Renewal Ch. 09-19

Later, they unfolded the couch and slept together.

Chapter 19

When Joy woke up that last morning she crawled out from under Lea's leg and went upstairs to Danny. Still naked, she got into bed. He wrapped her up and she felt his cock harden, questing against her thigh.

"Thanks for making it back."

"Oh, Danny," she said, "where would I go?"

"Portland?"

"My life is with you, Danny."

"Good. I wasn't sure when you sent us upstairs."

"How did you like the like the video?" That's a minefield, she thought.

"I liked it." Noncommittal.

"Was it a ten?" Testing.

"You're a ten." Sidestep.

"I performed well, I thought."

"It was a performance?"

Her feelings came into focus. "Yes."

"Fake?"

"No, it was real. I liked it. I got off. But it was fiction. I wore you guys out just the same," she said. "I could have gone on."

"Didn't you?"

Joy colored. "I guess I did."

"You like Lea."

"I always like Lea."

"You know what I mean." His voice had that tone of preemptory fear.

"I love her. Now I make love with her. You make love with her. It's wonderful to make love with her," she said, "but you are my home. My life."

Danny lifted her onto his thigh and entered her from below. It wasn't difficult at all. She nestled deeper onto his cock. His left hand wrapped around her back to caress her left nipple: his right hand found her clit, and her right nipple was in his mouth. She sighed.

"You like this," he said.

"Yes," she said, "I do." She closed her eyes. Everything felt right. After a while, they both stopped moving and lay together.

Joy said. "Do you want this to keep going?"

"I like it, but I don't want you to end up fucking the handyman."

"Dave," she said. "He has a name. I thought you wanted to watch."

"I don't want you to have any sex that doesn't include me."

"I made love with Lea last night and that didn't include you."

"I trust Lea. And you came back."

"Every day, Danny," Joy said fervently. "I'll always come back."

He pulled her tightly against him and she didn't let go.

After a time, he asked, "Do you really want to fuck the handyman?"

She loosened her grip. "No, but if I'm going to be a fucking slut I have to keep my hand in." She meant it as a joke.

Pulling back and looking right at her, he said, "I want you to be my fucking slut, not Dave Jason's fucking slut. This was an amazing week, but it was good to restrict it to our friends."

"Got more than you bargained for?"

"I got exactly what I bargained for, but some things were profoundly disturbing."

Soft warmth suffused her. "It's okay, Danny. We're leaving. Dave Jason is staying." Just what Dave said; then he gets hurt. Another reason to say no.

"I don't think you're done with Lea."

"I can be," she assured him, but that was a lie, and she was pretty sure that he knew it too.

When they went downstairs Joy was happy she hadn't made Danny come because Lea was still naked and still wanted to give her early morning blowjobs. Joy drank coffee in the kitchen. After a while she prepared breakfast and had it all ready by the time her oversexed friends were ready to eat it. Later, they went upstairs to pack.

"I'm ready for this to be over," Joy said.

"You changed your clothes at the airport when we got here," Danny said.

"I'm not going to the airport naked," Joy said.

"How about close to naked?"

"You," she said, "are a perverted voyeur."

"And you," he said, "are Venus. Let's not start normal life quite yet?"

So Joy put knee high wool socks and thick leggings and underwear and a long-sleeved top and a sweater in her handbag, and when she appeared downstairs pantyless in her shortest miniskirt and the naked bikini top Danny felt her up and got hard yet again and they fucked for bit right there in the hallway, until the still-naked Lea came down and asked Joy if Danny could save it for her. So Joy drove while Lea shared the back seat with Tal and Danny and a couple of beach towels. Joy listened to the intimate sounds and tried to guess what was being put where and by whom.

"We're getting close to the airport," Joy called over her shoulder.

"I need . . . more . . . time," Lea huffed.

Joy made a quick left turn up a narrow road. There was a large stand of trees on her left, a dirt road looping conveniently behind them. Joy parked. She undid her seat belt. She turned and knelt, facing the back seat, where her husband was fucking Lea while she sucked her own husband's cock. It seemed like a script out of some else imagination; each of them filling a role created by the gestalt of all four of them.

"Danny?" Slightly exasperated. His eyes popped open. His rhythm stopped. He feels it, too, she thought. "Maybe it's enough, already?"

"Soon," he said, increasing his pace.

"Fine." She succumbed to the group one more time, pulling the ties of her top, baring her breasts, licking fingers, lips, sliding hands, stiffening nipples, staring him down with rage and compassion. After a minute she left one hand roaming from tit to tit and slid the other below the seatback, where Danny couldn't see her stop it well short of the imagined target. "Fuck my girlfriend hard, Danny. Real hard," Joy whispered at him. She stretched her hips as if she was masturbating. It begins, she thought. The deadliest compromise of marriage. Lie to him about sex. Then about other things. Look like the thing he wants. But what she wanted today was to stop all of this and go home with her husband.

Still, she liked the way his face looked when he came.

Joy was out of the car and into her airplane clothes before her naked husband caught up with her. Through the open rear door she saw that Lea was on her hands and knees and Tal was humping away. She visualized dogs. That was uncharitable. They are married.

"Hey," her husband said, tentatively.

"Hey." She took his arms lightly, stood on her tiptoes, kissed him on the forehead. "We'll talk on the plane. Put your clothes back on."

"Lucky you found this spot," Danny said.

"Yeah."

Danny took over the driving. Lea and Tal got dressed in the back seat. Not a word was spoken on the ten-minute ride to the airport. They threw the drenched towels away at rental car return. After security, they found a place to wait together before their respective flights, noses buried in the newspapers that they had forgotten about during the week. Lea and Tal's flight was called.

"I guess it's goodbye," Lea said, "for now."

"These last 36 hours have been difficult for me," Joy said.

"For each of us, I think, in different ways. It's going to take a while to sort it all out. We've all had our moments of doubt."

"I hope, Joy said, "we remain friends after it all."

"On that, dear one, there is no doubt. I'll always love you." She kissed her firmly on the lips, and Joy remembered thirty years of friendship, and knew it to be true. Corollary: There is more sex in our future.

Hugs were exchanged. Joy watched Danny and Tal soften into each other and exchange a kiss themselves. I'll have to ask him about that, Joy thought.

The plane took off.

"I guess," Danny said, "that was a bit much in the car."

"You guess? What was going on there?" Joy said.

"I think," he said, "Lea was afraid of stopping. Like she'd turn back into what she used to think she was."

"I was wondering what you were turning into."

"I'm not sure exactly how you mean that," he said.

"I saw us as slaves of the narrative we had created." Joy said. "Why the hell would we need to be fucking in the car on the way to the airport? We were becoming caricatures of ourselves. I turned around and you were fucking her and I was so tired of seeing it," she said. "I'm happy to be on this flight with just you."

"I get it." Danny patted her knee. "It was an amazing time, though, sexually. Right?"

"Yes. I'm glad to have experienced that."

"Past tense? Would you ever want to do it again?"

"Not this, I wouldn't think," she said to him, "but honestly? I'll probably have sex with Lea again."

"I figured. Not Tal, though, I hope. At least without me."

"Okay," Joy said. "I can respect that. It ended up being harder for you, anyway."

"It was a feeling of sheer terror and undeserved joy each time they had you, even though it was incredibly exciting. I was ashamed. But you always came back."

"I always will. You were brave, Danny." She squeezed his leg. "Besides, I think I one-upped you in the shame department."

"Ah yes," he intoned, "The Rape of Lea. Giving her what she wanted was shameful to you."

"No. Enjoying it was. Wanting to hurt her."

"She took a lot more cocks than you did. Overall."

"I took plenty," Joy said. "Probably eight or ten at least on those two big days."

"Thirty-eight," he said, "not counting what happened when I wasn't there."

"You counted." Of course he did. "I didn't take any cocks that you didn't see, Danny. Lea did use the dildo on me, though. Does that count?"

He pulled out his phone. "Different category," he said. There was a list in his notes app. She watched him type 'Dildo—Joy from Lea.' "I only saw once. What's the right number?"

"Four," she said.

"How many times did you do it to her?"

"God, I don't know. More than that. Seven?"

He typed 'Dildo, Lea from Joy. Seven.'

"What else you got there?" she asked.

"You gave four blowjobs."

"I sucked way more cock than that."

"To completion," he clarified. "No one came in your mouth during those threesomes. Twenty-two overall."

"Twenty-two." That sounded right.

"Lea swallowed seventeen times."

"She's definitely the blowjob queen. What else did you count?"

"Total number of sexual encounters for each person, grouped by kind and partner. Number of male orgasms, and where they were deposited. Estimated female orgasms. Hours of female nudity. Incidents of public exposure. Car sex. There are 1,726 photos and videos on my camera, of which maybe 20% are non-pornographic."

"Those bikini shots are pretty revealing," she said.

"Still PG-13, mostly" he said, "but the video is hard X."

"Have you watched it all already?"

"No. But I had time the night you and Lea. . . ." She felt him quiver; the pain is still there. Be kind. She put her finger lightly to his lips and patted his arm reassuringly.

"Sounds like the best documented sex week ever."

"It was a major obsession. I didn't want to tell you guys I was journaling everything because it might throw off the natural statistics."

"What we were doing wasn't natural."

"It was crazy. The counting was helping keep me sane."

"I like it," Joy said. "Now you can't ever tell me you never get what you want. The proof is right there in your own hand. Can it be over now?"

"Yep. We did it. Looks like we survived it. Now I get the big prize," he said, "keeping you."

"Keeping me flat on my back, you mean."

"I'm so grateful," her husband said, "that you can make jokes like that. But I like you on top, too." He looked around. "Do you think we could find a way to have sex on this airplane?"