In-Genie-Us!

"Think of it as protective coloration." A lewd grin. "I'll be happy to show you how."

She closed her eyes. "Gene. Go away. Help me ruin Brad's engagement, all right? I'll....I'll figure the rest out on my own."

"All right." A wicked gleam entered the djinn's eyes. "I'm going to Cabo. Call me if you need me. But I think I can make sure your girl is going to be very unhappy with her betrothed come tomorrow morning."

With a pop of displaced air, the djinn disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the faint scent of his cologne.

Shanaya dried off slowly, her thoughts miles away. In the act of putting on a pair of boxers to wear to bed, she paused.

What the hell. Maybe he's right.

Carefully, she locked the door. Then, after a pause, locked the door that led to the bathroom as well. Her parents had always respected her privacy, but tonight she wasn't going to take any chances.

She left only one light on, a lamp on her bedside table that she usually used for reading. After a moment's thought, she opened the top drawer. As she suspected, a few items that her mother might have blushed to see were conspicuous by their absence. No dildo, no rabbit vibrator. Instead, there was a small bottle of lubricant, and a box of tissue.

All right. Let's do this. Taking her deep breath, as if she were about to enter a burning building, she pushed her boxers down to her knees, then off entirely. Laying back on the bed, she looked down the length of her body. It still appeared strange to her, a landscape that belonged to someone else. Less curved, more carved, with clearly defined muscles and hair in odd places.

And, of course, there was the elephant in the room, so to speak. The undeniable presence of a penis between her legs. It hung limp, but as she frowned down at it, she caught a hint of coiled tension, as if it were only waiting for an opportunity. The base was the same color as her own skin, a creamy mocha, but it darkened throughout its length until it was a rich chocolate at the tip.

And if you make a stupid food joke right here, she told her mind firmly, I'm getting up and walking out. Carefully, as if petting an animal that wasn't friendly and might bite, she ran a finger down one side, then up another. Immediately, it twitched, and her breath caught at the sudden spark of pleasure in her groin. She did it again and watched, fascinated, as it began to grow. And so differently from her arousal as a woman. Unlike some of her friends, it had never been difficult for her to become aroused and reach climax. But this seemed almost obscenely easy. Even when she was at her horniest, a masturbation session had required some time. But now...she looked down at her cock and swallowed uneasily. It was already erect, bouncing in time to her heartbeat. The slit at the tip seemed to be looking at her impatiently.

"All right, all right," she muttered. "Give me some time to get used to this, okay?"

She squirted some lube into her hand, the liquid slightly cool on her heated skin. Closing her eyes, she spread it over her manhood, exploring her new organ curiously. It was something completely outside her experience, the skin soft and exquisitely sensitive, making her breath come short and quick, but still hard as iron beneath. She sank back into the pillows, her eyes slitted as she worked the lube into her skin. At the tip of her cock, a clear bead formed, glistening in the lamplight. Instinctively, her thumb came up to swirl it around the head of her phallus, and she groaned as the exquisite sensation flowed from her groin up into her brain. Good Gods! This was incredible. And so easy.

Her hand closed around her shaft firmly, pumping up and down her length. As she did, she wondered. Was she too big? If she ever got Allison into bed, would her best friend be horrified or frightened when she took off her pants and revealed this monster?

Allison. The mere name conjured up a hundred images of her, a thousand. She had seen her in every mood, in every light, in every season, and there was no memory which was not lovely in her mind. Her laughing face, with sparkling blue eyes and the corners of her mouth turned up like a bow. Her golden hair rippling in a brisk autumn breeze as they drove around the countryside in her car, music blasting form the stereo. Her sweetly curved body, always full of life and energy, bouncing as she did a cheer routine in front of half-empty stands as, once again, the Mayfield Tigers got the tar kicked out of them on the football field.

And always, those too-few moments when she had seen tantalizing glimpses of her body. In the locker room after gym, on sleepovers, in dressing rooms when they went shopping together. And the hugs and touches and passing caresses, always not lasting long enough, always treasured like jewels in a miser's hoard.

What if there came a day when those touches weren't meaningless, but full of love and emotion? What if she was no longer Allie's lesbian friend, pining for something that would never occur, not the boy who had grown up beside her but had never made his feelings known, but a man, a man who Allie found attractive and desirable? She imagined undressing her, revealing that incredible body which she had only seen in stolen glimpses. But now Allie was not a bystander, but a willing partner, giving herself to Shanaya joyfully.

Her fist flew up and down her length, stroking, urging her climax up and out of her body. Her balls felt heavy in their sac, full of seed, the sensation utterly new and at the same time hauntingly familiar. Her entire body shrank to her middle, where an unbearable tension was rising, cocked back like the arm of a catapult.

And then it happened, so suddenly her entire body jerked in shock. Her eyes sprang wide as her shaft bucked in her hand like a live thing, and spurts of white fluid burst from the head of her cock, splattering her chest in thick, milky streams. The pleasure was so great that she gasped, her head sagging back as her rod pulsed in her fist. Muscles she had never known existed clenched and released and clenched again, emptying her testes of their load of seed. She had to chew her lip to keep from groaning in relief and release.

"Oh." Her voice was faintly bewildered. "Wow." She dabbed at her chest with a handful of tissue, almost appalled by the mess she had made of herself, and how good it had felt to make it. Even now, her penis still felt wonderful in her hand. She stroked it softly as it softened, like a pet that was comfortably drowsy, sighing as pleasure flowed through her body.

Her nose wrinkled, however, as she took in the pools of semen that lay on her chest and belly like liquid pearls. While masturbating was clearly much easier for a man, the cleanup was apparently much messier. She recalled vaguely what the tissue was for, and flushed as she wiped away the evidence. The result did not leave her feeling cleaner. Actually, the opposite. So with a long-suffering sigh she climbed out of bed and made her naked way to the shower.

Where, under the stream of hot water, she did it all over again.

And again, before she was able to fall asleep.

Chapter 6: It's An Ill Wind

And again when she woke the next day, her morning erection proving too much of a temptation for her to pass up.

And again, after a pleasant little post-spank nap, until the irritated beeping of her phone finally roused her.

A little bit late for you to be going through puberty, isn't it? she thought, as she tucked her t-shirt into her jeans and slipped on a pair of loafers. Around her, the house was quiet, both of her parents already gone to work. But her phone was lit up like a Christmas tree, texts from Odette and Wendy and Tara clamoring for attention.

She opened up her messages as she strolled downstairs, then stopped, her feet frozen to the floor.

~Hi, Ray,~ said the first text, sent from Wendy, at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. ~You better give Allie a call as soon as you get up. Some serious shit went down last night. And if you want to ever be more than 'just friends,' you're never going to have a better chance.~

Shaking, she read the other texts, all of which bore the same general message, and which grew increasingly irate as the morning wore on. Finally, tired of the hints, she stabbed a finger at a button and called Wendy.

"About fucking time," she said when she picked up.

"What happened?" she asked, not wanting to admit that she had been too busy masturbating to look at the phone.

"You better talk to Allie to get all the details," Wendy replied. "But the long and the short of it is that Brad and Matt and the rest of them went out last night."

"And?" she said, when the other woman paused.

"And I don't know if it was a strip club or a regular bar or what, but things got pretty crazy, it sounds like. That dumbass Matt posted a bunch of pics on his Instagram account. It's all over town already. Everyone knows. And the ones who don't know will be told by the ones who do.

"Even by the standards of a bunch of dumbass, drunked-up redneck morons, it's..." She sighed. "I don't think she can ever forgive him, Ray. Not for this. And I don't think she really should."

"Has anyone talked to her?"

"She's not answering her phone. I called her mom, and she says she won't come out of her room. Honestly, it's like she's six years old again. I'd feel better if she was screaming or something, to be honest. Allie's sweet, but everyone has a breaking point."

"We should go over to her house. Talk to her."

"Like hell I am. God, Ray, you really don't know anything about women, do you?"

Her hand tightened on the phone. "Enlighten me, then."

"Didn't you hear us trashing Brad yesterday? We were trying to get her to think about things.

"But this is the worst thing that could have happened, in some ways. If she sees us, all she's going to be thinking is that sooner or later, one of us is going to open up our big dumb mouths and say 'I told you so.' And then things will really go to hell.

"No, Ray. It has to be you. Or maybe one of her sisters. But none of them live in town anymore and they have kids besides. So you're elected."

"And what am I supposed to do?" He kept her lips shut on the fact that she had trashed Ray as well, albeit in a slightly different way, the previous night.

"Just..." A long silence. "Just be there for her, all right?"

She nodded, then remembered that Wendy couldn't see her. "I'm always there for her."

"Yeah. You always are, aren't you? Well, when you have a second, let us know how things are going, all right?"

"Sure. Later."

She dropped the call, then put the phone down on the kitchen counter, as carefully as if it were a bomb that might explode if she jarred it.

Good Gods. What did Gene do? What did Brad do?

*****

Half an hour later, after a quick shower and a quicker breakfast, she was ringing the front doorbell of Allison's house. Before she had a chance to wipe off her shoes, the door was opening to reveal Allison's mother.

"Ray. Thank God."

"Hi, Mrs. Weaver." At the older woman's waved invitation, she entered. "How bad is it?"

"If I had enough frequent flier miles, I'd be on a plane to Cabo right now, just so I could plant my foot so far up Brad's ass that he'd be tasting my toenails." She rubbed the bridge of her nose with pinched fingers. "God knows that none of us are perfect, and we all have to deal with that, but that's no excuse for hurting my little girl. If he ever shows his face around here again, me and Dalton are going to have to flip a coin to see which one of us takes him apart. And that's not even taking the girls into account. Kimberly is so mad she started yelling at me when I told her to calm down."

She nodded. "That bad, huh?"

"You have no idea."

"Is she still in her room?"

"Yeah." She smiled sadly. "It hasn't been this bad since you got accepted to Louisville."

Shanaya had been on her way to the staircase, but those words stopped her in her tracks. "What?"

"You didn't know about that?" The older woman shook her head. She resembled her daughter, though time and care had put a silver sheen to her blond hair, and had added a few extra pounds to her hips and chest. Still, she bore her years with grace, and the lines around her mouth were more from smiles than frowns. "She never wanted you to leave for school, Ray, even though she knew you were set on college and getting out of Mayfield, just like your sisters. I think she imagined that the two of you would be best friends forever, always living a few blocks away from each other. I think that's when she started feeling lonely, when you were gone."

She jerked her head at the stairs. "Go on up. I'll have some lunch ready when you're done."

"Allie?" She tapped on the door.

Silence.

Another tap. "Allie, it's Ray."

More silence.

"Come on. I know you're in there." He tried the doorknob, but it was locked tight.

Finally, a response. "Go away."

"No." She leaned against the opposite wall. "I can stay here all day. The same way I did when Bobby Joe Hinton didn't ask you to the eighth grade Valentine's Day Dance."

The silence on the other side of the door seemed more reflective, than angry. "Is Mom out there with you?"

"She's downstairs."

A lock clicked and the door opened. Allie's tear-ravaged face looked out, her eyes darting up and down the hall. "All right. You can come in. As long as she's not around."

She slipped inside, and Allie closed and locked the door behind them.

Shanaya paused, fidgeting. "So. This isn't awkward or anything."

Allison's open laptop was on her desk. A stab of one manicured finger, and the screen flickered to life.

"I think," she said in a distant voice, like the calm in the eye of a hurricane, "I like this one best."

A video began to play. It was jumpy and poorly lit, loud house-music blaring from the speakers. But Shanaya could clearly see Brad, his best friend Steve, and a few of their cronies, sitting at a table. Two scantily-clothed girls were crawling all over Allison's fiancée. As she watched, gap-jawed, Brad pulled out a money clip and started peeling bills off, handing them to one of the women, who promptly took off her top, baring a pair of obviously enhanced breasts.

"Oh, Kali save me." But it was too late. She watched, disgusted and a little fascinated, as Brad stuck his face into the woman's impressive cleavage, shaking his head back and forth as the woman laughed. The other woman elbowed for room, her hands working at Brad's midsection. "Oh, no. She's not going to..."

A chant from the speakers interrupted her. "Go down on him. Go down. Go down. Down. Down. Down! Down! Down! Down! Down!!"

She turned away, and the sound stopped as Allison halted the video. "I don't think you need to see the rest of it. It's just as awful as you think it is. Since I didn't see Matt in the video, I guess he was the one who recorded it. That idiot must have wanted to post a couple of pics and put everything up by mistake. I wonder if he'll figure it out today when the texts start rolling in, or if he's too hungover to care."

"So," she said carefully. "Brad doesn't know that you know?"

"Not yet. But he will soon." She slumped into a chair, staring into nothing.

"Allison." He could sense her fragile mood. "What are you going to do?"

Her friend's eyes glittered hectically as she turned towards her. "Do your folks still have their croquet set? I was thinking about grabbing a mallet and taking out all the windows in Brad's Tahoe."

"Well, yeah," she said slowly. "You could do that, I guess." She put on a worried face. "But have you thought about the consequences, Allie?"

"Consequences?" She snorted. "As if I give a shit about those right now."

"But, Allison." She frowned seriously. "This is Kentucky. Wrecking your fiancé's car after he cheats on you with a couple of Mexican hookers is at least a twenty-dollar fine." She considered, pursing her lips. "Maybe twenty-five."

Allison stared at her, then snorted a feeble laugh. Tears welled out of her eyes as she came into her waiting arms. "You jerk," she said, her voice muffled by her shirt as she held her close. "How do you always know the right thing to say?

"How about we do something else?" She blinked up at him. Suddenly Allison noticed that she was wearing only a long t-shirt and pajama bottoms, and the way her body moved under the loose clothes made it obvious there was nothing underneath. "We can fuck, the way you've wanted to for years. I was thinking about you last night, in bed," she whispered. "It got me hot."

"It did?" she replied stupidly. In response to the warm softness of Allison's body, her cock was swiftly springing to life. Before she could do more than sputter a protest, Allison was shoving at her, pushing against her chest like a blond-haired bulldozer until her knees hit the bedframe and she sprawled on top of it in an ungainly heap. Allison followed, straddling him as the bed creaked in alarming protest.

"Come on," Ray," she whispered, tugging at his shirt. "Let's screw. Mom likes you. Even if she hears something, she'll pretend she doesn't."

It would be so easy. Her fingers twitched eagerly. She could do it. Just slide her hands under the hem of Allison's dove-gray t-shirt and gather the bounty of her breasts into her hands. Inside her jeans, her cock stiffened with sudden fierce urgency, as if to cast a vote in favor of fornication.

Shaking her head was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. "No, Allie."

"What do you mean, 'no?'" Sapphire-blue eyes glared down at her. "Was all that talk at supper last night a mean-ass joke? Because, Ray, if it was, I'll scratch your face right off!" Her hand balled into a clawed fist.

"No, Allie." She levered herself to her elbows, then into a sitting position, her friend sitting on her lap. Taking her hand, she drew it to her mouth, kissing the palm, and put it on her cheek. "Never that. Never, ever that."

"Then why?" The words were a heartbroken wail, and her face crumpled in confusion.

"Because I don't want to be your way of getting revenge on that idiot. You want to go to town on his truck, go right ahead. I'll even put up the bail money when you get arrested. Want to order up a bunch of pizzas and have them delivered to his apartment when he gets back into town, fine. Set a bag of dog shit on fire and leave it on his doorstep, I don't care. But I'm not going to let you use me. I love you too much for that.

"And I don't want that guilt on your conscience, either." She smoothed a stray lock of hair back over her temple, marveling at the silky feel. "Can you honestly tell me that if we did it right now, in the mood you're in, you wouldn't feel guilty afterward? And that when Captain Dipshit comes back from Cabo, crying and begging you for just one more chance, babe, I'm sorry, really, can you please forgive me, you wouldn't be tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since it would mean cancelling the wedding and disappointing all the people who were looking forward to it?"

Allison's glance strayed to her bedside table, where a small velvet box was prominent. Her hand, Shanaya suddenly realized, did not bear Brad's engagement ring.

"Well," she sniffled. "This is the weirdest Thursday ever. My boyfriend can't keep his pecker in his pants and I can't get laid!"

"Can't?" she joked. "How many people did you ask before me?"

"Jackass," she replied, laying her head against her chest.

Shanaya wrapped her arms around her, rocking slowly. "Hey," she said into her ear. "Don't you have work today?"