Chapter 7

It was two days before the front door opened and the now two musketeers came in just like always. I was at the computer, working. I'd neglected work for the last week. I thought I had a pretty good excuse, but still, I needed to catch things up. When I heard them come in I got up and went to the door of my office.

"Hey," I said in greeting. "What's up?"

"Swimming," said Ashley.

"Ahhh," I said. "Have fun."

"Can we use Kat's room to change?"

"Sure," I said.

"Come swim with us in a little while?" asked Emma.

"I need to keep going, but a break will be nice in half an hour or so," I said.

"Okay," she replied.

It all seemed completely normal. It was like things had magically returned to the way they were the year before. Except that the girls wanted to swim in my pool despite the fact that Caitlin wasn't there. But that was the only difference. And it was kind of nice having them around like this, because it made the pain of Caitlin leaving more bearable somehow. It hadn't been this painful in years past. So having them around was kind of soothing, in a way.

I did work another half hour, and then I stood and stretched. I went to my bedroom and, along the way, passed the room that I thought of as Caitlin's, even though she only used it one month out of the year. Two sets of street clothes had been tossed negligently on her bed. I got my suit on and went downstairs.

Where I found two girls sunbathing in the nude.

Their hair was still wet, so they had been swimming, but now they were laid out, legs slightly spread, luscious pussies on display, in my back yard.

I developed an erection. I was not surprised.

Still, I knew how possessive Caitlin was. And they did too.

"I should take a picture," I said. "And send it to Kat." I used their nickname for her to reinforce the value of their relationship with her.

Ashley lifted her head. She was wearing sunglasses, so I couldn't see her eyes, but I knew she was looking at me.

"She's seen us like this hundreds of times," she said.

The thought of all three girls "seeing" each other naked, which of course meant a lot more than merely "seeing" didn't help with trying to banish my erection.

"You know what I mean," I said.

The girl lay her head back down. This time, when she spoke, it looked like she was talking to the sky. Her voice even sounded like she was so bored she was talking to no one.

"What you mean is that you think Kat would be mad that we're trying to seduce you. But you're wrong about that."

"Am I?"

Emma sat up and took her sunglasses off. She turned on the chaise and faced me, knees primly together, which only made the eroticism of her nakedness even greater.

"Ashley is trying to be all grown up about this," she said. "What happened was that when Kat left, she said we could play with you. She used that exact word and made us say it back to her. She said we could play with you, but that was all."

"What does that mean?" I asked, genuinely curious. Then my mind jiggled and I remembered Caitlin's talk of wanting to marry me, and of me being the father of her children, and how if that didn't work out for some reason, the only women she could stand me being with were her two best friends. She had said I could play with them, and had emphasized the word "play" with me too. I had more or less dismissed it at the time, thinking she was joking. Then I remembered the huddle at the airport.

"This conversation happened at the airport, right? I'm going to go out on a limb, here. She said you weren't allowed to fall in love with me, right?" I asked.

"How'd you know that?" asked Emma, her eyes wide. "You were too far away to hear us."

"She sort of had the same conversation with me," I said. "She gave me permission to 'play' with you too, as long as I didn't fall in love with either of you."

"Well there you go," said Ashley, still talking to the sky.

I noticed her nipples, which had been flat as a board when I first walked out, were now well defined.

"So you want to play," I said.

Finally Ashley sat up, too. She turned to face me, like her friend had. Her knees were not nearly as close to each other as Emma's were.

"We talked about it," she said. "Em and me, I mean. It's like this. Guys our age can be a pain sometimes. They like to brag to each other about what they did with a girl they took out. It's bad enough when they just tell lies, but if you really do something with them, it's even worse. Plus all the cute guys are taken."

"How sad for you," I said, smiling.

She ignored my gentle barb. "Plus, there's the whole thing about getting the guy to use a condom. The point is that neither of us have a boyfriend, and even if we did, it's stupid to let them go too far, and you're safe. We girls have needs, you know."

I almost laughed, but controlled it.

"I thought you shared Lester and..." I couldn't remember what Ashley called hers. "Whatever you call Ashley's," I said lamely.

Emma looked shocked. "She told you about that?" Ashley's head came up again, but she didn't say anything.

"It was part of her argument about how I wouldn't hurt her if I put it in her," I said. I was a little amazed at how intimate this conversation was. I still thought of them as the girls next door. I'd fantasized about seeing them like this plenty of times. Now that fantasy had come true. And they'd both sucked my cock. Even so, it seemed awfully intimate somehow. It was a weird world for me at that moment in time.

"She was right," said Ashley. "She said it didn't hurt for even a second when you did it."

"She told you about that?" I asked, a little weakly. I thought I had some idea of how Emma felt.

"Of course she did. We're best friends. She told us everything," said Ashley.

"So where does that leave us?" I asked.

"It leaves us naked, and you with your clothes on," said Ashley.

"And you two came over to ... um ... play?"

Ashley spoke again. "Emma is curious about what doing it with a real man is like."

Emma looked away, for some reason. I thought that was funny in a bizarre kind of way too. Here she was, sitting in front of me stark naked, and yet she could still be modest. I didn't think she was being coy. Ashley might behave that way, but I thought "coy" was a bit beyond Emma's talents at this stage. Emma was just a sweet girl who was curious in the same way millions of other girls had been curious. She had a lot more experience with other girls than she did males, but she had also decided she wasn't a lesbian, so her curiosity about men was still sharp. That didn't mean she was ready to dive right in, though. Assuming I was reading her right. In any case, I didn't want to apply any pressure. Instead, I teased Ashley.

"But you're not," I said. "Having all this experience with men and all," I said.

"I didn't say that at all," she said, embarrassed not in the slightest. "You and I both know what would happen if anybody found out what Kevin and I do. But if somebody found out you were fucking me, it wouldn't be the end of the world."

"Except for the prison part, of course," I said, acidly.

"We checked. The age of consent in Oklahoma is sixteen. They can't arrest you for having sex with either of us."

"That doesn't mean your parents would approve," I said.

"Parents never approve of anybody having sex," said Ashley. "It's like some rule that all parents learn about as soon as they have a baby. It's stupid, because if their kids never have sex, then the human race will die out."

"It's not quite as simple as that," I said. "Your parents want you to choose a good mate, someone you will stay with for the rest of your life. You can have sex with that mate as often as you like. That's the rule."

"And that is what led to all those arranged marriages they used to force on kids," argued Ashley. "If parents were smart, they'd encourage their kids to have lots of sex before they get married. Then there wouldn't be so many hormones involved in choosing that mate you're talking about."

"What an interesting argument," I said.

"It's true!" said Ashley, apparently thinking I was being sarcastic. "Right now, if a cute guy pays attention to you, all you can think about is what it might be like being naked with him and ... stuff." Her nipples were rock hard now. "But if we weren't horny all the time, we'd be able to use our brains to choose the best guy for us."

I still thought she was trying to simplify a very complex matter, but it was amazing that a girl as young as her could glimpse how possible it is for passion to cause people make bad decisions.

Speaking of passion and bad decisions ... my cock was iron hard at that moment.

"There would have to be some rules," I said.

"You have to wear a condom and we can't fall in love with you," said Ashley, promptly.

"I'm not allowed to fall in love with either of you, as well," I added.

"Like that could ever happen," said Emma, finally breaking her silence.

I thought that was interesting.

"I need to tell you something," I said.

"Adults always want to talk about things," sighed Ashley.

"I need to tell you something about me," I said.

"Go ahead," said Ashley, with exaggerated patience.

"I don't just fuck around."

Neither of them said anything. I think they were confused.

"What I mean is that I don't go pick up women at bars, just so I can get a woman in bed. If I take a woman to bed, I have to feel something for her."

"That's called being horny," suggested Ashley.

"No, it's not," I said, exaggerating my own patience with my voice. "I have to really like a woman before I'll go to bed with her."

"You don't like us?" Emma's voice sounded tragic.

"Of course I like you," I said. "That's the problem. Let me ask you a question. What happens if you really like a guy and he asks you out on a date?"

"That's a good thing," said Ashley.

"And say things go really well, and you fuck like bunnies. What happens then?"

"You get satisfied?"

"How do you feel about Kevin, Ashley?"

Her response was both unconscious and instant.

"I love him."

"Exactly," I said, triumphantly.

"I don't get it," said Emma.

"Like leads to love," I said. "It's the most normal thing in the world. If you really like someone and then get intimate with them, it leads to falling in love. And we're not allowed to fall in love. I already like both of you. Caitlin said that you both have crushes on me. Whether that's true or not, if we mess around, it is entirely possible that things might not turn out to be all that happy."

"We won't fall in love with you," snorted Ashley. "You're old!"

"And what if I fall in love with one of you?" I asked, ignoring her unintentional sexual gaffe.

"You can't," said Ashley. "You're in love with Kat."

"You think it's impossible to love more than one person at a time?" I asked. "Don't buy into that one true love stuff. You can fall in love with dozens of people in your lifetime. Just because society doesn't approve of it doesn't mean it can't happen."

Ashley went into exaggerated patience mode again.

"Look, Mr. Simmons, you're a nice guy and all that. You're probably the coolest adult we know. But we're not going to fall in love with you. I don't even want to fall in love right now. There are too many things I want to do before some guy ties me down, and I think Em feels the same way. We just want a man we can come to when we get the itch. And it will help you too because Kat isn't here and if you have us, you won't get horny and be tempted to do something stupid with some other woman."

"There's still the problem of my feelings for you getting too involved," I said. "You know why I'm not married? I'm not married because every time I get intimate with a woman, I fall in love with her and want to marry her. And with me, it happens pretty quickly. In fact, it always seemed to happen long before any of those women were interested in making things permanent, which is why they all dumped me."