Chapter 96: Holidays. Teenager. Fixing Things In Vegas. Serious Trouble

Mark

We spent most of the two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s at The Meadows where the house was outfitted for a beautiful holiday season. We had three large trees, and each had come from a copse of evergreens off the end of our runway that would have needed to come down eventually to maintain approach clearances. We’d had a tree in the dining room, living room, and family room.

Philip Emerson was old enough to know that something special was happening, but not quite what. Jenny and Patricia tried to focus on the blaze of lights, and were obviously bedazzled. We all noted that in a couple more years we’d have a much more interactive squad of children racing around talking about Santa Claus.

Elsa had arranged that we’d do a Secret Santa instead of trying to get a gift for everyone. The exception was the children who were besieged with toys and useful baby gifts, as if they didn’t already have everything under the sun. She set a limit of a hundred dollars for the gift, and everyone drew names from a hat. The challenge was to buy something nice and useful for your recipient and remain a secret until Christmas morning.

I drew Tori, Kate’s teenage daughter. Kate had been around with us so much that she was considered part of the family, and by extension so was her seventeen year old. I couldn’t think of anything within the price range for a teen without copping out and buying a gift card, and Elsa had told us not to do that. Consequently, I decided to entirely forget about the spending limit we were all supposed to adhere to. I bought Tori the large screen ‘S’ model of the latest iPhone. Tears came to her eyes when she opened the gift. She’d be able to get rid of her much older flip phone that looked like it had gone through several major wars. I actually got a hug and kiss from Tori, and Kate about fell all over me in gratitude. This apparently had been something Tori had been wanting for years, but it wasn’t in their modest budget. I got a few faux dirty looks from my other family members for violating the spend limit, but Elsa kissed me and told me she knew I’d go over the top by a large margin, in this case about seven hundred dollars. I didn’t mention that I’d prepaid all the monthly costs for the next five years as well.

After we’d sat around and opened presents I gathered everybody in a circle in the living room and we had a little induction ceremony. Elsa helped. All the current family members were socialized to the decisions, and loved the outcomes. We had our Love and Commitment Rings for five people: Kate, Tori, June, Julie, and Tom.

Tom and Julie kind of expected the rings and were pleased with the honor and membership. We all hugged them, and told them we relished their being part of our craziness for all the years to come.

June sobbed wildly as Elsa and I put the ring on her finger. KC came and helped too, hugging her younger sib and assuring her sister that this was the rite of passage she’d wanted for years, and now she had her own intentional family – a rather large one at that. June had been an exemplar family member since her decision to hang out with us to prove her mettle. Although only a short time had passed, everyone wanted her with us, including KC.

Two weeks before Christmas day, June had relented and made love with James, whom she seemed to have particularly strong feelings for. After that, she slowly phased into the sexual mores of the family and made love with a few of the others, but she was very circumspect. She expressed worry that she’d become wild again, and I pointed out that we all had tendencies in that direction, so she shouldn’t fret. She’d had many long talks with her sister and Elsa about the family and the heavy responsibility that being a member implied. As with the others, everyone wanted her included.

Kate was a shoe-in from when we met a few years earlier. We loved her in every way, and she’d also gradually opened up to us sexually. As an exotic dancer, we had guessed her predilection for sexual things. We were right. She helped jack up our arousal factor significantly by doing sex dances and talking dirty to us. She could captivate a whole room in only a few seconds. She could also do things with her body or to her partner that almost defied description, and also made her one of the favorite people we loved to watch making love.

Ryan liked her dances so much he asked permission to install a dance pole in a corner of the living room at The Meadows similar to the one Kate used on stage at the Club Infinity. Kate not only danced for us, but also gave lessons.

Tori looked shocked when we asked her to come up to receive her ring. She kept asking her mother questions that got brushed off, and I finally had to go and take her hand and lead her to the front of the room to go through her ceremony. Tori cried and tried to insist that she wasn’t worthy of the honor.

We’d talked to Kate about Tori’s ring and significance, and agreed on a family position. When Elsa and I had Tori next to us to get the ring, she was so nervous and still crying, both from worry about the sexual implications and from joy at being included in the sprawling intimacy and love of so many people. Everyone applauded, in part at their willingness to change to accommodate Tori and her unique situation as she transitioned into adulthood.

Elsa spelled it out for her, “Tori, this ring is symbolic of our love for you. We each pledge to help you grow and become a fine young woman who has a view of her future and the assets to make that future happen. We give you this ring not to imply control or constraint, but to demonstrate that we accept you as you are and as you want to be. It may appear that you are gaining about twenty new parents, so we admit that that’s the case and we love you.” She laughed and hugged Tori.

I held Tori’s shaking hand and slid the ring onto her ring finger.

Tori gave me a huge hug and asked, “Can I have sex with everyone now?” She gave a sheepish grin, but her voice had been full of eagerness.

Elsa and I laughed, and so did many of the others. We all shook our heads. I spoke, “Yes, kind of, if you wish, but you have to wait three months, and eleven days until your eighteenth birthday otherwise your lover could end up in jail with a lifetime label as a sexual predator.”

Tori finally grinned at the room full of people, “I can hardly wait.” She gave me a sideways glance implying that I was high on her list.

I must have blushed because there were gales of laughter, obviously at my expense.

Kate rolled her eyes. The rule had been hers as well as state law. She knew that Tori had lost her virginity a couple of years earlier, and that she occasionally enjoyed sex with one of her school boyfriends. She’d spoken of the difficulty being in the adult trade and trying to raise a daughter so she didn’t turn out to be the school slut. Together we wondered whether the significance of our ceremony and the ring would have a positive impact on Tori’s life and habits, or the opposite. Tori was halfway through her senior year in high school, and completing the metamorphous from a young teen into a beautiful woman just like her mother.

Tom and Julie each received their rings, but there had been an expectation all around that that would happen, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to them. We were all happy to make it official.

During the last week of the year, Tom closed on his ownership of the twenty-eighth floor and took possession. Alice and a team of painters immediately rolled through the entire unit. A small army of seamstresses had already prepared new curtains that promptly got installed along with some modern shades, and a phalanx of movers brought furniture into the unit both from storage of Tom’s condo contents from his west coast condo and from various unique stores around the city where Alice seemed to have an ‘in.’

KC presented Tom with two large art pieces from her gallery that she’d painted and that he’d raved about. They promptly were put into his living room in prominent places, a point that brought KC to tears at his consideration and admiration for her work. He really was a great man and so sensitive about others, although I knew he really did treasure KC’s paintings.

The feature of his moving into a new home in our condo building that was most talked about turned out not to be the decorating, but his new live-in lover.

Julie moved in with Tom on New Year’s Day.

They were in love, and they were disgustingly cute together. They fawned over each other, and were in the stage where they touched each other all the time and sent each other little texts and pictures all day long when they were apart. Julie had loosened up so much that some of the pictures were one hundred percent pure pornography. I know, because I helped her take some of them and they sometimes featured a bit of me as they penetrated a bit of her. Tom took it all in good measure and wasn’t jealous as much as hornier than the devil when she sent him one each day for a couple of weeks. Occasionally, I’d get a mock lecture from him, but it was done in fun and good spirited. He threatened to fuck the rest of my wives, but that was a hallow threat because he usually did anyway.

In the opinion of the other family members, we also were ecstatic that both Tom and Julie continued to engage sexually with the other family members. There were twenty ‘in’ the family at that point in time. The men were Tom, Ryan, Mike, Deke, James, Carter, and me. The women were Elsa, Cindy, Melanie, Sheila, Izzy, KC, June, Alice, Marcia, Stacy, Julie, Kate, and Tori. I’d stopped counting Brita since she was seldom with us. I was again worried about sexual balance in the family, and that mainly from the viewpoint of pleasing the women who almost outnumbered the men two to one.

Our behavior modified significantly when our newer members moved into the city condominium. Kate and Tori took the three-room suite that Julie had been using. Tori was adult and savvy enough to realize that her mother wanted to often sleep with Mark or one of her other ‘husbands.’ She knew she was nearby and didn’t pull a hissy fit as I thought some teenagers might be prone to do. On the other hand, I thought I could see the wheels in her sweet head turning about what her life would be like in April when she became eligible to also enjoy sexual playtime with the others. Kate made no bones about enjoying her sex and orgasms, and Tori had made it known that she intended to find equal pleasure with us.

Tori made it clear to many of us that after nine in the evening, she would not be coming upstairs to the main living room and bedroom area the rest of the night. She knew that we got into what she humorously called ‘mischief’ after that bewitching hour, so we could continue to play our intimate games.

June moved into the condo as well, and was another in our midst who could walk to her job as an accounting assistant in a large construction company. She’d also become a volunteer Big Sister to a couple inner-city kids through a local program. Her giving nature appealed to all of us and helped reassure us that we’d made a great choice.

On the mornings when the weather was declared reasonable, there was a group of us that went for a five-mile morning run. The rule was to be in the living room of the condo or The Meadows at seven a.m. and the group left from there. Some days there’d be fifteen of us, plus several of the security team trotting away from the condo and around some of the city streets aiming for the park or the trails along the river.

The whole security situation triggered a discussion one night that surprised me. Mike started it by commenting that he didn’t need the security detail that followed him around. One by one almost all the others made the same comment. I argued that it was for their protection as loved ones of the family.

KC said, “Unless there is some reason to think that we’re under threat – the way we were with Myron Tanner, I’d just as soon travel about unencumbered with a tail. Sometimes I like to drive my own car, shop alone, prowl the art section of the library, and so on, without feeling like someone’s looking over my shoulder.”

Before I could counter, Alice made a point, “I go to meet with clients and there’s this other person waiting for me. It’s disconcerting. They wonder about who this other person is, and they know they’re being scrutinized by them.”

Tori commented, “You should try being at school with one of them. My friends get that I have a bodyguard, but it’s stupid. I’m well-liked, and always in a gang of other kids and classmates ... and then there’s this person – an adult – wearing a jacket that we all know covers up a gun – and she’s following me around twenty feet behind me. At least she doesn’t come into the classroom. She loiters outside; ughhh! I don’t like it. I wish I could opt out too.”