Carson Evolved Ch. 06

"The only thing I can think of is maybe when I gave you some of my blood in the hospital, it triggered a reaction in your body. None of the training we've done since then can account for all of the changes we've witnessed," she finished. "Maybe it's like with mental thing—your nanites are adjusting to some changes and modifying systems to accommodate your needs."

Carson had to agree. "That would explain the tone. I guess I haven't really explored what the nanites can do for me very much." At that point, his stomach rumbled loudly.

Tilda looked at him in surprise. "Didn't you have dinner an hour ago?"

"Yeah, I did," replied Carson with a frown. "But I'm starving now."

"Maybe you burned through that energy faster than usual with that little burst of speed?" she suggested.

He shrugged. "Beats me. That would make sense, though. Muscles have to get power from somewhere."

His stomach rumbled again and Tilda laughed. "Come on. We better get some food in you before your stomach fights its way out of your body and goes hunting."

In the kitchen, Carson wolfed down a sandwich made from thick slabs of roast beef and cheddar on dark rye bread. The spicy horseradish sauce was offset by the tomato and lettuce. He was absorbed in eating his sandwich and paid no attention to the look on Tilda's face as she watched him. He demolished the sandwich in record time, barely glancing up in his eagerness to consume the meal. There was something primal about the way he ate, like a starving, feral cat. Tilda thought it was fascinating since it was out of character for him.

"Another sandwich?" she offered. When he nodded, she gathered the ingredients and set to work. She wasn't a domestic goddess by any stretch of the imagination, but she'd come to enjoy serving Carson in this way. All of the ladies of the house took turns preparing evening meals, often teaming up. The servants handled most of the other daily meals and day-to-day chores. There was a measure of satisfaction in sharing in the kitchen duties, seeing the satisfied faces as a meal was enjoyed.

She set his sandwich in front of him and sat down. "I think we should get you in to do some testing in a performance lab. We should see just what you can do and whether you can control it. It would help guide your training."

Carson nodded in agreement. "I think you're right. I'm kind of curious about this. I doubt I'm going to be any kind of superhero or anything, but it is pretty cool."

They discussed some different ideas as Carson ate his second sandwich at a more leisurely pace. Tilda mentioned her plan to find him a new combat instructor, which made him balk. But when she reminded him that a) she was going to be unable to train with him for the foreseeable future, and b) she thought she'd reached the limits of her knowledge anyway, Carson recognized that this was probably bound to happen at some point and agreed to meet with some different teachers when she arranged it.

Carson took his plate and rinsed it in the sink. He returned to kiss Tilda's head, and thanked her for a wonderful meal. He apologized for the smell, since he hadn't showered yet. When he kissed her lips, she bunched his shirt in her fist and held him in place, kissing him back with intensity.

"Mmmm, don't apologize," she groaned. "You smell like a man to me. If it were my night, you wouldn't even need to shower, because you'd just get sweaty again." With a final kiss, she released him.

"I'll have to keep that in mind for the future," he said, heading for the shower nonetheless.

Carson spent longer than usual luxuriating in the sensation of the hot water cascading over his body. It was soothing, but less relaxing than usual. Instead, as he shut off the flow, his muscles felt rejuvenated and energetic, almost tingly. It was an interesting sensation; in light of what had happened in the gym, he wondered what it meant. Mara's in for a workout tonight, he thought. It was her night, and she was only now really getting back into the flow of routine sex after her pregnancy. Carson was anxious to show her how much she meant to him.

He was surprised, however, to find Sam waiting for him as he rounded the corner into his bedroom suite. One glance was all it took to put a fire in his belly, though it was tempered somewhat by the chill they'd been experiencing recently. There was no denying that she was one of the sexiest women he'd ever seen. Possessed of an almost limitless pool of sexual energy, she had easily been the most aggressive of his sexual partners until recently. He wondered what her appearance meant, and any sexual thoughts he'd been entertaining faded away.

From her perch on his bed, Sam saw the apprehensive look on her husband's face and it brought guilty tears to her eyes. Her love for him swelled anew, and she vowed not to let things get the way they were again.

"Surprise, my love," she said softly. She was watching him closely, trying to read his expression.

Despite his apprehension, Carson loved Sam as much as he ever had. He walked over and leaned down to gently kiss her lips. "Hey, Hot Stuff."

Hearing Carson call her by the nickname he'd given her allowed her to release some of the nervous tension. An angry man wouldn't use a loving term of endearment, would he?

Straightening up, Carson cocked an eyebrow and said, "I thought it was Mara's night."

"We worked out a trade," replied Sam. "I really needed to talk to you, and Mara thought this might be a good way to do it." When she saw the solemn mask descending over his face, she quickly added, "It's nothing bad, I promise!"

One of the things that Carson loved about his room was that it was large enough to have a sitting area to one side. Often, if he wasn't quite ready to fall asleep, he would kick back in the recliner and tune in to a gravball match or catch up on some pleasure reading. "Okay," he said, as he sank into that chair and waited for her to begin.

"Before I begin, Carson, I wanted to apologize to you. I've been really selfish lately, and I disregarded your feelings about the thing with my mom. I should have known better than to expect you to go against your instincts like that. More importantly, I should have respected you enough to accept that you had your reasons. You definitely didn't deserve for me to act like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum."

Carson pictured Sam in the midst of a foot-stomping tantrum. Instead of picturing her as a child, she was like a smaller version of her adult self, complete with large breasts that swayed and jiggled while she ranted and raved. He couldn't help but smile at the image. Clearing his throat, he said, "Picturing you throwing a tantrum is kind of hot, as long as it's not directed at me."

"Men," Sam said, rolling her eyes. "How you guys can relate something like a tantrum to sex is beyond me."

"It's a blessing and a curse," observed Carson, wryly.

Sam unfolded herself from the bed and walked over to take a seat in Carson's lap. She leaned her head against his shoulder and quietly said, "Please don't hate me. When Mara told me how miserable you've been, and how a lot of it was my fault, I was afraid that I was going to lose you." She looked into his eyes. "I can't lose you. I love you so much, and it's killing me to think that I've been causing you pain."

Carson stroked her hair. He hadn't felt any inclination to force her out of the Pride. He loved her, and that commitment wasn't something he'd ever renege on flippantly. They just needed to get on the same wavelength, in his opinion.

"It's okay," he said. "I don't hate you; I don't think I could ever hate you. I love you. I love you so, so much, and I love that you believe in me and want the best for me. Just like with the other Lionesses, I usually feel like I'm not worthy of the love you give me, and I really hate disappointing you. But I can't be anything other than myself, can I?"

"No, you can't," she replied. "And frankly, I would never want you to try. I just lost sight of that for a while." She looked into his eyes hopefully. "Do you forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive," he replied. "But if you need to hear it, then, yes, you're forgiven. Now you forgive me."

She shook her head in confusion. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Of course, I did. I should have talked to you more, tried to help you understand why I can't do what you asked. We shouldn't have gotten where we've been, and I take full responsibility for that."

She patted his cheek and softly kissed his lips. "You never need to worry about me forgiving you, Carson. I can't imagine you ever doing something that I wouldn't forgive. That's one of the many reasons why I love you."

With the heavy stuff out of the way, Carson thought it was playtime. He held Sam by the waist as he stood and carried her to the bed. The fleeting thought crossed his mind that she seemed lighter than he remembered, but it quickly vanished as his hunger for his wife came to the fore.

They were kissing with increasing fervor when Sam suddenly broke it off, saying, "Wait, wait, wait." Carson looked at her in confusion; this was the first time she'd ever told him to stop.

She said, "I want to get to the makeup sex as much as you, but there's one more thing that I wanted to talk about with you. I've been giving a lot of thought to the experiment that we asked you to run, and I understand why it's not going to work for you. But I think I have a solution that you'll feel more comfortable with. Can I tell you about it?"

She's persistent. I have to give her that, he thought. "Go ahead," he said. "I won't promise that I'll do whatever you ask, but I'll listen to whatever you have to say."

"Thank you," she replied. "Mara said something the other day that got me thinking. We were talking about the thing with you and my mom, and how badly I messed things up around here. Then she said, 'It's too bad you don't have a sister.' Her point was, something happens between you and I, and we think something would happen with you and my mom, so maybe if I had a sister, it would work with her too."

"You don't have a sister, though," Carson said.

Sam nodded in agreement. "That's true. But my mom does."

"Let me guess: you want to see if I have to same response to her that I did with your mom?" When Sam nodded, watching him carefully, Carson gave it some thought. It did seem like a reasonable approach to the problem. Then it occurred to him that they might still have the same problem.

"The issue with your mom wasn't a lack of attraction or interest on my part; I just couldn't bring myself to cause a problem between your parents. Won't we run into the same problem with your aunt?"

"It'd be different for several reason," she answered. "She is married, yes. But that won't be as much of a problem, I don't think, when you hear what her life is like. And I think it'll require a different approach anyway.

"My aunt and uncle are several years younger than my mom. I think Aunt Cara just turned 36. For most of my life, she's been more like a big sister than my aunt. She's always been more of a wild-child than mom, too. She didn't settle down and get married until she was almost 30. Uncle Stephen put up with her for a long time, but he finally gave her an ultimatum: settle down and marry him, or he was going to look somewhere else. She loved him, so she decided to grow up and get married."

Carson was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the scenario that she was painting. "I'm not hearing a lot to make me think this will be different."

"The difference is, they were married a couple of years and just starting to try for a baby when Uncle Stephen fell off a building he was working on and shattered several vertebrae. Now, he's paralyzed from the chest down. She loves him, enough that she wouldn't leave when he suggested that she look for someone who wouldn't be a burden to her. But I know it bothers her that they never had kids. They even tried to harvest some semen from her husband to do it artificially, but it didn't produce any babies."

She put a hand on Carson's leg. "They're not part of the project, Carson. Even with my parents pulling strings behind the scenes, they can't afford to try again. It was basically their one shot, and it missed."

The tragic story of Stephen and Cara's life together tugged at Carson's heartstrings. He'd gladly assist them financially if they wanted to do so, but he knew what Sam was leading up to. "How do you see this going down, if they're not part of the project? I mean, I've never even met them, and I'm supposed to just roll up and offer to father a child for them?"

"Actually," she said, "I think it could be simpler. From how my mom described her reaction to being in your presence, she had a hard time focusing on anything else when she was close to you. I was thinking that maybe we could spend some time with them, get to know them a little. Let them see what kind of a man you are, and hopefully, some magic will happen. If you tell me that you're feeling the same sensation that you felt with my mom, then maybe we can broach the idea with them together. And if not, we can try to help them a more conventional route."

Seeing the look of surprise on his face, Sam's expression softened. "Sweetheart, you have such a big heart, it wasn't hard to read what you were thinking in your eyes. Even if the experiment doesn't happen, or it doesn't work, of course I'd be overjoyed if you offered to help them go through another round of treatment."

Carson smiled. "I can't help it. Becoming a father has been one of the highlights of my life, and I'm looking forward to having more 'cubs' running around the house. If I can help someone else experience that joy, especially family, how could I say 'no?'"

Sam pushed him onto his back before sprawling atop him. "You're a good man, Carson Jayne."

Breaking off the resulting kiss, with a twinkle in his eye, Carson said, "So. Does this mean we can have makeup sex now?"

"Absolutely."

*****

Even with four infants at home, and four more on the way, the Lionesses were adamant that Carson still needed to keep up with his "altruism," as they playfully referred to his agreement to visit project social clubs in order to fulfill the desires of women seeking to get pregnant. Usually, only one of the women in his life accompanied him; tonight, he was blessed to have all three of his wives with him.

They were fascinated with his mind-reading ability and found it endlessly amusing to try and narrate the interactions between various men and women in the club as Carson 'listened in' on the actual proceedings. Afterwards, he'd tell them how close they were. He wasn't entirely convinced that none of the three had mind-reading abilities, because they weren't usually very far off. Maybe they were just better at reading the sum of the non-verbal cues than he was, but if he couldn't have listened, he probably wouldn't have been anywhere close most of the time.

Carson idly watched the crowd, but truth be told, he really wasn't especially engaged tonight. He was mostly just enjoying being out with his wives. There was no question that he was having sex tonight, but he could get that at home pretty much on demand, so he wasn't particularly enamored of the anonymous variety that he found at the club. Still, it gave him a cheap thrill each time some guy swaggered up to proposition one of his wives. Carson couldn't be mad about it; it was a swingers' club after all. And if any of them had accepted an invitation, he wouldn't have had a leg to stand on. He wouldn't have been happy about it, of course, but he would have felt like the consummate hypocrite if he complained too much. Happily though, while he'd slept with more women in the past year than any man really had a right to, his Lionesses were adamant that they belonged to him and to him only. So, he knew the outcome of the game before a word was spoken when a guy screwed up his courage to approach the group.

Before long, he noticed that word was getting around that the girls with the lion markings were off-limits. He had to chuckle as he thought about the day Mara had come home with her tattoo. She'd just gotten back to feeling normal again after her pregnancy, and she'd been making promises of a big night for her and Carson after he returned from a business trip. As he unwrapped her, he was surprised to see a little lion's paw print tattooed just above one hip. Inscribed within the design was the name of their daughter together, and her DOB. When he'd asked her about it, Mara had simply said that she wanted a symbol of their daughter, and what better way to commemorate a lion cub than the paw print?

Since then, Mila had gotten matching paw prints for her two boys. Sam had gotten a snarling, stylized lion's head for her son. Helga, Quinn, and Tilda were already working to tweak the designs a little for when their babies were born. Helena had informed Carson that under no circumstances would she be getting a tattoo, and Carson was completely okay with that. He hadn't asked any of the others to do it, and he wasn't expecting it in the future. But they'd intentionally placed their tattoos to show above the waist of their skirts if they had bare midriffs, and it seemed to be having the effect of warding off unwanted attention.

Though he wasn't really paying attention, occasionally Carson's eyes fell on a face that caught his attention. When that happened, he'd sometimes surreptitiously monitor them to see if they were interested in him as well. Other times, he simply moved on. It wasn't often that he caught someone looking at him first, so he was a little surprised to see a woman sitting off to the side by herself, apparently watching Carson and his wives. If he didn't know better, Carson would have thought she was spying on their group. She clearly wasn't putting herself out in the open, sitting behind the potted plants in a dimly lit area of the room.

She attempted to appear nonchalant when she realized that he'd caught her watching them, suddenly finding something interesting across the room. That gave Carson the opportunity to study her a little more closely.

The first thing that occurred to him was that she was so young. Eighteen was a legal adult in all facets of their society, so it wasn't as if she was out of place in a bar or social club. But it was a little unusual to find someone who couldn't have been more than 20 hanging out in a place like this. Difficult to tell while she was sitting, she didn't appear especially tall. Her frame was fairly slight, with a modest bosom. Her face, though...her face was stunning. She was obviously of Mediterranean heritage, maybe Greek or Italian. She had a narrow triangular face, which showcased her high forehead, long, straight nose, high cheekbones, and a pair of the largest eyes Carson had ever seen, framed in thick, dark lashes. When she looked back and their eyes met, she smiled self-consciously, displaying a wide smile. Looking at her straight on, Carson could see that she had mahogany brown hair that cascaded in loose ringlets down to her shoulders. Center-parted, it perfectly framed her gray-green eyes.

Carson could have attempted to read her mind, but something about her made him think that there was something more than a random hookup on her agenda. The way she was positioned, the fact that she'd been surveilling them, it all led towards something other than chance. So, he decided to play with her a little, just to see how she responded.

He flagged down a passing waitress and asked her to visit the mystery girl to take her order and put it on his tab. He could have taken a shot at ordering something for her himself, but there be traps and dangers aplenty going that route. Instead, he made a friendly offer of buying her a drink, something that she would definitely like, and settled back to watch her reaction. When the waitress returned a few minutes later bearing what appeared to some sort of wine, Prosecco perhaps, he knew he'd made the right choice. Carson would never have sent her something suggestive, like "Sex on the Beach" or a "Sloe Comfortable Screw," but he'd probably have gone for something stereotypically girly, like a margarita on the rocks.