“All right, I’ll see what I can do,” Catherine relented.
“I’ll try to keep the booking open,” Ken reassured and Catherine wanted to burst into laughter. He sounded like a teenager on a first date with the desperation of trying to maneuver through all of the obstacles making him as awkward as a duck climbing stairs.
“I’ll be in touch,” she closed the conversation.
They hung up with the issue still a hot potato.
There had been neither intention nor hint of romance from either side in their negotiation, it was naked lust; both of them knew it. Products of the liberated age, it was the promise of raw thrill that drove the pair onto the marshy bog of carnal desire.
Each, contemplating it privately, concluded that lust for lust’s sake was not an entirely bad state to entertain; lust and romance were entirely separate emotions they could deal with separately.
Catherine pondered it all day; it was rather like her first visit to the doctor, she thought, inevitable and terrifying, yet deliciously decadent… I must be warped.
Ken phoned again at lunchtime but Catherine could offer him no confirmation.
His four thirty call caught her in a meeting. “Catherine…” The intercom on her desk piped.
“Yes, Jenn?” Catherine responded; Jenny was Kaplan’s receptionist.
“Mr. Torrington called again, he sounds distressed,” Not understanding the situation, Jenny’s voice had been infected by Ken’s insistence.
Still, Catherine remained determined to draw out his agony a while longer, “You told him that I was in a meeting?” she queried.
“Yes. But he was very insistent, he said that he was leaving his office and going home. He mentioned that he might pop by here, on his way.”
Catherine flared with anger at Ken’s presumptuousness, she had no desire to see him; she was relieved to be forewarned.
She quickly estimated that, with no traffic, it would take him half an hour to travel the distance. But, since he’d have to push through the evening rush hour, she was content that time remained on her side;
“Ok Jenn, buzz me at ten to five, I must get a move on before he gets here. I’m not going to see him without an appointment,” She signed off, then began to wind up the meeting with her staff.
By five o’clock Catherine was on the road and very pleased that Ken was ignorant of her home address.
He was also not in possession of her unlisted home phone number. She knew that she would be safe from his harassment. Then, thinking about it, she realized that she would have to call him anyway lest he label Jenny as a bad receptionist who didn’t pass on messages.
With a sigh of trepidation, she scrolled to his listing and hit the ‘call’ button;
“Torrington,” came the authoritative voice in a tone that poorly cloaked a lashing of irritation—he’d obviously seen her name come up.
“Ken?” Catherine barely recognized his voice.
“Catherine?” he barked back, “…where the hell have you been?” his irritated snap betrayed a spoiled personality accustomed to getting its own way.
“Don’t you dare use that tone with me!” Catherine instinctively went onto the offensive, her anger was genuine. Client or no client, she wasn’t going to let him get away with brash rudeness.
“S… s… sorry Cath, I… I’ve had a hell of a day,” Ken retreated.
All day he’d been unable to focus on anything but his lust, he’d become obsessed with it. The irrationality of animal instinct had gone so far as to make him jealous over the whereabouts of Catherine, his fantasy lover.
“I’ve had a hell of a day too but I don’t harass Nancy and then bite your head off!” Catherine had also done little more than fantasize the day away, and it came out now in anger.
Unfolding was the strangest mating ritual that two people could play. The forces of instinct at fever pitch, making the two victims of lust cannibalize each other’s emotions in an unholy orgy of dominance.
Each had spoken their mind with all the finesse of wrestling porcupines, but Ken knew that bringing the tussle to a conclusion would be a process of cautious negotiation;
“Where are you?” Ken inquired, referring to their particularly poor connection, “…it sounds like you’re calling from the moon.”
His question had been delicately phrased, as though he were dealing with the finest china that might shatter at the slightest mishandling.
“I’m in my car, on my way to a big problem we’re having across town,” Catherine lied.
“Any chance of seeing you later?” Ken asked, not sure if he could bare the tension of seeing Catherine or hear her refusal; yet he had to broach the subject of their proposed date.
“No chance I’m afraid, they’re going to press with this job in the morning so it must be completed by tonight. I’ll have to push through this problem even if it takes all night.”
“I’m being silly even asking,” Ken tried to redeem his pride, “I’ve also got a few things to get through.”
The phone crackled with his distress and his gut wrenched as his mouth refused to speak the words that he demanded of it.
Catherine could sense his anguish and she surmised its source. She would not yield, not give him the confirmation that he desperately desired; Stew, you bastard, she thought, …stew.
Ken sensed that the conversation was at its end. With all of the coercion that he could muster he dragged out of himself the question that they both knew he’d called to ask, trying to make it sound like an afterthought;
“Hmm. Oh yes. Anything more about, maybe… tomorrow?”
“Unfortunately not,” Catherine replied, battling to wipe the grin off of her face, “but I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
Her fence sitting cost both of them a sleepless night.
Chapter 15
“Goodness gracious!” Catherine exclaimed, “Couldn’t you find anything more revealing?…!”
Her crotch felt sodden and heavy and the blush she’d carefully been damping since her arrival became a glowing beacon.
Never in her active sexual career had such a head of tension escalated for so long up to an event;
For three days, as the bristling negotiations around the cyber-sex had pressed on, Catherine had sought sanity and release from the madness of it through private means. When that hadn’t worked, she’d turned on Jacky.
“What is it with you, girl?” Jacky had sighed between wracking orgasms, “…you’re insatiable.”
Each idle moment had been an opportunity not to be missed; driving became a hazard as she weaved through the traffic, guiding the car with one hand and reckless abandon.
“It’s not exactly standard IBM peripherals, Cath. Anton did the best with what was available,” Ken defended the creation.
Anton was a programmer first, an integration engineer second, and an amateur model builder as a distant third. He had constructed the entire mechanism from spare parts, some bought through online pornography catalogues.
Catherine blushed her deepest scarlet at the mention of his name; the way he looked at her, she was positive that Anton had figured out for whom he had been constructing the suit for.
The contrivance termed ‘a suit’ was nothing more than a connected tangle of webbing straps and attachments that had little in common with anything vaguely garment-like.
Ken was trying to act calm and appear suave; a ham-fisted attempt to convey an impression of, “all in a day’s work.”
He would have done much better, Catherine thought, to drop the bravado act and immerse himself into the novel thrill, which it really was for both of them.
“Champagne?” he offered Catherine a glass.
The surface of the honey liquor a’tremble; a loyal transmitter of the hand that held it out to her.
“Thanks,” Catherine took it with no greater steadiness.
“To Caligula.”
Ken’s tactless toast to the Roman Emperor, infamous for his orgies, brought images of the C
oliseum rushing back into Catherine’s mind.
For some reason, alien to her knowledge, she shuddered with the familiarity of the thought and a chill ran up her spine.
Like two cats circling each other, neither wanting to make the first challenge, they drew out the moment, skirting the business at hand;
This is weird, Catherine thought, unable to decide whether she was enjoying or loathing the prolonged buildup. Ken’s frayed nerves were making him drone tediously as he explained the technicalities of the program.
The delicate precipice of stimulation threatened to crumble under the load of his dreary waffling. Aware of his awkward approach, he was desperately scrambling, seeking to take charge of his own mouth and the situation.
With the vehement intensity of two magnetic like-poles, a hidden hand invisibly held them at arms length and neither could breach the wall of the other’s intimate space, both acutely aware that the situation could be sustained no longer.
Unable to withstand the tension, Catherine drained the dregs from her glass and took the initiative, alcohol had become her kind assistant dulling the keen edge off of her inhibitions;
“The show must go on!” She almost gagged on the cliché that spilled from her mouth.
She took Ken’s hand and gave it a squeeze, making his Adams apple turn a somersault and his complexion turned instantly pale, his voice equally insipid;
“Let the ga… games begin,” he croaked and had to clear his throat mid-way through the tired and overworked line.
Intending to distract her mind off of what lay ahead, Catherine had purposefully worked late that evening. Once home, she had taken a long warm bath and only with a will of steel did she resist the urge to relieve the aching sexual tension that incessantly nagged at her.
She had taken her time soaking and douching herself, wanting to be meticulously fresh when the time for being exposed would inevitably come.
Her drive to the LifeGames premises had been an indistinguishable blur, all the excitement of her fighter jet simulation had seemed insignificant to the heart pounding that spurted adrenalin into the tiniest capillary of her being.
Now, the time to make ready was upon Catherine and her heart was a leaden anchor pounding out her ecstatic agony.
They were two strangers about to partake in the most premeditated act of sexual exposure possible.
“What the hell am I doing?” Catherine’s mind cried out, cartwheeling in opposition to her shaking fingers as they fumbled for endless seconds to unfasten each button on her crisp white blouse.
The silk garment fell away, exposing a heaving rib-cage topped by two lace-cupped protuberances of breathtaking magnificence, “Errr, must I take this off too?” she stammered, any hint of voice control eluding her.
“Afraid so,” Ken was suffering the same vocal malady.
Her bra slipped off but the flesh that it retained stood proudly erect with turgid nipples, moist from the sweat of anticipation. With his peripheral vision, Ken ogled Catherine’s first exposure of naked flesh as her skirt fell to the floor and she stepped out of it.
He could hardly bare the sight as she peeled away the silken, moistened G-string. He tried to cling to his casual manner, failing dismally, fumbling with the body strap that he was preparing.
The scene had become all that his control could handle as he moved cautiously to avoid displaying his achingly engorged manhood. His erectile dysfunction had become his greatest frustration in life; once so strong and virile it had become almost impossible for him to achieve without stimulants or perversity.
His vision hopped with each thump of his heart; it felt like he should sit before he fell down in a faint; but time ran out on him;
“Ready!” Catherine’s voice was clear and confident.
Deciding to quit the deadly serious pangs, she had taken charge of herself and let her inhibitions fly from her.
She was stark naked, her hands held skyward and her back arched in the pose of a female gymnast. Nuzzling from a neatly trimmed pubic tuft was a slightly protruding flange. Ken gulped audibly at the vision.
Catherine first knelt, then lay back with legs splayed as Ken fitted the equipment; It was a necessary procedure that they both pretended to endure, yet secretly each found to be an aching stimulation.
“What a way to get to know each other!” Ken croaked, his voice breaking up as he spoke.
With all the wiring, pipes, bags and paraphernalia plugged in and ready to go, she stood alongside the contraption that would play midwife to her coming fantasy.
Ken dared for a second to gorge on every minute detail presented to him, but it made him all thumbs as he struggled to adhere the Time Dilation plaster onto her skin;
“Th… the worst is over,” he tried with dismal capacity to make small talk.
Catherine stepped into the harness that clasped into a girdle that would fit snug up under her; forming as it did a modern chastity belt for a kinky new age.
“No need for lubrication here…!” Ken exclaimed as he brought the phallic focus of the contraption into contact with her.
The seating of the thick and knobbed implement was an explosive sensation that made Catherine wince as it nuzzled to her G-spot, strumming her hair-trigger sensitivity. With two fingers she adjusted the mini-phallus hinged onto the larger one inside of her. Identifying the blood-engorged bead of flesh that she sought, she engaged the small stimulator into contact with her throbbing delight.
“All ready?” Ken’s voice was husky.
“Yes,” she sighed her answer, the contraptions had settled delightfully into position.
Minutes later she was rigged onto the same gyroscope that she’d watched play host to the war game weeks before.
The affixed nipple stimulators began a gentle and insistent tug of suction.
Ken had said there were too many skin-contact straps for the nano-impregnated smock to provide feedback; she’d have to remain in the buff—it was something she hadn’t anticipated. Instead of the smock, monitors on her temples and sternum would wirelessly feed the computer data back and forth. Ken would use the remote control tablet to stay close at hand, to monitor the event.
With her helmet on, Catherine became the helpless and blind victim of Ken’s voyeurism as he circled beyond her synthesized world and Ken prepared for the show of a lifetime.
Chapter 16
The fire cracked and hissed in its hearth and two women lay sprawled before it. A boxer dog was watching them over his crossed front paws, his eyes moving from one to the other as they took turns speaking.
Lying on her side, Nancy had assumed a fetal position, wrapping herself around Catherine’s body and Catherine was using Nancy’s thigh and hips as her backrest. Her own legs lay flat on the ground before her.
Strains of thin and poignant oboe drifted on the air, embracing them in currents and eddies of sound.
“God Cath, you look like death girl…!” Nancy’s initial greeting to Catherine on her doorstep hadn’t been intended as an insult, it had been a plain and shocked assessment.
The Catherine that had appeared before her was gaunt and pale.
“…It looks like the life’s been drained out of you.”
Nancy had taken Catherine’s hand and guided her through the door, into her inviting cottage and warm maternal arms.
“I think that it has,” Catherine had agreed.
“Now you relax, I’m about ready to start dishing up. Wine?”
“I couldn’t bare the thought!” Catherine held her hands up in surrender, “You carry on.”
Nancy had shown Catherine her half full glass in response; “What have you been up to my wicked friend; playing truant…? That much I do know. I’ve tried to reach you on Thursday and yesterday.”
“I got your messages, thanks Nance. I’ve been resting, I’ll tell you all about it over dinner,” Catherine had promised.
“I’ll bet it has to do with Ken?” Nancy couldn’t help but fish for clues, she wasn’t a patient
gossiper; “…he’s been like a man possessed Cath, on at me all of the time to call you,” Nancy had chuckled.
Catherine had laughed too, but it was shallow and a social conformity only; not driven by a modicum of amusement.
“…It was ridiculous the number of times that I was supposed to phone through but I didn’t bother… I just told him whatever came to mind… ‘She’s in a meeting… She’s on a plane… I left a message’… What did you do to the man?”
Catherine had seen what Nancy was up to, prompting for details, “Wait till dinner Nance, I’m not going to tell you before.”
“You know?” Feigning deafness, Nancy had badgered onward. “…he wanted your home number, and… sheeez… did he blow his stack when I told him I didn’t have it?”
Catherine’s home number was little known beyond family and her closest friends.
Catherine’s unyielding stand for imparting more gossip till she was ready, had been motivation enough for Nancy to dish the meal in record time.
If Catherine looks this tired, she’d assured herself, it has to be a hell of a story!
It was Saturday night, seventy-two hours since Catherine’s cyber-sex episode.
Over dinner Catherine had kept her promise, breaking the news and giving the details.
“I thought that I was going to watch?” Nancy had pouted.
“That was my line,” Catherine had corrected her
It had taken the entire meal for Catherine to describe the delicious buildup to the game.
Nancy had been transfixed, stimulated to distraction. She had continually forgotten to eat until finally she gave up altogether, leaving the bulk of her meager portion untouched.
Her exhaustion forgotten, Catherine had risen to the occasion leaping in and out of her seat to demonstrate every detail.
At the end of the meal they had retired to Nancy’s living room where the fire was raging. With food in her stomach and the excitement invigorating her once more, Catherine had decided to accept a sherry.
LifeGames Corporatoin Page 19