by Ben Boswell
The Surrogate Master
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Surrogate Master © 2014 by Ben Boswell
Edited by Summer Wright
Cover design by Kenny Wright
Cover image © Getty/iStockPhoto used under license
First digital edition electronically published by KW Publishing,
November 2014
First print edition published by KW Publishing, November 2014
Printed by CreateSpace, Charleston SC
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without explicit written permission of the copyright holder.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
PREFACE
This is one of those books that began for me with a single image in my head. I don’t want to give away what it was since it reveals a major plot point, but the process of writing this book was basically about constructing a plausible sequence of events to lead up to that image, and then grappling with the consequences of the situation when it happens. That’s quite different for me. Most of my books and stories start with a beginning, a set-up, a premise. Here I had to invent a whole story about reaching a particular point. It felt, at times, like trying to hit a bullseye while riding on a bicycle.
As the first extended book I worked on after Whatever It Takes, I had planned for it to be light and a little silly. It isn’t that. It isn’t as dark as Whatever It Takes, but in trying to be emotionally true, it does spend a fair amount of time examining issues of jealousy, resentment, and mistrust. Still, I think there are enough moments of levity and wit to balance some of the more serious and introspective sections. At least I hope I got the balance right.
This is also the first book in which I delve into BDSM themes at any length. I have an ambivalent relationship with BDSM erotica. I find some of it quite sexy. And yet, I often find there is just not enough actual, you know, sex. The costumes, the bondage, the whipping… it’s supposed to be foreplay, isn’t it? But too often, it seems like that is the act itself. I have to admit, I don’t understand that. Anyway, a word of warning to readers deep into the BDSM scene, if you like your BDSM pure, this book may not work for you. On the other hand, if your interest in BDSM is stuff like the Story of O (the movie rather than the book) then I think you’ll find this a fun read.
In addition to Kenny Wright, as usual, I want to particularly thank Kirsten McCurran for her comments on an earlier draft of the book. But even more, I want to thank Kirsten for letting me read a draft of her book Grooming Kitty. It definitely put me in the mood to finish writing this book and gave me some inspiration as well. If you haven’t read it, please do. You can find Grooming Kitty at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Grooming-Kitty-Romance-Kirsten-McCurran-ebook/dp/B00NOFLXOU. I would also like to thank Mrs. Kenny Wright for copyediting this book. And finally, I am grateful to RP for closely reading a final draft and making several additional typographical and stylistic suggestions.
Finally, thank you to all of you who’ve written with compliments or suggestions. I hope you continue to enjoy my work in the future.
PROLOGUE
I don’t know how young I was. Too young. At least that’s what my parents would have thought. But that was their fault for bringing me to Europe. Spring vacation in Germany.
The Berlin Wall had recently come down, so that would make me thirteen or so. My dad, a real history buff, had insisted we go see what was left of it before, as he feared, all traces were erased.
He walked us all over Berlin, my little sister pacified by a constant diet of rich German chocolates. It’s a miracle she didn’t develop diabetes during the trip. As for me, I was preoccupied with pussy. Well, not pussy. I mean, that was just an abstraction to me. But women, girls, whatever.
Dad would be going on about Checkpoint Charlie. Sis would be gripping a chocolate bar with two hands taking big bites. And me… all I noticed was the flouncy blonde with the heavy breasts. The cute brunette in the painted-on jeans. It was a warm day. My shorts were doing little to conceal my recurrent hard-on.
Not that I had any idea what I’d do with it. Porn was still hard to get. I’d seen a few soft R movies. A bare boob here and there. Maybe a naked couple writhing on top of each other under the covers on some TV show. A Playboy. But my fantasies, such as they were, had that sort of vagueness borne of lack of knowledge.
We were staying in a suite. Mom and dad had one room, sis and I the other. There was also a sitting room with a TV showing German programming, which, much to my surprise and delight, included nudity. I discovered that by accident, flipping the channels absentmindedly when we first arrived. But once I did, I regarded the set with a mixture of protectiveness, apprehension, and excitement.
My big fear was that my parents would discover what I had, and find some way to lock the set away. But happily they didn’t. That meant that each night, after going to bed, I would force myself to stay awake, listening for my parents to finally turn in. I could hear them sitting up, going through the guidebooks, making plans, and all I could think about was what I was missing on TV. If they showed fleeting nudity in prime time, what would they show late at night?
Then finally they went to sleep. I forced myself to be patient, to let them drift off. Then I snuck from my room. I turned the TV toward the wall, turned the volume so low as to be almost inaudible. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me to turn it all the way off, even though I couldn’t understand a word of it anyway.
I flipped through the channels, transfixed by ads that showed a flash of boob, but convinced that surely, surely, there would something even more interesting. And then I got lucky. I tuned in to a scene of a beautiful brunette being led through what looked like a medieval castle, into what seemed like a cave crowded with leering men. They stripped her, which was already more than I could have hoped, and the camera lingered on her, on breasts that seemed too small for my childish tastes, but which I now realize were perfect and then lower, over her flat belly, and then down to examine her dark brown triangle.
I’d seen Playboys, but those were just pictures. This was… a real, live woman, naked. I couldn’t believe my luck, and would have been delighted if that had been all. But then, with a suddenness that bordered on violent, she was pushed to her knees, and then the camera swung wildly, the music swelled. It was not hardcore, no pink, no erections, but it was more than I’d ever seen. On her hands and knees with a man thrusting behind her, on her back with a man between her legs, not just one man, but different men, and others behind, watching, leering.
I’d like to say it turned me on, but it didn’t. It sort of scared me. But I was transfixed nonetheless. I watched the rest of the movie, where this beauty continued to be passed around, bent over couches and tables, the camera focused on her beautiful face as men took her. Sometimes she seemed angry, other times resigned, still others ecstatic. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. And then, she was taken into a room and stripped, and then, whipped. She writhed in pain… and pleasure? Her body glistened with sweat.
When it ended, I wished I could see it again. I talked my parents into buying a local TV guide as a souvenir. My dad tried to talk me into a model of an airplane from the Berlin Airlift. I insisted. I checked the previous night’s schedule. Histoire d’O had been the movie. It meant nothing to me, though I obsessively searched through the guide, hoping it would be shown again. It wasn’t.
That was, for six months, my idea of sex, though I was too embarrassed to speak about it to anyone, even my buddies who were increas
ingly bold about their sexual pronouncement. I felt like the grown-up in the group. I knew what real sex was like.
My obsession with that movie faded the day we returned from summer vacation, at the beginning of eighth grade. Becky Trainor’s body had changed. Her wardrobe hadn’t caught up. Every day, until her new clothes matched her developing physique, I couldn’t help but leer at her too long legs in her too short skirts, her too large breasts encased in too tight shirts. And after her was Elise and then Maddie and then Trina, the first girl I actually kissed with erotic intent, and over time the image of the lithe brunette, stripped and whipped, manhandled and taken, faded. That wasn’t real sex. Real sex was awkwardly fumbling around in a movie theater trying to get my hands on some teenage girl’s breasts.
CHAPTER ONE
Rachel and I have been together almost ten years. We met in business school. She was 24 at the time, one of the youngest students in the class, and easily the cutest. Slender, with dirty blond hair and blue-grey eyes hidden behind kludgy hipster glasses, she had by consensus a world-class ass. I hate to objectify her like that, but in her skinny jeans tucked into calf-high leather boots, it was hard not to notice.
I’m Max. A few years older than Rachel, when we met I was old enough to have a little cachet, young enough not to come off as a creeper. I started a study group and invited her to participate, a little subterfuge to get close to her without telegraphing my romantic intentions.
“Did that fool you?” I asked her, years later.
She grinned. “Not at all.”
We soon ditched the other members of the group. One night, we celebrated a set of solid mid-term results. We went out to a dive bar. We ordered a pitcher of Natty Light, then another, and a third. We munched on stale popcorn and danced to OutKast on the jukebox.
Back in our booth, she leaned over and kissed me. I’ve always been shy with girls. I’ve never gotten the hang of making the first move. My sex life was almost wholly thanks to forward women. Happily enough, there have always been a few of them out there.
Our kissing progressed into a full-blown make-out session in the bar. I noticed our waitress, a middle-aged battleaxe, giving us the stink eye, though I couldn’t be sure if it was because of the PDA or because we were too busy sucking face to keep up with our drinking.
The lights came on after last call, Semisonic’s “Closing Time” suddenly blaring. We gathered up our things, walked unsteadily to the door. Outside, she wrapped her arm around my waist, I put my arm over her shoulder. She was so warm, soft; it was like her body was molded to mine.
My mind was racing, trying to find the right words to get her to come home with me. I needn’t have bothered.
“My roommates have guests, can I crash at your place?” she asked.
“Um sure.”
She gave me a reassuring smile that seemed to say, Relax. Yes, we’re going to have sex.
I breathed a sigh of relief. She giggled at my awkwardness. It wasn’t malicious. She seemed to think it was cute.
Nowadays, with that much booze in me, I am sure I’d have whiskey dick. Happily, that night I didn’t. And being bombed probably kept me from coming right away. Even with a condom on, I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything nicer than the moment when she took me inside her. She was on top, and she settled down on me, her beautiful, and surprisingly full, breasts right in my face. I reached around and squeezed her hard, perfect, ass.
She rode me slowly, expertly, rising and falling on my cock over and over, lifting herself up until I was just barely inside her, and then impaling herself firmly on my prick. I was content to explore her body with my hands, tweaking her nipples, exploring the crack of her ass, running my palm along her spine, until I could feel her silky hair on my hand as I caressed the back of her neck.
She came suddenly, gasping sexily, her pussy spasming on my cock. She fell forward, her face in the crook of my neck. She moaned softly in my ear. I could feel her hard nipples against my chest. She pumped her hips up and down. I began thrusting upward to meet her. I came hard, seeing stars. The stars might have been the booze, but it was still a great fuck.
We both passed out after. She spent the night, and waking up to her naked body made the hangover seem like a small price to pay. She had no regrets. We made love that morning. And that evening. And every day thereafter for a week.
That was ten years ago.
-----
We finished school. By then we were living together. A couple of months after our first “date” she informed me she was having trouble with her roommates.
“Oh my god,” she sighed, “Becky is going to drive me crazy. She’s such a fucking slob. And I’m sick of waking up to see Jenna’s latest lay at my breakfast table.”
“Well, if you hate it there, you could come live with me,” I offered tentatively.
She smiled. It was the response she’d been looking for.
We both landed solid jobs out West, closer to my folks. Rachel worked for a large mutual fund as an analyst. I got a similar position, but with a VC firm. We moved into a nice apartment, two bedrooms, a swanky address. Bonuses the first two years paid off our loans.
We got married. Neither of us is real religious, but to please her parents we married beneath a Chuppah, with my parents’ Unitarian minister presiding. The reception was small by modern standards, one hundred or so guests, but fun. Lots of dancing, drinking, the usual. Her cousins insisted on hoisting us up in chairs as the band played Hava Nagila.
It was a perfect wedding night. We’d reserved a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. Under her classic dress, Rachel was wearing the most wickedly gorgeous white lingerie. A lace demi-cup bra that made the most of her cleavage, matching thong panties, and sexiest of all, a garter and stocking set. I was exhausted from the long day, but it was an instant hard-on.
I threw her on the bed, slid her panties to the side and ate her out. Her hair there was darker, but closely trimmed. She has the tastiest pussy I’ve ever experienced. Hard to explain, but it feels like a mixture of pop rocks and honey on my tongue. She bucked up and down against my face. I sucked her clit into my mouth, my tongue flicking against her hard little bud. She grabbed my hair with both hands and pulled me tight, almost as if she were trying pull my head inside her. She came dramatically, with a robust cry of passion.
She pushed me off, onto my back, and immediately went down on me, swallowing me whole. Rachel is a very, very talented cock sucker. She stroked me firmly, circled my shaft with her tongue, took me deep so that I could feel the heat and wetness of her mouth against my entire shaft. I was close. She grabbed my balls, and squeezed firmly against the base of my scrotum to stop me from coming. I sighed in frustration. I’d been so close.
She ended my complaints by sliding off me, positioning herself on her hands and knees. If there is a prettier sight in the universe than a perfect ass, encircled with garters and lace, I don’t know what it is.
I positioned myself behind her, again slid her panties to the side, pressed two fingers into her tight little pussy. She moaned and thrust back against my hand. I wanted to get my dick inside her, but that was just too sexy to stop. She reached between her legs, flicking her own clit. Again she came, this time her pussy clenching against my fingers.
Coming again drained her. She seemed ready to fall forward onto the bed, but I needed her first. I grabbed her by the hips, drove my cock inside her. She was loose, but amazingly hot and wet. I thrust inside her raggedly. She was on the pill, so no condom. I hammered her, hard. She moaned, reached between her legs to massage my balls. Then with a growl I came inside her.
We collapsed together onto the bed.
“Thank you for marrying me,” I said absurdly.
She laughed. “And thank you, Max, for fucking me silly.”
“You bring out the best in me.”
“Promise me it will always be like this,” she said.
“Always,” I sighed.
-----
Two years later, Rach
el was pregnant. When the ultrasound showed twins, we went through the stages. Panic. Desperation. Depression. Resignation. Acceptance.
It is weird. Somehow the idea of having one kid was appealing. The kid would be a trooper. Would sleep through the night. We would trade off childcare, and each still have time off, and also time together. The idea of twins, though, seemed overwhelming. It was always a delusion to imagine that having a kid would be just a minor alteration of our lives. But we were not even given the option of indulging in that fantasy. Faced with the reality of twins, we had to accept that nothing would ever be the same.
Not that things were perfect anyway. Not really. We still got along well. We worked well together as a couple. We had similar values, interests. But we were both working long hours, only seeing each other when tired or stressed.
Sex was still good, but increasingly routine. Once or twice a week, but pretty much by rote. I’d let Rachel initiate. I was always willing, but by habit, it fell on her to signal interest first. We’d strip. I’d flick her bean, she’d stroke my cock. Then either me on top, or her. A few minutes of very pleasurable sex. She would come first. Then me.
Even routine sex is good sex. And we were having sex often enough to keep us both satisfied. But “satisfied” is a weird standard. Sort of a minimal expectation. It is weird to describe a regular, mutually satisfying sex life as a “rut.” But what better word is there for something that becomes routine?
When we accepted twins were on the way, we realized we’d need more space. We moved out to a house in the ‘burbs. Nice place, though we bought at the height of the market. Four bedrooms, a fenced yard.
The pregnancy was tough on Rachel. Given her small frame, carrying twins was particular difficult. She gained a lot of weight, had blood-pressure issues. She had twelve weeks of maternity leave, but burned through more than half of it on bed rest even before the twins came.
It became almost a foregone conclusion that she would want or need to drop out of the workforce for a while to take care of the kids. Money wasn’t really an issue. Even with the markets roiling, my firm was doing well; I was doing well.