Mike & Karen Ch. 03

"Oh, I somehow doubt that," Karen purred, squeezing around him and feeling the last of his cum seeping into her from his cock. "Nice of you to say, though."

"I could prove it using scientific measurement tools, you know," he pointed out, making her giggle prettily. "Controlled, black-box study."

"So you're inserting a speculum and God knows what else into my derrière, simply for scientific purposes, is that it?" she asked, smirking back at him.

"Not like you to object to the occasional item being inserted in you," Mike mused, sliding a hand down and massaging her frothy pussy.

"I wasn't objecting, my love, I was just amused by your assertion that it would be for science," she cooed, winking at him. "When have I ever objected to anything you've ever done to me?"

Mike made a show of thinking, making her giggle. He slowly pulled out of her and they both shivered, while Karen hiked her skirt up over her hips, cum now dribbling out of her behind freely.

"Messy boy, look what you've done," she chided, smirking at him while his cum pattered onto the concrete. "No matter how hard I clench, you still manage to disgrace me."

"It's only a disgrace if the wrong people witness it," he pointed out, smiling and reaching for her purse on the hood of the SUV, to pull out some wipes. "I'm a big believer in secret glories."

"Oh, is that what I am?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in amusement. "Your secret glory?"

"There's nothing secret about your glory in Creation, Gordon..." Mike said as he pulled her to him.

***

The four of them were eating a nice, quiet dinner Mike had prepared -- a sizable casserole of spiced rice and eggplant with onions and lamb, accompanied by a cold drink of frothed and salted yogurt called ayran. Dessert was simply dates stuffed with pine nuts and cardamom.

"You really outdid yourself this time, Mike," Alexa said as she put her utensils down. "That was spectacular."

"I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it, Alli; just don't belch the way Alex does every time he has Arabic food," Karen said, masticating on a date.

"It's what they do in the Middle East. I'm just being culturally appropriate," Alex protested while taking a drink.

"But of course you are, Saladin," Karen said dryly. "Biff him one if the urge takes you, Alli."

"I'm more into boffing than biffing, admittedly," Alexa replied, smirking. "Especially with Alex."

"Did you guys have a nice time after we left?" Mike queried.

"I'd say so, yeah," Alex answered simply.

"We played anal roulette," Alexa added casually while refilling her drink. Alex sighed and put his half-eaten date onto his plate and pushed it away.

"Hm, been a while since we've done that," Karen mused before looking at her husband. "How long has it been, do you think? Didn't we play that with Jeanie and a few other girls once?"

"Jeanie says she hasn't played it since she was about fourteen or fifteen." Alexa said.

"Oh, but it's Jeanie, darling, her memory can be somewhat faulty," Karen pointed out. "Honey, have we played anal roulette with Jeanie?"

"Pretty sure we haven't," Mike replied, "Even Jeanie would remember anal roulette with me, if she could remember anything after that."

"Point taken," Karen agreed, while Alexa snickered and Alex just shook his head. "Yes, Alex, this is your new reality. One of the ways your father and I have decided to adapt to you being in love with your aunt, my baby sister, is to be completely open about any and all sexuality in this little tribe. Don't worry, she's totally worth it."

"I think its hot to talk about," Alexa agreed. "My big sissy is uber-sexy. And my poor, repressed little husband just needs time to come around."

"Helluva world we live in where the guy breaking incest laws has to be the one to mentally adjust," Alex sighed, while his aunt, mother and father all chuckled. "Still, whatever helps you accept this, I guess."

"I like to think we're doing well," mom quipped, sucking some date resin off her fingers and winking at her younger sister, who giggled and blushed. "We're very adaptable, your father and I."

"Y'know, you've been telling Alex and I about how you two got together, but thus far in the tale, you've mostly been barely restrained rivals or antagonists," Alexa mentioned. "Like, you were nowhere near just jumping into bed with each other yet."

"God knows I wanted to, even if we couldn't admit it to ourselves," Mike agreed. "I was just respecting her space, however. As much as I wanted to just grab her and bang her like a screen door in a hurricane, I didn't want to make her despise me by overstepping my bounds, just for the sake of sex."

"And I apparently did such a splendid job of seeming aloof, that he never did the one thing I wanted more than anything, which was to just grab me and bang me like a screen door in a hurricane," Karen sighed. "Sometimes, hard-to-get is not a good thing."

"Yeah, that wasn't an issue with us," Alexa admitted. "I was naked in the hot tub with Alex very soon after my arrival and exposing innermost secrets to him, you may recall. And we were having sex not long after that."

"Clearly hard-to-get is not in your playbook," Karen sighed. "You, Freja or Jeanie."

"Truth," snickered Alexa. "Jeanie's so bad at saying no that it's practically a speech impediment. Same with my Danish slut. You never had a slut phase, Kar?"

"Depends on your definition, I suppose, but maybe at boarding school," Karen allowed. "Mostly, that was me asserting myself over the other girls of the student body. I wasn't a tyrant, but I made sure any uppity girls knew not to mess with me."

"Fuck them into submission," Alexa mused. "Sounds like more of a Mike-style thing."

"Except I'm not into making women submit for the sake of my ego," Mike pointed out. "And I wouldn't use that tactic on a guy, thank you."

"Details, details," Alexa said dismissively, waving her hand. "So, what happened next, after the families had visited and you handed my sister's cute little ass to her in a fencing match?"

"Hot tub time," Karen declared, standing. "Boys, clean up and meet us out by the jacuzzi. Al fresco, or don't show up."

Alexa and Karen both headed out while Mike and Alex began clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. The girls would be getting their drinks ready. Within ten minutes, they were all sitting naked in the jacuzzi together, Alex next to Alexa, with Mike and Karen sitting across from them. Mike clinked his bottle of beer against his wife's champagne glass and shared a kiss. Alexa sighed contentedly and snuggled into her husband's torso. He smiled and put an arm around her, reminding himself that if was perfectly acceptable to do so now. Expected, even.

"I'm assuming that life downtown on a busy campus was rather different for Kar, since she was raised in a posh, exclusive neighbourhood and stayed at a boarding school," mused Alexa. "But what about you, Mike? Northern Ontario is pretty darn far away, and probably a totally different world."

"Nothing as extreme as the 'Gotta Dance' dream sequence from Singin' In The Rain," Mike replied, shrugging. "And I'd visited the big city before. But yes, it's quite a bit different from Kapuskasing."

"Pretty sure the most famous person to ever come from Kapuskasing was the first person to spell and pronounce it right," Alex quipped.

"I will have you know that James Cameron, of Terminator, Titanic and Avatar fame, is from my humble village, thank you," Mike said airily, while Karen smiled and shook her head, snuggling into him. "I was fairly certain early on in life that I was destined for more than my environs could readily offer, and my parents did everything they could to encourage me ..."

***

1983: Kapuskasing, Ontario ...

He stared out over the lake, sitting quietly on the dock. The only sounds were the light breeze and the serene call of a loon somewhere nearby. The sun was setting and the world around him was agreeably peaceful. It was somewhat ironic to him that such a small settlement, with fewer than ten thousand people, could generate such a racket sometimes.

Then again, industry marched on, didn't it? There were the pulp and paper mills, the phosphate mines, and General Motors even had a cold-weather research and development station up here. None of which interested him. He knew there was so much more, and he wanted to see it, to experience it.

And his family wasn't making it any easier by being so encouraging and accommodating. He sighed and hung his head, feeling somewhat trapped.

"What are you doing out here, ivinisowin?" asked a familiar voice behind him. He didn't respond initially as he heard the feet approach, already knowing who it was.

"Hey, Kee," he replied as the Cree girl sat down next to him. After white Canadians who spoke French or English, the Cree were the largest group in the region, with a reserve nearby. "Just sitting here, thinking."

"You do that a lot, I notice," she agreed, nodding. She was an attractive girl, with dark brown, almost jet-black hair, and dark brown eyes. Her skin was tan and her figure slender. Her face was pleasant enough and her expression was one of resigned reflection. He didn't blame the Cree for seeming apathetic, of course, given the systematic eradication of their culture, since the French began colonizing in the seventeenth century. "I believe you do more thinking than everyone else in the town put together."

He smiled and shook his head. "I doubt it's that dull here. Sometimes, I feel like I can't think enough."

"That's because you're out of place here," she reasoned, her voice not unkind. "This may be where you live, Michael DeBourne, but it is not your home. You were born in the wrong place."

"Maybe you're right, Kee," he sighed. Her full name was Keegsquaw, which meant 'Virgin' in her language, but everyone just called her Kee for short. Mike called her Kee because he'd seen to it that her full name was no longer applicable some time ago. He looked at her and smiled. "Kinohti-nihiyawan?" he queried, asking if she wanted to speak in her own tongue.

Kee smiled warmly and gratefully. "Ninohti-nihiyawan," she answered, indicating that she wanted to speak Cree. It was very special to her that the DeBournes took the time to do this with her. "Thank you, it means a lot to me."

"I like practicing," Mike replied, nodding. "Just correct me if I say something wrong."

They sat on the dock for some time, talking in stilted Cree, mostly on his part, but she dutifully taught him and corrected him. She knew he already spoke other languages, so for him to speak Cree meant the world to her. The sun continued setting, the lone loon being the only sound to compete with their voices.

"Why do you hold back?" she asked, looking at him curiously. "You are only one grade ahead of where you should be, but you should have been in a university four years ago."

Mike sighed again. "Maybe, but I have other things to consider, aside from rushing off to embrace a future in the sciences."

"Your family."

"That's one part of it, yes," he admitted. "But I also don't need or want to move too quickly. I've seen evidence that very smart young people who go to university before they are socially developed have a miserable time with their so-called peers, and often quit in despair."

"But you're very socially developed," she pointed out, smiling and resting a gentle hand on top of his. "You are very popular in school and even with my people on the reserve. Most of them, anyway."

"Yeah, they're a pretty insular bunch, not that I blame them," he said. "I still have a few things to figure out about myself, before taking the intellectual world by storm. I can be patient a little while longer."

"Is that what sitting here on our docks moping is about? Patience?" she asked, smirking now.

"I'm not moping," Mike protested.

"For a white man, you're a horrible liar," Kee laughed. "I know you're moping, because if you were here and not moping, you'd have your rod with you and be fishing for the maashkinoozhe. Since I see no rod and no fish, I am forced to conclude you are moping."

"Anyone ever told you that you're annoyingly observant?" Mike muttered.

"Just you," Kee replied. "I wish more people would, though. It'd make me feel useful."

Kee then stood and held out her hand, reverting to English. "Why don't you take me over to those tall reeds and show me other ways I can feel useful, aside from being annoyingly observant?"

Mike grinned and took her hand. "Now that I can happily do ..."

***

"Oh, don't cut out now," Alexa whined, looking robbed. "You were just getting to the good part with Kee!"

"Given my tender age at the time, I believe it best to skip the more prurient details of my associations with Kee," Mike said, taking another swig of his beer.

"Oh, not fair!" protested the blonde. "You've watched videos of Fre and myself when we were fifteen, peeing and having lesbian sex in the woods of Slovenia!"

"Some other time, maybe," he allowed. "When you're too drunk to remember the details."

"Oh, fiiiiine ..." Alexa mumbled, draining her champagne glass and allowing her older sister to refill it. "What about you, Kar? What were you doing while the Great White Mope was boning Cree girls in the north woods?"

"I was in boarding school by then, of course," Karen answered, pouring herself another drink. "Like Mongo here, I was at least a year or two ahead of schedule, but determined to take my time and enjoy my teenage years, before the pressures of university stole all semblance of fun from me."

"Sounds to me like you had plenty of fun in university," Alexa observed, winking.

"True, but that wasn't a chance I was willing to take at the time," continued Karen. "My parents had their expectations of me, but they also didn't push me. Like Michael, I was already taking university courses by correspondence, partially to help ensure I'd attend, rather than saunter off to MIT or Oxford. I was so far above and outside most of the social structures of my peers, that they worried I might never have a friend unless I slowed down."

"At least you were in a big city," Alex mused, drinking from his beer bottle. "Dad was stuck in BFN."

"BFN was pretty damned big to my dad, when he first arrived from Moose Factory," Mike commented, elaborating for Alexa's sake. "He met your grandmother Annette in Kapuskasing, in a chance encounter. Mom is originally from Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta. They fell in love pretty much instantly and stayed to raise a family."

"Falling in love instantly seems to be a thing with this family," Alexa concluded.

"Except for mom and dad," Alex added, which earned him a withering look from his mother.

"One more smart-ass remark out of you, young man," she said in a steady-but-dire tone, "and your wife finds out what town you were born in."

Alex clammed up immediately. Alexa made a mental note to somehow coax that little detail out of her sister at a later date.

"As for what I was up to ..." Karen continued.

***

1983: St. Evangeline's Academy, Toronto ...

Karen did what felt like her four hundredth pliée in a row, in the center of the studio, away from any form of structural support, like a wall of a balance bar. She thought of something her Shotokan instructor had once told her, and she figured it applied to ballet as well.

"Fear not the man who practices ten thousand moves one time. Fear instead the man who practices one move ten thousand times."

At this rate, she'd have better pliées than Anna Pavlova. The burning in her thighs and calves could attest to that, not to mention the ache in her toes. Thank the Almighty that the school insisted on the reinforced-toe slippers, so that the dancers weren't functionally crippled in their thirties.

Rather than flowing, lilting music, she worked now by a simple, syncopated tune, one that helped her keep time and allowed for no resting, error, or interpretations in timing. She either kept up, or she didn't.

The ticking noise finally ended, and she exhaled wearily, willing herself not to collapse on the spot. No, she would rest back in her room. For now, she would complete her stretches, turning and contorting her body in ways that it had not during her practice. That was the ideal way to handle her weariness. And once she was done, she would drink at least two glasses of grapefruit juice, which would help hinder the lactic acid production in her muscles. Some girls just used water and bicarbonate, but Karen found those results audibly (and gastronomically) barbaric.

She linked her fingers and pushed her arms over her head before arching her spine backwards, touching the floor. She could feel the stretch right through her body, from her quadriceps, up through her nether regions and core, through to her shoulders and into her arms. She imagined a circuit that bled the tension out of her, into the sprung wooden floor below.

"Well now, if it isn't everyone's favourite étoile," said a snide voice from the entrance to the room. Karen didn't even bother looking, knowing exactly who it was. She could hear inane giggling after the statement and sighed inwardly. "How's little Miss Perfect today?"

"Corrina," she said in a plain, uninterested tone, not bothering to right herself. "What brings you here? The sun's still up."

The blonde girl with all the kinky hair scowled at the dismissal, holding onto her books. She'd hated this little snot the moment she'd laid eyes on her. The school uniform she wore was immaculate, pressed and starched. What bothered her more than anything was that she still felt underdressed when compared to the little snot currently wearing a leotard.

"You always have such a big mouth on you," Corrina said, trying not to hiss as she entered the studio and approached Karen followed by two flunkies, a skinny brunette with glasses and a stout black girl. "Don't you ever worry that someone is going to just shut it for you one day?"

"Not really, no," Karen replied, standing up straight again, her arms over her head, her breasts jutting proudly forward under the leotard. Corrina tried not to blush at the display of unearned maturity. "After all, if someone wanted to shut my mouth, don't you think I should have done something to earn that censure first?"

"Well what if I tell you that you have?" the blonde said, her tone venomous.

"Please elucidate," Karen replied unconcernedly, bending forward now to touch the floor with the flat of her palms. "Inquiring minds want to know."

Corrina gripped her books tightly and glared at the younger girl. "What I'm saying is that you're going to end up with a lot more than a fat lip if you don't learn respect, you little bitch."

"Oh, I somehow doubt that ..." Karen replied, standing straight and bending down again.

"You think I won't beat you right here and now?!" Corrina snarled, her attendants looking nervous. "I'll smash your face in until you --"

She never finished the sentence as the bottom of Karen's foot swung down from above like a pendulum while she was touching the floor with her hands and bashed the blonde's nose. Corrina grunted and staggered back in shock, her companions crying out in shock as she raised her face, blood from her nose gushing everywhere.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Karen exclaimed as she righted herself, biting on her knuckle in a trite display of concern, having just mule-kicked the girl. "I had no idea you were standing so close, Corrina!"

"You kicked me!" the blonde girl sputtered, her eyes wide with shock and fury, blood spattering on the floor around her. "You broke my nose!"

"You should go and see the nurse immediately," Karen suggested. "Shall I come with you and explain what happened so that you don't have to talk?"