Chapter 24: Delayed gratification. Halloween party

There had been a modest effort to put away the leftover pizza and side dishes, and square away the kitchen after the impromptu meal. The four girls – Lisa, Marcia, Ashley, and Christy – had tempered their nudity by putting on aprons for the meal. None of their feminine parts were frontally displayed, but there was a lot of skin, ass, cleavage, and occasionally a breast, pussy, or bare leg that kept Myron and I hard as rocks for the entire meal. I had a hundred questions for him about what his relationship with Lisa would be like, but I thought I was finding out bit by bit as I watched him ogle each of the women, paying particular attention to Lisa.

When Myron excused himself for a couple of moments, I whispered to Lisa, “What’s the drill the rest of the night? What do you want to do? What does Myron want to do?”

Lisa shrugged and said, “I want to make love to him and to you. I don’t know how he’d accept that and I don’t want to do anything to upset him, especially today.” She smiled broadly and again waved her new engagement ring under my nose.

Ashley said, “Well, you did kind of invite him to compare the two of us in a sexual way. We could probably use that as a stepping off place for the evening.” The way she spoke I could tell that Ash was curious about what Myron would be like as a sex partner – her mother’s boyfriend probably had some kind of special appeal to her.

I said, “You won’t know how interested he is unless you ask him.” I gestured towards the short hallway to the guest bathroom; “Why don’t you ask him? Test the waters with some hypothetical situations. We will all honor his and your decisions, and don’t feel pressured to do anything with us, especially today.”

Lisa nodded and headed towards where Myron would be in a few minutes as he returned from the bathroom.

Shortly, I heard some dialogue between the two of them in the hallway, but only a few syllables here and there, and not enough to really hear what they were saying. We politely kept up our own conversation in the kitchen so it didn’t seem like we were eavesdropping when they reappeared.

Five minutes passed, and then ten. I was watching one of the living room clocks, and their conversation continued. I wondered whether they were negotiating or just sharing ideas or making up potential situations or what. Maybe I’d find out some time.

They both came out looking neutral. Neutral was good, I thought. I got a smirk and a wink from Lisa when Myron couldn’t see her face, so I knew things had gone reasonably well from her point of view.

I looked at both of them but focused on Myron. I made a head gesture as though to say ‘What’s up?’

Myron said in a positive tone, “We’ve completed our first serious negotiation as an engaged couple. What we came up with is not an easy solution or a final solution, but maybe it’s something we can live with in the near term, and hopefully please everyone in the long run. I think I may have been a little overbearing, but I can be that way sometimes. Lisa pointed out that the techniques I used in my business might not always be the best ones in my home life. I’ve been told that before, including by two previous wives. I’m apparently still trying to learn that lesson.”

Myron had made no secret that he had been married twice before, with divorces ending both relationships. His last marriage had ended nearly a decade earlier, and he’d then announced he intended to remain single after that. Lisa really had set him on his ear.

Ash, Chris, Marcia, and I sat in the living room wondering what the rest of the evening would be like. All the women were still wearing their aprons. I wore shorts and one of my more sophisticated t-shirts with a Nike logo on it and the phrase ‘Just Do it.’ I liked the double entendre.

Myron explained further, “Lisa explained to me the details about the polyamorous family that you have and how she has, as she put it, kind of been a member. She still wants some family privileges. That gave me food for thought so we talked about that and what it would mean for us. She validated my assumption and to my surprise asked if that made me want to break off our very short engagement. I don’t and I told her so. I want to adapt to the situation at hand.

“I learned I was jealous in the process of our talking. I had a visceral response to the idea of her having sex with you, Jim. But then I started to apply some rational thought to the situation. I realized you are not a threat, you aren’t out to steal Lisa away from me – to the contrary, you’ve been pushing her to find someone nice and compatible and establish a new life. It was because of you that the two of us found each other to begin with and then earlier today when you made sure I knew what I needed to know to bring us back together. You want the best for the two of us, I know.

“Lisa earlier confessed her bisexuality to me too and we talked about that. I guess I’m enough of a pervert that the idea of my fiancée playing sexually with other women turned me on, and then I imagined some kind of orgy with the four of you and Lisa, and that was erotic and hot. The idea turned me on and makes me want to participate. I know from our talk that you have a couple of other people you have played with too.

I recalled that you once kicked her out of your bed, despite her total availability and no particular reason you couldn’t have blinked each other’s lights out. I believe that started her on a new course that turned her into the woman she is today – the woman I love.

“I then bounced around with societal expectations for an engaged couple and most couples – monogamy, exclusivity, and so on, as well as how visible I will be for a few months once our engagement becomes public tomorrow. If I put that at one extreme, and where you are at the other, I want to be in the middle somewhere, and I don’t know what that looks like. Lisa told me about Jeremy, David, Doug, and Deb, and that didn’t sound like any kind of threat either, but their presence and participation kind of made me wonder and think about how they view things. I’d like to meet them sometime.”

Lisa poked at him and whispered, “Get on with it. You’re wandering.”

Myron smiled at her. “Okay, the bottom line. What I want, for now, is some exclusive time with my new fiancée. I hope that’ll work for you. I don’t want a long engagement, so I could see we’ll be married before year-end. After that, I’d like a few more months for us to get used to each other and learn how we dance together, and then we’ll consider opening things up and maybe joining your ‘family’ if there are any vacancies available. I’ve promised that we will revisit this discussion, and maybe even sit with all of you about all of this sometime a few months after we get married. Other than that, we’re just a ‘normal’ engaged couple with a circle of family and friends, whatever that means.”

Lisa happily said, “I agree whole heartedly. I want to build a solid relationship with Myron before we branch out as a couple. He did agree that we could do a lot of sexual teasing like the pizza delivery, and even a lot of touching and kissing, but no intercourse or sapphic loving beyond that. A little nudity is acceptable, for instance like tonight, but we need to keep it light and fun; no big orgies – yet.” She giggled. Myron rolled his eyes up at the ceiling.

Ashley stood up and went to her mother and kissed her. She said, “I’m so happy for you, mom. And, I think I like how you’ve left the door open. I hope you both eventually decide to be with us in a sexual way as well as being our great friends.”

Ash moved over to Myron and kissed him. She said in a sexy southern drawl, “You’re going to become my step-daddy.”

Ash untied the apron and pulled it over her head and tossed it aside, leaving her standing naked in high heels and looking hotter than the surface of the sun. She took Myron’s hand and put it directly on one of her pert breasts.

Ash teased, even changing her voice to be kind of flirty but she kept up her slow and fake southern accent, “Of course, a step-daddy needs to develop a special relationship with his step-daughter, and I hope to facilitate that in every way possible before the rules get relaxed and we can really do some serious bonding.”

Ash took Myron’s hand, separated one finger from the others, and then brought it down to her smooth cooch, running the finger through her moist slit. Her sultry tone continued, “Now, daddy, why don’t you smell that finger and then sample what I taste like. There’s plenty more where that came from ... later.”

The rest of us were laughing at the look of total lust on Myron’s face. He obviously wanted to paw all over Ashley and enjoy sex with her. He did sniff and then taste his finger. Lisa was on the edge of riotous laughter at her daughter’s taunting antics. Myron had pretty much forgotten there was anybody else in the room.

Before I could blink, Christy was next to Myron, repeating almost the same lines and seduction technique, only in this situation she talked about how he’d be her ‘step-uncle,’ and how he’d be eligible for special favors once the new rules got relaxed. She too drew one of his fingers through her slit and then brought it up to his face to smell and taste. Myron was struggling for sanity. He’d also started panting.

Of course, Marcia couldn’t be left out. She repeated the whole scene, even sticking one of her gorgeous breasts in his face and begging him to suck a nipple into his mouth just so he had something to remember her by ‘until sometime next year ... or earlier.’

I just chuckled and enjoyed the teasing, glad that I wasn’t on the receiving end of it. I have little willpower. That suddenly changed.

Lisa came to me and removed her apron. She had me suck on one of her magnificent tits for about ten seconds, and promised that ‘just maybe’ sometime in the future, I’d get an opportunity to enjoy her body again. I resisted anything further, amazed at my own resolve.

Myron suddenly announced in an anxious tone, “OK, everyone. We’re saying goodnight and heading home, and that means my home in Lincoln. We’ll see you soon, I’m sure. Thank you for dinner and the ... entertainment. You have accomplished at least part of your goal.”

Lisa didn’t bother to dress. She gathered up her clothes, and strolled out the front door in her high heels and with a super sexy extra sway to her hips. She got into the passenger side of Myron’s Corvette, flashed us all her pussy, and apparently had no intention of putting any clothes on until they got to Myron’s abode, if then. As Myron got in the driver’s side of the car, Lisa looked out and gave us all a wink. Three naked women and I waved goodbye.

The summer jobs at Robotix were demanding but exceptionally important and at the leading edge of where artificial intelligence was moving. The small company had five more important papers published in learned journals in just the first half of the year. Chris and Ash were coauthors on two of them. The problem was that the material in the papers was out of date by the time they were published; the whole field was moving faster than real time.

The three of us got split apart for the summer. I ended up working with a team working with doctors at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. We were teaching one of the computers what the world’s leading oncologists knew about medicine, cancer, and cancer treatments. Our intelligent machine was also digesting the eight thousand articles published every month around the world dealing with treatments, diagnosis, and preventive steps. We were just getting our first trials using our algorithms in the real world, comparing the AI results to a board of doctors doing case reviews.

Ashley had been assigned to the team still doing algorithms for driverless cars. There were working with Google refining the work being done in Silicon Valley merging sensor data and applying various weights of importance to the processing. One issue needing resolution was the priorities that should be given in an inevitable accident: for instance, should survivability priority be given to the driver, to a pedestrian or bicyclist, or to the other driver.

Christy was working on a marketable product – a concierge bot for use in stores or residential buildings that could be asked questions and direct customers or visitors to the right location for whatever they were looking for. It was a simpler job, but did require machine learning of various languages and dialects as well as teaching the model the thousands of ways people make inquiries.

I gifted the girls a licensed driving instructor early in the summer. Fundamentally, the instructor, a nice older man named Richard Grey, gave Ash and Christy over twelve hours of instruction and then rode with them for another six, which he signed off on to certify to the state that they had all the requirements for the road test. I also went through an hour of instruction about how to properly supervise the teens when they were driving on their learner’s permits. I needed to give them each forty hours of supervised driving. We kept a little log. Most of the time we were driving around town on errands, to or from the university, or to or from Portsmouth to go to work at Robotix.

Ash’s birthday had been about ten days prior to Christy’s at the end of February. She had to be sixteen-and-a-half to get her junior driver’s license, and she went to the DMV the next day and passed with no problem. Christy put on a mock pout that she couldn’t as yet drive. With her new junior operator’s license in hand, I sat with Ash and also Christy on the next Saturday morning in late August. I asked, “Well, what kind of vehicle would you like to be driving? Can you two agree?”

They more or less knew the question would be coming and I had heard discussions between the two of them several times about various cars. They would pore over the Sunday newspaper looking at auto advertisements and specials.

Ash produced a thick red file folder from their room and opened it in front of me. In it were the printed pages from the newspaper, Consumer Reports, and also Car and Driver rating various cars. They’d also done a ‘value for money’ spreadsheet comparing their top choices. They had done a careful analysis and decided that their car of choice was a new all-wheel drive Subaru mini-SUV Forester. They had carefully selected the various optional packages on the car as well, rejecting the high-end upholstery and navigation packages because they were impractical in rainy and snowy New England and because apps on their iPhones could outperform any built-in nav package.

I’d been driving my Subaru for eight years and liked the car; only mine was suffering from old age and high mileage. I liked the brand they’d chosen and its service record.

We got in the car and drove to Winslow Subaru out on Route 1 in Peabody. We poured over various cars and carefully evaluated the colors and other options again. Ron Stihl, our salesman, gave us dedicated service in a low-key way, answering our questions and mentioning some of the other costs involved in purchasing.

Around noon, I announced that we were going to lunch but that we would return. We went to the local McDonalds and while eating worked the numbers on buying two cars while trading in an eight-year-old model in good running condition.

We were back at Subaru at one-thirty. I laid a handwritten offer we’d put together at McDonalds in front of our salesman. He blanched at the price and muttered something about ‘No way!’ I suggested he talk it over with the sales manager and he went off with our page in hand.

Ron came back with a counter offer. We took our offer page back, thanked him for his time, and stated that we thought our offer was fair, especially since two cars were involved. We also felt we had an advantage because we were near the end of the month. I had long ago learned that sales bonuses were often paid on turnover and revenue for a month. August wasn’t known as a high volume sales month.

As we got into my car, the sales manager came running out of the showroom. He came up to the car window and asked whether we couldn’t work something out? I thrust our page of numbers back in front of him. He grimaced and said, “Come on in. We’ll do it your way.”

Two hours later I was the owner of two new Subaru Forester mini-SUVs, and significantly poorer. The way the girls’ eyes had lit up light like a starry night was worth every penny. Ash drove one of the cars home and I drove the other. Chris had to ride with me because of the passenger restriction on Ash’s junior operator’s license. I wanted to do something about that.

Monday, I called Gabe Slocum, the attorney who had handled some of my real estate, estate planning, and business situations. I explained what I needed, and he went to work. I got a reply from him on Wednesday. Fundamentally, he would need a letter from me as their guardian dated the day Christy passed her test and approving her or Ashley as car pool passengers when the girls were traveling to work or school. After he filed it with the DMV, this would let the teens ride together. He had a friend at DMV who would issue a permission letter to that effect to each teen.

In early September, I took Christy to take her road test in the girls’ new Subaru. Of course, she passed with flying colors just as Ash had.

To celebrate the significant rite of passage of having driver’s licenses I hosted a small party in mid-September. The attendees included the four of us, the Czernys, Lisa and Myron, Deb and Doug, and David and Jeremy. The weather was still nice, so we did a cookout, swam in the pool despite the cool evening temperatures, and then dispersed. The guests all fawned over the girls’ new mini-SUV. Lenz Czerny told me he thought I’d gone over the top to be nice to his daughter. I told him that I loved his daughter and that no price was too large to make her happy. He rolled his eyes at my smaltzy comment.

The girls had flirted with Myron, but nowhere near as outrageously as they had the evening he and Lisa had gotten engaged and we’d done the crazy pizza delivery routine. He and Lisa were definitely in love and practically joined at the hip.

Lisa told me during the party that they talked all the time about their lives, their pasts, their dreams and fantasies, and that the lovemaking was out of this world. She also whispered to me, “Myron can be kind of kinky at times. I love it.”

At Myron’s insistence, she had moved in with him in his ten-thousand square foot house in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She kept telling him that she didn’t need all the gadgetry and possessions he seemed to have in order to love him. He had kept buying jewelry and other trinkets for her until she finally put her foot down and told him to stop it; she wasn’t a girl who got messages of love from gifts.

Lisa’s love languages were mainly quality time and affirmations about her and their relationship. Once Myron got it through his entrepreneurial skull, he shifted gears and that was when their in-depth discussions and constant pillow talk shifted into high gear.

Lisa smirked and told me in our short conversation, “Myron confessed to having used escorts and some prostitutes occasionally over the past twenty years when he was between wives. He took the occasion to apologize profusely to me about walking out when I told him I had to make some money by selling myself when I was staying away from Marco Ricci.”