Guilty Pleasures Ch. 06

"Are you two good?" Wanda asked tentatively, despite our apparent comity.

"Yes," Yancey said with a smile, sliding his arm around her waist. "Clark will continue to sex you into the ground on several more occasions, and I will continue to enjoy the aftermath, until you guys have come even with my miserable behind."

I found myself uneasy at his bravado. "You are taking this almost too well, Yancey. Are you really sure you are okay?"

He looked at me and shrugged. "I am, to be honest, appropriately unhappy about this. But that is the point, no? And even if I wasn't okay, what do they say about glass houses? I sure as fuck have no stones to throw," he said, firmly but sadly.

Wanda slipped her arm around him in turn. "We are doing this for you as much as for us, you know," she said softly.

He arched his eyes at her, and said softly. "If it brings you back to me fully after all these years, then yes, I win too."

"I don't think that's what she meant," I said, smiling at them both, happy to see them snuggle.

"You want me to have stones to throw?"

"No, asshole," Wanda said, smacking him on the arm. "We are getting rid of our stones."

"Oh..." Yancey drained his glass. "I have to hit the bathroom before I make a mess out here. Finish your glasses, and I'll see if I can bring the bottle back with me so we can all have a refill, without the unworthy types inside seeing I have it. I assume this is the Pappy that you brought?" he asked Wanda. She nodded, and Yancey disappeared inside, seeking relief.

Wanda watched him go with happiness in her eyes. But then she turned to me with a glint in her eyes. "Seeing you two getting along makes me smug about my plan. This is going to work," she said, still needing to convince herself a little.

"I do want our next hall pass soon," I said softly, with a smile.

"Eager beaver! Don't you like spreading this process out?"

"I want to get mine all in before you and Yancey completely reconcile," I joked. I meant every word of it though. Every moment of this whole thing was a tightrope, and it all could collapse at any time. The sooner it was over, with Wanda and Yancey completely happy, the better. But I wanted my time... my times, plural... Holy fuck was this woman a sex goddess.

"Ha!" she laughed. "I intend to get my every drop of evening up," she leered at me quietly. "So, Mister Right Now Please, when do you want to do it next?"

"Friday night again?"

"No, I don't think so," she said sultrily. "I'm going to need a longer stretch with you next time."

"Longer?"

"How about I come over Saturday morning instead? I'll bring along stuff to cook for dinner for the two of us. What do you think?"

Dinner?

I grinned. "I think I'll have to make sure Becca doesn't try to bring a crowd over on Saturday, then."

She grinned back. I looked for Yancey.

"I haven't fucked in my pool in at least eight years," I said softly.

"Well that needs to be corrected," Wanda giggled back. "But I also was told something about that bed of yours..."

I dimly realized that all that beer, along with two fingers of high-proof rye whiskey was making me just the littlest bit drunk.

Yancey made his reappearance, with the bottle mostly concealed under his arm, and poured three more fingers for each of us. This was looking suddenly to be a bit of a bender.

The three of us chatted away for a while. Various other couples stopped out to say goodbye to Wanda and Yancey. Others remained inside, playing a card game that from the sound of it was not Bridge, but something stupid and silly.

Yancey was peering in at one point, not looking at Wanda, and she smiled at me and sucked her finger lasciviously.

My eyes widened and I shot a look at Yancey, just as he turned back to me. He looked at my face and laughed. "Did she do the finger suck thing, or just lick the tip of her nose?"

Busted.

"She sucked her finger in a most inappropriate way," I said in a puritanical voice. "You should keep an eye on this lovely little wife of yours. She might do something... improprietous." We all laughed a little drunkenly.

Wanda could lick the tip of her nose?

Wanda just snuggled into Yancey for a moment. But in another minute, the three of us were standing equidistant and laughing hysterically about something.

"Guys, this may be the weirdest thank you in history, but thank you for doing this evening up thing," Yancey said. "I feel as good as I have in a while." Then he turned to Wanda and giggled, "Whatever finally made you demand to put your plan in action after so many years of keeping it to yourself?"

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Yancey absolutely did not need to know the inciting incident that made Wanda make her move.

Unfortunately, Wanda and I were both caught off guard, and were both well and truly drunk by that point. That is not a good combination for hiding things, or making up cover stories.

Yancey, who I guess had not had as many beers as a foundation for his drunk as I had, instantly saw that there was a secret here.

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

"What is going on, you two?" he asked, suddenly suspicious. Uh oh. I might have been drunk, but I knew instantly that if we didn't tell him... something, something that rang true, he would start having all sorts of dark suspicions. The Plan would fall apart and maybe so would their marriage.

Wanda saw it too. Unfortunately, she chose truth as the best thing to say.

"I, uh, walked into Clark's backyard on the way home from work, only to find him, um, getting busy," she blurted out.

"Wait? Actually getting busy? You saw him?" Yancey instantly laughed. I relaxed a fraction. "That must have been embarrassing... But wait. Why did you think to stop your car and go see him? Did you recognize a car out front?"

Fucking perceptive fuckwad...

Wanda froze. Shit.

"Was it someone's I know?" Yancey asked slowly. Dangerously. He was way off the mark, I could tell. But he clearly thought that she had caught me fucking some other guy's wife. That was super bad. If he thought I was going around fucking guys' wives, then Wanda's and my evening up wasn't a brilliant, berserk Hail Mary play, it was just another notch in my bedpost, with him as unwittingly cooperative cuck.

Fuck it.

The black eye was going to be worth it to protect Wanda... and Yancey.

"Someone you know." I took a deep breath and made my hands stay low, away from protecting my face. I looked him in the eye and let him see my shame. All the fucking shame that I had accumulated since the start of the cruise. "It was Mary's car. That's why Wanda stopped, thinking to say hi to her."

Yancey actually laughed for a moment. "But then why did you..." he started to ask Wanda, then dropped off in horror.

Would the blow come right away?

He turned toward me with icy slowness.

"You... You took. My daughter. On a cruise. And when you came back... you fucked her?!?!?!"

This was it. I was finally going to get what I deserved. I straightened and pushed my chin out. "I... we... on the cruise, too."

Yancey stared at me. Fuck, he was looking like doom itself. I'd have looked like that if he had touched my Becca.

"But..." he was suddenly almost bewildered. "She's been in such a good mood lately."

"Not so much," I said miserably. "She's mortified, Yancey. Getting caught was... We got caught. Both times."

"Both times?"

"Becca caught us, on the cruise."

"Twice?!?!" Yancey hissed, something still holding him back. I was guessing it was the few remaining guests, obliviously playing Crazy Eights or some shit inside. "How could my smart daughter get caught twice by..." He was apoplectic.

"Because our daughter gets set on an idea and won't let go," Wanda said flatly.

"Mary gets caught up on..." Yancey said, suddenly stopping. Finally, I saw his hand bunching into a fist.

He turned away, coiling up...

Then his shoulders shuddered.

Was he laughing?

"We are three fucked up people," he said, chuckling.

He turned back, a wild lighten his eyes.

"I fuck my best friend's wife, behind his back, with no excuse from his blameless behavior. Then my now divorced best friend, without knowing of my douchebaggery, fucks my goddamned daughter! Twice! Then," he went on, dragging a ragged breath, "My wife catches them, and decides that that means she needs to fuck said best friend herself... with my full knowledge."

Yancey sagged down onto an outdoor chair and heaved a ragged breath. "I'm sorry guys. This all starts with my assholeish behavior."

"Yancey..." Wanda said, in pain.

"No. This is on me," I interjected quickly. The further in the background Wanda was here, the better. "Yancey," I said, kneeling near him. "I am the skeeziest human in this city. You still don't know how skeezy I am. Yes, you pulled an ace asshole move once upon a time. But my... my behavior," I said, suddenly unwilling to call what happened with Mary... or any of the others, a 'total mistake', "is not on you."

"Careful, asshole," Yancey grumbled. "I still haven't decided whether or not to punch your lights out."

"You get one free punch," I said softly. "Free and clear. After that, you can try to punch my lights out." I was leaning over him, my chin sticking out like the target it was meant to be.

Yancey looked at me, his whole body still as stone. With a jarring jerk, he heaved a deep breath, and stood. He stood up and blinked as slowly as a sloth. "We are having a wonderful evening. We are healing wounds. My daughter is of age. And unlike some of us, you are not married..." He shuddered.

And he lifted his glass and took an amazing, unhealthily large slug of 130 proof whiskey. Then he held up his glass to us both. "Cheers," he gasped.

Wanda and I clinked our glasses to his and we all took a liver-tormentingly proportioned slug.

Yancey looked at me with a grimace. "Let's move on," he said, meaning legion.

He heaved a deep breath, smiled at Wanda, and looked back at me. "I'd still rather not hear about that shit happening again."

Then you better talk to your daughter, I thought darkly.

"Stan!" came an outraged female voice from inside. The three of us looked at each other in surprise. Any... whatever that had been boiling between us vanished in the face of the utter novelty of hearing Monica raise her voice to Stan.

We all came inside together without discussing it, drawn by that magnetic curiosity that draws drunk people to conflict.

There were only four other guests left. Stan and Monica were playing whatever the game was with another couple. Stan must have gone into his usual act, and wonder of wonders, Monica, who could not move away and ignore him under the circumstances, had snapped. Mildly, but that was still thunderous, for her.

Stan looked bewildered, like he couldn't believe that she had called him out. The rest of us couldn't believe it either.

I wanted to cheer, but knew that would be a Bad Idea.

"Let's go home, Stan," Monica said, softening her tone. "I, at least, have had too much to drink, and maybe you too. Thanks, everybody. Thanks Yancey, Monica," she said, louder, easing Stan out of his chair.

The tool looked like he was about to get mulish and balk, but Wanda stepped smoothly over and 'helped' him with his chair. Before he knew it, he was up and moving with Monica out the door. I saw her rolling her eyes apologetically over her shoulder at Wanda.

And they were gone.

"I don't think I've ever seen her yank his reins," I mused out loud in admiration.

"Honestly, I always thought she kind of liked his attitude, the way she never pulled him up short," the other woman in their game said, almost nastily.

I never knew people held Stan against Monica. I was absolutely certain that that was not fair. But honestly not unreasonable.

*

The very next day, Becca descended on the back yard with a crowd of friends. These summer groups were seldom as big as the ones she had brought early last fall and late in the spring, when UNC was still in session, but it was still enough for a nice party. And the crowd was growing again as the summer went on.

Mary was conspicuous in her absence. I wondered who had made that decision, Yancey, Wanda, Becca, or Mary herself. Probably a combination thereof. I wondered idly, as I got in some office work before firing up the grill, if Yancey had even told her that he now knew. I'd find out eventually if he had.

I was quite glad to have Mary not there for the time being. I had made one significant decision. I for sure must not succumb to Mary's charms again, despite a genuine desire to finally finish what had been interrupted twice. Whatever I wanted, I wasn't going to do it.

If I did, the Pope would probably drop by to interrupt us.

No, more likely it would be my mother.

The Pope, I could have handled. After being denied at the very moment of truth twice, I'd have told His Holiness to take a seat and I'd be with him in a minute.

"Hey, Mister Howard," came a voice, breaking in on my attempted concentration on performance reviews. Despite how much I complain about my young employees, they all do in fact have performance, and I have to periodically review it. For the most part, it is better performance than I want them to think I think.

I looked up to find Stephanie standing next to me. Sigh. The girl hardly ever spoke to me, though she was always friendly and polite to me. She just was callous with the other kids. I was never comfortable when she did choose to speak to me because, well, she was always in a bikini, they were always small bikinis, and she was the cheerleader all the other cheerleaders were jealous of. She was in the current ESPN college football promotional montage for chrissake. My eyes tended to want to linger on places other than her face.

"Yes, Stephanie? What's up?"

"I was wondering if I could have a White Claw today," she said, sitting down tentatively on the chair next to my chaise. I raised an eyebrow. "I know you are a stickler about it. That's cool. But it was my birthday on Tuesday. I'm twenty-one now."

"Oh are you now," I laughed. I wasn't meaning to sound skeptical, but I've gotten into the habit of being amused about drinking age with these kids.

"Yes I am," she said cutely. "I even brought my ID, so you would feel better about it." With that, she twisted on the seat and reached behind herself. Christ, she had tucked the driver's license in the back of her barely their bikini. And when she turned to slip it free, I got a really lovely view of her really lovely backside.

Oh, God. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Blithely, she presented me with the card. I waved it away. "I believe you, Stephanie, but thanks for bringing it over. Happy birthday, and help yourself. I think I only have Lime and Black Raspberry right now."

"That's great! Thanks Mr. Howard," she chirped. She turned and slipped her ID back in the back of her bikini bottom as she squatted by my beer fridge to fish out a black raspberry seltzer. She then unfolded herself to her feet, smiled at me in thanks, and bounced off to several of the other girls. Jesus, I could not keep my eyes off her. She had the most perfect, tight, round, barely-covered ass.

I snapped my eyes back to my laptop.

Normalcy. Normalcy. Normalcy.

She had not been flirting with me. Girls who look like her don't need to put in an effort to still put on a show. She had not been flirting with me. And I still didn't like her that much.

"Hey, Mister H!" another girl called out to me from beside Stephanie, pointing at the White Claw. "It was our birthday last week too!"

"I know when your birthday is, Magda," I taunted back.

I shook my head and surveyed the crowd. Anne and Carol were both there too, of course, but they were mercifully both having their attention consumed by three guys who seemed to be quite intent on finding out who had a chance with whom. Both of those two girls had explicitly been a one time thing, and I had not had any 'trouble' from either of them since the cruise... but guilt has no expiration date.

When things finally broke up early that evening, I was amused to see that Becca made damned good and sure that both of my two 'mistakes' left before she did. I called her over as she was rounding up the last two kids who were riding with her, a girl I didn't know and a boy I was not sure I wanted to.

"Darling," I asked her, as off-handedly as I could. "If you bring another crowd next weekend, do it Sunday, would you? Saturday won't be good."

"Sure, Pappadoodle. What's up?"

"I, uh, I'm having a team meeting. I don't know if I'll have it here, or a Laser Tag place or some such."

"Laser Tag, Dad? Really? Your team is grown-up people."

"They are all about three years older than you!"

"Do they even have beer with Laser Tag?"

"Uh, I think I saw one place that has a full bar."

"Oh," Becca brightened. "Then I'd say go do a shoot 'em up." She paused. "And I may not even be in town next weekend, so you might not see us Sunday either. Tell me how the Laser Tag goes!" With that, she and her stragglers were gone.

I sat down grumpily. First, she had deliberately not told me where she was thinking of going, and second, now I had to take my worthless team to play Laser Tag...

But Saturday was clear. I texted Wanda to that effect.

WANDA: I'll bring steaks. You will need the protein...

*

Wanda showed up at my door at 9:45 in the morning the next Saturday, dressed in a swimsuit of some kind under a voluminous cover-up, with a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses. She had an insulated Costco bag slung over her shoulder that was doubling as steak transport and pool bag.

Of course, she looked like a million bucks.

I grinned a little stupidly and ushered her in. She gave me a little kiss as she swept by me and into the kitchen. I followed her there as she pulled out two very nice-looking prime New York strips and some other groceries for dinner, stashing them in my already crowded fridge.

Then she turned around... and we were fucking on the kitchen island in no time flat.

That went really very well, except for the demise of a favorite peppermill of mine that got knocked onto the tile floor during the festivities. Totally worth it.

With our edge taken off, Wanda started to slip back into the really rather fetching one-piece, sling-type black swimsuit she had worn over to my place. Whatever she might complain about her 'aging' body, no woman owns a suit like that without being very confident about her figure. "Go get a suit on yourself," she said. "I'm hankering for a sexy backyard pool day."

"We don't need suits," I counter-offered. "Although you look like a dream in that number, I've got pretty much perfect privacy in my backyard, unless someone has a drone."

"Good to know, which I already did," Wanda said, heading for the back yard, producing a can of sunscreen from her bag. "But if we just go with Naked Day, that takes away the fun of taking off each other's suits repeatedly." With that, she went out the back door, leaving me to scramble upstairs for a suit of my own for her to take off.

Our first hall pass had been pretty much set up as a date. This one was more a cool, casual hang... with benefits. When I came out back, we swam for a bit, just relaxing in the water and talking like the friends we were, except for a little casual grab-ass here and there. The suit she was wearing was a dream for feeling her up without dislodging it at all. Somehow, letting my hands slip underneath the front of the sling to cup and tease her breasts was way naughtier than just outright playing with them naked. Especially since we spent much of the time I was doing it talking about propagating irises.

By noon, I felt like I had a brand new penis, one that was more than ready to go for a drive, but we both were hungry, too.