Chapter 33

Should this feel normal, or should this feel extraordinary? he wondered as Kathryn slurped on his cock And wouldn’t it be extraordinary if it was normal?

Despite their sexual marathon the previous evening (and the tremendous amount of wine they’d consumed), he’d had some trouble sleeping. His mind was unsettled by what seemed to be a key and unanswered predicate to their conversations to come: not whether they’d end up together, but whether or not they should try. He knew all the logical reasons against, but felt the powerful reserve of emotions that angrily contradicted those reasons. Sleep refused to arrive until he came to a decision.

Even if it’s not the wiser or more righteous choice, I have to at least try. I don’t want her to be the mother of all lost opportunities. She suggested that there may be a limit; that who I’ll need to become to ensure that she’s part of my future might be more than I can forgive. I’ll have to be wary of that. But I just can’t give her up without some sort of fight.

That conviction flowed back into his waking mind as she brought her passionate oral wakeup call to its usual climax, gulping down gouts of his seed and moaning with satisfaction as they slid around her tongue and down her gullet.

“And so, Mr. My Mind Was Drifting While Having An Orgasm, what’s it going to be today? Talk, work, sex, or a revelation of exactly when my blowjobs became so boring that they no longer hold your attention?” She was draped across his supine form, one leg nestled between his, while her drenched sex ground against his thigh. Her extraordinary breasts were mashed into his chest as her fingers played and toyed with the light hair that covered it. Despite her words, the lilt in her voice made it clear she was teasing. Nonetheless, he felt an apology was in order.

“You noticed that?”

“I do have a little bit of experience taking you into my mouth, you know. I recognize a distracted penis when I’m sucking it.”

“I seem to remember that you do, yes,” he said with a smile, caressing her crimson waves and moving them away from her face. “And my mind wasn’t really wandering, so much as relaunching a file it saved last night.”

“Your pillow talk desperately needs work, love.”

“What I was also thinking was how extraordinary it is for blowjobs of such surpassing excellence to feel normal.”

“Better. But you’re running such a deficit that you haven’t quite earned another one yet.”

“Actually, that’s fine. Last night you were all over me, so this morning I want to return the favor.”

Her grinding grew a little more rhythmic. “Even better. That just might get you out of the doghouse.”

“Wonderful. Before you let me out, though, I want to answer your question. Sex this morning, a little bit of work later, talk tonight. But there’s a wrinkle in our plans: at some point this afternoon, a delivery truck’s going to arrive with quite a bit of wine. They’ll unload the boxes straight into the cellar, but it’s going to be up to us to put it away. And, by the way, you’re going to have to sign for it. I didn’t see any point in scheduling the deliveries under my name, since they’re going to continue after I’m gone.” He forcibly put down a twinge of sadness at the unspoken implications of departing while the cellar continued to expand with wines meant to age as long as her marriage might.

“A truck full of muscular, sweaty, sexy men, eh?”

Luke laughed. “Sweaty is unlikely, given how far from their warehouse you live. Muscular is probable, but it’ll be two people at most. The rest calls for unfounded speculation. Having used this service in the past, however, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Why, are you thinking of tipping them with handjobs or something?”

Instead of answering, she rolled away from him and spread her legs. “Didn’t you promise me some sort of oral service? For some strange reason, I appear to be several orders of magnitude hornier than when you first made the offer.”

It’s the forest all over again. “My god, you are thinking about it!”

“Well, Luke ... the longer your tongue works its magic between my legs, the more likely it is that I’ll forget the entire idea.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, he moved on top of her and began kissing her neck. She sighed with pleasure as his mouth worshipped her flesh, and she was writhing by the time he arrived at her succulent breasts. For a long while he caressed and teased her nipples with the gentleness he knew she preferred, but when he realized that she was fighting against the buildup to orgasm, he moved on to her stomach. It rippled and heaved at the touch of his lips. When he finally descended to her sex it was a swamp, emanating a raw, urgent heat. Sensing her need, he skipped the rest of the preliminaries and buried his tongue in her hole, curling it upward and dragging it outward with enough force that it snapped across her sensitive clit. Three times he did this, and each time he was met with a deafening shriek. Suddenly, her hands gripped his head, holding it hard against her pussy as she wailed in uncontrolled ecstasy, pumping her essence into his mouth as he furiously assaulted her clitoris, maintaining her climax as long as he could. On and on he imprisoned her in the narrow band between the moment of unbearable tension and the moment of ecstatic release, unrelenting in his demands for her peaks, and she rewarded him with explosion after explosion. They’d done this so often he felt like a master at reading her signals and her desires, reveling in his ability to bend her pleasure to his will. It was something she’d been able to do to him from the very beginning.

I’ve never understood someone’s body so intimately, yet I feel like there’s so much more to learn. Tomorrow will be ... interesting, he mused as he introduced fingers to his manipulations. Kathryn’s orgasms rolled on, every momentary ebb followed by yet another eruption of carnal bliss.

Gasping for breath while shuddering though involuntary aftershocks, Kathryn was finally able to speak the words she’d been trying but failing to form since he’d released her from sensual bondage. “Jesus, Luke. You weren’t kidding when you said you wanted to redress an imbalance. That was so incredible, for so long, that even I’m not sure what time it is.”

“Yes you are,” he snorted, kissing the inside of her thigh and setting off another series of tremors.

“Okay, okay, I am. Still, learn to take a compliment, would you?”

“I did. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Love, ‘enjoyed’ is a pathetically under-equipped word for what you just did to me. That was ... look, if I tell you something important, will you promise that it stays between us?”

“Of course.”

“I mean it. You’re going to feel the urge to redeploy this information with one specific person. Don’t. You can’t. You’ll wound her if you try.”

“Now I’m both intrigued and a little scared.”

“You should be both. Luke, that was the best oral sex I’ve ever experienced. Better than any of my lovers, better than Wendy, better than Irina, even better than Faith ... though I admit that she could probably make a run at the title with a little more practice, because she’s more sexually intuitive than anyone I’ve ever met. But you know everything I want ... everything I need ... exactly the way and time I want or need it. And then you pull me away from the familiar and do something that’s totally new. You’ve known for a while that I can come virtually nonstop, but I’ve always had to work up to it. You just made me do it from the very start. No one’s ever done that before. I guess that means I’ve a few more cherries to offer you after all,” she added with a lopsided grin.

“Come here,” she demanded, pulling him from between her splayed legs until he was blanketing her scorchingly beautiful form and his erection was searing her flesh an inch or two from one of its favorite homes. Playfully licking her emissions from his chin, lips, and nose, she looked deep into his eyes and confessed, “You’re the most perfect lover I’ve ever had. No one’s even close anymore. I come more often, and with more intensity, with you than I ever have with anyone else. Even the biggest, most mind-rending orgasms of my life — like the ones I had when we were at Alejandro’s apartment and you were both inside me, or when I was finally allowed to come after so much torturous denial — were because you were there and deeply, intimately involved. I know this isn’t the time for our talk, but no matter what happens, I want you to understand and believe that I meant every single word I just said. You take me places I’ve never been. You hollow me out and remake me as a vessel for your pleasure, and because you do, I experience ecstasy unlike I’ve ever known.”

His heart swelling and shattering with every word, he answered, “The same is true for me, my love. I thought I’d had good sex ... I thought I knew what great sex entailed ... but I’m not sure I have words for what we do together, because I never imagined it could be like this. And since we’re still ‘not talking about it,’ just like yesterday,” he added with an unpleasant tightness in his throat, “I never want to stop. You know that, right?”

“I do. And just so it’s absolutely, crystal clear, I feel the same way.” The pregnancy of the uncomfortable silence that followed said everything she’d left unvoiced: no matter how revelatory or transformative the sex, all by itself it wasn’t enough of a foundation to redirect their futures.

They kissed for a while — a casual, comfortable exploration of their intimacy — until, with a slight shift of his hips, Luke slipped into her welcoming wetness. They moved together as one, saying nothing, only giving voice to their escalating passion with breath and the formless noises forced from their throats. Kathryn was building to her sixth or seventh consecutive peak when Luke reached for her legs and hoisted them over his shoulders, tightening the channel sheathing his shaft as he folded them against her body, driving into her sex with demanding force. Her volume overtook his, drowning his rhythmic grunts in the ululating arrhythmia of her surrender. Suddenly, she twisted to the side.

Assuming she needed a pause or a change of position, he began pushing himself off the bed. She locked her ankles behind his neck, momentarily arresting his withdrawal. Her eyes flamed with rampant desire as she handed him a well-used tube. Deftly uncapping it with a flick of his finger, he withdrew from her cunt, squeezed a dollop of its contents onto his cock, and worked several fingers-full into her rear entrance while she impatiently smeared the slippery lubricant all over a rod already glistening with her juices; a highly efficient routine that, for them, now operated like a flawlessly tuned engine. Pressing against her legs even harder, elevating her buttocks an inch or two higher, he repositioned himself and eased his cock into her back passage, gritting his teeth as the force of her orgasm clamped down on his invading spear.

Even though he’d switched holes, he immediately resumed the furious pounding to which he’d been treating her pussy. She reveled in it, howling with pleasure as he savaged her rectum with violent thrusts. Summoning an unexpected reserve of energy, he hammered her ass without respite, tearing countless climaxes from her body via her anal canal, nearly numb from the overwhelming pressure of his long-delayed release, yet holding it at bay with every last molecule of will.

Finally, well over an hour after he’d first plunged through her snug anus, he buried himself as deeply as her buttocks would allow and flooded her colon with a tidal wave of seed. Her climaxes were again unending as he filled her innards with semen. When his balls were finally empty, he collapsed atop her body, panting with exhaustion from the duration and raw athleticism of their coupling. Her legs fell back to the bed and her arms wrapped around his sweaty back, holding him close while she waited out her own slow recovery.

“You’re a sexual god,” she finally managed. “I know you and Wendy make all sorts of jokes about me, but I’m serious. It’s like you were designed in a laboratory to be my ideal sexual partner. That was amazing.”

“Thank you, but of course I’m no Art Fingers.”

“Oh, shut up,” she cackled. “Seriously: it just gets better and better. I’m no longer surprised at the unprecedented heights to which you take me; I just revel in them instead. But what’s really scary is that I don’t think we’ve reached the true peak yet.”

“Well, that’s good motivation to keep trying,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. “Anyway — and I’m terribly unhappy to have to say this — we have to get up. There’s a little last-minute reorganization we need to finish before the delivery truck arrives.” He slapped her buttocks to emphasize his point, and she quivered with delighted approval.

“Do that some more and I’ll do anything you want.”

“You’ll already do anything I want.”

“True, but I promise you’ll enjoy proving the assertion.”

“I will, but not right now. Seriously, let’s have a quick lunch and then move some bottles around.”

“So demanding!” she teased, untangling herself and rummaging around in a drawer while his creamy issue oozed from her dilated ass. “But you’ve regressed to seriously unsexy pillow talk again.”

“So they’re arriving soon?” she asked, slotting another pair of bottles into the racks.

“It’s hard to say, but ... wait,” he self-corrected as his phone beeped. “They’re on their way. Fifteen minutes.”

“Okay. I’m going to run over to the house and change. I should probably look a little more presentable,” she called over her shoulder, departing the cellar.

Right on schedule, a truck pulled into the driveway. Luke asked the driver to maneuver around until they could extend their loading ramp straight into the cellar, and it didn’t take very long for a few dozen cases to make their way from the truck to their destination. The two men were just about to retract the ramp when the metal suddenly clattered to the floor, startling Luke and causing him to fret about the sanctity of that floor, until he realized that both men were staring past him, mouths open and eyes wide. He sighed and turned around, already prepared for what he was about to see.

Kathryn was crossing the driveway wearing her black bikini. Below the waist she was concealed by a diaphanous sarong that was almost (but not quite) transparent enough to reveal what was beneath. The already undersized triangles of her top seemed stretched over her irresistible breasts even more than usual, as if she’d tightened the ties just to achieve such an effect. Her chest moved as she walked ... nothing so crass as bouncing, but swaying subtly as she made the most unsubtle of approaches to the three disbelieving men. Her nipples were very obviously erect, though whether it was the situation or a quick bout of pre-emergence self-stimulation remained a mystery. Knowing her, it might be both.

“I understand I have to sign for something?” she asked with an insouciant flip of her luxuriant hair, which wasn’t just down, but which she’d obviously teased into an even more sensual tangle than usual. Uncomfortable silence greeted her question. Luke smirked and turned away, trying very hard not to laugh.

“Bill of lading, boys. Let’s have it.”

Fumbling with his shirt pocket, but unwilling to wrest his eyes from the stunning and nearly naked redhead, the driver produced a folded piece of paper and a pen. Luke relieved him of both and handed them to Kathryn, who smiled with feigned indifference over what she was doing to the trio as she pinned it against the side of the truck and signed with a dramatic flourish. “Here you go,” she said as she handed both items back to the driver, staring a seductive challenge into his paralyzed eyes. Though he was beyond amused by the theater, Luke wondered just how far she’d take it, for recent conversations suggested that he didn’t actually know.

To his mild surprise, it was already over. “Thanks for all the wine,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll see you kind gentlemen again,” she continued with an inviting lilt, turning and walking back to the house as the deliverymen continued to stare, mesmerized by the unimaginably enticing curve of her ass as it swung back and forth inside her sarong.

I need to let them off the hook or they’ll never leave. “I know. Believe me, I know. I assume you two have just decided to volunteer for all future deliveries. If so, you might want to be more careful about dropping things.”

“Wasn’t that hot?” she asked as her lips worked their way around his neck. She was back in casual wear, but it was clear that her encounter with the deliverymen had reenergized her libido.

“I’m not sure,” he answered, and she pulled her lips away with an exaggerated pout. The look in her eyes warned him that, if he persisted, this would be no lighthearted conversation.

“This is important to you, isn’t it?” He gently nudged her a little farther away before continuing. “Tell me why.”

“It’s not important to you?”

I feel like I’m standing amidst a cloud of angry wasps, all of them ready to sting the moment I make the wrong move. “Tell me what you mean, specifically, and I’ll answer as best I can.”

“You didn’t find my teasing arousing?”

“Yes. That part I definitely did.”

“Were you worried I was going to go farther?”

Be careful. “Not worried so much as curious and cautious. And ... okay, yes, maybe even trepidatious.”

“Luke,” she said, taking his hands between hers, “does the idea of me being with other people arouse or upset you? Or is it both?”

He shook his head. “It’s definitely both, and it depends on the person and the situation. You know how much I debated and struggled over Alejandro, even after I talked myself into it, and despite all your — and his — reassurances, there were many moments along the way when I felt utterly lost. That said, by the end it didn’t bother me at all. Faith and Wendy were no problem, but then again I’m a heterosexual dude, and an interest in watching two women having sex is apparently hardwired into our DNA. I admit I’d be slightly nervous about you being with Irina unless I was involved, though I doubt it’d last very long. But as you know, I hoped Alejandro would help me get over my jealousy regarding you and Bill. Unfortunately, last week proved that it didn’t.” He paused as she cocked her head. “I heard the two of you having sex.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Well, there were a lot of opportunities, so I’m not terribly surprised. I kept the windows open for a reason.”

Her admission was surprisingly hurtful. “You did?”

“Please don’t misunderstand me. It was absolutely not so you would hear — if I’d known you were going to be out and about, I would’ve closed them, but except for your morning exercise you almost never are — it’s just because the general idea of whatever sex I’m having being audible to anyone within earshot turns me on so much. Years of stammering and odd looks from landscapers and pool cleaners suggests that I’m getting exactly what I want, but I really didn’t mean for you to overhear us. I’m truly sorry, Luke.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t figure it was deliberate, and of course you’re right that I rarely leave the guesthouse. Still, I did hear you.”

“And?”

“I hated it. But since I had no right to object, and there was nothing I could do about it, I went on with my day.”

“Well, it’s a special exception, I grant. But putting Bill aside, this is the second time you’ve reacted this way to the possibility of me pushing this specific boundary with others. Is it because we’re talking about men rather than women? Is it the surprise or the uncertainty that you don’t like? Is it about prior approval? If it’s your idea, or if we discuss it first, would that make it okay? Because I want you to understand that I’m quite content with that sort of arrangement, if so. I just need to know the rules.”

“Maybe. I really don’t know, because this is still so new to me. Liz and I have never been anything more than fuck-buddies, and even when she enthusiastically recounts an encounter with someone else — which she often does — all it does is make me hornier and more competitive. The only person who ever demanded the right to see, date, fool around with, or sleep with other people while we were in some sort of semi-committed relationship was Véronique, and as you know I resisted at first and, later on, withheld my own commitment as a result. I know that, if you and I have a future, we’ll be including other people in it, and I want you to know that I’m fine with that ... but I’m fine with it as an abstraction. I’m finding the details a little more confusing.”

“That’s completely understandable.”

“Is it? If it happens, the people won’t be abstractions, they’ll be real. Will I react this way every time? That doesn’t seem very reasonable on my part. Either it’s okay or it’s not.”

“I promise I won’t do anything else like that around you from now on.”

“No, no, it’s...” He rubbed his temple for a few moments. “No. Please don’t stop. Do whatever it is you feel like doing.”

“But it upsets you.”

“One of the things we don’t know about us is what it’s like to be together when it’s not just endless sex punctuated by food, wine, and a pathetically small amount of work. Part of yesterday’s talk was an attempt to amend that, though of course we ended talking about sex anyway. But if this is the person you want to be ... if this is the Kathryn I’m allegedly freeing to be who she really is ... then I need to see her. See you.” She nodded, her expression visibly torn between doubt and careful consideration. “There’s something else I’m trying to figure out, though. Why is this so important to you? Teasing and openness to random encounters rather than planned ones, I mean.”

She sighed and moved closer, as if physical proximity could somehow insulate them against what she was about to say. “Do you mind if I talk about Bill?”

“Probably, but he’s also part of us facing our reality. If it helps you explain, go ahead.”

“This was ... this is ... his hangup. He’s obviously okay with me being somewhat of an exhibitionist, or he wouldn’t be able to accept the dresses I wear, much less something like ... to pull an extremely unlikely possibility out of invented air ... me hanging out by the pool in a very revealing bikini while our hot young wine stud is sitting a few feet away. And he’s completely fine with the sort of low-level flirtation I engage in, which you know about as well as anyone. Even when someone gets very slightly handsy with me, he doesn’t intervene ... though I wouldn’t say it pleases him very much, either. But the idea of me physically interacting with another person in any overtly sexual fashion whatsoever brings his barriers up, hard. And that applies to everyone. At first I didn’t believe him; can you imagine a man who’s not interested in being with, or even watching, two women?”

“Despite what I said earlier, I’m sure there are plenty who aren’t.”

“Sure, but I could never have foreseen I’d end up married to one. And yet, somehow, I did. As I told you a while back, before we left the city I thought I almost had him ready to at least try a little adventure, just because he knew I wanted it so badly. We were going to go to a bar or a club and I’d seduce another woman into joining us ... at first on the dance floor, then at our table, and perhaps, if it all went well, to a hotel room for something more. I left it completely up to him to let me know if and when it was too much, or if he wanted me to stop. The truth was that we never even made it out the front door. One week there was one excuse, the next another, until I finally gave up. He was never going to be okay with it, and I was damaging our marriage by trying to change his mind. I’ve accepted that I never will.”

“Is that why you’re with me?”

“No, Luke. No. Absolutely not. In the beginning it was only about my irresistible attraction to you. Later, I realized that it was also about love. But I’ve told you more than once that openness to this sort of thing has been part of your appeal for a while now.”

“And that’s why my sudden resistance is upsetting to you?”

“Not upsetting so much as surprising.”

“How so?”

“It doesn’t make a great deal of sense, at least to me, that you’re fine leaving me alone with Wendy, or Alejandro, or Faith ... or that you’re okay with watching Alejandro feed that monster all the way down my throat and then absolutely pummeling me with it ... but a little exhibitionism and flirting with strangers is so distressing that it causes you to panic. Well, ‘panic’ isn’t the right way to put it, but...”

“No, it’s okay. And you’re right; now that you put it that way, it doesn’t make sense. So what would you have done with the delivery guys if your stick-in-the-mud lover wasn’t holding you back?”

Shaking her head, though she was smiling as she did it, she responded, “This time, no more than I did. Next time, maybe I’ll be rushing out of the shower and ‘accidentally’ drop my towel while I’m signing something. While they’re standing there in shock, I’ll give them both a hug of gratitude so I get something out of the experience, and then saunter back into the house, as if being naked in front of them was no big deal.”

“So you get ... oh, I understand. You want to feel that they’re hard because of you.”

“Exactly. I know some exhibitionists are into the feeling of humiliation that comes with exposure. I’m the opposite; I revel in the sexual power it gives me. I find it incredibly stimulating. Do you remember that first day we spent by the pool, before we started having sex? It turned me on so much, knowing what I was doing to you. Once I went inside, it was very difficult to stop masturbating long enough to change clothes and make dinner — you’ll remember that I didn’t exactly cover myself very well — and there were a few hours of encores after you left. The boat was even worse; I could barely get to sleep that night because I was fantasizing about you with pretty much every device I own. And yes, it’s really turning me on right now to see how you’re responding to these revelations. But Luke, there’s also something here that’s relevant to our discussion: I hadn’t one-hundred percent committed to having sex with you at that point, though I was certainly strongly considering it, but I went ahead and relentlessly enticed you anyway. I guarantee that, if we’d managed a repeat engagement by the pool before our relationship turned physical, I would’ve at least been topless ... and not covered like I was on the boat, either. It’s even more likely I would’ve ended up naked, which is how I usually spend my time out there. If I could’ve talked you out of your bathing suit as well, that would’ve fueled my orgasms for days.”

“So the only reason you don’t do things like that all the time is because of Bill?”

“Yes. While he’s happy to show me off up to a point — he’s come to accept me being naked while Irina’s around, for example — the rest is a line he wouldn’t want me to cross.”

“But you crossed it with me because...”

“ ... I was already most of the way to being unfaithful, as I’ve explained before. In retrospect, it’s completely obvious that the final step was so inevitable it might as well have been preordained ... the pool, the boat, cuddling at the rock ... but I needed a little time to grant myself permission to take it.”

He fell silent for a while, considering everything she’d revealed. As ever, there’s this yawning gap between what I’m prepared for and what she’s capable of. I felt it with Alejandro and Faith, I felt it during our experiments with dominance and submission, and now I’m feeling another expression of it. So am I more like Bill, or more like her? Am I capable of following her as far as she wants to go?

“Can I ask another question about Bill?”

“As long you’re prepared for the answer, now’s as good a time as any.”

“Are you satisfied with him? Sexually, I mean?”

“Why would you possibly want to know that?”

“I can’t really explain it, but I find myself wanting to understand him better. You love both of us, but we’re very different people, and so it must be for different reasons. I want to know what those are.”

“So you can make a better case for yourself? I’m impressed and horrified.”

“Why horrified?”

“It’s very lawyerly of you.”

“Now I’m impressed and horrified,” he joked. “Maybe you’re right that it’s all about advantage. Maybe it’s just a stupid retreat to pride, because I want to hear the specific ways in which I’m apparently better in bed. Or maybe it’s about knowing where I do and don’t measure up in a larger sense. Like I said, I can’t really explain it. If you don’t want to answer, though...”