In the Den of the Beast

"I don't know," he says finally, shaking his head. "I just know you can't stay here. Technically, you don't live here anymore but even if you did I couldn't risk . . . that . . . happening again. Good for you if you're happy, but I've got to find girls and a job and like, get married and have kids and stuff. I feel like if you were around, I might want to . . . not do all of those things I want to do. Do you know where you'd go if you weren't here? Like, can you call your parents?"

"I don't know that I'm ready for that either," I replied. "That's a big step in a different direction from the one I'm headed in."

"Well, I guess you could sleep here tonight if you need to find something. If you don't want your parents to come get you, do you also want other people to not know you're here?"

I hadn't really thought about that since my brain was still in the habit of thinking about how good I was at leading a double life. Physical things, like the muscle growth and the hair I was able to make seem like normal things for a college guy. But disappearing for over a month and then suddenly showing up wearing literal rags for clothes would require a lot of explaining or some creative lies.

"I don't think other people should know until I've planned my next move," I answered cautiously. "If they ask me where I've been I don't really know what lie I'd choose that would explain why I just left all of my shit here."

"Do you need that back?" he asked.

"Probably not. I mean, most of those clothes don't fit me great anymore, especially the shirts and everything that was tighter in the, uh, crotch region. I'll take my phone and my wallet, but you're welcome to any of the rest of my stuff you want. I need to just go, you know? I think I need to keep moving while I think things through. I can't just go back and live an old life."

He nodded, as if he wanted to show that he understood, but I could tell that he really didn't. Dan was all about living the same, old life, but I couldn't fault him for that. It would be a lot easier if I did, too. Things would be a lot more certain and stable if I had never followed James back to his apartment, although looking back I'm not sure if certain and stable would be the same thing as a life worth living.

"I might take you up on spending the night, though." I manage. "And can I maybe borrow some clothes?"

I leave the next morning before Dan has a chance to wake up. I threw my old, ripped clothes away. Dan gave me a large, plain white t-shirt from a package and one of his nicer pairs of athletic shorts that actually had pockets with zips. I had opted against underwear since I didn't see how any of those baggy boxers would do anything to help me out, though the whole grim process just made me long for one of those jumpsuits with the amazing fabric and the specially-fitted cock sling built in. I hoped that the next step of my plan meant that I wasn't going to need to travel far on my own, since funds really were low.

Overnight watching Dan sleep and failing to do so myself, I realized that today I was going to have to do something that I had put off doing for some time without fully thinking about why. Something that excited and terrified me at the same time.

I was going to call Princess.

2: A New Side to a Princess

Princess seemed really glad to hear from me and told me to come over to the house he was renting with his now-fiancée over on the other side of campus. He told me to come right over and they'd help me figure some things out. I made the mistake of calling him Princess, which I could tell even over the phone he didn't like when he wasn't "working."

"Please, it's Alex," he said.

The house was a cozy-looking bungalow with new brown paint and a cute little porch in front and a private-looking garden in back. The woman I understood to be Princess's, or rather, Alex's fiancée, the redhead I had seen at the bar, was rocking on the porch swing with a glass of lemonade when I approached.

"Steven?" she asked, affirming my identity. Her voice was kind of husky, surprisingly low and rough for such a petite woman. When I nod, she introduces herself as Vanessa and invites me inside, offering me some of the lemonade.

"Or we've got milk, water, tea . . . It's nine in the morning, but I guess wine, beer, gin . .?"

"Water's fine, thank you."

Alex is waiting in their sitting room, a snug little place full of old chairs with soft blankets thrown over them, with quilts on the walls and handmade rugs and coasters for drinks. He looks wrong in clothes, a black and blue striped v-neck and oversized black cargo pants with short lengths of silvery chain. He might be off the meds that limit his hair growth, because I can see some prominent black roots poking out of his scalp and patches of dark hair poking out of his cheeks and chin. When Vanessa and I enter the room with our drinks, he takes the water from me and puts it down on the table next to where he'd been sitting before giving me a big hug.

I take a big sniff of him. A little too much cologne for my taste, although he's chosen something heavenly, with what I think is sandalwood or something with a vaguely floral note. It thinly disguises the smell of his sweat, which I've missed. The three of us sit down and Alex looks at me anxiously.

"How are you doing? Are you . . . okay? Are you still taking meds?"

I pulled out the bottle James had given me when I left.

"I haven't taken any today, or, I guess," I thought about it. "I didn't take any yesterday, either."

Alex and Vanessa looked at each other.

"Do you want to keep looking and feeling how you've been looking and feeling?" asks Vanessa calmly. "They're not going to hurt you if you keep taking them, but if that's what you want to do you need to choose today - now - because otherwise we need to start getting you ready for withdrawal symptoms."

I popped open the lid and swallowed two of the oversized horse pills, gulping down half of the glass of water as well.

"So, we're glad to see you and I want you to know that we support you," says Alex slowly. "But what brings you here? The call was just out of the blue. Is something wrong with James?"

I fill in the parts of my story that Alex doesn't know already, and he helps explain some parts of it to Vanessa, who seems fully aware of what's going on in the community although she's never been herself. She does giggle and high-five Alex when I talk about wanting to take on more dominant roles ("My boy's so good he turned you into a top!" she crows) but they're both appropriately serious and sympathetic when I talk about my frustration with James.

"Is it the routine that you think was upsetting you or the fact that the relationship didn't feel equal?" Vanessa asks. Alex explains that she's a social worker who does a lot of work with "troubled kids" and she laughs again.

"Sorry, yeah. If you want, I can try to turn it off and not go into social worker mode. But I think that's an important question for you to ask yourself when you're trying to figure out if you can have a future with this guy at all - or just trying to figure out what your future is, period."

"I don't know how I feel about James now other than that I miss him, or I miss how he used to be. For myself, I know I want to finish my degree since I only have one year left, but I'm kind of afraid to go back to my parents for the rest of the summer and I don't have a job or a place to stay."

I realize I'm starting to cry a little bit, although I'm not entirely sure why. Alex pats me on the back, which secretly thrills me even though I'm crying.

"I think I want to go back, like, I can't imagine myself not being there anymore or not being able to be that free anymore. But I'm also scared at how easy it was to just let weeks go by in which I didn't do anything but be a little dog-boy, like I was turning a part of me or a part of my brain off."

"It's good to want to find balance," offers Vanessa helpfully. "I think it's really brave and really healthy that you recognize even with all of the change your body went through you still need some downtime and some moderation in your lifestyle."

"As for a place to stay, you can stay with us," Alex said. I tried to protest, saying it was too much, but they both talked me down. "We also won't accept rent from you if you can't afford it. You'll be our guest."

"I don't want to do that to you guys. Like, Alex, man, you're still trying to pay off loans, right?"

They look at each other, then Alex answers, quietly but also with a strain of pride in his voice.

"Actually, that's all done, and Vanessa's as well. We're working together now to try to save up for a house and a car so we can move away from here. Somewhere nice out in the country, where she could still commute but we're not surrounded by people all of the time, all of those bodies . . . constantly pressing up against each other."

He shivers.

"Tomorrow night, I was actually going to go work this new job I've been trying out. If you're serious about wanting to help out around here, I'll call my guy and tell him you're coming too. I think with your look and skill set, you'd be more than welcome."

"I wish you'd tell me more about this job," mutters Vanessa. "Last time I at least got to meet Mike beforehand and see where you'd be working."

"Are you not still working with Mike?" I asked, confused. "Sorry, I don't mean to change the subject, but . . ."

"No, it's okay," replied Alex. "My contract with Mike was up. They're getting closer to the big end-of-summer Hunt over there and a lot of the more experienced guys are getting antsy and secretive. In general, they're not letting in as many outsiders, which means at least for a couple of months freelance contractors like me are out."

He sighs and leans back in his seat. "Which is fine since I was only ever a seasonal item on the menu anyway. Mike has a couple of us he hires, but usually on a rotating schedule so people don't get bored with the same-old, same-old. Like, the theory is that people will want to fuck Princess more if fucking Princess feels exclusive and rare, like a limited opportunity."

Vanessa laughs as she finishes her lemonade. "I'm the only one who gets that luxury," she boasts. "And Mike's making a mistake with that business model: it just gets better every time."

I'm kind of jealous as they kiss when she gets up to carry the glasses away, but I don't think it's about wanting to take Alex out of a situation where he seems happy as much as it is about me feeling shitty about things going wrong with Alex. He seems to sense my gloom and leans over to me and says in a hushed voice:

"Hey, have you still not been with a woman?"

My eyes widen as I nod, to his delight.

"Dude, if you're up for it I'll talk to Vanessa tonight and we'll make something happen after dinner. When she gets going, she's the hottest thing I've ever seen, man, and this would be our favorite kind of threesome. I'll tell her it would be good for you to see what people outside of that place can get up to, and good for you to experience someone other than the same thing with James."

I had been curious about this Hunt he mentioned since I didn't know anything about it, but I'm suddenly distracted by trying to imagine Vanessa naked. Alex had done so much as Princess - what could she do that would drive him so crazy? I fantasize briefly about Vanessa's body, with her perky little tits and long red hair, but with James's giant cock superimposed between her legs. Then in my daydream, her face turns into Olivia's and she's bending me over and spanking me, but I fight back, trying to crawl my way into that mysterious space between her thighs.

I snap myself out of it to see a grinning Alex.

"I'd . . . I'd really like that a lot," I eventually manage.

"Good," he smirks, leaning over to pat my beard and quickly kiss me just as he and Vanessa had just kissed. "You look enough like Jake Gyllenhaal that it won't take much convincing for her."

3: A Toy for a Powerful Queen

We had a beautifully normal day, just the three of us. Vanessa had some work to do, so Alex took me back into their garden so I could help him pull weeds, water the flowers, and mow the lawn. We took our shirts off because the sun was bright and we were both pretty quickly drenched in sweat. I liked that we had to stop so I could help rub sunscreen onto Alex's body, which was still so ridiculously pale that it was almost hard to look at. I also kind of liked that his normal hair was growing back, because it meant he had a couple of random long chest hairs like a teenager and some equally tentative growth under his arms.

Vanessa joined us for lunch, a spread of crackers, olives, and some kind of cured Spanish ham that I absolutely devoured. We had some strawberries and lemonade sitting on the front porch, chatting and watching people go by. Vanessa joked that she wished she could look as comfortable as we did with our bare chests covered in dirt, sweat, and grass stains. Alex offered to pull her top off and roll her around in the backyard, and we all laughed.

After lunch, Vanessa asked if I played chess at all, and while I didn't, I enjoyed watching her beat me a few times while listening to Alex sing badly from the next room while he washed the dishes in their tiny metal sink.

"It's my parrr-teee and I'll cryyyy if I want to, cryyyy if I want to," he crooned, making a ruckus as he tossed dishes around.

Vanessa went back to her office to work and Alex left to pick something up from the store, leaving me to chill out on the couch and read some of their books. I started one at random because I was drawn to a large yellow bookmark with a heart on it that was placed toward the beginning. It was an interesting enough historical piece, but I became quickly enamored with the heroine, a French prostitute called Blanche due to her pale white skin. I was particularly glad I picked this one up because the bookmarked page indicated a scene where Blanche wakes a man with surprise oral; they're soon joined by this guy's friend and the two fuck her elegantly, double-teaming mouth and ass. I wonder if it was Alex or Vanessa who placed the bookmark - was Blanche inspiration for Alex's Princess character? Was she acting out a fantasy of Vanessa's, to be taken by two men, one hairy and one smooth?

I reach into my shorts with one hand and pull my idle cock a few times as I reread the scene once, twice, thrice. I'm not trying to reach orgasm, just enjoying the acting of imagining waking up to find this French prostitute has my cock in her mouth, then trying to read the scene again and imagine it differently. Alex has my cock in his mouth. Vanessa has my cock in her mouth. James has my cock in his mouth. I imagine myself entering the room to find Vanessa blowing Alex, and imagine joining them, sliding effortlessly into her from behind.

I imagine sucking off Alex, then looking over to see Vanessa with James's cock on her body, and she slides effortlessly into me.

Eventually I remember her comment about balance and I keep reading past it, letting myself get sucked into Blanche's dizzying series of flashbacks and fast-forwards, her worries about clothes and money and her ugly little baby. I could easily have shimmied out of my shorts and jacked off two or three times playing out different scenes with myself, but I'll have that much more excitement anticipating what Alex is setting up for tonight.

"Steven?" calls Vanessa's voice from her office.

I put the book down, making sure the bookmark is where I found it, and hurry to the office door.

"Yes?"

"Sit down, please."

She has a couple of books opened up in front of her and two different documents opened on her desktop monitor. I see the words "Case Studies," "Reports," and "Developmental Practices" on the screen. Several yellow legal pads covered in meticulous notes litter the workspace. Vanessa is scribbling away at a fresh one as she reads something. She doesn't look away from her work as I push aside a stack of files to sit on a solitary folding chair.

"Steven, Alex told me it would be instructive and beneficial for you to join us when we have intercourse this evening," she states matter-of-factly. "Do you agree with his assessment?"

"Yes, ma'am," I say, maybe too eagerly, before feeling embarrassed and apologizing. "Sorry, I mean, it's just . . ."

She keeps working, as if ignoring me or waiting for me to finish.

"It's just that I think you're amazing and you two are really hot!" I blurt out.

Vanessa puts down her pen and turns around to face me. She's wearing a small pair of reading glasses, and since lunchtime has undone a few extra buttons on her blouse so I can clearly see an intensely red bra trimmed in black lace.

"Ask me if you can fuck me tonight," she says clearly, looking me straight in the eyes. I suddenly wish I was wearing a shirt, or at least that she'd look away. I'm excited, but also terrified.

"Can I fuck you tonight?" I eventually manage.

"I'm sorry?"

"Can I fuck you tonight, ma'am." I correct myself.

"No." she says simply, turning around to go back to work.

I start to apologize again and shuffle bashfully out of the office, thinking the conversation is over. Apparently, however, it's not.

"If you do a little favor for us first, though, you may, however, choose to fuck Alex," she says in that same business-like tone. "He might choose to fuck me. And I will definitely fuck you."

She turns around to look at me again and allows herself a little half-smile, enjoying how surprised my expression is and that she's tricked me in this simple way. Her tone softens significantly as she playfully cajoles me:

"Honey, if you put yourself inside me at all I wouldn't be able to walk again. We are all out of the tablets that can stop your knot from growing, and I don't need my insides all messed up if Alex and I are eventually going to have kids. But we are both always enthusiastic about welcoming a third player, as long as you remember that the queen is the most powerful piece. Got it?"

I nodded vigorously, dumbstruck by my sudden luck.

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am."

I turn to leave and she stops me one more time.

"Open the bottom drawer of that cabinet next to you and take what's inside. If you can wear it until after supper, that'll show me you're ready to take a special toy we got for Alex to satisfy some of his needs."

The drawer contains a tall bottle of anal lube and a stupidly huge butt plug that consists of a swollen black bulb bigger than my fist attached to a short central column and ending in a flat, black stopper. It looks like the spade symbol on playing cards, and obviously will have a similar sensation to a fully engorged knot.

I grab these items and hurry out of the room, thanking her profusely. I step into the cramped bathroom and shut the door, already breathing heavily. If you can wear it until after supper, that'll show me you're ready to take a special toy. I gulp. She had also said: the queen is the most powerful piece, and, most excitingly, I will definitely fuck you. All thought of what this "little favor" might be vanished from my mind completely. Eagerly, I stumble out of the shorts I had borrowed from Dan and contemplate the spade-shaped plug.

It's bigger than the metal ball at the end of my tail, otherwise I would've just slid it in with no problem. I'm also not worried about it once I can get the widest point actually inside me, since my anal cavity has been specially adapted to accommodate incredible knots. I'm most worried about just getting it inside since the rim of my actual hole will still try to flex suddenly so it's very tight. If I'm not totally relaxed and lose control trying to contract too quickly, there's no way it will even be physically possible to follow Vanessa's order.