I didn't have to tell Ariel what I wanted. Well, we all understood what I wanted, especially Kate, on her hands and knees in front of me, her mouth full of me, milking me with her lips and playing with me with her busy puppy tongue. Give it up, Kate-no responsibilities toward cook or clients today. Just to me. She winced, shuddering from time to time, when Ariel pulled off a particularly nasty snap of the whip, and she began to cry about halfway through, her tears silently streaking down her dusty cheeks. But she never broke rhythm, never lost her focus. She drained me, and then, staying in puppy role, dribbled some cum down her chin and onto the ground in front of her.
I almost lost it there, I was so charmed. Just as she knew I'd be-Kate probably hadn't given sloppy head since we'd been teenagers. "Bad puppy," I said severely, catching my breath and somehow managing to maintain the rhythm of the script. "Lick it up."
I stood up and hugged Ariel's skinny shoulders. "Lady," I said, "you got some wrist. Thanks."
She had her eyes on Kate, though, delicately lapping at the little spot she'd made in the dust. "She was good," she said in a distant voice.
"Yeah," I said briefly, "I know. See you at eight. Heel, Kate."
When we got back to my rooms, Steve was waiting on the deck.
"Get her cleaned up," I said, "and fix her up for this evening. Bring her back after she's gotten some food and rest." I hadn't really wanted him there-too much like he was checking up on me-but I wouldn't have trusted anybody else to treat Kate as a puppy while I wasn't watching. Sylvie and Stephanie would have just brought her back to her own huge, claw-footed bathtub, dumped in a whole bottle of healing rosemary bath oil, and, after they'd gently rubbed her dry with warmed towels, knocked themselves out giving her a massage and a pedicure. No, it was only Steve who'd wash her off in a big galvanized tub outside the stables with an ordinary scrub brush, feed her some water and dog food before giving her a nap in the straw, and then fix her up according to plan and bring her back to me.
He probably was checking up on me, too, but Kate looked so calm (even if exhausted) that he couldn't find any cause for complaint. Well, not until I told him that I'd invited Ariel and Arthur to dinner and would he please take care of the arrangements. He grimaced at that, before he led Kate off, leaving Sylvie and Stephanie to take care of me.
A bath. Sylvie got into the big sunken tub along with me, scrubbing me gently, shaving my face expertly with a straight razor, and then handing me over to Stephanie for a massage. And while I rested for a few minutes on the massage table, I heard the two of them fussing with the chairs and umbrellas out on the deck, making sure I had a nice shady spot for lunch. Berries for dessert, served on a silver tray that Stephanie hugged to her front-the strawberries and raspberries and blueberries were heaped around her breasts.
"Clean off the berry stains," I told Sylvie, and she licked away all the reds and purples, while I sipped minted iced tea. And then finally a nap, inside, with just a little bright afternoon sun slanting through the blinds, the two of them curled up on either side of me, each sighing contentedly whenever I chose to stroke her.
My friend Tom arrived soon after that, for a pre-dinner game of racquetball. He'd get to stay the night, too-the suite included a guest room.
"Oh, and I forgot to tell you," I said afterward, in the Jacuzzi, "we've got a dinner guest. Arthur Geist."
Tom whistled. "The Arthur Geist?" he asked. "The guy who wrote Semes, Memes, Genes: Sites of Limnal Alterity?"
I glanced over at Kate, half hoping to see her sneer at that monstrous title. But she was calmly retrieving the ball Tom had tossed her, as though she didn't understand a word we'd said. Well, what would a puppy care about semes or memes? Especially the gussied-up show dog we'd found waiting for us when we'd gotten back from our game.
Incredible job Steve had done on her-I doubted that she'd gotten any rest at all while we'd been out playing. She had a poodle tail now, with a curly, silvery little ball of hair at its end, tied in a little pink bow. Her hair was curled into humiliating Shirley Temple ringlets, the ones at the sides flopping over like puppy ears, the one at the top tied in a bow to match her tail. My poodle, with her lips and toenails lacquered a bright, tasteless pink. Her nipples, too. And her pubis was shaved, to show that its lips were also outlined in that awful pink.
We fucked her a little, with the handles of our rackets, and now we were tossing her the ball, which she'd fetch in her mouth, sitting very straight at the edge of the Jacuzzi. She wasn't as quick as she'd been in the morning though, because they'd tied her hands into little mitten-like booties, and doubled her legs back, strapping them into place. So it really was like she was getting around on four paws, on her balled-up hands and bent-back knees, her back arched, tail held high. But she still managed to retrieve the ball each time. I wondered, idly, what I'd do to her if she missed one of my tosses, if I threw it a little too hard and it bounced a little too high, over the deck's railing and out into the yard.
"Arthur Geist," Tom was shaking his head. He's better read than I am, and he was extravagantly impressed. "Wow. If I'd known, I would have spent the week cramming."
"He may not say anything at all," I answered, and told him about Ariel.
Which just shows how little I'd scoped out Arthur, who's one of those people who lives for the sound of his own voice. And-which is much more rare-one of the very few who gets away with it, because he's that good and interesting a talker. Except, I suppose, when he's alone with Ariel, and she makes it abundantly clear how little he has to say about anything that really matters. It probably clears his head, like wasabi.
You would have enjoyed hearing him, Carrie, rolling out his elegantly formed sentences, while he knelt at the table on a padded footstool he'd brought along with him. He couldn't sit, evidently. I mean, it seems that while Tom and I'd been whacking a ball around the racquetball court, Ariel had been doing similar things to his ass and back. So he'd come to dinner in a loose, elegant silk robe, carrying his stool, and slowly lowering himself down onto it, settling into a comfortable position from which to hold forth on semes and memes. Well, for openers, that is, before he segued into the genetics of the trans-human body, after briefly checking in on the Renaissance, particle physics, and a shortcut he was working on for mastering the two thousand Japanese kanji. He had me and Tom enthralled, as we all tucked into Kate's cook's expertly prepared monkfish, served by Sylvie and Stephanie and Randy-wearing nothing but their collars, gold sandals, and slender gold chains around their waists.
Ariel was wearing a little leather skirt, thigh-high boots, and a transparent black blouse. Her breasts were tiny, almost nonexistent, and she'd painted her nipples the same pale silvery blue as her lips. She ignored Arthur, pushed her food around her plate, and tried to pretend she wasn't obsessed with Kate-who was under the table nuzzling our feet, accepting our pokes and caresses and kicks and the occasional scrap of food.
"Is it okay with everybody," I asked, as Randy started clearing our plates from the table, "if we have dessert and coffee by the fire in the other room?"
Because the other room was nicely set up for it, with comfortable armchairs arranged around a large glass coffee table that held a low silver bowl of round, old-fashioned roses, big crystal ashtrays, plates of cake and fruit, and a delicate black and silver coffee service. The heavy glass was nicely balanced on the backs of Sylvie and Stephanie, who had little rubber suction cups attached to their shoulders and the cheeks of their asses, and who knelt so motionlessly that you wondered if they were breathing. Randy set out the coffee and brandy, and stood by to pour and serve. Arthur brought his stool, and Kate sat up at my feet.
But conversation was waning, our eyes all falling on Kate. Even Arthur seemed to be winding down. It was a comfortable silence, though, laced with coffee and brandy, the warmth of the fire and our mutual and separate anticipations of how the evening might proceed. Tom did us the service of moving things along.
"Great meal, Jonathan," he said, "and great conver
sation," he nodded cordially at Arthur. "But," turning back to me, "shouldn't you be feeding that puppy?"
"I suppose you're right," I smiled, "unless you'd prefer to do it."
I handed him the leash. He looped it around his wrist while he undid his pants.
"In fact," he murmured, pulling Kate to him, and decisively clamping her head down over himself, "if the food and conversation had been any less great, it would have been utterly unbearable...."
And then there was just the sound of his moans, and our clicking coffee cups and saucers.
He finished quickly, and handed Kate back to me, nodding to Randy to button his pants and straighten his clothes.
"But you know," I said thoughtfully, "I think the puppy's still hungry Well, she did have that long run out on the trail this afternoon. Arthur?"
He looked eager, but unsure, glancing at Ariel for instructions.
She was frowning. Good. I'd hoped to engineer a little confusion for her.
"Sure, Arthur," she said flatly, "knock yourself out."
He did, too, though Kate had to work a little harder at him than she had at Tom. Still, he smiled delightedly afterward, handing the leash back to me.
Okay.
"Ariel?" I said politely.
She nodded and took the leash, shooting me a tiny, furious look.
She tugged Kate toward her, between her slender legs in their big suede boots. And the room was dead silent while we all watched. I was glad she'd chosen the armchair she was sitting in, angled so that Sylvie and Stephanie could both turn their heads and see.
It would be slow, I knew. She wouldn't be able to take a lot of sensation at once. And I knew that Kate knew that too, that she'd build up as absolutely slowly as Ariel's tightly wound sensorium needed. We watched Ariel's blue eyes lose their focus, her face relax, her jaw loosen. And then the first sigh-I think I sighed along with her, and I heard a tinkle of crystal, as the tabletop trembled slightly.
She started to moan. "Oh, oh shit," she said once, and her hips began to buck. And her hands began to clench and unclench and then she dropped the leash. She looked sweaty. And she moaned and screamed. And kicked. Arthur looked troubled, disoriented, at first-I was afraid that I'd messed up his game for him-but, like Liz and her boyfriend that morning, he pulled himself together, looking, well... honored, I guess you'd have to say
Her movements were almost convulsive-one more scream-well, not a scream, kind of a hoarse bellow, from very deep in her belly, and she collapsed in the chair, her blue lipstick bitten off, and her hair matted with sweat.
She closed her eyes for a minute. And when she opened them, it seemed as though she'd lost all her guile, and that she really was just nineteen years old. Or maybe ten, or fiveshe looked like a refugee child who'd just tasted her first ice cream cone.
She groaned a little, smiling ruefully, peering down at Kate, who was calmly wagging her tail. "Oh shit," she murmured softly to herself, in a kind of exaggerated, sitcom tone. And then she picked up her glass from the coffee table.
"Uh, more brandy. Randy," she called. And she giggled at how silly that sounded. We all laughed, and Tom raised his glass to her.
He's a talented guy, Tom. I mean he can size up the way things are going and move them in the right direction. So he began making gentle, joking conversation with Ariel. He didn't seem to need to outhip her, like I probably would have. He just said a lot of trivial, amusing, comforting things to her, giving her time to regain her equilibrium.
I turned to Arthur, picking up the thread of an earlier conversation. The splendid Pazzi Chapel in Florence, designed by Brunelleschi. Or maybe not by Brunelleschi after all, Arthur said. He'd heard there was some new research.... Ridiculous, I answered, tugging at Kate's leash for emphasis. But we agreed that it was a wonderful building, and we thought we might go look at it together, some weekend, in off season.
I stroked Kate's hair roughly, pinched her breasts, squeezed her between my knees, and let her rest her chin in my lap while I talked to Arthur. Her face was wan and exhausted, her eyes serene and accepting. "Water," I called to Randy, and he poured some into a little black saucer, putting it at my feet for her to lick. We all knew the evening was drawing to a close, conversation becoming fragmentary, the fire burning down.
I nodded to Randy to begin clearing the coffee table. And Tom took his cue, yawning ostentatiously, while Arthur started his slow progress off his knees and onto his feet.
"I'm as tired as Tom is," he said. "And at my age, that's saying a great deal. I think we'd better go, Ariel." In a mild voice that allowed no room for discussion.
And she'd regained enough of her cool by then to mutter something as she also got to her feet.
I was grateful to all of them.
"Take the girls, Tom," I said, as Randy lifted the tabletop off them. They kneeled up, presenting themselves in Tom's direction, eyes lowered as usual, and only the subtlest of signals-an unwonted pinkness on Stephanie's breasts, and on Sylvie's cheeks below her freckles-to show how much they'd enjoyed the evening. And Tom would enjoy them, I thought. He deserved to.
"And tell Steve to have you harnessed tomorrow morning," I said to Randy, "so this lady"- I nodded to Ariel-"can practice her driving. She's quite ready to take you out by herself, I think." Ariel shrugged, implying that it was all the same to her, and I knew I'd scored a hit. And Arthur probably wouldn't mind sleeping in.
Another round of thanks and compliments at the door. And they were finally gone, and I picked her up and carried her to bed, wordlessly removing her cruel little mittens and kissing her fingers, unstrapping her legs, massaging the stiffness from her knees so that she could get some sleep. So that that we both could sleep, that forty-thousand-dollar Saturday night, in the middle of an enormous bed, our bodies and breaths as commingled and intertwined as they'd been in that little sleigh-shaped one, a million years ago.
CARRIE
I wouldn't cry, I told myself. Not, I supposed, that it would have mattered, since he wasn't really looking at me across the small restaurant table. He was looking past me, or through me, back to that Saturday night, or even further back.
He blinked, focused, smiled at me apologetically.
"Well," he said, "I hadn't really meant to lay that last little bit of middle-aged sentimentality on you. Let's just say that the weekend continued hot, and, and, well, meaningful, to us......-
JONATHAN'S STORY CONCLUDED
And late Sunday afternoon, I handed her a check for forty thousand dollars-it might have been a sentimental journey, but there was no question of not paying up.
But the money part worked out okay, too-having less income of my own to live on gave me more impetus to get my business going again. I put in some seventy-hour weeks, but I enjoyed it-it was a relief to find out I still liked being an architect. And Kate had meetings in the city that summer and fall-she and Brewer were overseeing the design of the new computer system the association was building. So we'd meet, lunch hours, which helped, because I was too busy to drive up to Napa every weekend. But we both learned to juggle our schedules, and we played more than we had in years, sometimes just the two of us, and sometimes she and I and all of them. Even Steve. Things went well. I stopped smoking.
And early last December, we celebrated my thirty-seventh birthday together. Lavishly. And exhaustingly Well, not just my birthday. A design of mine, something I'd been fooling around with for a long time and finally figured out how to complete, had won a prize. Just a commendation, really, but Kate made a big fuss about it.
Anyhow, she'd finally sent Sylvie and Stephanie and Randy to bed, but she and I were too tired to pick ourselves up off the rug in front of the fireplace in her bedroom. It was a nice warm fire, which was good, because we couldn't seem to make it across the room to where our bathrobes were. It was about all we could do to sip Armagnac and touch and smile and sort of giggle stupidly from time to time. She began inspecting the bruises I'd acquired earlier that day no, not what you think; she'd bo
ught me roller blades, and, well, there's a knack to it, I'd discovered, the hard way-at least to stopping, on some of those slopes, in the hills of her place.
I picked up her hand, which had been tracing the edge of a quickly gathering black and blue mark on my thigh. I kissed her fingers. And then I moved closer to her, pulling her toward me.
"Stop," she murmured. "I want to give you your birthday present."
I laughed. "You mean those skates weren't present enough? Don't tell me you've got Ariel hidden behind a curtain, ready to beat me." Ariel worked for Kate now, though she'd insisted on maintaining a separate arrangement with Arthur.
Kate laughed too. "We're saving that for when you turn thirty-nine, sweetie," she said. "And don't even try to imagine what I've got planned for your fortieth."
I rolled over on her, pinning her down, my cock stiffening between her thighs. I kissed her slowly, cupping the cheeks of her ass in my hands. She kissed me back, running her hands lightly over my back. And then not so lightly. And then I guess we both decided that the present could wait a little longer.
"It's nice," I said afterward, "being the boss lady's boyfriend, I mean. I think I've finally adjusted to it after all these years."
She nodded, just a little grimly. Well, it's taken you long enough, the expression on her face said, and it took me some effort to completely kiss away the little line between her eyebrows. She pulled herself to her feet. "Your present," she said. "I almost forgot."
I rolled over on my belly, watching her ass sway as she walked across the room to her desk. That ass was present enough, I thought. I couldn't imagine what she could give me that could make me feel any better than I was feeling right then.
So I took my time, untying the curly rainbow-colored ribbons and undoing the silver paper wrapped around the flat, rectangular package, while she sat a little distance away, hugging her knees.
"Come on," she hissed anxiously, "tear the damn paper for once."
"I don't like to," I said. "You know that."
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