It was 1:15 and Sally wasn't here yet. She hadn't missed a minute of our special time together since the day we had started having it, so naturally, I was concerned. I wandered down through the house, looking for her in the various rooms as I passed them. I heard voices when I finally reached the main floor and I followed the sounds to the kitchen.
I immediately sensed that something important was going on, as Sally and Nicole were doing their alternate sentence thing. The third person at the table, a woman I didn't know, but who looked vaguely familiar, watched their performance with a bemused smile on her face. Their coordinated sentences were still disconcerting to me, even now. I don't know that they sensed how disorienting it was to other people. Or if they did, if they even cared.
Sally looked up at me when I entered the kitchen, then over at the clock. She realized what time it was, but she didn't seem too upset. I wasn't sure I liked that.
I grabbed a cup of coffee, topped up their cups with the pot and joined the ladies at the table. Nicole had sent me a sense over the link, blasted it actually, as she was still getting used to the 'volume control', that I was welcome to join. Sally's link asked me to stay as well.
As soon as I sat down, both my wives moved over to flank me. It wasn't defensive on their part, it was just the position they normally took, one on each side. What was curious was that, in their psychic mode, their actions were mirror images of each other, down to the position of their hands in their laps.
"Larry, this is Jerome's mother, Diane Turner." They used the synchronized talking to introduce the other woman at the table. But I didn't make the connection immediately.
Jerome?
"That's Simone's friend. You know him as 'JT'."
Ah-ha! Mama bear here to protect her cub. I sent a probing finger of my link out to this new person and was not surprised by the suspicious thoughts I found. What did surprise me was that her honest curiosity about us, the three of us, was even stronger than her suspicions. She had great faith in her boy, that he could handle himself. She was here to find out what kind of people would be influencing him. Particularly me.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Turner. JT is a fine boy." God, did that sound as lame as it seemed?
Diane sat across from us, considering her first words to me. She had apparently been here a while, or at least long enough to have gotten the idea that our lifestyle and marital relationship were not normal.
"Are you Simone's father?" Her tone was accusatory, almost bitter. I let it pass.
"She calls me 'Papa, ' but I am not her father."
"Oh. What about the cheerleader?"
"Cheerle- ... Oh, you mean Janey? No, she is Sally's daughter, not mine. But she calls me 'Dad.'"
Diane had a look of disbelief on her face. "So. Are you at least married to one of these women? I don't see any rings." She glanced pointedly at our hands.
I saw a glance pass between Sally and Nicole, then watched as their hands stole silently under the hem of the shirts they were wearing. Together they lifted up the fabric to expose their piercings in their left nipples. Following their example, I unbuttoned my shirt and moved the left panel aside to show Diane my rings as well.
The tall black woman didn't get it right away, then she saw the letters they were wearing and the letters I was wearing.
"Shit!" slipped out before she stopped herself. She paused before she continued.
"I was worried about the kind of weird rich people that might be influencing Jerome up here. Now don't take it wrong, I don't mind you being rich, especially if you worked for it. Sally here assures me that you do, though I'll be damned if I can figure out when you've got the time..." She looked pointedly at Sally and Nicole, " ... or the energy."
She seemed to stop herself from continuing down that path. Smiling ruefully at us, she apologized, "I'm sorry I said that. It's just that, well, you," and she pointed her chin right at me, "represent everything that is wrong with the stereotypical black man." She raised her hands to prevent us from jumping all over that statement.
"You work hard, you stay home, you are raising not one, but two children and neither one of them are yours. You are not promiscuous, ignoring the fact that you have two wives. At least you're honest enough to marry them both, not leave them in the lurch." She gave an exasperated sigh. "Do you know how many of the single black mothers in this community alone would kill for a man like you?"
I assumed the question was rhetorical, so I didn't answer, but just in case I hadn't caught on, two very sharp sets of fingernails suddenly and simultaneously dug into both my legs, both sets dangerously close to the holy land. I nearly farted with the effort to not squeal like a stuck pig, and that started the two women to giggling as they sensed it over the link and then having to suppress the laughter. Served them right.
JT's mom continued as if she didn't notice, "I guess I really can't complain. My Jerome, JT's dad, was killed in action. And since Simone has been spending time with him, JT has come out of the shell he had built around him after his Dad died. I was so worried about him, he was so withdrawn, not doing well in school. I was worried about the gangs getting to him, now that he was missing a father figure.
"Simone changed all that. He has even started cleaning his room without me asking him. He is taking special care with his clothing and hygiene. Especially his hygiene. And his grades! He has never done so well in school. I mean, he was always the smartest kid in the class, but now? It's like she is challenging him to do his best."
She paused. I knew what was coming. I felt Sally and Nicole's grips tighten on my leg again, encouraging me to be quiet. Geez, give me some credit, will you?
"That's why I'm really here, I guess. I'm so happy for him but at the same time, now I'm even more scared than before. I guess I just needed to know where the girl was coming from, what kind of a family, if she could be counted on not to screw with his head and dump him." She looked at us, her relief evident. "You might be crazy and weird, but you're not cruel people. Somehow, I know I can trust you to do right by my boy."
Sally and Nicole's grips on my groin relaxed and I could feel the tension flowing out of them. They hadn't been sure of the outcome of this meeting and somehow, that made me feel a little better. They were mortal, after all.
Diane stayed a while longer, actually daring to examine Nicole's rings at close range after a bit. She told how her husband had been killed while stationed overseas. He had been a Major in a Special Forces unit. She had never been told how or where, only that it had been in action and that he had died serving his country. JT had taken his Dad's death hard but had never cried that she knew of. He just kept it bottled up inside.
She left with an invitation to come to our house for dinner the following week. It was going to be a special night, with JT and Simone hosting. She asked if that meant they would be cooking, as well. When Sally said it did, Diane just rolled her eyes and said, "I'll bet you $10 we have hotdogs and beans. That's all he knows how to fix."
I walked out to the basketball court to check the action a couple of days later. What I found was not exactly the action I expected. The ball was sitting in mid-court, and three couples were there as well, two on the baseline and one at the top of the key. While there was a lot of activity, none of them were actively looking for the basketball. I cleared my throat, and six teens separated guiltily, caught, thank God only figuratively, with their pants down.
I decided to establish some ground rules of my own. "JT, what's going on?" I asked him specifically, thus making him responsible.
"We, uh, she, uh..."
I stopped him right there and pulled him off to the side.
"First, JT, and as you get older you'll understand this better, but first, JT, never, ever blame the woman. It won't work."
He looked back at me with a solemn face, taking my statement as wisdom from the ages. God! This kid has got to lighten up!
I continued in a more serious vein but more in keeping with his attitude.
"JT, as a man, be a man. Take the responsibility, take charge. And right or wrong, take the blame. Understand?"
I raised my eyebrows at him, trying to get him to lighten up.
He nodded, still unsure.
"Now then, I'll ask you again, what's going on out here?"
He looked around, then over at Simone, who had wandered up to us.
He grinned, "We, uh, I was resting, sir!"
I laughed.
"Well, just don't rest too long, OK?"
The six of them grinned back, the message understood. From then on I kept the window to my office open whenever Simone had the kids over. I couldn't see the court from there, so I wasn't exactly spying on them. I kept it open so I could hear the 'boing-boing' of the basketball as it was occasionally dribbled between the rest periods. What can I say, hormones were raging.
Sally popped up to my office and informed me it was time to dress for dinner. I grumbled at her, as I was puzzling my way through a complex international financial transaction that nagged at me. Something was just too sweet with the deal and I wanted to make sure my clients wouldn't be left holding an empty bag if I recommended it to them. I could feel I was almost at the point of seeing the catch, and I wasn't ready to eat dinner.
"Now, Master!" came her voice again from the doorway. Something in her exasperated tone cut through the fog in my brain and I gave her my full attention. God, was I glad I did. Sally was wearing an outfit I hadn't seen before. I guess it could best be described as a formal loincloth. And a necklace, her jeweled collar. I idly wondered how she had gotten it out of the safe, but in a rare flash of brilliance for me, I determined it was best if I didn't know how she had figured out the combination to my safe. It would only frustrate me and right now I was once again totally besotted with her beauty.
She noticed me staring at her nakedness and she blushed, both from the joy my attentions still brought her and her frustration at having yet another delay in getting me dressed for dinner. She finally got me to our bedroom and into a similarly brief covering, now completely inadequate given the aroused state my cock was in. It looked more like a window awning with a single support than a loincloth and Sally and Nicole got a severe case of the giggles as they escorted me down to the dining room.
As we entered the rarely used formal dining room, I noticed that all the stops had been pulled out for the evening; candles, the good china, my family's silver service and the good linen napkins with the monogrammed silver rings. The large square table was set for 11 people. Sally and Nicole guided me to our places facing the door, bursting out in fits of laughter as it became obvious that the head of my prick was going to poke out above the level of the table. Unless something could be done, there would be 12 for dinner.
Nicole, I might add, was similarly attired, her loincloth as brief as Sally's. Her collar was also in place. She had added a pair of high heels to her outfit that lifted her butt nicely. With all the visual stimulation around me, there was no chance in Hell I was going to relax anytime soon. I thought Sally or Nicole would take the initiative and relieve the stress, so to speak but neither left her place at my side. The four of us waited for the other guests to join us.
I heard Janey's voice first. She was in 'polite' mode, I could tell. Not nervous, not scared, just on her best behavior. Whoever was with her, the guest was bound to be important. Then Marion's voice chimed in, again trying to reassure whoever was with them by her tone. She had practiced that tone on me all through our growing up and beyond and she did it well. I was curious about who was coming in with them when it suddenly hit me.
JT's Mom! Debby, or Dana, no. Diane. Suddenly panicked, I stared at my stubbornly erect member, trying to will it into submission. I guess you know that didn't work. As I heard them coming closer I got more desperate. I grabbed the linen napkin from in front of me and tried to yank the silver napkin ring off the damn napkin. Like a Chinese finger puzzle, the harder I pulled on it, the more it stuck, until it gave with a sadistic suddenness. The cloth I was hoping to cover myself with sailed out into the middle of the table, clearly out of my reach and too far away to get to without totally exposing myself to the group just now entering the dining room.
The silver ring, on the other hand, took another route to complete my humiliation. It flipped up into the air, glinting and gleaming in the soft candlelight. The flashes of light from the spinning ring managed to catch everyone's attention and six pairs of eyes watched the ring, in agonizingly slow motion, from my perspective, anyway, descend into my lap, landing squarely on the head of my cock, crowning my prick with a crown of softly gleaming silver.
We were all stunned by what had happened and were silent, staring at that damned napkin ring/crown. Sally and Nicole, again in unison, started shaking silently, their lovely tits jiggling enticingly. Watching those lovely orbs quaking was not helping my situation at all.
"You know, I've always wondered what to do with those damn rings after you take the napkin out. I never thought of doing that, but I'll bet my Jerome would have loved it."
Five pairs of eyes swiveled from staring at my cock to staring at this unruffled woman who had just defused a humiliating situation. Then we all laughed, wiping tears from our eyes. Nicole or Sally, I couldn't tell which one, surreptitiously lifted the ring from its awkward perch during the laughter and placed it on the table next to my place setting.
Marion, Janey and JT's Mom finished entering the room and sat at our left. Conversation was admittedly a bit less stilted and formal after that and I could tell I was going to take a lot of ribbing for a long time.
Simone slipped in and out of the room, serving wine and bringing in the salad and the soup. There was still no sign of the other guests or of JT, but Simone did not show any concern about the late arrivals. She also showed no sign of having heard the ruckus earlier. I admired her calm demeanor. She was growing up to be a confident and accomplished young lady.
I watched Diane watching her. She didn't do it openly but her attention was never very far away from Simone. Several times I caught a pleased smile teasing the corners of her mouth, as if Simone had just satisfied yet another of the myriad unnamed requirements on some sort of checklist. The common thought is that men are the competitive sex but it's nothing compared to what women put each other through. Men will accept best effort. Women have to be perfect.
Mac's unmistakable voice came booming into the room and I knew the last guests had arrived. I could tell he was nervous about something even before he entered the dining area. He was always about 10 decibels too loud when he was like that and he was really loud now.
Mac entered first, ahead of CeCe and Beth. The two women stayed out of sight around the corner of the door, hesitant to come in. Mac was dressed just like I was. Barefoot and an inadequate loincloth was all he was wearing, other than the championship ring he had just won. Somehow his team had pulled it off, winning everything they had to. Even with that effort it had taken a lot of luck, too. The other teams in the league had just folded at the end of the season, allowing Mac's team to slip into the wild card slot. Against all the odds, they won.
Mac saw how Sally, Nicole and I were dressed and grinned widely, obviously relieved. He waved merrily at us and then did something very uncharacteristic for him. He turned towards the door and snapped his fingers in a commanding way. It was odd, as he was so gentle and deferential with CeCe but here he was, ordering her into the room with a snap of his fingers.
Beth entered first, her head bowed, her perky breasts bobbing as she tread lightly into the room. As she approached Mac, she stole a glance up at him and I felt a deep devotion to him over the link. She didn't mind that she was nearly naked nor did she even know that Sally and Nicole were wearing the same attire as she. She just knew that this was what Mac wanted and that he was pleased with her.
Oddly, Beth had a leash in her hands. With a gentle tug, she urged CeCe into the room. CeCe was not dressed like the other three. She had quite a bit more on, but was even more exposed. The tight leather corset and the single glove binding her arms behind her back didn't cover any of her beauty. Or the marks of a recent whipping.
CeCe entered and sat opposite Sally. Their eyes met and I felt Sally questioning her silently. I didn't think Sally's link with CeCe was that strong that she could sense her. Sally probably could have with Nicole because of our relationship, but to be honest I wasn't sure about that either. I touched lightly on CeCe and found her very calm, happy and very aroused.
I looked over at Sally and relayed what I had found. She relaxed perceptibly with the news. I honestly think she hadn't known that CeCe was going to show up in severe bondage like this. Leave it to Mac to surprise her.
As was usually the case with Mac present, he presumed we were all there to hear of his latest exploits on the sports field. Usually he was correct. He had a way of telling the stories that made every other player on the team the hero. To hear him tell it, he was no more important to their stunning turnaround than the batboy. It was an endearing quality but on this particular evening, there was a hitch. JT's Mom was present. It was obvious from her polite but brutal dissection of his first sentence that she was not going to sit quietly and listen to him monopolize the conversation with silly sports stories.
Diane deftly turned the conversation to other topics, leaving Mac a bit stunned at first and then challenged to participate in the current conversation. It was the first time I had ever heard his political views aired in public, although he and I had had many conversations about them. Mostly I teased him as he realized that his early liberal beliefs were slowly but surely blown to smithereens. As he came to realize that all the fucking programs those idiot liberal politicians implemented had done nothing to help him nor were they currently helping the vast majority of other minorities in the 'hood, he began to see that those programs were the very thing that kept most minorities from getting out of their poverty and ignorance. His own success had come about because he had helped himself, no one else. He had not benefited from one single program instituted by the government. Granted, he was talented in sports, but he had also worked harder than anyone else I had ever known to hone those God-given skills.
Now that he was actually making some money, Mac was even more apoplectic about the cost of those worthless social programs. He hadn't realized how heavily he was going to be taxed and he resented that the only ones that would benefit from his taxes were the politicians. Them, and those very few people who actually needed the kind of handouts the programs gave them.
JT and Simone wheeled in a large serving cart in the middle of the conversation and began serving us dinner. Diane had a smug look on her face when the entrée was revealed. Franks and Beans, although her first bite wiped the smugness from her face. I guess we should have warned her that Simone had kind of a heavy hand with the chili peppers and other hot spices. We usually had to use the asbestos toilet paper after she cooked for us. After tonight, with all these beans, we'd probably have to avoid open flames, as well.
JT didn't get a good look at Mac until he put Mac's plate in front of him. What with trying not to spill anything and with four naked ladies literally shoving their tits in his face, he had not really bothered to take a look at anybody's faces. The look on his face when he realized who was sitting there was priceless. As was Diane's. She had apparently known of the hero status her son placed on this man. It may have been the 25 posters of Mac that wallpapered his room or the incessant recitation of his lifetime statistics, but a Mom just knows these things, I guess.
Suddenly, the reason behind Diane's controlling behavior became clear to me. While her son was a talented athlete, she wanted him to see his hero as more than one dimensional. She wanted him to see that while Mac might be destined for the Hall of Fame, there were other sides to him, too. I smiled as I wondered if she had realized that one of those sides was kinky. I had a feeling that that might have been a bit of a surprise but to give her credit, she didn't blink an eye when she saw his pecker dangling well below his loincloth. OK, she did stare at it with a look of longing disbelief, but she didn't blink. Not once...
And to give JT credit, when he realized his hero was going to be sitting at the same table, he never gave the eight bare boobs around the table another glance. I guess hero worship beats hormones. He barely paid attention to Simone, a fact that did not sit well at first with the young lady. After several attempts to get his face to rotate even a few degrees in her direction, all unsuccessful, she finally rolled her eyes at her mother. Nicole consolingly laid a gentle hand on her daughter's hand and gave it a few maternal pats. It didn't help but by that time Simone had resigned herself to losing this one to Mac. I just wondered which of the two, JT or Mac, would be paying for it later.
After a surprisingly sports-free dinner, a rarity with Mac in attendance, the ladies adjourned to do whatever ladies do after dinner. I have always suspected that women want guys to think that it is a drudgery to do the dishes and clean up but having it done myself more than once, there isn't that much to it. And, no, I did more than paper plates and plastic forks ... I really think that they just want to get us out of earshot so they can talk. For my part, I was hoping to hear all about what they talked about from Sally and Nicole.
JT, Mac and I retired to the family room at the top of the grand entryway. Mac had put an arm around JT's shoulder when he started to wander away to leave Mac and I alone. I thought the buttons would burst off his shirt as his chest swelled with pride at being included by Mac. When the ladies were done talking, they would join us before everyone went home. Simone slipped in once to offer us an after dinner drink but Mac declined for all of us, saying he didn't want anything that might detract from the enjoyment of the wonderful meal. Leave it to Mac to say just the right thing and get off the hook.
I was dying to know about him, Beth and CeCe and what was going on with their relationship, but I didn't think it would be right to ask about them in front of JT. If Mac and I had been alone, I would have bugged the shit out of him but now I didn't feel I could. With Diane not there to steer the conversation, I figured Mac would revert to his normal self. Again, he surprised me.
Mac started asking JT about himself, how he had met Simone, what he wanted to do, how much time he spent with Simone, how his grades were, what he thought of Simone, did he like sports, did he like Simone ... You get the picture. I kept waiting for him to ask the poor kid if he had scored yet, but he held back from going that far. JT held his own, though, answering each question with quiet assurance and seriousness. I could see Mac trying hard not to like the kid, but it didn't work. By the time the women joined us, Mac had resigned himself to being replaced by JT in Simone's life, as if there was anything he could have done about it, or would have done if he could have. Simone had picked JT out of the herd and had picked well.
There was considerably less tension in the family room with all of us there. Apparently the women's talk had gone well, too, as Diane left the conversation alone. She seemed relaxed, laughing with the rest of us as Marion and Mac enthralled us with stories of the old neighborhood from when we were growing up. Simone curled up in JT's lap, somehow making their total body contact seem chaste. I could only tell he was bothered by their closeness because of the sweat on his forehead, but then, teenaged girls always have that effect on teenaged boys. Especially when they are in such close proximity.
It was a most enjoyable, if uneventful evening. I was sorry to see it end.
It was a few days later when Simone came up to me as I was doing one of my favorite things. I was sitting at the dinner table, the everyday table, resting after one of Sally's delicious dinners. I was enjoying watching the show Sally and Nicole put on as they finished cleaning up after dinner. Tonight's entertainment was particularly nice as Nicole didn't normally get to help out too much as she was working more and more at the Clinic. She seemed to enjoy being included in the domestic chores from time to time. It let her feel a part of the everyday household.
I liked to watch Sally work in the kitchen as it always entailed much bending over and stretching. I realized early on that she enjoyed me watching and usually seemed to take much longer cleaning up, with a lot of bending over and reaching up on her tiptoes on those times I watched. Getting to watch Nicole was a special treat, as she was still not used to my lustful observations of her. It was in pure contrast to her blatant invitations to look at her when she was dressed in her finery. Now that she was wearing her slave clothing, which hid absolutely nothing, she seemed to blush with each bend or stretch. It was very becoming on her, this appearance of innocence.
Whenever Nicole helped out in the kitchen, Sally took advantage of her height and had her stretching, for my pleasure, to reach many unnecessary items. Although it was obvious Nicole had caught on to her antics, she went along with them willingly but still blushed profusely. And very prettily.
"Papa, do you have any prophylactics?"
Simone had come up behind me and stood beside me as I was absorbed in the kitchen ballet. At first, I didn't realize I had heard what she had asked me. Whether it was the uncommon use of the proper term for a rubber or whether it was because she asked me in plain hearing of her mother and Sally, I don't know. What I do know is it took me a couple of heartbeats to comprehend what she had asked, and the implications of it. Try as I might, I just couldn't convince myself that she and JT were going to have a water balloon fight.
I could hear the sudden silence in the kitchen area as two sets of curious ears tuned into what was bound to be an interesting conversation.
"Are you doing a science project, Simone?"
Hey, I could always hope.
She looked blank for a minute, about like what I must have looked like a second before. Then she blushed. Stuttering, and obviously now uncomfortable, she took the easy way out.
"Uh, yeah, I guess."
I guess, my ass.
"I think I could rustle up one..." I paused, " ... or two. Would that be enough?" I asked innocently.
"Uh, I was thinking more like a case. Or two," replying in kind.
I heard a muffled gasp, followed shortly thereafter by the sound of breaking crockery as it hit the tiled floor. I didn't see what happened as I was looking at Simone. I assumed that Nicole had dropped them, but I was wrong. Sally had been handing the plates to Nicole and had pulled her hands away to cover her mouth to stifle her laughter, in the process dropping the plates before Nicole even had a chance to reach for them. I could see both women were now fighting the laughter that threatened to burst out.
Her hand over her mouth hadn't worked to keep quiet and now, in addition, they had to be careful not to step on the shards of glass with their bare feet. The kitchen floor was now covered in a minefield of ceramic shrapnel. Nicole was in no better shape than Sally, as she was holding her sides and crying, too. Simone didn't understand what it was that she had said that was so funny and looked at me curiously.
"Well, Simmie, I think I could find a few more for you when you need them." I paused and took her hand. "Just be careful, OK? I don't want you to get hurt." I pulled her into me and kissed her forehead. "Or JT, either."
Imagine the color of beets and you would have a good idea of the color of the young girl. I can't imagine how kids ever think their parents are that dumb, that we wouldn't figure it out. But then, I think back on just how dumb my parents were while I was in High School and I guess it was just my turn. Simone did manage to turn and walk away with dignity, which is more than I can say for the two women who were now howling in the kitchen area.
Grabbing a broom and dustpan, I went in to rescue my two damsels in distress.