The Last Bridge in Pittsburgh Ch. 07

It was a couple days before I had time to test out my theory. Kate's sudden call from her boss had been the result of some sort of accident at the dam construction up the Monongahela, and she wound up doing several double shifts. I decided not to experiment on her for a little - I was happy she was getting so much work, and besides, what I wanted to try would take a long block of uninterrupted time.

Instead, I passed the time wrapping up demo on the upstairs. I figured if I could be completely finished with all of the wrecking I could start on actual construction when I got back. I worked diligently over the next two days ripping out musty drywall in the internal divisions and prying up the ruined hardwood floors. I also spent a little time shopping for what I'd need next time Kate and I did meet up.

With two nights to go before my long drive to Arizona, Kate finally gave me a ring. I was glad to hear from her - I wanted to run a test before I enacted my plan. But, for once, it wasn't a booty call. Rather, she had organized a nighttime cookout for the neighborhood some weeks back, and had fallen behind on preparation in her sudden burst of work.

Naturally, I was drafted to help. I didn't mind - I had grown to enjoy Kate's company in a certain platonic sense. Her stories were always colorful, her jokes always funny, and even for the pushy, acerbic lady she was, she was always kind to me, and I to her. To be honest, it was hard to work out what my feelings towards Kate were, exactly - as tired a trope as it was, I really did consider Kate a friend with benefits. I didn't want a future with her - nor her with me, as she made clear - but even without the patina of 'experimenting' on her, our fucking was just... fun. No hangups, no drama. I had no idea how to square that with my romantic feelings towards Sara.

With the sun setting, we loaded up a wheelbarrow with food and decorations and made the trek two streets uphill to the little park that sat just above our neighborhood. It used to be a dog park, I think, before all the rich folks fled. In the years since, the neighborhood dogs had played wherever they wanted, which I guess entitled us humans to the park. I helped Kate string up some lights, and a banner that read, "Local Incorporation Now!" before she ran off to greet the other neighbors showing up.

I spent the night happily grilling for the neighbors. I'm really not the most social guy, so hiding behind the portable electric range was about my level of comfort - I got to say hi to everyone just long enough for them to give their order and make a little small talk without having to get into anything too deep. Grilling was also pretty fun. I had been a cook in a fast food joint in high school and hated it, but now I found the task of making the best burger I could to be transfixing, a challenging task given that Kate had bought cheap vat-grown meat.

The night wore on and people came and went, before finally trickling off back to their houses, promising Kate they'd... well, I was actually unsure what Kate wanted them to do. Write the mayor, maybe? I began cleaning up as the last few folks clustered around her, caught in some incredibly dull argument about Emergency Powers. I made a couple trips back to Kate's place to drop off the uneaten food before leaning on the gate, waiting for her to be done.

When she finally noticed me and extracted herself, we sloped quietly down the hill back home.

"Your place or mine?" she asked, once we were out of earshot of the others.

"Mine." I replied. Else, I'd have to bring the ingredients of my plan over, and that might come off weird.

"Thanks for helping tonight." Kate said. "I know politics isn't your thing."

"Happy to lend a hand." I responded quietly. "I hope you get, uh... Incorporation?"

Kate punched me in the arm. "I knew you weren't paying attention!"

We turned down the steps into my basement. Before the door was closed, my lips were on hers. Thirty seconds later, she was riding me.

---

Kate's cunt was as intoxicating as it had been three afternoons ago, with the exception that this time, I hadn't just cum between her tits. My diminutive neighbor only managed to get off once, grinding her mons against my pubic bone and briefly collapsing onto my chest as I thrust into her. Shortly after, I realized I was on the edge, and warned her as much. A couple days ago, she would have hopped off to get her 'fair share' of cunnilingus while I cooled down. Now, though, she hissed back encouragement and then affirmation as I boiled into her.

And then, as always, her face went slack, her eyes glazed over, and Kate was under.

I gingerly got up from the bed, rolling her onto her back. At my desk in the corner lay the key element in my plan - a pair of high quality noise-cancelling headphones. This particular model had been out of production for over twenty years, but had been the only pair at the local flea market that actually did as advertised - blocked all sound.

I slipped the headset over Kate's head, ever so carefully flexing the foam around her ears as they settled, trying to avoid creating a pocket of air pressure. If I was right, and loud noises were responsible for the end of trance, I didn't want to mess up by making her hear one of those dreadful ear-popping noises. I let out a sigh of relief when they were snugly seated.

Next I tested to make sure they were working properly by standing on the other side of the apartment and yelling loudly. Nothing - Kate continued to lie, limp and glassy-eyed, on my cheap government-issued bedspread. Not quite satisfied, I rang the doorbell, and banged a pot lid against its pot. Nothing. Either sound was irrelevant, or the antique headphones were doing their job.

I then settled into the hardest thing I had had to do all week: nothing. The only real way to know if I was keeping Kate from snapping out of the trance was to wait and see. She'd stayed under for a little over an hour late one night several days ago, as I had whispered in her ear about the delicious flavor of my cum. Most of the time, she'd been in trance for maybe fifteen to forty-five minutes. I figured waiting three hours would be enough to know, and so I settled in for the wait.

It was the longest three hours of my life. I told myself, to pass the time, I would document Kate's behavior while she was under, but after staring at her for half an hour and not seeing a single muscle move - except for the beat of her heart and the slow, steady draw of her diaphragm, moving her breasts ever so slightly - I set aside my notebook. For perhaps an hour I sat at my kitchen table, looking at her in the bed, growing steadily harder as I recuperated from our last bout. Eventually, I tore my gaze from her body and instead opened my computer to research my route to Arizona.

At long last, around one in the morning, my alarm rang. Kate still looked entirely placid. My body tensed with expectant energy, ready to begin my experiment in earnest, but I made myself stop. Once again, I tried to wake her - I yelled, I banged the pot lid. Nothing. Kate was, it seemed, caught in her trance until I took the headphones off.

I delicately snaked a wire to the headphones, plugging it in behind the left ear. My gaze lingered on her for a moment, in awe at her total placidity, her big brown vacant eyes staring transfixed at the ceiling. I tore myself away to stick the other end of the cable into my computer before bowing my head to speak into it.

"You had a good time tonight."

"I had a good time tonight."

There was a sightly different - though still flat - quality to her voice than before. This gave me some pause. Then, I realized - Kate couldn't hear her own voice with the headphones on. A different tone made sense. I forged ahead.

"You love the feeling of my cock inside you."

"I love the feeling of your cock inside me."

"You relish the feeling of me cumming in you."

"I relish the feeling of you cumming in me."

Thank goodness - it seemed a three-hour-old trance was just as good as a farm-fresh one.

I sat back and thought. I wanted - needed, really, deep inside my heart or cock or wherever such perverse desires lived - to know if I could overcome resistance through repetition. I had to learn if there were any limits to my ability. Really, I needed to smash through those limits. But first, I needed a good test case. Not blowing me - Kate had rejected that in very firm terms. But perhaps I could inch her closer. I pressed the spacebar on my keyboard and began to speak into my computer microphone once again.

"You love my cum."

"I love your cum."

"You want to drink my seed."

"I want to drink your seed."

"You want my semen fresh." I had taken inspiration from this from a comment of hers several days previously, as she had rushed to lap my seed off her chest. Apparently it wasn't as good 'stale'. I'd told her I'd get the USDA to print a 'best by' label on my cock.

"I want your semen fresh."

"You want to drink my cum straight from my cock."

"I... uhh... want.." Kate shuddered a bit.

I ignored her resistance, having anticipated it. Instead, I tapped the spacebar on my keyboard again, stopping my recording.

Besides being sort of curious, my findings presented an opportunity - one of endless repetition and enforcement. It was one that I had first stumbled drunkenly into using on myself last week, in a bid to... who knows? Either to buck myself up or to preemptively kill my own self-control. Now, though, having properly proved out the principles, I could wield them to best effect - on Kate, this time. Or anyone, really. I saved the recording of my voice and pressed play.

> "You love my cum."

My speakers rang out in time with the headphones.

"I love your cum." Kate's voice echoed back in turn.

> "You want to drink my seed."

"I want to drink your seed."

> "You want my semen fresh."

"I want your semen fresh."

> "You want to drink my cum straight from my cock."

"I... want... to... drink"

She gave another shudder, smaller than the first. I muted my computer's speakers and played another loop, leaving long silences that hung in the air as the headphones whispered desire into her ears.

"I love your cum."

"I want to drink your seed."

"I want your semen fresh."

"I want... to drink... your cum straight from..." Another shiver, almost imperceptible this time.

Already, in three repetitions, Kate's resistance to my last suggestion had gone from firm to suspect. I flipped a setting to allow the recording to run indefinitely.

"I love your cum..."

I stepped outside for a bit of fresh air, suddenly finding the basement apartment intolerably stuffy. I took big gulps of the warm night air, leaning on the steps that led up to the front door above. Slowly, the discomfort brought on by the raging hardon in my pants subsided.

It returned in full force when I reentered. Kate was now speaking with conviction, or whatever the trance equivalent of conviction was.

"I want to drink your cum straight from your cock."

No resistance at all.

---

When I finally took off the headset and woke her, Kate was beat. I wanted to push onwards, to reap the fruits of my labor, or the computer's labor, anyway - I guess all jobs really can be automated. But I, too, was tired. Kate snuggled against me, and we drifted off together. In the last moments before my eyes closed for good, I noticed that Kate had, in her sleep, placed a hand over my cock - not playing with me, or trying to get me aroused. Just present, close, familiar and safe. For some reason it warmed my heart.

I slept deeply - there is something magical about sharing a bed with a beautiful woman - or perhaps it's just about it being another human. There's a warmth, a presence, that actually sleeping with someone brings - it makes things feel safe, and certain, so that in those little moments when you wake up at the night, instead of grumpily slamming your eyelids back down, you can place your hand on the other person's waist and let their pulse lull you back to sleep.

I slept so well, in fact, that I was woken by my backup alarm alerting me to my work shift. Kate fumbled, eyes shut, in vain at where I assumed she was used to her bedside table being. I turned off the alarm and, careful not to wake her, slipped on clothes and out the door to my bike, leaving my key behind on the kitchen table. I shot her a text letting her know where I'd gone and headed into the city.

The lab was, once again, oddly empty. I could have sworn Gretchen and the rest of folks were supposed to be back, but when I went to check the note on her door it was gone. Maybe they were all hung over from a late night drinking after the symposium. Cal was also not around, and she'd left me a terrific amount of dirty equipment to clean. It looked like there would be even more the next day - she had left all the chemical synthesizers in the lab running - but that was a problem for someone else. I was off tomorrow and then in Arizona for a week.

Setting aside my hopes of clocking out early as I had on my last two shifts, I got to work. I usually found my job as a lab tech quite boring, but with all of the excitement this last week it was remarkably pleasant to just turn my brain off and scrub some stuff. Eight hours later, I clocked out, the lab still empty but clean as a whistle.

Kate was waiting for me when I got back. She stuck her head out her front door as I biked up.

"Hey! Come over in a sec? And, just so you know, I used your toothbrush this morning."

"I'll be up soon!" I yelled back. I was actually a little cross about the toothbrush. I know I had no leg to stand on - I was brainwashing her into a sex kitten and all - but god, some people just didn't respect boundaries.

I quickly forgot about it. And, for that matter, everything else. After a quick shower to get my commute sweat off, and after tucking my computer and the good headphones into my backpack, I let myself into Kate's place. I was surprised to find her wearing nothing but a bikini.

"Why the swimsuit?" I asked, somewhat entranced by her chest.

"Doing laundry. Well, really, I figured you'd be looking. I want to take another crack at the boobjob thing and I hafta to get you riled up first. Have you eaten yet?"

We ate MREs in the shell of Kate's kitchen. We chatted amicably - about my upcoming drive, about the accident up at the dam site, about the cookout the night before. Truth be told, though, I'm not sure I looked her in the eyes once, and she knew it - she wiggled at me several times to emphasize her points.

By the time we were done, I was as stiff a man could be, and Kate had grown quite flushed herself from seeing my reaction through my jeans. We neglected the dishes and hurried up to her bedroom, where she pushed me onto the bed and roughly fished me out of my pants. Before I could cast about for her bottle of lube, she had spit on my cock and had it and her chest covered in saliva.

"I read online that spit makes it feel better for the woman." She explained, unprompted.

I gave her a skeptical look. "How is that supposed to work?"

"Different viscosity, I guess? Hold still."

And with that I was, for a second time, ensconced in her legendary breasts. Kate didn't bother stripping this time, but rather slipped me under the narrow strap of her bikini top. It made for quite a picturesque scene, I thought.

"Hmm - it's best for me when I squeeze them together hard. I mean, I'm not going to get off obviously, but it's surprisingly nice. How is this for you?"

"Really, seriously, truly, incredible. It feels like -" My answer was cut short by my phone, which began ringing loudly. I glanced at the screen to see that it was Sara, and I hit the button to decline. I could call her tomorrow, while I was on the road. Kate paused before resuming her ministrations with vigor.

I had just allowed my mind to slip back into blissful catatonia when the phone rang again. My hand flew to silence it, but Kate got to it first, plucking it from the duvet to look at the caller ID.

"Oh shit, it's this other girl! The cute one!" She broke into a grin as she turned it around to show me Sara's name and picture on the caller ID.

"I'll call her back in the morning -" I said, a little distracted. Kate's free hand had just found my balls, and had begun massaging me gently.

"_I_ think you should pick up. It's rude to let a girl go to voicemail, you know." She smirked. Her eyes had taken on an intense quality. "It would be pretty hot. Do you think you could get her to talk dirty?"

"I really don't think - "

"I swear, I'll be totally silent." Her grin grew wider. "Cross my heart, she'll never know I was here. Please?"

"She doesn't - " I was interrupted again.

"She doesn't know about me, yeah, yeah, totally chill. Hey, wait, you're not exclusive with this girl or anything, are you?"

"Uh," I paused for a millisecond. "We haven't talked about being exclusive yet." Hey, strictly speaking, that was actually true - though only because Sara was the sort of person who understood monogamy as just an assumed part of dating.

"Well then - I don't see what the problem is." The beginnings of a scowl on Kate's face dissipated, and her hand flew to my phone's screen, pressing the answer button. I opened my mouth to protest - truly, this was courting disaster - but before I could snatch the device back, I heard Sara's voice.

"Hello handsome!"

The fire in Kate's eyes grew, and seeing me temporarily frozen in panic, she gave my cock a hard squeeze, snapping me back into the moment - terrifying and arousing as it was.

"Hello, beautiful!" I responded, with a bit of a quiver in my voice as Kate began to stroke her hand smoothly and quietly up and down my shaft. "What are you up to?"

"I'm on a little walk. Had to get out of the house. Ava's got some local girl over and I don't want to even think about describing the noises coming from her side of the house."

"I won't ask you to, then. Wait, her _side of the house_? Have things devolved to the level of a sitcom down there? Do you have a line of tape through the middle?". I laughed a little, in spite of the fact that my neighbor was giving me the most insistent handjob I think I'd ever had.

Sara laughed back, the soft ringing chimes of an earthbound angel. If I had still been capable of guilt, I thought as Kate wet me with her saliva, I would be feeling it now.

"No, no - we just divvied it up to divide responsibility for packing. I am really looking forward to you getting down here, though - some actual adult company will be nice. Do you have your route figured out?"

We talked for a minute or so about my plans and schedule. I let my mouth run on autopilot and disassociated a little. Kate briefly tried to slip me back between her breasts, but seemed to conclude that she would not be able to maintain her stealth, and went back to aggressively jerking me off. A hand had disappeared down her bikini bottom - she seemed to be enjoying... the danger? The taboo? I will admit, I really didn't understand Kate sometimes, but I have to say my initial terror at the situation was gradually giving way to a sort of frenetic arousal - and one I could do nothing about without giving away the game to Sara.

Eventually we lapsed into an amiable silence, as we often did. I could hear some sort of bird on Sara's end of the line, calling out lonesomely.

"I miss you." I said, more tenderly than I'd meant to.

"I miss you too." Sara responded with a long sigh. "Wait a second, are you... are you masturbating?" Her voice got low and furtive.

"I, uhh-" I grew flustered. Kate's look turned downright evil as she continued to work her hand up and down.

"You are, I can hear you!" Sara laughed soft and quick. "I guess you really do miss me."