Chapter 14

Tuesday didn't start any better for the Cantrells; Jean got up and went off early, and Heather got a ride from Amy -- and from what I could see, they avoided each other. Michael wandered over around ten -- and went back for a while to clean house after a short grilling by me. He was back by eleven-thirty, though, playing video games in the basement with Pete.

Kate and Karen cleaned the house; at the current rate, I was going to have to let go of the maid. Sending her next door was an option, but probably not a viable one. Afterwards, Kate went out to tan -- and dispensed with her suit, I was to discover later.

My contractor showed up and we discussed subdividing the basement for Pete. I banished Karen to the master suite for the initial tour, but when we sat down to draw plans at the kitchen table, I needed a hostess. "Karen!"

"Master?" Karen stuck her head around the door. Mike Rafferty glanced up at the odd response, but she wasn't on display -- yet.

"Bring coffee," I directed. She questioned me with her eyes and I nodded, so she came on into the kitchen, sweeping past to go to the cupboard and the coffee pot.

Mike missed it; he was drawing on a sheet of quadrille paper. When she stood beside him, place his cup, and asked, brightly, "Sugar? Cream?" his first flickering glance took in her furburger.

"Jeezus!" Mike did a double-take, then rolled his eyes up to take in the rest of Karen. Now, Karen is plump, but that doesn't mean she's a dumper, big ass or no big ass. I'd give her a six or a seven, anyway -- and she's CLEARLY fuckable for most guys on first glance! "Things have changed some around here!"

"You could say that," I agreed. "I spend a lot of time asshole deep in teenyboppers these days, for one thing." I pretended to be totally blasé about Karen.

"Uh ... huh..." Mike was busy mapping Karen's big tits with his eyeballs. I don't think he really heard me.

"Just bring them to the table," I told Karen. "Mike may want you to stir his coffee, though -- I'm thinking he's a tit man."

Karen collected the sugar bowl from the cupboard and the half and half from the refrigerator. "Sorry, it comes from a box," she apologized, playing with him.

Mike didn't know WHAT to say! He looked from her to me and back. "What's going on?"

"I've taken on a Chinese obligation," I told him. "I figured I might as well enjoy it, so..." I waved at Karen's state.

"What is she? You getting married or something?" Mike asked me. Then, belatedly realizing that he was talking about Karen as if she wasn't there, he turned to her, "What are you? What's all this?"

Karen glanced at me; I waved at her and sat back to see how far she would go. She recognized the test. "I'm property. Cletus owns me."

"What?" Mike's head swiveled between her and me. "Are there any more of you on the market?"

Karen dimpled, but I warned him, "Be careful! She's high-maintenance!"

"Looks like you're saving a bundle on clothes!" Mike observed.

"Yeah, but I'm having my house remodeled..."

Mike snorted. "Seriously -- what's up?"

"Karen has unique needs," I told him. "I offered to help her with them and help her family, in return for ... personal service. That kind of thing is actually part of handling her needs."

"So she waits on you hand and foot?" Mike asked. "Why can't I find a woman like that?"

I chuckled. "It isn't all hearts and flowers."

"It never is!"

"I nodded agreement. "You married, Mike?"

"Not this week," he replied. "The cost of alimony being what it is, I won't be again, unless I can find a woman who will support me." He eyed Karen. "Given what I'm seeing, maybe that IS possible..."

"Well, having failed at marriage on multiple occasions, I just can't recommend it," I replied, "but there ARE alternatives. How long since you've been laid?"

"Long enough," Mike replied. "Couple of weeks." His eyes shifted back to Karen.

"Want any?" I asked.

Mike was incredulous. "You shitting me?"

I looked at Karen; she answered, "No -- he isn't." She knelt and went to work on Mike's zipper. Mike eyed me, open-mouthed.

"Consider it a fringe benefit of the job. We'll keep it under the table." I chuckled at the joke; Mike was too busy being surprised. Karen got his jeans and boxers down and sucked in his uncut joint. "You aren't gonna give her anything, are you? Are you clean?"

"Yeah, I'm good," Mike gasped.

"Well, more than that, you use a rubber, anyway, just in case," I told him. "Karen, give the man anything he wants. Rubbers are in the nightstand if you need them." I sat nonchalantly sipping coffee while Mike sat frozen, trying to figure out what to do with his hands while Karen bobbed and slurped on his meat. I watched her run her tongue under his foreskin -- and I watched his cock grow past it while he gasped and thrashed in his chair. He was a goner in less than ninety seconds; Karen sucked in his juice and showed him a mouthful of it before swallowing.

Mike was more than impressed. "Jeezus!" he gasped, shifting his glance from her to me and back. Settling on me, he said, "I had no idea that you were into this kind of thing..."

"What kind of thing?" I asked.

"Well, I dunno. Must be blackmail ... What have you got on her that she does this kind of thing?"

I was a little nonplussed. I turned a bemused glance on Karen, and she ventured, "Nothing like that -- Cletus just ... understands me. He sees to my needs."

Mike absorbed this. "What does she need? Drugs?"

I shook my head, chuckling. "Well, maybe. Adrenaline, certain pheromones, some endorphins -- nothing illegal or anything. As a matter of fact, I don't actually SUPPLY her with any of that -- I just kind of give her access to her own supply."

"I'm lost," Mike grunted.

"She's a sex junkie, Mike," I explained. "She gets high on sex and excitement. Oh, and she's a submissive -- which means she gets off on putting her life in someone else's hands."

"Shit, where do I get one of those?" Mike erupted.

"It isn't as easy as it sounds," I told him. "You have to spend a certain amount of your time looking for new ways to make her happy. Things tend to escalate."

"Uh huh." Mike didn't believe a word.

"Well, whatever," I muttered. "About the basement -- do you think we can put a bathroom down there?"

"Huh?" Mike changed up -- which took a moment. "You would have to pump up to the sewer -- it would cost a bit, but there are ways." He flicked a glance at Karen, expecting her to disappear in a puff of smoke or something. I snapped my fingers and she came around the table to kneel beside me on my right -- which I discovered was mildly inconvenient, so I had her move to my left so I could maul a tit while pointing at Mike's drawings. Poor Mike was seriously distracted.

"What about an addition? Any shot?" I asked.

"Where?"

"Dunno. A bump out going out back for a bedroom -- or maybe go up?"

"Shit, I dunno. Let's take a look..." Mike got up and threw open the slider. I followed him through -- and ran into him as he stopped dead in his tracks. "HO LEE SHIT!"

I peered around him; Kate was laid out on a lounger in the sun, tits up, without a stitch on. She didn't move, despite Mike's eruption. "Karen!" I called, "Check your daughter -- she's asleep out here and I bet if we don't do something she's gonna have sunburned nipples!"

Karen whipped around me and shook Kate. "Honey, are you wearing sunblock?"

"Huh? No..." Kate looked around and spied Mike. "Oops!" She covered her tits.

"Too late, Hon," I chuckled.

"Jeezus, Cletus!" Mike husked. "I can't send a team out to work here -- they'd never do a fucking thing except sit and ogle!"

"We'll work out something," I assured him. "What do you think?"

Mike glanced around. "Nah. A surface addition would have to come off the garage -- which would be fucked up. Otherwise, it would screw up the deck or the pool -- or both." He walked out a bit. "Maybe we could jack up the roof and stick a second floor under some or all of it. It would be a nasty fucking job and it would cost an arm and both legs -- easier to buy a new place."

"I like this one, so I guess we'll go with what we've got," I hazarded.

"Maybe the front?" Mike wondered. We walked around the Cantrell side, around my garage to the front. Mike eyeballed it. "Nah. Not on this lot. Oh, maybe, if you forced it, down there at the end, but it would make the front of the place ugly."

"Okay, we'll stick to underground." We went back inside via the front door.

"You know, you've got an office and a TV room -- those are bedrooms, most places," Mike observed.

"Yeah..." I didn't have to like it.

Mike eyeballed the living room. "Use this for much?"

"No."

He stuck his head around the wall and looked at the TV room. "Pretty good sized..."

"What are you thinking?"

"Gimme a sec." He sauntered down the hall and stuck his nose in my office. "Uh huh. If I took closet space out of here and stole five feet from the TV room and five feet from the living room, I could squeeze in a bedroom."

I frowned. "What about load-bearing walls?"

"They're in the hallway."

Serious business?" I started scoping where the open wall of the living room would be moved to. The area was open to the kitchen/dining area already...

"Sure. It would sort of formalize the dining area. We could put in an open door facing to sort of define it where the new living room wall goes through -- right now, it's just open. That would shift the TV room several feet, but it's fifteen feet long and you've just got a couch and a couple of chairs in there ... Do you use the closet in that office?"

"Well, to stash junk," I admitted.

"If we open it onto the other side you could keep some if you wanted," Mike opined. "The resulting room wouldn't be huge, but it would meet HUD and FHA definitions of a bedroom..."

"What about windows?" I asked.

"Yeah ... Let's go back out front." Mike scooped up his quadrille pad.

Ten minutes later, we had a front elevation designed with the windows shifted. The TV room lost it's window, but having one just meant you had to put in heavy drapes to keep sunlight from blasting the TV. We decided to do the living room wall that was shared with the TV room on a slant that opened it up to the dining area and use the far side of the restriction to reposition the entertainment center and focus it from the wider seating area. That bought us another foot or two of what would have been dead space -- and even a small coat closet in the living room next to the door where the sharp corner would have wasted space in the TV room. "I'll get the architect in," Mike advised me as he got ready to leave, "But I think this will work."

"Price?" I asked.

"Downstairs, five thousand, including all the bath bullshit. Upstairs ... Fifteen to twenty. Depends upon how much we'll just have to rip out."

"How long?"

"A week of days downstairs, what with permits and plumbers and electricians and shit," Mike estimated. "Might take ten days to make the schedule work. Upstairs there isn't a bath involved, so another week -- maybe less. But it'll be dirty and ugly and you won't want to be here."

"We'll save the upstairs until the temps come down," I opined. "Move on the basement soonest."

"Okay." Mike glanced around. "About the women..."

"If they get in the way, fuck 'em," I replied, grinning. "Literally."

Mike grinned back. "I'm gonna spend a lot of time supervising."

"Don't bill me for it!"

"Doesn't seem like I'll have to!" He got in his pickup and left.

As I turned to head back inside, I noticed my other neighbor, Ed Grover, bearing down on me. "Uh, Cletus, can I have a word with you?"

I shrugged. "Sure."

"Look, uh, we've noticed that things have gotten a little wild and wooly at your place..." he said, diffidently.

"Oh?" I flicked a glance at Ed's house and didn't see anything, but Ed wasn't the nosy one. "Like what?"

"Well, you having sex outdoors..."

"You're just jealous," I grinned. "If you want a piece, why don't you ask, rather than pretending you don't like to look at it?"

"What? Cletus -- I'm married!" Ed got distinctly nervous.

"That's not always a problem," I replied blandly. "You can just fail to mention it to the little woman -- or you can get permission, or at least forgiveness -- or sometimes, the little woman wants to play, too..."

That flushed Cindy, confirming my suspicions. She stuck her head out of the window and said, "Forget it, Edwin -- if he's going to be insulting, we'll just go to the police."

Now, I was pretty certain that Cynthia Grover was the queen over at her house, and Ed was just the prince consort -- that's why I suspected that he had puppet strings hanging off of him when he came up to me. But Cindy Grover wasn't queen in MY house, and some people need to be confronted directly. Ed might be a steer, but I am a bull -- and Cindy is just a heifer... "You do that, Cindy. When they come by we'll talk about how it is you can practice voyeurism over my privacy fence -- and how that makes me liable for activities that happen on my private property behind it."

Cindy jerked as if slapped. There was a woman naked in your front yard yesterday! That's pretty public!"

"She probably felt she had to upstage you running around in those translucent housedresses you wear when you're out walking Scooter," I replied blandly. Scooter is the Grover's pet beagle.

"Wh--what? They're not translucent!" Cindy gasped.

"No?" I retorted, "How come I know you wear thongs, then?" I turned to Ed. "Lucky you! I figured she was a sex kitten the first time I saw that ankle bracelet she wears..." I was teasing the shit out of him; I figure Ed didn't get shit -- and if he did, he paid in advance by slurping at Cindy's box until she was taken care of. But you have to HAVE a pussy and USE it to pussy-whip somebody, I guess...

Cindy was sputtering, trying to decide whether to deny wearing thongs or not, so I kept poking, chiding, "Come on, you're just jealous. You know, you can just compete directly -- you've got a nice rack." She stood there, gobbling, trying to decide whether to be pleased or insulted. "I'm not a member of your harem!" she ventured.