Lloyd's Angel Ch. 08

Lloyd's Angel: The Party

January 1962

I wasn't graced by any dreams that night, but Alexandra appeared at the door to my cave about mid-morning. That was even better, as far as I was concerned.

"How was your weekend?" I inquired, beckoning her in.

"Okay," she smiled. "The wedding seems to be on track, and we have Jonathan and Danny measured. The waistcoats they settled on aren't too tacky."

I thought Jonathan was an idiot. While Alexandra was preoccupied with her coat, I closed my eyes long enough to locate her, and wafted that thought ever so gently in her direction. The rigid erection in my pants was more than enough of a reminder that it was perilously easy to go overboard without meaning to do so.

"Well, what brings you down, besides the heat?"

She settled primly in my guest chair and flashed a brief smile. "There is that." The humor was switched off just as quickly as it had appeared. "I wanted to hear what you learned from Susan on Friday. She had an appointment this morning, so I haven't been able to ask her."

I quickly related the censored version. "If you try something like that again, I think she might hit you," I concluded.

"But it worked!" Alexandra emphasized, clearly excited. "It's just fascinating, Lloyd!" She turned her gaze on me, but it was clear she was looking at the interesting research problem and not the man.

Well, I liked her looking at me, and vice versa. I used my lightest featherweight touch to loft that thought at her, too. Gently, Lloyd, I told myself before resuming the conversation. "So, another test?"

"Absolutely," she responded. "It's pretty clear you have a genuine ability, but we have no idea how it works. Why did the ketchup work, but the word fail? What limitations does it have?" Alexandra cocked her head. "Have you figured out anything more?"

I decided a little confession wouldn't be out of line. "I think it's pretty short range. If I concentrate, I can see sort of a glow where people's heads are, if they aren't very far away. It's hard to describe, but I think it's all related."

Her bug-under-the-magnifying-glass stare was back. "Really! Can you see me now?"

I already knew I could, but I went through the motions of closing my eyes and finding her in front of me. Alexandra's glow started moving toward the doorway; keeping my eyes closed, I told her, "You're walking away from me now." She kept moving until she was so faint I wouldn't have found her if I hadn't been watching, and then the glow moved sideways and abruptly disappeared. "Lost you," I reported, and opened my eyes again.

Alexandra looked around the door jam. "Interesting. Was it when I went through the door, or when I stepped down the hall?"

"I think it was the wall. I could still see you, but you disappeared when you moved sideways."

"I wish Susan was here," Alexandra sighed, walking back into the room. "This isn't rigorous enough; we need an observer, at least."

The lack of an observer wasn't bothering me, but I was having difficulties resisting the temptation to meddle. "Couldn't we rough things out, so we'd have a better idea of where to spend time with the careful experiments?"

"How would you propose doing that?" Alexandra asked cautiously, but she didn't dismiss the idea out of hand.

It was a spur-of-the-moment suggestion, so I didn't have a plan in mind. "Well..." I thought furiously. "Let's go out in the hall where there's more room. You'll walk slowly toward me until I tell you to stop, and then we can count tiles to get an estimate of the distance."

"How will you decide when I should stop?" Alexandra wanted to know.

"It's kind of hard to describe," I demurred. "We're just trying to get a distance we can refine later on, okay? I only have a few more minutes before I need to head to class."

"Okay," she decided, clearly humoring me.

We walked into the hallway and proceeded to opposite ends before facing each other, rather like modern-day duelists. The difference was that we were unarmed, at least visibly, and only Alexandra began pacing slowly forward. I closed my eyes and began casting my vision outwards, mouthing her name silently on my lips and concentrating on the warmth I felt.

Her slow footsteps echoed down the hallway as I kept concentrating. Eventually a faint sense of her presence appeared in my mind and I redoubled my effort, ignoring a burgeoning headache. As soon as saw a faint ripple, I shouted, "stop!" and opened my eyes.

"How far, Alex?" I asked, rubbing my forehead.

She quickly paced off the remaining distance between us. "About 15 feet. How confident are you about the distance?"

"Pretty sure, I guess. Like you said, Alex, we'd need to set up a more formal experiment to be sure." Her neutral expression, hinting of calculation, was the only confirmation I needed -- my use of "Alex" hadn't set her off at all. Maybe I'd let her come closer than was necessary, but that was what the follow-up would determine.

I heaved a sigh. "Well, we can discuss it this afternoon. I have to go suffer at the hands of undergrads now. Susan should be there by then, right?"

Alexandra -- no, it was "Alex" for me, now -- nodded. We collected our coats and headed our separate ways, the spring in my step at odds with my fading headache.

I was looking forward to our afternoon meeting, but not for any reasons that had to do with Alex's research. This late in the day, the temperature in their office was almost normal, and I shrugged off my coat without hesitation. "Hi, Susan! Hi, Alex! What have you thought up for us now?"

The girls smiled welcomes at me, although Susan quietly mouthed, "Alex?!" when her officemate wasn't looking. I winked at her in return; she was dressed more attractively than her usual practice, if less daringly than the end of the previous week.

"Okay, let's get started," Susan decided as soon as I'd sat down, and produced a half-eaten basket of French fries slathered with ketchup.

"Weren't there more of those when you brought them back from lunch?" asked Alex. Susan nodded sheepishly and Alex resumed her usual direction of our activities. "We discussed this earlier, and I think it's important to see how easy it is to undo a change you've made. For one thing, "flipping" something back and forth will be much more efficient for some tests than what we've done so far."

"You want me to make Susan hate ketchup-covered fries again, then?" Both girls nodded, and I could see the point, too. Not about the fries specifically, but I did have some flashes of regret over a few of my impulsive decisions on the weekend.

"Now?" There were more nods. "Okay, then," I said a little more confidently. I found Susan's mind almost instantly, and then opened my eyes again so I could stare at the red-spattered fries. This time I focused on the feelings of nausea I'd had once after finding particularly bad "lost" leftovers in the back of the refrigerator, and imagined those leftovers were the fries in front of us. After a suitable period of time, I relaxed. "Well?"

Susan popped a dripping piece of fried potato into her mouth. "It was better hot, but they're still good."

"Hmm, let me try again." I closed my eyes, found Susan's glow, and kept concentrating on that while I thought hard about tomatoey horror. Her glow never wavered and I felt the beginnings of a headache, so I stopped. "I don't think it's going to work," I told them.

Alex thought out loud while Susan ate another fry. "Maybe Susan would always have liked ketchup on fries and just was afraid to try them?"

Susan shook her head. "I don't think so. That supposes that Friday's experiment was a failure too, just like today -- but you rigged it so I couldn't have faked it. Besides, I know Lloyd can do these things!" She clamped her mouth closed, but Alex already was looking suspiciously at the two of us.

"You know?" Alex asked carefully. "How did you obtain this knowledge?"

I cringed, seeing no good way for the conversation to end. "Look, Alex, --"

"Just a minute," she snapped. "I'm talking to Susan right now."

Susan had a quick mind -- quicker than mine, anyway -- and proved it again. "Look, Alex," she echoed, and paused for the inevitable response.

"Don't call me Alex!" the blonde hissed, and then stopped herself so abruptly I thought I heard her teeth click. Suddenly, her attention was focused entirely on me. "Say it again," she demanded.

"Alex." I drew it out, letting the syllables roll gently off my tongue and looking her straight in the eyes. "I like calling you 'Alex'." Her eyes widened and I thought I detected a hint of color in her face.

Susan cut in, talking fast but without sounding jittery. She had to be improvising, but she did a great job. "Lloyd and I discussed this Friday night while he was taking me home. We felt that, as principal researcher, it was important for you to understand the change in perception, and I didn't feel I could do it justice with a verbal description. I know you didn't plan it this way, but we thought first-hand impressions would be extremely valuable. And," she pointed a fry at Alex for emphasis, "it's payback for that ketchup trick!"

"When did you do this?" Alex asked me. If she didn't look happy, at least she wasn't looking upset either.

"This morning. It was just fortuitous coincidence I was able to combine it with your suggestion for a distance test."

"Well, don't do it again."

I nodded, thinking I was fortunate to escape with no worse repercussions.

"So tell me," Alex continued, "how were you able to determine the distance? What's going on inside that head of yours?"

Not for the first time, I had the impression that although I was the most educated person in the office, both women were smarter than me. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about mind glows, visualizations, and hypotheses about interpreting them.

Susan caught up to me halfway across the quad after we'd called it quits for the day. "I need to talk to you, privately," she announced.

I was already mostly hard thinking about what she might want. "Sure -- you might as well see my cave, anyway."

She surprised me again. "I really like Alexandra," Susan told me while we unfastened our coats. "I really like this, too," she continued, gripping my rigid shaft through my trousers. "But if you hurt Alexandra or take advantage of her, I'm going to tear it off and feed it to you, understand?"

"Perfectly," I gasped, painfully aware of Susan's surprisingly strong grip.

"Good." A moment later we were tearing at each other's clothes; I fumbled a condom onto myself while Susan pulled down her pantyhose, and then we were both enjoying a fast stand-up fuck. Neither of us lasted long, and I could feel Susan screaming into my mouth as I kissed her.

That encounter pretty much set the tone of the next few weeks. The three of us did our class work and continued studying and evaluating my ability. Whenever Susan and I were alone, we fucked like rabbits. Both of us were insatiable, and it got easier after Susan revealed she was on the pill and we could dispense with the condoms.

She still came like a banshee every time I pumped her, and after I found sticky deposits in her panties, I began to suspect I wasn't the only guy Susan was fucking. I couldn't complain since I thought about Alex all the time, although I hadn't done anything more "off the record."

I sure wanted to, but knew I shouldn't, and wasn't sure it was needed. The three of us necessarily spent a lot of time together, and Alex had been getting increasingly frustrated about the wedding preparations. It sounded like Jonathan didn't take the planning, or Alex's aspirations, seriously; either it was getting to her more than it had, or she was just less inhibited about voicing her annoyance.

Sometimes we'd be talking about the project or reviewing a draft of her thesis, and I'd catch a hint of an expression on Alex's face that had me instantly rock-hard in my pants. There was no way I could have restrained myself if Susan hadn't been available to serve as a willing, wanton receptacle for my physical urges. Nobody had actually said anything, but I was pretty sure Alex knew something was going on between Susan and myself even before the morning she returned unexpectedly early from a class and caught Susan giving me a blowjob in the office.

The minx had bet me that she could get me off without orgasming herself, which was saying a lot for a girl that pretty much came if my cock moved inside her. I didn't think she could do it, which was the only reason I'd taken the bet; joining Susan for a three-way with another guy wasn't on my list of erotic fantasies. Unfortunately for me, her technique had improved and she was using a combination of suction and tongue action that had to be felt to be believed. The finger tickling my prostate was borderline cheating.

I heard the key rattling in the lock, but I was right on the verge of exploding in Susan's mouth; Susan was so focused on me I don't think she head the door at all.

"Where's Susan?" Alex asked. She'd deposited her books on her desk before she noticed my expression and looked down to see Susan's head buried in my crotch. "Oh gosh, you two! Get a hotel room!"

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw a trace of something other than shock and disgust in her expression. Real or not, it -- and Susan's finger -- pushed me over the edge and a huge load boiled out of my balls and up my shaft.

Susan immediately pulled away, unwilling to risk losing her bet due to some involuntary muscular contraction on my part; that left my jerking tool in plain view while Susan managed to catch most of my spraying semen in her mouth.

Alex finally regained her voice. "Susan, don't you have any shame?"

"Not as much as I did," Susan quipped. She rose slowly to her feet, wiping her cheek clean with a finger.

I hurriedly tucked myself away before Alex's accusing stare returned to me. "Don't look at me -- it was her idea!"

"You seriously expect me to believe that?" Alex's laugh didn't sound too humorous. "I saw what you got out of it." She looked over at Susan, who now appeared a model of decorum. "Lloyd didn't pressure you into this, did he?"

"No," Susan laughed. "We made a bet -- which I won! Do you want to hear about it?"

Alex eyed her officemate's cat-who-ate-the-canary expression, and responded with a doubtful, "I don't think so." She looked intrigued but, true to form, tried to focus on the job at hand -- after getting in the last word. "Just remember, Susan, you're the equal of any man. Don't let them push you around, even Lloyd, okay? You can always talk to me."

We spent the remainder of the afternoon reviewing and organizing data that suggested my changes seemed to be permanent. After the session broke up and we were preparing to leave, Susan told me, "pick me up tonight at 7."

"What?" I tried to restrain my surprise and avoid attracting Alex's attention. "You already set it up?"

Susan gave me a Mona Lisa smile. "You're a pushover, Lloyd. I knew I could do it."

I smiled thinly in return and left. It was beginning to feel like I'd created a monster. However, I'd given my word, and I'd feel better if I was there to watch out for her. And, I admitted to myself, I was looking forward to fucking Susan -- even in the presence of another guy.

Thus I found myself pulling up in front of Susan's apartment right at the top of the hour. I could see Susan talking to Yelena in the lobby; the girls noticed me and Yelena waved as Susan walked out to the car. I jumped out to get the door for her, although Susan had enough practice to handle it herself.

"To the Madison, James," she drawled in a mock British accent, once I'd rejoined her in the car.

"Certainly, Madame," I replied in the same tone, and put the car into gear. It was a nice hotel, once very nice, that wasn't too far off campus. Its declining fortunes owed more to the subsequent construction of newer properties closer to the city center than to decay, and it was still the place well-heeled parents and alumni wanted to stay when they visited the campus. "That must have cost you a pretty penny," I told Susan in my usual voice.

She laughed. "Not a cent! I won it on a bet."

"What bet?" I asked, laughing too. "With who?"

"You'll see," Susan smiled mysteriously.

I couldn't get anything more out of her on the drive over. Turning over the car to the hotel valet was a little nerve-wracking, but most of my mind was focused on Susan and the question of who the other guy would be. Apparently she already had a key, so we walked through the hotel lobby to the elevators.

"Looking forward to this evening?" Susan asked, brushing my pants to feel for my penis. She found me half-hard.

"Half of it, anyway," I admitted. I reached for a breast but Susan adroitly steered my hand aside. I settled for a steamy kiss instead.

We found the room and Susan let us in. I don't really know what or who I was expecting, but I wasn't prepared to find Danny Sullivan sitting in the armchair, nursing a glass of champagne.

He rose and came forward to shake my hand. "Lloyd Parker, I really didn't expect to see you here," he told me with a grin. Turning to Susan, he added, "You're an expensive date."

"I'm just learning to get what I want," Susan rejoined, throwing her coat across the chair. "I'll just freshen up while you gentlemen prepare yourselves." She disappeared into the bathroom.

"Oh, I'm prepared!" Danny told the closed door. "I have to say," he continued, "I didn't have you figured for this kind of scene, Lloyd. But I guess Susan's a hot enough number to have both of us wrapped around her little finger, eh?" He leaned closer. "I've been with a lot of girls, and I never met one who got off on sex the way she does. What a firecracker!"

"Yeah," I tersely agreed. I couldn't decide if it was better or worse to be stuck in this with somebody I knew, much less Alex's brother. I couldn't resist asking, "How'd she get you here, anyway?"

Danny laughed. "Not much to it, Lloyd! She just asked if I wanted to help give her a night to remember. I'm always ready to help out a lady that way!" He made some thrusting motions with his hips to reinforce the message, and then sighed. "I just thought she'd end up paying for the room when she bet me you'd be the other guy. What about you?"

I had to smile, thinking of how Susan had played both of us. "She bet me she could blow me without getting off herself; I lost."

"Really?" Danny blinked. "I would have taken that bet, too -- talk about a hair trigger. Damn, I wish I'd seen it!"

Some perverse notion made me tell him, "Your sister did."

"Alexandra?!" He gaped, genuinely off-balance for once. "How did that happen?"

I shrugged, obscurely pleased by his reaction. "We were doing it in the office at school, and she walked in on us."

"I bet that went over like a lead balloon," Danny laughed. "Now I really wish I'd been there."

After a chuckle, I admitted, "she seems pretty uptight about that kind of thing, I but I think she was too surprised to say much."

Danny poured me a glass of champagne. "Lloyd, before 10 minutes ago, I would have said you were too uptight for this." He toasted the closed bathroom door and then me.

"I guess first impressions can be deceiving." I hesitated, but he seemed to be in a good mood, so I observed, "I wouldn't have thought Alexandra and Jonathan would make a couple -- how did they meet?"

"Cotillion, I think." Danny took a sip and paused before continuing. "When we were kids, anyway. Mom liked to pretend we were rich; Jonathan's parents actually were rich." He snorted. "Alexandra was looking for Prince Charming, and I think Jonathan was looking for arm candy, a nice corporate wife. I've seen worse couples."