Chapter 7: Friends With Benefits

When Laura and Alice returned, Mark could tell they were more than a little drunk. He heard the two clearly from his room as they almost fell through the front door.

“Oh ho! It’s that time of the month!” He heard Alice giggle. She had obviously seen the box on the hall table.

“He can have his treat in the morning,” Laura responded.

“Yes,” Alice replied, “we mustn’t get him up at this time of night just to get him up.”

The two women laughed.

“And besides, there’s no point in getting him up because you’ve already promised me that you’re going down.”

There were more inebriated giggles.

Mark tried to pull the bed clothes over his head. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to think of his wife and another woman sexually amusing themselves.

It was ten o’clock the following morning before either of the women were up. Laura was first to appear as Mark, dressed in his latex suit and hood in anticipation of the arrival of the others, was clearing away his own breakfast things. He heard her on the stair and pulled his hood up over his head before she came into the room.

“Oh god,” she said as she came into the kitchen. “How am I supposed to put up with sound of you sucking air through those filters with this headache?”

Mark felt this was pretty unfair. He would much rather not have to bother with the filters and it wasn’t his fault that they made each breath sound like a creaking door.

Laura perched on a stool by the breakfast bar. Her short dressing robe fell away from her bare legs. Mark was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing anything under the robe. The results of that thought on his enclosed cock didn’t help. “I could use some coffee,” Laura said.

Mark was about to reply with an acidic remark to the effect that she might like to get it herself when he realised that his throat mike wasn’t switched on. It was less effort to make some coffee.

“Thanks,” said Laura as he put it on the bar beside her.

At least she’s grateful, Mark thought.

Laura crossed her legs as she stared into the cup. Mark wasn’t sure if she was trying to cause him problems with his enclosure but the results were the same. She leant forward and pressed the switch on Mark’s throat mike. “Do you mind me being here?”

“No, I guess not,” wheezed Mark. “Alice deserves some fun. She’s looked after me well.”

“Good. I hope we can be friends.” As she turned back to her coffee her robe managed to slide from one shoulder. The effect was provocative. Mark really couldn’t work out how she had done it.

“I’m sure we can,” said Mark, trying to ignore the flirtatious move. He was pretty sure that getting involved with his wife’s lover wasn’t likely to improve the mood around the house.

Laura took another sip of coffee and smiled over the cup at Mark.

“I could...” he started.

Laura shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’ll decide.” She reached up and slid the switch on his microphone to ‘off’. It cut out with a crackle. “This is such a good idea,” she said with a laugh, “a man whose talk you can turn off.”

Mark grunted.

“What’s a good idea?” Alice was standing at the kitchen doorway.

“The throat mike,” Laura said. “It’s a neat one. I’ve not seen one like that before.”

“Oh. Yes. I suppose so. I see Mark got you coffee.”

“Yes, he’s been looking after me very well. He’s sweet.”

‘Sweet’ was not what Mark felt. Laura’s flirting had left him with his cock trying to escape from its enclosure. The result was uncomfortable.

“Now, Mark, this morning,” Alice had her ‘listen to me’ tone of voice on. Mark had learned that it was a good idea to pay attention when she was talking like this. “Your donation kit turned up yesterday I see. You know how much I hate doing it and we’re not going down to the clinic again. That’s far too much trouble. Laura’s offered to do it though. Isn’t that kind?”

Mark wondered whether ‘kind’ was the word he would use but he nodded nevertheless.

“I’ve given her the key to your ‘thing’.” Mark looked across to Laura, she was holding the key to his enclosure on a chain around her neck. Her dressing gown still wasn’t fastened properly. “She can sort you out while I pick up some shopping. Make sure you do just as she says. I don’t want to hear that she’s had any problems and I certainly don’t want any letters back from the Donation Bank saying that there’s anything wrong with your contribution.”

Mark nodded again. He didn’t understand why she had to be so critical. He was as public-spirited as anyone and he knew just how important it was to keep up the level of donations, in order to ensure sufficient genetic diversity in the Bank. True, he didn’t much enjoy the rather clinical process and it was even worse when his wife or one of the nurses at the clinic was supervising but he accepted the need for it and would probably have agreed to it, even if the regulations didn’t mandate it. All right there had been that one time when the Bank came back with an “insufficient donation quantity” message but that hadn’t been his fault. He’d been distracted at the critical moment and spilled most of it. Alice had been furious, needless to say, and even more so when she got the letter from the Bank. “I suppose you’ve just done that so you can have another wank this month,” she had said. Mark had thought that pretty unfair. Mostly his wife had been very supportive of all the measures they now had to take and up until now she been understanding most of the time. She did have a problem with the sperm donations, though, he knew.

“I’m sure Mark will be fine,” Laura said with a smile. “But I’d better get dressed, I suppose. See you later.” She gave Alice a teasing wink, that drew a smile from Mark’s wife.

“Remember, behave,” Alice said grabbing her purse and turning towards the door. Mark grunted. He didn’t feel that he was the one that Alice should be worrying about, given that he was completely enclosed in a rubber suit with his genitals in a cage to which her lover had the key.

When Laura came back downstairs she was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a crisply laundered white shirt. She was shorter and slimmer than his wife and the clothes gave her a rather boyish look, apart from the glimpse of cleavage exposed by the fact that she hadn’t fastened as many of the shirt buttons as she should have. Mark could clearly see the key to his cock cage hanging on its chain and nestling between her breasts. She reached up and switched on his throat mike. “Do you want to do this now?”

“I suppose so.”

“All right. I’ll put on a mask and glove up. Do you want to do it here or... ?”

Mark wasn’t sure if the kitchen was the best place but on the other hand he couldn’t think of anywhere better. If she came into his room, he’d only have to give it a deep clean afterwards. And at least there was a tiled floor in case of any accidents. “Here is fine, I guess.”

As Laura snapped the latex gloves on, Mark caught himself staring into her brown eyes, seeming made larger as she looked out over the top of her surgical mask. He was beginning to worry that he was developing a fetish for masked women – it seemed that they were inevitably associated with any sexual contact.

“Well, you’d better unzip,” she said. “I’ll get the donation kit.”

Laura returned to the kitchen and placed the box with the donation kit on the breakfast bar. She opened it while Mark stood by, just enough of his zip-fronted suit open to allow access to his genitals. As usual there was a small, wide-necked, sterile, donation bottle in a sealed packet, a book of instructions, a return despatch label and a form. With the kit laid out, Laura turned towards Mark and took the key from round her neck. “Let’s get started then,” she said.

She unfolded the standard questionnaire that came with the kit. “You know that I have to check for any symptoms,” she said. “Have you, in the last week, experienced any loss in appetite?”

Something about the relish with which she said the word ‘appetite’ caused a response from Mark and his cock twitched.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Laura responded with a laugh. “Not that.”

“No,” said Mark.

“And has their been any soreness in the throat, dryness in the mouth, lack of saliva.”

If he was being honest, he ought to confess to the occasional cough but he put that down to keeping his head inside a rubber hood for a good twelve hours a day and certainly wasn’t going to admit to it. He didn’t want to be put under the sort of quarantine that suspicion of infection caused without real cause. As far as he knew there wasn’t any cure for the virus – there had been five more deaths announced in the town alone in the last week and that was after the mayor had been on local radio saying that the virus was on the back foot and she expected some restrictions to be eased in the coming month. No, he wasn’t going to admit to anything unless it was obviously a problem. That would lead to all sorts of unpleasant tests and procedures. Why should he put up with that?