Servicing the Tenants Pt. 01

This is Iain Roberts' backstory; as such, it obviously doesn't carry forward Rob Andrews' story, or Ben and Shay's, but it does serve to flesh things out a little. I had intended it as a one-off while I'm trying to work around stuckpoints with my other protagonists, but I think he deserves better. My thanks to my quondam collaborator PhilipScrewdriver for letting me take characters and other material created for use elsewhere and reimagine them here. NB: all characters in the story engaged in any form of sexual activity whatsoever are 18 or older.

*****

I stood for a moment on the street looking up at the newest property in my portfolio, a mixed residential/commercial building known as Coventry Bay. The first two floors are an upscale mall called the Coventry Bay Centre (yes, really; that's what the original developers named it). Rising out of that great rectangle is a 16-story diamond-shaped tower (with rounded corners) officially named the Cerulean Tower at Coventry Bay; it's mostly referred to simply as the Cerulean--except by its residents, who generally call it the Blue Diamond. (A small handful call it the Almond.)

Coventry Bay was an overly-ambitious project for Clarksburg; it did eventually start turning a profit, but by that time the developers had already gone bankrupt and sold it to me for a fraction of what they had put into it. It was on the verge of profitability at that point, but they were so far in the hole, they had no other option. When market conditions shifted just after I bought the complex, it quickly became very profitable indeed.

It also provided me a significant secondary benefit, because the developers had provided themselves with a large office space in the complex which connected to both the mall and the apartment lobby. My company, RA/Coppergate Properties, Inc., was growing and needed more space; since the Coventry Bay offices were more than sufficient, I moved us in lock, stock, and barrel. My employees regretted the loss of windows, but most agreed that having all the shops and restaurants right outside made up for it.

They also appreciated having their own secured parking area within the underground garage, which came complete with a private elevator. It's quite a large parking area, in fact, with more spaces than we need--especially as (to my employees' amusement) I often don't use mine. The Regis-St. George Social Club (which, despite its name, is more of a community foundation than anything) is only a ten-minute walk from Coventry Bay, and as a longtime member who has served several times on the board of directors, I have a spot in the garage of that building as well. When the weather is good, I prefer to park there and walk the rest of the way. Maybe it's eccentric of me, but I like it; the walk gives me a few minutes of fresh air before going into the office, and it helps me feel more connected with what's going on in and around the complex.

That day, however, I had an additional reason: I didn't really want to go to work. I made myself go, but I couldn't make myself keep up my usual brisk pace. Instead, I dawdled, putting off my arrival as long as I could. Atop my to-do list was to meet face to face with several tenants to warn them they were in danger of eviction for failure to pay rent. I loathe giving that warning, but it has to be done, and it feels like my responsibility to be the one to do it. On the one hand, it seems abusive to me to dump the hardest stuff on my employees just so I can do something more pleasant. On the other, if there are any mitigating circumstances, or if there's some way for them to work their way back into the black, I have authority to make decisions on the spot which my employees don't have. Even so, too many warnings are followed by evictions--and while there have been a few tenants I've been happy to evict, there haven't been many.

As such, I was in a brown study when I walked through the Cerulean entrance into the apartment lobby. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts, I didn't realize someone was calling me until I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped and spun to see the quizzical face of one of my favorite tenants, Ben MacMillan (apartment 901). He put out his hand and I took it, shaking myself a little; his other arm was around his girlfriend, Shay Reeves. Shay's another favorite of mine, now that she officially lives here... and thereby, as the Bard said, hangs a tale.

I inherited Ben and his flatmate, Ted Vavros, when I bought Coventry Bay. I didn't like having Ted in the building. For one thing, he wasn't formally one of my tenants, he was subletting a room from Ben. When I took over, I added a clause to the standard agreement forbidding subletting, but it wasn't in the contract Ben had signed, so there was nothing I could do about it until the lease ran out. For another, Vavros was a louse. If I'd had to make a permanent exception to the subletting ban to keep Ben as a tenant, I would have done it, but only because I valued him even more than I despised his flatmate.

I was immensely pleased when Vavros shot himself in the balls (metaphorically speaking, more or less). He was gone, and Shay was a huge improvement. What's more, she signed the lease agreement along with Ben, so no more sublet.

While Ben was looking at me with concern, it was Shay who spoke first. "Iain," she asked, "are you okay? You look disturbed."

Ben flipped a small grin at his girlfriend. "Well put, love," he commented. "Disturbed is the perfect word." He looked at me and asked, "What's weighing on you? Can we help?"

Ben's a counselor of some sort--get him to tell you, I don't understand it--but I knew his motivation was mostly simple friendship. The man has a big heart. I released his hand and smiled at them in fond gratitude for their concern. "I have a round of default warnings to give," I sighed. Ben cocked an eyebrow at me; I grinned a little despite myself and explained. "I have a number of tenants who are far enough behind on their rent that they stand at risk of eviction. I have to give them formal warning, and then I'll try to work out a way for them to recover."

Ben and Shay both nodded slowly. "I understand," Ben said quietly.

"We'll be praying for you," Shay added gently. Ben gave her a thoughtful look, then looked back at me with a small nod.

"Thanks, you two," I responded, reaching out again to take one of each of their hands. "I appreciate it." I smiled, feeling my heart lift just a little. "Where are you off to?"

"Oh, just running errands," Shay told me. "But we're both free, so it's more fun to do them together."

"I agree," I said. "Well, thanks again for asking; I suppose we should all be about it. I'll see you both later." They nodded, and we went our separate ways.

When I got to my office, though, I procrastinated. Seeing Ben and Shay together reminded me of all I'd lost, sending me slipping back into melancholy. At 36, I was four years a widower, but I hadn't really moved on. I'd dated some, but never seriously; mostly I'd poured myself into the company. I just tried to keep myself so busy that exhaustion carried me to sleep without giving my soul a chance to ambush me with things I didn't want to see or think about. The days when busyness just wasn't enough... those were hard.

That spirit of nostalgia is probably why I decided to do something I hadn't done for a long time: dig into the archives of Birch Residential Development. Birch was the ancestor to Coppergate, and the company that launched my career.

I graduated from Barron State University with a degree in journalism. My long-term goal was to be the Gary Smith of the American political beat. (If you've never heard of him, just Google "Gary Smith" "Sports Illustrated"; he was amazing.) My senior year, I interned at a small publication here in Clarksburg, and the internship went well enough that I was offered and accepted a full-time job; I was scheduled to start work three days after my last final. I figured I had my feet on the first rung of the career ladder and I was on my way.

Instead, two hours after that last final, I found out the publication had folded. I was out of a job, which meant I didn't have the income to afford the apartment I'd found for myself. The resulting scramble for employment sent my life in a completely different direction from anything I had imagined, let alone planned. I felt I had to take the first job I could get, which turned out to be a position as a building manager for Birch.

As I sat in my office some fourteen years later, my half-hearted goal for cracking the Birch archives was to see if the old lady had had any ideas which might help me work with my delinquent tenants. The first thing I found, however, was something I'd forgotten even existed. The day I began the fateful job that launched my unplanned career, I started writing a running account of my life. It seemed like a way to deal with my disappointment; it quickly turned into something quite different.

*****

I look around my new apartment and remind myself to be grateful. I am, I think with a sigh. It's just... When I graduated from college, I expected that to be the beginning of my career. I didn't expect that the best job I could find would be building manager for the Marylebone Apartments (pronounced "MAR-le-bun," I remind myself). The pay isn't much, but the apartment is free (small, but free), so it's enough to live on. If the tenants aren't too demanding, I should have time for some freelance work. Hopefully this won't slow me down too much in getting my real career started.

Fortunately for me, my dad's a real DIY type. He never saw a tool he didn't want to buy, and he hates paying for anything he can do himself. He taught me how to do everything up to major repairs. What's more, he was thrilled when I got this job. He considers it "real work"; he's never been happy about my career goals. I consider that "hot air," but at least it means he bought me an impressive set of tools to celebrate my hire. (He also told me to feel free to borrow anything of his that I might need, but if anything gets that far, I'm probably fucked.)

Right now, though, I should go around the building and introduce myself to as many of the tenants as I can find at home. The property company--Hah! "Company" makes it sound way too grand. One old lady and a couple office staff!--the old lady told me she likes a quiet building, so she won't rent to young single men (unofficially, of course). She prefers single women, but she likes kids, so she'll rent to married couples as long as their children are well-behaved; rent is on the cheap side here, but that's only because the neighborhood is so unfashionable. It's not a bad neighborhood, there's very little crime in fact, it's just working-class and inconvenient. The apartments are really nice, they've been well-maintained, and the construction quality is high, so she wants to keep them in good shape. The building has a mix of college girls, female graduate students, young professional women, and couples, some with kids.

Anyway, the old lady gave me a sheet of paper with a list of names, which also includes their ages (she said that would help me know what to expect), but I don't want to stop there. I want more information on each of them--and pictures, if they'll let me, to help me learn their names. That way, I can avoid making too many mistakes.

I hope.

*****

I probably wouldn't have been quite so disgruntled if I hadn't been single at the time. In fact, not only did I not have a girlfriend, my regular fuckbuddy had moved to Chicago. That hadn't seemed like a big problem when I thought myself safely launched as a journalist, but the disappointment made my singleness loom much larger in my thinking. Though I had reached my 18^th birthday a virgin, that had ended not long afterward when my then-girlfriend discovered my tongue, and since that point I'd never gone more than a week or two with no one at all to fuck.

My tongue is unusually long, and I don't have much of that membrane that holds it in place, so I've always been able to stick it out a lot farther than normal. As a kid, it was my parents' despair, because of course I liked to play with it. I discovered I actually could touch my nose with my tongue; I also discovered I could roll it, and I could squeeze the sides in and make it go from flat to round. Naturally, I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't do all these things in school... in restaurants... at church...

By high school I'd mostly been trained out of such uncouth behaviors (as my mother called them--she's always had a thing for the BBC and Agatha Christie novels), but I still did them absent-mindedly sometimes while deep in thought. One day I was studying with my new girlfriend at her house while her parents were out. Jessica left the room for a few minutes to walk off her frustration; without her there to keep my attention, I slipped into a hyperfocused state. I don't know how long it was until a loud moan broke my concentration, but I suddenly realized my tongue was stuck all the way out and plumped up round. I looked up to see her, eyes wide, with a hand between her legs.

We hadn't played around much up to that point; we'd only been going out a few weeks, and Jess was gunshy from her previous relationship. I was head over heels in lust, though; she was tall and willowy with pert, perfect little boobs (32B, I would come to know) and a tight little round ass that was firm enough to hammer nails. She was also that magical being, an older woman--she was in fact 19, having been held back a year in elementary school, though none of us knew why. I'd gotten to play with her boobs a little, even suck on her puffy pink nipples once, but I had resigned myself to waiting a while to do anything more. As such, I couldn't have been more surprised when she dragged me up to her bedroom, stripped naked, and sprawled across her bed. "But I thought--" I got out, my voice sounding a little strangled.

"I know, baby," she panted, "and maybe I'll regret this later, but I don't care. I saw your tongue and all I could think of was how it would feel in my pussy. I need it--I need it--"

I'd never eaten pussy before, but Jess didn't care about that either. She swore up and down that I just needed to get my tongue where it belonged and she'd teach me the rest. I'd never really thought about going down on a woman, but I wasn't about to turn my new girlfriend down when she was that horny, so I did what I was told.

I'm not sure how long I spent with my head between her thighs, but I can tell you we were barely back downstairs when her parents got home. Jess taught me how to play with her clit, then had me tongue-fuck her until she came all over my face. I loved it. Her arousal was intoxicating, and I thought her spicy, musky nectar was wonderful. After she came the first time, I flipped my tongue into a tube to suck out more of her girl-cum; when she felt it flexing in her pussy, she gasped and shuddered and came again.

After that, Jess pushed me away, saying she needed a minute for her head to stop spinning. I got up on my knees and reached to fondle her firm, fresh peaches, but she batted my hands away. After a couple deep, heaving breaths, she pulled me back down. This time, she taught me how to find her G-spot and what to do with my fingers in her box, and she told me what she liked as I licked and sucked her clit. She even discovered something she hadn't known she liked when I got overexcited and kind of nibbled on her bud a little--she came hard, yowling and exploding in my face like a volcano. She told me later I should only do that when she was already close to cumming; at the time, though, all she could do was gasp, "Fuck, that was hot..."

I ate Jessica to five or six orgasms and loved every minute of it before she grabbed my head with both hands and dragged me up for a hard, burning kiss. To my amazement, she then seized my cock and pulled it to her dripping quim. I pulled back to look at her, eyes wide; hers were half-closed as she growled, "Fuck me, baby. I need you inside me."

"But I thought--" I said, again, and again Jess cut me off.

"I know, baby," she began, as before. "But it's different--you're different--" She broke off; I held position silently as she began rubbing my cockhead on her clit. After several moments, she said, "Nick never ate my pussy. He didn't take care of me in bed. He didn't take care of me. You've taken care of me--when I was sick, you came over and sat with me to do your homework--and now you've eaten me out of my fucking mind."

"It's not like it was some sacrifice, Jess, I enjoyed it--" I responded.

"I know you did, lover," she replied with a faint smirk. "And why?"

Confused, I answered, "Well, you taste really good, and it was really hot making you cum so hard..."

"Yeah," Jess returned softly. "And that's the difference. You get off on me getting off, right?"

"Well, yeah."

"Well, nothing," she said. "That's the difference. I trust you, because you're not just using me. You care about me, you take care of me--you care about my needs, and what I need is for you to stuff that big dick in my little pussy and fuck me right."

Part of me was worried about taking advantage of her, but I wanted her so badly by then that that part of me got steamrolled. Jess lined me up and I drove forward. She was so ready for me that I went balls-deep in one stroke. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her; she threw her arms around my neck and crossed her ankles in the small of my back, holding me close. I held there for a few long moments, savoring the feeling of her tight, wet heat pulled snug around my cock. When I started moving, she broke off the kiss and murmured, "Cum inside me, baby. Cum in my pussy. I'm on the pill, and I want to feel you fill me with your hot load."

She got what she wanted almost immediately: it only took a few thrusts before I erupted, pumping her full of cum. Jess egged me on, telling me how good it felt. A few moments later, she was moaning my name in delight, because I was so turned on by then that my cock stayed fully erect. We made out frantically, our tongues fencing with each other, while I fucked her as hard as I could. It wasn't long before she came again.

After that, we rolled over so Jess could ride my pole. I fondled and squeezed her firm titties and enjoyed watching her fuck me. "You look fucking incredible," I breathed.

"You feel fucking incredible," she moaned back. She came once, grinding hard against me, then sped up. "Cum for me, baby," she urged me. "Cum in my pussy again. Fill me up. Let me feel you cum." She bounced up and down, then shifted gears and started sliding back and forth, rolling and flexing her hips. I cried out her name and blew; she hissed, "Yessss!" and came hard right along with me.

We fucked like bunnies for several months--and then, suddenly, it was over. I went over to Jessica's house one day and she told me she was getting back together with Nick. I didn't understand it; I never understood it. None of her other friends did, either. I was crushed for about 24 hours, until her best friend, Kenzie, showed up in my bedroom and stripped us both naked. She rode my face to a couple orgasms and my cock to a few more, then informed me that she and several other girls had decided to share me.

I was stunned, but apparently Jess had spent our time together bragging to all her friends about how well I ate pussy. When she dumped me to go back to Nick, they tried an intervention, telling her she was being a blithering idiot--one, to go back to a guy who had treated her that badly, and two, to let go of a guy who ate her out like I did. When she refused to listen, they decided her loss might as well be their gain: if she didn't want me anymore, they'd be happy to take me. I spent so much time eating pussy (and then fucking it) the rest of the year, it's a wonder my grades didn't plummet.