Chapter 5

Ken arrived home a few minutes after eight that morning. He was weary from working a shift on a night he hadn't been expecting it but looking forward to the extra thousand dollars it would add to his next paycheck. The house was quiet when he entered it, the blinds all pulled, the lights still out. Hannah was wandering around, tennis ball in mouth, wiggling in the way she wiggled when she really had to pee.

"Hey, Hannah," Ken greeted her, giving a quick pat on the head and then heading for the back door. "Mommy didn't let you out this morning? What's up with that?"

Hannah whined out a few syllables that managed to convey just what she thought was up with that. Ken opened the door and she shot out in a flash.

While Hannah was taking care of her business out behind the house, Ken walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. As he passed the garbage can he saw two empty wine bottles in it. When he reached the sink he saw two dirty wine glasses. The dark house and the absence of Meghan began to make sense. Meghan had told him that she was going to ask Jo to catch the late showing of that chick flick she'd wanted to see. Apparently Jo had taken her up on it. They must have come back here and pounded down a couple of bottles of wine after the movie. He hoped Jo had been all right to drive home. Having a DUI on your record was something that made the FAA take a hard look at you when it came time to renew your flight certification.

He drank his water and then let Hannah back inside. After tossing her tennis ball for her a few times he went upstairs to the bedroom. The room was cool from the air conditioner that Meghan kept set at seventy degrees in the summer and very dim since the blinds were all tightly shut. Meghan was in the bed, under the covers, sleeping soundly on her left side, just her head sticking out.

He undressed to his underwear and dropped his clothes into the laundry hamper. After relieving himself, washing his hands and brushing his teeth, he pulled back the covers to climb in next to her. He saw that she was nude, which made him raise his eyebrows a bit. Meghan had no standard sleeping attire to speak of. What she wore (or didn't wear) depended on what circumstances had existed at the time she went to bed. When he came home in the morning after a flight she was typically either in panties and a bra; which meant she had come home from work, taken off the outer clothing, and then gotten into bed; or a t-shirt and panties; which meant she had been lounging around in sweats before retiring and had taken off the bottoms to get into bed. She did sleep nude at times, but usually only on nights he was home with her. If she did sleep nude while he was flying, it usually meant...

He leaned forward and looked over the top of her, to the floor between her side of the bed and the wall. Sure enough, a couple of the self-pleasure devices from her collection were lying down there. There was an eight-inch vibrator with an adjustable motor and something called a butterfly, which she used to stimulate her clitoris.

I guess it must've been as good of a movie as she was hoping, he thought with a smile.

He climbed into the bed and snuggled against her, so his chest was pushing against her bare back. Her body was warm and soft, just the way he liked her body to be when he came home after a night flight. Her hair smelled of chlorine, telling him she'd been in the pool at some point. The rest of her smelled like sexual musk, telling him she had really gone to town on herself. He put his right arm around her, his fingers finding their way to her smooth belly. She cooed a little and put her hand atop his, her fingers stroking his gently. She turned her head and gave him a brief kiss. Her breath smelled faintly of alcohol.

"Good morning," she said sleepily. "What time is it?"

"A little past eight," he told her. "Late night with Jo?"

"Yeah," she mumbled. "We had some wine after the movie."

"I saw that," he said. "It looks like you entertained yourself a little after she left?"

Meghan giggled. "Oops," she said. "Guess I forgot to pick up my toys."

"You know you leave them out on purpose to get me horny," he accused, his hand stroking a little lower on her stomach now, although not quite with serious intent.

"Maybe," she said coyly. "Did it work?"

"Maybe," he said. "But how about we stay in the holding pattern for a little bit first? I'm kinda tired right now."

She yawned. "Okay," she said, amicably enough.

In truth, had she tried just a little bit, she would have been able to bring up his interest very quickly. Finding her nude and seeing the toys and feeling her sexy body against his while smelling her musk was already starting to have an effect. But she didn't try. She yawned a few more times, asked him if he'd let Hannah out, and then drifted back to sleep. Ken caressed her tummy gently and listened to her breathing. Soon, he drifted off as well.

The sound of the main riff of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water woke him some time later. It was the ringer on his cellular phone. It was sitting on the night stand next to the bed. He opened his eyes and saw the light in the room had brightened considerably. That meant it was at least eleven o'clock, late enough for the sun to make it to this side of the house.

"Oh god," Meghan moaned next to him. "Shut that thing off or answer it or something."

He reached over and picked up the phone, flipping it open and putting it to his ear. "Hello," he grunted into it.

"Hi," an insanely chipper female voice said in his ear. "This is Pepsi from the Marshall Medical Group Family Practice Clinic. Could I speak with Ken Patterson, please?"

Pepsi? Ken thought sourly. Is that what she said her name was? Who in the hell names their kid Pepsi? "Uh ... this is Ken," he said.

"Hi, Ken," she said warmly, as if they'd known each other for years. "I have a note here from Doctor Adrial that he'd like to see you as soon as possible regarding the latest blood work you had done."

Ken blinked a few times, his groggy mind still trying to comprehend what she was talking about. Blood work. Oh yes. He had had a routine lab draw last week. Dr. Adrial was his primary care physician. If he wanted him to come in for an appointment as a result of the labs it must mean something about them was amiss. But what? "Uh ... sure, right," he told Pepsi. "Do you know what it was about the blood work that was concerning?"

"I don't have that information here in front of me," she said. "So ... can I schedule you to come in? What day would be convenient for you?"

While he discussed what day would be convenient for him, Meghan grunted a few times and rolled out of bed. Naked, she padded over to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet without bothering to shut the door. A moment later the sound of her urinating reached Ken's ears. By the time he set the appointment and confirmed it twice verbally, she had finished her business, wiped, flushed, and washed her hands.

"What was that all about?" she asked, still naked, as she picked up her toothbrush and squirted some toothpaste on it.

"Doctor's office," he said nonchalantly. "They want me to come in and talk about the blood draw I had last week."

As he had known it would, her face took on an immediate look of worry. "Why?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"Not sure," he asked. "Probably nothing."

"Did you ask?" she asked, her tone half-accusatory.

"I did," he said. "Pepsi the receptionist didn't know anything except she was supposed to call me and make an appointment."

"Well when do you go in?" she asked.

"Next Thursday at ten."

"Thursday?" she nearly screeched. "That long?"

"They didn't have anything on Monday," he told her patiently. "And I fly Monday and Tuesday nights. Thursday is the first day I can come in where I won't be exhausted from being up all night."

"Well ... couldn't you have taken a flight off and gone in sooner? You just had an overtime flight. We could have absorbed it."

"Hon, there's no reason for me to do that," he said. "Don't worry. It's probably just my cholesterol level and he wants to try to talk me into those pills again." Dr. Adrial had, in fact, been trying to get Ken and Meghan both to start taking a statin drug for the past two years despite the fact that their cholesterol levels were only borderline high. Meghan, who was a journalist with a journalist's drive for as much information as possible, had done enough research on pharmaceuticals in general and statins in particular to know that; A) their doctor was most likely getting commissions by the pharmaceutical industry for each statin prescription he wrote, so, therefore it was in his best interest to write as many as possible, and; B) statin drugs, while they did lower cholesterol levels, were not quite as benign as the public was led to believe; they were very hard on the liver, an organ that was just as important as the heart when it came to living to a ripe old age.

"Maybe," Meghan said slowly. "Your weight was down last week, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, I was down five pounds since my last appointment."

"So wouldn't that bring down your cholesterol?"

"Not necessarily," he said. "Look, hon, I'll find out what the deal is next Thursday and you will be the first one I tell. There's no sense worrying about it now."

"Yeah ... I know ... but..."

"No buts," he said. "We'll find out next week and that's that.

She looked like she had more to say, but she didn't. She simply nodded. "Okay," she said. "I'm sorry. I just worry about you."

"I know," he said. "And I appreciate it that you do. Now why don't you stick that toothbrush in your mouth and operate it? And once you're done with that you can come over here and collect your rain check from earlier."

She smiled. "Well ... if you insist."

"I insist," he said. "And when we're done, I'll go downstairs and make you some breakfast."

"Mmm," she said. "Bacon, sausage and eggs?"

He laughed. They did not even have bacon and sausage in the house. And the only eggs they had were the low cholesterol kind that came in a carton. "You bet," he told her. "Although they might taste a little like whole wheat pancakes with blueberries on them."

She frowned. "They always taste like that," she said.

He simply shrugged.

"Oh well," she said. "I guess I'll take what I can get."

"Isn't that the same thing you said when I asked you to marry me?" he asked.

She nodded seriously. "Pretty much," she said.

They laughed together for a moment. She then put the toothbrush in her mouth and operated it. As soon as she was done, she went and collected her rain check.

They ate in the breakfast nook, Ken wearing a pair of sweat shorts and a t-shirt, Meghan wearing her fuzzy yellow robe with nothing on beneath, Hannah lying beneath the table at their feet, waiting for any scraps to fall. When they were done, both pitched in and cleaned up the mess until the kitchen was its usual, sparkling self.

It was almost one o'clock in the afternoon when they finished. Meghan would have to start getting ready for work in another ninety minutes. It was already too late to go to the gym since they wouldn't have time to let their food digest a little first. Meghan suggested they go sit on the couch in the living room.

"You want to watch some TV?" Ken asked her once they were settled in. "I think there's a couple episodes of Smash Lab on the DVR we haven't watched."

"Maybe tomorrow," Meghan told him. "I think ... uh ... well ... there's something that you and I should talk about."

He looked at her face, seeing that she was nervous about something. He had caught a few vibes of this while they'd been eating and cleaning but he'd assumed it was only about his lab results. Now, he wasn't so sure that was what was bothering her at all. "Uh ... okay," he said. "Is something wrong?"

"Uh ... well, no, not really," she said softly. "It's just that..." She sighed. "I don't even know how to begin."

Now he was getting worried. "Babe, what is it?" he asked. "Did I do something ... you know ... to upset you?"

She shook her head. "No, not at all," she said. "There's just something about me ... something that I never told you."

"Something about you?" he asked, looking in her eyes, seeing shame, embarrassment, and ... something else there. Is she talking about... ? No, she couldn't be. She never talks about that. Unless...

"I wasn't trying to hide it from you," Meghan said, and then quickly backpedaled. "Uh ... well, actually I guess I was. I mean I know I was, but what I'm trying to say is that I hid this from everyone, not just you. I even hid it from myself for a big part of my life."

Everything suddenly clicked together in Ken's mind. The movie, the empty wine bottles, the smell of chlorine in Meghan's hair when he'd come home, her vibrator and butterfly on the floor. Despite the fact that he had just spent himself in her body less than forty minutes ago, he felt himself start to stiffen as the ramifications of this conversation started to hit him. "Meghan, hon," he said gently. "Are you talking about the fact that you like women?"

The look on her face was quite comical to behold. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened in shock. "You ... you ... you know about that?" she blabbered. "How? When? Who told you?"

He restrained himself from laughing at her, fearing it would be taken the wrong way. The last thing he wanted to do was trigger an argument right now. He had been waiting for years to have this conversation with her. "Sweetie," he said, "nobody told me anything and I certainly don't know any details, but ... well ... I live with you and I love you. We share a bed together, we share a bank account, we share a computer, we see each other going to the bathroom and doing everything else. We're on intimate terms with each other, connected at a little more than the physical level and have been for more than eleven years now. We finish each other's sentences. We know what each other is thinking most of the time just with a single look. Did you really think I didn't know that you have a thing for women?"

"Yes," she said in amazement. "I did. But ... but... how did you know?"

"You're kidding right?" he asked.

"No," she said. "I've always been so careful ... so ... so ... it's something I always kept as far back in my mind as I could."

This time he couldn't help letting a little chuckle escape.

"What?" she demanded.

"You didn't keep it as far back as you think," he said. "Not only do I know that you like women, I know that it is their breasts that you are most fascinated with, particularly ... well..." He had a second thought about revealing too much about what he knew. "Never mind the particularly."

"No," she said. "What were you going to say?"

"Uh ... well ... you seem to have a particular attraction to breasts that are ... well ... lactating."

Meghan's mouth dropped open again. Her face flushed as bright red as Ken had ever seen it flush. "Oh my God," she said, appalled. "How ... how ... what makes you think..." She shook her head. "Oh sweet Mary, Mother of God. How do you know this, Ken? How?"

"Meghan," he said. "Do I like guys?"

"What?"

"Do I like guys? Do you think I'd like to suck some guy's dick some day, just to see what it's like?"

She looked shocked by the very suggestion. "No!" she said. "I don't!"

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Of course I'm sure!" she said.

"Okay," he said. "And do I like to look at other women?"

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling for a second. "Duh!" she said. "If I was the jealous type I would've kicked your ass a thousand times by now."

"Uh huh," he said. "And what kind of other women do I like to look at?"

"Why are you asking me this?" she said a little sharply. "I know you look at other women and it doesn't really bother me that much, but it does bother me a little."

"I know it does, hon," he said. "But play along with me for another minute or so. What kind of women, other than you—who is the most beautiful woman on Earth in my eyes—do I like to look at?"

She huffed out a breath but answered his question. "You like natural blondes and natural redheads," she said. "Pretty ones but not gorgeous ones. You like nice legs most of all. Your eyeballs nearly fall out of your head whenever a girl with really nice legs walks by."

"All true," he confirmed. "And what kind of girls don't I like?"

She had to think on this one for a few seconds, but finally said: "You don't like women with skinny legs, overly thin or overly fat women, women with fake boobs no matter how good of a job was done, trashy women, or any woman who flaunts her sexuality, whether she's actually pretty or not."

"Again, all true," Ken said. "And now for the big question. How do you know this about me? How do you know that I'm not secretly lusting after another dude? How do you know I like blondes and redheads and don't like skinny or trashy or fake chicks?"

"Because I can see what catches your attention when we're out," she said. "You guys always think you're being smooth about it when you check out another woman, but women can always tell. I also see the porn you have on the computer. And ... and..." Realization suddenly hit her. "Wait a minute," she said. "Are you saying that you know because ... you see me doing this too?"

"Bingo," he said, touching the tip of her nose with his finger. "As long as I've known you, a nice set of tits has always attracted your attention. The size doesn't seem to matter but the general aesthetic shape and method of display does. Girls in loose-fitting clothes, you don't even glance at them. Girls in short skirts, even if their legs are magnificent, you won't even see them. Girls in tight shirts, tight sweaters, sports bras, halters, or tube tops, however, your interest is proportionate to the amount of jiggle and the niceness of the shape. You, like me, however, have no positive interest in fake boobs, although you do have a contemptuous negative interest in them."

Meghan was amazed. "Is it that obvious?"

He nodded. "Yes," he said. "It is. And the one thing that always catches your attention, usually to the point of distraction, where you will actually stop talking mid-sentence, where you will actually swerve if you're driving, is when you see a pretty woman with big, full boobs and a small baby nearby, whether in her arms or in a stroller. And when you actually see a woman breast feeding a baby ... well, you kind of blank out everything else around you and your eyes light up like a pinball machine."

Meghan was looking at the carpet now, her finger twirling her wedding ring around in a circle. "Wow," she said quietly. "I didn't know I was doing that."

He leaned closer to her and put his arm around her, pulling her against him. "Hon," he said. "This doesn't offend me."

"It ... it doesn't?"

He shook his head. "No. On the contrary. I find it quite arousing to think that you like women. I've tried to get you to talk about this before but you've always changed the subject as fast as you possibly could."

"You really think it's arousing?" she asked, searching his face for signs of deceit.

"Yeah," he said, taking her hand in his. "I really do." He put her hand on the bulge of his erection beneath his sweat shorts. "See?"

"Wow," she said, giving him a few soft squeezes. "You really do."

Reluctantly, he pulled her hand away from him and rested it on his leg instead. "So now that we have that established," he told her. "How about we talk about what prompted this confession of yours?"

She nodded slowly, her eyes dropping back to the carpet, her free hand picking up the end of her robe tie and twirling it. "Something ... well ... happened between me and Jo last night," she said.

He swallowed, feeling an extra burst of blood go shooting to his penis, feeling a small jolt of adrenaline go shooting through the rest of his body. Images flashed before him, images of Jo and Meghan naked in the pool, touching each other, kissing each other; images that were both erotic and slightly worrisome because he didn't know what they meant just yet. "Did you and she ... uh..."

Meghan shook her head strenuously. "No!" she said forcefully. "Not what you're thinking! We didn't do anything to ... to each other."

Ken was both relieved and disappointed—although, truth be known, mostly disappointed. "Then what did you do?" he asked her.

"We swam naked together," she said, and then, as if he needed clarification of this: "In the pool."

He nodded. "Is that all you did?"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "We also talked. And then the talk turned sexy and we got kind of turned on. I told her I was attracted to her. Very attracted to her. And she told me that she was attracted to me."

"Wow," Ken said, his hand dropping to his own thigh now, very near his erection. One of the prevailing rumors among the guys at Early Bird was that Jo was a lesbian but Ken had never believed it for a minute. In the first place, he knew that guys started such rumors when all of them were consistently shot down by a particular woman, as every guy at Early Bird had been shot down by Jo. In the second place, he remembered how aggressively Jo had pursued him when they first started working together—a pursuit that had toned down considerably after that night she'd first met Meghan. And now here was Meghan telling him that Jo had admitted an attraction to her. Were the rumors correct after all?

"And then," Meghan went on, "we didn't touch each other but ... well ... we touched ourselves."

"You touched yourselves?"

She nodded, her eyes no longer quite as embarrassed. They were now showing arousal of her own. "Yeah," she said a little breathlessly. "We touched our ... ourselves... there. We played with ourselves in front of each other out there on the steps of the pool. We did it until we both came."

Ken swallowed again as the image burned itself on his brain. "Oh my God," he almost moaned. He moved his fingers to his erection and stroked it up and down a few times. He couldn't help himself.

His motion did not go unnoticed by Meghan. "This really does turn you on, doesn't it?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "It really does. What ... uh ... what exactly were you two talking about?"

Meghan's hand crept inside the front of her robe and she massaged her left breast. She took a few breaths, as if remembering that this was a serious conversation, and pulled the hand back out. This, however, left the robe gaping open and her left breast exposed to Ken's gaze. "I was telling her about ... well ... some things I'd done with other girls when I was younger," she told him.

Ken licked his lips. A little shudder passed through him. "Some ... some things you'd done with other girls?"

"It was long before we were married," she said quickly. "Before we even knew each other, in fact. I was still in high school."

In high school! Oh Jesus Christ. He had seen pictures of his wife when she was a teen. She had been as beautiful then as she was now but she always looked so prim and proper in those shots, so innocent. Not that she looked corrupt or used now, but in every picture from her teen years she was dressed in the conservative clothing of a young Catholic girl who had yet to be exposed to the realities of the world. The thought that she had been doing things with other girls back then was so blackly exciting ... The only thing that kept him from jumping on her right now and driving his erection into her body was that he wanted... needed to hear the rest of her confession. "Tell me," he told her hungrily. "Tell me what you did."

"Ken," she said, mortified. "It's embarrassing."

"Meghan," he said, not quite sanely, "you can't tell your husband you did things with other girls when you were a teen and then not tell him what it was that you did."

"Why not?" she asked.

"You just can't," he told her. "It's the law!"

"It is not the law," she said, giggling.

"It should be," he said. "Come on, babe. Give it up."

She sighed. "It wasn't really all that," she said.

"There's no such thing as a story about your wife and another girl doing anything sexual together that isn't all that," he said. "So let's hear it. If you can tell it to Jo, you can tell it to me, can't you?"

"Jo was different," Meghan said. "She likes girls too."

"Well so do I," Ken reminded her.

Meghan sighed, though it wasn't a bored or upset sigh. "This conversation is definitely not going like I planned," she said. "Okay, I'll give you the abridged version."

"Aww," he complained.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm just sparing the background details." She swallowed. "You already know the first girl."

"I do?"

She nodded. "My cousin Catherine."

"Catherine?" he said, astounded. "The one who sends us all of that anti-gay propaganda on our email?"

Meghan smiled wickedly. "One and the same," she said. "Only she wasn't three hundred pounds then. She was cute and had big round boobies and was a little on the wild side."

"Wow," he said. He had seen pictures of Catherine as a teen so it only took him a moment to shift his mental picture from the adult version to the earlier model. "What did you do with her?"

"It wasn't all that much," Meghan insisted. "It was when we were fifteen and my family went to Fort Wayne to visit them. Cathy and I shared her bedroom while we were there. One night we were talking about French kissing and I told her I'd never done it before so she ... well ... she offered to show me how."

"How to French kiss?"

"Yeah," Meghan said. "And she did. We sat on her bed and put our tongues in each other's mouth for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then we went to bed."

"That's it?" he said.

"Well ... that night," she said. "The next night, she asked me if I wanted to practice kissing some more."

"And?"

"And I did," Meghan said softly.

"What happened then?" he asked.

She gave him the same basic story as she'd given Jo the night before, although with considerably less detail about the emotions and feelings involved. By the time she reached the end, Ken's hand was once more squeezing his erection and Meghan's legs had fallen open to the point he could see up the hem of her dress to her inner thighs.

"That is hot, baby," Ken told her. "I'll never look at Catherine quite the same again."

"Don't you go mentioning anything about that to her," Meghan warned. "She's probably blocked it completely out of her mind."

"Spoilsport," Ken said with a chuckle. He then turned more serious. "Is that when you and Jo started touching yourselves?"

"No," Meghan said. "It was during my story of the second time I ... uh ... did something with a girl. The last time I did something."

"Let's hear it," he said.

She didn't bother putting up a protest this time. "Her name was Mrs. Banion. She was a twenty-eight year old mother from the church. I used to babysit for her and her husband when they went bowling on Friday nights."

"A married woman?" Ken said, shuddering again.

"Yeah," Meghan said, her legs open wider now, her fingers creeping up her thigh toward the junction. It was obvious that the effect her stories were having on Ken was turning her on. "A married woman ... with a baby."

"A baby?" Ken said. "You mean..."

Meghan nodded. "Yeah," she said. "A baby that she was breastfeeding."

Ken gave up all pretense of surreptitiously touching himself. He kicked off his sweat shorts and bared his throbbing erection.

"Oh yes, baby," Meghan said, lying back on the couch and throwing her robe open. "Come here. Sit on my tummy and play with yourself while I tell you the story. But don't come until I tell you to."

Ken threw off his shirt and straddled Meghan's body, his butt resting just above her pubis, his erection pointing toward her breasts. He stroked himself slowly but firmly as she told of Mrs. Banion and her wonderful mommy boobs. Meghan played with herself as well, reaching around him and sliding her own fingers through her slippery folds. As had been the case with Jo ten hours before, it was Mrs. Banion's words during the final encounter—'come on, little Meghan; it's time to get some num-nums from Mommy'—that forcibly set the machinery of orgasm into gear for both of them.

"Oh god, Meg," Ken cried as he heard this. His body started to tremble, his hips to involuntarily thrust back and forth.

And as Meghan breathlessly described how her lips closed around Mrs. Banion's nipple, how the milk squirted into her mouth and overflowed, how it ran down her neck because the other breast was leaking on her, Ken cried out and began to squirt his hot semen all over her heaving breasts, drenching her turgid nipples and splattering her spasming tummy. Meghan, feeling this, seeing it, came as well, her fingers rubbing furiously between her legs, her body jerking up and down beneath him and nearly throwing him off.