Rules of the Game

"I don't need anything to put on." Still, I didn't object when he wrapped me in my terrycloth bathrobe. I stood looking at him, eyes almost averted. "Thank you," I muttered.

He stepped away again. "What's going on here? Why do you want to do this?"

"Its personal," I muttered, now averting my eyes.

"And this isn't?" He laughed bleakly.

I shrugged. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I do," he said. "I take it this has something to do with your boyfriend and roommate being out of town?"

I glowered at the floor.

"How long has it been going on?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"When did you find out?"

"This afternoon," I admitted grudgingly. "And what does this have to do with your getting fucked?" I glared at him defiantly.

"I'm not the one you're angry at," he reminded me.

"You'll do." I shrugged out of the bathrobe and pushed back my shoulders. Normally, I consider my breasts my best asset. Not huge, but softball-size with a nice shape and plenty of lift. Guys I'd dated said they were almost perfect. Perfect to hold and suck on. Jim ignored them completely.

"I'm not fucking you to get even with your boyfriend."

"You won't be. I'll be doing that," I said, cupping his crotch with my left hand as I attempted to kiss him. He turned away, pulled my hand free of his crotch.

"I don't want you like this."

"How would you like me?" I asked. I was not entirely faking the Marilyn Monroe personae I'd put on. My heart was pounding and an unexpected pulse of hormonal heat shot through my body. Maybe there was something to this "naked with a man in my bedroom" business after all. It's what I had counted on to get me past the first, terrify initial coupling. It occurred to me—rather belatedly, I must admit—that I hadn't ever expected it to get this far. Yet here I was, and for Jim, anyway, I was committed.

"How would you like me?" I repeated. "On my knees?" I breathed deliberately in his face, against his lips, Marilyn Monroe style. "I'll do that if you'd like. I'll also--" I raised his right hand and put it on my breast. "--make love to you in my bed, under my covers, for the whole night. I'll replace the rest of the party with you. Let you have me any way you want. For as long as you want. Would that be better? Would you say okay to that?" I kissed him, very lightly on the lips. I realized—also belatedly-- that what I'd told him was the truth. I didn't so much want a revenge in gang-banging as I wanted someone to hold me, love me, be with me and comfort me, tell me I'd be okay. Prove that I would. Jim might be that person. Or Nick, or Mike or even Richard. I just needed somebody.

"I can't do that either," he said, removing his hand from my breast. And then he grabbed me to him and crushed his mouth against mine and lifted me off the floor as he stumbled toward the bed.

"Condoms," I protested breathlessly. "In the nightstand next to the bed." I reattached my mouth and hung on as he pushed my down onto the mattress and came down atop me hard. Without urging, my legs wrapped his waist and locked together at the ankles. I moaned, reacting as the pulse of heat turned into a flame-thrower. I tried to fend off his tongue, which tried to rip out mine. Any clothes I had on would have been ripped from my body. He made short work of my panties as it was, yanking them with both hands in opposite directions. And so I was naked.

"Condoms!" I pleaded. "I don't want to get pregnant!" I also didn't want him ruining it for the others, filling me with sperm, though this consideration came only later.

"Fuck condoms," he growled, going after my neck. I fended him off, fended him not at all. I wanted that mouth, wanted it attached to mine. I thought my legs would break, trying to scissor him in half. Somehow, with both of us tearing at them, we got his belt and button and zipper undone, his pants pushed down his thighs, his underwear out of the way, and that blessedly hard cock in my vagina.

"Stop!" I told him. He panted into my face, me into his. "I'm serious about the condom, Jim. I'll get pregnant."

"You will?" he huffed.

"I'm in danger of it right now. You're not leak proof."

He laughed, gutturally. "Just another second. I want to feel me inside you. Know I'm really there."

"You're there," I assured him, shifting uncomfortably. That might have been the fastest, hardest, deepest penetration ever. Jim was thicker and longer than Matthew. Decidedly thicker, actually. I felt stretched to bursting like a soft leather glove on a football player's hand.

"Am I hurting you?" He laughed, gutturally again.

"Only when you move."

He kissed me gently. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize. Just put on a condom."

Resigned, rolling his eyes, he reached toward the end table, missed by a foot, made up the difference sliding me sideways, laughing. I tried to regain solemnity as he groped in the drawer for the box, flipped open the top and withdrew a foil-wrapped package. He examined the label, myopically.

"My brand."

"Only the best," I agreed, watching him rip open the package with his teeth. Never had I wanted something between a man and me less then I did right then. But rules were rules, no matter the game. He removed himself and I helped him roll on the lubricated tube.

"Guess it wouldn't be wise to get you pregnant," he admitted. He reentered me, gentler this time, and I adjusted, taking him deeply and fully inside me. I discovered he was made for Missionary Position, my favorite position. I wrapped him in my own variation of a condom, legs and arms nicely tight.

"This is very nice," he sighed.

I sighed, agreeing completely. "You have a decision to make, Jim. Me, or the poker game."

He groaned. I settled myself into a perfect rhythm of meeting his thrusts with an upthrust of hips. We copulated in perfect rhythm. Jim was a terrific lover, stunningly, unexpectedly so. He put Matt to shame in just a matter of minutes. I was growing alarmingly wound up.

"They don't deserve you," he said. He made a disaster zone of my neck and left shoulder. I assaulted his back with my fingernails.

"You don't exactly deserved me yourself," I reminded him, though blunting the criticism with a ferocious kiss. Even now, I could feel him building to climax. I worried how I'd sound, what kind of noise I'd make. "I want you to kiss me when you come," I said. "I need you to keep me quiet."

He laughed, though he agreed this would probably be wise.

"You are a very good lover," I whispered. I was very close to orgasm now. I was in orgasm, I decided, and had been for a while. What I was, was close to was losing it. This was just incredible.

Jim came. He did not kiss me, but tightened to me almost to crush pressure. I squeezed him like a boa constrictor, spasming silently as gush after gush of sperm left his cock for the confines of the receptor tip. We convulsed, in union and separately, gasping, shutting down our breaths, moaning against the forced injustice of this. It was the most intense orgasm I'd ever experienced. And it went on and on because Jim went on and on. I clung to him until it was finally over, and then we just gasped, locked in each other's arms.

"My God!" he finally got out.

"Hallelujah!" I croaked.

"Marry me!" he pleaded, laughing. I grasped his left hand, held it up for us both to see. "Minor inconvenience," he assured me. We laughed, laughed and croaked and coughed and made it clear to anyone, anywhere within thirty feet of us what we'd done.

"All the guys know," he said.

"I know," I agreed, wiping sweat off his brow. I tasted it from my fingertips. It was salty. He laughed and grimaced simultaneously. "I have something else you can taste."

I considered it a moment. I didn't particularly like the taste of sperm. But I had swallowed it on occasion, relished it in the right circumstances. And in fact, I hadn't wanted the condom. I looked into his eyes, wondering if having it safe and sound in my tummy wasn't a better alternative to flushing it down the toilet.

"I will, if you want me too," I said.

He grinned at me. "The offer is enough. The fact that you would is enough." He looked at the door. "I don't want to give you up."

"You don't have to," I pointed out. "I came with my panties. It was a package deal." Not quite the deal, as Steve would so quickly point out, but Steve wasn't there.

"Tell me why you did this," he said instead.

I turned my head away. "Let it go, Jim."

"Did you really plan to fuck us all to get even with him?"

I said nothing.

"That's not hurting him. That's hurting you, Lisa."

"Are you done?"

"Listen," he said, turning my face back toward him with his fingertips. "Back in high school—I know it was the stone age, but it still applies—I cheated on my girlfriend with her best friend. It went on for months. Finally, one of her other friends spilled the beans and we broke up. She got even with me the same way you're getting even with Matt. The Friday after we broke up, she went with a bunch of friends to a party and got drunk. She screwed a guy, doing everything with him she wouldn't do with me. That's what started it in the first place. She wouldn't put out. She wanted it to be special between her and I our first time, but I was a typical high school senior. I had to have it now. No waiting for that special moment or to get married or any that other bullshit. Her friend and I just hit it off and I started getting it from her instead. Now, I'm not saying that's what happened here. I don't know what the scoop is between you and your boyfriend and your roommate. I don't want to know. But back in high school, who exactly did my girlfriend hurt by screwing another guy in revenge. Me? Her girlfriend? You tell me who."

I forced his fingers off my chin and then forced him off my body.

"I don't need any lectures," I said hotly. I pushed him onto his back and sat up. "Do something with that," I ordered, indicating his flaccid cock and its lubricated sheath. I stormed into the bathroom and closed the door against his protestations. "Go away," I said, sitting down to pee. He knocked lightly again.

"Be reasonable, Lisa."

"Fuck you," I muttered.

"I'm not asking for myself. I'm asking for you. Don't do this to yourself."

I laughed, cynically. "This from the guy who just filled up a condom inside my cunt."

I could feel him wince. "Do it for me, then. You said I had a choice."

"You blew your choice," I said, flushing the toilet. "You chose to lecture me instead." I rinsed my hands under the tap, dried them quickly on the towel. "Get out of my bedroom."

He twisted the knob back and forth. "Come on, Lisa."

"Get out of my bedroom," I repeated.

"Stop being crazy."

"Do I have to scream for the others? Tell them you raped me? Chased me into the bathroom afterward?"

What the fuck are you doing, I asked myself. You just made love to this guy. He gave you your best orgasm, ever. You fell in love with him a little bit just now. Now you're threatening rape?

Before he could answer, I crossed the bathroom and yanked open the door. I fell into his stunned arms. "I'm sorry," I apologized, wrapping his neck with my arms and laying my head against his chest. "That was the meanest thing I've ever said. I'm so sorry, Jim. I would never do that to you. You're right, I am being childish. A baby. Please forgive me, Jim."

He placed his hands tentatively against my back, and began to rub it lightly. "It's okay. I understand you're upset. I understand your need for revenge, Lisa. But is this really the way you want to get it?"

I clung to him, tightly. I didn't know what to say. He was right and I was wrong and the stupidest idiot in the world could see that. I was his high school girlfriend all over again, taking revenge on herself--only eight times over. And idiotically, I couldn't stop myself.

I leaned my head back and looked up at him. "Regardless of what I do or don't do, the truth is, you're 50-something, married, with kids my age, and not in the least bit available. Even if you were..." I didn't need to point out he was more than twice my age and we would never, ever work.

"The marriage proposal was facetious," he said with a grin. "Consider it withdrawn."

"And here I thought..." We both laughed. Then I pulled him down and rising onto my tiptoes, kissed him.

"It's not fair I give myself to you, and not the others."

"Lisa."

"They've been a part of the game, too, Jim."

"Yeah, but..."

"They've got as much invested in me as you do."

"Maybe," he allowed.

"No maybe. It would be a slap in the face to Nick and Mike and Richard not to have the same opportunity as you did." I kissed him again. "Bill and Robert, maybe not. Certainly not Gary."

"And certainly not Steve," he agreed.

"Certainly not. But..."

"There's always a fucking but," he grumbled.

"All seven are part of the game, and the rules of the game, which I'm playing by, state that every member gets the option to act. Everyone, Jim. Deadheads included."

He laughed bitterly. "You and your fucking rules."

I laughed. "If there's any way possible, I promise you'll be my last also. I don't know if I can--" He nodded. "But I'll try."

He kissed the tip of my nose. "Don't let anyone in you without protection."

"I won't."

"I don't want anyone having you for real."

"Just you," I promised.

"Does than stipulate my past possession, or the one possibly coming?"

"Both," I said.

He kissed me again, and I damned near took him back to the bed.

* * *

"Ready?" he asked.

I nodded. I was all erupted in goose flesh again. My nipples were achy little points, and my body started to shrink into itself again. All in the minute since Jim had last kissed me.

"You don't have to do this, Lisa."

I nodded, though in disagreement. I didn't trust myself to speak. I wondered if I had the courage to retreat to this bedroom again with someone else. I looked up, pleading all over my face, and then to the door again. I decided if he refused to let me continue, I would do as he said. I wanted to stop. Please stop me, Jim, I thought. He opened the door.

The game was mid-round. Robert stopped midway to dropping a stack of blue and red chips on the pile. He jerked his head, flicking his eyes to the door, and the others did likewise. Every man at that table knew I'd been fucked. Each one looked at my naked body. Half of them, open-mouthed, assumed I'd reenter under some form of concealment. They hadn't expected me naked. I blushed bright red as every pair of eyes darted to my thighs, away, and then back again. Not for the first time, I wished I weren't clean-shaven and visible in all my baby-soft glory. My rather red, baby-soft glory, I thought deprecatingly. I walked, stiff-legged and rigid to the table and sat down.

Steve looked at this watch. "I hope you got your money's worth, Jim."

"Fuck you!" Jim spat back. He was on his feet in an instant.

"There's no cause for talk like that," Nick admonished. "From either of you."

Jim fumed, and Steve returned his furious gaze with a mellow one of his own. "I was just saying..."

"You don't need to be saying," Jim replied angrily. "No one does."

I had to defuse the situation. "Jim and I had sex."

Jim started and yelped, "Lisa!"

"They all know it. We were in there for twenty minutes. What else would take us twenty minutes to do?"

Both Mike and Rich laughed. Nick guffawed and Jim turned bright red. Steve looked smugly pleased. I saw my mistake.

"It was the best twenty minutes of my life," I said with a smile. "And I've gone all night long before."

Jim only turned redder and sat down. Everybody else laughed. I felt miffed, but decided I'd done enough damage. Instead, I dropped the destroyed pair of panties atop Steve's pile of chips, crossed my forearms on the table and smiled sedately at the guys. One by one, they sobered up.

Mike said. "Is that what you meant by services? Having sex?"

I stroke Jim's shin with my foot. "Jim's a special case. He helped keep me in the game and looked out for me while I played." I smiled at him as I continued. "He got a special reward along with his goods. He didn't pay for it. It came freely. But as you can see," I went on, indicating the nakedness of my body. "I have nothing left to offer but my services." I looked pointedly at Steve. "And no one but me, and my prospective buyer can set a limit on that. Whatever they are. Right, Steve?"

The look in his eyes should have flayed the skin off my face.

"Right, Steve?" I repeated.

Mike pointed at him. "Don't you even think about saying it, buddy."

Nick joined in. "That goes for me, too, buddy."

Rich threatened: "I'd take it very badly if you used that word, my friend."

"Which she's not," Jim concurred, taking my hand.

Bristling, Steve said through clenched teeth. "I had no intention of calling her that."

"Bull shit," Jim hissed. "It was on your lips."

Steve returned his blistering glare to me. "I want you out of this house, Lisa. You and that asshole boyfriend of yours. First of the month. Gone. Kaput. Every last stitch and article of clothing."

"I'll be more than happy to, Steve," I said blithely.

"You're not gone, I'll have the Sheriff here to put you out, Lisa."

"You asshole," Mike growled. "Haven't you figured this out?"

He turned his head toward Mike, without moving his eyes off me. I kicked Jim in the shin, who jumped and yelped: "Uh, let's not go there, Mike!" earning himself another kick on the shin. He looked at me, helplessly. Mike laughed harshly.

"Your daughter is with her boyfriend, you asshole."

I groaned, even as Steve narrowed his eyes at me disbelievingly. "Whaddya mean?"

"You stupid fool. How can you miss something like that?"

Steve wasn't the only one mystified. Bill and Nick and Rich all exchanged looks. Jim just looked guilty, staring at his hands flat on the table. Robert looked at Gary, who was smiling, rather disdainfully, at me. Steve's eyes never wavered from my face.

"What the fuck's he talking about?" he demanded.

I lowered my eyes, unable to answer.

"I'm talking about," Mike said patiently, "the fact that your daughter, and her boyfriend are shacked up somewhere north of here, or will be shacked up, sometime this weekend, fucking their brains out. Isn't that right, Lisa?"

I looked at my clenched fists, appalled.

There was a stunned silence. Then Nick asked: "Is that true, Lisa?" at the same time Steve pronounced "Bull shit! That's a load of crap!"

My face turned bright red. I obeyed my survival instinct and fled.

* * *

I ignored the tap on the door.

"Lisa?"

"Go away!" I said fitfully. I lay on my bed face down, face buried in pillows.

"Open the door."

Over my dead body, I thought. "Go away."

"Please. I want to talk."

Talk about what, I wanted to know. Your whore of a daughter?

"Leave me alone."

He did leave me alone, for about five minutes, during which time I heard murmured conversations outside the door. Then one of the voices resolved itself into Mike's who objected vehemently: "Hey! You can't do that!"

I looked up, even as I heard the sound of a key in my doorknob and the doorknob turned. I hurriedly wrapped myself in the bed sheets.

"Hey!" I objected. Three other voices objected "Hey!" at the same time, though Steve ignored them as easily as he did mine. I tightened the bedspread across my chest and stared at him belligerently.

"Get out of my bedroom!"

"After we talk." He closed the bedroom door against the protestations of the other players and thumbed the lock.

Furious, I flung back the covers, exposing myself and spat: "Here I am! Come and get me, Steve!" He looked away when I spread my legs invitingly.

"Please stop."