Quaranteam - Book Two (Ch. 02)

Chapter Two

December 10 ^th, 2020

There was a certain level of expectation that had been building up around tonight for the past several weeks. While he and Jade had been sexually intimate several times now, they'd both sort of been dancing around the subject of her virginity, until last week she'd come to him with a proposal. They could have a nice dinner date, and then they could fuck and get her past the hurdle of her virginity without anyone else present, without any real pressure, with the chance for her to have the experience exactly how she wanted. It was more than anyone could ask for, and he had hoped it would've alleviated some of the tension for both him and her.

It had seemed to work for her, as Jade had been happy as a clam all week, but Andy had found himself more than a little nervous about it, hoping that he wouldn't let her down or disappoint her. The girls, particularly the fiancées, had had plenty of advice, but most of it all boiled down to the same thing - just fucking relax already.

The person with the best advice had been, unsurprisingly, from Ash, who'd stressed that every girl's first time was important, but that as long as a good time was had by all, that was all that mattered, and considering Andy was giving Jade an entire evening of his attention all to herself, it would focus their time on each other in a way that would let Jade have center stage. They were even having a nice formal dinner beforehand, so it could feel like a private date, although Jenny had insisted on bringing the food to them.

They'd planned to have dinner out on the patio, but the weather had been uncooperative. While winters in California were certainly not as cold as most other places in the United States, they were still brisk enough that they had decided to have dinner indoors, the two of them using one of the smaller ballrooms as their dining room for the evening.

On his way over to the dining room, he stopped in one of the bathrooms to make sure his attire didn't look too off. He'd been trying on outfits for the dinner when the Air Force had rolled up and carted him away, so while he hadn't been entirely settled on this particular look before, he didn't really have time to swing by the bedroom and choose different things to try on. He made sure it wasn't askew or hanging out, tucking in one little bit of shirt that had gotten loose back into his waistline, then sighed, splashing some water on his face.

He was fairly certain the more he thought about it that he was more nervous about this whole thing than Jade was, at this point.

Andy walked out of the bathroom and headed down the hall, marveling at how quiet the house mostly was. All the girls had agreed to mostly stay out of the way, although he imagined a bunch of them were also grilling Niko for any information they could get from her about why the Air Force had hauled him up and onto the base with no warning and no courtesy whatsoever.

On the car ride home, Andy had stressed to Niko that he get a chance to talk to Piper first before any discussion of his time at the base happened. He expected Niko to hold strong, although he knew that the girls would be nonstop peppering her until bedtime. But Piper absolutely deserved to know about what was coming before anyone else, and he wanted to gauge her reaction privately, so that she didn't feel any pressure from the rest of the house, or even from him. Andy had stressed that they'd talk about it all over breakfast in the morning, but he planned on getting up early and pulling Piper aside so they could have a private chat first.

The door to the ballroom was closed, but he could hear music being played on the other side, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers singing "Learning To Fly," which only made him grin. He stepped up to the door, took one final check on his attire, adjusted his glasses then opened the door and headed in.

The ballroom had been set up with a small table in the center of it, lots of candles everywhere although the candle light wasn't the only illumination for the room, the lights simply turned down to half power. The table had only two chairs at it, something that was basically alien in the house at this point, with every other place having multiple seats scattered around it. There was a single centerpiece of flowers that had been adjusted so it was slightly off to one side, a pair of plates, a bottle of wine on one side of the table, a mixed mojito on the other, as Andy wasn't much of a wine drinker.

He found himself gasping a little as he caught sight of Jade, and immediately felt significantly underdressed. She was wearing a red dress that hung down to her knees with long black leather boots that ran up underneath it. The top was low cut, but not so much that it felt scandalous, offering a generous amount of view of Jade's plump breasts, pushing them up into the best shelf she could get them to be with some push-up bra beneath the dress. Her blonde hair mostly hung down her back, although part of it had been braided up into a crown around the top of her head, keeping any of it from falling into her eyes. Her makeup had been done tastefully, although there was a heavy amount of smoke around her eyes to make those emerald orbs really stand out even more than they normally did.

The look was nothing short of breathtaking.

"It's too much, isn't it?" Jade immediately said as she starting moving across the room towards him. "I kinda like how my hair turned out, but I knew the make up was too over the top. Sarah promised me you'd like it, but you kinda hate it, don't you?"

"Jade," Andy said with a wide smile. "You're magnificent. I feel like I should be turning and running so whoever your real date is don't see me slinking around near his girl."

Jade giggled suddenly at that, clutching her hand to her face. "You really think so?"

"Honestly, Jade, you're stunning. Are you sure what I'm wearing is okay?"

"Andy, you could be dressed in a leopard print thong and flipflops, and you'd still be handsome to me," she said, batting her long thick eyelashes at him. "Shall we sit and eat? I can tell you how the first woman's NFL team's training is going and you can fill me in on why the military took you out of your own home without so much as a polite warning."

"I want to hear your story much more than I want you to hear mine," he laughed, leaning in to kiss her lips tenderly as she pressed her body against his. "New dress?"

"New boots," she countered. "The dress was just in a collection of things that I needed to be in the right mood to put on."

"They are good boots," he said, moving over to pull her chair out for her. "I'm betting that mojito's got quite the kick to it, doesn't it?"

"It's date night," Jade said, sitting down, letting him slide the chair in to meet her. "If it isn't, I'll be bitching at Jenny in the morning."

He moved over to pour a glass of wine for her before going to his own seat across the table from her. "I'm sure it'll be fine. So they're really going to go for a completely female NFL?"

"They have to, which means the state of the game's going to change a whole hell of a lot," Jade said with a smile. "They're doing their best to get fully staffed women's teams, but they're also just having a lot of pitch in to help with training. Cheerleaders, trainers... hell, you'd be amazed at the throwing arm Lauren's got on her. I think the team's going to be trying to convince her to play any day now, not that I think she'd want to take them up on it."

"She tell you she doesn't have any interest in it?" Andy said, picking up his mojito, bringing it to his lips, finding it was indeed loaded with rum.

"Quite the opposite, actually," Jade said, picking up her wine, swirling the glass in her hand. "But she wants to have a kid first before she gets into that kind of thing. You knew that already, though. I'm sure she told you she's off her pills."

"She did," Andy laughed. "God help us all next summer. It's going to be baby central up in this house, and I don't think any of us are ready for it."

"No parent ever is," Jade said, smiling shyly. "But I figured maybe I could be the house nanny. We're going to need one, and after three or four years, I can go back to teaching, once things have stabilized down a little bit."

"Is that what you want or what you think the house needs?"

"Equal parts of each," she said, looking up as Nicolette was bringing in a bowl of French Onion soup for each of them, setting it down on the table without saying anything to either of them.

"Thanks Nicolette," they both said in unison, laughing a little as they caught themselves.

"Jinx, you owe me a Coke," Andy said first.

"Nicolette, be a dear and bring me a Coke that I can pour over Andy's head, would you?" Jade smirked at the blonde in her French maid's outfit.

"Yes, ma'am," Nicolette grinned back before heading to the door, slipping out of the ballroom.

"Two to one she's actually going to bring you a glass bottle of Mexican Coke," Andy said, shaking his head in amusement.

"No bet. I've been around her long enough to know it's just going to mysteriously appear on the table at some point when we aren't expecting it."

"Yeah, that sounds like her. So, back on topic, you think you're going to be okay tending to that many newborns?"

"Well, I'm hoping one of them will be yours and mine, and the rest will still be yours, which means they might as well be mine, so someone's gotta be on baby duty," Jade said, stirring the soup just a little bit. "There will probably need to be two of us, one on daytime duty and one on nighttime duty, but one of them should definitely be me. I like babies, and I won't mind taking some time away from teaching to get the house up and running on the right foot."

"As long as you're happy with the decision, I'm not one to tell you no for anything," Andy said before taking a sip from his own soup, although something struck him before he could take a second. "Yours and mine, hm?"

"I'm not getting any younger, Andy, and I have a feeling that once I've got this chain out from around my neck, I'm..." She paused for a second, a strange smile crossing her lips. When they'd first met, Jade had had the habit of using fake cuss words instead of real profanity, a trait that absolutely driven Andy up the wall, and one that Jade had been working very hard to break herself of when she was around him. "I know I'm gonna like fucking, because you like fucking, and all the girls in the house like fucking, so once I start fucking, I don't think I'm gonna want to stop fucking any time soon. I haven't been on birth control before, so why start now? I'm not like Fiona, where my window is rapidly dwindling, but I've always been unlucky when it came to relationships, so I feel like my odds of getting pregnant aren't going to be any better. That means you're gonna have to fuck me a whole lot to knock me up. Hope that won't be too much of an imposition on you," she teased.

"Looks like Sarah's swearing lessons have been helping some," he laughed. "No, I can't say I'll be all that bothered if you want actual sex out of our encounters moving forward. I imagine you're a little tired of giving blowjobs all the time anyway."

"Well," she blushed a little bit, looking down at her soup before looking up at him again. "It's fun watching you sort of spasm out when you're cumming, but the minute your spunk hits my throat, I'm so caught up in the moment of my own orgasm that I can't really enjoy the sight of it for too long. And I don't want to wait to feel you inside of me any longer. I've been a virgin too fucking long," she grumbled before digging back into her soup.

"You had your reasons," Andy told her. "For better or worse. And those reasons don't apply any more, so we'll get you over that hump tonight, and you never have to worry about it ever again. I mean, you only lose your virginity once."

"Well, I don't intend to give up all my virginities tonight," she giggled. "I don't care how big of an advocate of it most of your brides-to-be are, I'm definitely going to want to fool around on my own with a few toys before I even think about having your cock lodged up my ass."

"You don't ever have to have my cock in your back door if you don't want it, Jade," he chuckled, rolling his eyes. "All of you ladies have very different tastes and nobody should be expected to share anybody else's."

"Enough talk about that for now," she said, finishing off her soup. "How was your trip to the Air Force base? They let you go, so I imagine it couldn't have been too bad."

"It was both better and far worse than I'd imagined, but I probably shouldn't talk too much about it yet, otherwise all the other girls are going to be mad you got to know some of it first."

"How am I going to tell any of them?" Jade said, rolling her eyes at him with a dopey laugh. "After you've fucked me properly, you and I are falling asleep in my bed and not moving until morning. That was the thing I made all the girls agree to. Nobody's barging into our bedroom until daybreak, and even then, if we're still sleeping, we're gonna keep on sleeping until we get up. Tonight's my night, and everybody is going to respect that."

"Well..." he considered. "I suppose I can talk about parts of it. They ended up giving me top secret clearance when it comes to things related to the DuoHalo pandemic and the Quaranteam serum, because I've been made a member of the civilian oversight team for the New Eden base."

"That's... good, right?" she asked, tentatively.

"Probably? It means I've got a direct line to register concerns, in case we find out things like Covington's little diversion project end up happening again, but it also means I'm on the hook for wandering around that base every now and again, just to make sure nobody's trying to sneak something by the rest of them. So, a bit good, a bit bad. The new General running the base seems like she's got her head on straight, but you never can tell with people these days, so we'll just keep an eye on her like we do everybody else."

"Makes sense," Jade said as the door opened again, Nicolette bringing in a serving tray with a couple of steaks on them, mashed potatoes and gravy on the side, placing one in front of Jade which looked slightly pinker than his own.

Andy wondered how the hell Jenny had learned he preferred his steak medium-well instead of medium-rare. He couldn't remember them ever talking about it. Hell, he couldn't remember talking steak with anyone in the house, although at this point, he supposed it was possible he'd mentioned it in passing to someone somewhere along the way. He'd long ago since decided that keeping track of who knew what when in the Rook Household was going to be an impossibility, and that people would just disseminate information at will.

"There's some other stuff as well, but we'll talk about that tomorrow, with the whole house around, although I might have a couple of private chats first."

"Things the Brides Club needs to know before the rest of us?"

"Not even that," he sighed. "It'll make sense tomorrow, so I just need you to trust me on this one."

"Of course, Andy. We all trust you with our lives. If you think I should wait until tomorrow to hear about it, I'm sure you've got your reasons."

The two ate quietly for a little bit, although Jade spent a bit of time asking Andy if he'd considered where he wanted the main nursery to go, and how he planned on divvying up kids rooms eventually, which made him laugh, simply because it was so far in the future to be thinking about, and was a welcome change from talking about next month's upcoming wedding, which felt like it was going to be practically a convention, and which Fiona, as the oldest, had sort of taken point on, doing planning and scheduling with nearly all of her free time.

When it came to dessert time, Nicolette brought in two slices of decadent chocolate lava cake, one for each of them, and Andy was a little worried that the amount of sweetness might put him into sugar shock, sending him spiraling into some kind of a food coma but Jade's relentless enthusiasm certainly didn't seem to let him wind down.

During the pitch process the month before, where all the girls had suggested their friends who they wanted to be brought in to safety, Lauren (who had pitched Jade) had described Jade as the human equivalent of a golden retriever - always full of boundless energy and enthusiasm and nearly impossible to put in a bad mood. Andy had thought it was a bit of hyperbole when he'd first heard it, but true to Lauren's word, Jade had never been anything less than unwaveringly positive about anything and everything, even when she was nervous.

"Just one thing I'd thought I should ask about an update on, regarding your father, Jade," Andy said as they were finishing dessert. "You said you didn't want to ever hear from him again, and that any messages he sent over we should completely ignore and reject. That still true?"

Jade sighed, her face darkening for only a moment before the storm passed as she nodded. "That's no longer my problem, so unless he's actually dead, I don't want to hear a word about it. If he's sick or dying, he can do so without my knowledge."

Andy nodded silently, making a mental note that they were likely to revisit this conversation within a few days, then, as reports were that Cormack Dillon was indeed on his deathbed, and that he wasn't expected to last much longer, although it wasn't DuoHalo was that catching up to him, but good old fashioned lung cancer - Cormack had never been able to shake his habit of pipe smoking and it seemed like it was finally going to be the death of him.

"Besides," she continued. "I'd rather focus on the fun we're going to have in just a little bit. I know we both agreed to wait until I was ready, but I'm starting to think maybe I should've been ready far sooner than I actually was. That's on me, though."

"You wanted to be sure you were ready," Andy said. "I respected that."

"Sure, but in waiting so long, I just kept letting the pressure build and build inside of my head until finally nothing was ever going to live up to that. Spending time with Sarah's helped out for that, some, because she pointed out to me if I just relaxed and enjoyed our time together, the fact that it was my first time would stop mattering so much. So I'm just going to make sure we have a good time and that you give me a good and proper fucking, you know?" she giggled. "So maybe we should move this to the bedroom?"

"In your own time, obviously."

"Oh, my time is now so get your ass up out of that chair," she laughed, standing up, pulling him to his feet, pressing her lips against his, both of her long arms folding behind his neck, keeping her lean athletic body pressed firmly against his. When she broke from the kiss, she was grinning from ear-to-ear. "Or are you just gonna take me here in the ballroom like some sort of savage brute?"

He reached both of his hands down and grabbed her ass, hoisting her up so that her legs wrapped around his waist as he started turning and walking towards the doorway while Jade was cackling with laughter, tears starting to run down her cheeks she was laughing so hard at Andy's absurd caveman like walk, taking her out of the ballroom, down three doors before stepping into the only bedroom that was open, which, thankfully, was Jade's, carting her in before tossing her onto her bed with a loud clatter, her face still beaming with joy as he turned to close the door shut behind them.

Andy hadn't spent much time in Jade's room, but was pleased to see she'd gone all out in decorating the room to her own tastes, having even repainted the walls inside to a nice warm orange/yellow hue, like an approaching sunset. Framed artwork lined the walls, and he knew that some of them must have been gifts from her father, because they were originals and not prints, and some were quite valuable. But in addition to the modern and classical artwork, there was something that Andy had to work insanely hard not to laugh at, framed with as much love and care as the Matisse next to it, was a vintage black and white poster of a tiny Siamese kitten clinging to a bamboo branch with the words 'Hang in there, baby,' written on it. The poster probably wasn't even worth a tenth of the money spent on framing it, but the sheer contrast of it was so undeniably Jade, he couldn't help but being caught up in smiling over it.