Chapter 11: Friends with Benefits

After more flight training from Gerry, the last time with the trainer, Gerry telling Sue she’d not need it, Gerry dropped her off at the roof helipad, handing her a book and folder. “For the pilot test.”

“Already?” Sue asked.

“You’ll still need a month or so of flight time. This is for the written part.”

“I’ll have it memorized,” Sue promised.

“I’m sure you will,” Gerry laughed.

Donna had already told Sue she’d be working late in order to be free for the weekend, so Sue took the elevator down to the basement where her car waited. Her weird and wonderful car, which she patted like a pet. “Hello Hoss,” she giggled.

She thought about shopping, but the traffic proved an impediment. Instead she negotiated slowly the few blocks to Donna’s apartment and parked at her assigned spot, bringing her bags up to the condo. Looking in the fridge and the cupboards she sighed. A Whole Foods was only four blocks away, though one was a long one. Looking through Donna’s walk-in closet, she found a hiking backpack, neither too big nor too small, and slung it onto her shoulders.

She shopped diligently for Donna’s meals, less so for hers, stuff with meat she could nuke in the microwave. Half gallons of milk and fresh squeezed orange juice weighed most, along with a quart of ginger raspberry Kombucha she wanted to try. Added to it, she visited an adjacent liquor store, getting a recommended rosé and Armagnac, the latter since they didn’t have Joe’s preferred cognac, and in fact the clerk thought its existence a myth!

Once everything got put away including the backpack, Sue worked off the recipe on her smartphone to create an eggplant casserole for Donna (and her of course). It was half done (half baked?) when Donna arrived home. “Another twenty minutes,” Sue reported.

Donna hugged her, “Best roommate ever,” and then they kissed.

“Fred?” Sue asked.

“Part of our agreement, not being exclusive unless things move up the timetable, but I won’t be telling her.”

“I imagine she’d have less opportunity.”

“You’d be surprised. We’ll being going to a girl’s bar, and a young dyke like her with her ability to chat up some lipstick lesbian?”

“Would that disappoint you?”

“It would, but I couldn’t blame her. How about less talking?”

“And more fucking? Because that’s what I’m going to do to you.” They’d already entered the bedroom and began stripping.

“Joe fuck you raw again?” Donna asked, removing the last of her clothing.

“Not quite so raw this time, but yeah.” Sue followed suit getting naked and opened the drawer with toys, grabbing the usual equipment. Lubing the phalange that would press against her clit, she gazed at the sexy tight bodied blonde spread before her. Once she attached the dildo to the strap on, she knee walked between Donna’s legs, lube and vibrator in hand, and lowered her mouth to Donna’s pussy. Licking the labia and nipping at them with her lips, almost teasing, avoiding the cluster of nerves hiding beneath a hood of skin as if hesitant to reveal itself, it brought forth secretions that had been minimal before, increasing them dramatically when the tongue finally lapped across the clit, also creating a moan and shiver. Each addition to Sue’s efforts, the nip of lips on the finally exposed bit of excitable flesh, the laps inside and across it and the labia, quickly wetted fingers one and then two getting farther inside and creating more pressure, especially that textured place just behind the pubic bone, and then the slim plastic sliding and vibrating along the place the tongue and fingers had been, the clit rigid and bare and with its own vibrations, made the passage slick with moisture, almost dripping with it. And then the cock entering, some extra slickness added, just as Donna’s pleasure neared its peak, and with one steady thrust, the vibrator still vibrating just above, Donna reached it, meeting the thrust with hers, exclaiming her ecstasy.

And it wouldn’t be the last one she reached, Sue’s steady thrusting sparking another when Donna sped it up with more meetings, more lifts into it, strong legs wrapped around Sue’s thighs aiding them, Sue’s nipping at a nipple with her lips and careful scrapes of her teeth, the other nipple just as carefully twisted and pulled with her fingers adding more intensity. And Sue kept the pace even as Donna halted her lifts with one large one, pushing Donna to another one much quicker than her second, and the hard fast thrusts bringing Sue over as well just as she approached muscle fatigue with all that thrusting.

Pulling out, Sue found herself on her back, and despite a post-multiorgasmic lethargy, Donna kissing her and caressing her, appreciating her, the kisses soon moving down to breasts, and when the strap had been released and the dildo removed, to her pussy with, as Sue had done, ever more attention to her clit, the vibrator the final step to bringing Sue over.

“Dinner,” Donna realized.

“It’s baking with the top on. It’s fine,” Sue told her.

“Good,” Donna grinned, giving a last kiss to Sue’s vulva, “because I’m starved.”

“Me too,” Sue chuckled. “All that fucking takes a lot out of a guy.”

Donna moved up a little and kissed a nipple. “You’re definitely no guy.”

“It does give me an appreciation for Joe’s stamina.”

“Mmm,” Donna agreed dreamily.

“That brief threesome wasn’t enough?” Sue guessed.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to borrow him again soon.”

“Not borrowing if I’m there,” Sue smirked. “Our devout hermit loved it.”

“Because it’s the two women he loves the most,” Donna decided.

“I suppose so,” Sue agreed, but thinking about how that might put doubt on other, different threesomes. A brief thought, ending with her decision that Joe was enough, and any possible threesome would be like adding frosting to an already delectable cake.

They threw on robes, Sue borrowing the sexy transparent one more because it was handy than being provocative, and pulled on panties and ate the casserole, which Donna proclaimed delicious. Afterwards they cuddled and watched Casablanca for Sue’s edification, Sue deciding she liked these old black and white movies. Their cuddling continued in bed, though no more sex ensued.

In the morning, sleeping in a bit, they finally got up for a light breakfast of bagels and cream cheese, the fresh squeezed orange juice a highlight. Some puttering around, cleaning and washing things, including the dildo and vibrator, the latter attached to its charger, they headed out to their separate dates or appointments.

Jan’s apartment in an old brownstone near the University of Maryland’s campus turned out to be small, an efficiency, the hall leading to it smelling a bit musty but looking clean, the coverings on the lights attached to the ceiling somewhat dimming the incandescent bulbs inside from a yellowing age. The apartment itself looked clean and smelled fresh, the air conditioner stuck into what appeared to be the one window humming purposefully, Sue not seeing the advertised messiness. Except for the bathroom, the place really only had one room, the kitchen sharing the study place, a small desk near the air conditioner, with a double bed closest to the entrance door and the bathroom to the left, Sue discovering a second window to an air shaft in the latter space.

“Cozy right?” Jan smirked.

Noticing the crisply made bed and everything seeming to be put in its place, Sue remarked, “I’m looking for the messiness.”

“A bit of late spring cleaning in honor of your visit,” Jan blushed. “A spray of Fresh Scent disguises the ammonia.”

“Sorry to put you to the trouble.”

Jan waved it off. “It needed it.”

Handing Sue a can of diet cola from the slim choices, Jan grabbed one for herself. Jan brought out a couple cheap plastic dinner plates. “Anything you want to listen to?” she asked, standing at her desk where a laptop had been opened and a couple small black Bose speakers framed it.

“Whatever you want,” Sue replied.

“My taste goes towards women singers, the darker the mood the better.”

“Sounds good,” Sue chuckled.

Sue liked what she heard, whether smooth or rough voices, the lyrics often clever and interesting, and dark. She’d glance at the laptop from time to time to find out who sang, and they mostly ate and listened, leaving a couple slices. “Is it okay if I keep them for snacking when I get home?” Jan asked.

“Of course.”

The slices put away and the box set aside, Sue finally got down to business. “You ever heard of JAS Industries?”

“Vaguely.”

“I think that’s most people. It’s a behind the scenes corporation or conglomerate really since they own several companies. It’s mostly about engineering and innovative design, a lot of it in support for well-known manufacturers, whether supplying parts or generating or streamlining ideas or creating and manufacturing testing equipment to assure the larger companies things are in spec or work properly. Despite its relatively unknown presence, it’s one of the more successful businesses in America.”

“Okay.”

“I’m getting there,” Sue chuckled. “JAS stands for Joseph Allen Solomon, the founder of the company. I’ve become friends with his grandson, Joseph Allen Solomon the Third. He’s a recluse, a hermit really, and though not as classically crazy as the most famous recluse, Howard Hughes, he does have a bit of craziness to him, essentially what makes him a recluse. His shyness goes to a pathological level such that being around people makes him physically ill. Even chatting on the phone can make him uncomfortable and especially if it’s Skype or Zoom. For years he’d only had one real friend, a woman who trained him to fly helicopters amongst other things. More recently, he’s managed to befriend an ex-lover of Gerry’s, the woman who trained him, and you met her.”

“Donna.”

“Yes. And I guess I’m the third exception to his seclusion, a recent addition. I’m becoming his first girlfriend.”

“Except you were with that asshole, and me for that matter,” Jan pointed out. “Not that I have much to say, since a lot of my clients cheat on their wives with me.”

“I wouldn’t consider it cheating. For one, I hadn’t been intimate with Joe at that point, but that actually doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No, because Joe knows who he is, and knows to have a girlfriend he can’t really expect her to have to be stuck in his cage, no matter how gilded it is, and believe me he has a really nice cage. Especially someone like me who actually just escaped a much less appealing one, who’s young, and who needs to explore the world outside that shitty cage in which she grew up. That includes going to college at Maryland. It also includes finding friends, and yes, lovers.”

“He trusts you?”

“What choice does he have?”

“What do you mean?”

Sue couldn’t help cringing a bit, hopefully inside and unseen. Hadn’t she just answered that question succinctly if metaphorically? Should she have taken Joe’s advice and have Donna look into this woman’s past, her grades at least and SAT scores and her IQ if she’d been tested, before offering her a scholarship? It hadn’t been offered, but why else bring all this up? But, Sue realized, the whole thing was unusual to say the least, nothing in the least bit normal. Perhaps she should give the woman some slack.

“What do you think I mean?” Sue asked.

“You wouldn’t be happy stuck in the world he’s stuck with. You said he’s never had a girlfriend?”

“His circumstances essentially prevented it.”

“Why you? Why now? Why accept? He’s rich, right?”

“He owns the company, so yes, very. I could say that doesn’t matter, but I suppose it does. He can support my independence. He can indulge my whims, pretty much all of them,” Sue smirked.

“Sounds like a sweet deal, the ultimate sugar daddy. Is that why you accepted?”

“If it was the only reason, he wouldn’t have accepted me, not for the long run.”

“So you like the guy.”

“I love him, though it’s early going, but I don’t see that changing.”

“That’s ... convenient.”

Sue laughed. “You can’t see him as anything but the ultimate john, Misty. Have you had sugar daddies before, or does your sexual preference get in the way?”

“You get cynical in this business, especially as long as I’ve been at it. Men become just money and penises. They’re not all like asshole, some are even pretty nice guys, there as much for the company as for getting laid, but ultimately you’re there to get paid for making a penis cum. It’s what they want. It’s what you want so you can go off with their money. You develop a fixed view about men. It started with stripping, the single-minded male gaze. Then it was teasing, not giving them what they really want, and fucking them did, and made me a shitload more money because of it.”

“That makes sense, the inevitable trajectory.”

“Yes. To answer your question, I’ve never had a sugar daddy. If it’s been offered, suggested, hinted at, I shrug it off, show them I’m not interested. I couldn’t stomach the continuous gaze and the continuous expectations. This is my sanctuary to get away from all that, my break from it, along with school.

“But I did have a sugar momma I’d guess you’d call her. An heiress, a rich divorcee, her marriage a merger of powerful families, arranged to continue the line, a queen whose job was to produce a prince. Her duty done, she left all that, including her son I guess. We met at a noblesse oblige party, some benefit for waifs or something, for the great unwashed from the thoroughly scrubbed, writing checks much smaller than the taxes their accountants cleverly had them avoid paying. I arrived on the arm of a man in his fifties, still somewhat handsome but otherwise sagging a bit, who I think had a reputation for bringing escorts to such events just the way most snubbed me or rolled their eyes. She did neither, and I returned her attention, her interest.

“Since my date abandoned me to schmooze with his fellow blueblood males, though not far enough away for them not to check me out, the heiress approached me. She says with a smirk, ‘A bit stuffy, follow me.’ So I did, chuckling.

“She leads me to this big office with dark paneled walls and a huge desk made from some dark wood, a couple expensive looking Surrealist paintings on the wall depicting fantasy worlds, and it was obvious it was a man’s domain. She opens a panel revealing a few bottles of liquor.

“‘What’s your poison?’ she asks me and I tell her whatever she’s having. ‘Neat?’ she asks and I can tell it’s what’s expected so I nod. ‘Put that crappy champagne down,’ she insists, although it was actually very nice champagne, so I place it on a table beside a soft leather couch and sit on the couch. She sits near, but with enough room so that when she angles her body towards me and I do the same towards her, there’s not actual contact. We tap glasses and drink, a sip for me, and it’s really smooth scotch, and about half the glass for her. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ she asks, for which I reply, ‘I’d rather hear about you. Like for instance you must know the host well.’

“She tells me they met in college and hooked up once at the end of a drunken party, but had been just friends since and did business together. Then she told me her life succinctly, bluntly and cynically before pulling out a business card and writing on the back an apartment address, asking me what evenings I had free for which I replied none because it’s never free, amusing her. ‘Tomorrow?’ she asks. ‘After seven,’ I tell her for which she nods and tells me to be there at eight.

“She ends up giving me the apartment, a very nice one of course with a really nice bed and pays for my school and gives me beautiful things, lingerie and jewelry, but never lets me be seen with her and never trusts me on my own, and I find gossip on the internet about her and some other blue blood woman, rumors of lesbianism confirmed, both remarking they were each other’s love. It’s a lot to give up, the apartment and the gifts and the money for school and such, but the affection not so much, hers not being genuine, and mine either to tell the truth. I’m abrupt about it, leaving the trinkets and the sexy clothes and the key and a note. She’d given me enough money to keep up payments of this apartment, and I had stayed here often enough, it being close to campus and all, but a gap in my escort work had lost me most regulars, so I hired on to the service after that.”

“So she was your only john so to speak?” Sue asked.

“As she demanded, and I had to get running to make ends meet again so to speak,” Jan giggled at the unintended double entendre.

“But it must have been a relief taking a break from all that?”

“Like an extra-long vacation,” Jan agreed.

“What if you had a similar arrangement except without the strings or restraints attached?”

“There’s always something attached.”

“Not if the man’s too wealthy to notice.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

Suspicion flashed in Jan’s eyes, a momentary glare, quickly quieted by the realization that Joe had never met her, but this delicious redhead had. “You sure there’s no service required?”

“No, Jan, but ... I’d like to be friends.”

“With benefits?”

“Uhm ... You obviously know how hot you are. But...”

“Go on.”

“I promise there’s no obligation, with me or...”

“Your boyfriend.”

“Yes. How heterosexual are you? I mean, the asshole wasn’t in the least agreeable, but I never saw any real disgust.”

“Honestly I like men, probably even prefer them, except for the fact I’ve seen the worst of them both in attitude and physically, and of course there’s their relentless presence in my life for far too long, an endless parade of cocks I sucked and fucked. Like my respite in this apartment, there’s respite in a woman’s softness and their lack of invasive flesh, thus my unsuccessful pursuit of a girlfriend.”

“Joe suggested you might not want to be with a man if it were a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, but in my case it was the most efficient way of paying for school, and life I guess. Obviously sex was involved in your discussion of me and this scholarship.”

“Yes, and I already overstepped what we decided, that it wouldn’t be required of you to get the support you need financially, which it honestly isn’t, but I’ve still put it on the table, haven’t I?”

“I helped put it there because it wasn’t an unpleasant requirement, me being with you.”

“Thanks. But maybe you’d consider Joe too, because what you said about experiencing the worst attitude and looks, that isn’t anything you’d find lacking in Joe.” Sue showed Jan the picture of Joe just emerged from the stream.

“Okay,” Jan laughed.

“Hot, right? And he’s an excellent lover too, very compassionate in assuring you get as much pleasure as possible. Empathetic even, in that he gets off on it, too, you getting off. But like I said he’s pathologically shy, and it usually takes some time for him to be comfortable around someone, and he could possibly never be with you.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t think it will be problem if you’re yourself with him. Just be honest and don’t come in with an agenda. Don’t be any more seductive than you already are.”

“That’ll be different,” Jan admitted.

“Which is why I’m telling you this. Think of it not like a date like you have to present yourself at your best if you want to ensnare a boyfriend and later on you both have to let go of those masks and reveal your true selves and hope they’re acceptable in the long run. Think of it more like you’re already living together and the stuff you tried to hide is in plain sight.”

“My naked self?” Jan asked.

“So to speak. Oh.”

Jan literally showed Sue her naked self, stripping off the cute halter top shirt which Sue had noticed she’d been naked beneath, and the yoga pants which suggested a lack of underwear also, but revealing a thong once it was stripped off, which Jan stripped off as well.