Chapter 3: Sidelined

True to his word, Andy did a quick inspection of the ejaculate crusted on her skin and cemented in her tresses, and then reset the oxy system. “You can shower if you want,” he offered magnanimously, and she did.

Afterwards, Sharon didn’t even try to put her underwear back on; and none of us made any reference to Andy’s pretense of ‘just this once.’ There seemed no point. She did resume her work, to whatever extent she was able to concentrate. But later that morning, the engineer ambled over and whispered something in her ear. “Graeme,” she said, “I think you’d better go to our bunk for a while.” She wasn’t willing to look me in the eye. After a time, she came to get me; and I spent the rest of the day painfully aware that my wife was dripping with another man’s sperm.

The following day it happened twice. By that point, we had it down to a little routine. Andy would approach and squeeze her upper arm lightly; she’d say “Graeme, could you...”; and I’d go cover my ears.

And if we all did exactly what Andy said, he’d make sure the air stayed breathable for a while longer.

Fuck that, right? I had to escape. So, next morning, I put on my suit and went out to ‘explore.’ At some level, it was a relief to be alone in the Martian wasteland, miles away from the Hab. And yet ... over and over, I found my mind wandering back there—peeking in through the plexiglass windows to visualize the abuses he was visiting on my wife.

When I arrived at the base that evening, however, Sharon wasn’t coated in dried semen as I’d expected. And nor did Andy decide to go for a nightcap after I returned. By bedtime, I was beginning to think he really had left her unmolested all day—even felt silly for having imagined the worst. Was it possible the man truly had ‘gotten it all out of his system?’

“So,” I murmured to Sharon when we had some privacy, “today he didn’t ... you know...?”

A hangdog look crossed her face. “Umm...”

“But ... he couldn’t get it done? Couldn’t finish?” Hope dies hard.

“No, it wasn’t that...” She glanced away, head ducking perceptibly. “He, um ... he wanted me to swallow this time.” Fuck, of course he did. Sharon had never been willing to swallow with me. I’d floated the idea once, and her exact response had been “gross!”

After hearing her news, I was in no mood for excuses. I pushed her down on her side, facing away from me so that my chest pressed up against her spine. Wordlessly, I reached around to work my fingers in between her legs; and she shifted her hips so that her thighs parted a bit. Greedily, insistently, I groped her pussy—rubbing her velvety pleats with a driving, rhythmic motion, while simultaneously grinding my erection against her coccyx.

Soon, I began to tease her labia apart with deft motions—circling her opening, and then thrusting a finger into her cunt. She moaned and stretched her back. And damn: she was relaxed and soaked. Probingly, I pushed two ... three ... four fingers into her canal, and she accommodated them easily. After the things she’d endured, and the emotional strain we’d been under, I’d feared she wouldn’t be receptive. But the truth is, she was more aroused that night than any time I can remember.

There seemed no need for further foreplay, so I reached down and eased my cock into her vagina, from behind. She flexed her pelvis so that I could enter her more squarely, and worked her pussy back and forth against my groin. I started pounding hard, slamming up against her vulva, straining to plant myself as deeply as I could. And within twenty or thirty violent thrusts, I was ready to finish. Glutes clenching, chest heaving, brain burning with a harsh desire, I poured every bit of myself into her womb.

Afterwards we lay together quietly, my slowly softening organ still nestled deep in her sodden tract. Reaching back to brush my flanks lightly with her fingertips, she whimpered lightly—expressing some mixed-up hash of emotions that I could only guess at.

I went out again the next day. And I guess I was hoping that when I returned home. I’d find Sharon had swallowed his load again. At least then I wouldn’t have to look at it.

Unfortunately, Harris’ sick mind had brewed up a fresh torment for me. This time, he arranged it so that when I emerged from the airlock ... there was my wife—naked and on her knees, tits perked and wobbling provocatively, servicing the engineer with a dutiful blowjob.

I could only stand there, shell-shocked, while she nuzzled Andy’s ponderous ballsac, licked her tongue along his shaft, suckled his glans gently. It was an agony to witness something like that. And what’s worse, the sight of her fawning over the man’s penis threw the thing’s improbable size into stark relief. Her fingers didn’t even stretch around its girth, and the head alone was an entire mouthful for her. It was the kind of thing that if you came across it in a porn video, you’d wonder if it was real.

“Jesus,” I shuddered, feeling queasy, “I don’t need to see this”—and made a move to withdraw.

“We were waiting for you, man,” Andy said complacently. “Now babe, what was it we wanted to tell him?”

Still gripping his cock in one graceful hand, Sharon pulled off and gazed up at me apologetically. “I’m sorry, hon. I—I didn’t want this. But ... he says he won’t reset the system unless ... u-unless you watch.”

“Screw that,” I said, retreating toward our sad little refuge.

She rose and grasped my arm. “No, please, Graeme, you need to stay. It’s the same thing he’s been doing already, right? Nothing’s different. And ... he has been keeping the system running, like he promised.”

I vacillated, feeling an icy pang in the pit of my stomach. I wanted more than anything to flee. But what she said was true—he’d already been molesting her like this for days. It wasn’t new. So ... wouldn’t it be just that much more pathetic and cowardly to run away and pretend it wasn’t happening, leaving her to deal with the fallout alone?

With a groan of defeat, I sank down into a chair. Head bent and fingers pressed to forehead, I eyed them beneath lowering brows.

For a while it was no worse than the lurid images my brain had already invented. Drooling sloppily, bobbing her head energetically, she did her level best to pleasure him. Fingertips, lips, tongue—all of them worked together to stimulate his genitals. He caressed the side of her face with an affectionate hand; and chucked her under the chin every once in a while, directing her sparkly-blue eyes upward to meet his self-satisfied gaze.

But soon, things took a darker turn than I could have imagined. Grasping Sharon’s head more firmly, Andy began working himself further inside. She dropped her arms and went limp; as if she already knew what his demands would be, and had resigned herself to meeting them. With a steady in-and-out motion, he drove himself onward—deeper ... and deeper ... and deeper still ... until at last his gargantuan cock disappeared completely down her gullet.

Fuck: he was throating her. My wife had never taken me like that in her life. I didn’t even know she could. And yet somehow, she’d accepted all of him.

He kept her there a moment—her enflamed lips flush against his groin, and her nose smashed into his pubic hair. And then ... then ... he started thrusting. While I watched with outraged eyes, Sharon let the man use her like she was a sex-doll. Holding her head steady, he’d pull out several inches, and then ... shove himself home again with a grunt of satisfaction. Over and over. With every plunge, her neck bulged out disturbingly. Her eyes were streaming; her jaws were straining; and big, gooey blobs of spit were pouring from her nose and the corners of her mouth.

He was fucking my wife’s face, plain and simple.

I’m sure it didn’t go on long, but it felt like an eternity. Later, I wondered how Sharon could hold herself together in the face of such an onslaught, without retching or choking. But somehow she did; and at last he’d taken what he wanted from her. The moment when he finally pulled out—withdrawing the entirety of his thick, fleshy, scarlet-red phallus from her gaping mouth—was unbelievable and alarming, like some obscene magic trick. More and more and more of him kept appearing into view. 10 inches? 11 inches? 12? Just how deep in her esophagus had he been?

As soon as he was free, his shaft jerked, his testicles spasmed, and he commenced to hosing my wife down with his seed. One after another, he doused her with generous, elegant, iridescent arcs of semen. Freely the stuff rained down on her—over her hair, her eyelids, her cheeks, chin, tits. How he was able to store up enough sperm to soak my wife like this on a daily basis was a mystery to me. But the hard evidence of it was spewing before my eyes.

At last he was done. He tapped her on the shoulder, and she opened her eyes. Then, in what was apparently a well-established routine, Sharon parted her lips and stuck out her tongue—licking the fluids from along his length, and sucking the last drops of cum from the tip.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said, casting a sly glance in my direction. “Now we can see about those atmospheric settings.”

That night, I didn’t want to talk to Sharon, and lay down facing the wall. Her voice was plaintive in my ear. “You know I didn’t want that, right? I did it for us—to keep us alive.”

My response sounded sullen and childish. “You never offered to take me deep like that.”

This seemed to catch her off-guard, and it was a moment or two before she responded. “I mean ... it’s something I can do. But, it’s not something I really like doing all that much ... Should I—do you want me to do that for you now?”

“No, I just want to sleep.”

Fortunately, I didn’t have to endure that particular horror-show again. For a while longer, they continued getting up to whatever they were getting up to; while I spent long hours wandering the red planet alone. Just me and my morbid thoughts.

Then one day, when I entered the Hab, I found that the air was thick, and the oxygen alarm was sounding off again. “What the hell?” I demanded of Andy, who was slouched at the console in his typical pose. “After all this, you’re just gonna screw us over?!”

He shot me a look that was mildly aggrieved. “Hey man, I’ve done exactly what I said I would. Ask your wife about it. Talk some sense into her. She’s sulking in the closet.”

Sure enough, I found Sharon curled up on the mattress in our berth. “He reneged on the deal, eh?” I asked with a hint of smugness. “I told you we couldn’t trust him.”

She rolled over and looked at me. “More like he renegotiated the terms—unilaterally. He says oral sex isn’t enough anymore. He won’t reset the system unless I have intercourse with him.”

“And, you...? What did you...?” I asked, feeling a stab of apprehension in my chest.

“I decided it was time to call his bluff. See if he’d really let us all suffocate. So ... here we are.”

I sat down beside her, feeling more peace than I had in a long while. “Good. That’s it then. Either he backs down or we die. I’m ok with that. One way or another, we’re done with him.”

Sharon cocked an eyebrow at me. “Um—I, for one, don’t have a death wish. All that between him and me happened yesterday. And today the alarm’s been going off non-stop. My head’s pounding, and my brain’s already getting fuzzy. I’m starting to believe he’ll go through with it.”

“Let him,” I said, still feeling zen. “We knew this was a dangerous mission. At least then we’ll go out with some dignity.”

She looked disgusted with me. “You call this dignity? Honestly, it’d be pretty damn stupid for either of us to die on account of his sick libido and your possessiveness. And nor do I intend for that to happen. At some point, I’ll have to do what he wants.”

The sensation of calm dissipated as quickly as it had come, and my heart stopped. “No. I won’t let you.”

She sighed. “Graeme, I love you dearly, but you don’t own my body. At the end of the day, I’ll do what I think is best for us. For both of us.”

“Be realistic. We’re going to die no matter what happens. He’s never going to give us the password. When he goes, we go.”

“Yeah...,” she said thoughtfully, “I said the same thing to him. He told me he wants to enjoy himself these last few weeks. But, when he’s close to the end, he’ll give us the password, stroll out the airlock, and we’ll never see him again. You know, die on his own terms.”

“Sure he will...”

“I don’t have a crystal ball Graeme, but neither do you. The guy’s mind is a nasty mess. But there are still bits and pieces of humanity in there. If there’s a chance to be had, then I think it’s worth taking. And it’s my call to make.”

That night, we barely slept. I don’t think Sharon drifted off at all, for fear of never waking up again.

At one point, I seriously considered driving the hauler into our oxygen tanks. Poof, in a few minutes, or hours at most, this nightmare would be over. We’d all be dead. Andy would be dead. I’d be dead. And ... and Sharon would be dead.

And there, I hit that damned roadblock again. When it came right down to it, I wasn’t willing to do a thing I knew would seal my wife’s death sentence. I couldn’t.

By the next morning, we’d all descended into a leaden stupor, lolling around the Hab, barely able to move or think, while the warnings droned on in endless clamor.

Finally around noon, consciousness fading fast, my wife roused herself with a heroic effort of will, and shambled over to Andy. The man was slumped in his command chair, head nodding to chest. Sharon screamed in his ear ... pounded his shoulder with her fist ... but he didn’t stir. Becoming frantic, she raked her fingernails across his bare back, scraping bloody tracks. Pain brought him groggily to his senses.

“You win,” she rasped—in a lifeless tone that signaled utter exhaustion, and abject surrender.

He accepted her defeat with a watery smirk. Then, he turned to the console—even now remembering to shield his fingers from view. After fumbling the commands a few times, he managed to fix the settings; and the alarm soon fell silent.

For an interval, the three of us sprawled there, drinking in the sweetening air, waiting for it to restore us. We were all drained, but Sharon looked particularly shattered. I couldn’t blame her—along with the physical effects of the poisoned atmosphere, she’d been carrying an immense weight of stress, and probably hadn’t slept in two days. Then, add to all that, the daunting thing she’d just agreed to? It was hardly a wonder if her mind sought refuge in oblivion.

After an hour or so, though, Andy rose. I don’t know where he got the strength; I still had all the vigor of overcooked linguini. Maybe it was his desperate eagerness to get inside a woman’s vagina after long absence. Or maybe it was something more—a strange effect of his tumor, perhaps, that spurred him to burn incandescently in the short time he had left. But however it was, I found myself watching in useless bewilderment as he lifted up from his chair and staggered over to my wife. Grabbing her arm, he dragged her from her seat and hauled her to the table where we ate our meals. “Bend over.”

Sharon’s legs were unsteady, and she appeared grateful for any surface to lean on. Planting forearms on the tabletop, and setting feet apart in a solid stance, she allowed her head to droop with weariness. In her confusion, I don’t think the woman even grasped how vulnerable this made her. I did though: it was painfully visible from where I sat. Posed naked that way, her pliant labia sprang apart easily, so that not only her asshole was exposed, but also her glistening inner pleats, her clit, and—nestled at the center of it all—the shadowy entrance to her reproductive tract. Andy’s eyes shone greedily at the sight.

I could have left. Could have crawled away to my cupboard on hands and knees, if nothing else. So why didn’t I? I still wonder about that, and sometimes wish bitterly that I had. But I didn’t. Maybe it would have felt too much like abandoning Sharon to her fate. Or maybe it would have seemed spineless to sneak off that way—as if the macho thing was to sit there and pretend it didn’t affect me. I really don’t know what was going on in my head at that moment. But like a deer trapped in the headlights, I stayed and witnessed everything.

Andy was already very erect. (Indeed, ever since Sharon first stripped for him, he’d been hard most of the time.) Spitting copiously on his hands, he stroked that sequoia-like spear of his to lubricate it. Next, without ceremony, he positioned the fat, springy head against my wife’s vaginal ring, and edged forward. For one fleeting moment, she held him there—his mounting pressure offset by her natural resistance. Then, with a gentle pop, Sharon’s modesty was vanquished. The man was inside her.

At the electric jolt of that first probing incursion, her body jerked in surprise, and a gasp escaped her parted lips. Raising her head, the woman gazed over at me with a mystified, questioning expression. It was as if, with her mind still clouded by oxygen deprivation and fatigue, she didn’t fully get what was happening. As if she couldn’t quite understand where these new sensations were coming from, and thought I was somehow responsible for them, or could explain them to her. But I had nothing to offer.