The Bullpen Ch. 07

"You've got a ride home, though, right?"

Erica nodded. "Jake booked me one of the executive coaches. They're on call for me tonight and tomorrow, until I get my own car back."

"Well, here," Hannah said, standing and reaching into the pocket of her lab coat. "This is from Natalie and I." The Korean girl handed her friend a white envelope.

Erica took it, and began to open it. She stopped, though, and glanced at her boss on the far side of the room, readying the champagne flutes for a congratulatory toast. "Shouldn't I wait to open it Natalie around?"

"Despite everything," Hannah sighed, "Natalie thought you might want to open this without Colin, Noah, and Jake hovering over you."

Erica's green eyes showed a flash of understanding. Opening the envelope, she pulled a gift card to Victoria's Secret, as well as another to Le Chateau Exotique. Erica was familiar with both stores, if only in passing – a billboard for the latter, a pornography and adult store, stood on the side of I-91 running through Hartford.

"You know I've already got a chest full of sex toys in my office," Erica observed wryly.

Hannah knew she was being teased, she knew that her friend appreciated the gift, and she knew that Erica would probably rush out to Le Chateau the first chance she got. "I thought you might like to pick a few out on your own."

"Well, I guess I've got my day planned for me tomorrow." Erica winked at her friend. She took her final item from her locker, her thick, black-rimmed glasses, both stylish and non-stylish at the same time, in a sort of geek chic style. It had been so long since she'd last worn them that Hannah did a double-take, as if she'd forgotten that her friend had seemingly styled herself after Lisa Loeb in her previous life. She added, earnestly, "Thank you."

"God," she observed, looking at her reflection in the mirror hung beside her locker. "Remind me why I never used to wear contacts?"

Hannah laughed. The two women, now both fully dressed for the first time in weeks, joined their friends and co-workers on the far side of the Observation Room, eager to share a celebratory toast.

***

Erica heard the familiar, but long-absent, click of her front door close behind her. For the first time since the Monday she'd first shed her clothes, Erica was finally alone. She finally had space of her own, privacy. She finally was able to escape both the probing cameras and sensors of the Bullpen, as well as the curious eyes of technicians and scientists in the Observation Room. She would finally be able to go the bathroom without being watched. She would finally be able to indulge in sexual self-pleasure without an audience watching every thrust of her hips or hearing every dirty utterance that escaped her lips.

Her coach from ConnPharm would return if summoned, but for now the large, overweight Italian man had departed. For now, she was entirely alone.

Erica had fetched her purse, her jewelry, and the large red cooler from her office after leaving the Observation Room. Heavier than she had perhaps expected, and filled to the brim toys for every orifice, the ice chest was the only object that Erica carried into the house, her pocketbook and the useless pink bra inside. She made the conscious decision to leave it by the front door, rather than succumb to the temptations of plastic and cold metal immediately. It had been a week since Erica had last used one of her toys, and there would be time to re-accustom herself to each of them in the coming days and weeks. For now, though, Erica knew her fingers would do well enough on their own.

She'd wanted to masturbate in the hired car. She had fantasized about the driver, Gino, watching her in his rearview mirror, as she lifted her skirt and rubbed her twat into ecstasy. But this wasn't the Bullpen anymore, and even if Erica herself had shrugged off the shackles of what was socially acceptable, she didn't want to push the envelope around other people – at least, not yet. She'd even toyed with the idea of inviting Gino in with her, and up to the bedroom of her condo. Had he been under fifty years old, under two hundred and fifty pounds, and devoid of a wedding band on his ring finger, she just might have. Instead, she stepped into her foyer alone.

The dark haired girl had only been in her home for a few short seconds before she began to unbutton her blouse. She hadn't even been dressed for an hour as she shrugged the material off, her bare, deuterotone-enhanced tits preceding her into the living room. She didn't go to the kitchen, to fix herself dinner, or check on her plants around the house. She didn't even go to turn up the heat on her thermostat, or even fold her white shirt neatly, instead letting the fabric drop into a heap on the floor.

Erica shed her shoes on the way up the stairs, past the mail stacked neatly on the third step. Despite his infidelity, Tom had obviously remained faithful to checking on Erica's mailbox.

She was naked by the time she reached her bedroom, her tweed skirt in a puddle at the top of the stairs. In her nudity, she felt more at home than she had stepping through her front door. There was a level of comfort in being bare, a sense of familiarity that had been absent to that point.

The room was dark, so Erica flicked the light switch on her way into the room. It had been so long since she'd been in her own bed, but Erica didn't even bother to pull back her bedspread. Instead, she laid herself down atop it, stretched, and found her pussy with her hand. Again, it wasn't being home in her own condo that made Erica feel at ease, but the sensation of her fingers against her clit. This, despite the fact that her bed felt too soft and lumpy beneath her, despite the fact that no one was watching her.

Erica parted her legs, allowing her fingers to find the inside of her wet, pink folds. As her right hand penetrated deeper into her pussy, her left brushed against her sensitive nipples, causing her release a small gasp. Her middle and index fingers were inside of her, simulating the thrusts of an imaginary male partner. Her palm ground against the top of her bare slit, and she rubbed circles around her clit with the base of her hand. Her legs were up, bent at the knee, and her left hand was casually and sensually playing with her left nipple. From her feet to her ears, Erica's entire body was one, large erogenous zone, as it had been for weeks by that point.

She sighed in bliss. Imagining herself on her bed, but in the center of a jam-packed audience at the Hartford Civic Center, Erica shut her eyes and gave way to the feelings overcoming her body. The seats were filled to capacity, over 16,000 people watching her on the arena's floor. They wore UConn's blue and white, the Whalers' blue and green, or even red and white jerseys with the ConnPharm insignia sewn onto the chest. Men and women, of all ages, had gathered to watch the headlining act – "Erica Rivers: Homecoming." Someone was chanting. Elsewhere, Erica swore that she heard a woman heckling her, calling her a slut, a prostitute, a whore. This, however, only made Erica wetter and more excited.

"Fuck," she gasped. The bed gave beneath her, the springs rising and falling with the thrusts of her hips. She wasn't used to it, and the bed beneath her disappeared in her fantasy. She didn't need it. She was slut. A prostitute. A whore. She'd cum on the hardwood floors of the Civic Center, her fans eagerly awaiting her orgasm.

"Fuck!" she gasped again, opening her eyes. In the audience, she found Colin and Jamie, watching while holding hands. There was Noah, with Mike Takahashi, Aaron, and Vijay. Across the aisle were Hannah and Hyun-Shik. Natalie sat with Bill Forrester, and Jake Rinaldi sat behind them, rubbing his lap through his pants. Karen Rivers, inexplicably dressed in a zoo guide's uniform, sat in the front row, with her husband beside her. Chris Rivers, Erica's father, had a look of disgust and disappointment on his face, in stark contrast to the enraptured audience around him. But the displeasure on his face merely fueled the fire in Erica's crotch – she was his little girl, but she was also a slut. A prostitute. A whore. Despite his best efforts, his little girl was little more than a nymphomaniac, performing before thousands of his friends and neighbors.

"Oh," Erica sighed. "Oh, oh, oh..."

The building was dark, save for a spotlight on the naked girl at center court. The bright light was hot, and Erica was soaked in sweat. Her bare skin slipped and slid against the hardwood floor, lubricated by her perspiration. She was the absolute center of attention.

The scoreboard was lit up, the clock timing her, seeing how long it would take for her to reach her climax. One minute and thirty seconds had passed. Then two minutes. Then five. Then ten.

The fantasy began to fade. Her audience was gone, and Erica found herself back in her bedroom, still grinding against her hand. It still felt good – she couldn't deny that fact. But the scoreboard clock hadn't been lying, as the bedside alarm clock registered the same count. Erica had been masturbating for almost fifteen minutes, and though her orgasm seemed to be just on the horizon, it had stayed perched there for some time, by that point.

There was a level of frustration, to be sure. Erica had lingered over her sessions before, but always intentionally. Even as her fingers continued to work on her clit, she began to worry. If keyed up, she was capable of orgasming in under a minute. From an unexcited state, and there had been very few of such moments over the course of the past five weeks, she knew that she was still capable of cumming in under five minutes. In most sessions, she averaged roughly four minutes. She could draw it out, sure, and let the feelings of her fingertips against her bare skin linger, but Erica certainly hadn't been attempting to do so now. The dark-haired girl had shed her clothes the moment she'd entered her house and had immediately gotten down to business.

Another five minutes passed, and Erica still hadn't cum. Her orgasm was palpable, but just out of reach. Ten more minutes passed. Then fifteen. Still nothing. She tried masturbating on her hands and knees. She attempted to do so while thrusting her hips against one of her pillows. Worried that it was the soft mattress beneath her, she laid herself down on the floor. Was the fact that her bedroom was carpeted keeping her from reaching her orgasm? Doubtful, as the hard tile of her bathroom floor did little more to help her achieve her goal.

The girl, her hair in disarray and her eyes lost in a desperate stare, descended the stairs of her condo, and found the red cooler. She ascended them with a seven-and-a-half inch gel dildo, an orange rabbit vibrator, and a large, round-tipped white massager. A half hour later, looking even more frazzled, she descended the stairs once again. She returned to her room a few minutes later, a well-lubricated set of beads protruding from her asshole.

Three hours later, Erica still hadn't cum. The muscles in her arms were exhausted, her clitoris in pain from all the attention it had been receiving, and the bags under her eyes giving away the fact that she'd spent some time crying. Strewn from one corner of her home to the other were dildos, bullets, beads, tubes of lubricant, vibrators, massagers, butt plugs, pleasure orbs, nipple clamps, and toys that Erica had not even begun to imagine before she'd began masturbating for the Bullpen technicians. They were upstairs, downstairs, in the basement, and on the stairs themselves. She had fingered herself in her bedroom, in her bathroom, and in the hall. She'd rubbed her pussy beneath the warm waters of her bath, as she'd spread her legs on the staircase, and on her couch as she'd watched pay-per-view pornography on her television. And still nothing.

It certainly wasn't as if she was out of practice. Erica was, if nothing else, well skilled at the particular act she'd been attempting all evening, having had more than enough time to perfect her technique in the Bullpen. And yet, for whatever reason, she was simply unable to orgasm.

The girl was on the floor of her kitchen, lying against the cool linoleum beneath her. She was surrounded by pile of toys, each covered in a thin veneer of her pussy juices and lubricant. She banged her fist against the tile, cursing out loud – now out of frustration, instead of her usual sexual satisfaction.

Had she just not been in the mood? Erica doubted it – she was, at least lately, ALWAYS in the mood. In fact, if the exercise hadn't gotten increasingly frustrating and essentially moot, the dark-haired girl would still be knuckle-deep in her own cunt, orgasming for the fifth, sixth, or seventh time. Instead, she hadn't been able to climax even once.

She had gotten close, to be sure. But Erica had never been able to make that crest, to coast over the top to the carnal satisfaction that awaited her on the other side. Her orgasm seemed tantalizingly close, but she seemed to be Sisyphus, forever trying to push his boulder up the hill. It reminded her of her dreams from the second week in the Bullpen, and more specifically, the first few nights after her first deuterotone injection. Before allowing herself to masturbate beneath the shower, her nighttime fantasies had constantly ended unresolved, as she was building towards her orgasm. But she always awoke before the tension in her body could be released.

Was this a dream? Erica shook her head – it seemed more like a nightmare.

***

She didn't linger in Victoria's Secret. There'd be time to shop more extensively the following day, when she wasn't so preoccupied.

Erica slid into the back of her waiting coach, Gino greeting the girl and her pink shopping bag with a raised eyebrow. She knew that he was wondering what awaited the dark-haired girl inside, and she also knew that she'd be unable to resist showing it to him. Daydreaming about slipping it on and masturbating for him, Erica shut the door behind her, and gave the driver directions towards Farmington. If she weren't sure that fingering herself would only end in frustration, she would have immediately put on a show for the Italian gentleman.

But Erica had decided that her problem had been a singular focus upon fucking another man over the previous few days. Once she'd been released from captivity, she doubted that any amount of masturbation would end successfully, at least until her primary sexual objective had been achieved. She had dreamt about dick, thought about a man's cock inside her for days upon end. And, consequently, she suspected that she'd wound her psyche so tight around that wish that her orgasm would remain elusive until her intentions were realized.

Still, Erica certainly wasn't going to deprive Gino of a little T&A. Even if it went nowhere for her, Erica was going to make sure that Gino would be thinking about the scientist that evening when he screwed his wife.

She was dressed casually, wearing a tight-fitting pair of denim jeans and a casual, v-neck, long-sleeved t-shirt beneath a brownish, hound's-tooth-patterned pea coat. To her left, hanging behind Gino in the backseat, was a garment bag that Erica had brought with her. Her wardrobe, as she'd gone through it at home while waiting for her coach to arrive an hour ago, had left much to be desired. But Erica had, eventually, found something that she hoped would arouse her intended victim, even if she didn't intend to wear it for very long.

She and Gino chatted about the girl's venture into the mall, about how Erica had to convince the store manager to stay open for a few extra minutes while she picked something out. As they talked, Erica's thin fingers found the buttons of her coat, and one by one, she slipped each button out through its corresponding buttonhole.

If Gino realized that the girl was changing in the back of his coach, he didn't let on – not as she shrugged her shoulders out of her coat, not as she casually slipped her feet from her shoes, not as her hands found the waist of her pants. Instead, he continued to converse with the girl, about the weather, about the New England Patriots, about some of the more interesting places he'd been while driving one of ConnPharm's executive cars. Erica, for her part, maintained the banal conversation, talking about growing up in Ohio, about living in Southern California and Boston, about what she did – though not what she'd been doing for the past five weeks – for Connecticut Pharmaceuticals. She caught the driver glancing casually, covertly in the rear-view mirror, but he kept himself from being an open voyeur, even as Erica began to unbutton and unzip her jeans.

As her fly came down, Erica's baby-blue thong came into view, though unfortunately, not for the man in the front seat. Erica wished that Gino had a better vantage point, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that the very conspicuous sound of her fly probably had given him an erection. Her thumbs found her waistline, and Erica shimmied out of both her jeans and her panties at the same time. Soon enough, her bare ass was pressed against the expensive leather seats, her sopping wet pussy undoubtedly leaving a puddle beneath her.

"Gonadatrophin releasing hormone," Erica continued to explain, even as she folded her pants on the seat beside her. She was naked from the waist down, and even though Erica doubted Gino could see much below her still-covered breasts, the very thought of being without pants or panties in the backseat of the Italian's car turned her on. She fought the urge to touch herself, knowing that it was pointless until she'd first cum through coitus. She wanted to put on a show for her driver, something he'd cherish in his fantasies forever. Even without masturbating for him, Erica told herself, she doubted that he'd forget the strip show she was performing for him. And besides, this was only Act One. When he picked her up to drive her home the following morning, or later in the night, the psychological blockage would be removed, and Erica would be capable of properly cumming for the man. Act Two would be well worth Gino's wait.

"GnRH," she said. "It's excreted by your hypothalamus when puberty kicks in. It sets off the follicle stimulating hormone and the luteinizing hormone in the pituitary gland, which, in turn, cause the sexual organs to release gender-specific sexual hormones, like testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone."

"Uh-hunh," Gino responded. He obviously wasn't listening, more interested in what was taking place in his backseat than in what was taking place inside the walls of Connecticut Pharmaceuticals. But he didn't want what was transpiring to end, either, and feigned interest in Erica's science in the hopes of seeing Erica's naked body.

Erica hands found the hem of her t-shirt, the last article of clothing she still had on. She began lifting it up her torso, exposing more and more skin to the pair of eyes flitting back and forth between the rearview mirror and the road. "What we've been able to do," Erica lectured, "is bypass the GnRH, the FSH, and the LH, injecting our own, manufactured sexual hormone into the body."

Her belly button, and then the bottom of her breasts came into view. Her nipples next, though Gino noted they sat higher on her breasts than he had been expecting, almost pointing upwards instead of outwards. As Erica pulled her shirt up over her head, she paused in her scientific dissertation, and Gino nearly swerved into oncoming traffic on Route 10.

Gino quickly corrected the car's course, jerking the steering wheel back to the right and returning his focus, briefly, to the road in front of him. Erica smiled to herself, knowing that her DD chest had had its intended effect, even if it had almost gotten her into an accident. She continued to explain about deuterotone, even though neither she nor Gino were really paying attention to the words coming out of her mouth. He was attempting to sneak a few more peaks at her bare breasts, and she was luxuriating in the sensation of feeling his eyes upon her naked body.