Jessamine Less was impaled on an iron spike.
She was thirty-nine.
She loved the unreal thickness of it, the cut of its unrelenting rigidity, the pace of its entry and reentry. She flexed around the outsized plug in her ass, squeezing her passages even tighter, compounding the pressure in her delta, pushing herself to her absolute limits. Her hips ached from lusty repetition, but she couldn't stop—not yet.
This fullness, this boiling, it was almost enough to drown out the noise of those searing white eyes, all their divinity tarnished in the absence of their bearer. The light hadn't let her go when their war was over and she'd been a fool to think they might. She would only ever be this thing, this creature, this monster of their errant design, always burning but never burned away.
A younger Jessamine could never have imagined that she'd envy all the spirits that died that day, but the stillness and quiet of death had grown to possess a certain appeal.
"Be calm," murmured Domingo, beneath her. "The boys are with Perry. They won't even notice you're gone."
It was cute that he thought that the boys were the greatest worry on her mind. Right now, right here, she needed this more than they needed her. The kids were fine without her. They had mothers to spare.
Domingo massaged her tits in the cup of his rough and callused palms, the clutch of a fighter, not a doctor, but she supposed that in his line of work he needed to be both. Her bosom had never quite gone back to what it was before her children—maybe Kenda had the right idea, after all—so she graciously appreciated the helping hand. She squealed when he pinched her nipples and felt his cock swell in response. Something about that particular sound always pushed his buttons.
"Do it," she urged. "Fill me up. Come inside me."
"Are you sure?" he groaned. "I'm not wearing—"
"How many times to I have to tell you, Domi," she interrupted. "I can't have any more. Not after Silas. It's completely safe—unless you picked up something on your globe-trotting adventures, in which case we already have a problem."
"No," he insisted. "I was careful. I'm always careful."
Jessamine had no patience left for careful. She squeezed her cunt muscles and he gasped and gurgled, choking off any other remarks that he had thought to make as he jerked upwards and unloaded the contents of his balls deep inside of her. Moaning loudly enough that anyone in the yard would have little doubt about whether or not the guest house was occupied and just what activities were occupying its guests, Jessamine arched her back, crashing into Domingo's thick trunk, and let her own climax crest and overflow.
They panted and heaved, riding out the waves together. Her hands were tangled in his unkempt mop of hair and fresh beard—he'd gone too long without creature comforts for his liking, she could tell. His arms were wrapped around her stomach, one hand still perched protectively over a tit like a dragon guarding its hoard.
"Can you go again?" she rasped.
Domingo laughed, the booming of his belly nearly forcing her off his cock.
"I'm hardly a young man, anymore," he grumbled. "I can't just go for hours on end."
"Oh, really?" she quipped. "Is that what they say out in the borderlands? Do the lost and lonely refugees no longer hurl themselves at you for comfort? Do they say you've grown too old and tired? Do they say you've lost your edge?"
She pulled herself off him, letting his still mostly hard cock spring out of her cunt with a sad slurp, then bent at the waist, planting her palms on the floor and waving her ass and cunt—surely oozing with a trail of his semen by now—just close enough that he could easily reach her if he tried. It had been a low blow going after his reputation in the field: Domingo was one of the kindest, gentlest, and most steadfastly good people she had ever known and would never take advantage of his position as a source of strength and healing among the damaged and the displaced. But he also had a competitive streak a kilometer wide.
"The hell they do," he growled.
He punctuated this notion by bringing one big hand down hard on her sweat-slick ass.
"Mmm," she groaned. "Unplug me. Take me jungle style."
"Racist," he chided.
"Role-play," she shot back. "Fuck me in the ass, Domingo. I'm not going to ask you again."
Domingo laughed again and lumbered up to his full height, towering over her arched body on the floor below. He took his time, rubbing his fingers up and down the run of her vulva, scooping out a dollop of their mixed juices and licking it off his fingers.
"Hm," he grunted. "I've eaten too much sodium. Airplane food will kill you, you know."
"Domi," she whined.
This time he only allowed himself a chuckle—he'd had his fun. He slipped three fingers under the bell of her butt plug and pulled, gently but firmly, until her ass relented and let go of its prize with a soft pop. The sudden air on her gaping hole felt unreasonably cold, but he didn't let her stay empty for long. Domingo ran the head of his cock through the swollen lips of her cunt, making sure he was slick as could be, and then pressed himself into her eager ass.
Jessamine was glad, for a moment, that he hadn't fully recovered. Even at less than maximum, he was arguably much too big for her to take in any manner but slowly and carefully. The thing was, he'd finally acquiesced to the tone she'd set and he only stayed less than fully hard for about three seconds after entering her.
She wailed as he pushed the full weight of himself down into her, straddling above and behind her, anchoring his feet on either side of hers so that he could hammer all but straight down, nailing her ass with a precision barrage. Domingo wouldn't last long like this, of that she could be sure, but that was fine. She would take whatever she could get and she currently lacked the ability to form words to ask for more.
If not for his hold on her hips, she would've been crushed beneath him. He was entirely too much, too big, too heavy, too beautifully, wonderfully, savagely violent. But she didn't buckle because he didn't let go, even as the strength went out of her arms and her tits dragged along the floor with every rag-doll shudder, as blissfully helpless as a ribbon dancing on the end of his stick.
He roared, loudly enough that he likely he wasn't conscious of the sound that erupted out from the low place between his chest and throat. It came from somewhere deep and bottled up, a pain long buried under the needs of the crowd.
Jessamine wondered sometimes about their parallel paths. By her count, she'd saved the world three times over, but he'd actually been out there in it, making a real difference. Ask anyone who wasn't a child of the light and she was pretty sure they could tell you which one of them was a better servant of the cause of honest goodness.
"Fuck me," she gasped, finding her words again. "Destroy me. Break me. Set me free."
"No, mi belleza," he thundered. "You are unbreakable—and you still have work to do."
Domingo's cock opened up deep in her ass, spraying out a load even larger than the first, blooming fire within her belly. He thrust three or four more times, pumping out the last of himself, and then pulled out of her as quickly as he had entered, falling back onto the bed and finally dropping her, letting her collapse on the warm wooden floor. She didn't mind. Jessamine liked it down here, where the ground was stable and only her mind whirled.
Neither of them said anything for a while. The labored sounds of their breathing filled the bright little room. After so many years together and so many months apart, there wasn't anything more that needed to be said.
"I'm going to take a shower before I go back in," Jessamine said, at last. "Want to join me?"
"Rain check," said Domingo, with a heavy sigh. "I know what you get up to in there and I need a nap. I barely slept on the way over and you've taken the last that I had."
She crawled up and onto the bed, laying kisses first along the run of his thick thigh, then across the swollen mass of his well-used cock, up and over his belly and his chest, and finally one on each of his closed eyelids.
"Slumber well, Don Quixote," she whispered into his ear.
"I thought I was Don Juan," he murmured, already half asleep.
"Don Juan would go another round," she laughed.
She left him alone and spent and retired to the bathroom. It was notably smaller than her usual digs, but no less comfortable. She spent the time she needed on the toilet, emptying herself of what mess she could, and then ducked under the refreshing stream of a hot shower. It might've taken less time than it did, but she couldn't help herself and masturbated her way to the orgasm that she'd been denied by the complete overwhelm of Domingo's rough treatment. She could still feel the echoes of his cock, stretching both her holes. It wouldn't last, but for now it was enough to help her come quickly once and once more again for good measure.
////
The main house was usually quiet at this hour of the early afternoon. Kenda and Clara were off at their shop. Will was holed up in his office with a patient, no doubt. Shuhui was out of town on the site of some new masterpiece, and even if she wasn't, she wouldn't be home right now. That left only Periwinkle and the boys, who Jessamine found in their usual spot in the great room.
"Mama!" chirped Silas.
Her son ducked out of the world of his imagination and ran to intercept her, crashing into her knees the way her children always seemed to do, always a bit too quick for her to manage. She crouched down and wrapped him up properly in a tight embrace, but somehow she always felt like she was on the receiving end of this affectionate gesture.
Barnabas, Periwinkle's son, held back a beat behind his foster brother, such that Jessamine caught him easily in her arms, no knee-crashing needed. He and his mother had come to live with them when he was barely seven months old, so he saw little distinction in the lines between their families. Silas and Lucia had taken to him as if he was blood, too. He was never lonely.
The same could only partly be said for Periwinkle. She had been welcomed with open arms, as much a part of their strange collective as any of them, but Barnabas's father had broken her heart and she'd kept the lot of them at arm's length—except the children. Periwinkle was wonderful with them, so much so that it might make Jessamine jealous if she weren't so relieved that Silas and Lucia had a "proper" mother to nurture them when she couldn't be there.
"Heya, Jess," Periwinkle greeted her, putting down her book. "How's Domingo?"
"Taking a nap," said Jessamine. "Too much strenuous activity."
She flashed a wink at Periwinkle, too quickly to regret or reconsider, bringing up a blush to Periwinkle's usually pale cheeks. That kind of flirtation came much too easily to Jessamine. She felt bad, but she wasn't about to apologize. Periwinkle would never feel like a proper part of her family if she kept on tiptoeing around her all the time. This was who she was.
Almost to prove that point to herself, Jessamine let herself properly stare at the other woman while their children escaped and went back to play. She half-lounged on one of the big sofas in an easy summer sundress, which presently caught the midday light and was rendered half-transparent, highlighting the soft peaks of her sumptuous curves. If Periwinkle tasted half as creamy as she looked, she'd make for a delicious meal.
Periwinkle traced the arc of Jessamine's gaze and blushed harder, going red to the tips of her ears.
"I'm going to take the boys for a walk in a little bit," she stammered. "We'll meet Lucy at the bus stop. And then come in for a snack!"
"Woo!" bleated Barnabas. "Snack!"
Periwinkle giggled, endlessly amused by her child's rapidly-expanding vocabulary. He might not be able to say as much as Silas, but he also spoke much more. Jessamine's son was an uncommonly quiet child.
"Would you like to join us?" Periwinkle asked.
The flush had mostly but not entirely receded and she had pulled herself upright, wrapping herself in the shadow between sunbeams.
Jessamine shook her head. Lucia was angry with her. She didn't know quite why, but she was perfectly content to give her daughter some space.
"That's okay," she deferred. "I'm going to check on Will. You're still on for girls' night, right?"
"Of course!" Periwinkle beamed. "The kids deserve some time with the man-folk."
She didn't say the quiet part out loud: the rest of them deserved some time away from the kids.
"Plus," she continued, "they'll be tickled to see Domingo. I'm sure he's brought them souvenirs that we'll never hear the end of for the next two or three weeks."
Jessamine sidled up to the couch on her way by and leaned down to give Periwinkle a soft kiss on the cheek, a quiet thank you, expressed the best way she knew how. When she moved back away, Periwinkle surprised her by catching her chin and pulling her close again, granting her a soft but insistent and lingering kiss directly on her lips.
If either Silas or Barnabas found this strange, they didn't say so. They went on playing, unburdened. Silas drew forth the imaginary shape of a sword, brandishing it in defense of his foster brother against some growing, monstrous foe. So small and already a hero.
"I know you still have doubts about me," Periwinkle breathed, breaking their connection but still holding her within kissing distance. "Or maybe you still think I have doubts about you. But I need you to trust me, Jessamine. Y'all are the best thing that's ever happened to me, after Barnacle. I want to be here. Truly."
Jessamine's heart thumped in her chest. Had she missed the change in Periwinkle? Or had it been her all along?
When Periwinkle let her go, her nails brushing ever-so-tenderly across the sensitive skin of Jessamine's throat, it was all she could do not to go back in for another kiss. There would be time for that later, she reasoned, if nobody changed their minds between then and now.
"I'll try," said Jessamine.
That, at least, was honest.
////
Jessamine paused to listen outside Will's office door. His voice was—by design—muffled beyond comprehension, but he was speaking to someone on the phone. The red light on the lintel wasn't illuminated, so it must not be a patient, after all. Most likely someone at the clinic, by the way he raised his voice. They were undergoing costly renovations and tensions ran high. Her interruption might be in some sense a nuisance, but given all the stress he was under, she considered it an act of mercy.
"I don't care what it costs," he shouted as she slipped through the narrowest crack in the door she could manage and closed it softly behind her. "I'm not going to sacrifice the safety or the comfort of my patients. We owe them that much."
Will's eyes widened at his wife's sudden appearance. He knew that look on her face, the one she couldn't keep hidden even if she'd tried, but he made no indication to the caller that they were no longer alone. For his cooperation, she'd give him a moment to prepare.
Jessamine sank to the floor, prowling ahead on hands and knees, making sure he could hear the sultry rustle of her passage through the high-pile carpet. She ran her fingers along the curve of the well-used chaise, nominally a feature for those rare occasions when he needed to see a patient at home in person, but mostly a stage for impromptu bouts of hard fucking. They wouldn't need it today. She intended to keep this brief.
"Take it off my salary, then, if you have to," Will crowed. "I won't budge—you know that—and I make more than I need."
She rounded the corner of the desk and emerged between his legs, running her palms up the inseam of his trousers and tugging open his zippered fly with a practiced, whisper-quiet fizz. Her fingers wound easily inside, parting the folds of his trunks and wrapping around the warm flesh of his already-stiffening cock. It would have made him perfectly happy for her to just hold him like that for as long as she wanted—he'd told her as much before—but she needed more than that. She pulled him out into the cool air and straight into the warm, damp cavern of her mouth.
"Well, that's very kind of you, seeing as your pay grade is based off of mine," Will groused, smartly refusing to acknowledge his current predicament. "But that's beside the point. Make it happen, whatever you have to do. Find a way—or I will."
He slammed down the phone on its receiver and sighed, whether because he was glad to be done with that conversation or because his cock had just tapped the back of her throat, who could say? Will's fingers ran lazily through Jessamine's hair and he let his head roll back onto the leather of his executive chair. She bobbed up and down, tongue swirling and lips held tight, drawing his nectar up from the depths.
"I have to go in to see a few patients," Will lamented, "and possibly to put a boot up Darren's ass about the fucking waiting room."
"Don't go too hard on him," said Jessamine. "You'll leave him wanting more."
Will made a gross little mock-vomiting sound. His feelings about Darren had been made absolutely clear on several occasions over the years, only to be galvanized at their most recent clinic holiday party, after he'd unabashedly propositioned every single femme-presenting member of their family over the span of several drinks. Darren was cute, but hollow, like so many money men were. A necessary evil, Will conceded, but a poor bedfellow.
He made another little sound that could be mistaken for revulsion by someone who didn't know him the way Jessamine did. She tightened her grip around the base of his cock, holding back his runaway tide, even for just a moment longer. Jessamine loved the feeling of him in her mouth and she wasn't ready for it to end.
It did end, though, a few hard strokes thereafter. Hot waves of semen sloshed around her mouth and down her gullet, quick as she could swallow, adamant in her stubborn refusal to waste even a single drop. Neither one of them was good for making babies, anymore, but he was still great at making her favorite snack, nearly whenever she wanted it.
"Anyway," coughed Will, catching his breath. "I should be home before the lot of you have to head out. You have a seven o'clock reservation, right?"
Jessamine nodded, licking her lips as she tidily put him back into his pants, saving him for later.
"I'll be fine, then," Will repeated. "I know Domi can handle the little devils on his own if he needs to, but I want to see him, too. Has he said how long he's staying?"
She shook her head. He hadn't said. He claimed it was because he didn't want to disappoint them, but they all knew better. Every time he left the world outside their home, it was a little harder for him to justify than the last. He loved it here, loved them all, this place and these people, but if not for the depths of that love, she doubted he would ever come back.
Jessamine had come to grips with the fact that he more than likely wouldn't be with her until the end, after all—that maybe none of them would—but that bitter truth was easier to deny in passing than to hold in her heart. She closed her eyes, letting the white eyes scorch her with their glow, filling the dark places of her mind with their boundless light.
"It'll be all right," Will hummed. "You'll make it through tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow."
By now, they all understood what lay inside her mind, although each of them had come to that understanding in their own way, each perspective shaped by their own experiences, since none of them could truly share in her own. Domingo, the doctor, saw the way that she rebounded. Will, the shrink, saw the way that she endured. Sometimes, it helped. The rest of the time, she felt just as hollow as the money men who were unwelcome in their home.
There must be others out there, the many discarded children of the light, but they were too few and too far between and they wore no outward signs of their passage through the sieve of fate. Perhaps she had met one, before. She would never know. There were no spirits left to tell her.
"I'm sorry," she said, shaking off the torpor of her thoughts. "I don't mean to hold you up any more than I already have."
Will looked at his wristwatch and grimaced. He'd be late if he didn't go now.
"I'm going to go out to the greenhouse," Jessamine added. "There's some pruning to be done."
That answered the question he wouldn't know how to ask. He was so good with his patients, just as gentle and kind as he had ever been to her, but when it came to this, he was helpless. He knew that she would be all right tomorrow, he believed it, he'd told her so. But what about today?
Will helped her to her feet, gave her a sweet kiss, and went out the door in a hurry. When he closed the door behind him, leaving her again on her own in the little office, she flopped down on the chaise and pulled up the hem of her dress, exposing herself to his absence. The kids would be out on their walk, still. The bus didn't come by for at least another fifteen minutes. She could be as loud as she liked.
////
The air in the greenhouse was thick and damp. Jessamine had lied about the pruning—she'd done the last of it last Tuesday—but she could be alone out here. The children found the greenhouse creepy, draped with its menagerie of creeping vines and vibrant blooms. Periwinkle would stay with the children. She thought about a smoke, but she knew where Kenda was taking them tonight and she wanted her mind clear. That meant resorting to other traditional means of finding calm in the arms of the storm.
Meditation had never come easily to Jessamine. It was difficult to clear one's mind when it held three layers of additional and perpetual occupants. There was something about being here in the greenhouse that made it least a little bit more manageable. When the air was so thick with greenery that she could almost taste it, when she could almost imagine that she, herself, was green, then the blinding clarity of white and gold and orange was diminished, diluted, and made just a murky wash across her mind's palette. She could paint with that.
Jessamine breathed as deeply as her lungs would allow, in through her nose, out through her mouth. She let her thoughts dance along the pathways of her mind, entering from one side and exiting on the other. She was water. She was air. She was lonely.
A whisper of movement caught her ears, but she kept her eyes closed. That was what the wind might sound like if it blew within these four glass walls. She had no reason to fear the wind—or anyone that sounded just like it.
The hand that wrapped around her stomach was soft and small and so familiar. It moved swiftly and smoothly down her belly and under the belt of her leggings, neatly ignoring the barrier of her panties and coming to rest over her vulva, its pressure pliant but unyielding. Jessamine yearned for it to slip inside, but she sensed its deliberate hesitation. It was waiting for her permission—no, not that. It was waiting for her submission. It wanted her to beg.
"I didn't think you'd be back till next week," whispered Jessamine, keeping her eyes closed.
"I changed my flight," said Shuhui, her voice as languid as it was luscious. "I decided I didn't want to miss girls' night, after all. They'll be fine without me micromanaging for a few days."
"Is that the only reason?" asked Jessamine.
Shuhui laid her other hand along Jessamine's chin and peeled her back, letting her open her eyes to glass-clad clouds a moment before her view was eclipsed by Shuhui's beautiful face, her lips descending to grant Jessamine their mercy. Of all her lovers, no one kissed her quite like Shuhui. It was incredible how someone so diminutive could so dominate their space, making every lip-lock feel less like a battle and more like a gracious act of surrender. Shuhui had conquered her heart so many years ago, but she still treated Jessamine like she was a prize.
"Maybe I sensed that you needed me," she offered.
It became impossible to ignore that Shuhui's hand was still firmly pressed against Jessamine's vulva, in spite of the rising tide of her runaway wetness. Shuhui had weathered such squalls before.
"I do need you," Jessamine agreed. "I need you so badly, Shu. I need you right now."
Shuhui laughed and put her lips against Jessamine's again, parting them with her tongue, giving her exactly what she wanted but in the wrong hole. Well, maybe not the wrong hole. This was nice, too. But she wanted more. She always wanted more.
"Please," Jessamine mumbled around Shuhui's tongue. "Please fuck me."
A single finger came down from the barricade, sauntering through Jessamine's wide-open gate and ramming into her depths. Jessamine curled, groaning incoherently, unable to form the words to ask for more. Shuhui got the idea, anyway, somehow.
"So it's like that, then," she remarked. "No need for foreplay when you've already done the job for me."
It was all Jessamine could do not to scream so loudly that the kids would come running when Shuhui dropped all pretense of patience or kindness and let all three remaining fingers and thumb dive into her, forming a spearhead with her hand and driving it through her cunt.
"Yes," Jessamine hissed, long and low. "That."
Shuhui whirled into motion, careful to keep her fist buried in Jessamine's cunt as she pulled down her pants and underwear and marched her to the nearest table. She planted Jessamine's suddenly bare ass on the steel mesh, lifted her knees into the air, passed them over her elbows, and braced her heels on the table's corners, leaving her target spread wide and her path to victory unobstructed. Nothing could stop her advance, now—and, thank the light, nothing would.
The fist within Jessamine's cunt expanded and contracted, testing its limits, then plunged as deep as her tunnel would allow. What Shuhui might lack in terms of raw strength compared to Domingo or Kenda, she more than made up for in a capacity for speed. Her arm was a blur, impossible to focus on as it thrust in and out of Jessamine faster than she might've believed possible if this wasn't a fairly regular occurrence in their household.
"One," Jessamine gasped, drool dripping from her lips as her mouth fell open to make the sound.
"What do you think?" asked Shuhui, sounding almost as if she was relaxing. "Should we go for three, this time? Or maybe five?"
Jessamine shook her head as rapidly as her shuddering body would allow.
"Five is too many," she barely managed to protest.
But before she'd even finished the claim, a second orgasm had wrenched itself free of her body, threatening to dislodge her from the table as her hips bounced skyward.
"Whoa, there," Shuhui soothed. "Try to hold still or you'll hurt yourself. Also, it doesn't count if you don't count it."
"Two!" Jessamine groaned. And then: "Three."
Shuhui's free hand snaked up Jessamine's stomach, lifting her sweater as she went, pushing it higher and higher until her tits slipped out from its confines. Stepping lightly to the side, she leaned in and clamped her teeth around Jessamine's left nipple, even as she pinched the right one between two folded knuckles. Shuhui couldn't thrust her arm quite as quickly or as forcefully from this new angle, but the added sources of blistering sensation more than accommodated for the deficit.
"Oh, fuck you," Jessamine growled. "Oh, fuck. Oh—fuck—that's four."
Jessamine's tormentor waited until her hips had mostly calmed before she pried her lips free of her tit, leaving it sopping and ruddy.
"Well, I guess if that's all you think you can do, we should stop there," Shuhui suggested, slyly.
"Fuck you," Jessamine repeated.
"Later, dear," Shuhui said with a grin.
The fire inside of Jessamine's belly, that same fire that coiled and uncoiled behind her eyes, radiated out from Shuhui's fist and spread to every corner of her, sparking like firecrackers on her fingertips and toes. How was this not enough? How could she be so conceited as to believe that she could demand more pleasure than she'd already received, let alone that she deserved it.
What world had she saved? She was no more a savior than her son. Both of them could only be heroes in fabricated realities. Here in the mortal domain, she was the monster. She was the omnipresent, looming foe.
Shuhui slipped her thumb into Jessamine's mouth, hooking it behind her bottom teeth, drawing her forward, mouth forced open.
"Hey," she barked. "Come back to me."
Jessamine whimpered.
"Tell me not to stop," Shuhui commanded.
"Don't stop," Jessamine breathed.
Shuhui let her go and her tongue crashed forward to fill the void her thumb had left behind. A moment thereafter, she withdrew her hand from Jessamine's cunt with a squelch and put her whole face in its place, burying her tongue as far inside of Jessamine as it would reach. Her hands wrapped around Jessamine's ass, digging in until they could hold no more flesh, giving Jessamine no quarter, granting her endless release.
Jessamine didn't say the number five out loud. If she didn't count it, it didn't count.
Shuhui would just have to keep going as long as it took.
////
"Thank you again for that," Jessamine purred into Shuhui's ear.
She was curled around the little woman in the back of Clara's convertible, barely in her middle seat, Periwinkle on her other side, a small but healthy distance between them. Kenda and Clara bickered playfully in the front seat, Kenda at the wheel thanks to a lost bet at the dinner table which had set Clara into a long pout with the promise of imminent reprisal. The sun was long over the horizon, but the summer air was sultry as ever, so they zoomed along the highway with the top down, leaving the peace of the countryside for the roaring city.
The rush of wind overhead gave their conversation some anonymity, but that was the extent of their privacy, so when Shuhui lazily cupped Jessamine's bare tit, already most of the way to falling out of her tight dress, there was nothing to stop their companions from staring. Clara noticed it first, in the rear view mirror, but she did nothing but flash the two of them an encouraging smile—a brief lapse in her grumpy facade. Kenda was, as Kenda was want to be, less chill about it.
"Hey, now, you two," she called back over her shoulder, careful not to take her eyes off the road for more than a blink or two, "if you tire yourselves out now, you'll miss out on all the fun later."
"You say that like it's possible to tire her out," Shuhui shot back. "Have you met our Jessamine?"
Jessamine flushed in a way that had nothing to do with her full tit being out on the highway for any passers-by to see.
"We're not as young as we used to be," Kenda warned. "And how many times has she already come, today? Domingo looked exhausted and I don't think it was from the flight."
If Jessamine could've given Kenda a number in her defense, she might've, but she'd lost track even before her and Shuhui's escapades in the greenhouse. Besides, she'd learned that her best course of action was probably to keep her mouth shut in times moments like these. There were so many better purposes she could put her mouth to.
Defiantly, Shuhui freed Jessamine's other tit from the loose confines of her dress and leaned in to put her lips around its peak. Jessamine closed her eyes, reveling in the sensation, and thus was completely surprised when she felt a second pair of lips brush against her other nipple.
She snapped to attention and discovered that Periwinkle, without a word of warning, had begun to suckle at her teat like a babe. Shuhui seemed not to have noticed that she had a companion-cum-competitor and carried on in her merry way, running tight circles with her tongue around Jessamine's areola, nipping at her nipple with her teeth, drawing her tit-flesh tight with sucking pressure and then letting it snap back. Periwinkle's efforts were gentler by comparison, but had an earnestness that offset her clumsy technique.
"Yeah, all right," chuckled Kenda, defeated. "Try to finish up before we get there or we're going in without you."
"I don't know," Clara remarked, "maybe we should just pull off at the next rest stop and go to town on each other in the parking lot."
"Nuh-uh," Kenda insisted. "We have reserved the pool and we are not going to let it go to waste."
"So it is the pool!" Clara squealed, drowning out a curse from Kenda.
She collapsed into a puddle of triumphant giggles as Kenda punched her lovingly in the arm.
Jessamine had known where they were going, tonight—and she suspected Shuhui did, too, although she wasn't supposed to be in on the secret. They all took turns planning the events of girls' night, but Kenda, in her own words, was shit at planning, so she'd leaned on Jessamine. Clara had done the same thing, the time before, not that she would ever tell.
They'd started the evening with a drive to the seaside, where they dined at an upscale restaurant that offered a private enough dining experience that they could all be themselves without reproach—just five early-to-middle-aged women, out for a night on the town. Pay no mind to the way their touches lingered on each others' hands, nor how many of them kissed across the table. They were just gals who were pals.
"Okay, you figured it out," Kenda groused. "Are we even, now?"
"For driving my Betsy?" scoffed Clara.
"A privilege I earned fair and square," Kenda interjected.
"There is nothing fair or square about flashing your pussy," Clara retorted. "So, no, we are very much not even."
The incident in question had happened at the restaurant. Kenda had bet the table that she could get the waiter to comp their third round of drinks. Clara had bet the driver's seat against her. You'd think the poor kid had never seen a grown woman's cunt, before. Maybe he hadn't, because after he dropped the whole tray of beverages—what a mess—he offered them replacements on the house.
Jessamine supposed it had worked out for the waiter, in the end. Kenda and Clara, appearing to feel at least a little bad about the unexpected consequences of their little game, had followed him outside when they spotted him taking a smoke break and gave him a quick double blowjob for his troubles.
A low groan escaped from Jessamine's throat, causing Shuhui to pull back and appreciate the results of her labors. That was when she noticed Periwinkle with a soft gasp and a sweet little chuckle. She reached across Jessamine's lap to put a hand on Periwinkle's knee, sliding it upward and inward and giving her a soft squeeze of support.
Jessamine, in turn, leaned down and laid a kiss on the top of Periwinkle's tightly-braided hair.
"You know," she whispered into Periwinkle's ear, "you don't have to keep doing this if you don't want to."
"Do you want me to stop?" Periwinkle mumbled around her mouthful.
"No, honey," Jessamine gushed. "No, not at all."
Periwinkle didn't stop. If anything, she began to suckle twice as hard as when she'd started. Shuhui said nothing as she witnessed this wanton display—she just smiled wickedly and went back to her work.
It had been much the same at their second stop of the night. They'd hopped a few towns over in search of a particular underground dance club where, in Kenda's words, they'd only stay long enough to work up a sweat. (Jessamine was pretty sure that was when Shuhui and Clara had both figured out that they were going to the pool, after.) On a hot summer night with a crowded dance floor, that wouldn't take any of them very long—but not very long was plenty long enough for the five of them to work up a lot more than sweat.
Periwinkle had waded straight out to the middle of the sea of gyrating bodies and gone wild. Kenda had gone protectively out after her—although it was unclear whether she was trying to protect Periwinkle from the other dancers or the other dancers from her. That had just left her and Shuhui and Clara, all of whom liked to dance, but all of whom very much liked to fuck, more. Shuhui had flashed that same wicked smile and led the two of them into the bathrooms, where they'd put on a show for some wide-eyed young lesbians who claimed they'd never seen a woman get both her cunt and ass eaten out at the same time, the poor, sheltered things.
Jessamine licked her lips at the memory. She didn't get to make Shuhui scream like that often enough and she blamed both their damned eyes—the bright ones in Jessamine's head that drove her mad and the dark ones on Shuhui's face that saw right through her.
"We're right around the corner," Kenda announced. "Time to get yourselves put back together. Don't worry, you'll be naked again soon enough."
Periwinkle drew back first. Her lips were bright pink from her exertions and it seemed she couldn't quite keep a smile out of them—a different kind of smile than the one Jessamine was used to seeing on her face. She also looked a bit confused.
"Naked?" she queried.
"Did you miss the bit about the pool?" asked Jessamine.
"Pool," Periwinkle repeated. "Oh, yes, I did. I was a bit distracted. That makes more sense, I think."
Jessamine leaned in, her breath still husky and her chest still heaving, and kissed Periwinkle hard. After a moment's nervous hesitation, the other woman melted into Jessamine's embrace, and it was all Jessamine could do not to flip her over the backseat and thank her with things better than words, but Periwinkle understood the message on Jessamine's lips.
"You're welcome," she replied. "What kind of pool?"
"You'll see," said Shuhui, archly. "We're nearly there."
Periwinkle smiled at this, and then frowned again.
"Jessamine, your boobs are still out," she observed.
"Hm," Jessamine reflected. "So they are."
She took her time in putting them back beneath the thin layer of fabric that framed her chest, hypnotically massaging away the dregs of the two women's spit where it lingered, fully aware that Periwinkle's eyes never strayed from the objects of her desire. Not that the dress did much to improve her modesty, especially given that her nipples were still absolutely rigid.
They didn't have far to go. It would have to do.
Jessamine laced her fingers through Periwinkle's as they got out of the car in the small and secluded guest parking lot. Shuhui gave them each a peck on the cheek and then skipped ahead to join Kenda and Clara at the front of their little pack.
The campus on which they now strode consisted of no fewer than six palatial buildings. No single one was quite a skyscraper, but the even the shortest of them rose an easy five stories and all of them featured matching rough-poured concrete exteriors, which gave them a look that was somehow both extremely modern and as antique as any rock buried beneath their foundations. They approached the largest of the sextet, entering it by means of an arched pair of double glass doors that opened onto a wide staircase that descended below street level.
"What is this place?" Periwinkle wondered aloud.
"I'm not actually entirely sure," Jessamine admitted. "We've never been allowed into any of the buildings except this one—and only the basement, here. We think it's some kind of ultra-private college or maybe a foreign embassy, but no one will tell us."
They kept going deeper, at least two stories down into the earth.
"If it's so secret, why let us in at all?" Periwinkle asked.
"Oh," Jessamine laughed. "Shuhui designed it. Not the stuff above ground, just—well, you'll see it in a moment."
The staircase ended in a thirty-foot proscenium arch, framing the scene that awaited them. The star of the show was a massive pool, easily Olympic-sized in width and breadth, only far deeper than any regulation would recommend, and with its basin stained black in such a way that it looked more like it was full of the liquid night sky than mere saltwater. Around the pool were more than two dozen columns that had the air of the Roman Baths about them, only they were oddly organic, as if they'd been grown out of the rock for the sole purpose of supporting the ceiling.
If the buildings above had looked strangely timeless, this space looked like it had been stolen out of time, as if Shuhui had tapped into some esoteric vein of knowledge and had brought back the works of a civilization from before recorded time—or perhaps the work of a future that had yet to come. That was a hallmark of Shuhui's architecture: artificiality as a return to nature, a way back as a way forward.
"They let us use it for ourselves every once in a while," Jessamine explained, "so long as we book ahead."
"Holy shit," swore Periwinkle, in rare form. "How long do we get to stay?"
"As long as we want, technically," said Jessamine, "although we don't usually stay much past dawn. Clara likes to see the sun coming up over the city."
Clara, as if on cue, pulled her floral-print dress over her head, exposing her tanned and toned body from shoulder to ankle, kicked off her steel-toed boots, and took a running dive into the pool, knifing into the water with a barely-audible splash.
Kenda was only a few steps behind, mostly slowed by her intention to put on a show. She waggled her bare ass at the women standing behind her, spreading her cheeks to give all of them a distinctly more comprehensive view of her cunt than the one she'd favored the waiter with at the start of the night. Then, she ran and leapt, arcing higher into the air above the pool than Clara had, giving her ample time to curl into a tight cannonball whose splash reverberated through the cavernous chamber like a bomb had gone off.
Shuhui dawdled at the poolside, shimmying out of her little black dress and neatly folding it at the base of the nearest column along with the large black tote bag she'd carried in. She'd left her shoes in the car, preferring to go barefoot down the long stone stair, and she'd equipped herself with her swimming leg—as she called it—a slightly sleeker affair than usual that was designed for buoyancy and hydrodynamics. Thus stripped of all pretense, she twirled and grinned expectantly at the two who lagged behind, inviting them to join her before she took the plunge.
"What do you say, Perry?" Jessamine propositioned. "Do you fancy a swim?"
Periwinkle had already unbuttoned her blouse and discarded her bra by the time Jessamine finished asking the question. Her skirt and flats followed in short order, leaving her in only a lacy pair of nylon panties.
Jessamine took no pains to hide the lust in her gaze as it traveled up and down Periwinkle's body, which was precisely as lovely as she'd expected it to be. Periwinkle's tits were comfortably the largest of any of theirs, what with Kenda having cut hers off, Clara having barely more than that to begin with, and Shuhui's being the beautiful little perfect freaks of nature that they were. What's more, in their fullness, they appeared to have avoided any of the sag that plagued Jessamine's own twice-mothering pair.
She watched Periwinkle's hands move to cover herself, but she caught them before they climbed above her delicately-striated waist. It was obvious that she was pushing herself. Had they gone too far or quickly? Had Jessamine crossed a line? Only one way to find out.
"Would you like some help with those?" Jessamine inquired.
Periwinkle hesitated for a moment as her breath caught, then nodded, biting her bottom lip.
Jessamine knelt on the gently uneven stone floor and threaded her fingers underneath the band of Periwinkle's panties, easing them down over the full half-moons of her ass. She paused for a few seconds as Periwinkle's cunt came into view, its lips whorled and flaring, its furrows so laden with her wetness that she shone as enticingly as the pool. She stopped herself just short of diving in and pulled the panties the rest of the way down, over her knees and onto the floor.
Had Periwinkle been breathing that heavily before? Surely not.
"You go first," Jessamine encouraged. "I want to see you jump in."
Periwinkle giggled like a girl fifteen years younger.
"You're a weird one, Jessamine Less," she announced. "Did you know that?"
"It has been said," Jessamine agreed.
Periwinkle giggled again and leaned in to take Jessamine's face in both hands before she kissed her on the mouth, tongue darting past her lips for no more than a heartbeat. She turned and walked calmly over to the pool, gauged the distance, bent her knees, and jumped forward without form or plan, arms and legs wheeling as they hit the surface of the water. It wasn't graceful, but it looked like she was having fun.
"You're going to fuck her, tonight," said Shuhui as Jessamine drew alongside her. "I'm going to make sure of it."
"Shu," Jessamine admonished, "let her go at her own pace. I'm already worried that I'm being too forward with her. She's been so good for our family—we don't want to drive her away."
Shuhui barked the laugh of one who thinks you are behaving very ridiculously.
"Too forward?" she cackled. "I caught her three weeks ago with a copy of our private photo album from the last trip to the Mediterranean, furiously jilling herself with a dildo as thick as my arm. You're good at reading people's intentions, but I think you've got a blind spot with this one."
Jessamine sighed. Shuhui had it wrong, but not in a way that mattered. She had seen the signs of Periwinkle's attraction, but she'd written them off as a desperate, unnecessary effort to fit in where she was afraid she didn't belong. Periwinkle would be a part of their family whether they fucked or not, and Jessamine wanted her to know that before they did.
"She didn't come to live with us because she wanted to," Jessamine argued. "We offered her a place when she had nowhere else to go."
"And she's stayed on with us for more than a year, now," Shuhui countered. "If she didn't want to stay—if she wasn't on board with the kind of family we are, however radical that might seem—then she would've found another place to be. After what Vic put her through, any one of us would pay her way if she wanted to live on her own and you know it."
Any one of them who made money, she meant, but now Jessamine was just being petty.
"You're probably right," Jessamine admitted.
"I usually am," Shuhui agreed. "Especially when you're being an idiot."
Jessamine smacked her on her bare ass hard enough that she had to take a step forward off the edge and into the pool. Lucky for her, every part of this pool was the deep end.
"Light knows I want to fuck her till she breaks," Jessamine said aloud to no one but herself.
Thus the last woman standing, Jessamine surveyed the bodies in the pool. They were her family. They and Will and Lucia and the boys. She would be incomplete without any one of them.
Periwinkle was the best reason for her to hold little fear for their children's future. Maybe she could help to undo the damage that Jessamine was afraid she'd already caused her daughter with her failed attempts at being a good mom.
Clara was a grounding force that all of them needed, sometimes, and she balanced out their assortment of hotheads and cooler minds. Kenda, on the other hand, was the only reason any of them actually got anything done, the juice and the drive to their sit-and-ponders.
And Shuhui, wonderful Shuhui, was—well, she was never going to leave her. She'd promised that. And unlike Domingo, she hadn't changed her mind. Shuhui was the wind and the wind never broke its promises.
They were also so fucking hot, every last one of them. She could stand here watching their naked bodies frolic in the pool forever, but she didn't have that long. The sun might not be up for another four or five hours at least, but the night would be gone in the blink of an eye and she'd have to face tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
Jessamine removed her dress, dropped it in a heap, and dove in.