Chapter 1: The idea

It was Saturday, and half The Crew was in the computer room working.

Wayne Engelhart sent his draft to Greg’s computer. He got up, needing to rest his butt as much as the proximity, and sauntered over. Greg looked at what he had done for a couple more minutes.

“I really think this flies.” he said. “Great job, Wayne. I’ll just polish it a little, and I’ll submit it to the client. Greg always talked as though he were the boss. According to what Wayne understood, they were all working at web-page design co-operatively, even if Greg had started the business first and had taught the rest of them.

“Taking a break,” he said. He looked out the window to the yard with patches of snow still in the shade and decided to take a break inside. He’d head up to the men’s bunk room and catch a show.

“You really ripped that one out,” Val said from behind him before he’d got to the top of the stairs.

“See it?” He was a little proud of what he’d done.

“No. But I saw when you picked the job up. If it satisfies Greg, it satisfies me. And you slept alone the last two nights, too.

That was supposed to be the advantage of the Crew, six guys and three girls sharing a house and an occupation. Gayle claimed that three women could keep six men happy. Well, as one of the six, he hadn’t been all that happy for the last couple of days.

“I’m going to take a break,” he said.

“Maybe what you should take is a shower.” He took that as a promise, not an insult. Val might take a cock in her cunt that hadn’t been cleaned in two days. She would only take one in her mouth if it had been in the shower very recently.

“I might do that.” He got a change of clothing from his closet and dresser and took it to the shower room. There were four stalls, but none were in use at this time of the day. With nine people, choosing to bathe mid-day not only gave you some privacy, it was a courtesy to others.

He had merely soaped himself down when the door to the hall opened. A minute later, Val stepped in the shower stall wearing a shower cap -- only a shower cap.

“A couple of other stalls are free,” she said, “but do you mind if I share this one?”

He stepped back and made an arm gesture or welcome. She wasn’t looking at his arm, though. After thoroughly wetting herself, she soaped her hands and stroked his cock and then his balls. She might be trying to get them clean, but she was definitely getting his cock hard.

Valerie Davis said, “Shower head,” and reached up. The shower heads were detachable, and Wayne put it in her hand. She rinsed off his genitals, and turned the water temperature down.

“Hey!” Wayne said, but he took the shower head when she handed it to him. The water went off, and she knelt. Wayne was the shortest guy, but he still had seven inches on her 5’ 2”, and the cock was close to her face already. She ducked under his soft and protrusive belly and stretched her mouth open.

Wayne was in paradise. Val sucked the head into her mouth and then closed her lips over the shaft. He felt her hand cup his balls and the long nails scratch lightly over his ball sack.

The tongue swabbed the underside of his cock, and then it circled the head. He grabbed at her head and held the shower cap. He tried to pull her into his groin so he could penetrate her more deeply. He felt her teeth on his shaft and relaxed his hands. She tightened her lips, pulled back a ways, and then went forwards. He was fucking her mouth except that she was providing the motion.

She fluttered her tongue on the most sensitive point on his cock and lifted his balls at the same time. He lost it, shooting what felt like a gallon up his cock and into her warm mouth. He grabbed the walls to keep from collapsing.

Val, as soon as she felt the pulsing between her lips stop, crawled back on her knees. She left Wayne’s cock with a slurping suck. Then she bent down and spat the goo from her mouth into the drain. When she reached up, Wayne handed her the shower head. She turned on the cold water, and sprayed so that everything went down the drain. Then she sprayed around her mouth, opened to let a little water in, and spat again. But this time, Wayne was standing up straight again, though the same couldn’t be said for another part of him. She turned the spray on his cock, and got rid of most of what she’d left there.

“Hey!” Wayne said.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Sharon asked from just outside the curtain.

“No,” Val answered. Just one stall in use; three more available.”

She took her time drying off and dressing, while Wayne got as far away as the room allowed and dressed there.

She was still there when Sharon finished her efficient nurse’s shower. “Look,” she said. “I know we shouldn’t play in the shower room. I just thought nobody else would need it right now.”

“There are two unbreakable rules: Don’t sleep around. Don’t pair up. Yeah. You shouldn’t. I haven’t seen you making a habit of it. Which means, if you’ve been making a habit of it, you’ve chosen your times very well. Was that Wayne?”

“Yeah. And he did a real good job, too. He’s been bearing down and carrying his load. Seems I should acknowledge that.’

Sharon Mitchell said, “Well, you could acknowledge that in your own room. Actually, I’m glad to see you flying so free.” Val wasn’t her responsibility, but of the three women, the slight Val seemed the least likely for this group-sex thing. Val sometimes seemed to have followed Greg into the Crew.

Sharon had the impression that Val was the second best designer of web pages, nowhere as good as Greg, but better than any of the others. If Greg decided to leave and took Val with him, then what would the Crew do for money? She had her earnings as a nurse in the Hospital in Madison, so she would land on her feet, but she liked the others, and she doubted that they could live as designers of web pages without Greg.

That was entwined with Val’s previous problems with Wayne. They had made their peace now, but she -- and everyone, maybe even Wayne -- knew where Greg would end up if the two couldn’t paper over their differences.

So, Val’s blowing Wayne in the shower was three surprises. Val was getting more open -- Sharon could remember her shyness in the first winter’s strip Scrabble. Val would do it with Wayne, which meant that they were more friendly than ever before. Val would see that something had to be done to reward Wayne, which meant that she was taking some leadership in the Crew.

Sharon was on the 10 to 6 shift, which meant that she had slept through lunch. It had been Greg’s turn to help Gayle in the kitchen, and she said at supper that he’d made the spaghetti sauce.

“Very good, Greg,” she said helping herself to thirds.

“Isn’t it?” Sharon asked. “It’s the last of our own tomatoes. So, Bill should get a thank-you, too.”

“Not to mention the woman whose recipe is really responsible for the taste,” said Greg. They ate well whoever was helping in the kitchen. Gayle might be explicit about what organ was most important to men, but she took good care of their stomachs, too, and of hers and Val’s.

“Anyway,” Gayle said as though this was some resumption of the previous conversation, “Bill has an idea for improving the yield of the gardens.”

“Well, I won’t claim that it will actually improve fertility,” Bill said. “But many primitive peoples considered fertility rituals very important.”

“Fertility rituals?” Trent said. “Sounds sexy. I’m already in favor.”

“It is sexy. Some peoples had a ritual act of intercourse in the field just before the seeds were planted.”

“In the field?” Val asked. “Out in the open where people driving by could see?”

“Well,” Bill said, “the place doesn’t have any of what the real Millerville farmers would consider fields. We do have gardens, though, and one of them is hidden by the orchards from any place but the barn.”

“Of course,” Gayle said, “the participants would have to be willing. We can roll a die or flip a coin if Val or Sharon were interested, but I have said that I’d play the role.”

“You and Val can flip a coin,” Sharon said. She’d be happy to participate in the audience. She wasn’t eager to screw in the open air, much less in front of seven voyeurs.

“I’ll pass,” Val said, “Anyway, if you flip a coin, the guys would be rooting for tails.”

“Anyway,” Sharon said, “you’re the Earth-mother type.”

“And I would be willing to be the man or one of the men,” Bill said.

“Don’t you think Gayle should choose?” Sharon asked.

“We don’t pair up,” Steve said. “That doesn’t apply to particular sessions, but this seems a one-shot. I think that the willing guys, and I’d bet the number is six, would put their names in a hat, and Gayle would draw one.”

“Or,” Bill said, “more than one. Many fertility rituals called for something close to an orgy.”

Gayle Tansey said, “We have time to think about this. It should be the night before planting begins, if I understand Bill correctly. When is that?” She wanted to add something to the pudding before it gelled.

“I’ll check on the dates for planting,” Bill said. “Probably the Ag department doesn’t have any advice on when to hold a fertility ritual.”

Cleanup and washing dishes was Trent’s duty tonight. Val stayed behind to help him, which showed where he’d be sleeping that night. The rest trooped into the living room to watch TV. Soon, she signaled Bill. He got up and kissed Sharon. Kissing good night wasn’t common when you left the room, but she was going out that night.

While Bill grabbed his clothes for the next morning from the guys’ room and joined her in hers, Gayle got into a robe. Each woman in the Crew had a corner room with a queen-sized bed. The fourth corner room was larger and housed six bunks for the guys. They would never have accepted that if they hadn’t expected to share the queen-sized beds fairly often.

She greeted him with a kiss and helped him strip. She liked how he stripped. At an even 6 feet, Bill wasn’t one of the tallest guys in the crew, but he was the most muscular by far. As she ran the kitchen and the meals and Greg ran the programming, Bill ran the farming operation, growing a lot of the vegetables that they ate and the providing chickens and eggs. Unlike her, who had regularly scheduled chores assigned to assist her, Bill did most of the farm work except during planting season. Even this late in the year, his face was a shade darker than his legs.

When they got to bed, Bill kissed her, which tickled a little. Then he kissed down to her breasts, where his beard tickled a lot, kissed further down. As he kissed upwards on her thighs, all the ticklishness turned to lust. When he patted her lower lips with his tongue, she held his head there while fire burned.

The fire burned hotter and hotter as he teased her. Every muscle was tense, but he wouldn’t take her over.

“Bill,” she pled.

“Yes?” But then his tongue was right where she needed it. She convulsed, and as she shook, his lips were taking her further over. She moaned and shook.

When, after an agonizing eternity, she finally collapsed, he moved up her body. He pressed into her, filling her with one motion.

“Minute,” she asked him.

“Sure.” And he took the tops of her breasts in his hands and then remained still. He had big hands, but not that big. The skin was rough, but it was arousing.

“You are so sexy,” he said. “There is so much of you. And I almost died when you brought up the ritual. I wasn’t ready, but you knew just what to say. Now, the only questions are not if but how.”

“You’re the smart one. Still, wouldn’t your fertility ceremony have more influence if the woman was fertile?”

He said nothing for the longest time, but she felt his cock twitch within her. That was a better lie detector than sweaty palms.

Bill Jenkins was perfectly serious about Gayle’s intelligence. He had studied Anthro, but she knew more about how the Crew worked than he did, than anyone did. She had got his idea adopted, and he could tell that it had been only a means to the end of getting her own plan adopted.

They had included children as a sometime-in-the-future part of the plan for the Crew. There were empty rooms which were labeled children’s rooms in the plans.

At first they hadn’t been sure that they could make a go of the whole crew. Then, they had been nervous about the money. Now, apparently, the money was fine. He was conscious every time he considered it, that either the women have two children apiece or some of the guys would be dads while some would not. Even if the women agreed, or if Gayle did more than her share and it ended up at six, then some of the guys would be dads for years while others would not. And would all the women go for kids at once? If so, that might cut down the sexual availability that was central to the Crew’s attraction, if not, that made for more delay in some guys’ getting to fatherhood. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to be a father, but that was avoiding responsibility. He sure didn’t want the responsibility of another man’s kid.

All these thoughts were under the consciousness of the sensations of being on top of Gayle and buried in her cunt. Gayle was one hell of a lot of woman. He had a lot of weight on his elbows and on his knees, but he didn’t know many women who could cushion his midsection so long without complaint.

Then she tightened inside and started to move under him. “Darling,” he said. He rubbed her nipples with his thumbs and started the ancient motion.

She could take him all. When he was pounding into her, she was thrusting up against him. He held fire by gritting his teeth, but he couldn’t hold back his fiercer drive down into her depths.

Gayle felt his pounding loins meet hers, his thrusting cock plumb her depths, her own muscles tightening. She was almost there, and when he slammed against her and drove the base of his cock hard against her clit, she went over.

She convulsed, and he drove deep into her clasp. “Argh!” he shouted.

They lay gasping into each others’ ears. He slowly moved off, knowing her well enough to leave her the side of the bed she wanted. She turned on her side, and they spooned. His arm across her was solid.

“You are much woman,” he said.

“And you are much man ... Bill, there is a certain point in a woman’s cycle when she is likely to conceive.”

“Yeah, Midpoint, isn’t it?”

“About,” she said, “but Sharon can pinpoint it for me. Well, if I fuck Bruce that day and you not until a week later, and I got knocked up, you’d think it was Bruce’s kid wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe. You going to wait a week? You usually spread it around.”

“Well, if I fuck Bruce and Steve that day and you four days later, you’d think the kid wasn’t yours.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “It wouldn’t be as if you went with that guy at the gas station.” The man had propositioned Sharon early in the Crew’s involvement with the house. He had become a symbol in the house for the hypocritical locals who judged them as immoral but were not faithful to their own commitments.

“I don’t owe you anything, or maybe I owe you-all something. But if that happened, you wouldn’t owe the kid anything either.”

“You’re saying?”

“Well,” she said, “It’s wild, but if I fucked all of you that one night in the ceremony you spoke about, then it would be the kid of all of you guys.”

“Not if it had brown eyes or was incredibly tall.”

“Well, I’m tall for a woman, and you have hazel eyes. That’s sort of brown. But, anyway, with equal chances, I could easily ask all of you to promise to treat the kid as your own.”

“Could you even do it?” he asked. “You’re one hell of a lot of woman, but could you handle six guys the same night? Then, too, what’s next. If you could, would Val try something like that?”

“Not in a million years. Still, we could set up some form of lottery. Or, maybe, she’d decide that she doesn’t want kids. Or, something else could happen. I’m not planning the entire future. I just want to have a kid. Is that too much to ask? And, really, you guys are part of my life. I want a kid with one of you, and I want all of you in the kid’s life too.”

“You are, you know. Maybe you’re not setting up the future for the next century, but you get pregnant and the kid will run 18 nearly 19 years later; he’ll graduate from college 23 years later. Twenty-three years ago, this place was a working apple orchard.

“We still get plenty of apples,” she said.

“We get more apples than nine people need, and we could get five or six times as much if we worked at it. Want to go into business selling your pies? But it’s not enough for a harvest. What those trees are good for is firewood. We already have maybe five year’s supply stacked in the barn.”

She snapped off the light. She’d have to be in the kitchen early, and Steve was scheduled to help. He was always hard to wake.

Sharon Mitchell drove home from the hospital. Traffic was one of the few advantages of working the hours she did. What traffic there was in Madison this early was heading the opposite direction. Sure, there were big trucks on the roads, but not enough to worry her. She got in the house in time to wash up before breakfast. When she got to the table, Gayle and Steve brought in a stack of pancakes. Bill was already there. The others trailed in. It was her last meal of the day, but she treated it as breakfast. The three women all took their pills at the same time. It was a ritual, an important ritual for the group.

“Have anything planned for this morning?” she asked Greg.

“Alas, a couple of business calls. I might be free well before dinner, though.”

“Need a sleeping pill?” Steve asked her. She could actually get to sleep just fine without sex. Maybe not ‘just fine,’ but -- even at this odd hour while the sun shone in the windows and the place woke about her -- she had little trouble sleeping. She did, however, find that a little pre-prandial sex relaxed her and marked the end of the day.

“That would be wonderful, Steve.” When he’d drained his third cup of coffee, they went upstairs together.

They stopped off at their respective rooms for toothbrushes. He used the urinal while she had to struggle her lower clothes off and on in the last stall. He had his hands clean and was half-way through brushing his teeth when she got to the sink. Still, he waited for her and walked her to her room.

The kiss was sweet, and he was careful taking off her uniform.

“You know,” he said, “it would have saved us time if you’d come out carrying these.” He held up her pantyhose.

“I still had my shoes on. Besides, I don’t think efficiency is our greatest objective.” She knelt to take off his shoes.

“Sorry,” he said, “I was on KP, and I delayed my shower.” He didn’t smell that bad. She sniffed at his crotch when she took his pants down to demonstrate.

When they were both naked, they had another kiss. He hugged her but turned a little to the side so his penis only brushed her abdomen. He turned her and kissed her ear and neck while his penis lightly brushed her side.

“Tired?” he asked. “Am I keeping you on your feet after a night of standing?”

“No. Got very few calls. Spent most of the shift sitting on my ass.” Nurses were on the floor in case anything happened. And, when it did, they might do a lot that the day shifts handed over to housekeeping. But this hadn’t been one of those nights.

“In that case.” Steve dropped down and kissed her buttocks. His hand stroked up between her legs until he reached her labia. Then he gently rubbed one against the other. After a little, she wanted more, and she wanted to deal with him. She walked to the bed and stripped back the spread, blanket, and top sheet. She lay down by herself, and he came to join her.

They lay sided by side kissing. She played with his chest hair and then his nipples. He had one hand on her breasts and the other stroking her labia. When she opened her legs, he spread her lubrication up to her clit.