Promises Pt. 09

"Wait, how did Peter get all this stuff? Was he using spy cameras to record me?"

"No, the video in the room was from a hidden camera placed by Raul, the guy who was holding the knife to your throat when you woke. He had a thing for Kira from the moment they checked in. He planted the camera while they were at breakfast the first morning. It caught everything that happened in their room for the rest of the vacation. Peter only discovered the camera when he was packing to come home. Luckily, he took the card before anyone else saw what was on it."

"What about the stills?"

"Those were taken by a perv who snuck a camera onto the beach against the regulations. It was totally unrelated to what Raul was doing."

"But how did Peter get the pictures from him?"

"He spotted the guy and caught him unawares. The guy ran away so fast that he left the camera behind."

"Yeah, I'd bet he'd run."

I'm impressed by Bethany's memory of all these details. She's got a sharp mind and amazing recall.

Next is a short clip of the concession's video of Anna and Kira parasailing together, taken from three different angles. They both look terrified at first, but completely exhilarated by the time they are reeled back down onto the stern of the speedboat.

"You know, I'm proud of Kira," Teri murmurs. "That looks so awesome. I wish I could be that brave."

Then there's video of Kira and I making ham sandwiches in the bungalow. We're only visible from the waist up behind the kitchen counter, but Kira's obviously quite comfortable about her bare breasts as she concentrates on trying to spread the mayonnaise. It's a nice domestic scene, just with no clothing.

"Wow," Teri murmurs softly. She's silent as the montage goes to audio only.

"I love you, Kira Zwilling."

"And I love you, Peter Malakhov. Promise me something?"

"Anything."

"If something bad should happen, please don't give up on me. Don't ever let me forget you."

"Of course, but what could possibly make you forget me?"

"I can't imagine what it could be, but promise me anyway?"

"Kira, I promise I will always come for you, no matter what happens."

"Thank you, Peter. Now make love with me."

Teri is dead silent as it plays. The silence goes on for a long moment after the montage ends.

"Oh my God," Teri finally murmurs, obviously stricken. "Kira knew what was going to happen and made Peter promise to find me. And here I sicced the cops on him when he tried to make good on that promise."

"He's not upset with you. He says he completely understands."

"Then he's more forgiving than I could be. That restraining order is going to be on his record permanently. I shouldn't have let my mom and dad talk me into it."

"No, probably not, but I've been telling you that you need to spread your wings and fly for a long time. You obviously have it in you somewhere."

"So it would seem."

"Teri, are you interested in finding out more? I'm sure that Peter would welcome a call, or at least an email from you."

"I... I just don't know. I mean, this stuff is amazing, but I'd want to know more first. Do you suppose you could talk Peter into letting me have all of the pictures and recordings?"

My face shows my hesitation to Bethany. My mouth forms the word "Anna."

Bethany nods, then answers Teri. "Yeah, I'd bet he'd do that, but there's something else you need to know. You remember meeting Anna, right?"

"Yeah, she's the one who helped get me to the hospital. She sat with us in my room for a while. And I guess that was her parasailing with me."

"Well, there's a bit of a story there. See, while they were in Mexico, both Kira and Peter met Anna separately and became friends with her, each without knowing that the other had even met her. When they realized it, the three of them hung out together, then Anna moved in with them. They were all three, uh, very close."

"Oh shit, Bethany. Did I, uh, Kira, have sex with her too?"

"That's what you need to know about, Teri. The three of them found that they have a very interesting dynamic. Like you, Kira was nominally cis-only, but when Peter was with them, she was sexually receptive to Anna too. On the other hand, Anna is a life-long lesbian, but when Kira was there with them, she really enjoyed having sex with both of them."

There's a long silence before Teri speaks again. "So I was in a ménage à trois with a giant and a lesbian?" Her tone is one part awe, and one part mortification.

"Pretty much. They evidently got a little careless, though, and Anna got pregnant as a result. Peter married her when he found out."

There's another long pause before Teri speaks again. "That doesn't sound like the most obvious option."

"No kidding. Without Kira with them they're celibate, but they've evidently become the best of friends and are looking forward to raising kids together." Bethany doesn't know about the miscarriage. That can wait for some other time.

"I hope Peter realizes that I'm not Kira," Teri warns. "I can't do that for them, if that's what he's after."

"He knows that, but he says he'd still like the chance to be your friend."

"I don't see that happening anytime soon, and I don't understand why Kira would have made him promise to contact me."

"I get that, but try to be open-minded, okay?"

"I can't make any promises, but I'll watch the rest of the videos if he agrees to let me."

"That's a good start. You won't be sorry."

* * * * *

When Anna gets back to our loft on Sunday night, I meet her at the door and we take each other in a tight embrace.

Anna's hugs are so awesome. Intercourse with Bethany didn't release as many endorphins into my bloodstream as I'm getting just from the feeling of Anna's body against mine. Good vibes or not, though, we've got stuff to talk about. I give her a kiss on the cheek, then lead her over to the couch.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asks.

"Look, Anna," I say, "I'm really sorry about getting us into that situation. If you hadn't been so quick on your feet, it could have been a real mess. I know we agreed to an open marriage, but I'm closing my end of it right here and now. I'm never going outside it again. I promise you that I'll never be with any woman but you."

"And Kira," she reminds me. Her tone says that it's not an accusation at all. She's just reminding me.

"Well, yeah, but I guess I consider her to be within our marriage, if we can ever get her back with us."

"She's a part of us," Anna agrees. She takes a slow breath. "Are you sure you don't want to take advantage of opportunities as they come along? I mean, there's a good chance that you may never have sex again otherwise."

I'm looking her right in the eye. "Anna, you give me all the friendship, companionship and love I'll ever need. Compared to those, the sex act is a very small thing, and not worth risking everything else I have. I love you with all my heart, Anna. You truly are enough."

Anna smile is beatific as she goes to hold me. I wrap her in my arms, feeling in my heart and my soul that she truly is enough. "Oh Peter," she murmurs, "you don't know how happy you make me. I was never going to be with anyone but you or Kira either, but I couldn't stand to trap you in a sexless marriage. Still, selfishly, the thought of you being with another woman was almost more than I could take."

"And then you ended up seeing me with another woman. Anna, I'm so sorry."

"There's nothing to forgive, Peter. You were doing it with the purest of motives and it may have helped to bring back the woman we both love." She pauses. "And though I was jealous, actually watching the video was a relief to me. It eased a lot of my fear that I might lose you to her." She giggles.

"Anna, you astounded me with how well you handled it. I have no idea how you came up with the perfect plan so quickly and carried it off so well."

Anna waves that off. "You had it pretty well in hand," she says. "I just backed you up. But Peter, what I really want to know is why you did it. I thought we'd agreed that Teri was beyond our reach."

I tell her about watching the video and finally noticing that Kira had feared forgetting. "Anna, I'm really sorry about taking such a crazy chance, but I made a promise."

"Please Peter, don't be sorry. As your wife, I like it that you work so hard to keep your promises. What I want to know is why exactly that is. You take your promises more seriously than anyone I've ever met."

I pause for a long time, trying to decide if I can even talk about it. It's incredibly personal, and it will force me to dredge up a lot of memories that I'd just as soon leave way down in the deepest bilges of my subconscious. Anna waits patiently, likely seeing the turmoil on my face.

I finally decide that, as my wife, Anna has a right to know. And there's only one way to do this. I've got to take it head on.

"Okay, you know that my mom was an alcoholic who drank herself to death while I was in college, right?"

Anna nods somberly.

"Well, she did try to stay sober while I was younger," I say. "She could go months at a time without drinking, but inevitably something would happen that would drive her to buy a bottle of vodka. At that point, she couldn't just have a shot and call it good, she'd drink until the bottle was empty.

"Unfortunately, my mom was a mean drunk. She'd scream at me, asking why I couldn't be normal, telling me I was destroying her life because I was so different. Then she'd take whatever stick or belt she could find and beat me until she was exhausted."

Anna is obviously horrified. "Oh God, Peter, I'm so sorry."

I shrug. "She never managed to leave any permanent marks, but hearing words like that from the one person who should have loved and accepted me? That cut deep. What was worse, though, was what she did every time she sobered up. She would cry and beg me to forgive her. Then she would swear to me, sometimes on the grave of my father, that she would never do that again. Every time."

Knowing how the telling of this story for the first time ever would affect me, I'd been able to brace myself and not show my emotions, but my wife hadn't had that luxury. There are tears streaming down her face.

"So you swore to yourself that you would never break a promise?"

"I could no more have walked away from the promise I made to Kira than I could stop breathing."

She tips her head up and plants a warm, loving, (but non-sexual) kiss on my lips. "I knew there was a reason I married you."

* * * * *

"Hon, would you get my front?"

Anna has just rolled onto her back in the lounge chair next to mine. The movers left half an hour ago, but it took us almost five minutes to get to the pool. The early June sun is plenty warm, but it's not nearly as hot as we've been warned that it will be later in the summer. Still, we're not taking any chances with sunburn so early in our residence.

"Sure," I say, happy that I get to run my hands all over her long, nude body. I did her backside just thirty minutes before, right before she did mine.

Our physical and emotional affection for each other has continued to grow. I can no longer imagine a life without Anna. Her miscarriage has only brought us closer. Yet, even now, as I work the lotion into her bare, sexy skin, I keep my desires under firm control. Anna is my much-adored life partner, but not my lover.

Anna gives me a tolerant grin as I take longer than strictly necessary to coat her breasts. I work the lotion evenly into her hips and thighs, then she spreads her legs and I thoroughly cover her crotch. I know better than to abuse this privilege and as my finger makes its one coating stroke up her slot, I can feel that, despite my hands just having been all over her body, she's dry as a bone. As always, I have to face the fact that Anna just isn't into men. Even me.

I finish up and lie back down. Anna grabs the bottle and returns the favor. I'm sure I'll get used to this eventually, but Anna's large, strong hands feel so good on me that I'm at full mast when Anna takes my cock and begins spreading the lotion all around, from head to base. She looks up at me, the offer clear on her face. What she's doing feels really good, but letting her continue would feel really wrong.

"No, that's okay," I say. Her hand stops on me.

"I wouldn't mind doing it for you," she says, and I can see that it's true. To her, it would probably be like milking a cow. It wouldn't be particularly gross, but she wouldn't get any sexual pleasure out of it either.

"And I have no doubt that you would do a wonderful job, Anna, but if it's only sexually gratifying for me, I don't think it's a good idea. I don't want to start us down a road that ends up with you feeling like you have to do sexual things for me." The words don't come easily, because my member is on fire at her touch.

She leans down and gives Mister Needy a quick kiss on the head, then moves her hands elsewhere. "Thanks Peter. You really are too good to me, but just let me know if you ever change your mind."

She finishes quickly and efficiently, lying back down at my side. We automatically seek out each other's hands, fingers intertwining, and soak up the warm Florida sun.

* * * * *

A couple of hours later, Anna and I are arranging the furniture in our palatial bedroom when my phone comes to life with a special notification sound that can only mean one thing. Teri has finally sent a text. Alerting Anna, I start tapping the screen. There it is...

Hi guys, I just wanted to congratulate you on the new house. Hope you're appropriately dressed and enjoying yourselves!

"I bet she's following my social media," Anna says. "I posted a couple of pictures of the house earlier and announced that we'd completed our move."

"And 'appropriately dressed?'" I say. "That almost sounds like teasing." It's so hard to divine people's emotions from a text message.

I speak a reply into the phone. "Does that look okay?" I ask Anna when I'm ready to send.

"Perfect."

Anna and I were thrilled to get your message, Teri. Yes, we're dressed as you might imagine and we're already loving our new home. Glad to see that watching our little movies hasn't made you decide never to speak to us.

It takes a couple of minutes before we receive Teri's reply.

"They were quite illuminating. Seeing them has made me work harder on becoming brave, but I don't know that I'll ever be able to do the things Kira did."

I feel so sad for her, having such a fun and outgoing person buried deep inside her somewhere, but unable to bring her out.

"We understand, but we hope that you, or Kira, can visit us some time. Our home is your home."

Anna nods. Our door will always be open to her. There is another long pause before Teri's response arrives.

"I won't be able to come anytime soon, but I'm taking steps to make sure the next Maya understands what's going on when she emerges. I'll make sure she knows she's welcome with you guys, and I'm almost certain she'll want to visit. What concerns me is what is going to happen at the end of her visit."

Bingo. Anna and I have spent a lot of time discussing this very issue. I pass our favorite idea on to Teri. The pause is even longer this time, but she finally sends her reply.

"<brave face on> I'd like to try that."

* * * * *

Bethany and I are having dinner at one of Minneapolis' nicer restaurants. I was in town closing on the sale of my shop and arranging for my machine tools to be trucked to Homestead. I'm going to have to leave in the next hour to catch the red eye back to Miami, but it's been interesting talking with Bethany. I'm getting her take on how Teri is dealing with the knowledge of what her alter ego had done in Mexico.

Bethany is also fascinated by the unorthodox relationship that Anna and I have. She has lots of questions about how we make it work. She's also drooled over the pictures of our palatial estate.

I've noticed a new confidence in Teri's friend, probably at least partially due to her change in career plans. When she steadfastly refused to take my money, I spoke to Bob the Lawyer, asking if he had any use for someone with exceptional English, research and organizational skills, but little other practical training.

It turned out that his firm had an opening for a researcher in the litigation support department. Her qualifications were a bit of a stretch, but as a favor to me he brought her in for an interview. To my amazement, his colleagues were impressed with her computer skills (she hadn't confessed to me that both she and her brother had been wickedly talented hackers back in the day) and hired her on the spot.

After a couple weeks of that, she had broken up with her college advisor ("that dried-up old crone") and decided that law would be her career henceforth. By now, she's already started night classes to become a paralegal, paid for by her employer. She's also decided that the dowdy, butch look isn't conducive to this new direction in her life and has (on my advice) joined a gym. She's been working out regularly and has added more protein into her diet. The change in her body shape isn't blatantly obvious yet, but I can see the difference.

Bethany has changed her hairstyle to something that, while necessarily short for now, is emphatically feminine. She's also gotten makeup and wardrobe tips from some of her friends. She'll never be beautiful, but it's been enough that she's attracted the interest of a nurse that she's met at the gym. A male nurse. She says she hasn't slept with him yet, but that she may take the plunge this weekend. I get the feeling that the lucky guy's gonna have a tiger by the tail tomorrow night.

* * * * *

We may not be lovers, but Anna and I do enjoy date night every week. Now that we have the money, we've discovered that we like high-end restaurants and ballroom dancing. Before marrying her, dressing up and going out was what I did for sex, but now it's become an end unto itself, especially since sex isn't in the offing.

Anna's got an amazing fashion sense, but because she's so tall, her choices in off-the-rack clothing are almost non-existent. I'd happily pay for custom tailored designer dresses for her, but she steadfastly refuses to let me spend that kind of money on her. Fortunately, sewing was a skill she learned at her mother's knee and she enjoys making a lot of her own clothing. I'm a bit in awe of her ability to look at pictures of a designer dress from a show in Paris, then pattern it in her head and quickly reproduce it in her own size.

Anna knows that I enjoy being seen with beautiful women, and because she loves me, she likes to go all out. Though she may be conservative in some ways, some of her creations are sexy to the point of near scandal, yet always classy.

In a futile attempt to look like I belong with such an amazing woman, I've had a few suits custom made for me by a high-end men's clothier in Miami. It's amazing the difference that quality materials and fine tailoring can make, and I truly enjoy wearing them.

In her heels, Anna is almost always the second tallest person in the room wherever we go, easily towering over all the men, not to mention the women. I get looks of envy from the men, and Anna just beams when she gets the occasional catty look from other women.

Do we attract attention when we go out? Why yes. Yes we do.

* * * * *

"Hey guys, what's for breakfast?"