26: Graduation

"I'd like to say I did a lot of thinking last night. That would be a lie, though. I beat off and went to sleep. I didn't wake up until a few minutes ago." I'd rolled out of bed wide awake and alert at exactly four-thirty. I started talking to Rhonda as soon as I got my teeth brushed and headed for the kitchen. I wanted to do something special for my girls and decided on raspberry almond scones. It was still too early in the season for local berries, but I'd seen raspberries at Kroger's when I was hanging out between classes yesterday and grabbed some. Talk about something that is hard to handle in a classroom!

"I don't want to do that too often, but it was such a good reminder of what I have and treasure in my life. I'm sure you were all relieved that I wasn't poking at you all night. But I really missed you. Sounds so silly. It's been like seven hours. I'm gone to class longer than that. I mean, the last four weeks have been pretty damned intense. Josh, Cassie, and Elaine here for their spring break. Our spring break and trying to get Dor pregnant. Well, I guess getting Dor pregnant. There is no try. And having my sister here. Then Donna and Nicki here for their spring break and Mary arriving. She is really something else. I was sort of dreading taking her as a lover, but more and more now, I find I'm looking forward to it."

I patted the dough out in three huge circles and buttered the top before I sprinkled almonds and powdered sugar over everything. I cut each circle into eight pieces and slid them all into the oven.

"Can you believe how I'm talking? That I'm looking forward to taking another lover when I just ran away from seven perfectly wonderful women last night? Except, I don't consider her a new lover. Aside from putting my penis in her vagina, we've been lovers for nearly a year. I made love to her a week ago. I put so much emphasis on that act of penetration that I make myself sick. Like, I would never consider Cassie as anything but my lover, even though I haven't penetrated her with my penis. And, even though she's committed to Josh. I wonder how many of the women in our casa Josh considers to be his lovers. Cassie, Mary, Jennifer, Liz, Rose? How about Samantha? What was Nicki doing with him during their break? Yet, he's only had his penis in Cassie's vagina. Does he think about it differently than I do?" I laughed at myself.

"You know, this is what I was planning to talk to myself about while I was alone in my room last night. Instead, I whacked off and went to sleep."

"I bet you were looking at pictures of Heaven," Rhonda said behind me. I about jumped out of my skin.

"Rhonda! I didn't realize you were there. I was just..."

"You were talking to me. I felt you tickling my head and just wandered down. It was like listening to true confessions," she giggled.

"Are you okay, honey?" I asked. She paused and tilted her head as though she was inventorying her body and her emotions. Maybe she was. Finally, she smiled and came to hug me.

"Yeah. I am. At first, I was a little sad last night because I thought it was my fault that you needed space, because I was so needy. I didn't even say anything and Rose marched up to me and pretty much dragged me to bed. 'Don't you try to take all the credit for Brian's condition, ' she said. 'Every girl in this room would fight you over it.' Then she shoved her nipple in my mouth. Um ... she might need you to kiss it and make it better today," Rhonda laughed. "I might have been a little hard on it. I don't know what it is about Rose," she sighed. "I play with Sam's nipples when we make love. But it's different with Rose." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "I really like sucking on her titties." Well, the thought of sucking on Rose kind of got my engine running, too.

"Rose wouldn't offer them to you if she didn't want you to suck on her," I said. "I think she kind of likes it, too."

"Kind of," Rose said as she came up to hug the two of us in the kitchen. "Kiss them and make them better, Brian? Our hearthmate was really enthusiastic last night." I kissed the offered nipples tenderly and Rose hugged us to her. "I love you both," she said. "I love each of you."

Saturday afternoon, we all got dressed up and drove to Indy to see Elaine's play. When I say 'all', I mean pretty much everybody associated with the clan in any way who lived in or near Bloomington. Twenty-six of us bought our tickets at the door and filed into the theater. We were half the audience. I couldn't believe it was closing night of the show and I think everyone in the audience was related to someone in the cast. There were only twelve people in the cast.

It was beautifully and simply staged. We found Elaine after the show and she invited the whole crew to 'help' strike the show. It only took about half an hour.

"How come there were no more people here?" I asked. "It was really a beautiful show. So simple."

"Oh, Brian. If I weren't involved with the show, would you even have walked across campus to see an English translation of a French interpretation of a Greek tragedy?" Elaine asked.

"Well ... When you put it that way..."

"Right. Will you still be my designated driver tonight after the party?"

"Of course I will, honey. You want to go to the party?" I asked.

"Yeah, but it's such a small cast and crew that if I want to have sex in a dark corner, after I get drunk and high, I need to bring my own partner with me," she said.

"If you are going to get drunk and high, you need to give me explicit permission to have sex with you now. I mean, give me the permission now to have sex with you then. I don't want you accusing me of taking advantage of you when you are not in your right senses," I said. I was only half joking. What those guys tried to do to Cathy at our Valentine's Day party still got me angry.

We kissed all our cousins and hearthmates goodbye and I promised that if it got too late, I'd rent a motel room. In fact, we decided to just stop and get a room before we went to the party.

"Brian," Elaine said when we pulled into the director's driveway, "I, Elaine Frost nee Candace Jones, give you my free and explicit permission to take complete control of my body and to take me sexually in any way you want tonight. This permission shall be deemed valid, even if I am inebriated and unable to talk coherently. It is deemed valid even if I object to some vile act you wish to submit me to at the time. It is even deemed valid if I am unconscious—which I'd prefer if you decide to ravish me anally. The only restriction I invoke is the casa rule of using a condom for any anal or vaginal penetration until I have returned to our casa to reside permanently. I give you this permission before the fact, having partaken of no alcoholic beverages or mind altering drugs. There. Does that work for you?"

I grinned at her.

"Elaine, you might want to make your first stop at the party be the bathroom so you can empty out as much poop as possible," I grinned at her lasciviously. She caught her breath and stiffened as if I'd just put my cock up her butt. Then she nodded and ran to the bathroom.

I had absolutely no intention of abusing her body in any way if she was drunk, or high, or both, no matter what permission she gave me before the fact. I just couldn't even imagine it. I watched her carefully all night, though. She's pretty small, so I estimated how much alcohol she'd have to drink to be considered drunk. I wasn't as sure how much weed she'd have to smoke. I saw her take a couple tokes as a joint was passed around. I didn't hover around her, but I kept an eye on her, even while I was talking to the director about our plans for the summer television camp. He wanted to come down to observe a few times as well as being a guest on Elaine's show.

I got distracted by the actress who played Antigone who had heard that I had a television show and wanted to know what she could do to get on it. It was apparent that she was willing to do about anything. That's when I looked over at Elaine and discovered her in a lip lock with the guy who played the Chorus. It bothered me, but I didn't do anything until I saw him lean her back and put his hand on her breast. I walked over and removed it.

"Hey! Fuck off!" the guy said. "I'm not doing anything she doesn't want."

"Yeah, fuck off, Brian," Elaine laughed. I almost stormed out of the house and left her. God damn it! I didn't sign up for this shit.

Or did I?

"Sorry, dude. You'll have to wait till she's sober if you want to make out with my cónyuge. She gave me her explicit permission to stop anything like this from happening," I said.

"I did?" she asked.

"You did. You gave me complete control of your body and your explicit permission to make you submit to any vile act I desired. My desire is to prevent you from having any sexual contact with anyone in this room but me," I said.

"That's not fair," she protested. "This isn't what I meant."

"I have your explicit permission to enforce this, even if you object at the time," I reiterated.

"What if I object," the actor said, struggling to his feet. He wasn't all that big. Not like he looked on stage. It was obvious, though, that he intended to try to intimidate me.

"Don't try me," I said. "You are drunk and slow. I'm not. I could hurt you without meaning to." He looked down at his hand and started clenching and unclenching his fist, sort of waving it at himself. It was like watching him check to see if he thought he had a fight in him.

"Awww, fuck," he said. He plopped down on the floor and reached for the joint that had just been lit.

"I suppose I have to go home now," Elaine groused.

"No, darling. You can stay as long as you'd like. Do you want another glass of wine? Another toke? The only thing you can't do is have sex with somebody else." She looked at me.

"Can I have sex with you?" she asked. I leaned in close to her and whispered.

"Let me get some vegetable oil from the kitchen so I can lube your asshole." She gasped and visibly clenched her cheeks together.

"Maybe one more glass of wine. And then we can go home." I brought her a glass of what seemed to be her favorite, though I didn't think any of them looked like particularly good wines. What did I know? "Thank you, cónyuge," she whispered. "Anything you want."

"No. Anything you want, my dear. Almost." I grinned.

At which time, there arose a rather heated argument over whether Anouilh had been faithful to the intent of Sophocles or if the play shouldn't have been called Antigone at all. An hour later, I pushed Elaine into the shower in our hotel room and scrubbed her from head to toe. I was surprised she hadn't thrown up, but when I went over it in my mind, unless she had managed drinks I didn't observe, she really hadn't had that much. When I came out of the bathroom, she was sprawled naked on her stomach. Carefully placed in the middle of her back was a condom package and a tube of lube.

"You should probably teach me a lesson about respecting my date and my cónyuge," she whispered.

Night turned into day as the truth dawned on me. She really did want this, but she knew she couldn't do it without being in an altered state. The party had simply been a means to goad me on. This was the moment she was waiting for.

I hauled her up on her knees, though her head stayed on the pillow. Her breathing increased with just this amount of foreplay, if you could call it that. I reached forward and dragged my nails lightly along her back from her shoulders down and across her freckled butt. A flush followed my fingers. I pulled her cheeks apart and bent to lick her butt hole. While I was engaged there, I slipped one hand forward between her legs all the way up to her breasts and played with her nipples while the inside of my elbow pressed against her pussy. It got pretty wet there as I slid forward and back. Elaine was moaning.

I was hard as a rock, with no danger of going down, so I managed to get the condom on while still licking her. When I rose up, she tensed up, thinking I was going to simply plunge into her butt. Instead, I rammed into her pussy. I'd discovered that in this position, the tender cervix was tilted in a position that I didn't pressure when I went deep into her. While I pushed in and out, as deeply as I could go, I reached around and started manipulating her clit with one hand while I squirted lube into her crack with the other and used my thumb to work it into her hole. The triple stimulation caused Elaine to rise quickly to a small orgasm and then keep climbing to a large one as I pressed my thumb into her butt. I could feel her clenching my cock with her pussy muscles, but I was determined to make this last. When the initial urge to come abated, I withdrew and positioned myself at her back door. She was still moaning from her orgasm when the head of my cock popped through.

"Ahhh! No-no-no-no! Too much!" I looked to be sure I wasn't tearing anything and pushed on in a little at a time. Her protests lessened. She sobbed. "Yes. Yes."

"Is this what you wanted, my redheaded angel?" I asked when I was deep inside her. "My girlfriend/sister. My wife. My cónyuge."

"Yes. Easy. If I get too excited it hurts."

"Does that mean you can't come while I'm here?" I asked, starting in on her clit again.

"Yes. Oh. No. Oh!" I started a series of long slow strokes into her bottom as I played with her clit and her nipples. She climbed the slopes of Mount Bliss and planted her flag at the top with a scream of victory. The scream had not quite subsided when I started pulsing into her, jetting between the spasms of her anus. Elaine went limp and her knees slid out from beneath her. She was sound asleep when I finally pulled out of her butt. I cleaned things up and went to sleep next to her, holding her close to me.

I woke up to a prolonged and exquisite blowjob.

Elaine and I did not hurry to get out of bed and back to the casa. She would have to return to UIndy the next morning anyway.

"Do you need aspirin or water?" I asked.

"Water. I took aspirin before bed last night and drank a quart of water. I'm not in bad shape. At least my head isn't."

"Oh? Do you hurt someplace else?" I asked.

"Um ... a little. I'm sorry I got drunk and goaded you. I was afraid you wouldn't do it," she said.

"Don't you think it would have been easier to just ask me?"

"I ... I didn't have the courage. I couldn't say, 'Fuck my butt.' I wanted you to go around the world and you did. But I couldn't say the words. So I gave you permission and then got just drunk and high enough to egg you on. Even then, I was afraid you wouldn't do it."

"So you put the condom and the lube on your butt and told me to teach you a lesson," I sighed. "You're damned lucky I finally got the message or you'd be lying here regretting last night and still not having gotten what you wanted. Or you'd have woken up next to a Greek chorus."

"Isn't it bizarre how, after all this time living with the rules, we still need to play games to get what we want? I understand you finally had to be explicit about what you wanted this week, too. I wouldn't have understood any better than any of the others."

I kissed Elaine and held her tight.

"I love you, Brian. Are we okay? Did I ruin things?"

"No, cónyuge. You didn't ruin things. We just learned another little bit about each other that makes my love even deeper."

"I don't ... I don't ever want to leave you," she said with a bit of wonder in her voice. "I can't go away. We have to make our shows successful this summer. I don't want to go away!"

Three weeks later, the whole clan was back at UIndy to celebrate Elaine's graduation. We stood outside the gymnasium and watched the double line of caps and gowns process from the auditorium across the promenade to the gym for the commencement exercise. Senator Lugar was the speaker for the commencement and spent too much time extoling the virtues of President Bush and the quick end to the Gulf War. 'You, too, could be a great man like President Bush, graduates.' I looked over and Rhonda was taking notes on what he said. I wondered what was going through her head.

If we thought getting 350 graduates through commencement at St. Joe Valley High took a long time, there were three times that many at UIndy. Almost half of them were from the School of Nursing. We caught up with Elaine after the ceremony for photos on the steps of the theater building. It was nice to see her parents, of course, but it was Cam and Patsy that kept us all laughing. Patsy had the gently rounded tummy of a pregnant woman. She told us all she was due on Labor Day, which launched Cam on a whole diatribe about how appropriate it was to go into labor on Labor Day and his son would be told that the day was named for his emergence into the world.

"I'm giving you the week to get through finals," Elaine said kissing our casa one after another. "Then I'm moving in full time." She glanced over at her family and whispered to me, "I'd move down today, but I really need to spend some time with the parentals. You understand, don't you, honey?"

"Of course I do, sweetheart. And you are right. It wouldn't be much fun to be there during finals week. The other casa already left and our hearthmates are getting anxious to get home and study," I said. "I can't wait for you to be with us full time."

"There are things I'm looking forward to," she grinned at me. "Better get your cónyuge home and study. I'll see you Sunday."

The week was stressful, but we supported each other. Rhonda and Liz pulled double duty in the kitchen to keep us in food and snacks. We'd added another huge recliner and I noticed that Rose was usually in it with girlfriends piled on top of her while they studied, just the way they snuggled into my chair with me. I was startled when Tuesday night, a very naked Dawn settled into my lap in the chair and opened her anatomy book. I was a little distracted by her anatomy as I reviewed chemistry notes.