Chapter 30: Scarlet

Dave tossed a manilla folder across the table to Andrew. The folder contained the information on a potential participant in the project. This applicant was a very different prospect from any of the previous ones. Curious about Andrew's reaction, he sat back in his chair to watch his boss.

Andrew opened the folder. He took one look at the picture inside, closed the folder, and looked back up at Dave.

"Are you kidding?"

"No," Dave answered. "She applied. I treated her like all of the others."

"I don't believe it," Andrew said.

"Well, she is what she is," Dave said. "You wanted variety."

"This is different," Andrew said while trying to make up his mind about the candidate.

"Think about it," Dave said.

Andrew opened the folder and looked at the pictures of the woman again. She had a reasonably nice body. She actually didn't look all that bad.

"What name does she want to use?"

"Scarlet."

"That's horrible," Andrew said with a groan.

"I know, but she picked it out."

"What's her story?"

"She was in a car accident that killed her husband and two kids. She hasn't had a job in fourteen years and the money is gone. She's on the verge of bankruptcy," Dave said.

Andrew studied her pictures. She appeared to be in her mid to late thirties with a shapely figure that was lush, but not fat. Her breasts didn't exactly hang down to her navel, but it was obvious that they weren't young and perky. Her aureoles were small topped with small nipples.

Her light brown hair, almost light enough to be blond, was shoulder length. It was parted in the middle and framed her face nicely.

She once had what would be a pretty face, but the two ragged red scars had done a number on her appearance. One scar cut across her forehead ending at her eyebrow. The other scar ran from her temple on down to her jawline. He looked closer and noticed a smaller scar at the corner of her mouth.

"She looks like a soccer mom except for her scars."

"That's about right," Dave said.

He was going to mention that she had shown up wearing a soccer mom tee shirt, but kept silent on the subject. The fact was that she was the middle class girl next door all grown up into a middle aged woman.

"Why would she do this?" Andrew asked.

Dave answered, "She's desperate. She's still waiting for a settlement on the accident. Her husband was under insured. Even with insurance, she's racked up a significant medical bill. She's underwater on her mortgage, so she can't raise money by selling her house.

"She's tried to get a job doing anything. Basically, she has no skills. She even applied at an escort agency and was turned down."

Andrew looked down at the survey of sex acts that she was willing to perform expecting her to have only marked a few items. He was surprised to see that she was willing to try anything. She had even added a few items at the bottom of the page.

"Light bondage, discipline, spanking, and piercing?" Andrew said reading the added acts.

"I'd say she's really desperate," Dave said.

"I'm not into that kind of stuff," Andrew said.

It was true that he and Amber had occasionally engaged in a little forceful sex with the cheerleader episodes, but that had been kind of exceptional. His experience doing those little scenes had shown him that he wasn't into humiliation. To him, the pretend bondage scenes in porn videos looked stupid. The more realistic ones actually sickened him.

Curious, Andrew asked, "You don't have a problem with this?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"She's really desperate."

Sue Ellen had been sitting off to the side without saying a word.

Andrew asked, "What do you think, Sue Ellen?"

"I kind of had the same reaction as you did," Sue Ellen answered.

"And?"

"I'd say go for it if you're willing to do a little bondage with her, otherwise, forget it."

"Why? Is she really into bondage?"

Sue Ellen gave a little laugh. "No. She needs the bondage to do everything else on the list."

"What?"

"I've got the feeling that she was raised to be a good girl. She's been playing the moral mommy role for a long time. I think she sees the bondage as a way of avoiding responsibility for doing the bad girl acts of lesbian sex, anal sex, and role playing," Sue Ellen answered.

"That's weird," Andrew said not understanding it at all.

Sue Ellen said, "It makes sense in a strange sort of way."

"What about Raven? Do you think she'd go along with that?" Andrew asked thinking about how those kinds of scenes would freak her out.

Sue Ellen said, "She's in the room across the hallway. Why don't you call her over and ask her?"

"I don't know if even discussing this with her is a good idea. She's got a real fear of forced sex," Andrew said with a worried expression on his face.

"I'll talk to her," Sue Ellen said confidently.

"Okay," Andrew said.

Dave said, "Now you'll have Cat and Scarlet."

"And Raven."

"Raven joined in?" Dave asked with eyebrows moving upwards in surprise.

"Yes," Andrew answered.

"I thought she was leaving the project now that you've hired her across the hall," Dave said.

"We never really had a chance to discuss that," Andrew said.

Sue Ellen frowned upon hearing that. She asked, "How was she?"

"I'd rather not answer that," Andrew said while shifting around uncomfortably in his chair.

"It was that bad?"

"It's kind of personal."

Sue Ellen stared at him. She knew for a fact that he didn't go a day without getting laid and on each Friday, she even knew who he had sex with on each day. She knew how many days he had sex with two or more women. She might not have known the details about what they did, but she knew there was a lot of sex going on at the house. Discussions about how a woman was working out after the first few 'performances' was actually the norm and not the exception.

She decided that she was going to have a nice long conversation with Raven over lunch. There was a story here and, she, in her normal nosy fashion, wanted to know it.

Surprising Dave, Sue Ellen said, "That's okay. We don't want to intrude in personal matters."

Sue Ellen and Raven sat down in a booth at a local sandwich and soup shop. It was a national chain where one went to a central counter, ordered, picked up the order, and then seated oneself. It was a higher class place than a chain deli. The sandwiches were a bit more sophisticated than submarine sandwiches. One of the nice things about this particular chain was that the sandwiches were served on real plates, the soups in real bowls, and there was metal silverware rather than the plastic junk.

Sue Ellen, while examining her sandwich, said, "So how are things at the house?"

"They're good," Raven answered before taking a bite out of her sandwich.

She had never been to this particular place before and was rather intimidated by the food. These weren't typical sandwiches, but gourmet sandwiches. She wasn't used to ordering food like that and had been lost when making a sandwich selection.

"I'm glad to hear that."

Raven frowned and then said, "Now that I have a job, I'm worried about who is going to take care of the house. Cat isn't exactly a help there."

"I wouldn't worry about that," Sue Ellen said. "Those kinds of things tend to take care of themselves."

"No they don't," Raven said. "The dishes won't wash themselves."

Sue Ellen said, "I didn't mean it that way. You and everyone else will adapt your behaviors so that it will get taken care of. I mean, Andrew might start helping out with the dishes."

Raven almost laughed at that. She couldn't imagine him in the kitchen washing dishes.

"So now that you've got the job, I imagine that you're going to drop out of the project," Sue Ellen said beginning her careful probing of what was happening in the project.

Raven replied, "I've actually joined the project in a more active manner."

"Really? I'm surprised to hear that," Sue Ellen said not surprised at all since she already had heard that from Andrew.

"It took a little time for me to work up the nerve to ask him to make love to me, but I'm really glad I did. It was wonderful," Raven said.

Sue Ellen picked up on one thing right away. Raven was talking about making love. No one else in the project had ever used those words for what they were doing. Her curiosity was aroused.

She echoed, "You asked him to make love to you?"

"Yes. He was so gentle and nice," Raven answered with a private little smile.

"Let me get this right. You asked him to make love to you," Sue Ellen said.

"Yes."

"So you got down on the floor and did it in that sex room."

"No. We went into his bedroom. It was really quite nice waking up in his arms in the morning," Raven said.

"Interesting," Sue Ellen said.

She couldn't recall any of the women talking about spending the night with Andrew with the exception of Gift and that had been a special occasion with a one day and night participation in the project. While Even and Bambi had been much more closed mouthed about details of what went on in the house, Amber and Cat were much more open. She pretty much knew what kinds of activities were occurring in the house. She was pretty sure that none of the women spent the night in his room.

Raven was so enthralled with her experiences with Andrew, that she really wanted to talk about it. She leaned over and, in a low voice that wouldn't carry far, she said, "I've never been so satisfied. I couldn't image that it could be so good."

"Really?" Sue Ellen said.

It was her opinion that the sex in that house had a pretty empty meaningless feel to it. It was more or less Andrew masturbating, but using women instead of sex toys. Cat had complained that the sex recently had grown stale and uninteresting, particularly when she was the only one taking care of his needs.

Raven gave a smile as if she was hiding some secret and said, "I can't wait to get home tonight."

"Well, this is quite a change," Sue Ellen said.

"I know. I'm wondering what it will be like having sex with Cat," Raven said. She frowned as old fears once again rose and then added, "I guess we'll know tonight."

Sue Ellen said, "We might have found another woman for the project."

"That's good," Raven said.

"She wants to try a little bondage," Sue Ellen said.

"You mean, leather and restraints?"

"Yes," Sue Ellen said.

"Who would be restrained?"

"She would."

"You say that she wants that?" Raven asked with a slight frown.

Having expected a more forceful and negative response, Sue Ellen asked, "Yes. Is that a problem?"

Frowning, Raven said, "I don't think that Andrew is into that."

"He isn't all that happy about the prospect," Sue Ellen said.

"Neither am I."

Friday night, Andrew spent the night at a hotel. This was normal for when a new woman was entering the project. It was felt that it gave the woman a chance to settle into the house, meet the other women, and represented a 'last' chance to withdraw from the project. The real last chance was right when he arrived home.

Raven, still dressed in her office clothes, answered the door when Scarlet and Dave arrived. The two women stood there staring at each other for a moment. Raven couldn't believe the damage done to the other woman's face. She had known the woman had scars from a car accident, but she was still surprised by the degree of scaring.

Scarlet was equally surprised. She couldn't believe how attractive and normal Raven looked. She had expected the other women in the project to be alcoholics, drug addicts, trailer park types or just plain old sluts. She didn't expect to find one of the women dressed like a secretary or office worker.

Dave cleared his throat and then said, "Are you going to let us in?"

"Oh, sorry," Raven said while stepping out of the way.

Scarlet entered the house carrying a box. Raven glanced in the box and noticed that it contained a number of family photographs. The topmost picture was a family portrait. It had been a real attractive family. The husband was a good looking man. The boy, dressed in a football uniform, had a kind of awkward ruggedness that a lot of very active teenagers possessed. The girl, dressed in a soccer uniform, looked like a younger version of her mother. Having had just a summary of what had happened to the family, looking at the picture made Raven feel sad.