Tom and Crystal

Tom said, "From what you said, sucking on me wasn't awful, but it didn't sound like you got much out of it for yourself." She nodded. "And I'm still pretty inexperienced. Is it OK if I say I'll be on top, with a chance that I'll change my mind later?" She nodded. "Then let's do it that way. But first, I really want to kiss you and explore your body a little more."

He knew—from reading and from videos—some of what he might do, but he wasn't really sure how much he could trust those things. They seemed to be aiming to titillate men, not to honestly show what would please a woman. He thought of how many portrayed women as eager for anal sex, and what Crystal had said the night before about that. Certainly women must vary among themselves, but—.

So he stroked her while they kissed, for what felt like a long time. He rubbed at her breasts with his face, causing her to protest his scratchy beard. He realized he'd probably been a little hard on her face and neck, too. He sucked on her nipples and stroked.

He thought he'd better ask before trying to go between her legs with his tongue. She was pleased that he'd asked, and told him to go ahead. She said he could bear down a little more—his tongue not being hard the way his fingers were—and told him to try to keep plenty of saliva going as lubrication. She said a dry tongue—on her pubic hair especially—was unpleasantly scratchy and didn't do anything for her. She said she'd tell him when to put a finger inside, all the way.

He eventually produced encouraging gasps and moans, but after a while she told him to just go ahead and go in. "I don't think you can get me a lot closer, Tom. You're trying, and you're doing things pretty much right. It's me, again. And you're trying so hard, I really wish I could do better! But enjoy yourself, now. Which way do you want us to be?"

So he knelt between her knees. Again, she opened herself, and guided him in with her other hand. This time, he slid right in with no problem. When he asked about that, she said, "Part of it's just that last night loosened up things that had gotten tight over two or three years. Part of it's everything you've been doing. And a little of it's that my feelings have changed a little. You're not so much Tom, who's holding something over me so I have to go to bed with him. A little bit, you're Tom who's been nothing but gentle and considerate to me. I'm sorry it's taking so long to get through to me."

"Well, I am still holding something over you, after all. And I want to be gentle and considerate, but I may not always manage it. I mean it, though. When we're with your friends, you can do most anything you want to tell them you love me and you're totally happy with me." She looked concerned, so he said, "You don't ever have to say those words, with them or just with me! How could you love me, when I'm making you do this? Just act enough like it's true that they'll think that. With me, be honest and forthright, whether it's good or bad. OK?"

She relaxed and let out her breath. "Hon, that sounds wonderful. That, I can do, I think."

He began thrusting in earnest. Something about the way she moved with him was a lot better for him than things had been the night before—and that had been wonderful! He didn't say anything about that, but when he ejaculated it was amazing. Crystal was panting a little, too. When they were done, she closed her eyes for a moment. Then she looked at him and said, "I'm sorry, Tom. I was a lot closer, but I just couldn't get that last bit. I can't tell you how sorry I am about it. This time I wanted it for myself, too."

"Crystal dear, don't worry about it. It will happen eventually—or it won't, I guess. Either way, I've got you, and that means a lot more to me than you realize." He pulled out and got off her. He was aware of how much bigger and heaver he was.

Tom fixed breakfast. In the fridge, he kept waffle mix he'd made from scratch. He stirred in baking soda—it seemed to him that it worked better if that wasn't pre-mixed, at least with the buttermilk powder he used. He whipped the eggs and added oil, then the dry mix and a little vanilla. Early on, he started the waffle iron heating, and then oiled it just before he put in the batter. He told Crystal what toppings to get out of the fridge. She got the first waffle, while he started the second. He ate that while the third cooked, and then the leftover bit of batter. He'd made twice what he usually did for himself, but Crystal didn't eat as much as he did. He finished it all, but made a mental note to cut back the next time—and probably on what he fixed for other meals. Well, she was smaller than he was, and delectably slender.

As they ate, he asked her something that was bothering him. "OK, you said that perfume was a one-time impulse. Fine. But how did you come to have an anti-RFID bag handy? This is bothering me because it doesn't make sense. And noticing and investigating things that don't make sense is a lot of my business."

"When we get back upstairs, look in my purse. I keep my wallet in one. At Brown's we put tags on most things, with stock numbers and whatnot. Those have RFIDs. It costs a little, but it lets us reduce shoplifting by a lot, as well as returning items to where they belong. That part was in the video you've got. You must know about that!" He nodded. He knew way more than she did, he was pretty sure.

"OK, when they started pushing credit cards with chips at us all, I wondered how many people around me could read the encoded info right off my card. I did a little research, and apparently there are a lot! So I got a few of those bags. With one around my wallet, I cut that off except right there at the register."

"Excellent! Mind you, I'll have to look in your purse, but I believe you. And I approve of your caution and forethought. I keep my individual cards in little sleeves—but then, you've got a purse.

"The next challenge like that is when they start making everyone have smartphones and use apps that talk to the registers, by the way. I'm skeptical that they'll make that secure enough at all. They'll just rely on the bad guys not being too capable. But that's just as true for chip cards, really."

They went upstairs to get dressed. He remembered to check her purse, but of course it was just as she'd said. "Crystal, thanks. I'll try to respect your privacy, and not go in your purse without permission."

After a moment, she told him, "If I'm going to be here much—and I expect I will—I'll need to bring more clothes. That closet is huge! Will I crowd you if I bring a lot of stuff in? I guess I can use the guest room for my clothes, if I need to—is that OK?"

"Go check the closet for yourself."

Even with everything he had, he hadn't half filled the closet or its built-in drawers, much less the chests of drawers in the room—though those held some other belongings besides clothes, too. Crystal hung up some of her clothes from her suitcase. She probably had more clothes than he did, but there was really lots of room.

"Normally, I wear a nightgown to bed—with panties if I'm in my period. I stuck a couple in—I didn't know for sure I'd be sleeping in your bed—actually sleeping. Do you want me to wear them—for sleeping, I mean? And should I bring some—um, sexier lingerie for you to enjoy taking off me?"

"Up to you. I normally wear pajamas, but with you there I doubt I will unless we're avoiding sex for some reason—unless you'd prefer it, in which case tell me."

Tom was planning to take a shower. Crystal pointed out that she needed one too, and said they should shower together. Well, the chance to see her naked again wasn't something he wanted to miss, so that's what they did. Only, of course her plans didn't exactly focus narrowly on getting clean. It was a big tub and shower unit. Once the water was set right, she handed him the soap. "Wash me," she told him.

After that night and morning, he didn't exactly hesitate touching her in all the enticing places—except he kept his hands out from between her buttocks. She was obviously expecting this, and there was quite a lot of miscellaneous kissing, too. She backed up against the wall and told him to come inside her.

He was almost too tall for this to work at all, and he found it a little uncomfortable. He said as much to her, and she just told him sweetly, "Next time try picking me up."

He had some work he wanted to do after lunch, and he warned her about that. He showed her the library, downstairs. A lot of it was security-related and technical, but a lot wasn't—he liked to read. He had a feeling that for a good while he wouldn't have much time for pleasure reading, though.

He also warned her that any phone communications were automatically logged and sometimes recorded. There wasn't much point in knowing about these things and working with them all the time if he didn't use them to protect himself, was there? But in his view, his girlfriend—however reluctantly so—deserved to know.

For lunch, he just provided sandwich fixings, plus homemade soup that he thawed.

He showed her where his lab was. That was what he called his workroom. After all, he explained, that's what "laboratory" means—more or less literally—and originally all it meant, even if the more limited meaning developed pretty early on. He told her not to get into anything unless she was sure it was OK, and left his door open in case she needed him, but otherwise gave her the run of the place. He worked for three hours. In this case, it was designing a system for someone who was being plagued by vandals. He had some ideas he liked, but he still had questions.

When he was done, he got dinner ready. He explained to Crystal that he liked to eat pretty early, and either work in the evening or go to bed early. Again, he thawed and served food he'd prepared in advance.

"Don't you ever just, I don't know, call out for pizza or eat out or something like that?" she asked him.

"Occasionally. If I'm working at someone else's place, I may bring something I've made or I may call in or go out. Or the client may bring or order something in for us, or take me out. That happens often enough.

"But eating out—or eating carryout, or especially ordering in—costs a lot of money, over time. I have a couple of big freezers—they've got backup generators, too, by the way. From time to time, I spend a Saturday or a free day making a whole bunch of things, which I then freeze. Saves time and money. Of course, buying the freezers and the generators cost in the beginning, and electricity isn't free—but still, it pays. And if something happens like a widespread outage, I'm OK for quite a while."

"I can't cook anywhere near as well as you can. Just the things we've eaten today! I could probably do waffles, from a mix I'd have to buy, but they wouldn't be as good as what you made."

She got up, and came and sat in his lap. She kind of toyed with a button on his shirt for a moment. He waited. She obviously had something to say. When it came out, though, she surprised him.

She kissed him briefly. "Tom, how many sets of sheets do you have for that bed? If we keep—um—using it—at this rate—it won't be comfortable to sleep in, pretty soon. It'll stink, too."

He laughed. "Is that all? I was afraid you had some kind of serious problem to raise—you'd decided you'd rather face Miss Priss than have sex with me even one more time, maybe."

"What? No! You've been so good to me! I'm looking forward to tonight, and don't you forget it!" She hesitated. "Tom, will you please not call her that, around me I mean? You're right, it fits her perfectly. But just because that's true, I can't afford to call her that in her hearing, even once—and I'll forget and get fired if I keep hearing it. And—and I hate being snide, anyway."

"I'll try. Anyway, about the sheets, I don't really know. I left it to the maid to get me some, and I don't know how many she got me. Not to mention mattress pads. We may need to go out and buy some more, this evening or tomorrow."

"'The maid?' I admit, I was startled at how clean you keep everything. Tidy, too. But a maid?"

"It's a big house. I'd do what I could myself, but I can't afford the time to keep it up. Juana comes in two days a week, sometimes three, all day. She's reliable and conscientious, and scrupulously honest—and not in the least nosy. We need to get you here one day this week while she's here, so you can meet her—she needs to know who you are, too. I think she'll be disappointed in me, having sex out of wedlock—but she won't be shocked, just saddened. She doesn't expect others to live up to her standards, necessarily. She's a devout and faithful Catholic, and a single mother who really needs this job. Rigidly moral for herself. And a real sweetheart—you'll see. I'll ask if she can stay a little late Wednesday. Is that OK with you?"

"I can leave a little early, once in a while. If she's a single mother working that kind of hours, don't make her stay late.

"But let's go check on the sheets. I assume you at least know where they're kept."

They were in a large linen closet opening off the upstairs hall. Tom knew that, but he'd left the contents to Juana. He wasn't surprised at all that everything was tidy and well-organized. Sheets for the king bed were in one stack, sheets for the doubles in another. Some special twin sheets for thick air beds he'd never used, stored in the same closet for possible emergencies—those had been his idea. Bath linens were there too, in their own section.

Tom had very occasionally had a guest in one guest room, once two in separate rooms. He felt pretty oversupplied with bedrooms, with four of them. He found that there were three spare sets for the king bed—which might not be enough if Crystal visited very frequently.

"I hope we can make do with these for a few days," he said. "We could go shopping tomorrow afternoon, but Juana might feel I was going behind her back—and she's got better taste than I do, besides really knowing what to buy and where."

"You're right, I need to meet her," Crystal told him. "I hope she won't resent me—making messes and more work for her, and getting in the way of her taking care for you."

"She won't—but you're right, taking care of me is exactly how she views the job. Originally I just hired her to take care of the house, but by now it's me, and the house by extension. If there aren't enough dishes waiting for her to run the dishwasher, she worries that I'm not eating enough and nags me about it. Of course, it usually just means I'm busy somewhere else, but sometimes I do get wrapped up and forget to eat. I'm glad she views me as a wayward child rather than a potential husband, though. I'm selfish enough to not quite hope she'll find a husband to take care of instead—but I really do hope she'll eventually find one good enough for her. And then someone as reliable as she is for me, as a replacement."

They changed and made the bed, and stashed the two remaining sets in Crystal's bedside table. Tom wrote a note for Juana to read on Tuesday, since he'd be out for the day—though he would have anyway. They had a system for this, and Juana was meticulous about checking for instructions, even though Tom very rarely needed to leave any for her. As far as the house went, he was a creature of routine.

In bed that night, Crystal seemed a little subdued. Tom couldn't think of any reason, unless it was having discovered that he had another woman in his life—even just a part-time housekeeper. Maybe it was something about meeting Juana, though.

Sunday morning, Crystal asked about music, and he showed her his setup. What he put on, though, was just the local classical FM station he mostly listened to. The system was a little complex. It—the server, that is—was in a tiny closet off the living room, but it could be operated from the lab or the master bedroom as well—or from Tom's phone. The music followed him from room to room, unless he programmed it differently—he asked, and then set it to follow her as well. In addition to the radio, it could play from web streams or a huge library of music stored on the server. Doing that required a connection to the server with a login. There were also audiobooks.

Crystal was impressed. He told her a friend—a sometime colleague and sometime client—had designed and built one for himself. When Tom saw it and asked for one like it, the friend found someone to build and install similar systems, and he occasionally earned small royalties. Small, because the systems were somewhat expensive and the market was limited—and at this point there were many other ways to get enough of the functionality.

They spent part of the afternoon working a couple of difficult crossword puzzles. This didn't seem likely to be a frequent occupation—Tom was enough better at it that it was a little frustrating for them both. She felt outclassed, maybe more than she should have, and he was frustrated trying to hold back and give her a chance. They tried taking turns writing things in for five minutes each, the one not writing being required to be quiet unless asked for help, but this gave Tom an even bigger advantage, as he solved in his head more easily than Crystal did. Tom thought that sitting together while they engaged in separate activities might work well in the long run, but at this point he really wanted to discover amusements they could share.

After that, Tom showed Crystal another part of the house she hadn't seen before. At the back of the first floor, he had an exercise room—a treadmill, an elliptical trainer, a stationary bicycle, a weight machine, some free weights, and a few other things. "I try to get in here every day or at least every other day, when I'm home enough and not buried under a pile of urgent jobs," he told her. "You know why I didn't Friday or yesterday, but I'd like to spend an hour here now. And I'm certainly not telling you that you need to, but unless you're working out somewhere, it would be really good for you, when you're here."

His hour turned into two, because it turned out Crystal had no real idea at all what to do. He was kind of shocked at how little she could do, as he showed her exercises. A smallish barbell—small to his mind—that he used for biceps curls was beyond her strength for a bench press. With the weight machine, OK—if she couldn't do something she couldn't do it—but if she dropped a barbell on herself she could get hurt badly.

"For safety, until you know what you're doing and what your limits are, stick to the machine, OK? And both with weights and with the aerobic machines, don't overdo right now. Later, you'll have a better idea of what's a good workout for you."

Of course, she was done long before he was. She went out and found a book to read, then came back with it and sat on the floor while he kept working out.

Afterward, he made something quick and very basic for a light supper: macaroni and cheese, from scratch. She helped by grating some of the cheese and cutting up onion. He cooked the onion in with the pasta over the water he was using to hard-boil an egg, chopping the egg and then adding that and the cheese. Salt, pepper, and a couple of other flavorings went in too.

When they were done eating, Crystal said, "I really need to get home soon, and you'll need to drive me. Is that OK? We'll go upstairs first, and I'll collect my stuff—oh! Can I leave dirty clothes for—Juana to wash?"