Founders Ch. 46

46: Sunday July 19, 0800 hours CST: Provocation

At 8 AM Zach woke up alone with an urgent erection and only a note left behind by his lovers. What a night! He'd been absolutely insatiable. Colby had been red hot. Yum! Anming, he had to find a better way to wake her up. Or just not do it. But things had seemed to right themselves in the morning. Things had been special with Colleen. Berte had done well. In retrospect, he should have bothered her rather than Anming. Aanya, he thought she'd been satisfied. There would be many special nights with the five of them, he was sure. Yet there could be only one first night for Trigonometry, and it had been last night.

Zach got a text from Aanya that read, "Bad news: test negative. Good news: Michaela has a surprise wedding present for me at sleep cycle. See you with Michaela at 6 PM. Please no more rape for now! Give me a day. I'll just watch. Love love love xxx."

Wow, it seemed as though Zach had beaten all these women to death. They could talk about it tonight. He texted Aanya back, "Even if you're already pregnant like you feel, the test might not be positive until you'd normally have your period, so don't fret about the negative result. See you at 6 PM! Love love love xxx."

Zach somehow fit his raging boner into his scrubs. He left his quarters and proceeded antispinward towards Alexis and Charisse. They would be overjoyed to deal with his predicament. Although he was in a bit of a hurry, he happened to glance back over his shoulder. He noticed that the Latin graffiti, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," had disappeared since the last time he had passed by. Good. Although he didn't believe in omens, he did believe that words matter. He bet that Colleen did it or had it done. Its instructional value was over. Best leave the past in the past.

When Zach arrived at the quarters of his favorite unrepentant sluts, they were awake, naked, and had soft lighting. "Zach, you're alive!" cried Alexis in amazement.

"Not just alive but erect!" Charisse thrilled. She yanked down Zach's scrubs right there in the doorway and latched onto his straining member with her mouth. She gave it a good taste, her eyebrows raised, and unlatched. "He came to us dirty this time."

"He never comes to us dirty! How exciting!" said Alexis. "Who is it?" Zach groaned inwardly. His raging boner had distracted him from washing, and now he was going to have to live it down.

"I don't know," said Charisse. "Nobody I've snacked on."

"Double exciting!" said Alexis. She dragged Zach into their bedroom and cycled the hatch. "Well that rules out Colleen and Aanya."

"Lalalalala!" cried Zach, plugging his ears. "Too much information!"

"Well, what does she taste like?" asked Alexis.

"Really clean and good and sweet," Charisse smiled. "Definitely Lawful Good. Like oatmeal cookies."

"Oh, that's Colby," said Alexis.

"For the love of God," said Zach.

"Don't worry, tiger," Alexis was quick to assure him. "Your number one wife is an extremely hard target. She appears to only have eyes for you. It's tragic."

"How did you know, then?" asked Zach.

"Sometimes a girl can get a whiff of a girl," said Alexis. "It was a completely innocent situation, at least on her part. I'm sure she didn't even notice."

Charisse leaned back on the bed and presented her wet vulva to Zach. "Do you love me?" she asked playfully.

Zach turned to face her, his cock straining in her direction. "You know I do," he answered in all seriousness.

"Then show me," Charisse dared him with a playful gleam in her eye. "Fuck me as hard as you love me."

Zach fell on Charisse and choked her hard down against the bed. Her arms flailed in surprise. This was not the first time he had choked her in their lovemaking. But there was a different quality to this. His practice with Colette had made him able to be more ruthless than either of them reckoned. Both her carotid arteries were squeezed shut. He used his other hand to ram his penis firmly into her vagina. He grabbed her throat with both hands. Now her air supply was also cut. This was going to bruise. He fucked her so hard and with such energy he wasn't getting much satisfaction out of it. Her eyelids fluttered. She was at the edge of consciousness. Her hips pumped weakly and her legs quivered in orgasm.

After Charisse was done cumming, Zach let up on her throat a bit. She gasped some air into her lungs and some blood hit her brain. He grabbed a handful of her short hair in one hand and painfully yanked her head to the side. Her hips pumped more strongly in another climax, and a "gk!" escaped her throat. Alexis leapt out of the way as they fell halfway off the bed and onto the floor, with him still fucking Charisse with all the speed and strength he could force out of his body. Alexis pulled out her phone. Charisse was wedged against the floor and the side of the bed. She squirmed in orgasm futilely like a pinned specimen, barely able to move in his grip.

Zach's scrub pants tore in the crotch and down one leg as he loomed over Charisse. He slammed her head on the deck by the hair. He held her head against the deck with one deck slipper clad foot. He yanked her legs into a stress position and fucked straight down into her. She gave a piercing cry and shook in orgasm. She was enjoying it, so he was excited even though it was way too rough for him. His practice with Colette was helping him do this.

It had been several minutes of heavy exertion for Zach. Charisse was curled up and wedged against the side of the bed with him fucking straight down into her. He took his foot off her head and choked her with both hands. She shook and squirmed silently. The cum was boiling up in him. At the edge of consciousness, her vaginal muscles squeezed tightly as her eyes shut. He held her throat closed as he strained and ejaculated one hefty squirt into her. His work was thankfully done.

Zach pulled out, semen flying, and Alexis jumped out of the way. He lifted Charisse and put her down onto the bed. Her pulse was strong and her breathing was regular, but she was still unconscious. "Wave to our viewing audience, Zach," said Alexis.

"Alexis, please don't," said Zach. "Please delete it."

"She's going to have two black eyes and major bruising on her neck from this," said Alexis. "Everybody's going to wonder why."

"Let them wonder," argued Zach.

"Party pooper," said Alexis, deleting the video.

Charisse opened her eyes and said, "Ow."

"Was it everything you'd hoped for?" chided Alexis.

"Serves me right," said Charisse.

Zach checked to make sure that both of Charisse's eyes were dilating properly. He flopped onto the bed, exhausted physically and emotionally. He'd somehow needed to call her bluff, violently. It had been wrong, and he knew it. It was like that first anal fuck with Colette. Things had gotten way out of hand. He'd wanted to mark Charisse, do anything he could think of short of permanent injury. He'd allowed his rage to rise up at how much of a joke his love was to her. All he'd done was likely fuel her fear of getting close to anyone. She had set him up in a lose-lose situation and he'd fallen for it. He lay there in a funk. It was the worst sex he'd ever had. Never again.

Charisse left for the head. Alexis rolled Zach over, got some oil, and started massaging him. She had picked up on how rotten he was feeling. "My, you were in a demonstrative mood."

"I was an idiot," said Zach.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," said Alexis. "The bitch asked for it, and she was cumming the whole time. She obviously loved every second of it. Well, not the unconsciousness probably, but the rest."

"How did it come to this?" said Zach.

"Well," began Alexis salaciously. She was clearly intending to veer his mind away from the subject at hand. "We were expecting multiple men to be chosen. If you were one, Colleen and Colby, since they were both sweet on you, had agreed to share you. That's even if there were enough men to go around. Don't let that swell your head, or God forbid, any other part of you. It was hypothetical. They both had second and third choices they were also creaming mightily for."

During this explanation, Charisse had arrived back from the head. "Alexis!" she croaked and then coughed.

"Should I be knowing this?" asked Zach.

Alexis continued, "The rest of us had grudgingly agreed as long as some of our other top candidates were chosen. That's why I leapt into action when it turned out to be just you. I didn't want to risk Charisse and me not getting on high rotation, so to speak. As we came to know you, we realized we shouldn't have worried. You can't say no. Psh-hah-hah-hah-hah!" Both she and Charisse were laughing at this, Charisse more coughing than laughing. Her throat sounded painful.

"Yeah, you're such an easy slut, Zach," Charisse squeaked with hilarity, descending into another coughing fit.

"I'm sorry about your throat," Zach said to Charisse.

"I'm not," croaked Charisse wiping the tears of mirth out of her eyes.

"I'm not going to do this again," said Zach.

"Drat!" said Alexis, "I was hoping to get you to do it to me. Skipping the double black eyes like raccoon girl here, though." She flipped Zach over onto his back. She sucked his penis into a thrilled, erect state, despite his foul mood, and began riding him. When, after her first orgasm, he still looked sullen, she tapped him on the chin. "Hey you, buck up. It's not you with the black eyes."

"Don't worry about your reputation, Zach, if you are," said Charisse. "I plan to tell the truth. I injured myself in a stupid dare. It was my fault. I'm sorry I taunted you, you darling crazy man."

"I'm sorry I took the bait," said Zach.

"Now that all is forgiven, can you two shut up?" complained Alexis. "I'm trying to get the Earth to move for me here." But all was not forgiven, somehow, for Zach. He and Charisse lay there holding hands while Alexis worked her orgasms out of her ride. He looked at Charisse. She was definitely getting two black eyes. She looked at him, examining him. He tried to relax about the whole thing.

An hour later, Charisse was snoring softly. Zach was tense and straining. Alexis milked one more orgasm out of him before he shot a respectable load up into her. "Mmm. Warm," she said, settling on him and wiggling back and forth to feel every inch of him. "Now scoot," she ordered him, "and don't work too hard."

After changing out his ripped scrub pants with a new pair, Zach told Colleen about Charisse's visible injuries. He figured he ought to let her know as soon as possible. She was annoyed. Her response was, "Spectacular. Now I'm going to have to file a fucking form. NASA is going to have to put out a press release. It's not like the press won't notice Charisse's black eyes when we land fucking day after fucking tomorrow! Why the fuck couldn't you have beaten the crap out of her the day we got up here instead?"

"I'm not going to lie on the form," Colleen continued. "I'm going to say that two of my idiot children decided to have some rough sex. One came out the worse for wear. I imagine the press release will say 'minor hydroponics lab mishap'." Zach promised it would never happen again.

Zach did an hour of work then. Today he was working on the air conditioning system. It did far more than filtering out dust and maintaining the air at a specific temperature and humidity. The atmosphere of the habitat ring was as the atmosphere would be in the dome on Mars. The pressure was 60% of air pressure at sea level. It was 50% Nitrogen and 50% Oxygen. This was the same amount of oxygen as at sea level. Nitrogen was important for the plants. Carbon dioxide levels were maintained at 500 parts per million. This was far below dangerous levels for humans and helped plants grow. After the air was dried and filtered, the rest of the carbon dioxide was scrubbed out of it. This carbon dioxide was hydrogenated into water and methane. The methane went to combine with the methane made by Waste Recycling to be turned into plastics and such. Water from this reaction, combined with water from Waste Recycling, was cracked to yield hydrogen and oxygen in gaseous form. The oxygen was used to replenish oxygen consumed by the crew. The hydrogen was used to hydrogenate the carbon dioxide. Finally, the re-oxygenated air was re-hydrated and cooled to a comfortable temperature. As in nature, the four elements of nature, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, were recycled and reused endlessly. The combined actions of the waste recycling and air conditioning plants were powered by energy from the fusion bottle.

Zach met Michaela when she got off shift at 10 AM. He told her about the incident with Charisse, which was still upsetting him. Her comment as they were walking to her quarters was, "Bitch deserved. Nobody come between Zachary and love, any fool would know this. Maybe now in her thick skull."

"I wish somebody would yell at me for doing it," said Zach. "I feel rotten."

Michaela shut the hatch to her quarters. She pulled his hands up to circle her neck. "Now give me black eyes for love also." She laughed when he told her to fuck off. Despite himself, her lightheartedness about the incident lifted his mood.

Zach's lighter mood was a good thing. Michaela easily teased him to an erect state and got all the orgasms from him that her libido demanded. When she was done with him, she finished him and enjoyed his reliable hot wet gift deep in her. This made her moan and say something in Bulgarian. She stroked his hair and assured him that everything would be okay for ninety seconds. Then she kicked him out of her bed, told him to piss off, and turned towards the wall. This behavior was becoming a habit. He could see a method in her madness. It was a clear signal to him to not fall in love with her. His personality problem was that even getting kicked out of bed could become endearing to him.

Zach did another hour of work before letting himself into Colette's quarters at noon. She was in there getting ready for bed, and was nude. She stopped when he came in, looked at him attentively with her mesmerizing bright green eyes, and asked, "Can we talk?"

Colette was an achingly gorgeous woman. "Get on your knees," Zach ordered coldly. She dutifully got on her knees in front of him. Just thinking about one of her blowjobs was getting him hard. He hadn't had one since the day before yesterday. Then, curiosity got the best of him. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Ever since our first time together, you've been aloof and distant towards me," Colette said. "You've been trying to please my husband and me so much, you've obliterated yourself. I miss the man I met on that first night. The man that, sure, adhered carefully to the rules and instructions, but within that framework, was actually himself. I feel like I'm missing the chance to make friends with that man outside of these sexual matters, which is something I'd enjoy. I don't need you to be a fake sadist or any kind of sadist."

"I admit my approach to the rules and instructions, to you, has been clinical," said Zach. "In my world, my normal world, friendship, love, and sex are all intertwined. There's give and take in all of it. My heart has been hurting a bit, because I know that's not what you want. I'm still not sure what you want. You're asking for punishment and friendship? Excuse me for not enjoying inflicting pain on you."

"You're angry," Colette said. "I'm not explaining this right. Why wouldn't I want friendship, love, and sex with you all intertwined?"

"I don't know what to say to you. You're asking me why wouldn't you want love? I feel like this conversation is too big for me," Zach admitted. "I'm trying not to love you, because then you are me, and I'm hurting myself. That would be truly sick. But I've been failing ever since that first night. I realized I would never be satisfied with that tiny sliver of you. You wouldn't tell me to stop and be satisfied. I don't know how to be even friends with you in the conventional sense. Since that evening, I've been objectively serving your needs and X's needs like a doctor serves a patient. You taught me that first night that bringing my heart into it would only hurt us both. I thought you didn't want it anyway. I don't think you want it now. I don't know what you're asking for."

"When you whip me with the belt, it's for my own good, like you would lance a boil," explained Colette. "Let me put it this way. Are you by chance a Catholic, familiar with the concept of penance?"

"I'm a Unitarian when I'm anything, but I'm familiar with the general concept," Zach replied.

Colette continued, "I enjoy what the rules and instructions force me to do on pain of whipping. It keeps my head and heart straight. Disobeying is a real sin that I will suffer until it is canceled with a whipping. Then I let go of it. Things are truly back to where they were, not some fake version of it. That's why it requires real pain, real punishment, not a slap on the wrist. It's like lancing a boil. Do you want me to suffer forever or give me a little pain and end my suffering now? Well, doctor?"

"It's not just the belt," said Zach. "It's everything. It's how I'm not supposed to care how you feel. I'm supposed to treat you like an object, right? I'm not supposed to care how a urinal feels."

"It's a metaphor," said Colette. "You can be caring and merciless at the same time. You're both caring and merciless during surgery, aren't you?"

"I still don't understand," Zach said. "I've really fucked this whole thing up."

Colette rolled her eyes. "You did not fuck up. You followed the rules. You acted as instructed. That is the very definition of not fucking up. This is why I'm having this conversation with you instead of X. I got a glimpse of all of you that first night. This is about my experience of our relationship. It's not really about X, although he governs the physical part of our relationship. The rest is up to us."

Colette continued, "About that first night. I've never gotten that turned on from just kissing a man. What made me cream my panties was that I could see you wrestling with yourself. You were trying to figure out how you were going to make this work for everybody. That is so you. You got so desperately horny while you were trying to stall for time that you had nasty thoughts! Then you realized that you could order me to do anything allowed by the rules and I would like it. I did like it Zach, to an extraordinary degree. It was so genuinely horny and impulsive of you. You were so responsive, I thought I must be performing fellatio on a virgin boy. I loved the effect I had on you. I felt like the very goddess of the erotic. It was so hot."

"Why didn't you say anything about this before?" Zach pleaded.

"We wanted to wait until you had a chance to grapple with the situation a little. X especially cautioned that you wouldn't even understand what I was saying, and I think he was right. I have no experience with men of your kind, having never had any interest in them. Courting rituals are fake for any man, I would assert. He gets down on his knees in front of you with flowers. What he really wants to do is pin you down and put his semen into you. Everything else is fake, or at least not completely honest. Before this, I've only had positive sexual experiences with men who already knew this. They have cast off this pretense or were at least committed to the ideal of fully casting it off."

"Okay," said Zach. "I get your point that there's pretense in romance. But love isn't fake."

"I'm not talking about love. I know love. I even appreciate how the best of you romantic men are, or whatever you'd call yourself. I appreciate how you are with other women. I've seen how much you genuinely enjoy the process of persuading them. I've seen how much they appear to enjoy the process as well, though they may be only tolerating it as far as I know. I appreciate the artistry behind it, but there's too much pretense in that game for me. That doesn't mean you have to not be who you genuinely are around me. It means exactly the opposite! You're not committed to pretense anyway; I know this about you. You're all about honesty, painfully so. Just drop the courting pretense with me. You can enjoy that dance with other women if you want to. It's like some women don't like anal sex. You're a decent man who wouldn't force anal sex on her. I don't like the romantic dance. It's that simple. Cut it out with me. I don't like it."