Chapter 4

Two Days Later

I looked up at Hamish on the platform, and nodded. “Okay, you ready?”

Hamish nodded excitedly. “I think so. Holden and I talked about it awhile after you showed it yesterday.” Automatically he reached out to touch his brother’s hand. Holden and I had demonstrated the pair-hanging technique yesterday. Hamish had looked on in absorbed concentration, and asked a lot of questions. “And I think I can handle the weight. I did all those exercises, hanging with the extra weights, like the Dean talked about in that letter he sent.” He blushed. “I’m sorry, I think of it as him sending it, but Holden tells me you wrote it.”

I nodded and laughed suddenly. “I assume the Dean found a way to word it so it didn’t imply you were admitted already.”

Hamish laughed. “Well, as far as the wording, yeah. I didn’t know how else to take it, though. I knew it had to be connected with Holden being here, and something he wanted me to get ready for. Especially the hanging with the extra weights. Holden never got anything telling him to do that while he was waiting.”

I smiled. “I figured you wouldn’t be fooled, but the Dean was just covering himself. He didn’t want to get some sort of general early admission policy started.”

Both boys were naked, of course. That gave me another way of telling them apart, besides the newly-arrived glittery monograms attached to their collars. Both had identical reddish-orange bushes, but Hamish’s went further down, surrounding his balls. There hadn’t been time for electrolysis of the extra hair yet. Aside from that, Hamish’s exercise program over the past year had kept his body looking essentially identical to Holden’s. I remained on the lookout for subtle differences in habitual gestures or expressions that would help me distinguish them. There was still a touch of the familiar-friend-and-occasional-lover look on Holden’s face when he looked at me that was absent from Hamish’s, but that difference would fade away soon.

Each dropped a noose over the other’s head, adjusted it and tightened it, and waited for me to tie their hands behind them. They kissed each other—their faces were already only inches apart—but postponed any further intimacies to concentrate on the business at hand. It was obvious that Hamish took hanging as seriously as Holden, and Holden set a standard that was hard to match.

I nodded. “Okay, Hamish, I just want you to get a feeling for the breathing itself. Like I said yesterday, Holden and I have worked out some moves, part of a routine, but we were just showing you the basics to start with. We can work on some choreography in a few days, once you’ve got breathing mastered.” I gestured downward. “Hamish, move both of your feet just a few inches left. You’ll be able to put your right leg between Holden’s with less fumbling from there. While the platform is sinking, think where your knees are in relation to his.”

Hamish nodded briefly, and I pulled the lever, starting the platform downward.

As soon as he lost contact with the floor, Hamish quickly reached out with his feet, but banged them against both of Holden’s ankles. He knocked his right knee against Holden’s left, but then managed to push his right leg between Holden’s thighs and lock both his thighs around Holden’s right.

On Hamish’s first push upward, I saw a familiar problem arise. I quickly pushed the lever, raising the platform.

As soon as Hamish could breathe, he voiced an exasperated growl and stomped his feet on the platform. He looked at Holden with a pleading expression. “I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I...”

Holden covered Hamish’s mouth with his own, stifling the apology, and quickly said, “I did the same thing, the exact same thing, the first time. You have to get the balance just right. Push straight upward, and try not to lean back.”

“It’s just that I never screw up a...”

I reached up and stroked Hamish’s hip. “Shhh, it’s okay. Hamish, I know you can hang. But this is different. As you practice you’re going to work out a new set of reflexes you haven’t needed before. It just takes time. You saw Holden do it yesterday. You’ll get there.”

Hamish took a deep breath. “Okay. Can we try again?”

“Sure.” I spoke softly, going for a calming note. “Close your eyes and stand there a minute. I’m not in a hurry. Just breathe for a minute. Tell me when you’re ready.”

Hamish breathed in and out a dozen times, then nodded. “Let’s go.”

I pulled on the lever.

Hamish pushed his right leg between Holden’s again, much more smoothly this time. He lifted himself, took a few slow breaths, then felt Holden’s double thigh-squeeze. He relaxed his upper body, and tightened his thighs still further to allow Holden to lift himself.

On Hamish’s third lift, he twisted his upper body slightly to rub his chest against Holden’s. Holden duplicated the move on his own third lift.

I pushed the lever. As soon as he could stand, Hamish hopped excitedly in place. “Okay, okay, I’ve got it now! Can we do it again?”

I laughed. Hamish was just way too much like Holden. “After you rest about ten minutes. Your body’s more fatigued than you know, right now.”

“Okay.” He grinned at Holden. After a quick kiss, they leaned into each other, each one’s chin resting on the other’s left shoulder, rubbing their heads softly together.

I shook my head slightly. I’ve never seen lovers more in tune with each other. They always make complementary moves, always know what the other is about to do and what the other wants. Not me and Grant, not anybody.

I had a feeling they’d be like that, I reminded myself. But expectations aren’t much of a preparation for seeing it happen.

I paused at the door of Melissa’s and Jana’s room. Runner had spent the night there with Jana, while Melissa slept with me. I listened before knocking—I didn’t want to interrupt if they were making love. It seemed fairly quiet, so I tapped at the door, and heard Runner’s “C’min.”

Runner looked up from his reading and grinned at me. I looked at the book: Shep’s Day With Dad. I recalled that it involved a young boy spending the day with his father at work so he could see what Dad did for a living. Runner was sitting up on the bed behind Jana, his knees pulled up with the book propped on them. A squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup was leaning against his left shin, and Puppy was nosing at it while looking up at him hopefully. Puppy was whimpering softly, clearly a request to Runner to do something with the bottle.

Runner had woken me up early this morning while I was still sleeping in Melissa’s arms. He’d asked to take Puppy down to this room, and now I could see why.

Jana was on her knees and face on the bed, blindfolded and gagged as she preferred to be, her wrists tied to her ankles, her ass high in the air. She was sweaty from recent exertion, and her thighs and crotch seemed slightly darker than normal. I pressed my knuckles against my mouth to keep from laughing, but several snorts escaped. I knew what had been happening, partly because I knew how much Puppy loved chocolate.

Runner closed the book, using his thumb to mark his place, petted Puppy and said, “Oh, okay.” Picking up the squeeze bottle, he held it over Jana’s upraised rear end and dribbled chocolate sauce over her buttocks, concentrating mainly on her butt crack, where the sauce ran slowly down over her pussy lips.

With a grateful yip, Puppy rose onto her four legs on the bed and began licking up all the chocolate she could reach.

Jana gave a high-pitched squeal, and started squirming spastically, her muscles uselessly straining, the squeal quickly turning into rapid, breathy grunts. Puppy finished with the surface sauce and began lapping earnestly at Jana’s pussy; the grunts became sharper and briefer, timed with the rhythmic tensing of the muscles of her arms and legs as she got more aroused.

Puppy was nearly finished when Jana’s leg and buttock muscles tensed one more time and stayed taut, quivering. Her grunts rose in pitch and then held a sustained note until she was out of breath.

Jana slowly slid down the far end of his climax, and found Puppy’s attention less welcome. She squirmed, trying to push Puppy away from her oversensitive parts, but Puppy continued licking undeterred. At last the final bit of sauce disappeared. Jana was left alone to catch her breath, giggling in spite of the torment, her whole body now bathed in sweat.

That was just another facet of the gem that was Runner, his quick understanding of Jana’s offbeat wants and needs. I shook my head, grinning. “Runner, could you take her gag out just for a minute? I need to ask her something.”

Runner put his book down and laughed. “I think she’s had enough anyway. That’s her third time.” Runner reached forward and began untying Jana.

As soon as she was free to move, Jana pulled out the gag and slipped off the blindfold. She immediately turned to Runner and threw her arms around him. “Thank you so much, Runner, that was great!” She gave Runner an affectionate kiss, then looked up at me. “What’s up?”

“You’re on monitor duty for the party Saturday, right?” The Second Years were hosting the upcoming party.

Jana nodded. “Melissa and I both did bedrooms last time.”

“I was going to ask the Dean if it’d be okay for you to be assigned to monitor my room. I just wanted to check with you first.”

“Oh! Sure. Have you got any extra signals?” There were standard hand signals the hosts used to alert their monitors to special needs. Occasionally host/monitor pairs worked out some additional ones.

I shook my head. “Just the usual. I’m not expecting anything weird. If anything I’m sure they’ll be on their best behavior.”

Justin Greene and his crew who had rescued me from the island, were going to collect, at last, the remainder of the reward I had promised them.

Runner gasped. “Is that this Saturday? That’s...” He frowned in thought, pulling out of memory what he had learned about the days of the week. “Is that three more days?”

I smiled and nodded. “Today is Wednesday.”

“The sailors from the boat are coming to this one?”

I nodded again. “I need to get that done. There aren’t too many more parties before I do my own show.”

Runner gasped again. “Do you know when your show is? I thought you were going to find out later today.”

“Oh, no, not yet. Not exactly, anyway. But I know it’s going to be soon.”

“Can I come to the party?”

I frowned. “Well, there’s a place where you can watch from outside the room...”

Runner shook his head vehemently. “I want to be in the party, Amy. Everything I know about sex, I learned from you and the other Noosemeisters. And everybody here just says what they want. I need to learn what to do with people when I have to guess what they want. Isn’t that something I need to learn, if I’m going to be a Noosemeister?”

I bit my lip. “Well, remember, you aren’t really a student yet. That’s still going to be awhile.” I thought a little longer. “And even here we don’t let students host parties until they’ve had at least a month of classes and books about how to please their clients.”

Runner had a determined look on his face. “And if the boat hadn’t taken us here, I’d still be wandering around the Island eating nuts and peaches and stealing meat, right? I owe the sailors just as much as you do, right?”

I was about to dispute how much Runner really knew about sex with outsiders just from watching television, but realized that wouldn’t be at all helpful toward putting Runner off. The more Runner saw that he didn’t know about a subject, the stronger his need to learn it became.

It would be futile trying to satisfy Runner’s hunger for knowledge with anything other than real food. I couldn’t promise anything for sure, but I said cautiously, “I’ll ask the Dean if it’s okay...”

Runner bounced off the bed with a huge grin, enveloping me in his usual tight hug. “Thank you, Amy!”

Jana cleared her throat. “We can’t really just turn him loose in a bedroom, right? He needs to know some things first.”

I smiled at her. “You offering to help?”

Jana laughed. “Sure. It’s the least I owe him after this...” She gestured vaguely at the chocolate bottle.

I grinned. “Okay. Start making a list of what we need to do.”

Jana looked at the chocolate-stained bedsheet. “First thing is clean up a little.”

That Afternoon

Sitting at the conference room table, I felt the excitement billowing inside me. I’d been to several of these meetings, more of them than most graduates. Starting with the one for Laney. But this is the first time it’s been for me.

I’d thought about asking Melissa and Jana to accompany me, but had decided against it. We’ll probably have another meeting for contract signing, and they can come to that. The main reason I’d left them behind was that inviting them would have made it impossible to tell Runner that he couldn’t come. And I needed Runner to be absent today.

After all this time, I really wanted to meet the Club member who had bought an option on my services. It would be someone I’d met, but I didn’t yet know who, just that he was a topper. Someone who had decided far in advance that I was the Noosemeister he wanted to buy, and had paid money to ensure that he would have that opportunity.

I saw the Dean look at his watch. “What time, Sir?”

“He should be here in the next ten minutes.” The Dean always insisted that Noosemeisters be in the conference room, waiting, when a prospective client arrived. It assured the client that the graduate was there to serve his or her needs.

I decided that meant we had time to get another issue out of the way. May as well do it now, I thought. This was one of the things I didn’t want Runner present for. “Sir, could Runner participate in the party Saturday?”

The Dean looked startled. “I think for the present it’s sufficient that he watch from outside the room.”

“Sir, it really would fit in with what you want us to do with him. Aside from hanging, our most important duty is serving the Club members at parties. Runner himself pointed out that all of us knew something about sex with outsiders when we started here, and that helps all of us share a starting point. He’d be handicapped if he started as a student with zero experience outside the Academy.”

The Dean rested his chin on his hand, his standard thinking-posture. “It’s going to be a couple of years, I think, at least, before he reaches the point of being ready for admission. There’s plenty of time.”

“Yes, Sir, but two things. One is that I won’t be participating in any more parties myself, after this one. I know the job of teaching Runner doesn’t fall exclusively on me, but I think it’s my duty to do as much as I can before I go. The second thing is, this party is special. The crew from the boat who rescued us are going to be there. They’re here because I made a promise to them, and because I owe them so much for bringing me back here. But I’m not the only one they rescued from years of an empty, exhausting, painful life. They rescued Runner from that too, and he owes them the same way I do. He doesn’t need to try to entertain members. I know he’s not ready for that. But we can get him ready to give a guest a freebie. The guests will enjoy it, and he’ll learn more from that than from anything we could tell him ourselves. He has to get some hands-on experience...” I grinned. “ ... so to speak. Each of them can have an hour with me and an hour with Runner. It’ll be a wonderful night for them, and will partly repay what we owe them for rescuing us. This is the only way Runner can get that experience before he’s admitted, without sticking a member with an inexperienced boy—and probably the only time the opportunity will come up.”

The Dean was looking down at the doodle he was doing on a notepad. “So the understanding is that he’ll service only the ship’s crew?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What happens if they don’t want him?”

I laughed. “Are you kidding, Sir? You’ve seen him. And wait till you see him in a party outfit.”

The Dean smiled, still doodling, and sighed. “You win again. How many is that?”

I laughed again, just as the door opened and Tina said, “Your two o’clock is here.”

“Thank you, Tina. Show him in.”

I stood respectfully, trying to keep a lid on my excitement as another this-is-it moment arrived. I gasped, my jaw dropping. “Benjamin!! It’s you??”

Benjamin stopped in the doorway, blinked at the intensity of his reception, then smiled. “So you’d be willing to let me stage your hanging?”

“Absolutely! When do...” I worked to get a grip on myself. “I’m sorry. You should come in and have a seat.” I gestured toward a chair at the table opposite me. Then I remembered that I was a slave, and winced. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be the one who says...” I covered my face, blushing furiously. “I’ll shut up now.” I sat abruptly. Benjamin sat down across from me.

It sounded like the Dean was laughing. I peeked through my fingers, yes, the Dean was rocking in his chair, his right fist pounding on the chair arm. Cautiously I uncovered my face.