Intemperance Epilogue Volume I
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 11: Recon and Acquisition
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 11: Recon and Acquisition - Intemperance isn’t over yet—we still have lots of loose ends to tie up. Volume I picks up after Book X as Jake, Laura, Celia, Caydee, and the rest of the Kingsley orbit discover that life goes on, whether you’re ready or not. Expect music, love, grief, family, crows, weed, questionable decisions, and all the usual Kingsley antics along with the antics of the surrounding Kingsley orbit.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Lesbian BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Polygamy/Polyamory
Oceano, California
April 15, 2005
Jake left Kingsley Manor using alternate transportation on this morning.
While Celia and Laura made the drive in Celia’s Mercedes, Jake rolled out on his Harley. He wasn’t dressed for a biker run this time. No leather cut, no band tee, none of the outlaw window dressing he’d thrown on for the ride up to Heritage to bring Matt home. This was how he dressed when he was just ... riding. A leather jacket with built-in armor and air flaps at the shoulders and chest. Riding pants that passed for jeans but wouldn’t shred even if he went down at eighty miles per hour. Boots. Gloves. And a full-face helmet with a visor already speckled with the casualties of Central Coast insect life.
He took the familiar route out, the engine rumbling beneath him in a way that never quite got old. It had been years since he’d ridden regularly—life, career, kids, all the usual shit—but picking it back up had been like stepping into a version of himself that had never really gone away. It was still there. Waiting.
He passed the Johansen Spot on the way out. Still crawling with media.
Vans lined the shoulder like a traveling circus that had decided to set up permanent residence. Cameras on tripods. Freelancers leaning against doors, smoking, watching, waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen. Jake didn’t slow down. Didn’t look. Just rolled past like they didn’t exist.
Once he hit 101 North, he opened it up. Sixth gear. All the way to the top.
The bike responded instantly, the engine note climbing, the wind pressing harder against his chest and shoulders. The road stretched out in front of him, clean and fast, the morning still early enough that traffic hadn’t turned into a full-on clusterfuck. He moved through it easily, carving lanes, picking his lines, leaving space where it needed to be left and taking it where it was offered.
It felt good. Really good.
Even with Celia behind the wheel of the Mercedes—Celia, who drove like she had something to prove—Jake still left them in the dust. Not because he wanted to. Just because the bike didn’t like to go less than 65 on such a road.
He rolled into the Campus at 8:50, five minutes ahead of his usual arrival.
The place was not quite alive yet. No cars in the parking lot, just the security people’s personal vehicles parked in the security office parking lot. All were beaters. That would likely change when they got their own in-house security up and running. Another project that had been put on the back burner by Matt’s death.
Another Harley was parked out front, angled a little differently, a little less experienced in its placement.
Owen’s.
Jake gave a small nod to himself. The kid had kept the rubber side down and the shiny side up. That was good. They had a little recon trip to take today.
He swung a leg over and dismounted, the engine ticking softly as it cooled beneath him. He popped open the rear storage compartment and stowed his jacket and gloves with practiced efficiency. The helmet he left hanging from the handlebar, dangling in the slight wind.
He took a second to deal with the helmet head, pulling a small brush from the left saddlebag and working it through his hair using the rearview mirror. Good enough. He slipped the brush back where it lived and shut the compartment with a firm press.
He didn’t bother locking anything.
Not here. Not on the Campus. The security wasn’t trustworthy when it came to keeping Kingsley business quiet, but they were more than capable of keeping random assholes from wandering in and fucking with a motorcycle that did not belong to them.
Jake headed inside.
The smell of coffee hit him immediately. Fresh. Strong. Good.
Owen had probably been there a while—long enough to get the machine going and start powering things up while he waited for it to finish brewing. Jake grabbed a cup of it and then wandered down the hall and into Studio B, where Celia’s basic tracks were being recorded.
Owen was moving around the room, placing water bottles at the usual stations the way he’d done it a hundred times before.
“GM!” Jake called as he stepped in. “You ready for the mission?”
Owen looked up and nodded. “I’m ready. Looking forward to it.”
Jake walked further into the room, glancing around out of habit more than necessity. Everything where it should be. Good.
“What’d you tell Tif?” he asked.
Owen didn’t hesitate. “I told her that you and I had to go to a meeting at Mr. Tater’s place today. We’re going to discuss wholesale pricing of Purple-T and how to perform routine maintenance on our bikes.”
Jake paused, giving him a look.
“And she bought that?” he asked, thinking it sounded like a pretty flimsy reason to disappear on a motorcycle for most of a workday.
Owen shrugged. “Sure. Tif believes anything I tell her.”
“Anything?” he asked.
“I try not to abuse the power, but it seemed appropriate today.”
Jake nodded once. “I concur, but ... what if you told her the Earth was flat and we’ve all been lied to and indoctrinated all of our lives into thinking it was an oblate spheroid?”
“She would believe it,” he said.
“What if you told her that if you don’t come at least once a day you’ll get congested and develop testicular cancer?”
“She would believe it,” he said confidently.
“And if you added in that only ejaculating in a female body relieved the congestion? That giving Little GM a nice handshake wasn’t the same?”
“She already thinks that,” Owen said, seemingly proud of his girlfriend’s density.
“Wow,” Jake said. “I kind of envy you in a way.”
“It can be trying sometimes,” he said. “Fortunately, I’m a basically honest person so I don’t use this for evil. Just things like this. Surprises.”
Jake looked at him for a moment. “You’re a good man, GM,” he finally said.
“Thanks,” Owen said.
There was a brief beat.
“Did you bring ... you know ... the ring?” Owen asked.
Jake smiled slightly and reached into the side pocket of his riding pants. He pulled out a small black jewelry box and handed it over.
“Here it is,” he said. “The best fuckin’ engagement ring that your two thousand dollars could buy.”
Owen took it carefully, like it might explode if handled incorrectly, and opened the box.
His eyes went wide.
Inside sat an eighteen karat gold band set with a halo of quarter-carat diamonds, the centerpiece a larger stone—clean, bright, and unmistakably substantial. Two and a half carats in the main stone, another carat and a half in the band stones, all of it perfectly fitted for Tif’s ring finger thanks to Kelvin, the master of deception.
“Wow,” Owen said, staring at it. “It’s huge.”
“That’s what she said,” Jake replied with a grin.
Owen blinked. “Huh?”
Jake shook his head. “Never mind. Do you like it?”
Owen nodded immediately. “Yes. And Tif is going to love it. But ... this was only two thousand dollars? I looked online and most of the rings in that range had tiny diamonds.”
Jake gave a small, easy smile. “It’s good to have a friend in the diamond business.”
“I guess so,” Owen said.
He didn’t press it.
Jake watched him for a second, pretty sure there wasn’t even a hint of suspicion there. As far as Owen knew, that ring had come in right on budget.
In reality, it had cost fourteen-five. Jake had quietly covered the difference. Owen didn’t realize that. Tif would not know how much Owen had paid for the ring (or how much he thought he had paid). Problem solved.
Laura and Celia were the next to arrive, followed by Liz and Little Stevie, who were still staying at Kingsley Manor for the duration of the project. The studio techs arrived next. Then, the bass player and the drummer came down from the housing area where Drew was now their only companion. The Nerdlys rolled in next, followed by Massa Wu.
Jake, Owen, Tif, Laura, Celia, and the Nerdlys met in the break room for a briefing on the day’s activities while everyone else tromped into the studio to start tuning their instruments and getting ready for the session. It was a quick briefing; they already pretty much knew what they were going to be doing. They would be recording Celia’s acoustic guitar tracks for her song Pinch Me, which was a thinly veiled love song about her happiness with Jake and Laura. Everyone else would play backup to keep her in synch with the tune.
“We could probably send the National boys home at this point,” Jake said. “Their parts are already in the can. We can use the recordings for backing for here on out.”
He let that hang for a second.
“For tweaks, I can handle bass overdubs if I have to. Drums are a little trickier on short notice.”
That was the polite version.
The real version was that Jake didn’t quite trust himself to leave the bass alone. It was still a guitar, but it wasn’t his guitar. It had a job—rhythm, foundation, no bullshit—and Jake had a long-standing habit of turning anything with strings into an opportunity to express himself. That didn’t always serve the song.
And the mole on bass was just ... better at being a bass player. Jake knew it. No ego about it.
He could send one of them home and keep the other, but that felt wrong. Unbalanced. Unnecessary drama for no real gain.
So for now, they stayed.
“If, by some miracle,” Jake went on, glancing briefly at the Nerdlys, “we get through all of Celia’s tracks without anyone pulling the emergency brake, we’ll move on to Love Is Strange.”
Bill gave a small nod. Sharon’s expression didn’t change. That was as close to agreement as they were likely to get in advance.
Jake pushed off the counter slightly. “That’s really it,” he said. “Any questions?”
There weren’t any.
Jake took another sip of his coffee, then set the cup down and shifted gears.
“Alright,” he said. “Can you guys get along without me and GM for most of the day? We’ve got the ... uh ... meeting at Tater’s place.”
Laura looked at him, one eyebrow lifting just slightly.
“You going to pick up some more Purple-T while you’re there?” she asked. “Maybe grab a few of those pipes Tater and the boys use to sample their inventory?”
Jake didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve got three hundred dollars cash with Tater’s name on it,” he said.
“Good,” Laura said, satisfied.
Celia crossed her arms, considering this.
“We’ll be fine without you, Rev” she said. “But does Owen really need to be there?” She glanced at him. “You’re expendable. But losing Owen is like what would happen to the 4077th if Radar took a day off.”
Jake straightened slightly, mock offense flashing across his face. “I don’t have to take that kind of an insult to my production skills,” he said.
“Yes you do, sweetie,” Laura replied immediately. “You’re married to her.”
Jake shook his head, then looked over at Owen.
“This is why they tell you not to get involved with people you work with,” he said.
Owen, ever the professional, stepped right into the gap.
“I can stay,” he offered. “If it would help production, you can attend the meeting alone.”
Jake turned and fixed him with a look. A very specific look.
“Your presence at the meeting was specifically requested, GM,” he said, his voice tightening just a fraction. “Tater and the boys would not like it if you didn’t show.”
Owen held that for a second. Then it clicked.
“Oh,” he said. “Yes. That’s right. Sorry, C. I have to go to the meeting.”
Celia’s lips curved into a small, knowing smile. Everyone in the room except Tif knew exactly what “the meeting” actually was.
“Somehow,” she said, “we’ll carry on without you.”
Jake and Owen stayed around long enough for the morning sound check to be done.
Owen really was indispensable in that role. He moved from station to station with quiet efficiency, making manual adjustments on amps, preamps, and speakers that the primary soundboard didn’t control, always at the direction of the Nerdlys. It saved time—real time—and kept the process from bogging down.
Jake stayed because he was the only one who had the authority to make the Nerdlys stop.
They would chase it if you let them. Always one more pass, one more adjustment, one more microscopic improvement in tone. Audio perfection was what they sought to accomplish—a theoretical realm of physics and engineering that was as impossible to achieve as absolute zero or a perpetual motion machine—and they would happily spend the entire day reaching for it if nobody stepped in.
Jake stepped in.
“That’s enough,” he said at one point, not raising his voice, not arguing the point. Just stating it.
Bill looked at him. Sharon didn’t move.
Jake held the look.
“We’ve got it,” he added. “Let’s record some shit.”
There was a brief pause. Then Bill gave a small nod.
And that was that.
When the levels were set and the band assumed their places, instruments in hand and ready, Jake gave Owen a look and tilted his head toward the door.
Time.
Jake kissed Celia and Laura goodbye while Owen did the same for Tif. They then slipped out the door without further ceremony.
Out in the parking lot, the air had warmed just enough to take the edge off the morning. The two Harleys sat where they’d left them, Jake’s squared off and deliberate, Owen’s just a touch off-angle in a way that suggested he was still learning the finer points.
Jake grabbed his jacket from the rear compartment and shrugged into it, Owen doing the same beside him.
“Okay,” Jake said, “this is your recon run for the proposal tomorrow.”
Owen nodded, focused. “Recon.”
“We’re going to make the actual trip exactly the way you will tomorrow,” Jake went on. “Catch the PCH in SLO and follow it all the way up to Big Sur. Don’t rush it. Let the road do its thing.”
He pointed north, more out of instinct than necessity.
“Your target is the Bixby Creek Bridge,” he said. “The one that’s in all the fuckin’ car commercials and on the California postcards and shit. Sits about three hundred feet above the creek right where it dumps into the big-ass ocean.”
Owen nodded again. He knew the one.
“That bridge looks majestic as shit,” Jake added. “You don’t get to be on no postcard or in a car commercial if you’re not. You need a place with a bad-ass view of the bridge and the ocean. We’re going to scope it out now, find the perfect spot, and then you’re going to just happen to decide to stop there tomorrow with Tif because it’s so fuckin’ beautiful. Take a camera. If you get some Japanese couple to take a picture of you while you’re up there, even better.”
“Japanese couple,” Owen said. “Right.”
“As I remember from drives up that way with Celia—because she’s obsessed with freakin’ lighthouses—there are several turnouts above the bridge. That’s where you want to be. You’ll be coming in from the south tomorrow, so you need to use the turnouts on the north side.”
Owen paused. “Why?”
Jake gave him a look. “Because you have to ride across the bridge before you propose.”
Owen considered that. “How come?”
Jake stared at him for a moment. “Because that’s the way it’s done,” he finally said.
That was good enough for Owen.
“Okay,” he said.
“On the way home,” Jake continued, “you go north on the PCH for a few miles and take the faster inland route back. That keeps you from getting stuck behind some asshole in an RV for three hours with a brand new fiancée on the back.”
“That makes sense,” Owen said.
He was clearly a little nervous, but there was something else there too—excitement, building under the surface. Once he’d gotten past the initial fear, Owen had taken to riding in a way Jake respected. He didn’t fight the bike. He let it do what it was built to do.
Jake pulled his helmet on and secured it, Owen following suit. Gloves went on last.
Jake swung a leg over his bike and hit the starter. The engine came to life with a low, familiar rumble. Owen’s fired up a second later, not quite as smooth, but close enough.
Jake gave him a quick nod.
“Follow me,” he said, voice already half lost inside the helmet. “We’ll fuel up in SLO and that’ll keep us for the whole trip.”
“Right,” Owen said.
He dropped the visor, eased out the clutch, and rolled toward the exit, Owen falling in behind him. They passed through the security gate, down the access road, and onto Highway 101 South.
Fifteen minutes later, they rolled into San Luis Obispo proper and pulled into a Chevron just off the main drag, the kind of place that saw a steady mix of commuters, college kids, and road-trippers heading north or south with no particular urgency.
Jake killed the engine and swung off, Owen doing the same a second later. They moved through the routine without thinking—cards in, nozzles out, tanks filling.
$2.70 a gallon for the 91 octane the Harleys burned.
Jake didn’t really give a shit about the price, but he noticed it. Hard not to. It had gone up a hell of a lot in the last year. The Iraq War, the rapid industrialization of China, and the general unrest in the Middle East all doing their thing in the background whether anyone liked it or not.
“This shit keeps up,” Jake said, watching the numbers climb, “the regular stuff is gonna cost more than three bucks a gallon.”
Owen glanced over from the next pump. “You really think it’ll get that expensive?”
“No doubt,” Jake said. “But what can you do? Not much other than bend over and spread ‘em wider.”
The pump clicked off. Jake capped the tank and hung the nozzle back in its cradle.
“Let’s talk some more logistics,” he went on. “You’re gonna need a bathroom break before you get into the vicinity of your target. You do not want Tif with a full bladder at go-time.”
Owen looked surprised. “Wow. You’re really good at this, Jake. I never would have thought of that.”
Jake shrugged. “That’s why I’m the fuckin’ producer.”
Owen gave a small, respectful nod. “How many women have you proposed to?”
“Just one,” Jake said. “But I’ve boned a lot of them. I know how they think. I know what their bodies do. Some of the time, anyway.”
He jerked his head toward the station building.
“So we’ll scope out the proper facilities on this recon run. Tomorrow, during the mission, you pull in somewhere like this and tell her you have to piss. Take the hit for the cause. She’ll go too, even if she wouldn’t have stopped you for it.”
Owen considered that for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.”
They took a moment to drink from their water bottles, the kind of quick, efficient pause that didn’t break the rhythm of the ride. Then the bottles went away, helmets came down, gloves went back on.
A minute later, the engines turned over again, and they rolled back out onto the road.
They picked up Highway 1 in San Luis Obispo and headed north. It was called Cabrillo Highway through this stretch, but it was also the Pacific Coast Highway—the PCH—no matter what the sign said.
The ride out of SLO was easy. Rolling terrain, long gentle curves, nothing technical. The kind of road you could settle into without thinking too much about it.
It carried them into Morro Bay, the air shifting as they got closer to the water. Beyond that, the highway began to track along the coastline, not dramatically at first, but enough that the ocean started appearing off to their left in steady, widening glimpses.
They settled into a comfortable pace.
The road straightened in places, bent lazily in others. It wasn’t demanding yet. Just scenic. The kind of stretch where you could ride for miles without touching the brakes.
They passed the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse, the white tower set back from the road. Jake had been there once with Celia and Laura, walking the grounds while some disturbingly knowledgeable volunteer docent talked about lenses and shipwrecks. It had been a good day. They’d had a threesome upon arriving home.
From there, the character of the ride began to change. The road tightened. The coastline grew more dramatic. They started hugging the ocean more closely now, the land dropping away more sharply to the left, the water stretching out in that deep, saturated blue that only really showed itself on clear days like this.
Then the climb began.
The coastal hills rose fast—up toward twelve hundred feet in places—and the road followed them, winding upward in a series of tighter and tighter turns. The ocean fell away below, no longer beside them but far beneath, visible in long, sweeping views between rises in the terrain. Hairpin turns started showing up, posted at fifteen miles per hour, a few at ten miles per hour.
Jake led Owen through them deliberately slower than he would have ridden on his own. Second gear. Maybe twenty at the most. The bikes could have handled more, but there was no reason to push it. This was Owen’s first time on a road like this, and Jake wanted him to have confidence when it did it tomorrow with a one hundred and forty pound passenger whose glorious tits would be pushing into his back and whose firm thighs would be wrapped around his backside causing a distraction.
They climbed, crested, dropped, and climbed again, the rhythm of the road becoming more physical now, more demanding, more alive.
Traffic held together reasonably well. There were no passing lanes in this stretch, and the drivers who should have used the turnouts rarely did. RVs drifted along at their own pace, cars stacking up behind them until someone got impatient enough to make a move.
Jake kept them moving and safe.
He figured if Owen left San Luis Obispo at around one o’clock tomorrow, he’d hit this section at about the right time—late enough to avoid the morning traffic, early enough to stay ahead of the worst of the afternoon crowd.
After more than an hour of riding like that, the road dipped briefly before climbing again, the terrain tightening into the kind of stretch that marked the approach to Big Sur proper.
They were getting close now. Maybe twenty minutes from the bridge. Jake’s attention shifted from the road ahead to the margins of it, scanning for anything that might serve their purpose.
He found it just after a brief descent from a high point on the route. A break in the trees. A wide entrance cut into the hillside. A sign set back just far enough that you had to be looking for it to read it.
ANDREW MOLERA STATE PARK
It was a reasonably well-maintained access road. Gravel, but solid. Easy in, easy out.
Jake signaled to Owen—both with his hand and his turn signal—that they would be pulling in.
It was perfect.
There was no manned access gate.
They arrived in a parking area. Signs told them that the day fee was seven dollars and that they should put that money in a little envelope at a pay station and drop it inside the secure slot while putting the receipt on their dashboard. Heavy fines were promised if they were caught not doing this.
But there was no one to enforce it.
Jake was not a reckless lawbreaker—not completely anyway—and he would have put some cash in an envelope and dropped it inside if they were staying for more than ten minutes.
But they weren’t. So he didn’t.
The two of them dismounted, leaving their helmets hanging from the handlebars, and walked over to the state parks owned and maintained offload facility.
It was nothing that would be featured in a decor magazine about the classiest shitters on the planet, but it wasn’t terrible either. Clean, for an open pit toilet, and it even had actual running water—though it was one of those push-button deals where you got about five seconds of cold water per press before it shut itself off and made you work for the next round. The smell wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t the kind that made you question your life choices either.
It would do. Assuming the women’s side wasn’t worse. Jake figured that was a safe assumption. In his experience, women’s public bathrooms were respected better than their male counterparts.
They handled their business and stepped back outside, the air immediately feeling fresher.
“Don’t linger here tomorrow,” Jake told Owen as they moved away from the small building. “Stick to the plan. Pee and make sure Tif does the same. If she hesitates, tell her that you have no idea how far it will be to the next shitter. Even Laura would believe that, and she’s been to college and everything.”
“Right,” Owen said. “Make sure she pees. White lie again.”
Jake nodded once. “For the cause.”
They slowed near the bikes, but Jake kept talking, working through the next piece of it.
“I’ll leave the fine details to you,” he said. “But if you haven’t told Tif by this point where you’re actually going, you should do so here. Tell her the bridge is just a few more miles and you want to get a picture of the two of you with it in the background.”
Owen’s eyes lit a little. “The Japanese couple!”
“Exactly,” Jake said. “But if there are no Japanese couples available, you’ll have to pull in some other kind of Asian couple. If there are no Asians...” He shrugged. “Go with any black people who happen to be up there.”
Owen blinked. “Black people?”
“Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it?” Jake said. “But it’s really not. It’s just your white bread institutionalized racism speaking to you. Black people up here will be universally friendly and trustworthy. Most white people too, but tweakers roam these hills and they’re almost all white. They can pass themselves off as normal white people. Even a couple will steal your shit if you happen to stumble across one in which one or both are tweakers. They’ll travel to the ends of the fuckin’ Earth to steal shit for meth money.”
“Wow,” Owen said.
Jake jerked his thumb back toward the road. “But any black people up in these here hills will be cool. No brother intent on ripping people off is going to travel to Big fuckin’ Sur to do it. They’ll be touristy and glad to help. Not like Japanese people, who would still gladly take a picture for you if you were watching their mother’s execution, but any brother or sister who stops at a place to look at a bridge will do you a solid.”
Owen considered that for a moment.
“You have an interesting take on race relations,” he said.
Jake shrugged. “I’ve been around the fuckin’ world, GM,” he said. “You learn shit doing that.”
They mounted back up and rolled out of the lot, easing back onto Highway 1 without hurry.
The terrain picked up right where it had left off. More hills now. Longer climbs, deeper drops. The road rose and fell in a steady rhythm, each crest opening up another wide, spectacular view of the Pacific—blue and endless—and the rocks jutting up out of it like they had unfinished business with the surface. They rode through it, the bikes settling into the motion of the road, engines steady, no need to push it.
Then, for just a moment, they saw it. A brief glimpse through a break in the terrain—the bridge. Gone again almost as soon as it appeared, but there was no mistaking it. A concrete arch spanning the mouth of the canyon where Bixby Creek emptied out into the ocean three hundred feet below. The roadway stretched across the top of it, the whole structure that faded grayish-yellow color that came from decades of weather and salt air. Old. Solid. And unmistakably iconic. Totally worth spending a few million dollars to hire a helicopter and film a car commercial there.
They caught it again a few minutes later from a slightly different angle—this time from above, then again from slightly below as the road dipped and climbed its way toward it. Each glimpse filled in a little more of the picture until the last turn came and they were on it.
And just like that, the magic shifted. Crossing the bridge itself wasn’t the spectacle. Not really. The view off to the left was bitchin—no argument there—but the structure? You couldn’t see it from where you sat. Just the road, the guardrail, the span beneath you implied but invisible. The worst view of the bridge was from atop it.
That’s fuckin’ irony, Chase Best would say.
Jake kept them moving. They cleared the far side and immediately leaned into a sharp right as the road began to climb again. A sign flashed past on the shoulder—BIXBY BRIDGE VISTA POINT 1 MILE—and Jake lifted his clutch hand and pointed at it with two fingers. Owen answered with a quick thumbs-up, using his clutch hand as well. That was not something that needed to be taught. You instinctively knew that letting go of the throttle to gesture while moving was a bad idea.
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