching each other. It wasn't a sleazy lesbian sideshow. It was something that seemed sacred, magical, but at the same time had an overpowering eroticism.

Julia's bra had disappeared in the brief time that I wasn't watching, and Padma was leaving her kisses all over the thin girl's torso. Dawn had finally pulled off Padma's panties, revealing her glistening pussy. Dawn curled two fingers and pushed them into Padma's moist slit. Padma groaned as Julia swiftly removed her bra and began sucking her tits. The two other girl's attentions were clearly getting to Padma, as her normally composed and serious demeanour melted away to hot breaths and pleas for more. It was a side of Padma I had never really seen before, and perhaps never would again.

Simon was stroking my cock and I was stroking his without paying much attention to it. The automatic rhythm was enough to keep me at a low boil, and the strangeness of Simon's had alone made it better than mere masturbation. To our side, Ellie had begun sucking off Josh, while he had his hand down her skirt. I could smell the sweat and the arousal of all seven of us, a heady scent that blacked out any rational part of my brain.

Dawn had Padma on her back now and promptly buried her face in my friend's furry bush. I couldn't see much, but the sound of smacking lips was arousing enough. Julia stayed focused on Padma's plump brown breasts. I could see Padma trying to reach out, trying to reciprocate, but then her body would be wracked by another wave of pleasure and all was lost. This was a pure gift from Dawn and Julia.

I've never seen someone seem so hard like they were trying not to come than Padma did (well, no woman at least). She bit her lip and tried to keep it together as Dawn sucked and licked at her pussy and Julia ran her hands all over. I could hear her breaths getting more and more ragged and could see her cheeks turned pink as she tried to keep it together. It was like some embarrassing but undeniable bodily function was passing over her, which I guess it was.

Simon and I stopped stroking each other, and Ellie brought her head up from Josh's cock. We all stood still for a moment as Padma's icy facade shattered for good and she yelled out her climax. Her chest heaved as she thrashed in Julia's arms and thrust her pelvis into Dawn's face. Her voice was throaty and operatic at the same time. The orgasm seemed to last forever, and then it gradually died, with the her movements quieting and Padma's voice eventually becoming a kittenish growl. And then she collapsed into a melted, happy, puddle of woman.

Julia and Dawn were happy to join her. They enfolded her on either side in what could best be described as relentless cuddling. It looked like a very comfortable place to be. But I had more pressing concerns, most notably a throbbing cock with Simon's increasingly tight grip on it.

"Okay, that's it," he said out loud. "I need to get fucked." He got onto all fours and offered his taut ass towards me.

I was hard and horny, but a little confused. In our few trysts, he had always been the one penetrating me. "Are you sure?"

"I think you're ready," Simon said, although to be honest he sounded more impatient than anything else.

Padma wrapped her arms around her girlfriends. "Now this I want to see."

"Well, I guess I can't say no now," I said. All the same, I felt a little tension from the gaze of the three women watching me. It would be a bad time to go soft, or come too early. On the other corner of the bed, Ellie had lost her clothes and had just impaled herself on Josh's cock. That seemed to be less interesting to the three girls than seeing what Simon and I fucking looked like. 

I positioned myself behind Simon, trying to level my cock at his asshole. But I felt myself losing my erection as I thought more and more about the watchful eyes of my roommates. Even though they all knew about me and Simon, for some reason it felt as though my dirty secret was only now about to be revealed. And Ellie's ecstatic grunts seemed to help in disarming me. Obviously, Josh wasn't having any trouble performing.

Before I could even say anything, Dawn was crawling across the bed. She had a bottle of lube in her hands, produced from the bedside table or perhaps just from some magic pocket. "Here," she said, squirting a generous portion into her hand. "You can't go in there dry, man."

"I knew that," I said. Dawn grabbed my dick in her lubed-up hand and rapidly stroked it back to hardness. It wasn't the feminine touch so much as it was the casual but loving way she applied the lubricant. There was a complete lack of judgement in her eyes. She did the same thing to Simon, sliding two lubed-up fingers into his ass and moving them around. He groaned, possibly not even realizing whose fingers were in him. Hell, he probably didn't care.

"There we go," Dawn said, smacking Simon on the ass. "All yours, Mike."

"Thanks." I found myself genuinely grinning. And that was before I eased the tip of my dick inside Simon's puckered ass. It took a little effort to get the angle right - on my first attempt my lubed-up dick slid through his cheeks and out the other end, drawing a giggle from the girls. And then there was some resistance, a tense knot of muscles, but I knew what to do from my anal experience with Ellie. With a hard push, the head of my cock popped into Simon.

"Shit. This is nice," I said, trying to keep my composure.

"I'll say," said Julia, openly playing with herself. I guessed the tables had turned.

I had to take my time pressing my way into the gorgeous young man on the other end of my cock. For one, I was afraid of hurting him if I went too hard. For another, I was afraid of blowing my load in a minute and enduring the endless taunts that would come with it. The girls hadn't had that problem, and I allowed myself to feel a brief moment of envy for feminine biology. But despite all these worries, there was a kind of overwhelming pleasure radiating through me. As I edged my way deeper into Simon's back passage, I felt everything melt away bit by bit until my balls were right up against his and I was fully inside him. I exhaled and tried to sear this sensation into my mind.

Dawn inspected our coupling closely. "Wow. You're jammed right in there, Mike."

I didn't, and couldn't, say anything. Simon's ass was just as tight as Ellie's, but it felt totally different - a tightly muscled and almost flat butt as opposed to Ellie's opulent curves. Simon gasped out his pleasure from under me. He seemed almost surprised at his hardness.

"No need for the reacharound," Dawn said. She reached underneath Simon and a second later he gasped. His voice was higher than I had ever heard it. From the motion of her arm, it was obvious that Dawn was jacking him off. I just grabbed him by the hips and slowly began to withdraw and push back in. It seemed to take impossible strength just to move my cock, but that strength came with impossible reward. My muscles were on fire with the exertion as my hips picked up the pace. At this point I was on a ride beyond my control.

I frantically tried to look elsewhere to calm me down. My eyes fell on Ellie and Josh. She had straddled his cock while facing away from him, a porno-esque position that gave me a great view of everything that was happening. I could see Josh's cock pumping into Ellie from below. I could see Ellie's big boobs jiggling every time she thrust herself down on that shaft. I could see Josh's fingers flicking her clit, and hear Ellie crying out in animalistic pleasure. Our eyes caught, and something like an electric jolt passed between us.

There was little refuge from the overwhelming carnality of the situation. Julia had spread her pussy lips with two fingers in a wanton display of lust, and was currently thrusting most of the other hand into herself. Her little grunts were hard to hear over the orchestra of slapping and moaning that filled the room, but I cherished them nonetheless. Padma idly stroked Julia's breasts, but I could tell that she was aroused herself from what was going on. Julia's eyes kept flitting back and forth from me and Simon to Ellie and Josh as she frigged herself.

And then there was Simon, practically growling as I plundered his tight ass. I could feel his athletic body straining against me as I thrust forward. He was trying to fill himself up with me just as much as I was trying to fuck him senseless. I was beginning to feel dizzy, but I kept fucking.

"Oh god," Simon said. "Coming." Dawn's arm had practically become a blur as she jacked off the man I was fucking. He shuddered around me, and I could feel his ass clamping down on my cock. I wrapped my arm around his chest and held on for dear life.

Dawn was still kneeling next to me. She straightened up and showed me her hand, decorated with Simon's cum. In a moment of perversity that astounded me, I licked it off of her palm. It tasted a little sweet when it wasn't being fired into the back of my mouth.

Everyone was going off around me. Ellie threw herself down to the base of Josh's shaft and shouted out her climax, hair and tits flying up with the force of her exertion. Julia buried her face in the pillow as her body spasmed from her self-administered pleasure. And I could no longer hold out. With one final thrust, my vision faded to white, sound faded around me, and I felt myself shooting my seed into Simon's bowels.

Simon slouched down to a prone position on the bed, and I sagged on top of him. My vision was slowly fading in, but there were still sparks around the edges. That familiar, cherished post-orgasmic sensation came over me. I kissed Simon on the back of the neck and gave him as much of an embrace as I could manage. My cock was still hard inside him, but slowly shrinking.

Dawn gave us a round of applause with her sticky hands. "That was great, everybody." She had a smile from ear to ear.

Ellie seemed kind of dazed, but her eyes were transfixed on me and Simon. "Yeah, that was... yeah."

"What about the special girl?" Julia said, giving Padma a quick squeeze. "Disgusted by all the dicks, or turned on?"

"Turned way on," said Padma. "But I feel bad for Dawn. She's such a handy little helper, and she hasn't got to come yet."

"Neither have I," said Josh, brandishing his big and still-hard dick. "But that's okay. I want to hold onto this all night."

Padma rolled her eyes. "Macho idiot."

"I think he's a bit cocky," said Julia. It wasn't clever wordplay, but all of us were pretty lightheaded.

The two women reluctantly separated and crawled their way across the bed to join the big pile of flesh on the other side. Julia gave Josh a light smack on the chest, and then reached down to take his red cock into her mouth. Padma and Dawn knelt next to each other and made out for a minute. My attention to their liplock was a little more aesthetic, now that my dick was deflated, but I still couldn't avert my eyes. I'm sure I saw a little tongue in there.

Dawn ran her hands through Padma's hair. "You don't have to do anything for me, sweetheart. Tonight is all about you."

"Well, I'm not having fun if everyone isn't getting off," said Padma. "So get on your back and take the tongue-lashing you've got coming."

Dawn giggled and did as she was told. With a studious seriousness, Padma descended on Dawn's curvaceous body. When I was with Dawn, I went right for the knockers, but Padma was more settled. She briefly rolled Dawn's nipples between her fingers, but for the most part she kissed and caressed other areas - the shoulders, the back of the neck, the ears. Dawn groaned and went limp at Padma's sensitive hands. There was a kind of enchantment to it, a spell that I worried about disturbing through my gaze.

Beneath me, Simon shifted and pulled himself off my cock. We both sat up at the head of the bed, trying to get a better view, while being as quiet as possible. Ellie soon joined us, her body red and sweaty with her previous exertions - as, I realized, were ours. Ellie and Simon both had big involuntary grins on their faces, and I figured that I probably did too. We wrapped our arms around each other and tried not to stick to the headboard.

Julia was still sucking the head of Josh's shaft, and from where we sat I could see her hand moving beneath them to tickle his balls and anal rosebud. She was having a little bit of difficulty with Josh's girth, but it was obviously nothing she hadn't handled before. I noticed that their eyes were locked together - this was as much a war of wills as it was a gift of pleasure.

Padma was all over Dawn, her dark brown skin falling on the pale girl like a collapsing tent. Her fingers were dancing up Dawn's thighs while her tongue feasted on her neck. Dawn tossed her head back and urged Padma to keep doing what she was doing. And then, as if drawn in by erotic gravity, Padma finally had to take one of those luscious breasts into her mouth, and Dawn's panting demands became more urgent and more depraved.

"Shit," Ellie said, idly fingering her slit. "We have such hot roommates."

"Uh huh," I said. Despite my recent exertions (my hips in particular would be sore in the morning), I was beginning to feel my cock stir. I knew what Ellie meant - I probably wouldn't have looked twice at any of these people if I passed them in the street, but seeing them feasting on each others' bodies and abandoning all shame was about the biggest turn-on imaginable.

Padma had flattened herself out on the bed and was finally attending to Dawn's pussy. I couldn't see much except for Padma's dark hair spilling out from between Dawn's thick thighs, but the soft slurps cut with Dawn's moans and curses gave me a pretty good idea of what was happening down there. (The music had long since died, but what had arose in its place was symphonic enough). Padma's taut asscheeks lay right in front of me, as did her glistening pussy, that shock of pink peeking out from her pubic jungle. I knew that it was forbidden, and that just made me hard all the quicker.




Saying Stay Ch. 07



There was a woman here who I knew liked my cock, even if she was less enthused about the rest of me. Julia was still trying valiantly to make Josh come, but his stubborn stamina remained. As I shifted closer, I saw that she was sopping wet. Maybe it was exactly her frustration with these cocky men that made her so aroused. I gently pulled Julia's hips up and kissed her wetness. I could hear her groan as it echoed around Josh's cock, and Josh moaned too with the sensation.

As Dawn was frantically yelling out "Don't stop, Padma! Keep on - oh!" I wrapped my tongue around Julia's clitoris. I could feel her body shiver with the contact, and had to keep a firm grasp on her long skinny legs. I crudely rubbed my face into her crotch, and then slipped in a more refined finger. I curved that finger and stroked upwards, as Julia had tought me in one of our trysts that was both adversarial and educational. She was positively panting with arousal.

Julia's juicy cunt filled my vision. I could hear Dawn yelling out her orgasm as Padma drove her tongue further and further into her pussy. Come to think of it, the whole neighbourhood could probably hear Dawn yelling. Behind me, there was the creak of bedsprings and the wet thump of thrustings. I just kept my tongue fixed on Julia's clit as I fingered her.

The green-haired aesthete reached back and grabbed my thigh, the only admission of desire she could get out. I knew enough to not deny her. I drew up and practically mounted Julia from behind, slipping my cock into her with one effortless stroke. She thrust back at me just as hard, all the while bobbing her head up and down on Josh's cock. It would be easy to see Julia as simply being spit-roasted between our two shafts, but she was in constant motion, head and hips moving in a sinuous rhythm.

Dawn bounded up from Padma's embrace, only energized from her climax. "Sheesh, that was great. But now I need some dick." Padma pouted a little, but Dawn payed her no mind as she made straight for Josh and his bulging cock, shining with Julia's spit. She pushed Josh down and mounted him aggressively. Josh's head hung off the bed, his long brown hair swinging as Dawn rocked him with frantic thrusts of her hips. I watched her bounce with her unique brand of brash desire, and drove into Julia harder. The green-haired minx underneath me gasped and moaned - I knew that the little voyeur was watching Dawn too.

But it still wasn't enough. Maybe out of some sense of obligation, or maybe just out of her burning all-consuming lust, Julia was trying to claw her way across to reach Padma. It was an awkward form of locomotion, but I shifted with Julia and managed to stay lodged inside her until her lips kissed Padma's pussy.

I ran a finger down past Julia's flat stomach and to her proudly protruding clit. I think she liked it, but it was hard to tell with her face buried in Padma's muff. As I fucked the woman that was eating her out, I caught Padma's eye. She gave me a heavy gaze and played with her own nipples. I just about came right there.

The others were fucking too, although I could barely see them. Simon had Ellie on her back and was thrusting into her as he pawed at her plump breasts. Dawn was riding Josh for everything that he was worth, and probably considerably more than that. Julia's sweet, tight pussy was twitching and squeezing my cock as she delicately lapped up Padma's juices.

I felt my head starting to spin. No way this could really be happening. This was all too much, like something out of my fantasies that had seemed faintly silly even as I was masturbating to them. But I was really fucking a cute nymphomaniac as she dug her tongue into a dark-haired beauty, with women and men copulating all around me.

Julia was coming now. Her head jerked out and she let out a long "fuuuuuuuuck". Her fingers went to work, shaking as they plundered Padma's cunt. I think Padma was coming too, from the throaty moans she was making. And I finally let all the desire inside myself go as I came inside Julia.

Simon and Ellie were gently embracing each other - their orgasms had already come. I slid out of Julia and fell back on my ass, not sure if I was ever able to get up again. Julia slumped forward and rested her head on Padma's sweaty stomach. Only Dawn and Josh were still going, locked in some kind of competition of sexual gymnastics. Dawn was panting with both exhaustion and lust as another orgasm broke upon her. Josh was clearly having fun, but also clawing the sheets with frustration. He may have been regretting his earlier boast.

Dawn dismounted, although it took a moment for her to fully pull herself off Josh's length. "What's the matter, Josh," she said in a husky voice that was new to me. "My pussy not good enough for you?"

Josh gritted his teeth. "No, I just don't... feel... like... coming." Julia laughed.

Dawn took Josh's purple cock and put it in the valley of her cleavage. She began to rub his shaft, slick with sweat and the juices of three different women, between her buxom breasts. "Not even on my tits?"

"Not - oh fuck!"

Dawn giggled as Josh's cock erupted between her soft mounds. Cum spurted up volcanically, hitting her chin and running down her breasts. All the evening's stimulation spurted out, as rope out of rope of cum decorated Dawn's bosom. When Josh was finally done, Dawn sat back and rubbed her cum-covered tits together, very pleased with herself. Josh looked as if he was about to die.

"I wanna take a picture of this," Dawn said. I wasn't sure if she was talking about her tits or the whole sordid fleshy scene.

"Not one for the Facebook page," said Ellie. That was probably true, but I also thought if I had a picture of Dawn with semen dripping down her voluminous breasts I would never stop looking at it.

Padma grabbed me by the arm. I looked over and saw that she had taken Julia's arm the same way. Her voice was hoarse and hesitant, but she knew what she had to say. "Guys. I want you to touch me."

"Are- are you sure?" Even after all of the fantasies that had come true, this seemed implausible.

Padma smiled. "It needs to be all of you."

Gradually, we all converged on Padma - Dawn and Julia, us ugly boys and poor straight Ellie. All preferences were momentarily forgotten - this was all about connection and giving. Our hands and mouths descended on Padma's damp brown body. I kissed her left breast and the inside of her shoulder. Two more people had taken her legs - I couldn't tell who. She was kissing Julia, or maybe Simon, tenderly. I saw her take a sharp intake of breath as someone's fingers - who knows who.

At some point I lost track of whose fingers and whose tongue was where. We were all just one pile of flesh, consuming, probing, fucking Padma, this woman who was very briefly in our life and who we all loved very much. We fingered her pussy and tongued her clit and snuck a thumb into her ass and groped her breasts and kissed the back of her neck and rubbed our cunts on her leg and let her lick our nipples and then, with a stuttering roar, she came. It took all six of us to hold her down.

The morning afterwards could perhaps be described as a seven-person walk of shame, if we hadn't all been so goddamned pleased with ourselves. We didn't say anything about the night before - perhaps we never would (although I did note that someone - all signs pointed to Dawn - had added "Orgy Night!" as a weekly event on my cell phone's calendar). But the bitter and frustrated air that had sat in the house since Padma told us she was leaving had been completely dispelled.

Padma was still upstairs, doing the last of her packing. The moving van would be here in five minutes, or so they said. Everyone was eating their separate breakfasts, looking faintly dazed. But I was already noticing that it seemed as though things were different. We had all fucked before in various combinations, but doing it all together like that had brought a new intimacy. I noticed Josh giving Simon a back-rub, Ellie putting her arm around Dawn, Julia hugging me from behind as I rifled through the cereal shelf.

Still, we all felt tense when Padma came downstairs, lugging a big duffel bag behind her. Dawn looked like a kid who was just told Christmas was cancelled. "You're still leaving? Even after..."

Padma chuckled. "Well, the deposit's down and everything. Besides, last night was great and all, but... it doesn't change everything. I need to go. How do I put it... I've learned a lot here. I learned about myself, about living up to my ideals, and I learned an awful lot about sex. But for the next stage I have to go be by myself. I can't grow more here."

There was a silence, and I was worried that another argument would break out. But Julia just nodded curtly. "That sounds very New Age-y, but I guess I can accept it. I hope you find what you're looking for, Padma."

"Yeah, I'm gonna miss you man," said Josh.

Dawn made a telephone motion with her hands. "If you're looking for a late-night hook-up..."

I felt it was on me to make a more personal goodbye, so I walked up to Padma and took her by the hand - the same hand that was squeezing my shoulder as she climaxed last night. "I just wanted to thank you so much. Thanks for helping me through all those classes, and thanks for bringing me here."

Padma slugged me in the stomach. "I'm moving across the city, not to outer space. You'll see me all the time. And besides which, you've all got to help me move before we say goodbye."

Everyone looked away, whistling, trying to act like they had forgotten the physical task they drunkenly agreed to.

"Come on, kids! Boxes are upstairs, and the truck is up front. Let's get going!"