Loosening Up Bk. 02 Ch. 05-09

"I'll try to remember that," Rachel said.

She squirmed to drive his cock deeper into her body, even shifting slightly so she could move up and down as they had sex, and to rub her clit against his pubic bone4.

"You really love my mom, don't you?"

"I do. Last night took us to a new level."

"Even though part of that was posturing so I got the message."

"I never thought I was posturing, and I'm sure your mother didn't either. Everything we said to each other was genuine."

"It was," a sleepy voice from the other side of the bed said. Grace rolled over to look at the couple. "I did mean everything I said. And, baby, I'm sorry if what we did last night upset you. We had to get you to see the reality of the larger situation about Dave and everybody else in the Circle -- you and me included."

"Thank you. I got it. I cried for a while last night, even asking myself what had happened, and then it dawned on me what you two were communicating. You'd both told me, but to see it in action was a bit of a shock."

Grace sat up, her middle age breasts sagging slightly as she stretched. "I hope you'll have some of that morning wood for me." She grinned, and then got out of bed and went into the bathroom.

After some shared orgasms, Rachel left the bed for the bathroom just as Grace returned. She worked on Dave with some oral skills as he returned to hardness and then they made love.

Later, Grace and Dave shared a shower. She quickly dressed and ran, citing the need to get to work. Dave figured he'd use a little flextime. He helped launch Rachel out the door towards her classes, and then caught up with the rest of the family.

Matthew was at the kitchen table eating cereal when Dave came into the room. He laughed and said, "Daddy Dave was kissing people this morning."

Dave rolled his eyes and looked at Heather. She was laughing but shrugged. "I didn't put him up to that. He's just observant."

Alice came into the kitchen by way of the back door, with Julie right behind her.

"Where'd you guys go?" Dave asked.

Alice grinned, "We stayed over at Owen's condo with him. Sexually exciting, as usual. We figured you had your hands full -- mother and daughter, and all. I bet you had more fun than we did."

Dave smiled. "Yeah, that might be the case. Things worked out better than we expected, at least I think they did. I think I'm going to cool it with Rachel for a month or two. She needs to get her sea legs back under her about a whole lot of things about relationships and the Circle. I think because I was her first lover and because I gave her that huge orgasm that she locked on. She sees that she needs to unlock from me and spread her charms around, but intellectually. She needs to get into the reality of the situation. Maybe she'll even find some guy closer to her own age. Heck, I'm thirteen years older than she is, and that just doesn't seem like a good thing given that she's eighteen."

"I'll stand by you, but she'll still want some relationship with you."

"No problem, only no sex until things quiet down. I'll let her know if the subject comes up."

Alice chuckled, "Oh, it'll come up for sure. This Saturday, I bet."

* * * * *

The Saturday gathering was at Dev and Wendy's home down the cul-de-sac in the neighborhood. Because they had a protected back yard, the women were topless in seconds after arriving, and that meant that most of the men initially had revealing swelling in their bathing suits until they got used to the situation. The situation looked like an orgy about to happen well before sundown. In reality, it was an orgy among lovers about to happen.

Various couples quickly formed and sexy embraces became the order of the afternoon, until all of the greeting had been completed. There was then some division along gender lines as the men gathered around the barbecue, and the women sat around the stairs into the pool chatting.

Rachel had come to Dave with greeting kisses, and a not-to-subtle rubbing of her erect teenage nipples across his bare chest. He'd held back, but had kissed her, just not been as responsive as he might have been. Dave's interaction with Grace was more in keeping with the new emotions he felt for the older woman; they hugged, kissed, and made out while whispering of their desire to one another.

Rachel mixed around with some of the other men and women, but periodically would come back to Dave to 'touch base.' The conclusion he drew was that his assessment had been accurate: Rachel knew the full situation, but was having trouble dealing with the reality. Her behavior was following the old model of wanting her possession, but she was trying to act otherwise.

After dinner Dave helped carry some of the excess food into the kitchen with a few of the others. He helped box up some of the scraps and put them in the refrigerator. Kat was helping, too. Rachel made a trip in doors, and then went back out for a second trip to collect the used plates and flatware.

"Kat, come with me. I need you, right now." Dave pulled his friend and lover with him out of the kitchen and down the hallway towards Dev's guest room. Once inside he shut the door. I need to avoid someone, and you're helping me, plus we haven't been together for a while and I have this urge to merge with you."

Kat smiled. "Oh, goody. I also guess that you're avoiding Rachel. I could see some subtle body language on your part."

"She has been getting a little OCD about me -- possessive even. I just need to cool things down."

An hour and many orgasms later, Kat and Dave lay together snuggling and making out. Kat said, "Want me to get you a nice warm fuckable female body for round two?"

Dave chuckled, "That'd be nice and enable me to keep hiding."

Kat got up. "I'll either be back of send a surrogate." She kissed him and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Only a few minutes later, Clarisse peeked in the room. "A little bird told me that you might like some company?"

"Absolutely," Dave said as he patted the bed beside him.

"Kat kind of sent me. She told me to keep you fully occupied and not allow any teenage visitors. I guess you're hiding?" Clarisse came into the room, shut the door, and then stood at the foot of the bed. They studied each other's naked bodies and allowed the lust to build between them.

"Not so much hiding as sending a message." He explained about Rachel's fixation.

Clarisse snuggled into the vee between Dave's legs, making no bones about what she planned to do. She ingested his cock in her talented mouth, deep throating his tumescent shaft as he rose to a very alert state.

"You need to be in an adult video with me. This cock is one of the best in the business as far as I can tell. You're an A-lister. Now, let's see why we haven't done all this sex stuff with each other more often?"

* * * * *

Jack, Dev, Dave, Roy, and Alice strolled through the core rooms of the Circle Cohousing Project. Wallboard was up in places and in others you could see through to the adjacent rooms.

Alice said, "The kitchen is going to be huge -- like a dance floor."

Jack said, "Once the cabinets and islands get installed it won't look quite like a handball court. They'll close it in a lot, and then when you add the eat-in furniture that'll bring it even closer."

"This is getting so exciting," she exclaimed.

Dev said to Jack, "I just noticed that the AC is on. When did that happen?"

"Thursday. The wallboard guys pleaded for it. The afternoon temperatures in here were near a hundred, plus the joint compound wasn't drying the way it should according to them. It's comfortable now, isn't it? We're keeping it at eighty."

Dev commented, "The living room also looks huge, but I know with furniture it'll come into bounds."

Jack said, "Did you see the mass of wires hanging out of the wall in the media room. Supposedly, Audioworks, the company doing the entertainment centers, knows where everyone of those goes and what they're for."

"Spares?" Dave asked.

"In all directions," Jack gestured around the whole complex, "and even out onto the patio. Most of the outside stuff will be wireless, however, and you can move it around as you move furniture around out there. There are even underwater speakers."

Alice grabbed Dave's hand, "Let's go walk through our home."

"I like the sound of that."

The couple left the two men and walked across the eighteen feet of corridor, all under roof, to their backdoor and let themselves in.

Alice had the new home memorized. Despite heavy involvement in the design, Dave was still learning what the actually physical rooms were like. She announced, "This is the hallway into the living room." As they walked, "That's the media room ... guest bathroom ... utility closet ... broom closet ... and ... ta dah! ... the living room."

"This feel five times larger than in our current house."

"Just under three times," Alice informed him. "I'm so pleased that it had come along so fast. The AC is on in here, too."

"When do the floors get done?" Dave asked.

"Two weeks, Jack told me. They want to finish painting the walls and ceilings, and also have the baseboard molding ready to install right after the marble tiles go down. Most of those are stacked up in the garage."

"I still can't get over the idea that we have an elevator in addition to the stairs. I envision Matthew riding in this all day long." He gestured to a corner of the living room where a large piece of plywood blocked access to the elevator shaft.

"It's the in thing. What's cool about it is that it's not a tiny elevator but almost a room. When it's upstairs you'll see out the windows out across the meadow from the elevator. We can even see the entrance road and see who's coming."

"Five bedrooms," Dave exclaimed as he reached the top of the stairway and looked down the hallways upstairs in both directions. "Huge house."

"We did end up with the largest in square footage," Alice commented. "The master bedroom will be spectacular: size, skylights, cool lighting, a dressing room, and a master bath with a shower for six people at a time. We are going to be very popular for our sex parties."

"There's something like this in the core out beside the pool."

"And as the kids grow up, they will not want to watch their parents making love to each other in a common outdoor shower." She giggled.

"Who sleeps in the master bed? Have you sorted that out?"

"All five of us. Jack and I arranged for a special bed on order for us. Some assembly on site will be required once the room is complete. Part of the design of this part of the house, including the balcony overlooking the living room, is so that the mattress for said bed can be brought in, hoisted up here, and put on the box frames. It's eighty four inches by one hundred forty four wide."

"God, a bed that is twelve and a half feet wide. Immense. We'd better not add a sixth person to our crazy family.

Alice teased, "It's our sexual playground, and you'd better plan on keeping all of us content every night. The four of your wives are counting on it."

"I try every night," Dave said holding his wrist to his forehead, as though the sexual trysts he routinely had with Alice, Julie, Heather, and Pam were an onerous duty.

Alice came up to him, "Hey, wanna christen the bedroom right now?" She kissed him.

Dave looked around at the construction debris, waste, and squalor on the floor that created an ambience that was about as far from romantic as you could get. "Just this one time, I think I'll pass until things get a little cleaner. Besides, both of us have to go back to work from here. I'd smell, and you'd smell and be drippy."

Alice teased, "But drippy at work is good. Maybe I could entice Roy to clean me up if he got to fuck me on his desk."

Dave laughed. He knew that Roy was paranoid about being caught doinganythingsexual or illicit at work. He figured it was a sure thing he'd lose his high paying job. As it was, there'd been some speculation he'd heard about that he socialized with Alice outside of work, and most knew it was true although Dave made sure to emphasize that he was often there, too. Of course, both Alice and Dori had fucked Roy at work, but that didn't mitigate his concern about getting caught.

Roy did count on Alice's updates about the cohousing project and the house he also was building at the site, since he didn't go out to the construction job that often. Alice took some pictures from one of the windows in her house looking out across where the pool would be and the core building to where Roy's house stood, about as complete as the others.

As they left the shell, Dave observed, "There's still a lot of finish plumbing and electrical work to do. All our built-in light fixtures need to be installed, wall switches, plugs, and so on, and then the plumbing for all the sinks, toilets, and showers once the cabinetry gets installed."

Alice said, "Well, this is September twentieth. Jack estimated that we'd be able to move in before Halloween, so there are six weeks left to go."

Dave said, "And there's no pool, spa, sauna, and on and on even in the core space. I wonder what's taking so long. We'll find out more from Jack on Saturday."

Chapter 8 -- Promotions and Propositions

A few days later at Dori and Ty's house, Dave got tapped on the shoulder. He turned around, "Are you still avoiding me?" Rachel asked.

Dave counted back the weeks on two hands right in front of her. "Hmmmm. It's been twelve weeks. You tell me how you're feeling and let me think about it."

Rachel crossed her arms and looked peeved, "I'm feeling a bit like a pariah with you, and that makes me sad. I still love you, but I think you accomplished what you set out to do, and that was to get me to unfocus from you. Sean told me I needed to be a flood light not a spot light, at least at this age and stage in my relationships."

"Have you gone on dates?"

"Only a couple. I was in summer school, and put my effort on the course work. There were a couple of beach dates, but I didn't fuck anybody, and I certainly didn't find anybody worthy of falling in love with. I did have fun."

"And how do you feel about the other men in the Circle?"

Rachel grinned and dropped her arms, "Horny and in love, now that you mention it."

"Do you have a favorite?"

"Besides you? I guess I'd pick Dev. He's hunky and muscle bound, and he has that bad boy image about him. He has that monster tattoo, too -- a cool dragon. Alice has tats, as well; it makes me want to get one or two, but only if Owen does them. Mom told me to wait until I was twenty-one and then decide how to decorate my body. I guess I agree with her wisdom."

Dave asked, "And if we had sex again, how would that make you feel?"

"Besides orgasmic? I'd go back to being in love with you, but not being as OCD and possessive as I guess I was three months ago. I think I've really gotten the message, and I'm being honest with you about how I feel."

"That's the only way to be with anybody - honest. If you don't, those small errors in communication come back to haunt you in big ways."

"What was one of your errors, if I may ask?"

"I'll give you an 'almost' was situation. When we were still loosening up sexually, Owen came into our lives. Alice fell in love with him and he with her, much as you felt about me a few months back. I could see it, but I couldn't really say anything without sounding like I was paranoid or a worrywart. Dori orchestrated what turned out to be the two of them should go to Europe for a week on a trip that was hyper-romantic and exceptionally sexual and loving: Paris and Rome."

Rachel was enthralled with the story by this point. Apparently, she hadn't heard this.

Dave went on, "I had the opportunity to tell her not to go, and that I was worried about what the trip would do to our relationship and marriage. I was right on the brink of telling her not to go, and I realized that would be a huge error.

"Can you tell me what would have happened if I'd put my foot down?"

Rachel's brow furled as she thought. "She wouldn't have liked you very much; you'd have been keeping her from her lover. She wanted to fuck his brains out and make love to him a thousand ways, and you would be the one standing in her way."

"And longer term?" Dave asked.

"She would see that you thought she was a possession, and that you had the right to control her actions by giving or denying permission to do certain things. She'd stop sharing things with you that she knew you'd disapprove of, so communication would break down. She'd probably start to sneak around to see Owen, and she'd get a thrill from the illicit act and the affair, but that would be undermining her marriage and relationship with you.

"So, what really happened?" Rachel asked.

"Alice went and had the most romantic time in her life. She fell off a cliff for Owen. She confessed that she would have run off and married him ... if she wasn't already married to me.

"Back then I quoted one writer who said, 'If you love someone, set them free. If they come back to you, they're yours. If they don't, they never were.' I realized that Alice and I had fallen into our relationship and consequent wedding as a matter of convenience and acceptability to two sets of parents that were fundamentalists and ultra-conservatives about marriage and relationships. Further, they believed God and his angels genuinely made the arranged marriage in heaven; we had nothing to do with it, other than to carry out God's wishes. By the way, we were virgins until we married.

"Alice never really dated, except for me. She was a good girl and did what her parents told her to do -- marry me. I wasn't all that different with my parents, who went to the same church as hers, incidentally. She hadn't experienced crushes, love, lost love, unrequited love, and all the things that most teens and people in their early twenties go through. She needed that experience, and I guess she knew I was willing to lose her for her to have some of those. She wasn't my possession, and I loved her so much I had to be willing to give her up for what ultimately made her happier."

"But you didn't lose her. She's still your wife."

"And we redefined our marriage to include her sister Julie, Pam, and Heather, Matthew, AND Alice gets to be with Owen frequently. He even has an assigned bed in our house."

"Isn't that just inviting the fox into the hen house?" Rachel posed.

"Is it? I think if you understand the new dynamic in the Circle you'll see why I'm no longer worried about losing her."

"You give her all of her freedom and no constraints?"

"Do I? What am I to her?"

"Her husband ... Oh! You're her best friend, I guess ... and her lover ... and her confidant ... and the place of safety when nothing else seems to go right for her."

"Now, you're getting to it. I love her more than anybody else that I know, and she knows that. She respects that, as well. We each have boundaries about that revolve around each other but they're OUR boundaries, not from outside us but from inside. Despite the open marriage we have, we won't disrespect the other person."

"But doesn't Owen love her, too?"

"He does, but I have history and a track record. More recently, because I've not been possessive and I've been encouraging, I have a better record. I've been through the change with her that brought her to where she is today. I understand Alice better than anybody else, and she understands me. She now knows the pain and anguish she caused with her trip to Europe. She wouldn't do that to me again, and I wouldn't inflict that on her either, although we've teased each other about doing that.

"But there's more. Owen wanted and still wants to possess Alice -- to own her like he does his companies and his foundation. She sees that, and realizes the impact that it would have on her. She doesn't want to be a kept woman -- a chattel. She's just hitting her stride and becoming her own woman -- in our family, at work, for herself. She's finally rid of her parents' influence, or most of it. She's strong and I do everything I can to help her be that way and have the avenues to exercise the power she's discovering. As you know, the world isn't too kind to women; the glass ceiling, gender gap, and weaker sex philosophy are alive and well." Dave thought for a moment and added, "I've talked your ear off. Anyway, maybe you learned something about me, Alice, and the rest of us."