Podcasts about Nah

In today's show David ventures into the beach enclave of Virginia Beach to peek behind the curtain of the next great American wave pool, Chas politically correct's his queer VANS, Ethan Ewing breaks the golden rule of dating a younger woman, Dylan Graves reminds all of us to stay off the sofa, and the boys explain why people on airplanes are returning to decency. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Plantin' your seed in good soil ain't just a spiritual principle—it's a wealth blueprint. Too many of us out here throwin' our time, energy, and money into dry ground, then wonderin' why we ain't growin'. Nah, King… Nah, Queen... every seed got potential, but it's the soil that determines the harvest. You could have million-dollar ideas, generational vision, even divine purpose—but if you plant it in the wrong place, around people who don't believe, in environments that don't nurture growth, that seed gon' die before it ever sees sunlight. Good soil is mentorship, it's discipline, it's financial literacy, it's a circle that challenges you and feeds your faith. Spiritually, that's stayin' aligned with God's vision over your life. Financially, that's makin' wise investments, learnin' the game, and plantin' in assets that appreciate. Inspiration? That's knowin' your struggle is part of the process, but your soil—your environment—gotta match your destiny. So if you serious about freedom, about buildin' legacy, about breakin' them generational curses—check your soil. 'Cause when you plant in good ground, you don't just grow—you multiply. That's how you go from survival to abundance. Planting your Seed in GOOD SOIL | Wallstreet Trapper (Episode 148) Trappin Tuesday's

S27 EP31 Entre Amigos, tú y yo, y Radio Nueva Vida.⁠ En este episodio cubrimos:- Pregunta del Día – ¿Qué talento gracioso mostraría papá si protagonizara un concurso de talentos para el Día del Padre?- Perlas de Sabiduría- Verso del día – Nahúm 1:7- Chispa de Ánimo – La voluntad de Dios es perfecta

I was at a professional meeting recently and I heard an inspiring and insightful and forward-looking talk by journalist and author Roger Thurow. Roger was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal for 30 years, 20 of them as a foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. Roger has written a number of books including one on world hunger and another what I thought was a particularly important book entitled The First 1000 Days, A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children and the World. Now comes a new book on farmers around the world and how they are coping with the unprecedented changes they face. It was hearing about his book that inspired me to invite Mr. Thurow to this podcast and thankfully he accepted. His new book is entitled Against the Grain: How Farmers Around the Globe are transforming Agriculture to Nourish the World and Heal the Planet. Interview Summary I really admire your work and have loved the new book and what I've read before. So, let's talk about something that you speak about: the wisdom of farmers. And you talk about their wisdom in the context of modern agriculture. What do you mean by that? Farmers of the world, particularly the small holder farmers, indigenous farmers, family farmers as we know them in this country, they're really bold and pioneering in what they're doing. And these farmers, kind of around the world as we go on this journey around the world in the book, they've seen their efforts to earn a living and feed nourish their families and communities turn against. So, while conforming to the orthodoxies of modern industrial agriculture practices: the monocropping, the increased use of fertilizers and pesticides and insecticide chemicals, the land expansion, at the expense of savannas, forest wetlands, biodiverse environments. In the face of this, they've really witnessed their lands degrading. Their soils depleting. Their waters dwindling. Their pollinators fleeing. Their biodiversity shrinking and becoming less diverse. Their rains becoming ever more mercurial., Their temperatures ever hotter. And their children and families and their communities becoming ever more hungry and malnourished. So, they've really seen the future of their own impacts on the environment, and then the impacts of changing climates, of more extreme weather conditions. They've really seen this future. They've experienced, lived it, and it's ugly what they see and what they've experienced on their farms. So, that's their wisdom, and they'll really tell us that it doesn't have to be that way if we listen. That such a future isn't inevitable. Because out of their desperation, you know, these farmers have begun farming against the grain. So, there's the title of the book Against the Grain of this modern agriculture orthodoxy to reconcile their roles as both food producers and nourishers of us all, and stewards in the land. They're pushing forward with practices like agroforestry, agroecology, regenerative agriculture, kind of whatever one calls it. Farming with nature instead of bending nature to their will, which is what we too often done and with kind of the larger modern industrial agriculture techniques. So, farming with nature as opposed to against it as they strive to both nourish us all and heal our planet. Give us a sense, if you will, about how important these small farmers are to the world's food supply? So how important are these? They're really important. Extremely vital for the global food chain, certainly for their own families and communities, and their countries. In a lot of places, say in Africa, in many of the countries, on the continent, it's the small holder farmers that are producing the majority of the food. In their communities and in their countries and across the continent. Still not enough. Africa then must become a substantial importer of food. But these small holder farmers are so key and the more success that they have in feeding their communities and families, the more success we all have then in this great goal of ending hunger and malnutrition. Equally important, these farmers are the stewards of the land. And they're on the front lines of these environmental challenges. The threats from the changing climate and more extreme weather conditions. They're the first impacted by it, but they also increasingly see, and that's what stories in the book are about, how they see that their own actions are then impacting their environment and their climates. And this is why they're so important for all of us is that they find themselves at the center of what I think is this great collision of humanities two supreme imperatives. One, nourish the world, so nourish us all. That's the one imperative. And then the other imperative, kind of colliding with that, is to preserve, protect, and heal our planet from the very actions of nourishing us. So, these are these two colliding forces. You know as I think we already know agriculture and land use activities are responsible for about a third of the greenhouse gases impacting our climate and weather patterns. And the greatest impact of this then is felt by the farmers themselves. And they see what's happening to their soils and the depletion of their soils. Their lands being so terribly degraded by their very actions of nourishing their families and then contributing to nourishing us all. I think that's why they're so important for us. I mean, there's certainly kind of the canaries in the coal mine of climate change. Of these environmental challenges that we're all facing. And how they're then able to adjust their farming, as we kind of see in the book and that's this wisdom again. How can we learn from them and what are they seeing in their own situations. They're then having to adjust because they have no other options. They either have to adjust or their farms will continue to degrade and their children and their families increasingly malnourished and hungry. Roger let's talk through this issue of colliding imperatives just a bit. The fact that protecting the planet and nourishing people are colliding in your view, suggests that these two priorities are competing with one another. How is that the case? Some of the techniques of the monocropping, which is basically planting one crop on the same plot of land year after year, after year, season after season, right? And by doing that, these crops that are pulling nutrients out of the soil, many of the crops don't put nutrients back in. Some of them do. They'll restore nitrogen they'll put other nutrients in. But with the mono cropping, it's kind of the same depletion that goes on. And, has been particularly practiced in this country, and the bigger farmers and more commercial farmers, because it's more efficient. You are planting one crop, you have the same technique of kind of the planting and tending for that. And the harvesting, kind of the same equipment for that. You don't need to adjust practices, your equipment for various other crops that you're growing on that land. And so, there's an efficiency for that. You have then the price stability if there is any price stability in farming from that crop. That can be a weakness if the price collapses and you're so dependent on that. And so, the farmers are seeing, yeah, that's where the degrading and the weakening their of their soils comes from. So, what's their response to that when their land's degrading? When their soils become weak, it's like, oh, we need additional land then to farm. So they'll go into the forest, they'll cut down trees. And now there's virgin soil. They do the same practices there. And then after a number of years, well that land starts depleting. They keep looking for more. As you do these things, then with the soils depleting, the land degrading, becoming really hard, well, when the rain comes, it's not soaking in. And it just kind of runs away as the soil becomes almost like concrete. Farmers aren't able to plant much there anymore or get much out of the ground. And then so what happens then if the water isn't soaking into the soil, the underground aquifers and the underground springs they become depleted. All of a sudden, the lakes and the ponds that were fed by those, they disappear. The wildlife, the pollinators that come because of that, they go. The bushes, the plants, the weeds that are also so important for the environment, they start disappearing. And so you see that in their efforts to nourish their families and to nourish all of us, it's having this impact on the environment. And then that drives more impacts, right? As they cut down trees, trees drive the precipitation cycle. Tthen the rains become ever more mercurial and unpredictable. Without the trees and the shade and the cooling and the breezes, temperatures get hotter. And also, as the rains disappear and become more unpredictable. It has all this effect. And so, the farmers in the book, they're seeing all this and they recognize it. That by their very actions of cutting down trees to expand their land or to go to a different crop. Because again, that's what the commercial agriculture is demanding, so maybe its sugar cane is coming to the area. Well, sugar cane doesn't get along with trees. And so, the farmers in this one part of Uganda that I write about, they're cutting down all their trees to plant sugarcane. And then it's like, wow, now that the trees are gone, now we see all these environmental and ecosystem results because of that. And so that's where this collision comes from then of being much more aware, and sensitive in their practices and responding to it. That they are both nourishing their families and then also being even better stewards of their land. And they're not doing any of this intentionally, right? It's not like they're going 'we have to do all this to the land, and you know, what do we care? We're just here for a certain amount of time.' But no, they know that this is their land, it's their wealth, it's their family property. It's for their children and future generations. And they need to both nourish and preserve and protect and heal at the same time. Well, you paint such a rich picture of how a single decision like mono cropping has this cascade of effects through the entire ecosystem of an area. Really interesting to hear about that. Tell me how these farmers are experiencing climate change. You think of climate change as something theoretical. You know, scientists are measuring these mysterious things up there and they talk about temperature changes. But what are these farmers actually experiencing in their day-to-day lives? So along with the monocropping, this whole notion that then has expanded and become kind of an article of faith through industrial and modern agriculture orthodoxies, is to get big or get out, and then to plant from fence post to fence post. And so, the weeds and the flowers and plants that would grow along the edges of fields, they've been taken down to put in more rows of crops. The wetland areas that have either been filled in. So, it was a policy here, the USDA would then fund farmers to fill in their wetlands. And now it's like, oh, that's been counterproductive. Now there's policies to assist farmers to reestablish their wetland. But kind of what we're seeing with climate change, it's almost every month as we go through the year, and then from year after year. Every month is getting hotter than the previous months. And each year then is getting subsequently hotter. As things get hotter, it really impacts the ability of some crops in the climates where they're growing. So, take for instance, coffee. And coffee that's growing, say on Mount Kenya in Africa. The farmers will have to keep going further and further up the mountains, to have the cooler conditions to grow that type of coffee that they grow. The potato farmers in Peru, where potatoes come from. And potatoes are so important to the global food chain because they really are a bulwark against famine. Against hunger crises in a number of countries and ecologies in the world. So many people rely on potatoes. These farmers, they call themselves the guardians of the indigenous of the native potato varieties. Hundreds of various varieties of potatoes. All shapes, sizes, colors. As it gets warmer, they have to keep moving further and further up the Andes. Now they're really farming these potatoes on the roof of Earth. As they move up, they're now starting to then farm in soils that haven't been farmed before. So, what happens? You start digging in those soils and now you're releasing the carbon that's been stored for centuries, for millennia. That carbon is then released from the soils, and that then adds to more greenhouse gases and more impact on the climate and climate change. It kind of all feeds each other. They're seeing that on so many fronts. And then the farmers in India that we write about in the book, they know from history and particularly the older farmers, and just the stories that are told about the rhythm of the monsoon season. And I think it was the summer of the monsoon season of 2022 when I was doing the reporting there for that particular part of the book. The rains came at the beginning, a little bit. They planted and then they disappear. Usually, the monsoons will come, and they'll get some rain for this long, long stretch of time, sometimes particularly heavy. They planted and then the rains went away. And as the crops germinated and came up, well, they needed the water. And where was the water and the precipitation? They knew their yields weren't going to be as big because they could see without the rains, their crops, their millet, their wheat crops were failing. And then all of a sudden, the rains returned. And in such a downpour, it was like, I think 72 hours or three days kind of rains of a biblical proportion. And that was then so much rain in that short of time than added further havoc to their crops and their harvest. And it was just that mercurial nature and failing nature of the monsoons. And they're seeing that kind of glitches and kinks in the monsoon happening more frequently. The reliability, the predictability of the rains of the seasons, that's what they're all finding as kind of the impacts of climate change. You're discussing a very interesting part of the world. Let's talk about something that I found fascinating in your book. You talked about the case of pigweed in Uganda. Tell us about that if you will. Amaranth. So here, we call it pigweed. That's a weed. Yeah, destroy that. Again, fence post to fence post. Nah, so this pig weed that's growing on the side or any kind of weeds. The milkweed, so I'm from northern Illinois, and the milkweed that would kind of grow on the edges of the corn fields and other fields, that's really favored by monarch butterflies, right? And so now it's like, 'Hey, what happened to all the monarch butterflies that we had when we were growing up?' Right? Well, if you take out the milkweed plants, why are the monarch butterfly going to come? So those pollinators disappear. And they come and they're great to look at, and, you know, 'gee, the monarchs are back.' But they also perform a great service to us all and to our environment and to agriculture through their pollinating. And so, the pigweed in Africa - Amaranth, it's like a wonder crop. And one of these 'super crops,' really nutritious. And these farmers in this area of Uganda that I'm writing about, they're harvesting and they're cultivating Amaranth. And they're mixing that in their homemade porridge with a couple of other crops. Corn, some millet, little bit of sugar that they'll put in there. And that then becomes the porridge that they're serving to the moms, particularly during their pregnancies to help with their nutritional status. And then to the babies and the small children, once they started eating complimentary food. Because the malnutrition was so bad and the stunting so high in that area that they figured they needed to do something about that. And the very farmers that this program from Iowa State University that's been working with them for 20 years now, first to improve their farming, but then wow, the malnutrition is so bad in these farming families. What can we do about that? Then it was, oh, here's these more nutritional crops native to the area. Let's incorporate them into farming. This crop is Amaranth. Basically, neglected in other parts of the world. Destroyed in other parts of the world. That is something that's actually cultivated and harvested, and really cared for and prized in those areas. It's a really interesting story. Let's turn our attention to the United States, which you also profile in your book. And there was a particular farmer in Kansas named Brandon that you talk about. And he said he was getting divorced from wheat. Tell us about that. Yes, thank you. That's a really interesting story because he's standing there kind of on the edge of his farm, looking at the wheat crops across the road that his neighbor was planting and he had some himself. And he's saying, yeah, I need to get a divorce from wheat. Because of the impact that that was having on the environment. Again, the planting of the wheat, you know, year after year. It's the wheat belt of our Great Plains, which then is legendarily known as the breadbasket, not only of America, but the breadbasket of the world. This wheat is particularly good and appropriate for the label of Breadbasket because it's really good for breads, baking materials. But he's looking at here's the impact it had on his soil. The organic matter on the soil has been dwindling. In the season that the wheat is underground, and the topsoil is uncovered, then you have the problems with erosion. He's seen the impact over time of the year after year after year of growing the wheat. What's interesting, he says, you know, I need to get a divorce from wheat. Well, it's his relatives, because he's a fifth descendant, of the Mennonite farmers from what is now Ukraine - one of the world's original grain belts, who brought their hard red winter wheat seeds with them when they came to the Great Plains in the 1870s. They're the ones that wed Kansas, the Great Plains, the United States to wheat. So now this farmer, Brandon-I-need-to-get-a-divorce-from-wheat, well, it's your ancestors and your descendants that wed us to that. There's kind of historic irony that's taking place. But along with the wheat seeds that came, then also came the plowing up the prairie lands for the first time. And wheat is an annual crop. It's planted year after year one harvest. With each planting, the soil is disturbed, releasing carbon that had been stored, that had been stored in the soil for millennium when they first started plowing. Carbon along with methane released by agricultural activities is, again, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. And in addition, you know, this annual plowing exposes the soil to erosion. You know, relentless erosion with the wind and the rain in the plains. That's what eventually led to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Some environmental and conservation agricultural practices come along because of that, but now that continues. And Brandon himself is seeing the impact as he measures the organic matter in the soil. These are the microorganisms in the soils that naturally work with the soils to grow the crops to feed us all. The nutrients in the soil are weakened and depleted, which then results in the need for more and more chemical enhancements and fertilizers, particularly nitrogen and all the rest. And then you see the runoff of the nitrogen into the water system. And so, yeah, he's seen the impact of all of this, and he's like I need to do something else. And so, he's taken a rather radical step than of planting and growing perennial crops, which you plant one season and then they'll grow for three or four years, maybe more and longer. He has some cattle, so he is able to graze that on those perennial crops. One in particular called kernza, which is an ancient intermediate wheat grass. Has some of the properties of wheat. And so the Land Institute in Kansas then is also working on perennial crops and how can they then be cultivated and harvested also as crops that we all eat. And so Kernza is very high in protein. There's all sorts of breads and pasta, pastries, that you can make with it. Cereals. It's a good ingredient for brewing. There's Kernza beer. And there's promise with that. And then so these perennial crops, then it's like, okay, so we don't have to plow every year. We plant, they grow, they provide a cover crop, but they also provide food for all of us. So perennials, good for our nutrition, good for the soils, good for the environment. You know, we've recorded a series of podcasts with farmers who've been doing regenerative agriculture. And the kind of story that you talk about Brandon, quite similar to what you hear from some of the other farmers. Farming was in their family for many generations. They were accustomed to a particular type of industrial agriculture. They saw it harming the land, thought it bad for the planet, and decided to really retool and do things entirely different. And they're making a go of it, which is really exciting. Roger, I wanted to ask you about Native Americans. As you write about their agriculture, spirituality, kinship, and how all these things come together. Tell us about that. Exactly. Thank you. And so, if you go travel a little bit further in our great plains from Kansas up to South Dakota, and the Sicangu Lakota communities in the southern part of South Dakota close to the Nebraska border. They're trying to reestablish their food sovereignty and the agriculture practices of the Native Americans destroyed, as we tried to destroy them and their communities. By taking of their land, forced relocations, the Trail of Tears, the Trail of Death, in various parts of the country, from various of the Native American communities. And they realize that, as you and the researchers at Duke, know really well, the health impacts that has had on the Native American communities and the high rates of diabetes and obesity, the shortened life expectancies in those communities. And one of the main factors then is their food pathways, and their nutrition being disturbed through all this. So how can they reestablish their food sovereignty? The emphasis on the crops that they used to grow, particularly the three sisters' crops, the maize, the beans, the squash. And then that they would have crops and taste and nutrients that were so vital to their systems traditionally. To recapture that in various growing projects that they have. And then also, with the Sicangu Lakota, they are trying to reestablish the buffalo herd, which was basically decimated from upwards of 30 million or more size of the herd basically down to several hundred with the intentional slaughter of the buffalo in order to really oppress and impact the Native American community. So vital not only to their food sources and nutrition, but basically everything. Clothing, tools - so using every inch of the buffalo. And then spiritually. And as they explain their approach to regenerative agriculture, they would put a picture of a buffalo as the very definition of regenerative agriculture. Just by the way that the buffalo grazes and then moves around. It doesn't graze to the soil it leaves something behind. Then the grasses grow quicker because there's something that's left behind. They leave things behind for other animals. The way that they migrate, and then kind of knead the soil as they go along. That also helps with the soil. So, all these regenerative agriculture, regenerative soil, healthy soil healing practices of it. And then they also say, look the spiritual nature of things that the buffalo represents their kinship. Their kinship of the people to the buffalo, to their land, to the environment. And to them, regenerative agriculture isn't just about food, about soils, about the cultivation and the planting, but also about this kinship. It is a kinship and a spirituality of kind of all of us together. We're all combined on this global food chain. And so that whole kinship element to regenerative agriculture, I think is also really important for us to all understand. Getting back to your original question about the wisdom. This is the wisdom of these farmers, these indigenous farmers, small holder farmers, family farmers. Like Brandon, the small holder farmers of African, India and Latin America are learning so much about their crops that we have so much to learn from.vIt's inspiring to think that some of the remedies that people are coming up with now in the face of all these challenges actually have historic roots that go back thousands of years is pretty inspiring. And it's nice to know that the resurrection of some of these techniques might really make a difference in the modern world. Roger, there are so many questions I'd love to ask you. And I'd urge people to read your book Against the Grain to further explore some of these issues. But I wanted to end with something. Are you hopeful that things will change in a positive direction? I am. I'm also concerned that we need to recognize the need to both nourish and heal. Recognize that this collision is looming, but it's already happening. And I think my hope, and cautious optimism I guess, then comes from the farmers themselves. They're very resilient, and they have to be, right? If you'd asked them the question about where their hope comes from or their optimism or their motivation and inspiration to keep going, it's they don't have any other option. I mean, this is their land. This is what they do. They're farmers, they're nourishing their families. If their families are to be nourished and to end the effects of poor nutrition as we see in this country, which is then common around the world, they need to adjust. So Abebe, a farmer Ethiopia this is kind of where my hope and inspiration comes from. And he begins the book. He's at the outset of the book and in the prologue. His land in Ethiopia was utterly degraded and you couldn't plant there anymore. They had already cut down trees, moved into areas that had been forested. The humble forest in the area had basically disappeared, in kind of the greater area of where Abebe lives. The bigger kind of ecosystem, environmental changes that then come from that, or the disappearance of a forest. And he had been following then the practices and the orthodoxies of modern agriculture. He realized that that was then behind the degradation of his land and the soil. He couldn't plant anymore. And the World Food Program, the Ethiopian government, other kind of NGOs, were then seeing, look these farm communities, these families, we're going to have to be assisting with food assistance forever because their lands are so degraded. They're not able to nourish their families from them unless we do something to restore and heal the land and bring the land back. And so, Abebe and his family and many others in his community, the kind of wider neighborhood and in this area, the humble forest, a lot of them, they stop farming on their land and they're given assistance saved by the World Food Program, kind of food for work. And they set about rehabbing their land. Kind of terracing their land so it'll hold the water. Digging shallow water pans to collect the rain so it then soaks into the soil, into the ground, and then regenerates the underground springs and sources of water. Planting grasses, bushes, letting kind of the land heal and regenerate itself. After a number of years, they see that happening. They move back to the land, and now he has this wide diversity as opposed to planting say corn every year or other mono cropping. Now he has this wide, wild, riotous array of different crops and vegetables and fruit trees. Some of the staple crops that he's grown also in rotation. Working with trees that have then grown up. Springs, a little pond has reformed that he didn't even know was there had come up because of the conservation the water. And he says, you know, my land, which once was dead, he's living again. Right? A profound statement and a realization from this farmer of this is how we can bring it back. So again, as I say, they've seen the future and it's ugly, right? He's seen his land degraded. He couldn't nourish his family anymore. He then does these practices, takes heed of this. I need to heal my land at the same time as farming it. And now his land is living again. So that to me is kind of a wonderful parable. So again, the wisdom of the farmers. It's through the stories and the wisdom of Abebe, that kind of the hope comes forward. Bio Roger Thurow is a journalist and author who writes about the persistence of hunger and malnutrition in our world as well as global agriculture and food policy. He was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal for thirty years, including twenty years as a foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. In 2003, he and Journal colleague Scott Kilman wrote a series of stories on famine in Africa that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Thurow is the author of four books: Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty (with Scott Kilman); The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change; The First 1,000 Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children – And the World; and, Against the Grain – How Farmers Around the Globe Are Transforming Agriculture to Nourish the World and Heal the Planet. He has also been a senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, as well as a Scholar-in-Residence at Auburn University's Hunger Solutions Institute.

Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 9 The real world crashes down on Andy Rook. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. Andy felt an involuntary shiver of delight at her calling him that. He couldn't help himself. But she'd also said she wanted to be "loved like a princess" at the end, and he didn't want to disappoint her, because this memory was going to be seared in her brain. He pulled his hips away, sliding his cock out of her, hearing an unsatisfied whine melting from her lips for just a moment before he flipped her over onto her back, his hand closing around her neck for just a moment, giving it a tiny squeeze, watching her eyes widen as she nodded at him before his hand slipped away from it. Her slender legs lifted up to wrap around his waist, the soft fabric of the stockings smoothing along his skin as he moved to line himself up once more, pushing his cock back into her snatch, hearing those sloppy noises when he did. Her heels were pressed into his body, not letting him pull too far back, as if she didn't want to feel his cock slipping out from her twat even for a moment, so mostly he was just churning his cock inside of her. "Tell me you're at least as half as good a man as you seem like you are," she whispered, his forehead resting against hers. "I try." "Tell me you're going to be a good husband for Sarah, and also for me." "I promise to try my best." "Tell me you'll love me at least half as much as you love her," she said, taking Sarah's limp hand within her own, folding their fingers together. "I'll love you both with all of my heart." "Then kiss me, and cum in me, and we can claim each other. You've made me into such a wanton slut for you, but now make me an honest woman. Make me your honest woman, your slut, your wife or whatever in between. Bring me into your wonderful fucking family. Cum inside of my needy little cunt so hard you feel like I do, like this is all you've ever wanted your entire fucking life. I love you, Andy Rook, I love you so fucking much, so just claim me already!" Her lips shoved against his, one of her hands still holding onto Sarah's, the other squeezing the back of his neck as she clenched onto him with her stocking clad legs, her tongue demanding the presence of his as his body finally could resist no further, and he blasted a barrage of spurts of cum into her twat, a rat a tat series of jets, her feet giving frantic little kicks of her heels against his ass as her body accepted the injection of cum, and the process began, although she stayed locked in a vice around his waist for much longer than he expected her to. Eventually, however, the process did what it always did, and her limbs fell limp and slipped away from him, as she sunk into the bed like a dead weight. She was, naturally, mumbling "imprinting" over and over again, but unlike any of the other women he'd imprinted before now, she had a broad smile from ear to ear on her face while she did, her fingers still intertwined with Sarah's. As much as he wanted to lay down and fall asleep with them, it wasn't even dark outside yet. He glanced at his watch and saw it was barely past 2 in the afternoon. He felt like could just sleep for a short nap if he tried, but his curiosity got the better of him, and so slipped off the bed and moved his way over to the door, standing right at it before he opened it suddenly, swinging it inward, finding Niko and Aisling standing there, big grins on their faces. Niko immediately sprinted past him, her phone in her hand, as she slid up on the bed and immediately took a photo of Emily and Sarah's unconscious faces, framing it so their intertwined hands were framed right in the middle of it. "God, she's smiling while she mumbles!" she said, not lowering her voice at all, because she knew how completely unconscious the two women were. "I've never seen that before. They even wore the Dagger Academy outfits for you. Fuck me, you lucky bastard." "Emily asked her to take a picture of them while they were imprinting, so they could see what they looked like adrift on bliss," Ash said to him, giggling at how wobbly he was standing. "Looks like they did quite a number on you, though. You about to fall over?" "Oh, don't pretend like you weren't listening outside of the door," he grinned. "We weren't, until Emily was yelling loud enough for the whole damn house to hear." Niko moved to pull up a sheet over the two women, then the comforter, to make sure they wouldn't be cold while the vaccine and Andy's semen mixed inside of their bodies, bonding them to him on a cellular level, fundamentally altering their very biology. She slipped back and off the bed, moving back over to Andy. "If you aren't crawling in bed with that mass of pale perfection tonight, then I sure as fuck am," she laughed. "If I'm honest, I think Sarah would be worried if she didn't wake up with me in bed with her and Emily, so I'll come back and crawl in bed with them later tonight. You're both welcome to join me, obviously." "I am physically incapable of saying no to that," Niko said. "Same," Aisling echoed. "But Phil's going to be here in about an hour, so you should probably go and get another shower in. As much as I personally like you smelling like high end perfume and wanton cunt, I think he'd rather you'd washed up first." Andy laughed and nodded. "Yeah, fair enough." "We'll come shower with you," Niko said. "We both want to hear all about the Hollywood additions to our family," Aisling added. "Okay, but if you touch my cock and it breaks off, you two have nobody but yourselves to blame." Chapter 21 When Phil showed up, he looked crestfallen. Andy's first impression was that his friend had bad news for him, but he wasn't sure how bad of news, because Phil looked more bleak than Andy could ever remember seeing him. It was either Phil winding him up for some epic prank, or the kind of horrible news like he couldn't possible even imagine. "Jesus Phil, you look like shit," Aisling said to him. Andy was glad that it wasn't just him who was rattled by his friend's appearance. "Yeah, thanks for that," he grumbled. Phil had bags under his eyes, like he hadn't had a good night's sleep in a week. He gave Charlotte a soft smile, his weary face growing kind for a moment. "Heya, Doc. I hear you're going to be happier with me, so I hope you don't end up regretting that." "Thank you for agreeing to take me in, Mr. Pak," Charlotte said to him as he walked up to the porch. "Andy's a sweetheart, but I'm simply not attracted to white men. You, on the other hand," she said, moving to wrap her arms around him. "I'm going to take you home and gobble you up whole." Phil laughed a little bit at that, leaning down to kiss Charlotte, only for a moment, and clearly not for as long as she would have wanted. "I need to talk to Andy for a little bit first. I'll be back in just a little bit." Now Andy was beginning to get very worried. It wasn't a prank. It was damning bad news of the worst sort. He was starting to wondering if one of their mutual friends had died and he just hasn't heard about it yet. "What's going on, Phil?" he asked him. "Let's go for a walk," Phil said to Andy as Charlotte pulled away from him, starting to load her things into the car. "Yeah, okay." The two men started walking along the side of the house, heading towards the back, when Phil suddenly said "You got a private place we can talk for a bit? Some place where nobody will find us?" "Sure," Andy said, as he led Phil into the house. One of the places that Andy had discovered and kept to himself about the house was that there was a private study with a small balcony. The study was concealed behind a bookcase that popped out to reveal a secret passageway. He hadn't told any of the girls about it yet, simply because it was something he'd discovered on his own, and found it a nice little getaway. He'd only used it once or twice, and never for more than a few minutes, but for the time being it was still his private space. He'd tell the girls about it soon enough, although he was tempted to let them just discover the space like he had. The study had a couch, two chairs and a desk, and the balcony was concealed from the ground level, so that if you didn't know it was there, it would be completely overlooked. On the desk when he'd found it was a simple bottle of incredibly expensive whiskey, two crystal glasses and a note that read "good luck" on it. He still wasn't sure who'd left him the bottle or the note. He didn't recognize the handwriting, and he asked Nicolette about it, and she hadn't known either, although she had known about the presence of the room. She'd been the first to arrive at the house, a day before Katie and Jenny, and three days before Andy had showed up. She'd agreed to keep the room secret for the time being, just to give him a little hideaway. "We going to need a drink for this?" Andy asked him. "Yeah, and don't be skimping on the pour." Andy poured a large glass of the whiskey for Phil, and a smaller glass for himself, holding out the small one to Phil, but his friend reached over and took the lesser glass instead. "You're going to need the bigger one." "I don't drink that much, Phil." "Trust me on this." "Okay. Phil, now you're scaring me. What the hell is going on?" "So let me give you the good news first, so you know that there's something to hold onto," Phil said with a sigh. "They've developed another vaccine, one that can be transported cheaply and is going into mass production, unlike the one you and I have been getting for some time delivered second hand from our partners." Phil shrugged a little. "It's progress, I guess. We'll be getting shots of that vaccine too, and as long as the population goes and gets vaccinated, the quarantine will start to slowly get lifted in about three or four month's time. At this point, Congress is so desperate to keep people alive that they're going to do anything they can think of, what's left of Congress, anyway." "That's great news, Phil! So why are you so glum?" "They're going to announce that vaccine next week, and people should start getting shots in about a month, but with that news, they're going to also release the death tolls, the actual death tolls, and it's very, very bad." "Like, how bad, Phil?" Phil lifted the glass and drank all of the whiskey. He waited for what felt like an hour before he spoke again. "Three million women dead. Eighty million men dead." Andy poured Phil another glass worth, because he didn't even know what to say to that. He could feel his jaw wanting to drop to the floor. "That's, that's over half the men in America dead. How the hell have they been keeping all this quiet?" "Lots of suppression at the hospitals, of the media. Anything they can do to prevent a panic. Shit, I know I'd panic. I am panicking. Fuck, I panic each and every day. I mean, fuck, we're having to do mass cremations just to prevent the whole fucking system from collapsing. Too many people refused the first vaccine and those people each became a Typhoid Mary, infecting thousands of others. Hell, like a third of Congress is dead, although let's be honest, we won't miss most of the fuckers who died there from their own fucking stupidity. Teach them to say the whole goddamn thing will just disappear one day. Fucking morons." Phil was clearly getting angry about the whole thing, not that Andy could blame him. Phil had had a front row seat to all of the political backseating that had gone on for months now, hearing all the mistakes people had been making in the reactions to the virus, and Andy suspected it had been eating away at him. For months now Phil's temper had grown shorter and shorter, and wasn't allowed to talk about it. Hell, Andy was certain Phil wasn't supposed to be telling him any of this, but his friend had clearly boiled over and just couldn't bottle it in any more. Before Andy could say anything, Phil continued. "Why couldn't they just do their fucking jobs, just fucking tell people to stay the fuck at home, and we could've weathered this whole thing with only a couple of thousand people dead instead of this Shit!" Andy was half afraid Phil was going to throw the glass to the ground. "Is it, is it this bad around the world?" Phil shook his head. "Most places took this threat fucking seriously!" he shouted loud enough that he was sure people in the house could hear him, although he doubted they could make out what he'd said. "They hunkered down, bubbled up and took the advice of their fucking doctors! Doctors know more about medicine than braindead politicians! So in the parts of the world not run by fucking morons, we're looking at most countries losing only about five to ten percent of their male population, although there are a few outliers. India has numbers like ours, UK's got about half our losses per capita, maybe more, and China, well, nobody fucking knows what's going on in China, but the working theory is they're about as fucked as we are, if not even more so. Nobody will fucking tell us anything, though. The phone keeps ringing and ringing at their embassy but nobody's answering, so that's fucking scary as shit,” Andy took a deep pull off his whiskey. "Goddamn, who's going to recognize this fucking country once we're on the other side of this? Hell, how does this fucking planet go on from this?" "None of this is public information yet, so don't go talking about it to anyone outside of your household. You're still going to probably get a few more girls added to your household before all of this is done, if for no other reason than to start bringing our population numbers back up. A lot of the surviving males in this country are currently under sixteen. The children, it seems, could handle the virus better than us old farts. The country's going to go through a whole 'Give Birth To A New Generation To Save This One!' campaign soon. It's post World War 2 on crack. Polyamory's going to be the lay of the land with the announcement late next week, encouraging men to be married to multiple women and to be getting them pregnant as soon as possible. They've already got the rewritten laws ready to be passed as soon as the announcement hits. Our generation, the generation before us and the generation after us are all mostly wiped out. Pretty much anyone we went to high school or college with is probably dead." "No wonder it's been impossible to get a hold of people for the last few months," Andy muttered. "There's nobody fucking out there." "Yeah, all of which brings me to the real reason I'm telling you all of this, Andy," Phil sighed. "Conner and Samantha are okay, your mom's fine, but Matty died this morning. I'm so sorry man." Andy didn't know what to say to that, so he took a long draw from his glass of whiskey. "Do you know anything more?" "Shit, Andy, I shouldn't even be telling you this much. I know it was quick and he didn't suffer. He was barely in the hospital 48 hours before he passed," Phil said. "They had him on a ventilator for a bit, but his body just couldn't take it. I know you've often told me you guys weren't all that close, but he was still your brother." Andy wanted to cry, scream and collapse all at the same time, but the varying emotions kept conflicting with one another and he found he couldn't process any of them. "He was nine years older than me, and he went off to college out of state when he was 16. Smartest son of a bitch I ever knew, but that meant I was seven when he left, so we never really bonded like proper brothers." Andy slumped back in his chair. "He was a good man, though. Always called on Christmas, or my birthday, and always trying to find new things I might like. He always told me he was so proud of chasing my dreams and becoming a writer. He was always a little pissed at himself for staying to the safe route, selling real estate and not chasing his dream of working for Nasa and going into space, but his family was so goddamn important to him. Christ, Conner's only eleven and now he doesn't have a fucking father anymore? Goddamn this fucking virus. Do you know how he caught it?" "One of his neighbors was trying to get their storm doors shuttered before a lightning storm and he went out to help them. Apparently caught it from them." Andy sighed, rubbing at his eyes, knowing they could burst into waterworks at any moment, but the shock was still too great. "Typical fucking Matty. Always willing to help out, never quite thinking it through before he did. I assume Sam knows? And my mom?" "They've both been told. Your mom's in intensive care herself, but it looks like she's going to come through it relatively okay. She's on a breather, but she's showing steady signs of improvement. That's why I'm here telling you instead of her telling you over the phone. Sam's a total mess, and said even talking to you would set her off crying all over again. She and Conner will come out okay on the other side." Andy nodded. He couldn't find much more in terms of words. "Well, I guess I'm glad the news came from you, then." The two sat in silence for a couple of minutes. "You going to be alright?" "We weren't close, but he was still my fucking brother, Phil." Andy threw up his hands. "No, I'm not fucking alright. I'm fucked in the head!" He drew in a deep breath, held it as long as he could, then slowly let it out. "It's a fuckload to take in." "I'll come by in a couple of days and make sure you're coping as best you can. We can play poker if you want." Andy laughed a touch bitterly at that. "Let's take a few weeks off from poker, alright?" Phil echoed his laugh, immediately understanding why. "I mean, you're never going to get a prize like that ever again. You're banging Emily Stevens, which I would love to break your legs over, but I can't say I fault you for." "Did you know she and Sarah Washington are already a couple? Like, they were together long before they got here?" "What?!" Phil chuckled, thankful to take Andy's mind off of the pain for even a split second. "No! And you landed them both!" "Well, Emily made sure I landed Sarah and then was delighted to see she came along for the ride. I'm sure she'll tell you the story at some point, but she had more of a hand manipulating things than I think any of us knew, even Niko, who had her fingers in stirring that pot as well." "At least you're going to have plentiful beautiful bodies to drown your misery in." "I suppose. Eventually," Andy frowned. "Right now, I just want to break down crying, and yet I can't feel the tears coming." "You're in shock, man," Phil said, giving Andy a hug. "You're just in shock. There's no one set way to grieve. It'll sneak up on you, or it'll hit you in waves, or it'll just come at you a little bit at a time again and again and again. Nobody can tell you that you're grieving wrong. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you'll get through it, day by day. And tell the girls. Tell them what's going on, what you're going through. Don't hide any of it from them, or try and underplay it." Phil patted him on the back. "You'll get through it, even if we have to carry you through parts of it. That's what friends are for." Andy patted Phil's back in return. "Thanks man. I'm going to sit and have a think for a bit, if that's okay? You know the way back?" "You kidding? Finding your way out of here's got to be easier than finding your way in. You want me to send any of the girls up?" "Nah, I'll be down soon enough and talk to them then." "Got it. Sorry to have been the bearer of bad news." Andy shrugged. "Better you than some stranger." Phil headed back down the stairs and then opened the bookcase door, closing the door behind him, leaving Andy alone with his thoughts. For a good ten minutes, Andy had himself a good cry. He wasn't ashamed of it, he wasn't embarrassed by it, but he needed to let it all out before he could regain his composure. He spent a couple of minutes on the balcony, and he could see Phil's car driving off. He expected Phil had stopped and told the girls the news, and was glad they didn't come racing to try and find him. The sun was starting to set over the tree line, and Andy regretted most of all that he'd never be able to talk to his brother again. He couldn't remember the last time they'd talked, or what they'd talked about. It had probably been about Conner, Matty's son, Andy's nephew. Ash had talked to him a few times via Facetime, and Niko and Lauren had both talked to him just the once, but not for all that long. They'd all looked forward to seeing each other on the other side of the pandemic, something that was never going to happen now. After another ten minutes or so, Andy slipped back down the hallway and opened the bookcase, stepping out, closing it behind him. He wasn't sure he wanted to see anyone, but he also knew that hiding and sulking wasn't good for him, so he wandered down towards the dining room area, since it was getting close to dinner time. As soon as he set foot in the room, Aisling and Niko immediately rushed him, both of them wrapping their arms around him, hugging him tightly, refusing to let him go. "We're here for you, babes," Ash said to him, kissing his cheek. "And we're never letting you go, okay?" "I mean, none of you even got to meet him in person," Andy sighed. "One of the only people who knew me growing up, and he's just, he's just fucking gone." He was trying hard not to cry, but both Niko and Aisling started crying, which set him off as well. He was a bit of a zombie throughout dinner. It was lovely, Jenny had made chicken fettucine alfredo with prosciutto, one of his favorite things ever. But even with the marvelous food, Andy was sleepwalking, shell-shocked from the news. Lauren and Taylor came in later, and obviously either Ash or Niko had called them earlier and told them, because neither of them talked much, other than to check on where Andy's head was at, a question he couldn't really answer. They even made an exception and let Taylor eat sitting at the table, although Lauren still hadn't let her put clothes on. Asha, Emily and Sarah were all still very deep into the imprinting process, and it looked like Piper hadn't finished either, even as they were getting ready for bed, which surprised Andy. His general estimate these days was that the imprinting process took somewhere between 12 and 18 hours, but Piper had been deprived of completing the inoculation and imprinting process longer than anyone was supposed to be, so maybe she needed longer for everything to take hold in her system. When it came time for bed, Niko made sure Andy stripped bare, not letting him grab pajamas, and then Ash pushed him in between Emily and Sarah. Niko then moved to roll Emily partially onto his chest on one side, while Ash pushed Sarah on the other. Then both girls climbed into the bed and also wrapped their arms around him, followed by Lauren and Taylor, until Andy was basically being smothered in girl flesh, all of them hold onto him tight, until everyone fell asleep until morning. Chapter 22 In the morning when he awoke, Andy had expected that the girls would've scattered some around the bed, but instead, found all of them had moved in much closer instead. Sarah's face was against one side of his neck and Emily's face was against the other. One of his hands was folded into Niko's and the other was folded into Aisling's. Amusingly enough, Lauren and Taylor had actually slept toe to head with him, and were hugging his legs and each other. The biggest problem was that he desperately needed to take a piss. He started by drawing his legs in, gingerly slipping them out between Lauren and Taylor's arms without waking either of them. Two down, four to go. Andy slowly drew his hand out from Niko's, skating his arm slowly back towards him, working to roll the two women back, which he found he was able to do without too much trouble. He was about to do the same to Emily and Aisling, but saw that Aisling was awake and gave him a little wink, letting go of his hand and pulling Emily back and away from him enough for him to slip out, standing up, placing his foot on the headboard, using it as a sort of precipice, stepping up just long enough to pivot out and reach the edge of the bed, hopping out of it quietly. Aisling moved to lay Emily against Sarah, then moved to follow him into the bathroom, where he was already sitting on the toilet. They'd long ago gotten comfortable enough to talk to one another while they peed, although she still closed the door behind her, mostly to keep their conversation from waking the others. "Feeling any better?" she asked him. "Still mostly in shock," he sighed. "I mean, it's not just my brother. Basically any of my guy friends from high school or college is likely dead. That's a hell of a thing to lay on a person, and not be able to tell anyone." "Sure, but that's too big a thing to think about, so your brain's focusing on Matty, love," Ash said to him. "And that's okay. He sounded like a great guy, even if you two weren't that close." "He was. I was really looking forward to introducing everyone to him. I don't really have much family left at this point, other than this one, I guess. At least my friend Xander is staying safe back in Cleveland." "You talked to him Monday on FaceTime, remember?" Ash reminded him. "He was giving you shit about watching 'The Ipcress File' again." "God, I have to call him and tell him about all of that mess out there," Andy laughed, standing up, flushing the toilet. "He's probably going to fall down laughing." Aisling grabbed the back of his neck, forcing him to bend down enough for her to kiss him. "Good. Mourn your big brother, but don't lose sight of the good things in your life either. Everyone's taken the day off work today, so everyone will be around if you want to talk or fuck or cuddle or whatever. You should do some of all of that." "You want to hop in the shower with me? There's something else I wanted to talk about with you." "Awright, love," she said, reaching in to turn on the warm water. "What's on your mind?" Andy stepped in and did a little adjustment to the water temperature, turning it down just a little bit. For some reason, most of the girls loved it searing hot, while Andy didn't want it quite so scalding. "So, there are more changes coming with the announcements next week that I don't know if Phil told you about." Ash stepped in to let her fiery mane pass under the water, getting it good and soaked. "Just about the mass US casualties and that your brother was one of them. I immediately called home to make sure all me family was fine, but all my kin's staying boarded up, so they're safe." He moved to wrap his arms around her, holding her in a firm hug. "They're going to change some of the fundamental laws here in the states, and encourage things that would've been heresy just a few months ago. And Phil was encouraging me to think about the future, about what life's going to look like going forward." Ash looked over freckled her shoulder at him with a wry smile. "Sounds like some heavy shit." Andy laughed a little. "I suppose so. The whole polyamory thing is going to be codified in laws, so pods will be actual families and such. Anyway, uh, well, damn, you know I never thought I'd be doing this in my life, but Aisling Blake, will you marry me?" She immediately spun around in his arms and kissed him harder than she ever had before, her body pressing against his like she was afraid if she let go of him, all of this would disappear in a dream. That kiss lasted for a long moment before she finally pulled back, smiling up at him. "So, is that a maybe or...?" She reached around and swatted him on his ass. "Of course I'll marry you, you utter git!" she giggled. "But I do have two conditions that are completely non-negotiable." Andy smirked, tilting his head a little. "If one of them involves you getting to peg me with a strap on, this marriage is over before it's even started." "No, you big dummy!" she said through laughter and tears. "One is that you have to ask both Lauren and Niko today, like today today. If we're going to be an actual family, it's not right that I get to be your wife alone." "Of course," Andy said. "I was going to talk to them over the next few days, but I can make it today. What's the other?" "You have to promise me you won't feel bad if Lauren says no." Andy arched an eyebrow. "You think she'll say no if I ask her to marry me?" Aisling sighed a little. "I think you need to talk to her first. I think she wants to marry Taylor. She loves you, don't get me wrong, but it's a different level of love than what she feels for Taylor. If you bring it up to her, I think she's just going to want to remain your concubine or fuck buddy or whatever, and then her and Taylor get married. But when it comes to soul to soul connection, I think she feels a little guilty that she's not as close to you as Niko and I are, and that's not her fault, not your fault, not anybody's fault. I don't want you to guilt her into this next level." He nodded. "It's okay, there have been signs of that over the last few days. I know she said that she's moving her and Taylor into another bedroom since she gets up so early, but I also feel like it's to give them a bit of space on their own. I'm not mad. I'm genuinely not. I get that. And I suspected that something like this might happen when I saw how angry Lauren got at Taylor's arrival. You have to really care about someone for them to get that far under your skin." Ash squeezed him a little more. "On the plus side, Niko's totally going to say yes. She said she's been suspecting that men were going to have multiple wives sometime soon, so as soon as she finds out that it's happening, she'll fall over herself to accept." He leaned down and kissed her again. "We'll wait for the ceremony until we're on the other side of all of this, but we may want to do all the legal stuff as soon as we're able to." "Mmm," she said. "And then wait for all of us to have one giant ceremony, you and your multitude of wives." "Two's not that many." Aisling giggled again, rolling her eyes. "You're an idiot, you know that, right, love?" "What do you mean?" "Sarah and Emily are absolutely going to demand to marry you as well, and that's just for starters. Who knows how Piper, Asha, Hannah and whoever's next is going to feel?" Andy shook his head. "You're awfully confident that Sarah and Emily will want to marry me." "Of course I am, you daft git," Ash smirked. "I saw how Sarah looked at you yesterday, and, shit, we all heard Emily say as much last night. So you've got at least four wives already in the wings. And I'm never going to say this again, but I'll always know I'm the first," she giggled, kissing him once more. Fifteen minutes later, they were getting out of the shower, and Andy peeked his head back into the bedroom, seeing nobody else had woken up yet, so he quietly grabbed some boxers, some jeans and a t shirt, got dressed, and slipped out into the house. Behind him, he could hear the sound of the hair dryer turning on, even though the bathroom door, and he suspected the other girls would slowly be getting up. The first thing Andy did was walk down the hall and peek his head into Piper's room. She was awake and dressed, having clearly slept for a long time, dressed in a t shirt and shorts, reading the letter he'd left in her room. "I didn't want you just to awaken in a strange home without some idea of what was going on," Andy said, leaning against the doorframe. "You were so out of it that  " She rushed him suddenly, clutching at him in a firm hug. She was crying a little, but the way she was holding onto him said they weren't tears of sadness. "Thank you for rescuing me from that bastard," she whispered. "I woke up a couple of hours ago and have mostly just been reading and rereading this letter you left me." In the letter he'd left in her room, Andy had explained who he was, and how she'd come to be in his home. He'd detailed her experiences with Covington, in case she couldn't remember them, and how he would've like to just taken her away from him and gotten her to choose a man of her liking, but that she had been in such a lust rage that he hadn't had that option. He'd also explained how his arrangement with the staff of the house worked, and that if she simply wanted to have that distant level of engagement with him, he would completely understand. "I'm sorry we had to meet this way, but here we are," Andy said. She turned his head and kissed him, soft, tender, vulnerable, but for a long moment before pulling back. "It's, it's all a lot to take in," she mumbled. "I don't have to make a decision now, do I?" Andy smiled warmly at her and shook her head. "You've got plenty of time to figure out what you want to do here, and how you want to engage with me and the rest of the household. How are you feeling? People aren't supposed to wait that long to get imprinted, so we were a little worried there might be unforeseen complications." "Not that I noticed?" Piper said, still mostly whispering. "Although there's one thing,” "If there's a problem, definitely let me know and I can call my friend at the base. We can have some of the doctors check you out." "It's not a problem so much as just a weird thing,” she said. "I could, I could smell you? Coming down the hall? Like, I knew it was you, because the smell made me feel warm and tingly inside. Like, a little buzzed, in a good way. But it kinda makes it hard to think clearly? Maybe it'll pass. But I feel a definite connection to you, like I'm safe around you? I don't even know you, but I feel safe. How weird is that?" Andy shrugged a bit. "It might just be some part of the imprinting process that's functioning on a deeper level because of what you went through. I don't know. One of the doctors who's responsible for developing the process is now the partner of a friend of mine, so we'll have her check you out." "Is it okay if we wait a few days before we fuck again?" she asked. "I know I have to do it regularly, but I want a few days to clear my head, if that's cool." Andy pulled back and kissed her forehead. "You have at least a week before you'll feel any real need for my cum, and if you're still not ready by then, you can just blow me, or have one of the girls jerk me off into your mouth. Whatever's easiest for you." "Oh, I'm ready to fuck you right now," she laughed. "Maybe it's just the process, but I was ready to fuck you the second I smelled you walking down the hallway, but I want a few more days so I'm not in so much of a daze the first time we fuck. Well, the first time that we fuck that I remember." She had an easy grace about her, a sort of stoic confidence that he had to admit he found attractive. "Your letter makes me sound like I was quite a handful the night you rescued me." "Yeah, you can ask Niko about it, but you basically just pinned me down, climbed on top of me and rode me like I was an oversized sex toy." She giggled fiercely at that, blushing a dark red. "Well, I'm sorry about that, I guess, but, not gonna lie, it also sounds fucking hot. I'll talk to Niko about it." She looked at the room then looked back at him. "So is this my room for good then?" "If you want it to be, or you can move into the master bedroom as well, if you want. And you don't have to do just one or the other. You can have this as your personal room, but sleep in the main bedroom any time you want." She nodded. "Okay, I'll sleep here for the next few days while I'm sorting my head out. I need to call my friends and family and explain what's happened and where I'm at. Is that okay?" Andy gave her another short hug then pulled back. "Absolutely. Do whatever you need to. The letter included a list of everyone who's in the house right now and a short description of them. If you need help finding something, feel free to ask Nicolette. If you're hungry, just tell Jenny what you want and she'll whip something up for you." "Thank you again, Andy. I have a feeling I'm going to be saying that a lot in my life moving forward." "Call your family. We can talk more later." Andy headed out of the room and stepped back into the hallway, heading downstairs, where he found Lauren having a breakfast complete that Jenny had put together for her. Over the next few minutes, while Jenny made him a breakfast burrito, Andy talked to Lauren about her and Taylor. Andy mentioned that he had asked Aisling to marry him. Lauren agreed that she wanted to marry Taylor eventually, but was glad that Andy had asked her nonetheless, and reiterated that while she still loved him, she wasn't in love with him the way she was with Taylor, and she appreciated his being understanding about that. After that, Andy went to go write for a while It helped clear his head, and his two cats seemed to have made his office their regular sleeping spot. Whenever he was there, they moved to sleep closer to him, by his feet, on his legs or nestled into the excess room between him and his chair. A couple of hours later, he saved the file and got up, heading towards the kitchen to get lunch when he ran into Niko, who pulled him aside, saying she wanted to check up on him. They headed into one of the lounges and as soon as they were in the lounge, Niko dropped down to one knee. "Andy Rook, will you marry me?" she said, holding up a small ring box. Inside the box was a simple titanium band with a folded cabling pattern on it. Andy's jaw was on the floor, then he started laughing. "Of course I'll marry you, Niko, as long as you're okay sharing me with Ash, and maybe more." He hadn't even thought to get rings for Ash and Niko, but it was definitely a thing he needed to do soon. "Oh, sharing you is not a problem," she said, kissing him as she slipped the ring onto his finger. "I know Emily and Sarah are definitely going to insist on it. I thought I'd just ask you quick and take the pressure off. I take it Lauren's hitching up with Taylor instead?" "Yeah, I think we all saw that one coming. It's fine." "Is it fine or is it fine?" she asked him. "It's completely fine," Andy laughed. "Genuinely. To be honest, it means one less anniversary present I have to worry about." "I'm torn between wanting my own wedding day and wanting to share it with all the other girls," she teased. "Oh please, god, let me just have one giant ceremony, so that I only have one anniversary to remember," he pleaded, which made her laugh. "Alright, but only because it means I get to watch all of your two starlet fuck-pets' friends look on in jealousy when we're all marrying you." "Wow, are you optimistic," he muttered. "I haven't asked either of them yet, so there's no guarantee  " "Andy. Andy!” They're both gonna say yes. Shit, Sarah might cum just from you asking her, based on how she's been any time I've talked to her about you. I had to avoid telling her I was involved with you, but she was rereading a copy of 'The Trouble With Were Bears' when she arrived at the base." "Why is it the crappiest book in the series sold the most fucking copies?" Andy groaned. "But let me tell you, Emily is one clever lady." Over the next few minutes, Andy explained to her what Emily had done, how she had manipulated all sorts of people to ensure that Sarah would be paired up with Andy in the end, and how she was incredibly thankful to be with her as well. "See?" Niko said. "Emily even said you should marry her, so she's going to definitely say yes. So that's two more. A five person wedding sounds wild, but a lot of fun. You given any thought about talking it over with Piper or Asha?" Andy shook his head. "Piper's awake but I don't want to overwhelm her, so we'll let her get comfortable with the house in her own time, and Asha's too young to be ready to make that kind of decision." Niko tasked him. "You're gonna have to get over that, Andy. She's part of your family now, so the only question becomes how and at what level." "Fine, I won't rule it out, but we're certainly not bringing it up to her for at least a few weeks until after she's settled. I'll talk to Em and Sarah about it over the next few days, since they've both made it extremely clear how they're feeling about it." "And don't forget, you've got Hannah showing up tomorrow." "And we'll see whatever other surprise Watkins has planned with her arrival." The rest of the day was quiet. It had begun raining around lunchtime, and the rain kept falling into the evening, when Andy finally held a group dinner, the entire family having a big meal, using the largest ballroom they had, the banquet dinner table having enough seats for sixteen. With the three on staff, they were at twelve already, so Andy made the decision in his head not to grow the family by more than three more, one of which was already reserved for Hannah. At dinner, Andy told the gathering that he'd proposed to Ash and Niko, which Niko corrected saying that she had done the asking. Regardless of who asked who, Andy told them, the three of them were going to get married eventually, at which point Emily and Sarah had chimed in, asking Andy to marry them as well, to which he immediately agreed. Lauren also told the gathering that she and Taylor had agreed to marry each other, but that didn't mean they were leaving the family. Neither Piper or Asha chimed in, both looking content to wait and see how things moved forward before jumping in feet first. The dinner turned into a sort of get to know each other party, and the girls intermingled a bunch, talking to one another, trying to spend time with everyone, although all of them made a point to come back and check on Andy regularly. He felt weird, being at the center of a party exclusively populated by beautiful women he'd all fooled around with, and they were all getting along. He even saw Niko lean in and kiss Emily, both of them smiling and blushing afterwards. They all talked shit with one another well into the evening and eventually when Andy decided it was time to head up to bed, the girls were still talking and said they would be up to join him in bed eventually. Andy must've looked a little sad at that, because as he turned to head upstairs, Niko and Ash both darted over to walk up with him, and the three climbed into bed and fell asleep together. Chapter 23 The next morning, Andy woke up to a bed far less filled, although certainly just as appealing. Niko had needed to go to the base for the day, so she'd gotten up early, and Aisling had decided to have a nice early day as well, planning to FaceTime her family back in Ireland. That left him sandwiched between Emily and Sarah, who had immediately closed ranks and tightened in on Andy as soon as there was space available. Both of them were awake around the same time that he was, and he awoke to Emily nibbling on one of his ears, Sarah nibbling on the other, each of them smoothing a hand across his hairy chest. "Good morning, Andrew," Emily whispered. Andy shook his head. "Nobody calls me Andrew unless they're mad at me." "We're a little cock mad," Sarah giggled. "Does that count?" "I have to meet Hannah today, and she may want to join the family, so I don't know if I really should." "I'm not sure you could distract us even if you wanted to, Mr. Rook." He grinned a little bit. "I could distract one of you pretty easily." "I somehow doubt that," Emily said, "but you're welcome to try." Andy sat up, and slid out of the bed, a smug look on his face. "Sarah. In the basement living room, the big one with all the couches, there's a box off to the side with the letters ARC on the top. That's got the advance reader copies of 'The Doppleganger's Dilemma,' the next Druid Gunslinger book that's going to finally come out in December. If you want, you can  " He didn't even get to finish the sentence, as Sarah was already darting out of the room in her silk negligee, sprinting towards the stairs, giggling ferociously. Andy turned to look at Emily, who rolled her eyes at him with a matching amused smile. "Touché, Mr. Rook," she said to him, "touché." "How fast does she read?" "She'll be done with it before dinner, I'm sure, but she may forget to eat lunch." "Good lord, what have I done?" he laughed. "Made her very very happy," she said, before looking over at the doorway, seeing Nicolette standing there. "Looks like someone wants to talk to you." Andy waved, grabbing a pair of boxer shorts, tugging them on as well as a t shirt, before walking over to talk with Nicolette, who was, as always, rocking her maid's outfit. "Hey Nicolette, what's up?" "Might I speak with you for a couple of minutes, Master?" she said, her hands folded together nervously. "Hey, I told you, you don't have to call me that," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "But I like calling you that, Master." He shrugged. "Fair enough. Let's walk and talk. I'll see you downstairs in a bit, Em?" "Naturally," Emily said, hopping out of bed, heading towards the bathroom. Andy and Nicolette started walking down the lavish hallway, although Andy did notice she was staying a step or two behind him. It was her decision, and he knew he was going to have to get to used to it, but it still felt weird to him. "What's on your mind?" "Well Master, the rest of the staff and I were talking, and we would like, with your permission, to remain a bit more distant with the family," she sighed. "I know you're trying to make Jenny, Katie and I feel like family, but we very much want to keep our emotional distance from the family, sir, and being invited to dinner felt like a step too far. Katie and Jenny didn't know how to broach the subject with you, and suggested I talk to you, so you understand that we do not mean any malice or discontentment by it, simply that we want to keep that level of detachment." "I understand why Jenny and Katie want that," Andy said, "but you do as well, Nicolette?" She looked up at him and smiled shyly. "Look, Master. I know you're still adapting to all of this, but this is what I want. I don't want you to think of me as a partner. I get off on being submissive and subservient. That turns me on in ways I cannot even being to explain. In fact, the next time you want to gift me with your seed, you should just bend me over, flip up my skirt, tug my panties aside and fuck me without so much as a word. I would find that incredibly stimulating. In fact, I've envied the treatment that Taylor has gotten over the past few weeks more than a little. I had hoped the fact that I prefer calling you Master would've conveyed some of that to you, but it hasn't, so I'm going against my nature and trying to be more direct so you know that treating me as a piece of meat isn't just acceptable, it's wanted, even desired. In my free time, I'll take care of my personal life, and my own mental needs, but it's very important to me that you understand this isn't something forced upon me; it's of my own choosing. Whenever you are feeling like you want to let your dominant streak out, you should think of me first, if none of your wives are in the mood. You cannot be too rough or forward with me. Because that is what I want. Is, is that okay?" He stopped and gave Nicolette a firm hug. "Of course it is. I don't think I realized quite how much it was bothering you, being asked to straddle that line between family and functionary, but now that I know, I can make sure I reserve my most forceful side for you and Taylor." She let out a deeply held sigh of relief. "Oh thank you, Master. I was so worried it would upset you. Because while I love when you fuck me, I'm much happier sleeping alone in my own bed." "No worries, Nicolette. Now I know." "Yes Master. Thank you, Master." "You know, I didn't see Sheridan at all the last couple of days. She wasn't at lunch or dinner yesterday. To be honest, in the chaos of the last few days, I sort of lost track of her, and I feel bad. I need to talk to her and let her see about getting imprinted." "Oh, I don't think you need to worry about her, Master," Nicolette said. "I saw her Tuesday evening and told her about your loss, and she said she didn't want to intrude." "Sure, but she still should've joined us for dinner last night, at the very least." "Well, yesterday around lunchtime, she was complaining to me about starting to feel, ahem, the need, starting to gnaw away at her, so I gave her something to tide her over." Andy suddenly felt the pit drop out of the bottom of his stomach. "What do you mean?" "Well, the rest of the staff and I have kept a bit of your semen bottled up, so we can use it to take the edge off in weeks where you're particularly busy, so I gave Sheridan a bit so she could sip." "Fuck!" Andy shouted. "Which room is she in?" "She's the last room down on the left," Nicolette said, nervousness growing thick in her voice again. "Should, should I not have done that?" "She hasn't been imprinted yet, so basically you primed the process but didn't give her enough for the imprinting to start." Andy had heard from Phil a number of times, over and over again, how important it was to imprint someone quickly after letting them get primed, but Phil hadn't been specific about what would happen if he didn't. Andy had never thought he'd need to find out. "Christ, she's probably out of her fucking mind by now with need. It's going to be Piper all over again." Piper poked her head out of her room as Andy and Nicolette were walking by, heading towards Sheridan's room. "Did I hear my name?" The brunette was wearing a cutoff t shirt and a pair of loose shorts, clearly still in her morning workout gear. Andy stopped and turned back to look at her. "Look, I get that I have no right to ask you this, but I may have a woman in some distress and could probably use a hand, if you're okay with that." "What kind of distress?" "The kind you were in when I first met you a few days ago." Piper nodded solemnly. "You need someone to help you hold down a fuck delirious woman for her own good, got it. Let's go." "Don't hurt her," Andy said. "She's not going to be thinking clearly." "Is it really all that bad, Master?" Nicolette said, as they reached Sheridan's room, the door closed shut. Andy opened it, and Sheridan lay in the center of the bed, completely naked, the bed sheets shredded, ripped to tatters, as the blonde's body writhed and squirmed, whimpering loudly. "Make it stop. Make it stop make it stop make it stop," she kept repeating over and over. He slowly walked across the room, trying not to make any sudden movements, Piper flanking him to one side, Nicolette to the other. "Easy, Sheridan, I'm here now." Sheridan's head whipped suddenly at the sound of his voice, and he could see her lips were dry and cracked, as if she'd been licking them for days. "Andy. Andy. You have to fucking fix this, dude," she groaned. "It's like a horrible itch all over my fucking skin and I can't sleep and I can't think and I can't even walk and if fucking hurts so fucking much,” The room reeked with the scent of her arousal. Piper gasped as they got close enough to see that Sheridan had scratched herself up pretty good, tiny red gashes on her skin along her arms, thighs and belly. Andy was almost nervous to touch her, but Sheridan reached for his hip as soon as he was within arm's length, pulling him closer to her. Her skin was warm to the touch. "Fix this, Andy. Fucking do whatever it takes. Fix this or fucking kill me already." "Whoa!" Andy said loudly. "Nobody's killing anybody." "I haven't slept in a whole day, Andy," she moaned. "And I can't get myself off. It's like I'm stuck on the edge and I can't get myself to cum, and that's not fucking fair. Am I broken?" "You're not broken," Andy said, slowly peeling his sh

Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 8 Like Dying and Going To Heaven.. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. As Sarah was turning around, catching Emily's tiny British form in her arms, lifting her up, spinning her around. "Omigod, Emily!" she said, suddenly hugging her tightly. "I'm totally dead, aren't I? Life is never this fucking good to me. It always goes to shit somehow. Are you really real, bitch?" Emily giggled, infectious and warm, her voice posh within an inch of its life. "I am absolutely here for all of it, Sares!" She gasped, and then begin to giggle even more. "No way!" There was something about a posh English accent and the way it sounded saying a long O sound that sent delicious chills up Andy's spine. She'd just turned thirty less than a few months ago, but still had a very vibrant youthful exuberance to her. He knew there were angry, jealous men all across the world hating him right now who had grown up watching Emily Stevens grow up on film. She had begun starring in movies just barely in her teens where she'd played the book smart love interest of the protagonist of a series of sci fi bounty hunting school movies called "The Dagger Academy." After those, she'd gone on to try a number of various arthouse roles, trying to shake being forever associated with the role of Dahlia Hairtrigger, but she hadn't had the best of luck. "Are you serious, Sares?" she said, while the large redhead continued to bearhug her. "We're together forever? And we're really going to get paired up with your Mister Big?" "Mister Big?" Andy said, his eyebrows raising high. "Oh, hasn't she told you yet?" Emily giggled, that laugh forcing him to smile, no matter how much he felt off guard. "You're at the top of her List." "List?" Sarah put Emily down and turned to look at him, her face having gone nearly as red as her hair. "Gosh, fuck me, how do I even say this?" she said, looking down at her feet suddenly, as if trying to look at him while talking was making it even more complicated. "Em, can you tell him? I'm fucking scared now, that it's gonna freak him out or some shit." Emily's deep blue eyes twinkled. She was wearing a big blue DKNY t shirt over a pair of capri pants, a bright diamond bracelet on one wrist, a silver teardrop pendant hanging down from her neck. Her skin was pale like alabaster, her blonde hair hanging just past her shoulders in wavy blonde curls, her lips bright red with freshly put on lipstick. "I'll tell him, but we're fine, Sares, we're fine we're fine we're fine we're fine. Trust me on this! Em knows best." Emily squeezed Sarah's hand in her own, walking back over to Andy, almost leading Sarah along behind her, like she was a naughty child with her hand caught in the cookie jar. "Most people have a hall pass list, you know," she said, her voice again doing that thing with the O sound that sent goosebumps along his skin. "It's supposed to be a list of people you can fuck at any time, and your partner just gives it a wave." She had a coy smile on her face, as she brought Sarah back within reach of Andy. "Well, you are the top person on Sarah's list, Andy Rook, or should I say, Mr. Blake Conrad?" "You're, you're a fan of my writing?" Andy said, almost unable to bring himself to force the words from his mouth. "My writing? The Druid Gunslinger books?" "Tell him about OmegaCon, Sares," Emily said, nudging the much taller girl in the ribs. Emily was nearly a foot shorter than Sarah, and while both were fit, Emily was slender like a ballerina, while Sarah almost seemed more like an Amazon warrior. There were rumors that Sarah had been in consideration for the Wonder Woman role, but that her tendency to swear and be adorkably awkward at press junkets had kept her out of the role. "If you won't tell him, I will," she teased. "Oh fuckbeans, you totally would, wouldn't you, bitch?" Sarah hissed, closing her eyes, wringing her hands together. "So I was totally at your fucking panel at OmegaCon last year, in September." "I highly doubt that," Andy said. "I can't imagine an actress like you wouldn't have turned every head in the room the minute she walked in. I would've definitely remembered." "I was,” she mumbled before Emily prodded her again, a wide impish grin on Emily's adorable English face. "I was in costume, okay? Emily and I wanted to be able to just walk around the convention like normal people, so we were cosplaying so nobody would recognize us. I was in a Chewbacca costume, and I got up in the Q&A line and asked you if you ever imagined actors when you were writing your fiction." "No!" Andy said, gasping suddenly. "See, I told you he'd fucking hate me, Emily?" Sarah said, looking like she was about to cry. "And you said you totally imagined actors for every fucking character you'd ever written, like casting them and everything or whatever. And then you said,” "I said I'd always sort of seen Christian Kane playing the Gunslinger himself." She nodded. "Do you remember what else you said?" Andy tilted his head, struggling to remember whatever else he might have said, but he'd done half a dozen conventions last year, and many of the Q&A sessions blended together. "I don't. Oh god, I'm so sorry, what did I say?" "You said that you'd imagined Olivia Munn playing Doctor Erika Shirow and, and Sarah Washington, I mean, me, playing Layla Heartseye, the Elven barbarian queen," Sarah said. "We spent three days at the convention in costume, but had to leave early right after your panel finished," Emily said, "because she took me back to our hotel room after that and masturbated for nearly an entire hour, thinking about you saying that. She still has the video of you answering her question on her phone. I was recording your answer for her. I was dressed as Greedo, by the by." Emily pulled Sarah in even closer. "She's been trying to get her agent and your agent to set up a meeting for a year now, so she could talk to you about the book rights, and if she could play Layla Heartseye, but I've always thought she was really just doing it so she could get into your pants." "One of us definitely needs to fire our agent then," he muttered. "No way in hell I'd have turned down that meeting." "Wait, are you two, together?" Aisling said, pointing at the two actresses. "We are," Emily said, beaming proudly, "but we both enjoy more than a bit of cock as well, so we're known to dally outside of each other." "I thought you were with that director," Andy said to Sarah. "Dennis Jacobson." "That was totally over fucking years ago," Sarah said, still unable to lift her head up, her eyes fixated on Andy's feet. "And I thought you were with that soccer player," Andy said to Emily. "Georgie Stewart." Emily waved her hand in the air at him, her smile unwavering in its million watt intensity. "That was done with long ago. I did go on a couple of dates with Jeff DeHavelin last year, but it turns out, he is utterly prudish, and that I simply cannot abide by. He doesn't even go down on partners! How do people like that even live today? But now we're going to be with you for the rest of our lives, so that doesn't matter!" She clapped her hands together excitedly, as the limo driver set the last of Emily's four suitcases on the porch. "I, for one, couldn't be more excited! How about you, Mr. Rook? Or may I call you Andy?" Aisling was struggling not to erupt into a fit of giggles, but it was getting harder and harder for her to contain it all in, as she was mostly just shaking, threatening to burst out before she finally forced the words out of his mouth. "Tell her, Andy!" The words were a struggle, the laughter seeping into all of them. "You've gotta fucking tell her." Andy sighed, realizing there wasn't anything that could embarrass him at this point. "Sarah," he said, smoothing his fingertip along her chin, forcing her to tilt her head up and look at him. "You're number one on my list." "No fucking way. You're fucking making fun of me, aren't you?" Sarah, her blue eyes welled up with tears, as if she'd thought Andy was actually going to send her away. He leaned in and kissed her, trying to put as much emotion into it as she had when she'd kissed him earlier. "Number. One. With a bullet. Sarah. Washington." "He's not kidding," Erin groaned. "Ever since he saw you twelve years ago in that movie where you were a quirky airline co pilot. I'm his ex girlfriend. Believe me, I know. He watched that movie like a dozen times in the theater." "You saw 'Airway Mishaps'?" she whispered, wrapping her arms around him again, but still extremely shy. "That's super fucked up. Nobody fucking saw that movie." "You got nominated for an Oscar for it, Sares," Emily said, smoothing one of her hands along Sarah's back.. "That means tens, maybe even hundreds of people saw it." Niko giggled a little at Emily's teasing. "And I'm sure he's too old to be a fan of the Dagger Academy movies, so I'll just have to make him fall for me the old fashioned way." Niko cleared her throat, devilish amusement on her face, and Andy glared over his shoulder at her. Oh, how he wanted to bend her over his knee right now and paddle her ass red. "Omigod, I'm on your list too?" Emily said, giggling all over, blushing herself this time. "I had no idea! I assumed you were far too old to grow up with the Dagger Academy films." "He fell for you in 'The Last Graverobber,' where you played that heiress," Aisling said. "Although he did eventually watch the Dagger Academy movies after that. He'd never seen them before last Christmas, although we rewatched them together a few months ago. He said it was still a little strange seeing you so young in the first one. So while he didn't grow up on them, he's familiar with your work. You're number three on his list." "Who's number two?" Emily said, putting her hands on her hips in mock annoyance. "Alice Karteaux," Andy said. "I mean, after 'Winding Bullets,' anyone who isn't aroused by her isn't anyone I want to know." "Oh, that's totally fine," Sarah said, her hands starting to slide along Andy's back. "She's on Emily's list as well, so the slut can't say shit about you wanting to bang her." "Well, you're not on my list, Andy," Emily said, "but that doesn't mean I'm not going to fuck your brains out, all the while having my best girl by my side. So let's get to it." "What, now?" Andy said. "I'm not sure she's going to let go of you until you do, babe," Emily said, taking one of his hands in hers. "She's read every book you've written a dozen bloody times. She even found that silly porn story you wrote on the internet under a pen name earlier this year." "You read that? You found that?" Sarah nodded, finally getting her tears under control. "I recognized the sentence structure." "My, sentence structure?" "It's a very distinct sentence structure," she giggled. "Plus, like, there's a fuckton of swearing, and you have that in all your writing." "Not that much," he laughed. "Oh shut the fuck up already," Sarah said, smiling against his neck. "Take the win." "Okay, look, why don't you two go upstairs and get settled in the master bedroom, and I'll be up in just a little bit, and we can see about getting you two imprinted, since you both seem to want that," Andy said. "I apparently need to talk to Mr. Watkins briefly, so head up and I'll be along in just a few." "Okay," Emily said, trying to pull Sarah from her grasp on Andy. "C'mon, Sares, let's go upstairs." "Can I kiss him one more time before we go?" "It's going to be just a few minutes, babes." "Please?" Emily rolled her eyes, smiling. "Fine. One more kiss." Sarah locked lips with him once more, and Andy could feel her nipples hard as rocks pressed against his collarbone through the blouse. Eventually she pulled back and away from him, although her arms were the last thing to release him. "Don't keep us waiting long, okay?" she said to him. "You owe us at least two good fuckings. One good fucking for me, and one good fucking for her. Because we are not getting out of that bed until we get fuh uh uh uh ucked. Got it?" Emily started pushing her into the house, rolling her light blue eyes. "He's got it, Sares, now let's gooooooo." She was about to head into the house, then turned back, darted over to Andy, threw her arm around his neck and kissed him fiercely, grinding her hips against him before she pulled back, giving him a saucy little wink, slapping his ass on the way back. "I couldn't bear the thought that you might've thought that I didn't want this just as much as she does. Don't dilly dally or we'll start without you." She gave him a playful little wave and then skipped into the house. Andy turned to glance over at Aisling and Niko, who were gossiping between themselves. "They're gonna be so much fun, aren't they?" Ash said to Niko. "I didn't talk that much to Sarah, but I've spent quite a bit of time chatting with Emily, and she is a hoot," Niko said. "I kinda love her." "Oh, I'm sure you'll get your chance." Andy turned to see Watkins standing at the bottom of the stairs, so he walked down to meet him, even as he saw Watkins' limo driver loading Erin's bag into the limo. Erin had apparently gotten into the limo at some point while he'd been talking with Emily and Sarah. "Careful with that one," Andy said, his voice quiet enough that the conversation was just between the two of them. "I'm not saying she's a gold digger but,” "But she ain't messin' with no broke," Watkins said, laughing a little bit. "I hear you. I think she'll be alright, though. She'll have her own little staff to boss around. Maybe having her own private fiefdom will tamp down her more destructive urges." "For your sake I hope so." "So, we have one more matter to discuss I'm afraid, Andrew." Watkins sighed, shaking his head a little. "I'm afraid I can't bring you Deborah Barnes, and for that I'm truly sorry. My son, it seems, imprinted her while I was at the poker game. I can't tell you how furious I am with him." "Hey, it's okay, Nathaniel," Andy said, almost a touch relieved. "This is already a lot of women to keep track of, so I'm not angry about having one less." Watkins shook his head. "Except that I can't let my son go unpunished for this kind of transgression. If the damn kid doesn't learn that he can't go around doing whatever he wants, that's exactly what he's going to do, so what I'm going to do is have him bring the next woman assigned to him over here and have him give her to you." "Nathaniel," Andy tried to interrupt, "that's really not  " "It absolutely is, Andrew. He's nearly eighteen, and if he doesn't learn now, then when?" It was clear Watkins was violently unhappy with his son over all of this. "His refusal to follow agreements doesn't just reflect on him; it, more importantly, reflects upon me, and once the other men in this community find out, if I haven't come down hard on the boy, they're going to think I'm soft. I cannot abide that." "How would they even know?" "Because! Because, Andrew!" Watkins said, throwing his hands up into the air. "Because he likes to strut around town like he earned my wealth, not me! All it would take it for one of our little poker friends to see Deborah with him and they'll know something is amiss and the gossip will start. I'm going to get ahead of this, and will tell our fellow players all about it before they find out inadvertently. Later this week, my son is going to be delivered a girl he has been lusted after for nearly a year now, and then he's going to have to immediately march her over here and present her to you, as means of apology." Andy sighed, trying to figure out what to say next and failing a few times before finally deciding to stop resisting. It was clear Watkins mind was made up. "Is the lady going to be okay with this? I'm sure she'd much rather have a teenage boy instead of, well, me." "She'll probably be relieved, if I'm honest, Andrew," Watkins said, lowering his voice a bit. "She was Benny's AP Trigonometry tutor last year, and has been helping him with remote tutoring this year for AP Calculus. She was supposed to be a freshman at Stanford this year, but what with the campus closed down, they haven't started classes up, so she'll be going next year when they reopen. I think my son may have hit on her a few times, but she'd declined his advances, so you taking her in is in her best interests, as well as yours and mine. I suppose the people on the base thought they were doing me a favor by assigning her to my son, knowing his lusts for her. They weren't, and hopefully this will discourage them from helping my son any in an attempt to broker favor with me. My son will have something both for you and for her with him as well when they show up Friday, on the 6th." "Okay, well, if she doesn't want to be with him, we can see if she wants to be with me instead." "She will, Andrew," Watkins said, a hint of amusement in his voice. "She likes older men. She hit on me once during The Before Times, but back then I believed I was a one woman kind of man, and I didn't want to hurt my son's feelings. She is, quite beautiful, and obviously very smart. She likes intelligent, strong willed, dependable men. She might be initially fooled, as I was, by the appearance of meekness you can give off on first impression, but I'll tell her in the car ride over that you're not a man to be underestimated. Covington's made that mistake. I have as well. I won't let my son do the same." He tilted his head to one side. "I suppose it would be too much of me to ask for you to make him , watch as you imprinted her?" "God yes! Nathan! Jesus, how can you even suggest such a thing?" Watkins sniffed, clearly disappointed. "Fine, fine. Then I insist you open and read the envelopes that Benny, that's my son's name, will be bringing with him when he shows up on Friday. Make sure he stands there as you tell him exactly what's in them." "What is in them?" "A little bit more punishment for him, and a little more compensation for you," he said. "I won't let you refuse me this, so you'll just have to abide by it, but once you accept the envelopes and Hannah, that's the girl's name, once you accept all of that, I will consider the boy's debt paid in full. I'm sure he's going to bitch and moan about it, but the little brat is lucky I didn't just throw him out on his ear, out of both the family and New Eden. But he is my only son. Maybe I've simply been too lenient in the past, and it is time for him to get the stick instead of the carrot." "Family's a bitch," Andy said. "Indeed it can be." "Nate, I want to leave!" Erin said, poking her head out of the back of the limo. "Can we go now?" "I've made a horrible mistake bringing her into my house, haven't I?" Watkins said, giving Andy a pained smile. "Give her her own wing of your mansion and some staff to boss around, like you said you were going to, and you'll probably be fine," Andy said, shaking the man's hand. "Just don't let her think she's in charge of the rest of your wives. Give her an inch and she'll take every mile she can." "You're too good for this place, Andrew," Watkins said, returning the shake. "May this nest of vipers never break your noble spirit." "You say that," Andy laughed, "but I've got to go upstairs and fuck two people off People Magazine's Top 100 Most Beautiful People list at the same time after we're done here, so if this is a nest of vipers, I gotta tell you, they spared no expense on the gilding." Watkins laughed with him, heading towards the limo. "I'll see you on Friday, then. I'll bring Benny and Hannah over myself, just to make sure he doesn't try and screw this up too." "They never would've worked together anyway," Andy said, as Watkins stopped at the limo and looked back. "Benny and Hannah? People would've been making horrible Japanese steakhouse jokes at their expense non stop their entire lives." "God, you're right," Watkin said, a wide smile on his face. "I can't believe I didn't even think of it before now." He started to get into the back of the limo, sitting down next to Erin, shaking his head. "Benihana's. Fuck me." And then he closed the door and the limo drove off. That left Andy with Niko and Aisling, who had been watching the whole time. "I live the weirdest life on the planet," Andy said to them, walking back up the stairs. It looked like each of the girls had taken one suitcase with them, but left three more each on the patio. "Guess I'd better haul these in." He started to move towards the suitcases, but Aisling had stood up already and stepped in between him and them. "Nah, we got it, Starfucker," she said, pushing him by the chest. "You've gotta go lock in those two beauties before they run off." "Yeah," Niko said, moving to stand next to Aisling, blocking Andy's path to the suitcases, leaving only the door inside the mansion as his exit. "I wanna a turn in the sack with Emily, but you need to make her part of the family first." "Someone's got a crush, I think," Ash said, nudging Niko in the ribs. "Are you kidding?" Niko said. "Seeing her in that fourth Dagger Academy movie, 'Castle of Galaxies,' when she was in that evening gown for the school ball,” She shook her head, a little embarrassed smile on her face. "Well, that's when I realized I was bi." "Maybe if you ask her really nicely, she'll wear the gown for you, love," Ash said to Niko, who visibly shuddered with excitement, playing out the moment in her head. "Go on, go!" Niko said to him. "We'll crash in another room for the night if we have to, so you damn well better not come out of that room until both of those girls are imprinted, or I will beat the living shit out of you." "Yes ma'am, 2nd Lieutenant Red Wolf," Andy said, mocking a salute, which made her smack him on the shoulder. "God, I hope I don't get performance anxiety." "You're not the third guy in 'History Of The World Part I,' Andy," Niko said. "He is a eunuch," Aisling said, acting out the bit. "He is a eunuch," Niko said, continuing it. "He is Dead," the two girls said together, collapsing into a fit of giggles. "Now go in there and give those two beauties the best fucking orgasms of their lives," Aisling said, grabbing one of his belt loops on his jeans, yanking him towards the doorway. "How did I ever get so lucky?" he said, kissing Niko, then Aisling. "By being the best damn man any of us have ever met," Niko said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I love hearing you say that. I'm sure it's not true, but thanks." "It is," Ash said, "but we're not gonna stand here all night stroking your ego. If you don't go upstairs and fuck those two lucky bitches senseless right now, I'm going to have Niko kick your ass." "Okay! Okay!" Andy laughed. "I'm going, I'm going!" He hadn't been entirely joking about the possibility of having trouble getting it up, not because he didn't want to, but because he still considered himself way below their league. Each step through the hallway, up the stairs and down the other hallway were slightly plagued with nervousness. But all that of that was dropping away with each step, as he remembered that kiss from Sarah, how intense and inviting it had been, and that minx like smile of Emily's, toying and yet also welcoming, maybe even laced with a hint of thankfulness. A few hours ago, he'd been terrified that he'd end up striking an adversarial relationship with these two supremely talented actresses, and now he was worried that he'd not live up to their expectations. Their expectations. Of him. The life he lived was not meant to be believed. As he got to the door to the bedroom, he cocked his head, finding the door closed, something rather uncommon in the house. He'd never felt the need to close the master bedroom door before now, so he thought this might even be the first time he'd seen the door actually closed. He was about to knock on the door, his hand raised, about to rap his knuckles on the wood, when he looked at his own hand quizzically. "The hell am I doing?" he muttered to himself and then moved to open the door. There, on the bed, were Sarah and Emily. They were locked in a kiss, Emily sitting on Sarah's lap, the tiny girl's hands tugging ever so slightly on the unbraided portion of Sarah's red locks, their lips pressed together heatedly, making out as though they hadn't even heard him enter. They'd also changed clothes since he'd seen them just a little bit ago. Both girls were dressed in white Oxford button up shirts, violet and purple neckties loose but still hanging around their necks, black skirts that hung down to the middle of their thighs, black thigh high stockings with violet and purple trim at the top of them clinging to their legs. They looked a little like British private school uniforms, but Andy knew that specific color code of trims. They were Dagger Academy uniforms. The Dagger Academy movies had been oddly huge successes, following five different students growing up through several years of a bounty hunter college, set in a land "across the stars." The first one had been expected to do alright, but the five lead actors, one of which was Emily, had all been so winningly charming, that audiences had looked past the sometimes clunky special effects and fallen in love with the story. From the time she was thirteen until she was twenty three, Emily had starred in six Dagger Academy movies, and all said and done, they'd grossed over a billion dollars. He was more than a little surprised she was wearing the school outfit from it now. He'd figured she'd never want to even think about those films again, considering how much of her life they had eaten up. "Oh, Professor Rook," Emily said, looking over her shoulder at him, still grinding a little bit against Sarah. "Miss Heartseye and I seem to have been bitten by a, what was it?" She nudged Sarah. Sarah giggled a little, licking her lips, her blue eyes fixated on him like she wanted to eat him alive. "By a roxtreaux beast," she purred. "It's so fucking hard to think straight right now, Professor." Andy's eyes widened a little bit. She hadn't been kidding. She actually had found that story he'd written early on in the pandemic, months before even Aisling had come into his life. After about two months of quarantine, Andy had gotten frustrated with trying to work on another Druid Gunslinger novel, and had decided what the hell, to write a bit of porn fanfic, just to flex his writing skills, something to take his mind off of the whole lockdown. He'd written a bit of fanfic set in the Dagger Academy series, sometime after the last movie, when Dahlia Hairtrigger's boyfriend had died heroically saving the galaxy, leaving her to go her last year at the Dagger Academy alone. He'd introduced a new friend to Dahlia, a woman named Raven Doomeye, but he'd clearly described the character very much like how Sarah actually looked. In the fanfic, the two bounty hunter students had been out on a wild hunt after a target, who'd sicced a herd of wild roxtreaux on them. The roxtreaux, as he'd written it, disarmed their prey by injecting them with an aphrodisiac venom that fogged their minds with lust. It had mostly been an excuse to write a bit of porn using a handful of his favorite actresses, starting off as a lesbian scene between Hairtrigger and Doomeye until a member of the school faculty, Professor Deathwhisper, came to save them. Deathwhisper was an invented character as well, and he'd modeled her after Alice Karteaux. He'd thought about introducing a male proxy for himself in the story, but decided just to let it lie as it did, posting it to some random corner of the internet under some silly name he'd made up. He'd never expected anyone to actually read it. It seemed like both Emily and Sarah had read it, but read that story very well, because they had the details down to a tee, even going to far as to have Emily's shirt with a jagged rip just above her waist on one side, a rip in Sarah's left stocking just above the ankle, both the places where the roxtreaux had bitten them in the story. Emily turned on Sarah's lap, her back to her girlfriend's chest, rolling her hips in his direction, that skirt still concealing most of her legs from him. "You have to help us, Professor," Emily whimpered. "I don't want to die here on this desolate rock, before I've even finished school." She raked her nails along the back of Sarah's neck, her other hand smoothing along one of her own thighs, tugging a little on that skirt, as if she was torn between trying to pull it down or up. "But I feel so very strange, like parts of my body are on fire. My naughty parts especially." "Well, Miss Hairtrigger, the only antidote to roxtreaux venom is to ride it out," Andy said, stepping into the room, closing the door behind him. He tried to affect a British accent, but immediately abandoned it, deciding just to stick to his own voice. "Vigorous exercise will help, as it encourages the body to fight off the neurotoxins." Emily nodded, her face a contorted mix of fear and lust. "Just tell us what to do and we'll do it, Professor. Whatever it is! You're our only hope." "Just remain there for the moment, and I'll begin administering some treatment," he said, moving to the edge of the bed, sliding down onto his knees, as he made sure both Sarah and Emily had their legs spread, his hands slowly pushing up Emily's skirt, revealing that alabaster flesh of her thighs before exposing that she hadn't put on panties, a small brownish triangle of curls atop her dripping wet cunt. A lesser man might've thought Emily dyed her blonde locks, but Andy knew better, himself a blonde (when he wasn't shaving his head, which was almost never these days) with brown pubic hair. "Remember, whatever you feel, it's perfectly natural," he said, as he lowered his lips down to flick his tongue along her snatch. "Oh. OH. OH my!" she groaned, her hips pushing up towards his face, as he sunk two fingers inside of her cunt, his tongue continuing to draw shapes along her clit. "Fuck, Professor! You're, quite the cunning linguist!" Andy almost wanted to groan at the pun, but decided instead to focus on the work in front of him. When Emily had said her last boyfriend hadn't gone down on her, Andy had almost taken offense to that, and decided it was going to be the first thing he did with her. He could feel her body squirming and writhing against his face, her hands moving to hold onto his head. Her whole body erupted in a quick spasm when he dragged the soft hairs of his goatee across her clit, her thighs clamping on his ears for a moment. She kept him pinned there for several seconds before she relaxed a little bit, whimpering in tiny little chipmunk squeaks. "Fuck, sir, that was amazing," her British tinged voice purred at him. "I've never cum so quick before. You're very good at that,” He looked up from between her thighs, noticing that somewhere in the middle of it, Sarah had unbuttoned Emily's shirt, opening it, although the tie still remained dangling around her neck, resting between her small, pert tits. Emily brought a hand up, folding an arm across her chest, a touch self consciously. "They aren't as large as they should be, sir, I know," she said, looking down. He couldn't tell if she was still playing a part, or was genuine nervous about how he might look at her body. He wanted to put that to rest as quickly as possible. Andy stood up, moving in closer, lifting Emily's chin up, turning her eyes back to his, as he pressed a kiss to her lips, letting her taste herself on his face. "You are perfect exactly as you are," he said, "both of you." He moved to one side and leaned in to kiss Sarah, as he felt Emily's hands unbuttoning his jeans. "Any man who's told you that you need bigger tits can come tell me, and I will beat him to a pulp before of your very eyes, or fall trying." "Can we have more, sir?" Emily asked. "Of you?" Sarah nodded enthusiastically. "I fucking want some too. My brain's on fucking fire." "Alright, but let me tell you this," Andy said, trying to weave his knowledge about the vaccine into the storyline they were playing out. "Whoever goes first in getting a dose of serum will be completely unable to help the other when it comes to her turn. Once you get your dose, you will, ah, go into a healing coma, which will burn the last of the neurotoxin from your system. You two are such close friends, you should decide who you want to get dosed first, and whom you want to go second." He took a step back and Emily slid off Sarah's lap, moving down onto her knees in front of him, before she pulled the giant redhead down to join her. They made such a contrast, the blonde and the redhead, the pixie and the amazon, but the one commonality they shared was that utter adoration they had for him in their eyes. Emily tugged his baggy jeans and boxers down to his knees, letting his thick cock spring free and slap Sarah in the face, causing the redhead to giggle fiercely, her nose scrunching up in amusement. "Quite the weapon you wield, professor," Emily said, reaching up to give his fat cock a soft stroke, moving it to keep it away from Sarah's lips. "I heard a rumor from a member of the faculty, Professor Red Wolf, sir. About the very first taste of the serum. Is it true? Let's find out!" she said with a giggle. At that, Emily held onto his cock by the base with one hand, her other hand moving to grab Sarah's head, pushing the redhead's mouth onto his shaft, that large dollop of precum dripping onto Sarah's tongue as soon as her lips enveloped his cock. The minute that precum hit her tongue, Sarah's hands clamped onto his hips, and her body immediately began vibrating like she'd just been hooked up to a car battery, her blue eyes rolling back into her head as a gurgling moan chirped in staccato bursts of sound that buzzed along his cock, her lips refusing to give even a millimeter of space between them and him. After several seconds, Sarah's breathing resumed a more normal rhythm and she forced her blue eyes open once more, looking up at him, tears at the edges of them, as she slowly pulled her head back to let her lips pop off his cock. "Oh. My. Fucking. God," she whispered. "What the fuck was that, Emily? What the fuck just fucking happened? How did that make me cum so fucking hard? I'm still fucking shaking. What the literal fuck?" Emily giggled again. "Oh my god, it's true, it's actually fucking true. Let me have my first taste," she said, cradling his balls with one hand, stroking his shaft with the other, coaxing another droplet of precum to the tip of his cock. As soon as that milky white pearl emerged, she pushed her mouth over the head of his cock, not taking it deep, mostly just keeping the first few inches past her lips as her tongue swiped along the tip of his cock, gathering up that taste. As soon as her tongue lashed along that dollop, he felt her tiny body lock up, her finely manicured fingernails sinking hard into his ass, her eyes looking up at him, almost in deification, worshiping the sight of him while the orgasm shredded through her, Sarah looking on, somewhere between concern, fascination and jealousy. "Is it, is it always like this?" Sarah asked him, as Emily finally started to come down from her initial taste, both women now primed to him. "The first orgasm is always the strongest," Andy said to her, his hand stroking along the top of her head, as she turned to look up at him. "Other than the imprinting orgasm, which all the girls have described as something unlike anything they've ever encountered. But I think Ash told me that all of her orgasms now are about ten times stronger than they were in the Before Times. Niko and Lauren both said that was about right. Niko's said a number of times that she never knew what cumming was like before me." He chuckled softly. "I wish I could say I was that good, but I think it's mostly the vaccine." "Less men, better orgasms, the new world has so much to offer women,” Emily moaned, reaching over to unbutton Sarah's shirt. Neither girl had put on a bra, and Andy was a little surprised that Sarah's tits were plumper than he'd thought, rounder and fuller with large aerolas and stiff pink nipples standing at attention. She'd never done a nude scene before. Neither of them had. And now, here they both were, in a half state of undress. "Sares, do you want to go first?" "Totally, but I don't fucking know if I can, Emily," Sarah said to her. "But I think I fucking have to, I think I have to fucking go first, so I'm fucking locked in, so I can't back down. I'm just fucking scared I won't be good enough for him, that he won't fucking love me like I fucking love him. He's, like, my fucking hero, as a writer." Andy wanted to point out that both of the women were already completely locked in now, having gotten a taste of his semen to prime them for imprinting, but was afraid that might make things even more awkward for them, so he kept quiet. "It's okay, Sares, it's fine, it's fine, it's absolutely fine," Emily said to Sarah. "I'll be with you the entire time. Here, I know what we can do." She stood up again, pulling Sarah to her feet with her. The two of them moved around Andy's body, turning him around so his back was towards the bed, then Emily pushed him sharply, forcing him to fall onto the bed face up. "Climb on top of him." "Emily, I'm, I'm not fucking sure,” Emily stepped in behind her and slipped one of her hands up and under Sarah's skirt, rubbing her hand against the redhead's cunt beneath the fabric, obscured from Andy's view. "Sares, you are literally drenching my hand right now. You nearly fingered yourself until your hand dropped off after that time at the convention, and now, here he is, the man you wanted, and he's told you, quite explicitly, that he wants to fuck you. Now get out of your own way and climb atop that cock of his. This is your favorite dream. Look at him." Her other hand reached up and grabbed Sarah's hair, forcing her to look at him, while Emily carried on, her posh English accent almost making her seem even more dominating. "He wants you, you daft bitch. He's probably jerked off thinking about you, haven't you, Andy?" Andy reddened a little bit, then nodded. "More than a few times." "You see?" Emily's grip in Sarah's hair loosened a little bit, and Andy could see the lust building up behind Sarah's dark blue eyes, rising up to meet the levels of love already present there. "I'll do you one better. I'm going to give you to the count of five to get on top of the love of your life, and if you don't, I'm going to fuck him first, a fact I will surely lord over you for the rest of all our days." "Oh my fucking god, you totally would, wouldn't you, you bitch? The number one person on my 'I Wanna Fuck So Bad' list, and you'd totally fuck them before me, wouldn't you? I so fucking hate you right now!" "Five,” "You know I'd totally hate you, like, forever and longer." "Four,” "Four?! It was just, like, five, only a second ago." "Three,” "Oh no you fucking don't," Sarah said, tugging Emily's hand out from under her skirt. "You can have him after I've fucked him. He's mine first." Sarah slowly peeled away from Emily and moved one knee up on one side of Andy's thighs, bringing the other up to straddle him, leaning over him, her heavy tits swinging beneath her, her eyes holding on his face. "That's okay, isn't it, Andy?" she said, bending down to kiss him. "That I want to be here?" She kissed him again. "With you?" Again, only longer. "That I love you?" She wriggled her hips, and he could feel her reaching down beneath her skirt to grab his cock, rubbing the tip of it along her cunt. "That I wanna fuck you?" Emily peeled off her shirt, but left the tie hanging loose around her neck, as she crawled up on the bed alongside Andy, turning his head one side so she could take a turn kissing him. "That we want to fuck you," she said. "For ever and ever,” "That's totally okay, right?" Sarah said, turning his eyes back to her. "Because if it's not, then, well,” she said, pausing for a second, breaking eye contact for a moment before their eyes met again, resolve hardening behind them, "then I guess it's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission." Her hips slammed down on top of his, punching his cock deep into her drenched cunt, a sluttish moan bubbling up from her throat. "'Cause momma's gotta fucking eat. Fuck, you feel too fucking good. Shit, I'm fucking cumming already, shit shit shit shit shit Shit Shit!" Sarah's fingernails raked hard against his chest, not quite deep enough to draw blood, but enough to raise red lines of tender flesh, visible through the dark thatch of blonde curls on his chest. Her eyes watered up as she trembled atop of him, her head thrashing about to make those coppery curls swipe back and forth like a matador's cape in the wind. For several seconds, she just stayed there, impaled on his cock, vibrating in quivers, until finally the sensations eased up and she leaned forward, Emily reaching to wipe the tears from Sarah's eyes. "You okay Sares?" "This is the greatest fucking day of my life," she whimpered, her voice tiny and dumbstruck. "But I need more. I want more." She looked down at Andy, then leaned in to kiss him. "I need to feel more than just that oh so fat cock of yours inside me. You know what I fucking need, don't you?" Her lips kept returning to his in between every sentence. "I need you to pump a hot load of jizz right inside of my cute little fuckhole." This time she lifted her head up and kissed Emily right in front of his eyes, their tongues tangling up, until Emily tilted her head a little, and leaned them both down, until all three of them were kissing in one big mess, a weave of tongues and lips. Sarah started to grind her hips on his lap, finally leaning back until she sat upright, and Andy could place his hands on her body, one on her hip, the other over one of those round tits of hers, feeling her nipple hard as a rock against his palm. "Tell me I'm pretty," she pleaded to him. "You're fucking gorgeous," he told her. "Tell me I'm smart." "Brilliant, witty and charming." "Tell me that it's okay that I'm a big dork." "I love the fact that you're a big dork." She bit her bottom lip nervously, glancing over at Emily, who nodded to her with that coy smile of hers. "Tell me I'm your big dork." "You're my big dork," Andy laughed. "Again," Sarah said, starting to ride him harder, her ass smacking down on the tops of his thighs each time she bucked into him. "You're my big dork." "What am I?" Emily squeezed his shoulder, nibbling on his ear, her teeth tugging on his earlobe. "Say it. She wants to hear it. Cum in her tight little cunt and say it." Sarah's rhythm was frantic now, her cunt clamping and squeezing on his cock, trying to get that release from him, her hair a complete mess now, the braids having partially come undone, threatening to spill everywhere, her hands on his chest making her arms press her tits together, as if presenting them for him to see, her deep dark blue eyes never once looking away from him, imploring him, as if she wanted something she couldn't bear to ask for. The image was so erotic, Andy knew he couldn't resist, not that he wanted to. So when he felt that tightening up in his body, his hands grabbed onto her hips and held her down, his cock impaled hilt deep inside of her snatch beneath that skirt, as his green eyes held her gaze, while he said "You're mine." At that last word, his balls drew up and his cock blasted Sarah's snatch so full of cum, he was certain he could feel it dripping out onto his balls, seven or eight squirts of heavy cream inside of her, her eyes immediately rolling back in her skull, as she flopped atop of him like someone had just flipped a switch inside of her and turned her off. Andy barely had time to pull his head to one side so that Sarah's face fell safely into the pillow, her tits mashed against his chest, as she started mumbling "imprinting" over and over against into the pillow. "Oh my god," Emily whispered into his ear, "that is the hottest fucking thing that I have ever seen with my own eyes." Emily reached up and brushed part of Sarah's hair out of her face for her, seeing her muttering. "How long is she going to do that?" "For a couple of minutes," Andy said, slowly moving to roll Sarah off him, laying her down on the side of him opposite of Emily. The skirt had hiked up and he could see a small landing strip of copper curls above her snatch, so he tugged the skirt back down for her. "Then she'll just fall very still. She'll wake up in about twelve to sixteen hours." "That's all it takes?" Emily said. "Now she's just permanently bonded to you forever?" "Well, not forever, I'm sure," Andy said, as Emily moved him so that each of them were laying on their sides facing each other. He must've looked a little nervous, because Emily took one of his hands in hers and interlaced his bulky fingers with her slender ones. "I'm sure once we're out of this crisis, science will come up with some sort of solution so that people aren't quite so chemically dependent on each other, but for the time being, yeah, she's bonded to me, and she'll need to absorb some of my cum once every couple of weeks." "That won't be a problem," Emily giggled. "She's a wildcat. I swear to God, she might even be a nymphomaniac, not that you'll mind, although you're going to have to go with us on movie shoots from now on. We'll work it all out, I'm certain." She leaned in and pressed a tiny kiss on his nose. "Ready for me yet?" "I don't think you've met a man in your entire life who's been ready for you," he said, which made her laugh in amusement. "Me included. You're really sure you're okay with all of this?" "Can I tell you a secret?" she said, that impish smile widening on her face a little bit. "I sort of help set all this up." Andy narrowed his eyes. "I don't know how that's even possible." "When Sarah and I arrived on the base two weeks ago, we were put in a sort of group quarantine, and were mostly only allow to see people who had already been vaccinated and were with partners, a few staff members aside. Sarah was very nervous that someone would find out we were together, so we just acted like acquaintances, actors who didn't know each other but knew of each other," Emily said, not letting him pull his hand away, in fact bringing it to rest on her chest, just above her heart. "So while Sarah was having panic attacks and thinking our lives were over, I got to know some of the people who were on guard duty for us." "Niko,” Andy groaned, grinning in spite of himself. "Well, yes, Niko, but not just Niko," Emily said. "Also, I met one of Mister Covington's family, Rachel. And so I hatched a plan." "I don't understand why you even needed to," Andy said. "They partner you women up with men you want to be with, don't they?" "Is that what they've told you?" she gasped. "No! Oh my god, no! No, that's not it at all, Andrew. I mean, it might have started that way, but since the foundation of New Eden, any woman that a man wants and asks for is brought here and imprinted, to be part of his new family. Maybe that's not true for all of the women, but it most certainly is for some of us! Did, did you really not know that? Have you truly not asked for anyone specific?" "I didn't even know that I could, not that I think I would. Why wouldn't Niko tell me that?" "Maybe she doesn't even know," Emily said. "We were told not to talk about the process at all, to anyone. But I'm a little busybody, so I poked around a bit, and Rachel told me a lot more than I think she intended to. I also talked to Niko about the various men who were in the community already. She said she really didn't know that many of them, other than her partner and his friends, so I asked her to tell me about them." "Oh lord,” "Once I found out you were, well, you, and that Niko had such a high opinion of you , you really should marry all of your girls, Andrew, but my God, would Niko especially do literally anything for you , I decided that I had to get Sarah into your family, no matter what. I knew how she felt about you, and if she'd found out you were here and she couldn't fuck you, well, it might've sent her into an uncontrollable spiral of depression, and I would not allow that to happen. She's had struggles with depression much of her life, and her love for you is deeper than the Pacific. If I could get myself into your family as well, all the better, but if Sarah and I simply lived in the same town, even with different male partners, we could still be together regularly enough, so I had to ensure she made her way to you, and that was the bare minimum of what I would accept." "What did you do?" "So Rachel controls the distribution process at the vaccination center. She determines how women are sent to their partners and at what speed. She is also, like, the biggest Dagger Academy fan, thank god for that. I got all of this done with just a few autographs and a few selfies with her. I don't like trading in on my fame, but I decided that just this one time, I would bend my moral compass, to ensure that Sarah and I weren't miserable." "What does that mean?" "It means, I convinced Rachel to send out women in batches of two, because the other thing Rachel had told me was that her partner, that prick Covington, liked to gamble with women, so I made sure that he would see this as an opportunity to hold one of his poker games, and that both Sarah and I would be available as prizes in them. Niko said you'd never been invited to one before, so I also needed to make sure there was a reason for you to get involved." "Christ, if I'd have known you and Sarah were in it, I might have gone in on that alone." "Oh, bless Andrew, but no, you wouldn't have," Emily said, kissing his nose. "You're too scrupulous. Niko made it exceptionally clear to me that you saw your partners as people not property, another part of the reason I so wanted to ensure Sarah made her way to you. But that meant convincing you that you were rescuing someone, and hoping you would also give in to temptation when it was presented to you on a silver platter. So when they started vaccinating us all with the inoculation, I bumped that doctor, Charlotte, and made her accidentally inject herself. That meant she had to get partnered up with someone within a few weeks, and I knew that Charlotte wouldn't leave her daughter behind. I also knew that Charlotte was a friend of Niko's, and that Rachel had been told by Covington to watch out for a mother daughter pairing he could get his hands on, that sick fuck." "This is like some kind of fucking heist movie!" Andy said in amazement. "What I didn't know was that Charlotte was so heartbroken over the death of her husband, that she wouldn't care who she was assigned to. I had wanted Charlotte to be assigned to you and her daughter to be assigned to Covington, so you would feel the need to rescue her daughter and when you did, you would likely also take Sarah and I." "What the hell happened?" "Rachel got them both assigned to Covington instead, but thankfully, Niko decided on her own that she was going to make sure you were at that card game to rescue both of them, because she and the Doctor had become work friends. Niko convinced Rachel that you were a great cardplayer, and also made sure that one of their usual players dropped out. She's quite clever, your girl. I also put a bug in her ear that if she thought you were such a wonderful man, maybe you should consider trying to get Sarah as well." "You didn't mention yourself?" "I didn't want to overtax you, but I hoped that maybe I might be pretty enough to pull your eye." "Every woman here is prett

SmackDown felt like it was possessed this week. We're talking crown-chasers, sneak attacks, and CM Punk dragging John Cena into deep emotional waters with ZERO lifeguard on duty. Oh — and Ron Killings? That man is off the damn leash.

Guys, ada ga di sini yang suka nonton vlog atau video unfaedah??? Nah di sini bakalan kita bahas, langsung aja ya ciaao~

Need more reddit nice girls? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTz_vyR-zjcBNwAp2auWWsmje3m8_6umGIn this episode of r/NiceGirls we meet some nice girls. Nah, just kidding. They're horrible people to be around and they just seem to stick like nothing else can. How do you get rid of them? Simple. Starve them of what they crave. Don't give them even a drop of attention and your nice girl problem will solve itself seemingly magically overnight!YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/reddxyDiscord: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWuPayPal: https://www.paypal.me/daytondoesPatreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoesTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/daytondoesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddXD/Teespring: https://teespring.com/stores/reddx

Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 6 Andrew Rook continues to grow his family. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.   Chapter 17 The morning after any good party is generally a challenge to get up and out of bed, but thankfully, they hadn't gone too late into the evening, and so, everyone had gotten to bed at a reasonable hour. And the wonderful smell of a good, late brunch was the clincher to get everyone out of the bed. Jenny had prepared an excellent morning feast for them, but timed it so that it was just before noon when she had it ready, drawing everyone downstairs, although most of the girls were in pajamas still, and Andy stuck to sweats himself. Over a combination of huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos, Niko and Andy explained to the rest of the girls about Andy's upcoming day at poker. Their reactions were much like Andy's initial impressions. Shock at first, followed by concern for the women who were supposed to be showing up on Andy's doorstep tomorrow. "I mean," Andy said, in between bites of his burrito, "it's never come up before, but I technically do have the right to refuse any woman who shows up on my doorstep. Like, for example, if had been too much of a hassle for Lauren, I could've just sent Taylor away." "Which reminds me," Lauren said, bringing a mimosa to her lips, "you need to imprint her today, especially if you're going to be coming home tomorrow night with a whole stable of new women." "I think you girls have a lot more faith in my poker skills than I do," Andy sighed. "And I think you're just being modest to set expectations," Niko said. "I watched you confidently take apart those poor boys last night." "I've known those guys for over a decade, Niko. They've got tells and I've had time to learn them, but you're talking about cold reading a room worth of men, most of whom I've never met." "If Rachel's to be believed, most of them are crap, Andy, so the only person you've really got to worry about is Covington himself." "You mean, I've only got to worry about the one guy I have to beat. Sure, no problem." "Do your best, baby," Niko said to him, squeezing his hand. "That's all I'm asking." That hung in the air for a couple of minutes before Lauren started giggling, and Andy turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. "What's all that about?" "I was just thinking about you saying you had the right to refuse a woman delivered to you, and was trying to imagine you refusing Niko when she showed up." "You know, I still don't remember showing up at all?" Niko said. "I'm serious. The first thing I remember is waking up in the morning sucking your cock. I mean, I remember picking your picture out, and I sort of remember the start of the drive over to the old condo, but showing up on your doorstep? Me fucking myself on top of him in the goddamn dining room? I know you told me I did all that, but I don't remember any of it." "You were pretty out of it," Aisling said. "But it was kinda hot, watching you just pin him down and fucking use him. He wanted to take you upstairs first, but you were too wound up to let him do that, so he had to carry you naked upstairs after he'd filled you up with your first load." "I feel a little robbed that I don't get to remember that first super intense orgasm, though." "If you really want to get something equivalent," Lauren said, "you just need to fast from his cum for a couple of weeks. Right around the point you're starting to break, you'll get that high again, but the pain of waiting that long isn't worth if you ask me." "I agree," Aisling said, "but it's probably worth trying at least once, just so you can know." Niko shook her head. "I remember you telling me about how it felt waiting that long, Lauren, and I don't think I have any need to inflict that much need on myself." "You wait any longer to imprint Taylor," Aisling said, "and she's going to be there herself. She's already having trouble keeping her head clear enough to follow the rules." Niko nodded over at Lauren. "I get that you want to punish her, but she needs to get imprinted, otherwise she's not even going to remember the punishment." Lauren giggled a little. "I know, I know. Let's sic Andy on her after we finish brunch." "I like how much my opinion is being consulted on this," Andy grumbled. "Oh you know you're itching to have a go at her," Lauren smirked, waggling a fork in his direction. "Just remember, one of the three holes is off limits until she's passed the month, and frankly, I don't want you firing that sex bomb of yours down her throat for her first time either." "You've made it pretty clear what you want out of this, Lauren," Andy said. "I won't forget." After they finished brunch, the foursome headed upstairs. Taylor had been given brunch in a bowl while they'd been eating, and she had finished all of it. When they entered the room, she looked up, but didn't move over, as she was trying to take all of her cues from them and not initiate anything on her own. "Alright Taylor," Lauren said, "it's time. Andy's going to imprint you now, so I hope you've internalized all the lessons you've witnessed over the last several days." "Yes Mistress," Taylor said. "May I go and make a few small preparations? Not for myself, but for the Master." Lauren seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded. "Five minutes in the bathroom. We'll be out here waiting." Taylor moved to head into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. "Wonder what she's doing in there," Aisling said, as she moved to sit in one of the big plush chairs scattered around the room. Niko grinned impishly, as she moved to recline on the couch against the wall. "Oh, she told me she's been trying to plan as best as she can to make both Andy and Lauren happy." "I'm not sure I even want to know what that means," Andy said, moving to sit down on the edge of the massive bed. "I'm not sure I'd let her tell you, even if she wanted to," Lauren said. "Oh, you want to try and tell me what to do, Lauren," Niko said, a playful smile on her lips, "and we can see which one of us paid more attention in hand to hand combat classes." "That sounds like fighting words," Lauren giggled, miming rolling up her sleeves. Andy narrowed his eyes at them. "Don't make me bend you both over my knee and paddle your asses red." "Promises promises," Lauren said, blowing him a kiss. Just then, Taylor opened the door and walked in from the bathroom before moving to get down on her knees in front of Andy. She had put on dark, heavy mascara and pulled her platinum blonde hair back into a solid ponytail, held with a scrunchy that looked like it could handle a bit of force. She'd also put on thigh high white stockings that looked like extra long sport socks with red rings around her thighs. It made her look sportier, and also a little bit younger. "Your slut is ready for you to use her, Master, if you are ready." Andy slid from the bed and crouched down, brushing a hand along her face. "This is your last chance to back out, Taylor." Taylor leaned in and whispered into his ear. "I want this, Andy. I want to be part of your family. But my safeword is 'yeti,' if you're really worried." She'd said it quietly enough that he was certain none of the other girls had heard any of it. "I like the mascara," Lauren said, reaching to brush a fingertip along Taylor's cheek. "It's going to run nicely when he's skullfucking your face." "Yes Mistress. I thought you might enjoy seeing that, proof that he's making me cry." "Tears of joy, I hope." Taylor nodded. "Joy, yes. But also from being unable to breathe. I want Master to really use his slut, to make her gag and choke and gasp for air." "Good," Lauren said. "I want you to get him so wound up that he can't think straight, Taylor. I want to see him actively fucking use you, until you're a quivering, brainless heap of well used flesh, lying there in a goddamn puddle on the floor. You think you can handle that?" "For you, Mistress? I can handle anything." Her chin was lifted proudly, displaying that leather collar she'd been forced to wear since her arrival. "Please, Master, may your worthless slut finally taste your cock?" Lauren put her hand on Andy's shoulder, leaning in to whisper into her mouth. "Remember, I don't want you cumming in her mouth. Just in her ass, okay?" There was a tiny amount of trepidation to her voice, as if she wanted to be sure she wasn't overstepping her boundaries, so Andy simply nodded. He felt hands on his waist, and it was clear Taylor had taken the nod to be to her and not to Lauren, but Andy didn't feel the need to correct her. Taylor pulled his sweatpants and boxers down to his ankles, lifting one of his feet for him and then the other, to help him step out of them, before she finally looked at his thick cock before her bright blue eyes. "Your little whore has been thinking about this nonstop since she got here, Master. About how she watches your girls when their eyes roll back in their heads, when their legs twitch and spasm when you fill them up. And even though she knows it's unbecoming of her," she said, looking down as one of her hands stroked his thick cock, "she's been getting more and more jealous of them, of those intense feelings you evoke in them. She knows she needs to be patient and wait her turn, but sometimes, even thinking about it gets her cunt all wet, Master. May she at long last have a taste and begin her process of officially becoming yours? Please, Master? This worthless slut aspires to be better, to be more, to be, yours." They'd been particularly careful not to let her taste any precum of his because even so much as a droplet would prime the imprinting process. It wouldn't fully start until she got her first full load of his jism, but the amount in precum was enough to get the process ready to burst. Taylor had gotten particularly close to the girls when they were playing with Andy, usually at Lauren's insistence, but in her eagerness to rub Taylor's face in it, she'd come dangerously near starting the process early. Andy was about to say that she could when Lauren reached her hand along the back of Taylor's head, grabbing the ponytail, shoving Taylor's face down onto his cock until he could feel the head of it pressing against the back of her throat, forcing its way in, even as her eyes looked up at him with adoration in them, her body literally vibrating at it, as the precum oozed from his mushroom tip into her mouth. Her eyes were fluttering, almost like they were threatening to roll back into her skull, and while she was doing her best to maintain control of herself, he could feel a bit of drool dripping down onto his balls. After what felt like an eternity of keeping his cock buried inside of her mouth, Lauren finally pulled Taylor back, and she gasped hungrily for air, slobbering even as her eyes were starting to water, her chest rising and falling quickly. "Are you  " Before Andy could even continue the sentence, Taylor grabbed onto his hips with both hands and pulled her face back onto his cock until her nose was buried in the thatch of brown hairs at the base of his cock. "Don't just leave her on, Andy," Lauren hissed at him. "Give the little whore what she wants. Fuck that little cheating face of hers until she's a sloppy mess." Andy's hands grabbed onto the side of Taylor's head and pulled her face back, but just when the head of his cock was at the ring of her lips and she was inhaling another lungful of air, he shoved his cock back into her face, pushing it back against her throat once more, evoking a gurgling cough from her, as those eyes started to water hard, a single black tear running down her right cheek. He pulled her back back and off his cock, letting her drink in another swallow of air, a wide smile on her messy lips, precum and spit dangling from them, as her tongue lashed out to try and lap it up before Andy shoved her face down once more. Taylor was doing her best to lean into Andy, but Lauren was mostly controlling the depth she could reach, using her ponytail as a leash, although Lauren seemed to be letting Andy do most of the driving for the moment, partially because Andy had been told not to cum in Taylor's mouth, and it was starting to take some effort to keep himself cooled off. She had a talented tongue, and there was something primal and carnal about seeing his precum smeared all over the blonde's chin, drooling on herself when she had half a moment without Andy's cock in her throat. "Whose whore are you?" Lauren said, reaching forward to slap Taylor across the face, making that mascara run even more. "Yours, Mistress." "Wrong answer!" Lauren shouted, slapping Taylor's other cheek, hard enough to make Andy a little nervous. "Try again. Whose whore are you?" Taylor swallowed a breath of air, looking up with those heavily watered icy blue eyes of hers, realizing her mistake immediately. "His whore, Mistress. The Master's whore." "That's right, you cuntrag," Lauren sneered. "I'm your Mistress, but this man fucking owns you, if you want to live under this roof. You will deny him nothing. You will do whatever he asks of you, and you will do it gladly." "Yes Mistress. Sorry Mistress." "Don't apologize to me, you dumb bimbo! Apologize to him." "Your worthless slut is sorry, Master. She belongs to you, and only you, and will never forget that again." "You know what I think?" Lauren said, her face a wicked angry snarl. "I think you ought to spit into that bitch's mouth, so she knows who fucking owns her." Taylor visibly flinched, but leaned her head back, opening her mouth wide. "That's it, Andy," Lauren goaded. "Get a big mouthful of spit and give it to that vapid cunt." Spitting had never much turned Andy on, and if he was honest, he found it excessive and unneeded, but all of this was about giving Lauren some closure, so he pursed his lips together and started to summon a big mouthful of spit. Just as he was about to spit into Taylor's mouth, she turned her head suddenly and said, "Yeti! God, I'm sorry, yeti!" Andy turned his head and spit onto the floor, as his mind raced, trying to figure out a way to disarm the situation he knew he was about to be in. The imprinting process was already primed, so it was too late to pass Taylor off to someone else, or to send her away, but he suspected the explosion of temper that was about to erupt from Lauren was going to make all their lives living hell for a time. He turned to look at her as he started to speak, "Now look Lauren, there's limits, to,” The look on Lauren's face wasn't one of anger. It was one of, amusement? He frowned and she started to giggle, and pretty soon, all the girls in the room were giggling, including Taylor at his feet. "Sorry, Andy," Lauren finally said, through fits of laughter. "I told you he'd stop if she said to," Aisling said. "No matter how wronged you felt, Lauren, he wasn't gonna lose control." "Damn," Lauren said, "and here I figured I could get him worked up enough to push past it. Guess I owe you twenty." "Excuse me, were, were you gambling over whether or not I'd take a woman against her will?" Now Andy felt like he was the one starting to get angry. "It was just a game, love," Lauren said. Andy stepped away from Taylor and over to Lauren and picked her up, no easy feat considering her height compared to his, moving over to the bed, putting her down and bending her over it before yanking down her pajama bottoms. "What are you going to do, spank me?" Andy welled up his rage into his right hand and brought it down onto Lauren's ass with the hardest spank he could muster. "Ow! Jesus, Andy, that rightly stung!" Wham! His hand clapped down again, just as hard, and he heard her groan, a weird blend of pain and excitement, her whole body shaking. "Strewth, that hurts!" Wham! His hand spanked down once more, the cheek of her ass starting to redden quickly under the power of his slaps. "Fuck Andy!" Wham! "I'm sorry!" Wham! "Bugger, Master, I'm fucking sorry, awlright?" At that, Andy held his hand in the air, not slapping again, but brought his hand down softly to slowly press his fingernails against the edge of the reddened flesh, and then dragged them firmly across that handprint he'd left there, making Lauren quiver, lost somewhere between lust and fear. "You're right you're right, okay, it was a shitty thing to do, and I'm sorry, I'm very fucking sorry. I shouldn't have made her do it." Andy looked back at Taylor. "And you. I ought to just leave you like this." Taylor's face reddened as much as Lauren's ass. "I'm sorry, Master. She told me to do it, and I didn't want to upset her. I do have an actual safeword, but it isn't yeti. I told Lauren what it was, though, and how I didn't think she would need to use it." "And if you're punishing Lauren, Daddy, you probably need to punish all of us," Aisling sighed. "I mean, I took her bet." "Speak for yourself, Red," Niko said. "I told you I thought it was a bad idea." "Well, now we know, I guess," Aisling said. "You okay, Lauren?" Lauren lifted her head up, and there was a strange look on her face. After a moment, it registered to Andy that she was more turned on that he'd ever seen her before in his life, and that included the moment when she'd been in a complete fuck daze after her sex fasting. "That was the hottest thing that's ever happened to me," she moaned, struggling to not drool on herself. "I've been trying to get you to lay into me for months, Andy, and I don't think it's much of a punishment." She grinned, all crazy eyed and wild. "I'm a bad girl." "Well then, you know how I'm going to punish you, Lauren?" Andy sighed. "I'm gonna put you away wet. You can go without a dose until the end of the week now that you're all wound up." "Oh god, that's cruel, you delicious bastard," she purred. "I fucking love it. But that's okay, I've earned this. And now that you're all wound up, it's time you take it out on Taylor." Andy looked from Lauren over to Taylor, who nodded enthusiastically. "This is what I want, Andy. I want my first time to be hard, rough, fucking brutal. I don't want to be treated like 'one of the girls,' because I haven't earned that, not yet." She started crawling over on all fours towards him, doing her best to keep her head raised, so she could see her face while she talked. "After the month, we can do the soft stuff. We can cuddle and lay together gently in bed and I can fall asleep in your arms, or in Lauren's. But I need to pay for my misdeeds." Niko and Aisling both sat up a little bit, although Andy could see that Niko had her hand down the front of her pajama bottoms, clearly rubbing her own cunt. "This time, I'm not one of your girls, not a partner or a girlfriend or a wife or whatever you're calling them, because I'm not there yet." Lauren was looking over her shoulder at Taylor, not moving from her spot bend over the edge of the bed. "You're already doing me a favor by imprinting me, when you don't know if you should yet. But I love Lauren. I love her so much it hurts to know how badly I fucked everything up. So until I can make that right, I'm a worthless fuckhole, a filthy bitch you should batter and plow and fuck within an inch of her life. I want you to drill me so hard that I can't sit down for a week." Taylor turned around and waggled her ass in his direction, leaning her shoulders down to make sure it was upturned, so he could get a good look at her asshole, as well as her cunt that was drenched with fuck cream. "It's yours, Master. I'm yours. Your fuckdoll, your bitch, your worthless whore to pump full of spunk and leave, sore and drenched. I know you aren't going to have my cunt until after my month's punishment, but just look at that tight little asshole I have just for you." "Just for you now," Lauren corrected. "That's true, Master. You won't be my first, but you will absolutely be my last. I will be a good slut for you, loyal in every possible way. You own all of me, from my toes to my head, and you may do whatever you want with any of it." "She talks a big game, doesn't she?" Niko said with a smile. "Whatever you want, Master, I will do. If you'd wanted to parade me naked in front of all your guests last night, I would've gladly done it. I'm not ashamed of how I screwed up before; I'm proud you're letting me make it right. You've had every chance this last week to treat me horribly, and you've never done it. So now I'm asking you, no, I'm begging you. Punish me. Fuck me. Claim me. Mark your territory. Make me your property. Own me. Use me, harder than you have any of your girls, because I need to learn to be better, to be worth better. But you have to accept me first." Taylor placed her face and shoulders down on the floor, and reached behind her to grab the well toned cheeks of her ass, pulling them apart. "I'm all yours, sir, but you need to imprint me. Fucking take me already." "You'll do anything I say, Taylor? Anything?" "Speak and it will be done, Master." Andy finally felt like he was actually in control for the first time today. "Stand up." "Sir?" "Don't make me say it twice," he growled, mostly for effect, but he could've sworn he heard Aisling moan wantonly in response to it. "Yes sir," she said, placing her hands on the ground, moving onto all fours before standing up. "Sorry sir." She kept her hands folded together in front of her, her eyes lowered to the floor. "Here's what's going to happen." Andy saw Lauren was starting to try and shift, so he slapped her ass once more, and her hips shoved forward into the bed once more, groaning, making it clear she now understood she wasn't to move without his say so. "Words are great and all, and I'm glad to hear you've learned how I'm turned on by dirty talk, but I'm going to give you a harder challenge. You need to convince me that you belong to me with a kiss, just one kiss." Taylor started to move towards him, but he raised his hand and she immediately stopped in her place. "Is there more, sir?" "There is. After you convince me with a kiss, you're going to convince Lauren as well, in the same way. But you're going to put all of that sadness, all of that embarrassment, all of that shame, all of that is going to go into your kiss with her, to convince her that you understand how badly you hurt her, and how much you want to make it up to her." "Now Andy  " Lauren started to say, but as soon as he turned to look at her, the expression on his face cowed her into silence. "After that, I'm going to fulfill my promise to Lauren, and I am going to fuck your ass so hard, it'll be sore for a week. I am going to sodomize you so hard, you'll think you've gone to prison, and you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that as soon as I cum in your ass, you are going to feel your mind being blown into a billion fragments, and every single fucking one of them will have my name stamped onto it." Taylor was shivering now, but Andy was almost certain it was with pure excitement. "You are going to wake up tomorrow and feel like a completely new woman. Ash?" "Every single sense you have is going to be on overload tomorrow," Aisling said to Taylor. "It'll be like the volume on your life is turned up to 11. Smells, sights, sounds, tastes, and touches, they'll all be in full overdrive, which means your ass is going to hurt like you didn't even believe is possible. I'm talking the kind of pain that feels like it goes down to your very soul." "And you won't be able to take any drugs for it to mute the pain," Niko said. "No aspirin, no ibuprofen, not even a stiff drink. That pain'll linger for a full day, and there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do to make it go away before it's ready." "By Tuesday, it'll be sore, but it won't feel like it's threatening to overwhelm your body. But for all of tomorrow, you are going to fucking hurt in a way that you can't even begin to imagine. And this is your last chance to walk away from it." Andy knew he was actually lying at this point. Sure, he had to imprint Taylor, but he didn't have to listen to Lauren and go at her as roughly as she wanted. If he didn't, though, there would always be a rift between the two women, and that was something he didn't want either of them to suffer through, so he was doing his best to navigate down this narrow street the two women had built for him together. "So what's your decision?" he said to her. Taylor looked up, a steely resolve to her face, one he'd seen mirrored in Lauren's face more than once before. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him down so that she could press her lips against his, and in the kiss that followed, he could feel all of those conflicting emotions battling inside of her. It was the first time they'd kissed, but it was almost like it was a new first kiss for him, like he was a young man again in his parents' basement, kissing some girl in the dark while a scary movie played on the tv. She held the kiss for a long moment, the heat of the kiss turning up in the middle before backing down a little, so at the end he felt like she was trying to convey her shame at having cheated on Lauren. "Was, Is that good enough, sir?" Andy smiled a little. "And now the other half." Taylor mouthed the words "thank you" to him, out of sight of all the others, before she turned to the bed. Lauren was starting to try and turn around again, but Andy took the palm of his hand and pushed it hard on the small of her back, keeping her pinned there, and Taylor immediately understood what he was doing. She crawled up onto the bed, her pose mimicking Lauren's, bent over the edge of the bed, although to get in line with Lauren, she had to be much further up the bed. She looked painfully nervous, but reached and turned Lauren's face to look at her. Lauren's eyes were still pinched in anger at Taylor, up until their lips met, and Taylor kissed Lauren with everything she'd wanted to say to her for months now, holding onto her, even as Lauren tried to remain impassive and stonefaced at first, but melted shortly to the intensity of desperation that Taylor was giving to her. As the kiss continued, Andy started to position the players the way he wanted to, pushing Taylor as he pulled on Lauren, making Lauren roll onto her back on the bed, and bringing Taylor to straddle her, the two a tangled mess of lips and tongues, Lauren's hand against the back of Taylor's head now, keeping her face mashed against her own. Aisling could see he was maneuvering them, and hopped up, grabbing a couple of pillows, sliding them beneath Lauren's head, propping her up a bit, so that when Andy pulled Taylor down some to get her in position, she could still continue making out with her. Once he had her in place, Andy sawed his cock back and forth across Taylor's feverishly dripping snatch, feeling her ooze cream onto his thick shaft, even as she was trying to shift her hips, making it clear she still wanted to follow Lauren's rules, even now, her mind a dizzying chaos of fucknoise and lust. She reached one of her hands behind her to pull on her asscheek, forcing that pink pucker to expose itself even further. Andy lined the head of his cock up against her asshole, but then paused for a moment. That pause made Taylor break from the kiss long enough to plead with him once more. "Please, oh god please do it, Master. I've always been yours, your wanton fucking whore, I just didn't know it. Show me. Teach me. Fuck my ass and claim what's always been yours. Fucking take your bitch. Claim her. Own me!" That was good enough for him. He pushed his hips forward, feeling her asshole give a little more easily than his other girls had on their first time with him, and he suspected it wasn't Taylor's first time taking a man's cock in her ass. He felt no particular need to be exploring virgin territory, so it didn't bother him. As soon as he was most of the way inside of her ass, he could feel Taylor tense up, both of her hands clutching to Lauren's face, moaning into the other woman's mouth in a loud, muffled shriek, as her body clenched up, and suddenly Andy could feel liquid splashing back off Lauren's thighs up against his balls, as Taylor began to squirt all over the Aussie. He was tempted to ease off a bit, but Lauren had made it quite clear that the one thing he absolutely positively wasn't to do was to go easy on her, so he pushed forward until he was as deep as he could get, then pulled back only to punch forward again with a rough slam. Lauren broke from the kiss this time so that Andy could get an earful of Taylor's whorish moans, her body covered in goosebumps. "I think I'm fucking blind!" Taylor whimpered. "I've never cum so fucking hard in my fucking life oh my fucking god what the fuuuuuuck!" The Australain slapped Taylor across the face again, certainly less hard than before. "What do you say, you useless fuckhole?" "Oh god," Taylor said, as Andy drew back. "Thank you, Master! Fuck me! Fuck your needy bitch in her tight young ass until it's fucking carved in the shape of your cock! You're so fucking thick, it hurts, but your bitch loves how it hurts, so fucking rail her! Plow this bitch, your bitch, until she's cumming her brains out her fucking ears!" Lauren kissed her again, as Andy started to really rail her, shoving his cock hilt deep each and every time, making his balls slap against Lauren's sloppy twat that was still dripping girljizz onto his nuts. But Andy decided if they wanted him to get rough, he would oblige them. His hand grabbed onto Taylor's ponytail and yanked her head back hard, making her spine curve back, a strangled howl of pleasure shredding the air. He couldn't see it, but he was certain each time he drilled into Taylor, her tits were making Lauren's jiggle with them. "What are you?" he shouted at Taylor. "Ohgod," she whimpered, "I'm yours, Master. Your bitch, your whore, your slut, your worthless fuckhole to dump cum into and leave a sodden mess on the fucking floor if you want. I'm whatever you fucking tell me I am, because that's what I fucking what to be, sir." Her words were mostly squealed in between brutally hard shoves of his cock into her asshole, which continued to spasm and clench around his shaft. "Please, Daddy, let me be worthy of your cum. Your bad little bitch needs it, more than she's needed anything in her wasted life. Let her ass receive you. Oh god, your bitch wants your cum so bad it's fucking eating her away from inside! Please, Master, please, give your bitch your cum. Claim what's yours. You own this ass, this cunt, this mouth, these tits,” "I require more," Andy said, as he picked up the pace. He wasn't sure how many times Taylor had cum, but he was fairly certain it had been at least three or four. "Name it, Master, and it's yours." "I want to own that mind and that heart. Prove they belong to me. Confess." "Fuck," Taylor whined, her mascara having smeared all across her face, turning her a hideous mess, before she kissed Lauren once more, hard and fierce, before pulling her face back, looking down into the Aussie's eyes. "I love you, Lauren." Lauren's eyes instantly welled up and she kissed Taylor again before pushing her back, a look of satisfaction on her face, as she kept Taylor looking at her, saying only a single word. "And?" "And,” Taylor said, trying to trail off, a wild spike of nervousness running through her veins, before she muscled up the courage to speak again. "And I love you, Andy. Mind, body and soul, you own it all. I fucking love you, you bastard. Now please, let me, for the love of fucking god, have my fucking cum!" On that last word, one which Taylor was nearly shouting, Andy slotted his cock in nice and deep and finally let loose, a monster of an orgasm blasting a hot sticky load of spunk into her ass, and it was as though Taylor had just touched the face of God, a rapturous moan erupting from her until she forcibly locked lips with Lauren, the sound not stopping, only muffling some, as Taylor's sweat stained body quivered like it was having its own personal earthquake before slumping, almost deathly still, atop Lauren's form, the Aussie wrapping her arms around Taylor, stroking her hair, as the pint sized creature began to burble the word "imprinting" over and over again. Andy's cock had softened and slipped from her ass, as he pulled away from them, pushing them up onto the bed, grabbing a sheet, slowly pulling it up and over the two of them. "I don't have to stay here, Andy," Lauren started to say, before he waggled a finger at her. "You're exactly where you need to be right now, Lauren. Keep our newest family member safe, while the process runs its course." Lauren smiled at him, as if she was seeing him in a new light for the first time. "Yes Master." Chapter 18 The next morning, Andy woke up before anyone else. Taylor had been allowed to remain on the bed, in Lauren's arms, all night, and the two were still intertwined when Andy awoke. He suspected Niko would be up shortly, Lauren not long after that, although she might sleep a bit longer what with Taylor pressed up against her. Aisling wouldn't be up for hours. Andy had gotten decent at extracting himself from the bed, but this morning, it didn't take almost any effort at all. He grabbed some sweatpants and a t shirt, pulled them on and then moved out of the bedroom and onto the balcony, looking out onto his driveway, just as the morning sprinklers turned on, down below him. He sighed, leaning against the railing, shaking his head. "You're still worried," Niko said as she moved out onto the balcony with him. "Worrying's not going to change anything." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "Anything I can do to lighten the load?" "Nah," Andy said. "By this time tomorrow, it'll all be done one way or another. So I'm trying not to think about it." They stood together quietly for a moment, before she laughed. "Not working, is it?" "Nah," he said, joining in the laugh with her. "But I'll make it work." Niko decided to take a couple of personal days, and called in to the base, telling them she needed a few days to deal with some private matters. She didn't know when the dropoff was going to be arriving, but she figured that Andy might need some help, and wanted to be around to help him through any chaos. A few hours later, Taylor awoke and was truly in agony, her ass hurting like she'd ripped it open, so Lauren also decided to take the day off and tend to her. She wasn't actually wounded in any serious way, but as predicted, the high sensitivity of her nerves post imprinting process had all the sensations cranked up to a hundred. Andy could even see a little hint of regret in Lauren's expression before she steeled herself back up, to not let Taylor see even a moment of weakness. Aisling offered to help Lauren, but Lauren insisted that Aisling just go about her normal day, so the redhead had gone down into one of the living rooms to work for the day, although she told Andy that she'd come help once the women arrived. All the girls seemed to think Andy was walking on pins and needles, but at this point, Andy was less worried about the women arriving and more worried about the upcoming card game. He spent most of the morning watching poker videos with the hole cards covered, practicing trying to read people's expressions. He hoped it would keep his mind off things, and it mostly worked. It was just after two o'clock in the afternoon when the military truck rolled up his driveway. "Here they come," he said, watching from the balcony as they started to help the two women from the back of the truck. "Oh fuck. Shit. Shit shit shit shitshitshit!" "What's the problem?" Niko asked him. She'd come to join him on the balcony when the truck had been buzzed in at the gate. The first woman to get out of the back was the blonde Nico had described to him earlier, Sheridan, a lithe woman dressed in yoga pants and a sports bra. She stretched as she got out, folding one of her arms behind her blonde mane of hair, bending like he'd never seen before. She looked to be in her mid thirties, and certainly she was a very attractive woman. But she wasn't the problem. No, it was the woman who got out right after her that had sent him into a tizzy. "Shit, I thought you said the other one's name was Teri." "It is," Niko said. "At least that's what she told everyone. Why?" "Back when I dated her, she was going by Erin," he sighed. Sure enough, the second woman looked much like she had when Andy had dated her nearly a decade ago, with a handful of notable changes. She looked older, certainly, but she'd also dyed her hair a dark chestnut brown, hiding those golden locks of hers. She also had a large tattoo on her right shoulder, which he could see through the sleeveless dress she was wearing. It was a stylized bird of paradise, and it appeared that the wings curved back under the dress along her skin. She was a little curvy, but a bit less curvy than she'd been when they'd been together. "You dated her?" Niko blanched visibly. "I'm sorry, Andy, if I'd have known,” "No, I know you didn't know, Niko. But let's just say I won't feel bad at all about passing her on to one of the other men." They walked into the bedroom and headed out into the hallway, starting to head downstairs. "I hadn't been out here long when Erin and I started dating, and we were together for a little over two years, while I was just getting started out here, working in corporate communications for eBay while I was writing the first few Druid Gunslinger novels. She hated them so much, constantly told me I was wasting my time, and that I should just focus on climbing the corporate ladder at eBay." "You're fucking kidding." "I wish," Andy said, as they walked down the stairwell. "After that she started telling me she didn't like the way my friends treated her, which is to say they wouldn't do everything she said without question. I finally got to the point where I was so sick of her bitching at me about how I wasn't living up to her expectations that I broke up with her a week before Valentine's Day. Packed up all her shit for her and threw her out of the apartment." "That's uncharacteristically cold of you, Andy." "Oh yeah?" he said, stopping walking. "She had it coming. The place was entirely in my name, and I'd spent the better part of half a year trying to convince her to put her name down as a co renter on the lease, and she wouldn't do it. I moved out of that apartment at the end of next month and didn't leave a forwarding address, just so the bitch couldn't find me, because she kept harassing me. I didn't just move apartments,  I moved cities. Hell, I moved whole regions of the goddamn Bay. Back when I was dating her, I was living up in El Cerrito, so I moved fifty miles south and hoped I was fucking done with her." "What do you mean by harassing?" The doorbell rang, and it made Andy wince. "She showed up drunk at least a dozen times. Broke into my car a few times. Broke into the old apartment once. Tried threatening my friends to find out from them where I moved to. After that failed, she tried tailing me home from work for a while, until after about a year or so, she finally left me alone." "What a hot mess." "That's an understatement," he said as they headed down the stairs. "Yeah, let me tell you, Erin Teresa Donegal and I are over and done with, and there is no way in hell I am letting that deranged terror into this family." "Ah Andy, love! There you are!" Erin said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "I see you've moved up in the world since the last time we talked. I'm so excited to be joining this little family you've been given." "Don't unpack, Erin," Andy said. "You aren't staying." "The hell I'm not!" she said, her voice level raising to an uncomfortable volume. "I was given the option of what man I wanted as a partner, and I chose you, so it's a done deal. No more running away from your problems anymore." "I don't have to accept anyone sent to me, Erin, and I'm certainly not going to bring someone into my family who hates my friends and trashed my car." "Oh my god, are you still upset about that? It happened in the past. When are you going to let it go?" "Considering you never paid me back for the car window or the car stereo you destroyed, I wouldn't hold your breath any time soon." "Uh, are you sending me back too?" Sheridan asked, a confused look on her face, as if she realized she was caught in the midst of a deep historical squabble. "We haven't even met." At this point, Andy remembered what he'd been told to do in the instructions from Covington, and went into the rehearsed speech. "Look, there's a meeting in a few hours, and I can go and see what's going on. Maybe there was some kind of mixup about who was sent to who, so you can stay here for the night, but please don't unpack, at least until tomorrow when we get all this figured out. I should be back before midnight with some kind of clarity over all of this." While he was talking to the two women, Aisling had been using his cellphone to photograph the two for the sake of the poker game. Covington had made it clear that all the players needed to know what the "prizes" were, and so each woman was to be photographed in advance. "There's no mistake, Andrew," Erin said. "I'm exactly where I want to be." "Erin, I'm not the same guy you dated a decade ago," he said, as Aisling handed him his phone back. "You would not be happy here, and I certainly don't think the rest of my family would take to you very kindly." "No kidding," Aisling said as she scowled at the woman, shaking her head. "How could you not like his writing?" Erin sniffed in contempt at the Irish redhead. "They're juvenile, childlike stories, and nobody's ever going to want to read them." "Funny how I've sold half a million books across the series, Erin." "Children have disposable income, Andrew, and while I'm sure your little stories are fleeting distractions for them, nobody remembers them after they're done with them. They don't affect anyone. They're not literature. They don't mean anything." "Jesus," Niko growled, "I'm glad he's not letting you in, otherwise I'd probably have to beat your ass until you were begging me to stop." "I would like to see you try, young lady," Erin sneered back. She was about a decade older than Niko, but Andy would've bet on his partner over his ex."I've been taking self defense classes since I was a child." Aisling smirked and shrugged. "Niko's in the Air Force. My money's on her." Erin shook her head. "I have so much work to do here, Andrew, in teaching these girls respect and  " "Shut up! For fuck's sake, will you shut up and listen for one minute in your goddamn life, you vacuous socialite? This is my house! These are my partners, and they belong here, which is more than I can say for you!" "Andrew! How dare you  " "Stop talking! Oh my god, do you ever shut up, or are you so enthralled with the sound of your own voice that the words have lost all fucking meaning? You never wanted me, you wanted what you thought you could make me into, but whatever docile, kowtowing toady that is, that's not me, and it's never going to be me! I'm done getting pushed around by you. So don't get fucking comfortable!" At that, Andy stormed off, leaving Aisling and Niko to apologize to Sheridan and/or deal with Erin. Andy headed downstairs and into his office, closing the door behind him, moving to settle down at his desk, as his two cats, both of whom had been in his office, moved to claim his lap, demonstrating their affection, trying to soothe the temper of their angered master. As it usually did, the cats cleared his head and cooled him off. He wanted to not think about it, so for the next few hours, he just focused on his writing, getting a few chapters into the next Druid Gunslinger novel, that he was currently calling "The Dryad Always Sings Twice," although he wasn't in love with the title. Some time later, there was a knock at his door, and he sighed. "It's unlocked," he said, hoping it wouldn't be Erin. Niko moved to enter the room, closing the door behind her as she moved in. "You weren't kidding about that girl being a piece of work," she said. "How'd you two even hook up in the first place?" "I mean, she's attractive, and she took an interest in me at a time when I didn't have a whole lot of self confidence. And she wasn't entirely like this back then. The longer we were together, the more her intense desire to have complete and total control in our relationship came out." "Yeah, but pretty girls make graves," Niko said to him, moving to wrap her arms around him from behind. "None of you three have killed me yet. Maybe I've just gotten lucky." "Or maybe you've gotten more refined in your taste since your mishap." She kissed him tenderly. "Anyway, I thought I'd let you stew a bit, but it's getting time for you to head over to Covington's for the poker game. Are you ready?" He chuckled a little. "Not really, but there's no time like the present." He saved his file and shut down his computer. "Is she still being a pain in the ass?" "Nah, Ash basically quarantined them in the pool house out back after Erin demanded to see where the master bedroom was, so she could get unpacked." "Like you said, quite a piece of work." He helped the cats off of his lap and moved to stand up before giving Niko another kiss. "Thanks for keeping her away from me. You can imagine the hard memories seeing her brought up." "No kidding. I mean, the fucking gumption on that bitch." She pet Muninn for a second before Andy opened the door, and she moved to walk with him. "Anyway, I'm coming with you." "Are your sure you want to? There's a chance I won't come back with your friend." She nodded, as they headed down the hall, heading towards the garage. "If you don't, I want to be with you so you know that I'm not mad at you." Niko pushed one of the buttons and the garage door in front of the Tesla roadster. "Hop in, I'll drive." The drive over to Covington's mansion was only about ten minutes, and at least a couple of those minutes were spent waiting at the gate for Covington's security team to let them in. There was a full checkpoint, with a couple of women in military fatigues, each of whom had a M16 at the ready. Covington's mansion was far more decadent than Andy's, and as they drove up the driveway, Andy suspected that Covington might even be the founder of the enclave that preceded New Eden, when it was just a bunch of rich fat cats living in a gated community of their own devising. The house itself was some weird hybrid of European colonial tradition and hyper post modern industrialism, with a statue of Covington himself in the center of the circular driveway in front of the home. The statue portrayed him as a pioneer, with a child on one shoulder, and a dozen women laying around him, each reaching up to him like he was their savior. "Oh. My. God." Niko muttered. "This is extra extra." "Even if I have to cheat," Andy mumbled, "I am going to run this asshole into the ground." Niko immediately turned and shook her head at him. "Don't cheat. Don't. He's caught cheaters before, and they get thrown out and lose everything." "Relax," Andy said, "I don't even know how I could cheat here, even if I wanted to, which I don't. We'll play a nice, fair game of poker. Any tips from your friend?" "The only thing she could tell me is that he has a hard time getting untilted if things start going against him." Andy nodded. "That's good to know. Let's go meet the competition." The two exited the car and headed up the stairs, where a blonde in a French maid's outfit opened the door for them. It was similar to the outfit Nicolette chose to wear, except here the blonde's tits were completely exposed, and the skirt was significantly shorter. Andy was certain the girl wasn't allowed to wear panties either. "You are here for the game?" the woman asked him, her voice accented in heavy French tones. "I am. Andrew Rook." The woman nodded. "Staff and colleagues need to remain away from the card room, so I will escort your woman to join the rest of the chauffeurs." She snapped her finger and another woman, this one in a butler's outfit, except that she wore no shirt beneath the black overcoat, which left most of her tits exposed. "Amber will take you to meet up with the other players." Andy could feel Niko tense up next to him, and took her hand in his. "I'll see you in a bit, okay?" Niko sighed, exhaling the breath, then nodded. "I'm just sad I won't get a chance to see your face when you see all the other stakes in play tonight," a sly smile on her face. "That's a shame, but let me tell ya, I think you're gonna play your absolute best when you see what's up for grabs." She winked as she started to stroll away with the butler. "This way, sir?" the butler said to him and led him down a series of stairs. It felt a little like walking into a lair. The hallways were lined with expensive art, but there was no rhyme or reason to it, no sense of what was important or what had personal meaning. It all felt, well, dumped. Like someone was showing off what they'd acquired, but didn't really care for. In fact, the whole home felt like that. Like the owner didn't enjoy any of what he'd acquired if he wasn't rubbing it in everybody's faces. It made Andy hate him even more. Eventually, the butler brought him to a lounge room with a massive LCD wall filling one entire side of the lounge. But Andy didn't look at it for more than a second, because it was time to size up the competition. "Ah, Andrew!" Covington said. "There you are. I was starting to wonder when you were going to show up. I was afraid that you had chickened out." Andy scrunched his eyes. "You don't know me very well, Mr. Covington  " "Please, Andrew, call me Artie!" he laughed. "Arthur then," Andy started. "You don't know me very well, Arthur, but one thing you should learn early on about me is that I don't spook easily, and I certainly don't back away from a challenge if there's a reason to try and win." "Well, there's definitely prizes worth winning in tonight's pool. Here, Airdrop me the pictures of your stakes and we'll look over all the possible winnings together." Andy paused for a moment, then pulled up his phone, sending the images over to Covington's phone. A few seconds later, the images of Sheridan and Erin joined the others on the wall, like trophies on a wall. The very presentation of it all made him sick, but he needed to look at the faces, to establish some sort of foundation to the stakes in play. He immediately saw why Niko had been teasing him. The wall of faces was full of beautiful women, twelve in total, and both Doctor Charlotte Varma and her daughter Asha Varma were up there, although they didn't look at all how he'd imagined them. Charlotte looked European, and Asha's features were an interesting blend of European and Indian. Asha thankfully looked a little older than the 18 Andy knew she was. Both women were stunning. But they weren't the ones who caught his attention at the onset. There were two faces on the board that he recognized immediately. One of them was Emily Stevens, a British actress who'd co starred in a series of films as a teenager before becoming an L A celebrity in a bunch of well received indie

Dakota, Pedro and Chris? Nah, we're all about Pam, Tristan and Simon. On the latest Movie Squad pod, the Blockbuster Babes Tristan Fidler and Simon Miraudo join Brekky host Pam Boland for a brand new batch of reviews. First up, Tristan and Pam review Materialists, the latest love-triangle from Past Lives director Celine Song, starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans. Listen in as sparks fly! Is it a rom-com? Is it a rom-dram? Is it even a rom-ance? Then, Simon reviews Dangerous Animals, an Aussie serial killer thriller with a sharky twist starring a terrifying Jai Courtney. Stay tuned for a pod-exclusive conversation between Simon and Dangerous Animals' director Sean Byrne, where Sean talks about finding a new way to incorporate sharks in cinema, and working with Jai on his dance moves for what they describe as his character's “wrap party for a snuff film”. Remember: Movie Squad presents Pavements at Revelation Perth International Film Festival on Sunday 6 July. See the whole program here! Be sure to tune in to RTRFM every Friday at 7:30am to hear Movie Squad live on Breakfast with Pam!

Hai Wonder Kids, kembali dalam renungan anak GKY Mangga besar. Judul renungan hari ini adalah KISAH TENTANG ALLAH Mari kita membaca Firman Tuhan dariYEREMIA 32: 27"Sesungguhnya, Akulah TUHAN, Allah segala makhluk;adakah sesuatu apapun yang mustahil untuk-Ku? Wonder Kids, kamu pernah naik kereta api? Bayangkan kamu sedang di dalam kereta yang tiba-tiba masuk ke dalam terowongan. Di luar jadi gelap banget. Kamu nggak bisa lihat apa-apa. Tapi kamu nggak langsung lompat keluar, kan? Kamu tetap duduk tenang… karena kamu percaya masinisnya tahu jalan dan akan membawa keretanya keluar darikegelapan. Itu sama seperti hidup kita. Kadang ada masa-masa sulit—saat kita merasa takut, sedih, atau bingung. Tapi seperti kata Corrie ten Boom, seorang wanita Kristen yang menyelamatkan banyak orang saat masa perang: "Kalau kereta masuk ke terowongan dan dunia jadi gelap, kamu tidak melompat keluar. Kamu duduk dan percaya pada masinisnya." Nah, masinis hidup kita adalah Tuhan sendiri! Tuhan yang hebat dan sanggup melakukan segala sesuatu. Tidakada yang mustahil bagi-Nya. Mari Kita Bertumbuh di Dalam Anugerah Tuhan Wonder Kids, ketika kamu sedang merasa sedih, kecewa, atau takut… jangan lari dari Tuhan, ya. Datanglah kepada-Nya. Baca Alkitab, renungkan Firman Tuhan, dan dengarkan kisah-kisah tentang kebaikan Tuhan. Ada banyak cerita di Alkitab yang bisa menguatkanmu—cerita tentang Musa yang memimpin Israel, tentang Daud melawan Goliat, tentang Tuhan Yesus yang menenangkan badai. Semua itu adalah bukti bahwa Tuhan tidak pernah meninggalkan anak-anak-Nya. Mari kita berdoaBapa yang maha kuasa, Engkau adalah Allah yang dapatmelakukan segala sesuatu. Aku mengucap syukur karena Engkau selalu ada dan mendengarkan doaku. Tolong aku untuk mempercayai rencana-Mu bagi hidupku. Dalamnama Tuhan Yesus aku berdoa, Amin. Wonder Kids, PERCAYALAH KEPADA TUHAN YANG DAPAT MELAKUKAN SEGALA SESUATU, KARENA IA SELALU MENJAGA DAN MENGATUR HIDUPMU. Tuhan Yesusmemberkati ====/

Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!WE ARE BACK! With another amazing episode of AYDTMOn this episode of AYDTM we start with catching up on our weekends. Then Branee comes in and tells us about the horrible trip she took to Houston and the problems she had to encounter. Then we end it off with talking about settling. Wanna know if you doing the most!!??Got a crazy “doing the most” story?Send in your voice notes and/or ask us for advice!Email us @ Ayeyoudoingthemost@gmail.com… put in the subject “Am I doing the Most or Nah!?”Or send it in the DM!!!Please comment, like & subscribe.. Share with your friends!!Now streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio!!!!!Follow us on IG @Ayeyoudoingthemost- @CinnamonJaye && @BraneeDianeProduced by @RemyTheBrain  @ZoatShotMe

Hai Wonder Kids, kembali dalam renungan anak GKY Mangga besar. Judul renungan hari ini adalah RUMAH YANG DIJANJIKAN Mari kita membaca Firman Tuhan dariWAHYU 21:1Lalu aku melihat langit yang baru dan bumi yang baru, sebab langit yang pertama dan bumi yang pertama telah berlalu, dan lautpun tidak ada lagi. Wonder Kids, pernah nggak kamu membayangkan seperti apa rumahmu di surga nanti? Di dalam kitab Wahyu, Rasul Yohanes mendapat penglihatan dari Tuhan. Ia melihat surga seperti sebuah kota yang sangat indah, seperti pengantin wanita yang sedang bersolek menanti pengantin pria. Wah, bayangkan ya… Seorang pengantin wanita biasanya sangat cantik. Bajunya indah, wajahnya bersinar, dan semua orang tersenyum melihatnya. Nah, surga yang dijanjikan Tuhan juga seperti itu—sangat indah dan penuh sukacita. Surga bukan hanya tempat yang indah, tapi juga tempat yangpenuh dengan kasih Allah. Di sana, nggak ada lagi air mata, nggak ada lagi kesedihan, nggak ada rasa takut. Yang ada hanyalah sukacita bersama Tuhan untuk selamanya. Dan kamu tahu nggak? Surga itu bukan cuma mimpi. Itu adalah janji Tuhan buat setiap anak yang percaya kepada-Nya. Rumah yang dijanjikan Tuhan ini bukan dibangun dengan batu dan semen, tapi dengan kasih dan anugerahTuhan sendiri. Mari Kita Bertumbuh di Dalam Anugerah Tuhan Coba bayangkan kamu sedang menghadiri sebuah pernikahan. Apa yang kamu lihat? Pakaian pengantin yang indah? Dekorasi yang cantik? Janji setia antara pengantin pria dan wanita? Nah, Tuhan juga memberikan janji yang serupa untuk kita,anak-anak-Nya. Janji bahwa Ia akan selalu mengasihi kita, menjaga kita, dan satu hari nanti akan membawa kita pulang ke rumah yang indah bersama-Nya. Mari kita berdoaTUHAN,aku mengucap syukur atas janji-Mu akan langit dan bumi yang baru. Tolong aku untuk selalu berharap dan percaya kepada-Mu. Dalam nama Tuhan Yesus aku berdoa, Amin. Wonder Kids, NANTIKAN LANGIT BARU DAN BUMI BARU YANG DIJANJIKAN TUHAN, SEBARKAN KASIH SERTA KEBAIKAN KEPADA ORANG-ORANG DI SEKITARMU. Tuhan Yesus memberkati

El NYTimes y Donald Trump acusan a Elon Musk de drogarse lo más grande. Elon Musk acusa a Donald Trump de todo menos de bonito. El divorcio de este matrimonio por interés ha sido muy extraño, pero sigue habiendo un lugar para que resurja la chispa del amor. Se necesitan el uno al otro. - Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama on Trump's Campaign Trail – The New York Times - (20) Matías S. Zavia on X: «Un periodista le ha preguntado por qué tiene un ojo morado. Primero ha hecho un chiste sobre la mujer de Macron. Después ha explicado que le dijo a su hijo X que le pegara un puñetazo en la cara y el niño de cinco años accedió https://t.co/LoERZVfA20» / X - Elon Musk slams New York Times after report on alleged drug use - Elon Musk's Neuralink raises fresh cash at $9B valuation | Semafor - Pavel Durov on X: «Telegram and xAI have agreed to a 1-year partnership to distribute Grok to Telegram's billion+ users and integrate it into its apps. Telegram will receive $300M in cash and equity from xAI, plus 50% of revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram. Together, we win! ❤️

Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 3 A New family. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. Chapter 7 That evening, Andy and the girls decided to curl up in bed and watch some television with Niko asleep next to them. At first, Andy was worried that the volume would be high enough to wake up their newest addition, but Aisling assured him nothing was going to stir her from her slumber. Sure enough, despite the volume of the show “ a Spanish Netflix crime drama called La Casa De Papel “ Niko didn't budge an inch. Andy fell asleep with Aisling pressed up against his right side and Lauren pressed up against his left, both of their heads resting against his chest. When he'd first started sleeping with Aisling in his bed, he'd had trouble falling asleep easily. It wasn't something his body had any regular experience with, so it had to be trained. He'd had similar trepidation when Lauren joined them. But now, having had both of the girls for nearly three weeks, he'd grown comfortable with their bodies nestled against his. In the middle of the night, he was in the middle of a strange sex dream only to be woken to find Niko bobbing her head up and down on his cock, her lips latched around it firmly. Neither Lauren or Aisling had woken. Andy couldn't see Niko well in the low light of the wee hours, but her head was feverish, her mouth suctioning on his member until he popped a load against the back of her throat, a thankful, almost vulgar moan coming from the woman, as her tongue lathered over his cock to make sure no droplet remained. She was still spasming in orgasm long after he was done. Once she'd finished licking his cock clean, she crawled back up into the bed, and moved to lay against Lauren's side, folding one arm over the Aussie. Andy fell back asleep almost immediately. When dawn broke, Andy awoke to find Niko straddling his hips, his cock lodged up inside of her snatch. He often woke up with a hard on, but Ash and Lauren had agreed to let him at least wake up in the morning before having a go at him. Clearly no one had informed Niko. He didn't feel bad taking a better look at her now, her tits pressed together between her arms as her hands rest against his chest, while her hips snapped back and forth. Her skin was a deep tan, her nipples a chocolate brown, her hair a jet black. She wasn't tall, about the same height as Aisling so half a foot shorter than Andy, and a full foot shorter than Lauren. She was muscular, toned, a life of military training having kept her very in shape. His orgasm wasn't strong, but it came on quick. By this point, Andy was a little surprised he wasn't cumming dust. As soon as his orgasm hit, she fell forward against his chest, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Aisling and Lauren were both already awake, each with a hand on one of Niko's thighs affectionately. "God damn, sorry about that, sir," Niko laughed, breathy and still shaking. "2nd Lieutenant Niko RedWolf, reporting for her new life, sir. I think my head's finally clear again." "Wasn't it before?" Andy asked. She shook her head, lifting her head up enough so she could look down and smile at him, her hair threatening to spill out of her ponytail at a moment's notice. "Would you believe this is the first time it's actually registered to me what you look like, sir?" She had a mischievous smile and kind brown eyes. "They may have told me your name, but I don't think it cut through the fog. Who are you?" Andy blanched. "My name's Andy Rook. What do you mean, you don't think it cut through the fog?" Niko looked over at Lauren, who scooted a little bit to one side, so Niko could slide off of the top of him and in against his side. "I serve on the Air Force base where they were testing the vaccine, and I agreed to be a test candidate. The two men who were injected with it died immediately, but I and the other female officer seemed fine. At first. Within a few days of it, I started feeling, well, pardon my saying so, sir, but I started feeling horny all the time. The other female officer as well." Aisling smirked over at Niko. "Permission to swear freely is habitually granted in this home, 2nd Lieutenant. In fact, Andy likes a girl with a filthy mouth," she giggled, slapping his thigh. He wilted a little bit, but then nodded in confirmation to Niko. "It's true." "Duly noted, sir," Niko answered. "Anyway, they didn't know about the side effects during the early testing stages, but it started to become pretty fucking apparent to them when I would continually get all fidgety. I tried to resist as long as I could, but eventually I was jilling off in bathroom stalls every chance I could get. Within a week or two, they had an answer, and the program was born." "The Air Force developed the vaccine?" "You think those morons in private research were going to do it this fast? Hell no." Niko snuggled in, trying to get as comfortable as possible pressed up against his chest. "So they figured out that they could introduce the vaccine to men by sexual contact with a vaccinated woman, and that it seemed to help quell the insane need to fuck all the time that women given the vaccine were feeling." "If you were one of the first people to be given the vaccine, then why weren't you partnered up with someone immediately?" Lauren asked. "I wasn't fond of being subservient to a man, so I told them I wanted someone who would keep me on equal ground. But because the nature of my work with Air Force, I also needed someone who would have Top Secret level clearance." Andy's eyes widened. "I sure as hell don't have that." "No, you don't, but you'd mostly been vetted for it Your friend Phil Pak has been trying to get you to come and work with him for a long while, so they'd done all the legwork, and decided to call it good enough." "I also happen to have a mess of partners, Niko. Are you sure that's going to be okay?" "It's all been taken care of, otherwise they wouldn't have sent me here." Niko's eyes suddenly widened. "Oh my god, I haven't even introduced myself to your other partners." Aisling winked at her. "You had hard fucking to do, love. I'm Aisling Blake, I'm from Dublin originally. Everyone around here calls me Ash. I do graphic design." She shook Niko's hand, but Niko pulled her over Andy's head and pressed a kiss against Aisling's lips above him, one which Ash was perfectly happy to reciprocate. "And who's the giantess surfer behind me?" Niko said, pulling back and turning around. "Lauren Herron. I'm a personal trainer for the '49ers." "An Irish girl and an Aussie. About time you got some American blood in this mix." Andy laughed. "That's what my roommate's partner Lily said." "Where are you from, Niko?" "The Rosebud reservation in South Dakota. I'm half Lakota, one quarter Mexican and one quarter Japanese. I know, it's quite the cocktail, but we've all got stories." It was nearly noon when they all got out of bed. Niko was the youngest of all of them, only twenty two. Ash was twenty seven, Lauren thirty five and Andy himself just shy of forty. Andy was worried that Niko might consider him too old, but Niko assured him that his age was not a concern for her. As a matter of fact, she liked older men. She found younger men too emotionally volatile for her tastes. She'd actually read one of his books, but the problem was that it was "The Trouble With Were Bears," the book he was least proud of. She'd said she found the main character interesting, but the plot rather confusing. He assured her the other ones were better, and she seemed eager to read them. The fuck lust, as Niko described it, would be with the girls for the rest of their lives. The longer they went without reconnecting with Andy, the more their judgment would be compromised, the harder it would be to think clearly. They would become like junkies in need of a fix. They would be easily agitated, quick tempered and even violent if they felt it would get them back to their pusher “ Andy. When Niko had arrived at Andy's condo, she had been so out of it that even now she couldn't recall the events he related back to her. Her first memory in weeks had been being in bed with him this morning, even as she crawled atop of him. She knew that he was her mate. She wasn't sure how she knew that, but she could feel it, sense it. And when he'd had his third orgasm inside of her within less than a day, the imprinting had finally settled in and peeled back the cloud from her consciousness. While Lauren was on leave until the pandemic had receded, Niko would be working from the condo. Although she was a qualified pilot, her service in the Air Force was as a data analyst, and a secure connection was being set up on site for her to use. Until then, she had a bit of a break. It was a Saturday, and the girls decided they wanted to work on their tans. The condo had a small back yard that was fenced off. While the neighbors in the condos on either side would be able to peer down and see them, the girls had decided to sunbathe topless. Lily had even decided to join them, although she bitched about the heat, which was pushing over a hundred. Andy spent the afternoon filling Eric in on all the information he'd gotten over the last two days “ what Phil had told him, what Niko had told him, all of it. Eric, in return, had filled in Andy with what he'd learned from work over the last few weeks. While Lily, Andy and Eric all knew who Eric worked for, they'd been a little bit vague with the girls, always joking that Eric worked for a think tank that didn't do anything interesting, but soon they were going to have to fill them in. Eric worked for a company called Long Thought Research and Development, but the truth of the matter was that they were a remote analyst cell for the CIA. Long Thought handled problems that were overwhelming in the abstract and deadly in application “ they were responsible for terrorist profiling, weapons migration modeling, political theater simulations and a whole lot more. Over the last few weeks, they'd been working on building a new model, one which had Eric worried. Theoretically, every member of Long Thought was supposed to be sectioned off, working on only a singular aspect of the problem so that no one analyst could get an idea of what the simulation was intended to determine. It was supposedly to avoid confirmation bias, but Eric had considered that explanation bullshit as of late. So he'd done a little bit of data gathering from his coworkers on the sly, and come up with a working theory. The model was designed to see how the world's new normal would pan out if 37.5% of the male population of Earth died out to a pandemic. This pandemic. Niko had wandered in before the rest of the girls, while Andy and Eric stood in the kitchen, staring at one another. Then she'd offered her own information, to help talk Andy out of what he'd been thinking about. Because Andy had been thinking about going to the press. She'd explained to him that for the time being, all of the information had to remain secret, or a nationwide panic would ensue. The vaccine that the Air Force had developed was starting to be deployed to major metropolitan areas on a very specific basis. And when a mayor, a governor, a representative or a senator had put up a fuss, Niko hinted that that particular politician had been exposed to the virus and then offered a choice “ they could take the vaccine, and be mated for life to one (or in some cases many) person, or they could deny the vaccine worked, and would be allowed to die. Only one governor had chosen to decline the vaccine, and while the Air Force had respected their wishes, they didn't allow the governor to tell anyone about the vaccine and its side effects. They did allow the governor to die, though. Niko explained to the two men that there were probably only a hundred or so people in the country with the full picture of what was going on, and that was by design, because already the virus was starting to take its toll on other countries. While some countries had done excellent jobs at containing the spread of it, others were on the verge of collapse. And the CIA was debating on what countries were worth saving and which weren't. England, Ireland and Australia were already in the process of being brought up to speed about the vaccine, but the complete details were only being given to them on an as needed basis. The pairing program had been confirmed to the outside world, but the side effects of the vaccine had been kept hush hush. On some level, the Air Force was convinced that foreign governments would laugh themselves at being told that the vaccine had crazy sexual side effects until they had gotten a chance to experience them for themselves. "Shit," Andy grumbled. "The ex-journalist in me feel like I'm sitting on the story of the century here, and I can't tell anybody." Niko squeezed his hand softly. "You're a good man, Andy Rook, which is why I'm happy to be mated to you, but you have to consider the ramifications of what would happen if you revealed all of this to the public." "The whole goddamn world would explode," Eric sighed. "I know. I've seen the data. And that's not the worst of it." "What's the worst of it then?" Andy asked. "The worst of it is that we're going to have to let a billion men die off for the planet to stabilize. It's going to be the biggest culling since World War Two, and even that wasn't a drop in the bucket compared to what this is." The three stood in silence for a long time. "How does anyone make these kinds of decisions?" Andy whispered. "You don't have to. We don't have to," Niko said, wrapping an arm around him. "You can't save the whole world, Andy, but you can save us. Hell, you've already saved those two amazing women out there. And they've been so nice to me, even though I apparently fucked you at your desk before even introducing myself." She blushed a little. "I still don't remember that. Did you watch, Eric?" Eric laughed, lifting the Collins glass full of scotch to his lips. "Are you kidding? Lily would've kicked the shit out of me if I did." "Oh, I dunno," Andy chuckled. "If you asked, she might let you watch." "Well, I don't intend to ask. She already has me waking up sore most mornings." "That's just the exercise from all the fucking you're doing," Andy said. "You're out of practice, just like me, and hell, I've got three women to satisfy." "Soon to be four," Niko giggled. "I'm sure it's every man's dream." "I'm just waiting for the first big fight to occur, because I know it's coming sooner or later." "That's future Andy's problem," Niko said, turning his face down so she could kiss him for a moment. "Besides, Ash made it pretty clear just because you're tired of giving me my medicine doesn't mean you get to skimp out on your promise to her." Andy groaned playfully. "I'm going to be running dry in a few days at this rate." "Oh I wouldn't worry too much about that, Andy," Eric said with a laugh. "The fall will probably kill you." "Yeah, well, you just keep thinking, Butch," Andy countered. "That's what you're good at." "What are the cats' names?" "The Russian blue is Muninn, and the black one is Huginn." "Odd names." "It's the name for Odin's two ravens, thought and wisdom," Eric said. "We were on a Norse mythology kick when we got them as kittens." "They friendly?" "Oh sure," Andy said. "They're just getting used to this many people being in the house at one time. If you put out their food enough times, they'll start cuddling up to you any chance they get. Ash decided she was going to befriend them right after she got here, and Muninn'll hop up into her lap when she's working at the table some days and just settle there. That's why Eric built her the foot rest, so she can put her legs up and Muninn'll sit there quietly." Niko looked back and forth between the two men for a minute. "How the hell were you two single before any of us showed up?" "Women don't like nerds," Eric grumbled. Andy raised a finger, arguing the point. "No, they like nerds alright, but they don't seem to understand that nerds like aggressive women and are terrible at making the first move. So nerds don't get the love they deserve." Niko looked out into the back yard, where the girls were gathering up their things, wrapping towels around their waists. "I dunno. You two seem to have done pretty well for yourselves at this point." Andy smirked, cocking his head to one side. "Sure, but luck is like the weather. Wait a few minutes and it'll change." A storm of bad luck was, indeed, just over the horizon. Chapter 8 The next few days involved a lot of time getting settled, as Andy learned more about the girls who now shared his life. They also spent time learning about each other. Andy spent time trying to get some writing done on another Druid Gunslinger novel, and when he got into a zone, the girls made a pact not to disturb him, especially if he started typing away badly. That gave them plenty of time to dig into each other's history, and the girls began to scheme and plan. They took great fun in learning each other's turn ons and offs, and to figure out how to quell their own wild desires, to try new experiences. The girls also took an interest in reading the seven books Andy had written in the Druid Gunslinger series, with Aisling going so far as to even mock up a movie poster for one of them, which delighted Andy to no end. It was starting to become obvious that the condo wasn't designed to hold this many people, however. At night, things were fine because everyone was packed in their beds, but during the day, people were having to work around one another. Aisling and Niko set up their laptops at the dining room table, while Lauren spent much of the day either working out in the backyard, or reading in a deck chair. Andy and Eric each had their own desk, Andy's in the dining room and Eric's in the living room. Lily seemed perfectly comfortable coding in the living room on the couch. When Andy's last partner showed up, she would have to either share space in the backyard or the couch in the living room. The dining room table might fit a third workspace, but it would be a very tight fit. There had been nice surprises, however. Both Lauren and Aisling were excellent cooks, each with radically different styles. Lauren focused on healthy cooking, while Ash was the master of lush, savory cooking that threatened waistlines just from the very smell of it. The cats had taken well to their new housemates, keeping themselves entertained while everyone was working. From time to time, they would hop onto people's laps, or walk across their laptops, but for the most part, they were just happy to have people to be around who might be willing to pet them in a spare moment. But they were starting to feel the limitations of the condo, and the heat wasn't helping. They had fans running nonstop, but the condo didn't have centralized air conditioning. When it had just been the two of them, they were able to manage by closing the windows and drawing the drapes, because the condo was nicely shaded by trees. But with six people, that wasn't holding up as well. By the time it started to cool down in the evening, a light funk had started to fill the place. And there was still one more person to show up. The camaraderie between them all had helped diffuse the tension, even as they delved into each other's past. Andy had gotten to know some of Aisling's siblings, especially Dermot, who had refused to let Andy off the line the first time they'd talked until he'd promised to send him an advance reader copy of "High Noon At Stonehenge," the upcoming Druid Gunslinger book that had started Andy down this whole journey. Turning on the news every night had been hard to watch, simply because it didn't jibe with the information they had at their own fingertips. As Phil had predicted, the government was doing its best to downplay the casualties, reporting false numbers to make it sound like everything was under control. And while reports of the vaccination program were starting to get out to the masses, nobody was talking about the side effects. Why, Andy kept asking himself, why oh why was nobody talking about the side effects? They were wrapping up a day's worth of work when Niko looked over at Andy with a soft smile. Aisling and Lauren had headed upstairs a few minutes earlier. "I've sort of been monopolizing you for a few days, Andy, so Ash and Lauren have a little surprise cooked up for you while I work late tonight. I'll be up in a few hours to crawl into bed, but you should go up to your room and enjoy what they've got up their sleeves." "You okay with that?" Andy said. He'd been navigating a whirlwind of emotions since the girls had come into his life, and was doing his best to make sure nobody ever felt left out, and that everyone also got a turn being the center of attention. "Oh relax. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have said so. And I did demand a mess of attention when I got here, so it's only fair I tap out of a couple of play sessions. Gimme a kiss and then go have your fun." She tilted her head upward as he smiled and leaned down, pressing his lips against hers. He'd meant to give her a quick kiss, but she folded her hand against the back of his neck and pulled him in to make it much more intense, practically searing him with the heat. "And Lauren's going to be a little nervous, and you're going to want to go easy on her. Don't, okay? She wants what she's offering, so don't deny her that. You'll know what she wants. Give it to her." "Yes ma'am." He offered her a mock salute and she reached over and swatted his ass. "Don't be a smartass. Now get your butt upstairs." Andy shutdown his desktop and then headed up the stairs. The door to his room was closed. Eric and Lily had been in their room for about an hour already, and he could hear the sounds of moans behind their closed door. Lily and Eric both started and ended their days earlier than Andy and his girls. Whenever a door was closed in the house, the rule was that you always knocked. So there was Andy, once again, knocking on the door to his own bedroom. "Come on in, luv," Aisling said. Andy stepped into his own bedroom, and saw Aisling sitting on the corner of the bed. On her knees on the floor next to her was Lauren, with her hands folded together in front of her. She wore absolutely nothing, except for a collar attached to a leash, the end of which was in Aisling's hand. He closed the door behind himself, feeling Huginn skitter in just before he did. "So what's all this then?" "Well love," Aisling said, "Lauren has a request. A couple of requests, actually. Don't you, slut?" Lauren licked her lips nervously, not speaking, but nodding in agreement. Aisling took the leash by the midpoint and used the end to give Lauren a smack on the back like a mock lash. "I asked you a question, Lauren. Answer me." "Sorry, Mistress," Lauren said. "Yes, Master, your slut would like to make a coupla humble requests, if that's good." What Niko had told him just a few minutes rung in his ears once more before he spoke. "You may ask. Whether I'll grant them or not remains to be seen, but if you don't ask, you risk nothing, you gain nothing. Speak." "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. The other birds and I were talkin', and Aisl, Mistress Aisling was telling' us about her first time being taken in the back, an' I wanted to have a go at it." "Taken in the back?" Aisling gave her another playful smack with the leash end. "What did I tell you, whore? Speak plainly and dirty, otherwise he's not going to know what you want." "The ass, sir. I wanna be fucked in the ass." "That's one request. What's the other?" Andy said, moving a little closer to the two women. "You've been so wonderful and kind with me, Andy, but I want to see the other side of ya. I wanna rough go at it. Pull me hair, spank my ass, pinch me nips, ride my hard, pound me hard, make it hurt. Don't break me, but take me right up to that edge." Andy reached down and pinched one of Lauren's nipples between his fingertips, his grip holding firm and clamping even tighter than he would've normally. He expected to hear a whimper of pain from Lauren, but instead, a deep throated moan poured from her, and her hips almost rutted forward. "That what you're looking for?" "Fuck yes, Master." "If you want to be fucked in the ass, Lauren, you're going to need to get my cock good and slick. Going in dry would do some damage." Aisling giggled a little bit, and reached behind her, grabbing a tube of lubricant, handing it down to Lauren. Andy peeled his shirt off and felt Lauren's hands prying his jeans open, nearly ripping them down his legs. It wasn't until she'd gotten them down there that she realized he was still wearing his shoes from having walked out to the mailbox earlier. "Oh, you useless cunt, girl," Lauren said to herself. "Forgot to get his runners off." He certainly didn't go easy on her, and she certainly seemed to enjoy herself. Niko had slipped into bed with them an hour or so later, and the four of them drifted off to sleep. But it wasn't going to be a long and restful night for Andy. There was a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Aisling and Lauren were on his left and Niko was on his right, so he only had to move past her to get to the door. He saw her stir a little when he crawled out of bed, but he was able to avoid disturbing her too much. He pulled on a pair of boxers, tugged on a t shirt and opened the door to his room to see Eric and Lily standing outside. Eric curled his fingers at Andy to come out of his room. Andy nodded and stepped out into the hallway, then followed Eric and Lily downstairs to the living room. "Andy, we," Lily started, then paused, then started again, "I need your help." "Help?" Andy said, looking over at Eric. "What kind of help can I provide? I'm a writer, for fuck sake." "My roommate, well, my former roommate, she was given the vaccine, but,” Lily motioned for Andy to sit on the couch, so he did. "Look, Jenny's a nice girl. She's a little naive, and occasionally she's a bit daft, but she's a nice girl. She wasn't prepared for this." "Prepared for what?" Andy said. "What's happening?" "They delivered her to the man who was supposed to be her partner, and he took a swing at her, said he wanted to put her in her place before he'd let her have a taste of his seed. He tried to hit her, the fucking bastard. But Jenny's been studying aikido since she was six, and she broke his arm defending herself and ran. Even as horny as she was, she wasn't going to let someone push her around. So she fled and she's in hiding, and I can't let that stand, so we need to go and get her." "Go get her? Go and get her? And do what with her?" "I don't know, alright?" Lily said, raising her voice for a second. "I'm thinking we can take her to one of my coworkers and pair them up." "Isn't the government doing match ups? Aren't they going to be pissed that she isn't with who she's supposed to be?" "Look at me, Andy," Lily said, pointing her fingertips at her eyes. "Do I look like I give a shit what the government thinks? They didn't even do a proper check on the guy they were connecting her to. They paired her up with some abusive asshole with a history of violence towards partners. That isn't going to fly, okay?" "Let's go get her, and then we can figure out what to do with her, okay?" Eric suggested. "I'm sure one of us is going to regret this," Andy said, heading back upstairs to grab his socks and shoes. Before the plague had hit, even at three in the morning, there would've been at least a few cars on the road, but now, everyone was staying at home nearly all the time, which meant the freeway felt like a ghost town. That was for the best, because despite it not raining that much in the Bay Area, tonight it was pouring like a flood was coming. And people in the Bay were terrible drivers in the rain. It wasn't a short drive, and after a bit, Andy started to get a bit nervous. "How far up into the hills are we going, Lily? We're more than half way up to San Francisco at this point." "She's up here in Hillsborough, camped out in someone's vacant house since she fled from the asshole. I'm more worried that the cops have shown up to haul her ass to jail." "Or us," Eric said., They're gonna arrest us for being out under curfew." "Quit whining, baby," Lily said to him. "Right up there, on the left, 2885." There were in a very posh neighborhood in Hillsborough, with mansions on either side of them. There was plenty of space in between the houses, something that was mostly at a premium in the Bay. "You wait here with the engine running, Andy, in case we have to bolt quickly. Eric and I will be right back with her." Lily and Eric hopped out of the car, closing the doors and heading over to the house, and left Andy to wait. A minute or so later, a helicopter flew overhead, low and with a spotlight shining down, but it was off to the side and the beam of light cut through some back yard three or four streets over. Andy wasn't sure if they were looking for Lily's friend Jenny or not, but he hoped the police had other things on their mind. The wait was nearly unbearable. After ten minutes, Eric and Lily came back out of the house, a third person between them, hanging on, covered in a blanket it looked like had probably been stolen from whatever house she'd been hiding in. Eric held open the door and Lily loaded the woman into Andy's back seat before Lily ushered the girl into the car, crawling in after her as Eric slid into the front passenger's seat. "I think the cops are close, Andy," Lily hissed at him. "Fucking drive already!" As soon as both doors slammed shut, Andy's foot was off the brake and the car was in motion. It was hard to look back behind him, but after a few blocks he had to stop at a red light and glanced over his shoulder as he had to wait, and saw a familiar face resting her head in Lily's lap. "Jesus Lily, you didn't say your roommate was Jenny Carnero!" "Who's Jenny Carnero?" Eric asked. "She's the goddamn weather forecaster for channel 2." "How the hell would you know that?" Lily asked. "Neither of you strike me as Fox News watchers." "It's the only thing they had on over at 24 Hour Fitness when I went to work out, so I saw her all the time." "It was a job, Andy," Lily said. "I also didn't expect you to hold a grudge." "It's not that, Lily," Andy sighed. "She's going to be noticed missing. It's not like she's somebody we can just keep hidden without people knowing where she is. The minute she goes into work, the guy she's supposed to be with will know where to fucking find her, and that means they'll come for her." "By that point, she'll already be imprinted on someone, so it won't fucking matter," Lily growled. "And it won't be that asshole who tried to hit her." The girl whimpered, her head squirming in Lily's lap. "Lily," she whined, "Lily, it hurts. Need cock." "Soon, Jenny, soon. It won't be long." "Not long, Now," Jenny said, her voice starting to sound almost violent. "Give cock." "Oh shit, her nose is bleeding," Eric said, his eyes back on Jenny's face. "Just pull over and Andy can fuck her." "Excuse me, but I've already got three girls, and supposedly one more on the way. Why don't you fuck her?" "Because Lily says I can't." "Andy, stop the car," Lily said. "Eric, get back here." "But you said,” "I know what I fucking said, you little shit, but I'll have to fucking learn to deal with it, won't I? Get back here and let her suck you off while Andy's driving us home." Andy brought the car to a stop at the next red light, and Lily swapped places with Eric. As soon as Eric was sitting in the back seat, Jenny was practically ripping his pants off, fishing out his cock before slamming her mouth down on it. "Lily, are you sure about this?" Eric said, nervousness apparent in his voice. "Give it to her, Eric. She and I were good friends, we will be again. It'll just be an adjustment." Andy kept his eyes pointing forward for the rest of the drive as Eric got blown in his back seat. Chapter 9 The next day Andy was struggling to figure out a plan. He'd been running it around in his head for hours, trying to see some easy way through this, but he kept coming back to the same inevitable point “ he needed Phil's help. God, he was tired of having to ask Phil for help. "You're vexed, Andy," Niko said to him, placing her hand on his shoulder. He'd been sitting at his desk, and he looked back over his shoulder to her. "How can you tell?" "You've been looking at that computer screen for almost an hour and haven't typed a word, babe," she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. "That's vexed. We haven't been together long, but I recognize when you're vexed. I do the same, when I'm thinking very hard about something. I stare and I fret, while I'm vexed." "You seem rather like a badass, Niko. You sure you're going to be okay, being saddled with a square like me?" She laughed. It was a sound he was quickly learning to love, confident and yet still somehow a little cheeky. "You've been keeping this house together despite all the chaos. That doesn't seem square to me." "You know I'm like a dozen years your elder, right?" "I won't tell anyone if you won't. So how can I help? What are you vexed by?" "Last night, our little voyage out, we brought back a new girl for Eric. She's Lily's former roommate. She was supposed to be with someone else, but apparently the man she was paired up with has a history of domestic abuse, and so Lily insisted we rescue her and paired her up with Eric so no one could pull her away." "So you're trying to figure out how to tell the government about how she's paired up with someone different? What makes you think they're even going to notice?" "She's a weather reporter on one of the local news stations, so people are going to notice. I think I've got a solution, but I just hate to do it. I feel like I'm always leaning on this friend to help us out." "Oh? Someone you've told me about?" "Phil. I've mentioned him. In fact, you should probably meet Phil. I'm just tired of constantly asking him for help." "Do you really ask him for help a bunch, or does it just feel like it and you're overreacting?" she grinned. "Probably the latter, but it doesn't always feel like that." Andy grabbed his phone and loaded up the Signal messenger app. He and Phil used it to keep their communication private. “Meet up in an hour at the usual spot? Almost immediately he got a response. “Make it 2. "Okay, looks like I've got a meeting set up. Phil's been our man on the inside for this whole pandemic. He works for a company that contracts for the military, and while he can't tell us exact details about what's going on, he can help paint in some of the corners. Phil will know how to get all this sorted out." "How long have you two known each other?" "Nearly 20 years? He's good people. Why don't you come with me?" "Sure, lemme go throw some pants on." A couple hours later, Andy and Niko had headed back to the park to meet up with Phil, who didn't bring Audrey with him. He was dressed wrapped in head to toe, much like he was the last time, a mask over his face and goggles over his eyes, with a ball cap pulled down over his jet black hair. Andy was dressed much the same. Niko didn't feel the need to wear goggles, and had her hair drawn back into a ponytail. Phil kept a good distance from them, pushing his vape pen behind his mask to take a drag from it, then tugged the mask down briefly to blow out a cloud of vapor into the air. "So what's the 911 call about, Andy?" "First, let me introduce you, "2nd Lieutenant Redwolf," Phil said, cutting him off. "Mr. Marcos," Niko replied. "Didn't know your name was Phil." "I'm surprised you even remember me, Redwolf. You were pretty out of it when I sort nudged you towards Andy." Andy cocked his head. "You sent her my way?" "She's part of our tribe, Andy. Geek cred through and through, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to have her kept in the family, so I just made a connection in the system. She had decent odds to end up with you anyway, but why take a chance, right?" "Guess I owe you one then, Mr. Marcos," Niko said. Phil swiped his hand in the air. "Then I'll call in that favor to insist you never, ever call me Mr. Marcos unless we're at work. Deal?" "I can make that promise." "This what you called me about, Andy?" Phil said, finally stepping a little further back, pulling off his mask so he could just continually draw from the vape pen. "Nah. I've got a bigger problem. So Eric's picked up a runaway." Phil frowned a little bit. "How do you mean?" "So Eric's partner, Lily. She had a roommate before the whole pandemic, name of Jenny. Now apparently Jenny was set up with some guy." "That's how it works, Andy." "I get that, Phil. But it turns out the guy she was set up with was some kind of domestic abuser." "Wait, what?" Phil scowled. "That sort of thing should've shown up before he got paired up with anyone." "I dunno. Maybe it didn't get reported before, maybe this was his first time and he was trying it on. But before Jenny could get imprinted on him, he tried to take a swing at her." "Fuck. She okay?" "She's got some self-defense training, so she got away from the guy unscathed and went into hiding." "You get the guy's name?" "I can have Eric send it to you. But that's not the big concern. The big concern is that once we rescued her, she imprinted onto Eric. And she's a talking head." "Shit," Phil said, taking another drag. "News?" "Weather." Phil swiped a hand back in the air again. "Send me her name. I'll get it taken care of. Don't even trip about it. That's the least of our problems right now." "Shit getting bad, sir, I mean Phil?" Niko asked. "You have no idea." "How bad?" Andy asked. "We're looking at ten to twenty before it's all done." "Ten to twenty million people dead? Jesus!" "No, percent. We're talking ten to twenty percent of America dead, mostly men. We're guessing it'll end up around sixty million dead before the vaccine's in full effect in the middle of next year." Phil took a heavy drag, and the news hung in the air like a guillotine's blade. "The news is going to break any day now how fatal the new mutation of the virus is getting, and then everything'll be crazy. The army's going to be deployed here on US soil and martial law's going to go into effect. President Pelosi's at least been quick about it, and she's bunkered down. News hasn't broken yet, but the orange gooomba died on the operating table a couple of hours ago. Looks like milquetoast will be next in a couple of days." "Forty or fifty million men dead? That's nearly half of the male population!" Niko said. "How the hell are we going to recover from that?" "We're going to have to pair up a lot more women with the remaining men, and encourage them to have a whole shitload of kids," Phil sighed. "But even with that, it's going to be a fucking mess for a generation. Which reminds me, when you go home, I want you to start packing up your things." "Packing?" Andy asked. "What do you mean?" "I mean, start figuring out the absolute minimum you would need to take with you if you had to leave in a hurry, and then get anything that might take a few minutes packed up. Anything else, just have it at the ready." "Should I be worried?" "Nah, but it wouldn't hurt to be a little prepared." "What's happening, Phil?" "I can't tell you that yet, but the world's gonna keep on changing, and it doesn't hurt to be ready for it." "Yeah, okay." "You'll actually be very happy after it happens, man. Trust me." "If you say so." "Trust Big Daddy Phil." Andy rolled his eyes. "I trust you about as far as I can throw you, and that ain't very far." "You'll see." His watch beeped and Phil turned it up to look at it. "I gotta get back into the office. Send me Eric's new girl's name and the guy she was supposed to be hooked up with, and I'll make a few edits into the system." "You know Phil, there are days it feels like you're seriously into some black bag shit." "Only some days?" Phil said, taking one final drag off his vape pen before blowing a huge cloud up and into the air. It smelled vaguely of cinnamon buns, Andy noted. "Then I gotta up my game again. I'll see you soon, brother." He pulled his mask back up and headed back to his car. Andy and Niko watched him go, stretching out a little bit. "So you worked with Phil, huh?" Andy asked her. Her face scrunched up a little. "I was part of their security detail until I got exposed to the virus and then got quarantined. When the symptoms started to get severe, they used us as test cases for vaccinations and tried to pair us off. They were having trouble finding someone to match me with, based on my stated preferences before I got drugged." Andy smirked a little behind his mask. "I knew I wasn't exactly what you were looking for." "You're a little older than I initially wanted, Andy, but I don't have any complaints now that I'm with you. I was also a bit leery about sharing a partner with anyone, but it seems like that's going to be S O P moving forward." "S O P?" "Standard Operating Procedure. If Mr. Mar” if Phil's right about those casualty numbers, they're going to have to pair up a Lot of women to individual men. I bet you're going to get a bunch more than just the one more you're expecting." "Jesus, that's a whole lot of personalities to keep in balance," Andy grumbled. "I dunno if I'm up to that." "You don't have to do it alone, stupid head," she teased. "You've got Ash and me to help manage the cavalcade of women you're going to be saddled with. We'll try and keep everyone from killing one another and manage your time, although we're definitely going to have to continue getting you into better shape." "Lauren's started in on that, but frankly, I probably need to eat better." "And cut down on the soda. You've got a full nest to look after." "This scares the shit out of me," he sighed, leaning his back against a tree. "You know that, right?" Niko strolled over to him, a coy playfulness to her stride, as she moved close. "I know how to relax you." Andy arched an eyebrow beneath the goggles. "What, here?" "Who's going to see?" "We're in a public park, Niko!" "Ask me if I give a fuck," she said, as she dropped down to her knees, nuzzling her face against the crotch of his jeans. "Alright," he laughed, "Niko, do you give a fuh " His sentence was cut off as she pressed her mouth down along the length of his cock until the head of it was pressed against the back of her throat. She held it there for a good moment, long enough that he could feel her suppressing her gag reflex, straining back tears before she drew her head back and gasped in a deep breath of air. A playful giggle rolled from her lips, saliva dripping from them. "No sir, I fucking do not. But the faster you give me what I want, the faster we can go home," she said, moving to kiss at his balls, suckling on his nuts for a moment before moving her lips back to wrap around the head of his cock. "Now hold my hair back and fuck my face." Andy reached down and grabbed her silky ponytail with one hand, the other moving to curl his fingers against the back of her head as he pushed her face back down onto his cock. In response, she let out a wanton moan onto his cock, her hands reaching back to grab his ass, helping push her lips down to the base of his shaft, his balls pressing right against her chin. His hand holding her ponytail pulled her back, sliding her lips back to the head of his cock before pushing her face back down again, feeling her fingernails sinking into his jeans a bit more in response. He could swear he saw her hips thrusting forward beneath him, her legs spread wide, her knees almost pressed to the inside of his ankles. The pace quickened, as he thrust forward into her face while tugging her down onto each shove, whimpers that sounded delighted shivering across his skin between the sloppy sounds. He finally pulled her head back, letting her pop her head off his cock, just in case she wanted to tell him to stop, tell him she'd changed her mind, or whatever. Instead, she turned her eyes up to him. "Don't fucking stop. Fuck my face. Gimme that load of hot cum right against the back of my fucking throat. Please?" Her brown eyes were peering up at him as she licked her lips, and he could feel her struggling to try and lean even closer to him. He started to pump his cock into her mouth again, and suddenly he felt one of her hands slide away from his hips. He could see it push down the front of her jeans, and almost immediately, it came back up again and raised into the air towards his face. Her fingers were glistening, practically soaked, and he could smell her cunt on them as he leaned forward to lick them clean. Just as he did, he felt his balls draw up and his hand on the back of her head pressed her face down to the base of his cock as that orgasm shredded through him. He knew his cum was blasting into her throat, and could feel her spasming and trembling against him. It still boggled his mind, knowing that his orgasm triggered one immediately in his partner, and far more intense than he'd ever been able to bring a woman to before. His hands let go, giving Niko back control as she drew back, groaning in a carnal sound he hadn't yet grown accustomed to. Instead of pulling away, though, she started licking up, making sure to catch any loose jism or spittle from his shaft, her gaze never once leaving his, as she smirked while her tongue slathered him up. "See? Don't you feel less vexed?" He couldn't help it and started laughing, and it was infectious, because she immediately began giggling with him, even while she was lapping up the last of his spunk. "Okay, yes, you got me, I am certainly less vexed. How about you?" Niko smirked a bit, giving his cock one final lick before she pulled his boxers and jeans back up, rezipping and buttoning them up for him. "By now, you have to understand that your sperm is like a magic formula to us, your partners. It's exactly what we need and want every day. It's like giving a junkie a fix. Of course I feel better." She tugged up his shirt and kissed his stomach before pulling herself back up onto her feet. "I'd have kissed you but, "I don't mind that you just blew me, Niko," Andy chuckled. "Oh, that's not it at all. I just didn't want to share," she said with a wink, tapping one of her fingertips on his nose. "Girl's gotta keep every drop to herself any chance she can. Normally we try and pass a little of each load around, but here I get one all to myself. So I'm savoring that taste lingering on my lips. But we should get back to the house." "Fair enough." As soon as they got back to the house, Lily was waiting for them by the garage door. "Are we okay?" Niko smiled at her and gave the plump girl a huge. "Andy's got you covered, don't worry." She rubbed her spiky hair and then headed into the house, leaving the two together. "So get me the jackass's name from Jenny, and I'll get it to our friend Phil, who'll make sure it gets entered into the record that he's a domestic abuser." "Hopefully that means he won't get paired with anyone then." "Well, based on what Phil said in the Discord channel a week or so back, it's more likely they'll pair him with someone who can beat the shit out of him," Andy sighed. "Or, someone who's into that kind of thing. People are into all sorts of weird things out here." "You don't have to tell me twice," Lily said, exhaling a deep breath. "Jenny's been nuzzled up to Eric all morning, practically unwilling to let him go. I wasn't planning on sharing him with anyone, but if I have to share him with someone, I guess Jenny will be okay." Andy realized a second later, his face must have given something away. "What's with that look? You heard something else from Phil, didn't you?" "Yeah, it's pretty fucking scary out there, Lil." He shook his head then looked up. "You're probably going to be sharing Eric with quite a few other women. Men are dying left and right, and they're going to have to figure out how to keep the country afloat. That means the traditional family unit design is out the fucking window." "How bad can it really be if they're keeping it quiet?" "It's about to boil over. The estimate is we're going to lose nearly half the men in America." Her eyes looked to him as if she was waiting for the joke. When it didn't come, and the silence had hung in the air an uncomfortably long time, she finally spoke again. "Half? Fucking half? Fucking Half?" "Yeah, I can't say I'm thrilled about it either, Lily. I've got a lot of guy friends, and the idea of half of them just being fucking gone isn't exactly news I wanted to hear when I got up this morning, but I got it anyway." Andy tossed his hands up into the air. "And we can't fucking tell anyone! The news will out in a few days, but we have to be quiet about it until it is. Also, apparently we need to start packing." "Packing? What for?" "I guess we're going to be moved at some point. I guess we'll find out soon enough." Soon enough came the very next day. Andy and his usual gang of friends had a Discord channel they hung out on regularly, and they'd been using it for news on each other. And Phil poked his head in just before noon with a simple message: "@DruidGun 15 minutes." The household had spent part of the da

A new home. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. Chapter 4 Three days later, the calendar claimed it was a Saturday, but at that point, Andy wasn't sure any of them really knew. During the evening after dinner every day for the past three days, Lily and Eric had retreated to Eric's room immediately as soon as dishes were in the dishwasher, and Andy and Aisling were in Andy's room not long after. The walls between the two bedrooms were thankfully fairly thick, and each room was generating enough noise to drown the other out if there had been any spillover. If anything, Andy actually felt a little sore. Aisling hadn't been lying about fucking him thin. Each day had been a new and interesting work out, and she'd been true to her word “ he hadn't gone to sleep without giving her at least one load for the day. They'd also spent a bunch of time all getting to know one another. Andy knew within just a few minutes that Lily was a good match for Eric “ she knew exactly how much to push him around and how much to let him get his way. Aisling also seemed an ideal match for Andy, and they'd spent much of the Saturday upstairs just in bed, cuddled up watching movies on the television in his room. Late in the afternoon, Andy had starting making dinner for the four of them when a knock came at the door. Aisling was in the living room talking with Lily while Eric has helping him by chopping vegetables. "Who is it, Ash?" Aisling picked through the peephole then opened the door. "Looks like you should make that for five," she called back. "Delivery for Andrew Rook?" a man inside a bio hazard suit said, holding out a tablet. A woman stood next to him, dressed much as Aisling and Lily had been when they'd showed up. "I'm Aisling Blake, his partner," she said. "It okay if I sign?" The man glanced down at his tablet, frowned at it, clicked a few things, then nodded. "Sure, looks like that's okay. Sign here." Aisling took her fingertip and scrawled her name on it, as the woman moved into the room and started heading up the stairs, carrying her little roller suitcase with her. "The door on the left!" Aisling called up. "I'll be up in just a second!" She turned back to the man with a broad smile. "Anything else?" "Nah, I'll be back again soon enough," he said, and Aisling closed the door behind him, turning the deadbolt to lock it. "I'm going to go up and talk to her, Andy, so just hang out for a bit down here, okay?" "I'm cooking anyway, Ash, it's fine." Andy hadn't even gotten a glance at the new woman, but his curiosity was certainly getting the better of him. Still, he also found himself more than a little nervous. Aisling darted upstairs and then a few seconds later, he heard his bedroom door close again. "You've been kicked out of your own room again," Eric teased. "Meh, it's not even my room anymore." "Oh get over yourself," Lily said. They all knew she was joking, even as dry as her humor was. Ten minutes later, dinner was close to done, and Andy was tempted to call upstairs to her when Aisling came down the stairs alone. "Is she not joining us?" Andy asked. Aisling shook her head, and Andy could hear the sound of the shower turning on in his bathroom. "She's already eaten, so she's going to take a shower. After dinner, I'll bring you up to the room." "What's her name?" "Lauren," Aisling said. "You going to tell me anything else about her?" "Nah," Aisling grinned. "So how's the new girl?" Lily said as Aisling moved to sit at the table while Andy went to dish out his cooking “ a spicy chili over rice “ into four bowls before putting the fifth bowl back into the cupboard. "New," Aisling said. "Oh come on, Ash," Eric said. "Surely you can tell us more than that." "Of course I can, but I'm not going to, and don't call me Shirley." For the next few minutes, Lily and Eric peppered her with questions, but Aisling dodged them before she finally just rolled her eyes and stared at them. "You can make your own mind up about her tomorrow, alright? Let her tell you about her rather than me. Now can we talk about something else?" After dinner, Lily and Eric had agreed to clear up the dishes and get them into the dishwasher, so Andy could go upstairs and meet his next partner. Andy was more than a little nervous as Aisling took him upstairs. His own bedroom door was closed and as they stood outside of it, Aisling moved to stand between him and it. "Look, Andy, do you trust me?" He cocked his head to one side then nodded. "Of course, Ash. Why?" "Then just go with me on this, okay?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a blindfold. "Put this on." "Are you serious?" Andy looked down at the blindfold as she handed it to him. "Really?" "Please trust me?" Andy sighed, his shoulders slumped a little bit. "Alright. Alright." He lifted the blindfold up and put it over his eyes. "I feel a bit silly." "It'll all make sense tomorrow, I promise," she said as she made sure the blindfold was covering his eyes properly so he couldn't see at all. "Wait, tomorrow?" "Daddy," she said again, this time a bit more comfortingly. "Trust me." "Ok, Ash. Don't let me regret it." "You won't," she said, as Andy can hear her opening the door to his bedroom. She pushes him gently into the room, stepping with him, closing the door behind them. His room wasn't very empty, so he knew he had to watch his step. Move too far forward and he'd his a bookcase, or his armchair over in the corner next to his electric guitar and his arm. "Okay, now step back and lean your back against the door." Andy took a few steps back and felt his back press into the door, as he felt a hand smoothing along his chest. He thought it was Aisling's, but he couldn't be sure. "Hello, I'm Andy," he said, hoping there was someone else in the room besides him and Aisling. "Shhhh, don't say anything, Daddy," Aisling whispered into his ear. "Just listen, and feel." He could hear the sound of Aisling moving, and felt her hand on his waist, unbuttoning his jeans. "You're going to learn to love this," he heard her say, although he was fairly certain she wasn't talking to him. He could hear the sound of Aisling getting down onto her knees, but he thought he heard a second set of knees hitting the carpet, as he felt a hand tugging his zipper down then reaching beneath his boxers to fish out his cock. As soon as it sprung free, he heard a gasp and then Aisling giggling. "Go on, taste it," she said. "There's a droplet there waiting just for you." Andy felt a tongue lash against the tip of his cock for a second before pulling back, an unfamiliar throaty moan erupting from somewhere beneath him. Aisling giggled again. "Give her just a second, Andy." "Take all the time you need." After a minute or so, Aisling's voice cut through the darkness again. "Well, if you're not going to,” And he felt Aisling's mouth, or at least he thought it was Aisling's mouth, wrap around his cock once more and push down until her lips were wrapped around the base of it, holding there for a long moment before pulling back again. "At least one of us is gonna be an eager little slut, and if you're not gonna " She was in the middle of the word when Andy felt another mouth pushing down hard onto his cock, lodging it right into the back of her throat before coughing a little, drawing back, gasping for air. He started to reach forward, but he felt a hand on his wrist. "No no, Daddy," Aisling's voice said. "Let your new slut work." Not being able to see was heightening his other senses, putting them into overdrive. And yet, even as he felt her mouth sliding up and down his cock, he couldn't tell anything about this new girl who had entered his life. Anything other than the fact she loved his cock. "She's thirsty, daddy," Aisling purred up at him. "You can't see her, but I can, and she's giving you such sloppy head, I think she's desperately trying to get you to cum for her." "I'm not far off," Andy admitted. "One second then," Aisling said as she pulled Lauren back for a moment. She whispered something to the other girl, and then they both moved for a second, and he could hear the sound of one of them getting onto the bed. Then he felt a pair of hands on his hips, pulling him forward. "C'mere, you're going to fuck her face, daddy." "I'm going to what?" he said, as he slowly shimmied forward until he felt like he was near the edge of his bed. He felt a hand around the base of his cock, as Aisling stood behind him, and she moved him around a bit, then her hips pushed forward against his ass, forcing him to thrust into an open mouth that groaned eagerly around him. He tried to pull back a bit, but Aisling pushed him forward until he felt his balls brushing against what he thought was Lauren's nose. That meant, he assumed, she was on her back, maybe with her head hanging just off the edge of the bed. "That's it, daddy, feed her. Feed your newest slut a hot load of your cum. Claim her. Let her taste you." Aisling moaned into his ear. "This is so fucking hot, sir. But you gotta do it. She's yearning for it," she said as her hips moving with his pressed his cock in and out of the unseen girl's throat. "Make her your slut, daddy. Cum in that fucking throat,” Andy could feel Aisling's fingers closing around his balls as they drew up, and before he knew it, he was spurting a hot load of jizz into the throat of a woman he'd never even seen before. While his orgasm was strong, he could feel Lauren trembling beneath him like they were in the middle of an earthquake. The bed was jittering and he tried not to push forward or back until he felt Aisling's hands pulling him back a little bit. "God, this is such a fucking sexy image," Aisling said. "Now just wait here a moment, okay?" Andy nodded, and felt Aisling move around him before sliding up onto the bed. He could hear the sound of Aisling moving Lauren around on the bed. He also thought he could hear someone whispering the word "imprinting" over and over again very quietly. He remembered Aisling doing the same thing the first time she'd gotten a load of his cum inside of her. After a minute or two, Aisling slid off the bed again, and giggled, leaning up to kiss him for a moment. "I think you've earned a treat, Daddy, so give me just one minute more, okay?" "You're driving, Ash," he laughed. He could hear her opening the drawer she'd stored all her clothes in, even as she was stripping out of what she was currently wearing, tossing it into the clothes hamper. Then she pulled on whatever clothes she'd pulled out. Then he heard the sound of what sounded like a lotion bottle opening and then felt a cool liquid dripping onto his cock before the cap snapped back on. He felt her fingers sliding up and down his shaft, smearing the lotion onto his cock for a moment before her hands pulled away as she moved up onto the bed once more. "Okay, daddy, you can take off the blindfold now." Andy reached up and pulled off the blindfold and let his eyes adapt to his room, the lights set to low. On the far side of the bed, there was a body entirely covered by a sheet, which he assumed had to be Lauren. But his eyes only looked over there for a moment before turning to see Aisling in a Hogwarts outfit, on her hands and knees on the corner of the bed. "Let her rest, Andy. You've got to enjoy your treat now." Andy licked his lips as he reached down and pushed his jeans to his ankles before stepping out of them. "It's a hell of an outfit you're rocking there, Ash." She giggled again, looking back at him over her shoulder. "Oh, this is just for a laugh," she said. "No, your treat's something else entirely." "Oh is it?" he said pulling off his socks and his shirt before pushing his boxers down to the floor, then scooping all his clothes up to toss them into the hamper. "Then what is it?" "I've had your cum down my throat and up my cunt, but there's one hole that you haven't had a go at," she whispered. "That nobody's had a go at, other than me, of course. I've had fingers and toys up there, but I'm ready for the real thing." Her fingertips pulled on the skirt, tugging it up higher and higher until it exposed her ass. "Claim all of me, daddy." "Are you sure, Ash?" "Umm, am I not being explicit enough for you?" She brought her shoulders down to the bed as both hands reached behind her and pulled the cheeks of her ass apart. "I want you to take that thick cock of yours and shove it right up my virgin asshole, daddy. I wanna feel you butt-fucking my untouched hole until you toss a load up it and claim that last bit of me that no man's ever had a go at. So you truly fucking own every millimeter of me. I got it, and you, nice and slick. Just, just don't go too fast to start, okay?" "I'll stop the minute you tell me to." "Oh, I won't tell you to stop," she moaned. "Just pause for a second. Now let me fucking feel it already. Take my freckled ass for a fucking hard ride." Andy stepped up to the corner of the bed and rubbed the mushroom head of his cock along that crack, pressing it against that rosebud that she had indeed greased up well. "Don't hold your breath," Andy said, and pushed the tip of his cock through that ring. The moan that Aisling surged into the mattress was carnal, intense and almost overwhelming. Andy kept his hips steady, not giving her any more than that tip, even as he felt her asshole clenching a bit on his shaft, butterfly spasms. "Fuck that's so fucking big, it feels like you've got a telephone pole up me arse." "Want me to " "Give me more." "Are you" "Fucking more, goddamn it. It feels so fucking good, I fucking need it. Take my virgin ass and stuff it full, you motherfucker." Andy tried very hard not to laugh, and placed his hands on her hips, holding her steady, as he leaned forward while pulling her back, until his cock was nearly hilt deep in her ass. It felt ridiculously tight and hot, like a grasp around his cock. He kept his hips still at that point, just lodged up her as his hand smoothed along her back through the uniform. "In your own time, Ash." "So. Fucking. Full," she moaned. "Jaysis, I feel like such a whore. I fuckin' love it. Now plow me, you bastard. Give it t' me." His hips drew back, sliding most of that shaft out before thrusting forward again until his balls slapped against her cunt, feeling exactly how soaked she was. He held motionless a moment again before he repeated the motion. "Harder," she groaned. "What's that?" "Fuck my virgin ass harder, you beautiful boy," she whimpered. "Fuckin' use your bitch." He reached forward and his fingertips grasped a handful of her copper mane right by the root so he could pull her back up onto her hands, and he heard her squeal and felt her shiver as he did. "A bitch should be on all fours." "Fuck yes. Hammer me, daddy. Rail your slut in her virgin shit pipe until you've carved your fuckin' name into it." He started to piston pump in and out of her, knowing he wasn't going to last long. She was mercilessly tight, but after four or five thrusts, she was leaning back into him with as much force as he was drilling into her. "Do it, daddy," she moaned. "Give me my load, your slut needs it, she fucking needs it, daddy. Give her your cum so she knows who she belongs to, claim that fucking ass, oh god, jaysis jaysis jaysis., do it daddy, do it, do it, do it, do it, cum in my ass, cum!" At her coaxing, he relented and when his cock was slammed down to the base inside of her ass, his balls drew up and he started to spurt a hot load into her ass. The minute he did, he felt a splash of wetness against his balls and it took him half a second to realize she was squirting, a stream of liquid splattering against his nutsack and the corner of the bed. Her shoulders slumped back down against the sheets and she started to laugh, much more frantically than her normal giggle. "Omi god omi god omi fucking god, I fuckin' squirted," she said, gasping for air between shots of laughter. "I've never squirted before in me life. That was so fuckin' intense." Andy slipped his softening cock from her ass gingerly, as she rolled over and sat up on her knees, her hands grabbing his face so she could kiss him harder than he'd ever been kissed in his life. She held him there for a long minute before she pulled back just enough for their lips to part. "Thank you so fuckin' much, Andy," she purred at him. "Now let's hop through a quick shower and get to bed. You can meet Lauren tomorrow." "You okay?" he said, brushing a few rogue strands of her hair out of her face for her. "I wasn't too rough?" "I." Kiss. "Fucking." Kiss. "Loved." Kiss. "It." Kiss. "If it's ever too much I'll tell it, but I loved it. I fucking loved it." She blushed a little bit, her eyes closing before they opened again. "I love you, Andy." "I love you too, Ash," he said with a smile. "But let's get that shower. And you're the one who's sleeping with her feet in the wet spot." "Meanie," she giggled, as they headed towards the bathroom. Chapter 5 Not looking under the sheet was harder than it seemed, but after their shower, Aisling had made sure to put herself between him and the body concealed on the far side of the bed. She snuggled up firmly against him and made sure he didn't move too far over. At some point in the night, he must've been accidentally tugging on the blanket because he felt Aisling's fingers pulling his hand up and placing it back over her tits, a tiny little giggle burbling from her half-conscious lips. Andy drifted back off to sleep and slept through the night. In the morning, he was half awake when he heard two voices talking from the foot of the bed. "Does he always crack such a fat in the morning?" an unfamiliar voice said. "A lot of men often wake up hard," Aisling's voice said. "You want to touch him, don't you?" "God help me, I do," the other voice said again. "I really, really, really do." "Then go ahead." "I can hear you, you know," Andy said, reaching up to rub at his eyes. "Ah. Well good day Andy," the voice said. "I'm Lauren." He opened his eyes and sat up a little bit, looking down at the foot of his bed. To the right of his feet stood Aisling, completely naked. She had a huge smile on her face, her freckled hair hanging loose over her shoulders and down across her perky tits. To the left of his feet stood a huge woman. She wasn't heavy, but she was sizable, far taller than Aisling was, and more muscular. Not overly so, but fit, like an athlete. Statuesque. It was hard to gauge how big she was, but from his vantage point, and using Aisling as reference, Lauren had to be over six and a half feet tall. She was blonde, a long dark golden mane that hung over plump tits down to her waist. They were large full tits with very obvious tan lines. In fact, he could also see tan lines forming a mark where he imagined a bikini bottom normally was. She had a small triangle of dark blonde hair over her cunt, with her toned thighs pressed firmly together. One of her nipples had a barbell through it, a simple silver adornment. She also had a silver hoop through her navel. "Hope ya like the view," she said after what Andy felt like was far too long of him being silent. She was gorgeous, but she also looked nervous, maybe even shy, as her striking blue eyes looked down towards his feet. She was older than Aisling, maybe around Andy's age, in her mid-thirties. The accent implied she was Australian or from New Zealand, although it felt like it had faded a bit. "Don't just sit there silently, Andy," Aisling said, slapping one of his feet. "Say something." "You're absolutely stunning, Lauren." He pulled his legs back to sit up, making room for the two girls to get onto the bed. "Far too lovely to be saddled with a wreck like me." Lauren blushed a little as she moved to sit down. "Now don't say that. You're right handsome." "What was yesterday all about?" Andy said, as Aisling slid up further onto the bed. "I'm, uh,” "Go on, honey," Aisling said. "You can tell him." Lauren looked down, placing a hand on his thigh, before she drew in a deep breath and lifted her other hand up to push waves of blonde hair from her face, lifting her face to look up at him. "I've always identified as bisexual, but I've never been with a fella before, Andy. So while I told myself this is what I wanted, I was so afraid when I got here that I froze up." Andy frowned a little bit. "Lauren, if you don't want " Her fingers gripped firmly on his thigh, as she looked up at him, her eyes almost ablaze. "No. No, Andy. I do want. I so want. I'm just, I'm just nervous that I'll be bad at it. Or that you won't want me. I'm certainly not as young and pretty as Aisling is. I mean, just look at her. She goes alright, but I'm worried that I'm just a bit of a prawn." "Prawn?" "Y'know, a dog." Aisling shook her head. "She thinks she's what American cockheads call a butter face." "Oh god, Lauren," Andy said, putting his hand over hers on his thigh, squeezing it tenderly. "You're beautiful. Whatever man told you that you were ugly was out of his fucking mind, stupid and blind." Lauren smiled shyly, licking her lips a little bit. "You think?" "Jesus, Lauren," Andy laughed. "You're out of my league on the best of my days. I wouldn't blame you at all if you didn't want me." "I told Aisling I was nervous when I got here yesterday. I mean, I'd never gone a gobbie in me life, so I was worried that I'd damage yer tackle when I tried, but she told me,” Lauren trailed off for a moment. "She told me that I'd cum my brains out when I got me first load from ya, but I thought she was having a right laugh. And I didn't want you to see me all fidgety, so she said she'd blindfold you and I could take me time. She's a right keeper, that one is." Aisling placed her hand on Andy's other thigh and leaned over his legs, lifting her free hand up to Lauren's face, tipping her head up so she could press her lips against the giant beauty in a tender kiss, which started soft for just a second, then got heated quickly before pulling back. "And I was right, wasn't I? Wasn't the taste overwhelming?" "Crikey," Lauren whispered. "When he came in my mouth, I seized up like an ol' Buick. It was like every nerve in my body was lit on fire. I woke up this morning ready for my next fix." She glanced over at Aisling and smiled before looking back at Andy. "You don't mind me snogging your girl, do you?" Aisling reached over and poked Lauren on the thigh, as if prompting her for something. "Sorry, you don't mind, do you, sir?" The shiver that ran up Andy's spine had to be visible to both women. Their shared kiss only a foot or two over his cock had been one of the hottest things he'd ever seen. The word at the end only redoubled the sensation. "Ah, you two want to have a go at each other and I can leave you to it?" Lauren giggled, a mature laugh from a mature woman, as her hand moved a bit more up his thigh. "We had a bit of fun this morning before you woke up, sir, an' I don't imagine it'll be the last time, but I'm ready for the main course, if ya follow me." "He likes girls on top, so maybe you should just hop on," Aisling prompted. "That true, sir?" Lauren asked, sliding a little forward on the bed, one of her thighs moving across his thighs, straddling them, rubbing his cock with one hand near one of her thighs. "You want me on top?" "If you've never been with a man before, it might be best, so you can set the tempo and depth," Andy said. "I've been fucked before," Lauren said. "A rubber cock can't be that different than the real thing." Aisling started giggling furiously. "Oh, bless. You sweet, naive child. Let me help you to the new world." The redhead moved up on the bed behind Lauren, one hand reaching to grab her hip, the other reaching beneath her to grab Andy's cock, getting it lined up with the other woman's cunt. "Ready?" "It's not going to be that " With a sudden push of her hand, Aisling shoved Lauren's snatch down onto Andy's cock with one fluid motion. Lauren's head shot back, looking up at the ceiling, letting out a filthy, carnal moan, falling back against Aisling, who kept her propped up, her tits pressed against the taller woman's back while Lauren quaked like she was being electrocuted. The moan carried on for a long moment until Lauren sounded out of breath, and suddenly she gasped in another sudden inhale, one hand reaching behind her to grab a handful of Aisling's hair, the other smoothing across her own stomach. "Oh Fuck," Lauren babbled, "I was wrong, I was so bloody wrong, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck I think I'm still fucking cumming,” "That's it" Aisling said, one of her hands still holding onto Lauren's hip, the other moving up to cup one of the woman's heavy tits in her slender fingertips. "I told you just putting it in was going to set you off." "It's not right, it's not fucking supposed to be like this," Lauren whimpered. "I'm Still fucking cumming shit,” Aisling smirked at Andy who was watching on with awe, feeling Lauren's snatch fluttering around his cock. "And to think, once you cum inside of her, it's going to hit her even harder, daddy." "Fuckin' hell, Ash," Lauren whined, "I don't think I can handle it. It's too much, it's too fucking much." The redhead pressed a kiss against the blonde's neck. "Either you're getting that load or I am," she whispered to her. "Because I'm not letting' it go to waste." "I'm not sure," she mumbled. "Then get off." Aisling started to pull up on Lauren's hips before Lauren grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her hand off her hip and brought it to her belly. "Changed your mind?" "I'm scared," Lauren said, "but I'm excited too. It gets better than that?" "So much better," Aisling giggled. "Daddy knows how to reward his sluts." "Is that what I am?" "Do you want to be?" Andy asked her. "You could just be one of my partners." Lauren's eyes finally rolled back down the back of her skull, turning those blue orbs down to look at him. "I want what you want." "No," Andy shook his head. "This is a decision you make yourself." The tall blonde bit her bottom lip nervously, looking down at Andy's chest before looking up at his eyes. "Say it. I want to see how it makes me feel." "Say what?" "That I'm, you know." Andy smirked a little bit. "If you can't say it, why should I?" She licked her lips, swallowing awkwardly. "Call me your slut." "Is that what you want, Lauren?" She paused then nodded. "I want to hear you say it." "Does it turn you on?" He reached a hand up to her face, lifting her chin a little. "The idea of being my slut?" Her body shivered hard for a long moment before she nodded again. "Say it again." "You're my slut, Lauren." It was almost like waves of pleasure ran through her at the sound of the words. "More." "No," Andy said. "Say it back to me." "Andy.,” she whined, like a child trying to get their parent to buy them a toy. "You say it, and I'll say it again." Lauren mumbled the words so low even Aisling couldn't hear them. "If I can't hear you, you daffy bitch, how do you expect Daddy to?" the redhead said. "I'm your slut," Lauren whispered. "Again," Aisling said, giving the piercing in Lauren's nipple a little turn. "God, I'm his slut." "Who's slut?" "Daddy's." "All together now." "God, daddy, I'm such a little slut for you," Lauren said, the dam finally breaking in her. "I'm your slut, sir. All yours. Can I be your slut?" "Of course you can, Lauren," Andy said with a soft smile. "You're my good girl, my surfer slut." Aisling's hand slid down and started to rub against Lauren's clit tenderly. Those fingertips brushed across that flesh as the blonde writhed on Andy's lap. "How good, keep doing that," Lauren pleaded. One of her hands smoothed along Andy's chest, while the other reached behind her to get lost in Aisling's coppery locks. "You can't wait to feel it, can you?" the redhead laughed. "I remember my first day., my first time, sitting where you're sitting, praying to get a load up inside of me. Thinking it couldn't possibly be as good as they were promising it would be." She leaned in to whispering into her ear. "But you know what? It is. And it's even better." Lauren was rolling her hips back and forth in his lap, trying to thrust down on him even harder. "I want it. I do want it. I need it. God, I must sound like a little junkie in need of a fix." , In a way, you are. We both are," Aisling said, kissing at Lauren's neck. "But if you want it, you've got to ask him for it." "Please, Andy, daddy, master, whatever the fuck you want to be called," Lauren begged. "I'll say anything, do anything, but you need to give it to me. Fill me up. Let me feel a man, my man, coming inside of my cunt for the first time. I want it, more than anything I've ever wanted in my life. Please? I need to know I'm yours. Cum in me. Cum." On that last word, all the resistance Andy had simply melted away, and his body let loose, spurting a load of hot jizz up inside of Lauren's throbbing cunt. She began to spasm and quake atop of him as she felt it before Aisling let the tall Aussie slump forward, laying atop Andy. It was at least a minute before Lauren made any noise at all, before an almost mouse squeak of a giggle purred from her throat against his neck, her face buried in the crook of it. "You okay, Lauren?" Andy said, his hand reaching up to stroke her hair as Aisling laid down next to them, nuzzling in against the other side of Andy's neck. "Oh my god, it's just like being mounted," Lauren said. "I feel warm from the inside out, and kinda dizzy. But it feels amazing." "Right?" Aisling said. "Was I right or was I right?" "Girl, I'm gonna be an addict for this man," Lauren purred. "You and me both, sister." After fifteen minutes or so, the three of them got up and took a shower together. Lauren was indeed taller than Andy was by several inches, not that he minded. He did think, however, he was going to need a bigger shower. Later that day he found out that Lauren was thirty five and she was originally from Sydney, having moving to the Bay Area about seven years ago for a job working for the '49ers as a personal trainer. Aisling and Lauren immediately hit it off, although they made it a point to ensure Andy didn't feel left out. Late in the afternoon, the two of them had retired upstairs to have a little bit of fun together while Andy continued working on his next novel downstairs. "Y'know, when I first saw Lauren," Lily said to him on her way into the kitchen to get a soda, "all I could think of was that Eddie Murphy line." Andy arched an eyebrow at her, not catching the reference. "What Eddie Murphy line?" "You know, in Beverly Hills Cop 2, when he sees Bridgette Nielsen for the first time." Lily looked at him, waiting for the spark of recognition, rolling her eyes when she didn't see it. "You know, 'God damn, that's a big bitch.' You sure you can handle her?" He blushed a little bit. "Not in the least. I'm in way over my head, but I'm thankful for it at least." Lily nodded, closing the fridge. "That's good. Stay humble, stay thankful. But I'll tell you one thing,” "What's that?" "Two down and two to go, but so far you have a Limey and an Aussie, so you damn well better get some American pussy, and you damn well better get some cunt that's at least as dark as I am." She smirked at him. "If the next bitch who walks through that door is French, German, Russian, anything like that, I'ma cuntpunt her ass right outta here, you follow?" "Letting you answer the door for the next few weeks, got it." "Smart man," she said. "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." She started to walk back to the living room, but Andy just couldn't help himself. "Cuntpunt? Really?" "It's when you,” "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's just what it sounds like." "So keep in mind, I'm watching you." "Watch the door!" Andy laughed. "You can decide who to let in or not!" Lily would get the opportunity to decide very soon. Chapter 6 The next few days around the house were mostly spent with everyone getting to know one another. Lauren, in addition to being a personal trainer, turned out to be an excellent cook. A few days after she arrived, it was decided that a grocery run was needed, but Andy felt strongly that he wanted to go as well. It wasn't advised, but it wasn't strictly forbidden any more either. The news had been quite clear about what he needed to do if he wanted to go out “ not only was he required to wear a P95 mask, he also had to wear goggles protecting his eyes and latex gloves covering his hands. It felt burdensome, but he direly needed to get out of the house for a least a short period of time, so he, Aisling and Lauren resolved to make the grocery store run. "I feel like Mad Max in this get up," Andy grumbled as he got out of the car in the Safeway parking lot. "Except for the fact that I'm unarmed." "They won't let us in the shop if you're sporting an axe, love," Aisling said, comforting him. The girls were dressed up in their gear as well, although both of the girls were wearing his t shirts. They'd taken to just going through his shirts each morning and tossing one on, not that he minded. Andy owned a lot of t shirts. It was practically a uniform. "And we're going through supplies much faster these days with more mouths to feed." "An' you need to let me get a bunch more healthy things in addition to your junk food," Lauren said. "And with five people instead of two, we're going through food a lot quicker these days. So you'd better get used to one of us going out for supplies every few days." "Also, you're the one who wanted to come along, Andy," Aisling said. "You could've just stayed home and let us do all the work." "I had to get out of the house before I went stir crazy. You know I haven't been more a hundred feet out of the condo since April. We were told we were in a very high risk area, so we completely quarantined and just had food delivered, but it was starting to rack up quite the bill that way." The trio headed into Safeway, keeping a good distance from everyone else. At the beginning of the year, if Andy had come into this particular Safeway on a Saturday, it would've been a madhouse. Instead, it felt like a ghost town. Some of the aisles were still desperately barren, with supplies like toilet paper down to only a few options, if that. Thankfully, Eric had been smart enough to set up a recurring order from their local CostCo to get toilet paper delivered when they had it in stock. Andy had been tempted to do a CostCo run as well, but as his first real outing in months, he wanted to stick to something where he felt like he at least had a little control. Their local Safeway was located up in the hills a little bit, so it didn't always get as much traffic as grocery stores closer to the freeways. Andy started to move over to grab a shopping cart, only to get the mom armbar move from Lauren, who pushed him back a good step. "Oh no, Andy," she laughed. "We'll push the cart. You just pick things up and put them into the cart with your gloves." "I don't understand what the difference is," Andy sighed. "But okay, okay, I do remember them saying that men weren't supposed to touch shared objects in public spaces, so I'll keep my hands off." "It's like you haven't been trained properly," Aisling giggled. "You watch it, Ash, or I'll bend you over my knee," he teased back. "She'd only enjoy it, Andy," Lauren said, rolling her bright blue eyes as they headed into the vegetable section. Andy mostly let the girls pick up things and put them into the cart, but every so often he would insist on something and would pick it up himself, like garlic. Both Lauren and Aisling questioned the amount of garlic he bagged up and dropped into the cart, but he was insistent that they would use it all before they were back to the grocery store again. They'd gotten close to a full cart's worth of groceries and were standing in the frozen food section, mostly looking for ice cream truth be told, when a familiar voice called to him from a little bit away. "Andy, that you under all that mess?" Sure enough, it was his friend Phil, standing next to a curvy Hispanic woman. Andy might not have been able to recognize Phil at first glance with the mask and the goggles, but the jacket was a one of a kind letterman jacket from a fighting game tournament Phil had won almost a decade ago. "How did you recognize me, Phil?" "I was taking a wild guess, but I don't know anyone else here in the States who would be wearing a Nautilus Pompilus t shirt. Russian alternative rock band t shirts aren't exactly a dime a dozen." Andy paused for a second, and then realized, he wasn't wearing his Nautilus Pompilus t shirt, but Aisling was. He nodded with a slight smile. "Fair enough. We can't exactly talk here, but let's meet up at the base of Mount Diablo, in the park. We can stand far apart enough to talk and still be safe. We've got to drop groceries off, so let's say we meet up in a couple of hours?" Phil looked down at his watch. "Three o'clock? Sure, we'll see you there." They didn't say anything else to each other, just finished up shopping, paying and taking their groceries home. On the way home, Andy explained to Aisling and Lauren that Phil was one of his oldest friends, and that he was one of the people Andy had talked to over voice chat during the days since the quarantine had started, although Phil had been radio silent for a few weeks now. On the way to the park, Aisling and Lauren were peppering him with questions about Phil. They'd talked to a few of Andy's friends on video chat, but they'd only heard stories about Phil. Of course, they'd heard quite a lot of those stories. They pulled into the parking lot at the park and Andy could see Phil's car on the other side. Sitting on the hood was Phil with the woman he'd seen him with in the Safeway. Andy hopped out of his car, along with Aisling and Lauren. They were out in the open and so far from each other that they felt safe not wearing masks and goggles. Andy walked forward, not towards Phil, but towards the wooden fencing. "So Phil, where the hell ya been?" Andy laughed. Phil was a slender enough Filipino but he looked thinner than Andy remembered. He was clean shaven, and while Andy expected him to have a shaggy head of hair, it looked trimmed and coiffed. Phil had an easy going way about him, a casual grace that Andy had always envied. He smiled up at Andy, shrugging a little bit. "So, Andy, this is Audrey, she's my partner." To the right of Phil stood the woman he'd seen her with earlier in the day, but now he could get a better look at her. She was curvy, almost plump, but had a rosy demeanor to her. She was wearing a Street Fighter t shirt that clearly couldn't be Phil's. She was a bit younger than Phil was, but not unbearably so. "Hi Andy!" she said, giving him a big wave. "Sorry I've kept him off the group Discord, but I didn't want to share him until I felt like we were established." "Oh, love," Aisling giggled. "We're all doing that." "Phil, this is Aisling, Ash for short, and this is Lauren," Andy said, rubbing the back of his own neck sheepishly. "Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed they're stuck with me, but they both seem happy enough, so maybe I'm doing okay by them." Lauren nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. "Andy's the most humble feller I've met. I think me an' Ash are just a couple'a lucky gals." After a minute or so of silence, Andy spoke again. "So Phil, what do you know?" It was a question designed to cut right through the bullshit. Andy and Phil had been good friends long enough that they'd developed a sort of shorthand, particular words and phrases that they could use whenever and wherever and people wouldn't know exactly what was being said. There was a good reason for it. Phil clicked his tongue. "Okay, here's what I know." Phil had worked for a number of tech companies over the years he'd known him, but for the last four years, he'd worked for Boeing up in Pleasanton. Everything he worked on was classified, but he was known to share nonspecific things from time to time, especially if it affected their gang of friends. "What I can tell you without either of us getting our kiesters thrown in the hooscow, anyway,” "That sounds best." "It's bad, Andy," Phil sighed. "It's very bad. They're downplaying the body count for the media, but truth be told we're looking at over a million so far, probably a lot more. And it's only going to get worse. The internal projections are that we're looking at five million dead Americans before all of this is done." "Jesus," Andy muttered. "One million people dead? Seriously? How are they keeping all this quiet?" "Lots and lots of work," Phil replied. "It's not as bad outside of the US, but that's because other countries started taking it serious long before we did." "Are the rules true?" "I wouldn't be talking to you like this if I didn't think it was safe, Andy. But it's going to get worse. A whole lot worse. People here still aren't taking it seriously. You see the news the other day?" "People crowded into churches, shoulder to shoulder, demanding their faith will keep them safe. Idiots in city hall meetings, claiming the right to not wear a mask if they don't want to." Phil nodded. "It's madness. Half of those people will be dead before year's end, and I don't think we're going to have a lid on this until next year. We're living through Spanish Flu Part 2: Electric Bugaloo." "Five million dead? That's like one percent of the country. How the hell are they going to keep it all quiet?" "As much smoke as possible," Phil grumbled. "Keep the cover going until it's untenable. People are going to notice eventually, but the lockdowns are going to keep things contained for a while. But guys like you and me, we need to stay as safe as possible. Because we're high risk." Aisling scowled at him. "How so? I thought the elderly and immuno compromised were the most at risk." "They are," Phil said, nodding again, "but beyond that, it's men between the ages of thirty and forty five. That's where the majority of casualties have been so far. Thankfully, you and me, we're buffered pretty well." "What do you mean, buffered?" Phil smirked, giving a tiny shrug. "Let's just say we've been doing some vaccine testing in rather unusual and unorthodox ways. Did your libido used to be this high all the time, Ash?" She blanched for a moment. "I thought it was just the cabin fever, but now you mention it, I've had a slight buzzing of sexual need since they gave me those shots. What the hell did they do to me?" He raised a hand to calm her down. "Relax, it'll even out eventually. But it's designed so that you're protecting your partner, swapping fluids, giving him regular dosages of the natural antibodies you're building up inside." "Why not just give men the shots directly?" Lauren asked. "Because when we've tried it, it's been fatal." Phil took out a vape pen and inhaled a drag off of it before blowing the vapor back out. He'd been a smoker when they'd first met, but Andy had convinced him to quit. The legalization of pot in California had helped some, naturally. "But if a woman with the vaccine is having regular sexual activity with a man, he's getting a nontoxic dose, and both parties have about 70% resistance to the virus. I wouldn't have put Andy down as polyamorous, but it's going to strengthen your armor even more, my man." Andy smirked, looking at his feet. "I actually put no preference, so it looks like I'm going to get a full slate." "Nah, you'll probably stay where you are. Unless you got rated something ridiculous." "Me and Eric got rated level 5s." Phil nearly dropped his vape pen, his eyebrows raising. "Are you shitting me?" Andy laughed and shrugged a little. "How the fuck did that happen?" "The guy coming to test us was a fan of the books, so I gave him an ARC of the new one that's been delayed a few months. As a way of saying thank you, he rated me and Eric as level 5s." Phil chuckled quietly, shaking his head. "You son of a bitch. I'm not even rated a level 5 and I work for the goddamn military on goddamn black ops shit." "Allegedly," Andy added, grinning back. Phil nodded. "Allegedly." He dragged the word out before he looked up then shook his head. "You're gonna get two more, huh? Good lord, I'm both jealous and terrified for you all at once. How are you going to keep all those personalities from conflicting?" "I'm going to do my best to stay the hell out of their way, mostly." "That's not going to work forever, luv," Aisling said to him. "It's not like we're going anywhere, even when this virus recedes." "You say that now, but,” "No, they're always going to say that. Isn't that part of the public facing info about the pairing system?" Phil said. It was Andy's turn to raise his eyebrows. "No, whatever you're implying, it isn't public knowledge. But you're already in for a penny.." "Might as well be in for a pound, I guess," Phil answered, nodding in agreement. "Alright, but keep this just between us, okay?" "Well, I'll tell Eric, Eric's partner, and my other two partners when they show up, but other than that,” "Yeah, well, that's what I meant by us, alright? Okay, so here's the deal. Do you remember the first time they got a bit of you in them?" "You mean,” Lauren started. "I think you know what I mean." Both Aisling and Lauren blushed and grinned widely. "Most intense thing that's ever happened to us," they both said. "What do you remember right after though, Andy? Just you. They'll both have been passed out." Andy stroked his goatee for a second then snapped his fingers. "They kept mumbling a word over and over, so quiet I could barely make it out, something like, imaging?" Phil shook his head, taking another drag off his vape pen. "Not imaging, imprinting. You're bonded now. Mated for life, like walruses." "You mean penguins," Andy corrected. "It's penguins that mate for life. And what does that mean here, mated for life?" "You're intertwined on a chemical, biological and physiological level in a way we can't even begin to comprehend," Phil said, exhaling another cloud of mist. "If you go away from one another for more than a couple of days, you'll start to feel nervous, anxious, fidgety. After that, it'll be panic attacks, cold sweats. Past that, nervous breakdown. Unless, of course, the other person is dead, in which case that doesn't seem to happen." He shrugged a little bit. "We're kids playing with the building blocks of life here, man. We don't even know what we don't know. But you, Lauren and Ash, you're a unit now. And anyone else you add into that will be as well. I mean, why do you think that questionnaire is so damn long? We don't want to screw up anybody's lives trying to help them. Besides, another of the side effects is that being in each other's company will produce natural dopamine to keep things relatively smoothed out, helps you get past the small stuff, and let's face it, it's all small stuff at this point." "And this is happening all over the country?" "Shit, no," Phil sighed. "We've barely gotten this off the ground in the Bay Area, and all the tech for this shit is here. There are governors all across the country absolutely in arms against this plan, saying they'll fight it tooth and nail, keep people from getting the vaccine until it doesn't have any of these crazy side effects." "I assume you're still working on that." "Of course we're still working on that," Phil said, rolling his eyes. "I'm just baffled by how many goddamn Republicans insist a semi viable solution isn't a solution at all. Even if we were just hitting high risk areas, we could manufacture enough of this current formula to inoculate sixty or seventy million people in this country, all of whom would be 70% resistant to it." "They claiming it's a sin against god or something?" "Worse. But, I guess, more honest." Phil had a slightly bitter laugh filling the air. "They're angry they can't make a buck off of it. Now, of course, there are factions that are just going ahead and doing it anyway. Front line medical workers, emergency services, and a few branches of the armed forces, and their associated contractors. Of course, the whole Bay Area is taking part in it as well, so I guess I would've gotten treated either way." "So we're resistant but not immune?" "Fuck, man," Phil groaned, "I'm not promising you won't get the virus at all, but even if you do, it won't be life threatening. That said, you sti

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 Karen Saves The Universe: Part 2Can a strange marriage survive?Based on a post by LingeringAfterthought, in 3 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.I want you, Red. I need to make you mine; mine forever. I've never felt like this before; I know I never will again. Marry me." Cal pleaded."I;” Karen murmured, glancing around their group to make sure she wouldn't be overheard, "I don't know what to say. You're wonderful; and you've done so much for me, but this has all been so fast. We're still just getting to know each other; and half the time it doesn't even make sense to me why you would want me; but I; I just; can I just finish school?" she asked."How you can even think about school when someone like me is ready to give you everything you ever wanted, to take care of you completely, it's just crazy;” Cal murmured, sliding his hand up between her legs and brushing along the edge of her panties.Karen blushed and squeezed her thighs together, looking around embarrassed. "I just; I just worked so hard to get in. Juilliard's been my whole life for so long," she said, looking up into his eyes pleading.Cal looked at her through hooded eyes, "Keep looking at me like that and we won't be waiting for anything." His eyes heated as he pulled her closer, dominating her with a hungry kiss while she squirmed self-consciously. The couples around the table smirked as Cal grew even more bold in his explorations.When he released her, Karen hid her face in his neck as the others cheered. They were his friends, happy to see him happy. Cal glanced at a waiter nearby and gestured for more drinks for the table. The opening act on the stage below finished its last set, but the crowd refused to let the show end. Cheers filled the club, with the crowd demanding an encore.Castor, the lead singer, waited for the crowd to quiet with a grin, then his eyes drifted upward and his face lit with excitement. "Thank you, thanks guys, you're a great audience. For an encore, we'd love to give you a taste of our next album. We've been banging it out in the studio and I can't tell you how excited we are for it to be released. Problem is, it's got this insane keys part that can't be played by just anyone, but I think I see our studio angel in the audience tonight. Kare, baby; will you come help us out?" he asked, reaching upward to where Karen sat.Cal's friends turned to look at Karen in surprise. "You play? Like, for real?" Cal's friend Tony yelled across the table to her in surprise. Karen nodded in embarrassment, glancing at Cal.Everything suddenly froze as Karen rose and walked over to the table, standing over her younger self looking at Cal's face. "Look, you little dummy; look at it! It's right there!" she yelled at Young Karen."What's there?" Holland asked, craning his neck to try to see what she was yelling about."Cal, for all his big words, rich gifts, and grand gestures; he hadn't told his friends anything about me; because nothing of who I really was mattered to him. Only the things he wanted about me mattered to him ; that I was shy, and submissive, and just grateful to have someone pay attention to me. And here ; look at his face! It fell!" she yelled, gesturing to where Cal sat, leaning back in his chair."His face appears still to be attached, to me;” Holland said, doubtfully."It's just a phrase. His face didn't actually fall, but his eyes; look, he's still smiling, but you see it in his eyes. He's not happy for me. He's not happy because the moment stopped being about Cal and how he was the great boyfriend spoiling his new stupid girlfriend on her birthday. Once the moment became about me; that I was asked up on stage; that I could do something his friends admired; ugh, why didn't I see it?" she moaned."What happened?" Holland asked.Karen rubbed her eyes with her hand. "I was young. I was asked to do something. I was asked for help. I was a stupid ninny that had absolutely no ability to say 'no' without thinking the world would end; so, I went up and played with the band.""Oh; was that bad?" Holland asked."No, it wasn't bad. It was a great song. I played well and I was just tipsy enough to not feel all the eyes that were looking at me, making my skin crawl. And you know; some part of me; I wanted to do it. I wanted to show myself that I could play for people; outside a quiet studio," Karen admitted. "Everyone always went on and on about how I needed to get over being so self-conscious and how it would hold my career back. That, and part of me wanted to show Cal's friends that I was more than just another girl in the long line of girls that he had gone through; that I was worth something.""Sometimes I wish our crew would see that I was worth something more;” Holland said, ruefully."Yeah; it's hard when you're young. You're dying to show the world what you're worth, how you're special, but they mostly just need you to work hard and do as you're told," Karen sighed, looking around the club. "Some people will never see what's special about you. They see what they want and they really don't care about the rest. It's those people that see who you really are; without wanting anything from you; those are the ones you need to hang onto."Karen turned her back on the club and the room re-formed into her Newark apartment. The intercom buzzed and Dana rolled out of bed to answer it. "What's up?" she asked."Hey; um, I don't have my keys. Can you buzz me in?" Karen's voice shakily asked through the intercom. Dana frowned in confusion and pressed the button to allow her entry. Soon, she opened the door after Karen's tentative knock."What happened, Kare? I thought you'd be gone all weekend," Dana said, taking in her roommate's appearance. Karen looked unharmed, but her face was puffy and her makeup was streaked from crying and trying to wipe it away."I; uh; I played at the club tonight. Castor Graham was the opening act and he asked me to come up for the encore, so I did.""You played in front of rowdy drunk people? That's fantastic! How did it feel?" Dana asked, offering her back for Karen to lean on while she took off her heels."I was scared; but after a while it was fun. The keyboard was facing the crowd and after a while I looked out over the people and; they looked happy. They liked it. It felt good, then.""God, I wish I'd been there. I'm so proud of you! What did Cal and the entourage say?""Um; I; don't know," Karen blinked and looked around the apartment. "When, uh; when I um; when I got back to the table, they were all gone." Karen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and cleared her throat."Wait, what?" Dana said, her tone darkening like a storm cloud, threatening imminent destruction. "Say that again. You get called up on stage to perform, you play in front of all those people; like the freakin' keyboard genius you are; and when you got back, those motherfuckers were gone?""I; I think they were gone? The table was empty from what I could see; and the, uh, the security guy; he couldn't let me into the area. He really only knew Cal, and um;” Karen choked and turned her face away, trying to breathe through it and stop herself from crying."Karen; that's not; wait, how did you even get home?" Dana asked, unzipping Karen's dress and grabbing a pair of yoga pants for her."Well, my purse and phone were gone from the table, so I couldn't call anybody and I didn't have any money;” Karen choked. "The security guy was really nice and said I could use his MetroCard if I returned it, so;”"Oh, Christ On A Crotch-Rocket!" Dana yelled, throwing a sweatshirt at Karen, who caught it and pulled it over her head. "Kare. You gotta stop dating this guy. He's a piece of shit. Trust me. I didn't know it when I sent you over there to play, but he's walking excrement;""It's probably just a misunderstand;""And believe me, I'm sure he'll come back with some half-assed explanation, because that's what they all do;""And he tells me all the time that he;""Yeah. He ‘tells ‘; you pretty stuff. He ‘buys ‘; you pretty stuff. Problem is, words and money are nothing to him. Where the hell is he when you're walking home in fuck-me club clothes from the train station and trying not to lose your virginity, huh? Kare. I know you've been through hell, but you are worth more than this. You need a guy that walks you down the sidewalk and puts himself on the traffic side; just in case, because that's who he is. You deserve that. Don't you get it?" Dana asked, taking Karen's hair down and brushing it out, gently."Cal isn't; it's probably just; something;” Karen whispered, biting her lips closed.Dana stopped brushing and wrapped her arms around her roommate, squeezing her hard. "There is real love out there, Kare; and if you don't deserve it, I don't know who does. Someday, you're going to meet a guy that actually loves you and it's going to blow your mind when the games and bullshit are gone. It's like; when a guy is in love, gravity changes for them, or something;”Holland jumped up and pointed excitedly at Dana. "She's right! When I met the Zendayans, my tongue swelled up and;""Are you listening to my story at all, or are you just fantasizing about pretty girls?" Karen huffed."Um; both?" Holland replied, smirking. "I mean, you and Dana were really pretty; and there's just one bed here, and;"Karen shot him an exasperated look and he shrank back behind the bulkhead. "Anyway;” she said.The room dissolved and re-formed, both girls sleeping in the queen-sized bed they shared, morning sunlight streaming in through the dirty window, when the buzzer sounded. "Day, c'mon time to go," a man's voice sounded from the intercom. Karen's head peered out from under the blanket and she ran over to the intercom, tripping over some bottles of wine that they (mostly Dana) had consumed the previous night, trying to rid Karen of her birthday misery."Um; she's almost ready!" Karen replied, then ran to the bed and shook her hungover roommate awake. "Day, someone's here for you; they say it's time to go."Dana grunted and turned over, away from Karen. "Go do it for me; just say you're me again," Dana grumbled into her pillow.Karen swallowed nervously, but gamely grabbed Dana's dress, quickly got ready, and ran out the door. Upon leaving the building, she stumbled into the guy waiting outside. "Um; I'm ready! I'm ready! Dana Stevens. Thanks for waiting;” she panted.The man gave her a quick considering look, then walked her to a large extended-cab pickup truck that looked ridiculously out of place on the streets of Newark. "Miss Stevens," he said, opening the passenger side door and offering his hand to help her up into the vehicle."Thanks. Thank you;” she said, precariously climbing up the runner board in her heels until she settled herself up onto the seat."Just wait there, a bit," he said, after closing the door. Walking back to the building, he selected a key from his collection, opened the building door and walked in. Not long after, he emerged from the building carrying Dana over his shoulder and carrying a bag stuffed haphazardly with clothes. Opening the door behind Karen, he dumped Dana unceremoniously into the back seat and tossed the bag of clothes on top of her. Dana, still in her pajamas, put the bag under her head and turned away from the sunlight streaming into the cab."Dean, this is Karen. Karen, my brother Dean," Dana mumbled, as she draped a pair of sweatpants over her head to block the light."Oh; um, sorry," Karen said, flushing red as she glanced over at Dean's face. "I didn't mean to; um, I'll just go;""Lock the doors, and get us out of the city, Dean. She's coming with us," Dana ordered. "She's on asshole detox!"Karen jumped as the truck's doors locked and Dean wordlessly pulled out into the street and started out. She clasped her hands in her lap nervously. She hadn't packed anything. She had no phone. She didn't have time to let Dana drag her to West Virginia for a visit. Dana had been trying to talk her into coming with her to where she had grown up with her grandparents, but in the excitement of her birthday, Karen had forgotten the trip was this week. She knew better than to say anything, though. Dana wouldn't care, and Dean; who knew what Dean Stevens the brother would think. He didn't say much, but he obviously knew better than to argue with hungover Dana, which was something they had in common."She knows where we're goin?" Dean asked, checking his mirrors as he merged onto the freeway. Dana grunted in assent. "Why ain't she singin' it, yet?" he rumbled, seemingly amused."Because She's Not A Drunk College Kid, Idiot!" Dana howled, holding her head in pain.Dean smirked and started humming "Country Roads" to himself."I hate you so much;” Dana growled, pulling the bag of clothes over her head again. Dean only laughed.After a few miles of road, Karen looked at her roommate in the back seat, and unbuckled her seatbelt. She began to turn to lean over the front seat when Dean reached over and pushed her back down and pointed at her seatbelt. "Um sorry; I just;” Karen trailed off, horrified that she had done something wrong. She couldn't finish her sentence and sat back down, blinking back tears as she put her seatbelt back on.Dean glanced over, looking her up and down for a moment. With a sigh, he put his turn signal on and pulled off the road into a gas station at the next exit. "Do what you need to do," he said, curtly.Karen jumped up, turned around and loosely buckled the seatbelt across the sleeping Dana's hips, then turned, sat down again, and buckled her seatbelt. "Thank you," she mumbled. Dean turned to the back seat where his sister continued sleeping and his face softened. He looked at Karen a second time, sitting with her hands in her lap again, clenched like she expected a tongue-lashing from him for delaying the trip. His eyes drifted down to her feet, where her cold toes were turning pink in the strappy, uncomfortable-looking heels she wore when she came running out of the apartment building on his sister's fool errand. Reaching back, he grabbed a pair of thick socks that had fallen out of the bag of clothes and tossed them to her. Smiling gratefully, Karen removed the strappy heels and pulled on the warm socks as he pulled out onto the road again.The road stretched on. The scenery gradually becoming more rural, the traffic less crowded. Karen found herself relaxing and breathing more slowly as the land passed by. She occasionally glanced at the gas gauge and compared them to the passing road signs to try to discern when they might be pulling over to refill the tank. The third time she did it, Dean shook his head. "Bedford, hon," he chuckled. "You know, you could just ask me. I might be a longshoreman, but I don't bite.""Not like Dana, then," Karen replied, biting her lips so she didn't smile."Hm. Sounds like a story," he said.Karen nodded. "The first time we met, I was waiting to audition for our agency and I was almost going to leave, I was so scared. Day asked to see what I was playing and I handed her the music. Instead of looking at it, she took my hand and bit me. Said it was 'for luck,'" Karen said, laughing to herself."It worked, too. Kare needed to get of her head. She plays better when you throw her off balance, first," Dana said, rising to a sitting position and running her fingers through her hair."Is that so?" Dean asked, looking over at Karen."Yeah. I think too much. My teacher always said I played things perfectly, but he could hear me thinking about it the whole time. Day's a true performer, though. She doesn't think at all - she plays with her feelings, and that's what an audience connects with," Karen said, smiling proudly at Dana."Thoughtlessly playing with feelings; sounds about right," Dean said, chuckling when Dana punched him in the shoulder. "Speaking of, we're coming up on Bedford. Let me know if you need anything."Dana growled at this but said nothing as Karen blinked in confusion. Soon, Dean pulled off the interstate into a gas station and up to a gas pump. Dean hopped out of the truck and began filling the tank. After noticing the bug-splattered windshield, Karen changed back into her strappy heels and walked over to where the island held the squeegee and mop. Dean watched, bemused, as she diligently scrubbed the dried carcasses of insects off the glass while dressed to the nines. Karen finished and climbed back into the truck, only to have Dana grab her shoulder and start whispering in her ear and pointing at the convenience store. Karen, appearing distressed, blushed and said something back to Dana, who gestured emphatically.Dean kept watching as Karen seemed to screw up her courage, took her purse, and walked quickly into the store. He shot his sister a flat look. Dana only grinned, stretched, and put her feet up on the front seat. Shaking his head, he followed into the store."And what would you be needing all those for, hon?" the guy at the till asked while ogling Karen, who looked like she wanted to disappear under the rug."Um; it's uh;” Karen stammered."I need to ask for state regulatory purposes," the guy continued, as he put a large box of condoms on the counter and rang it up."They're for me," Dean said, as he tossed some drinks, chips and cookies on the counter. "Uncut and hangs to the left. Anything else the state needs to know about my cock?" The till guy cleared his throat and began ringing up the additional items and bagging them without further comment. Annoyed, Dean grabbed the bagged items in one hand and took Karen's hand in the other and left the store. "You know, you don't have to do everything my little sister tells you," he said under his breath as they walked to the truck."Then why'd you buy them? Seems like you can't tell her 'no' any more than I can," Karen replied, a little surprised that she had the guts to argue with him.Dean laughed, "I don't want her knocked up any more than you do." He helped her up into the truck and tossed the bag of items to his sister.Dana went digging through the bag and retrieved the box. "Wait a minute, these are just regular. Didn't they have lubricated?" she complained. Karen swallowed uncomfortably, searching for an answer as Dean pulled her seatbelt out and buckled it around her."Don't need lubricated if the guy does his job right," Dean said, grinning at her cheerfully. "Raise your standards and you won't need so many, either.""Hum; lower yours, and maybe you'll actually need some," Dana retorted, opening the package of cookies. Karen just shrank in her seat and covered her flaming cheeks as they pulled back onto the freeway.The scenery turned into wooded hills with mountains growing in the distance. Steering down the curved roads, Dean sighed quietly, a peaceful smile on his face. Karen leaned forward in her seat, trying to see everything as it passed, excitement lighting her face. Dana had fallen asleep again.Near evening, Dean turned the truck down a long, dirt road and reached behind him to shake Dana awake. "Watch for him, Day;” he said. Dana sat up, suddenly alert and scanning the darkening woods around them."What are we looking for?" Karen asked.

A pandemic survivor accidentally forms a harem.Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.Chapter 1Around day eighteen of the quarantine, Andy was starting to lose his damn mind. The governor of California had gotten on the television and announced that everyone who wasn't essential was under house arrest, essentially. Sure, the grocery stores were open, but restaurants were only doing delivery, and every bar in town was closed. The most time he'd spent outdoors in the last week had been walking out to the mailbox cluster for the complex down at the end of the street.Despite the fact that both of them had decent paying jobs “ Eric as a software engineer and Andy as a marketing writer “ neither could afford an entire place to themselves, so Andy paid rent to Eric, who owned the condo (or at least was paying it down).Andy also had a side hustle as a novelist, and was getting frustrated as hell that the quarantine was keeping him in place meant that his newest book was being pushed back. There was a warehouse full of fifty thousand copies of his next novel, and they were all just sitting there."They'll come out eventually," his agent had told him, but the whole thing felt very much like a death sentence to his literary ambitions. Andy even had a box of copies sitting on their kitchen table, along with a movie poster styled promotional in a frame."Did you get the mail today?" Andy asked his roommate."Nah," Eric said. "Didn't see the point.""Fair enough."Wham wham wham."You order food?""Nope. You?"A voice came from outside their front door. "CDC. Open the door, please."Eric moved to the door and peered through the peephole. On the other side, he saw a man in a biohazard suit, covered completely from head to toe. He raised one covered hand and waved. "I'm perfectly safe, as you can see. We're going door to door and testing people for the virus."Eric looked back at his roommate and shrugged. Andy grabbed his two cats, scooping one up in each arm as Eric opened the door. It was like something out of The Andromeda Strain, seeing the man in the yellow hazmat outside, a small box in one hand. "CDC?""Yeah. I'm Dave. Invite me in?"Andy shrugged and Eric laughed. "Sure, c'mon in. We just need to close the door behind you so the cats don't get out.""Sure sure, I get that. I'm here to test if you guys are clear. Is there some place I can set up?""Go ahead and use the kitchen. You want us together or one at a time?""The test only takes fifteen minutes and I can run up to four of them at a time, so come on. I can run you both." He lugged the kit with a world weariness, as if he'd been doing this thirty times a day since the lockdown had started. "Paperwork says you've got two guys living here “ Eric Yang and Andrew Rook. That you two?""That's us.""Nobody else in the condo?""Nope. Nobody else.""Cool," Dave said as he set the kit down on the kitchen table. He glanced up at the movie poster promotional on the wall above the kitchen table. "Oh hey, you guys are fan of the Druid Gunslinger books too? I fucking love those things."Eric laughed a little bit, sitting down in one of the kitchen chairs, rolling up his sleeve. "I mean, you could say that, I guess. He writes'em.""What? No, they're written by some guy named Blake Conrad." He glanced at Eric and grinned. "I don't need blood, man. Here, just rub this swab on the inside of your cheek for a bit."Andy smiled a bit sheepishly, putting the cats down. "Yeah, that's me. It's a pen name.""Why the hell would you want a pen name when you've got an awesome last name like Rook?""I'm friends with Arthur McStevenson. You know, the guy who writes all those thrillers you see on sale in the airports? Anyway, he told me that he wished he'd have taken a pen name before he got started, so people just couldn't look him up and track him down at home."Dave took the cotton swap that Eric handed him and put it into one of the four slots on the little machine he carried with him. "Oh hey, I'm sorry man. I don't want to bother you about it.""Nah, you didn't come tap on my window in the middle of the night or anything. What do I care?" Andy waved his hand before taking a cotton swab from him, rubbing it along the inside of his cheek, and then handed it back to the man in the bio suit."While this is running, I just gotta ask you guys a few other questions. Do you guys each have a twin bed?"Eric rolled his eyes. "Are you kidding me? Ask him about his bed. Just ask him."Andy crossed his arms over his chest, as if this was a discussion they'd had a number of times. "Eric's got a queen sized bed and I've got a California king sized bed. Even though I've got the smaller bedroom. But what can I say? When I got out of college, I bought a big ass bed, so I'd always be comfortable, and never wanted to give it up.""Why do you ask?""They're starting to force people to house additional people in their places, so we can keep the uncontaminated together, at least for a while.""What?" Eric said, his face scowling. "There's no way that's legal.""It's temporary, and we're doing everything we can to make sure people are at least okay with it. At this point, we're just doing what we can to get people through it. But the death toll is starting to stack up. I mean, have you seen the footage coming out of New York City?"Andy nodded. "Trailer trucks stacked full with body bags. It's terrifying.""Besides, it's not all that bad. The virus seems to be targeting men a lot more than women, so guys are scoring with women way out of their league. And the women seem to be a little friskier once they've developed an immunity to the virus. I'm sure you'll see eventually."Andy arched an eyebrow in the man's direction. "That sounds ominous."The man in the biohazard suit waved a hand dismissively in their direction. "Not at all. Just relax and enjoy the ride. That's all I should say about it. So when's the next Druid Gunslinger book coming out? It's really soon, isn't it?"Andy stepped over to the fridge, opening it to take out a can of soda, using the fridge to hide his sigh, although he wasn't entirely successful. "It was supposed to be out in three weeks, but because of the virus, the publisher's pushing it back to the fall. I mean, I understand. I get a lot of additional sales off of in store appearances and whatnot. I get it. And I'm already working on writing the next one. But it's always rough having a book release pushed back.""Man, that sucks. I was really looking forward to reading it during my downtime when they're driving us between locations.""Y'know what, you're a fan, so let me do you a favor. I better not see this show up on eBay or the internet though, otherwise I'm gonna know who it was." Andy moved over to the box on the kitchen and opened the top of it, taking one of the books out. "They call these advance reader copies. They send me a few boxes of them so I can sell them at appearances or give them away to friends and such. I haven't even sent my family copies yet. I think the only other person than my agent and my editor who's read the book is Eric here."Eric nodded. "It's not as good as 'Have Totem, Will Travel' but it's one of the better books in the series, I thought. Way better than 'The Trouble With Werebears,' but then again, that's not hard.""Everyone's a critic," Andy said, grabbing a pen from near the box. "Fair, though. I had to bang that one out in five weeks because the publisher just wanted to cram another one onto store shelves while it was hot. I wasn't satisfied with it either, but it still sold okay. You said your name was Dave, right?""Yeah," Dave answered.Andy opened the front cover of the hardback ARC and wrote in the front of it, "For Dave, Jake thinks you're one of the real heroes. Yours, Blake Conrad." He blew over the ink for a second, making sure it was dry, before closing it up and offering it to Dave. "There you go. Autographed, personalized copy months in advance of when you can get it in stores.""That's awesome, man!" Dave said, genuine enthusiasm in his voice. The machine on the table beeped, a cheerful tri tone medley. "You guys are both 100% virus clear. And let me pay you back for this," he said, patting the book on the table next to him. He flipped a little toggle switch on the machine and then pushed the large green button on the side. A small little printout scrolled out of the machine. He tore it off and then pushed the green button again. "Okay, this one is for you," he said, holding out the receipt to Eric. "And this one is for you, Mr. Conrad," he said with a laugh, holding out the second slip to Andy. "You need to go onto the website today and fill out the questionnaire. I know it's going to seem weird, but just answer the questions honestly and openly, and go through the whole thing. You'll be very glad you did later, okay?""What's it for?""It'll help you be happy with your pair ups when we bring them by in a few days. You know that giant condo complex a mile or two over?""What, the 30 story skyscraper?""Yeah. That's being converted into a triage hospital, so all the tenants are being evicted. Lots of people who are going to be relocated. There's a range of five possible questionnaires that uninfected men can get, and it's at the test giver's discretion. Most people, we just give them level one or two questionnaires.""What did you give us?""Welcome to level 5, fellas. It's mostly reserved for medical professionals and high rollers, but it's my discretion, and this little baby's going to keep me from losing my mind for the next few weeks, so I gotta make sure we're square," he said while patting the book. "This should more than even us out.""It makes that much of a difference?"Dave smiled like a Cheshire cat beneath his biohazard helmet and nodded. "You'll see. Just trust me on this. Go fill it out right away, though! They'll probably have someone here tomorrow or the day after, and you want to be ready." The scientist picked up the book in one hand and his testing kit in the other. "And with that, I'm off! I won't be able to get started on this tonight, but I'll see if I can swing by on one of the drop offs and let you know what I think of it.""Hey, it's always nice to meet a fan," Andy said. He moved to scoop up the two cats into his arms again before he and Eric walked him to the door.Dave shuffled toward the door, as Eric opened it for him. "Remember guys, the questionnaire is completely confidential and no one's going to judge you on any of it, so be completely honest. Got it? Completely. Honest.""With all the hyping you've been doing, I can't wait to see this questionnaire," Andy laughed. "Go on, go! You've got more people to be saving, I'm sure.""Take care, fellas!" Dave said.Eric closed the door on him, then flipped the lock, and then the deadbolt before putting the chain on. He liked to make sure it was secure. "So I suppose we both better go take this thing, huh?" he said to Andy, who was putting down the cats again."Guess so."Eric's desk was in the living room, while Andy's was part of the adjacent dining room. They'd been known to politely yell at one another from their desks. Andy typed in the website on the slip and hit return. A rather bland looking government website popped up. There Andy entered his name, his address, his social security number and address."He wasn't kidding when he said this quiz was unorthodox," Eric called over to him, clearly ahead of him in the process. "These are not the kind of questions I expect a government website to be asking me.""Oh yeah? I can't wait to find out." Andy typed in the personalization code at the bottom of the slip. It was a long series of characters, a mix of numbers and letters, both capital and lower case, with a variety of special characters mixed in “ 25 characters in all. Andy had to enter the series twice because the first time he hadn't realized it was case sensitive and the site had rejected it.The first question immediately surprised him. "Are you attracted to: Women, Men, Both?" It wasn't at all what he expected, but he checked "women" and the site moved onward. There was a small button marked back, in case he made errors, obviously.The next page asked him what ages of women he was attracted to. There were two little slider bars, with the low end going as far down at 18 and the high end going up to 70+. Andy was nearly 40, but the words of Dave rang through his head. "Be honest." Andy shrugged, leaving the low end set to 18 and brought the high end to 35.He was a more than a little caught off guard by the next question. "Would you consider yourself: Monogamous, polyamorous, no preference?" He had to think about it for a long moment, but eventually clicked "no preference." If he was truly honest with himself, if he found himself with a girlfriend who had another girlfriend, he wouldn't have been bothered by it.For the next twenty minutes, Andy continued to work through the website, filling in all the options about what he was and wasn't attracted to. Height, weight, race, hair color, hair length, eye color, nationality, education, physique, the questions went on and on and on. After he went through any given category, he was then given a follow up page to rank all of the things from most attracted to at the top down to least attracted to at the bottom.Towards the back half, he started to understand what Eric had found so surprising. The quiz had a page with a seemingly limitless collections of fetishes and kinks. At the top was the message "Click all that apply." Following that, all of the things Andy had clicked on were in another list he was expected to order.When he had to order all of his turn ons, he became more than a little aware how at odds with each other some of them were. In fact, he had aggressive women and submissive women next to one another in the ordered list. He wondered what the algorithm would make of that.The last page was the same fetish and kinks list presented again with a different message at the top. "Click all those that are hard turn offs for you. Be thorough." It was this page that Andy found himself clicking a lot of buttons.He also had to look up a handful of the terms that did not include clarification. He was sure there were people out there who liked pissing on each other, but he certainly wasn't one of those. He also had to make sure to reject women who were allergic to cats. He wondered if all this information was just going to ensure no one showed up.All in all, the whole thing felt a little like a thing he'd taken in college called the Purity Test, a thousand question party game where people who had been drinking would compare sexual histories.The final page was all the information he'd entered presented in an ordered list, with a message in large friendly red letters at the top. "Review all the information below for accuracy! Once you hit submit, you cannot revise this information!"After a final pass to make sure he hadn't marked anything incorrectly, he hit submit. The screen went blank for a second before a confirmation message popped up. "A copy of this has been mailed to the email address you provided. Thank you for helping us keep California safe!"Andy closed the web browser and rose up from his seat, heading over to talk to his roommate. "Okay, yeah, that was definitely weird.""What did you say to the polyamory question?" Eric asked him."I put no preference.""Really? Man, I couldn't click the monogamous button fast enough. Last thing I want is a girlfriend who's shacking up with another guy."Andy smirked. "What if she was shacking up with another girl?""Ah shit, I didn't even think of that."He shrugged at Eric with a wry smile. "Like it's going to make any fucking difference anyway. I'm sure the whole thing is just an optimistic pipe dream. When was the last time our government brought any real change with a website?""Heh. Guess we'll see.""Yep, suppose so."And that was the last they talked about it for the rest of the day. But it certainly wouldn't be the last time they talked about it.Chapter 2It was a little past noon the next day when there came a knock at the door. "Open up! CDC!" the voice on the other side shouted at them. "Delivery and I don't have time to fuck about so let's go."Andy was in the living room working on his laptop, and glanced over at Eric, who was hip deep in a conference call. "Don't worry, I got it. They probably just forgot some questions yesterday or something." Eric waved his hand as Andy set his laptop aside, carrying on with his conversation with his coworkers.Andy rose from the couch and made his way over to the front door, opening it without thinking to look through the peephole. The cats were both upstairs asleep, so he didn't worry about them. When he opened the door, there were three people outside of it, not the one he'd expected. The person in the middle looked a lot like Dave had, except for the face. The man inside this biohazard suit was a black man in his late forties. He looked a lot less jovial than Dave had.To the left and right of the man in the biohazard suit was a woman covered from head to toe. From the clothing, it was almost impossible to make out any details other than the woman to the left of him was short and the woman to the right was tall. Both of them wore hoodies with the hoods pulled up. They wore ski visors over their eyes and scarves over their noses and mouths. Both wore long sweatpants and had those fuzzy lined boots he'd never thought were fashionable. He couldn't see an inch of skin from either. Each of them had a small roller suitcase with them, the kind of travel bag someone takes for a holiday no longer than a week. They also each had a large bag under their arm, an oversized purse maybe, or a laptop bag. The whole appearance was almost like Berkas by Gucci."You Eric or Andy?" the man in the gear asked him."Andy.""Copy," the man said, tapping at his little pad with a stylus that dangled from it. He let the stylus drop and then opened a pouch on the outside of his suit, upholstering a bottle of Lysol. He sprayed the surface of the tablet for a few seconds then held it out to Andy. "Just use your finger to sign on the line. Any day now. I've got another seven deliveries to make today, and people are on the bus waiting so let's go."Andy lifted a finger up and signed an approximation of his name on the tablet's surface. "So how long is this for? That these people are staying with us?""Which room is Eric's and which room is Andy's?" the shorter of the two women asked."Upstairs and turn right for Eric's room and left for my, uh, Andy's room," he said, as the two women immediately brushed past him and ran upstairs. "How long?""The fuck should I know, pal? I just deliver them." He took the tablet back from Andy and glanced down at it. "Anyway, that's it for this batch. I'll see you again in a few days, maybe a week or so, with the next one.""The next one?" Andy asked, but the man had already turned and started walking back to a school bus that was idling in the street. "What do you mean the next one?" But the man had already moved on, and either didn't hear Andy or didn't care. Andy suspected it was the latter. Behind him, up the stairs, he heard both his and Eric's bedroom doors shut.He closed the door and locked it, then turned the padlock and put the chain back on. Andy looked over his shoulder, then glanced and Eric, who shrugged. He moved upstairs and knocked on his own bedroom door. "Uh, hello?""Five minutes please!" a voice on the other side of the door said to him.Andy sighed, turned around and walked downstairs. His roommate looked over at him, having just wrapped up his conference call. "She wants five minutes."Eric laughed. "We've been kicked out of our own rooms. Great."Andy moved back over to the couch and picked up his laptop, sitting back down and starting to write again. He was curious, though. Insanely curious about what was happening in his own room. Neither of the cats were complaining so he imagined it couldn't be too bad. His roommate had wrapped up his conference call, but had clearly turned on his music, because Andy could hear the tiny noise flare ups, even though Eric was just wearing earbuds. He did love his death metal loud.He spent a while trying to work but trying to focus felt damn near impossible. He popped into his company's Slack channel, to let them know what was going on.“your partner showed up?” his boss typed. “take the rest of the week off. you're going to be busy“They said they're going to be back later with another delivery. What the hell does that mean?” Andy typed into the channel.“oh shit” his boss typed back. “how big is your bed? queen sized?”“King sized.” Andy replied. “California king, actually. Don't know what difference that makes though. The news said one partner per person.”“u have a king bed tho” his boss replied. “did the site ask u the polyamory question?”“Yeah” Andy typed. “I put no preference”“shit” came the reply. “okay take off the rest of the week and let me know when you get another partner and we can do the same again as many times as you get partners”“Wait. What? How many partners can they give me?”“depends on what level the tester gave you”“He said level 5. He was a fan of my novels so I gave him a signed copy of the new one”“Oh, shit” his boss answered. “then u can be assigned up to 4 partners with Cali king bed”“Now you're just fucking with me” Andy sent back with a laugh.“noshit my dude” his boss answered. “ok we play it by ear then but dont check out any new tasks until monday, k?”“Am I still getting paid for the time?”“new partner adaptation time dude its all covered”“Okay then, I guess.”“level 5, L O L, u fucking suck” his boss typed. “u dont deserve that level of woman”“Wait. What do you mean?”“LOL u didn't read how the levels system work fuck u go enjoy winning the lottery”And with that, his boss set Andy's status to Out Of Office.From upstairs he heard both pairs of doors open, although he didn't think either of them opened fully. "I'm going to take a shower if that's okay with Eric," a voice called down."He's in the zone working, so that should be fine," Andy called up."Thank you!" And then Eric's bedroom door closed again."Okay Andy, come on up," a different voice said. "But close the bedroom door behind you, okay?" And then his own bedroom door shut.His work day was done. He found himself a little nervous at the idea of going into his own room, but he realized waiting wasn't going to make it any easier. Time to face the music. He pushed his laptop back into his laptop bag, zipped it up and set it on the coffee table.Andy walked up the stairs and came to his bedroom door. It was odd, staring at this side of his bedroom door. He knocked on the door, and a soft giggle came from the other side. "You don't need to knock, silly. It's your room. Come on in."He wasn't entirely sure what he expected to find behind the door. But he did as he was told to do, opening the door, stepping in and closing the door behind him.Sitting on his bed was a lovely redheaded woman in her mid to late twenties. He suspected the coppery color of her hair was natural as he could see a generous dusting of freckles on her cheeks and arms. She had it done up in a sporty ponytail that hung down to the small of her back. Instead of all the layers he'd seen her in just a few minutes ago, she was dressed now in simply a sports bra, a pair of booty shorts and a pair of thigh high leather boots. She had her hands behind her on the bed to thrust her perky tits up in his direction. She was fit, pale, strikingly beautiful, and had a playful smile on her face."Hallo Andy," she said, an Irish tinge to her voice. "My name's Aisling. It's pronounced Ashling, but spelled A i s l i n g. I'm from Dublin, but after I finished uni, I got a job out here working as a graphic designer. I'm your new partner. I hope I'm to your liking.""Oh!" Andy said, as if the whole situation was just dawning on him. "Oh, I'm "Aisling couldn't contain herself any longer and sat up and rushed him, throwing her arms around, clinging to him firmly. "We can touch," she moaned into his ear. "Touch! It's been so fucking long since I touched anybody. And I'm going to touch the fuck out of you nonstop, you beautiful bastard."He was slightly taken aback at how tightly she was holding him. "I mean, you don't have to ""I don't have to do any fucking thing I don't want to," she whispered into his ear. "But it is taking every bit of willpower I have not to drop to my fucking knees and rip those pants right off you. Because that's what I desperately want to do right now."Andy could feel her nipples pressed firmly against his chest through the sports bra, and her breath was hot against his skin. "Wah, why?""We've been in isolation for months," Aisling said as her hand grabbed onto his ass through his jeans. "They gave us injections to help us build our immune system against the virus, but they said it was going to stoke our libidos a bit. God, wasn't that a fucking understatement." She nibbled on his earlobe for a moment. "They showed me twenty pictures of men with a bit of description beneath each of them on what they wanted and didn't want, and I picked you."His hand moved along the small of her back, trying to keep it from going anywhere inappropriate, but she reached behind herself to grab his arm by the wrist and push his hand down onto her ass, which invoked another moan from her. "Why did you pick me?""You like gingers, which I am obviously. I'll be sure to show you it's natural in just a smidge," she said with a smile. "But you like both submissive and aggressive women, and I can be both. You're open to polyamory. I like both men and women, and I know that polyamorous men with large beds get multiple partners, so that's something to look forward to. I consider myself a switch, so I'm looking forward to having another girl to play with, one I can order around a bit." Andy started to try and pull his hand upward a bit, and she rubbed her hips forward a bit more insistently. "If you're lifting that hand up, it'd better be to slip it under my shorts onto my bare ass.""Is, is that what you want?""For an appetizer," she purred. "But you know what made me want you most of all?"Andy lifted his hand just to the top of her booty shorts, hesitating for just a second before he slid his fingertips beneath the hem of them. He realized he must've been hesitating a bit too long, because she reached back and pushed his hand down firmly until he had a full handful of toned butt in his grasp. "What's that?""Out of that long, long list of sexual turn ons and offs, the thing you put that turned you on the most, was dirty talk," she practically moaned at him. "I fucking love dirty talk. I am an absolutely filthy little slut. No," she giggled, licking her tongue along the shell of his ear, "I'm your filthy little slut now. I am going to beg you to fuck me stupid over and over again. I can't wait to suck on that cock of yours, to make you fuck my face until there are tears rolling down my eyes and I can't breathe. God, that makes my little cunt clench. It's tight, too. I've only fucked two guys before, and each of them only a couple of times. But you are going to fucking plow that gash of mine so much I may have to etch your name into it. You are going to fuck your little whore so much that you fall asleep inside of my cunt more often than not, and wake up to me sucking your cock clean to get you ready for another round." She turned around in his arms, which made his hand slide up to her stomach, her head leaning against his shoulder. "Here," she said, taking his hand on her belly, pushing it down the front of her shorts. "Feel just how sopping wet a bitch you own now, sir. Should be it sir? Master?" She giggled a little, wiggling her eyebrows. "Daddy?"Andy stuttered for a second, as his fingertips pushed through a small strip of hair before reaching the most drenched snatch he'd ever felt. "Fuck, you are soaked,”"Umm," she said with a nod. "So I'll just use all three then.""Not,” Andy sputtered, "not in front of my roommate.""The other guy? Oh, he's going to be more than a little distracted. I talked with Lily a little bit on the way over here “ Lily's the girl waiting for him in his room “ and she's more worked up than I am. And your roommate likes them to be a little dominant with him, so I don't think he'll have time to say anything, but if it makes you feel better, sir, I'll just call you Andy when we're out in the common areas. Or honey or baby. Something innocuous. As long as you're going to hold up your end of our deal.""My end?" Andy said, as he pushed a fingertip inside of Aisling's drenched cunt, feeling her clench down on it as she shivered slightly."You owe me one load of spunk every fucking day," she said, grabbing his other hand to push it up and under her sports bra to cup her tit, feeling how hard her nipple was against his palm. "I don't give a shite where you put it “ on my face, down my throat, across my tits, up my cunt, you can even stuff it up my virgin asshole, something I can't wait to feel the first time “ but you don't fall asleep at night without making sure I got my daily dose of your jizz. Think you can live up to that?""God, I hope so," he said, lifting her bra up to her collarbone, as her hands moved to pull it up and over her head, tossing it aside. "You really want that?"Aisling giggled again, a sound that sent shivers up Andy's spine every time. "I honestly can't wait to get started, Master. I want you to fuck me so bad, I can feel it trickling down my thighs. You've got yourself a needy little slut on your hands. How do you want our first time to be?"Andy's hand slid up from her shorts and brought his fingertips to his lips, licking them clean, seeing her nuzzling her face against his neck, so he offered his pointer finger to her, which she wrapped her lips around and suckled hard on before letting it pop from her mouth. "You were going to prove to me you were ginger, weren't you?""Hmm, I'm sure you can see the freckles all over my tits," she said, crossing her arms at the wrists in front of her to push them together and up towards his eyes. "But you want to be sure you've got an honest slut on your hands, hmm? Boots off or on, you think?""The boots are dead sexy, but let's have them off.""You like them though, yeah?" she asked as she put one foot up on his bed, and started unzipping one of the boots."Oh yes, they're fantastic. A lot of forethought in thinking to bring them.""We were allowed to made a list of things to get packed up for us, so I've got all sorts of little surprises in my wheelie bag, but I'll tell you one, I've got a plaid skirt in there, back from my days at Mercy College. Every man around the world loves a schoolgirl." She pulled her other boot off and set it on the floor next to its companion. Then she unbuttoned the front button of her jean shorts, unzipping them before bending forward over the corner of Andy's bed. She pushed the shorts slowly over the curve of her ass and down her thighs before stepping out of them, leaving her in a tiny silky red thong. "Like the view?""God you're fit. I feel like a bit of fat man in your presence, I'm afraid.""Don't you worry, lad," she purred. "You and I are going to be doing a lot of exercise." She slid on her belly further onto the bed and then rolled onto her back. "I'll fuck you back thin, daddy." Aisling pulled her thighs back to her chest, reached down and drew her thong up along her legs. As soon as she lifted the fabric upward, Andy got his first view of her cunt, and she was glistening. With her ankles to the side of her head, she drew the thong off and tossed it to the side before spreading her legs wide. True to her word, there was a neat shaved triangle of copper curls just above her snatch. "See? Ginge minge. Now what're you gonna do about it?""Aren't you sweet as candy?" Andy slowly crawled onto the bed next to her. He didn't have shoes to kick off “ he'd barely put them on since the lockdown began. "You're down for anything?"Aisling rolled onto her side. "You want the first time to be something particular? How sweet. What did you have in mind?""Something simple. So you can show me what you like. You on top. That okay?" Andy said as he pulled his shirt up and over his head.She giggled a little bit, reaching a fingertip over to brush it along his chest. "Tattoos? You're full of surprises. I wouldn't have pegged you as a man with ink." Andy had a tattoo of a griffon starting on his right pectoral going down to his stomach, done in an elaborate and detailed style. It had been the better part of two days worth of work ten years ago. "I like the look of it, though. And if you want our first time to be me riding you, I say giddyup partner. Any other surprises down here I should be looking forward to?" Her fingertip moved to smooth down over the swell of his cock through his jeans."You can have a looksee for yourself after you do one more thing," Andy said, with a little laugh."Tell me what it is, so I can see the thing that's going to change my life." She was rubbing the palm of her hand firmly against that buldge now, her eyes looking down at her hand before bringing those green eyes up to meet his gaze, a girlish smile on her lips. "Stop teasing and tell me.""I've never shown my cock to girl I haven't kissed before," he said with a wry smile. "I don't intend to stay"Andy didn't even finish getting the sentence before Aisling had crawled all over him, pressing her lips to his. The kiss was intense, more intense than he'd ever remembered before. It came on strong and kept getting stronger, her lips parting after several seconds to let her tongue slip into his mouth and spiral around in a hungry dance. After a few minutes of making out like a couple of teenagers, she pulled back just an inch or so. "God, I hadn't realized how much I missed kissing someone. You're a great kisser." She pressed her lips against his once more and this time didn't wait to push her tongue in. After a few more minutes, she pulled back again. "That what you wanted?"He laughed softly. "You really want to see it, don't you?""See it, touch it, taste it, fuck it. I want to do everything you can think of with that cock, and once we're done with all of that, we can do it all over again." Her fingertips plucked at the button of his jeans, popping them undone. "Can I see it now, daddy?""I'm no porn star, Aisling, so I wouldn't get your hopes up," he said. "But yes, you can see it." He felt her drawing down his zipper and lifted his hips up so she could tug his jeans down and off, but she made a point of grabbing his boxers with them. "See? Not any longer than the average man.""Jaysus," she said quietly, "maybe not any longer, but certainly thicker. A lot thicker. That is a great big fat ol' cock you got there, Master." Her voice was one continuous purr as her slender fingers wrapped around the base of his cock and started to slowly stroke it. "Thicker than any cock I've ever had inside of me. Can I?""Hop aboard." The whole thing felt vaguely dreamlike. He wasn't sure she was real, wasn't sure any of this was real. He half expected to wake up and for everything to disappear at any moment. But that didn't happen."Gladly," she said, as she straddled one leg over his hips. She snaked a hand between them to grab the base of his cock, angling it properly, setting the tip against wet snatch before sinking down onto it with one continuous motion. As soon as her hips touched down against his, his cock bottoming out inside of her cunt, he felt her entire body slump forward atop him in a colossal shiver, her cunt spasming and clenching on his shaft. A tiny moan burbled from her lips, one that bubbled over into a breathy laugh against his neck, desperate and delirious. "Fer fuck sake. I've never cum that hard in my entire fucking life, and you just put the fucking thing inside of me. Nothing more. Just from putting him in.""Do you want to stop?""Are you out of your fucking mind?" she giggled, placing both of her hands on Andy's chest. "I haven't gotten my daily nut yet, daddy. And your girl wants what's coming to her. And by hook or by crook, she will fucking having it." Her arms pressed together to push her tits out even more, as she started to snake her hips backwards only to thrust them forward again. "It's been two years since I got properly fucked last. How long's it been for you?""You'll only laugh at me," Andy said with a slight frown."I promise I won't," she purred. "Has it been longer?""A lot longer.""How long?""Over a decade."She leaned down and kissed him again, this time a bit more softly and tenderly. "Well, you're never going to go a day in your life without fucking ever again, so it'll be alright." She had a magical way of swaying atop of him, shimmying back and forth on his cock. Her body ground down onto him over and over, sweat glistening off her freckled pale skin.His hands latched onto her hips, trying mostly to hold on. His fingertips clenched onto her smooth skin, pressing her down a little more than she'd been trying to push onto his cock, as if he felt like he wanted to contribute something to her effort."C'mon. Make me your girl, claim your whore, daddy," she whimpered, her face looming over his. "I wanna feel it. Gimme that cum. Own me. Own me. Cum in her tight little cunt. Paint it. Take it. Fucking own me, Master. Own. Me."Just outside of his room, he heard Eric's door open and then slam shut again, but it was only a momentary distraction, as Aisling continued to bear down on him, her ass slamming against the top of his thighs.It wasn't long before he could feel that release building up on him, and much sooner than he'd have liked, his body was shuddering in the throes of an orgasm as he started to spew hot cum inside of her tight young twat. As soon as he started to orgasm, however, it was almost like Aisling had been struck by lightning, her whole body violently shaking as a guttural sound was wrenched from her throat, primal and whorish, before her body collapsed on top of him, her body trembling for a long moment before she lay still atop of him.After a few minutes, he slowly moved her to one side of him so he could slip out from under her. She was completely unconscious, and he was almost certain he could her hear whispering nigh imperceptibly the word 'imprinting' over and over again.He didn't want to wake her, so he went and showered, then headed downstairs to grab himself a bit of dinner. The two cats sat at the foot of his bed, peering at the unconscious redhead in his bed, wondering what the hell was going on.The madness had barely even gotten started.Chapter 3When Andy woke up the next morning, he was almost certain he'd been dreaming yesterday. But he felt an odd sensation and lifted his head to look down. There he saw Aisling's coppery ponytail bouncing over his crotch. And he could feel her lips sealed around his cock, as she continued to face fuck herself on his shaft.Andy had never woken up to being blown before, and it certainly was a delightful experience. He tried to pull her head up, to give her a break, but she reached up and pressed his hand away with her own, a delightful little giggle rolling from her lips onto his cock.He thrust his hips towards her face because it seemed like the thing she wanted him to do, and sure enough, she kept pushing her head down again and again. She wasn't letting up until she got what she needed.In the end, resistance was futile.His body tensed up and his back arched as he felt her lips around the base of his cock, the head lodged in her throat as he started to spew cum. When he did, he could feel her body shake and quiver against his thigh.A few minutes later, both of them had regained their composure, and she'd snuggled up alongside him, her face nestled in the crook of his neck as she laughed almost deliriously. "It's actually true. The taste of your cum gives me an orgasm. Each and every time, harder than I'd ever known before I met you," she purred. "You really do fuckin' own me, daddy.""You say that," Andy said, "but eventually you'll get bored of me, and you'll come to resent me, resent being attached to me like this."She rolled over a little bit, pressing one of her arms against his chest as she shook her head, a crooked smile on her lips. "I woke up in the middle of the night and looked around the room while you were asleep. There are bookcases everywhere. My first boyfriend was a footie player who dreamed of going pro when he could barely get up in the morning. My second boyfriend? He was a shitty musician who claimed he was being artful when he couldn't carry a tune. You're surrounded by books. Have you read all of them?"Andy shrugged a little. "Maybe half of them. But I like having books around, knowing that when I'm ready for another, it's right there.""See?" she giggled. "I've never been with anyone so smart before. And I've never been with someone who'll let me be myself and not force me to hide it.""Hide what?""What an absolute slut I am," she said, kissing his neck. "Your absolute slut, if I'm honest." She wasn't trying to wind him up, just more of delighting in learning all the nooks and crannies of his body. "And I don't have to pretend I'm a good Catholic girl who'd never let a boy put his hand up her skirt when I'd rather be bent over getting my tight young gash plowed. You'll have to do that next, have me on my hands and knees, your good little proper bitch."Andy laughed. "You sound rather eager for that."" Umm," she mumbled, nibbling on his ear, "you want me to beg again?""Let me do it later," he said. "We should get up, shower, and we should meet our new roommates.""I talked to Lily a bit on the ride over. I'll tell you about it in the shower."Each of the bedrooms in the condo had an attached bathroom so they didn't even have to get dressed to get up and move to the bathroom. She scooted ahead of him quickly, and he could see the inside of her thighs were damp as she climbed out of the bed and moved into the bathroom.It was the first time he'd had a woman in his bathroom in a decade, and so he was a little embarrassed about the state of it. "Of course you don't have a hair dryer," Aisling giggled, as she ran her fingertips over Andy's shaved head. He'd started developing a bald spot in his mid twenties, so he'd been shaving his head every since then. "Don't worry, I've got one in my suitcase. Speaking of which, you're going to need to give me one drawer in that dresser to myself. That okay?""You're really in this for the long haul, aren't you?" He turned on the water in the shower as he closed the top of the toilet.She leaned in and folded her hands behind his neck, pressing her body up against his. "What did I tell you? You. Own. Me." She kissed him briefly in between each of the last three words. "But that means you belong to me as well. Whenever you go, I go. And I need to take care of you. And you need to take care of me.""I can clear out a drawer for you, no problem, Aisling.""See? It's not that hard to pronounce, is it?""But hey, this is your bathroom now too, so feel free to make it home.""Oo!" she said suddenly and darted back out into the bedroom. Andy could hear her unzipping her little suitcase before she sprinted back in, a giant tricolor beach towel which she set on top of the toilet. It didn't even take him half a second to recognize it was the colors of Ireland's flag. "Little bit of the home country. Now let's get wet. I've never taken a shower with another person before." She lifted her fingers and pressed them against his hair chest, almost shoving him back into the shower.It was rather a long shower, where they got dirty before they got clean again.About forty minutes later, they'd both gotten dried off and dressed and headed downstairs, Aisling bringing her laptop bag with her. Sitting on the couch was a Japanese woman dressed in sweatpants and a baggy t shirt typing away on her laptop while Eric was sitting at his desk on the other side of the room."Andy, meet Lily," Eric said to Andy as he walked down the stairs. "She's my new partner.""S'up," Lily said, not even looking up from her typing."She's kinda in the zone right now. She's a coder with DoorDash.""We talked a bit on the ride over here," Aisling said. "Hi, I'm Aisling. I'm Andy's first partner.""First?" Lily said, stopping typing and looking up and over her shoulder at them as they reached the bottom of the stairs.Andy scowled. "She didn't mean it like that. I wasn't a virgin."Lily snickered a bit. "I know. I'm fucking with you," she said, looking back down to her laptop. "So how was he Ash?""Fucking amazing," Aisling said. "How about yours?""I have a name you know," Eric said."Good but not great," Lily said. "But I'll train him to be the best ever. Best for me, anyway.""Hi Eric," Aisling said, shaking Eric's hand. "Nice to meet you.""I cleared off the dining room table behind Andy's desk to give you a bit of work space, Ash," Eric said. "Lily said you're an artist?""Graphic designer for Alphabet."Andy cocked his head as he and Aisling started to cross the living room, heading towards the dining room. "I didn't know you were a Googler.""I'm a contractor for them, so they don't really consider me a Googler," she sighed. "They might move me from contract to full time at some point, but it's just as likely they're going to just keep giving me new contracts over and over again.""Welcome to life in Silicon Valley," Andy laughed. "Everything's forever, for exactly five minutes."Aisling pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it on the table, noticing the box pushed off to one side. "Blake Conrad, huh?" she said, taking a book out from the box. "My older brother loves these books, but I've never read any of them. Are you a big fan?"From the other room, Eric couldn't help but laugh. "Go on!" he yelled at Andy. "Tell her."Andy rolled his eyes. "Look inside the back flap."Aisling took the hardcover and opened to the back of it, looking at the inside flap where Andy's picture peered back at her. "Wait, are you Blake Conrad?""It's a pen name.""Oh my god! I'm shagging Dermot's favorite pen!" she giggled. "I can't wait to phone him and tell him.""Mmm. I can even autograph a copy of the new one for him and you can mail it out to him, as long as he's not going to be mad that I'm sleeping with his sister."Aisling pulled out a Wacom tablet from her laptop as well as a power cord, plugging it into the wall. "Andy. You're a bloody hero to him. He'll be over the moon.""He's not going to be upset that you're shacking up with a guy you just met? Or that he's going to have, other women?"Aisling kissed him for a long moment, soft and tender. "You're sweet, Andy. But this is the way the world works now. And you're a good man, so Dermot'll be happy that I didn't end up with someone crazy or ugly.""Oh, you don't think I'm ugly?" Andy grinned impishly, as Aisling pushed him back down into his desk chair."Look fella," she teased. "If I thought you were ugly, I'd have said so. Now don't you have work to get to or something?"Andy turned on his computer and the two monitors on his desk sprung to life. "Well, yeah, but theoretically I'm on new partner leave, so I don't really have to be working."She stuck her tongue out at him. "Well, I don't get any such luxury as a contractor, so I need to get some work done today. How does a novelist get partner leave anyway?"He sighed a little. "That's just my side hustle. My day job is as a marketing writer for Netflix."Aisling's face scrunched up in cute confusion. "The books don't pay enough?""Not until they get optioned, which my agent seems to think will happen eventually, but hasn't yet.""I'll have to read them then." Andy tried to mask the look of surprise on his face, but apparently wasn't great at concealing it. "What? I said I hadn't read them, not that I didn't want to read them.""Fair enough!" Andy grabbed his headphones and pulled them onto his head, clicking on iTunes to bring up his music. He wasn't allowed to check out new tasks for his day job, so he figured he might as well get a bit of writing in on his next novel.After a few minutes, Aisling tapped him on the shoulder, so he pulled the headphones off. "What's up?""What're you listening to?""Right now? Post rock band called God Is An Astronaut, but I usually just put my music on shuffle and let it ride.""Can I listen too?"Andy nodded. "Sure, as long as you've got headphones with a long cable and a USB plug.""Certainly do!" she said, holding out the cable.He plugged her in, did a few clicks on his computer, and then they were both listening to his music, just a few feet apart.Andy found it a little hard to focus on his writing, so he decided to take a bit of time to read up on the level system. His boss seemed to know a lot more about it, so he figured it didn't hurt to see what was coming down the pipeline.The virus, it seemed, was hitting the coasts hardest, with N Y C being the biggest disaster area, but the Silicon Valley wasn't far behind. Isolation was the best path, but the bodies were still piling up, so the country was looking to build some stability into people's lives. That meant pairing the single people up. Men were dying at a significantly higher rate than women to the virus, so protecting them had become extremely important. The virus had a mortality rate that was fifty times higher in men than it was in women.Because of that fact alone, it had been determined that virus free men would be ranked on a scale of one to five in terms of their importance to society, and that the higher a man was ranked, the more that person's personal needs would be tended to. So level 1s, which it seemed like was most people, would simply be given the barest amount of effort to find someone to pair with their basic desires. 80% of the men were classified as level ones. Level twos were essential, low risk workers such as construction engineers, clerks, judges and the like. Level three was law enforcement. Level four was figures of high impact. Mark Zuckerberg would've supposedly been a level four if he wasn't already married, one article said. Level five was the front liners in the fight in the virus and those who had made extraordinary contributions to society. They made up a fractional amount of people in the pool, less than half of one percent.A kind of hushed up mythology had been built up around level fives from what Andy could find on the internet. There were stories of emergency doctors who were on the best of days a six in any woman's estimate getting partnered up with women who would never be any less than a ten.Andy scoffed a little bit until he started looking at some of the pictures, and noticed that there were endless pictures of ER doctors and genetics researchers with women way, way, way, way out of their leagues.It was on the fifth collection of photos he spotted a familiar face. There was Dave, the man who'd tested them just a few short days ago, with his arm around a Hispanic knockout who couldn't have been pressed closer to him. And in the group shot with Dave, there were nearly a dozen other similar pairings of schlep and stunner.Once paired, men were being kept in isolation for an indeterminate amount of time. They were allowed to go out for walks, but had to keep fifteen feet away from anyone else. They weren't even permitted to go into stores to go shopping. Andy and Eric had been living on food delivery for weeks now. They'd even had groceries delivered and left on their doorstep. The receipt said the person who delivered them was named Silva, but neither Andy nor Eric had seen them. Andy wondered which of the two women would volunteer to go and get groceries first.During the middle of the day, Eric wanders over to take their orders as he placed a food delivery, but none of them had any chance to talk until dinner, which they also had delivered. Lily got free deliveries working for DoorDash, apparently, so both lunch and dinner had been brought that way."So how did you guys meet?" Lily asked as she was bringing in the bag of food that had been left on their doorstep.Eric laughed. "You want to tell them or should I?"Andy waved his hand, turning his desk chair around so it was up against the dining room table. "You're looking forward to it, so you tell them."Eric grinned as Lily started to take the food “ cheesesteaks it seemed “ and put it out on the table. "He was trying to bang my sister.""I was trying to date your sister," Andy said as Aisling giggled. "There's a difference.""Date her so you could fuck her, let's be clear."Andy rolled his eyes. "That was over a decade ago, so it's probably time to let it go.""She's married and lives in Florida down with her husband and their four kids, so we never really see her much anymore," Eric said."But Eric needed a roommate and I needed a place to live, so I moved into his spare room, and we've been flatmates since then," Andy said. "Aisling's from Dublin, but are you local Lily?""Second generation Bay Area native," Lily said as Eric set a beer in front of her. "My parents live up in Petaluma these days. Are your parents still around here, Eric?""They retired and moved down to Santa Cruz, although they spend half their time out in Florida with their grandkids. I'll introduce you to them over Facetime when they call next.""They going to be happy you hooked up with a Japanese woman?""They'll be happy I'm happy," Eric said. "Beyond that, I don't think they care.""What about you, Andy? You got local family?"Andy shook his head. "I'm from Ohio originally, but I've been out here for longer than I was there. My dad died a few years back, but my mom's still out there, as is my older brother with his wife and their son.""How old's your nephew?" Aisling asked."Conner will be 11 in July. I generally go back every year for Christmas, but this year seems like that's probably out."The Irish girl cocked her head slightly. "How much older is your brother?""Nine years older than me.""No siblings in between?""Nope," Andy said. "You said you have an older brother named Dermot. That your only sibling?"Aisling almost snorted she laughed so suddenly. "Jaysis no. Dermot's the eldest, then me, then my sisters Aoife and Niamh, and the last one is my baby brother Colin, who's about as old as your nephew. What about you, Lily?""Only child, thank fuck," she grumbled. "So, Andy, I understand Aisling's not going to be your only partner. What makes you think you deserve more than one partner, hmm?"Andy raised a hand defensively. "Hey now, I never said I deserve anything.""She's fucking with you, love," Aisling said, poking him with a grin."Spoil sport," Lily said, sticking her tongue out. "I don't really care as long as you're not going to take a pass at me.""You're Eric's partner, Lily. I'm going to respect that.""Good, and I'll make sure he keeps his hands off your girls.""I would never " Eric started to say before Lily raised a finger in his direction and he felt silent."Good boy," Lily said with a smirk. "I'll get him trained yet."Andy had never seen Eric get cowed quite so severely before, but he could swear his flatmate was blushing a little."I'm actually looking forward to seeing who else we get to play with," Aisling said."How many names should I expect to have to learn?" Lily asked."It's a fookin' huge bed, Lil," Aisling giggled. "So I expect a few more.""What I was reading about on the internet says I'm supposed to share my bed with four partners," Andy said, "but that can't possibly be right can it?""Umm. I can't wait," Aisling purred.She didn't have long to wait.To be continued in part 2, by CorruptingPower for Literotica.

On this episode Vin and Justin try to get the Council of Nah to realize that the world might be run be reptilians. Enjoy.

In today's show gawk as the biggest financial loss in recent surf brand history, reveal the sum Mayhem seeks from Gaga, shudder at Tom Lowe's near fatal wipeout, and explain why you should always push your partner's boundaries but never push them into waves. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matching Day: Part 2The struggle for honesty, and the grace to accept..Based on a post by SmallTownPrincess, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connected."So, tell me about your family, Mason," Livia said, tracing the lines of his palm with one finger. How long had they been out there? Although it felt like she'd been with Mason for only a few minutes, at most, she was deathly afraid that dawn would break soon, and they would have to part ways, sneaking back into their respective beds."Oh, they're nothing special," he said with a shrug. "My father's done pretty well for us with inter-community trade, and my mother's a self-proclaimed busybody. I have two little sisters who must hate me, for all the grief they cause me, and a cat that only eats because I ask him to every day."Livia sympathized with the cat; she would follow Mason to the ends of the earth, if he asked her to and really meant it. She wouldn't tell him that, though. He still believed that the answer to all their problems was to run off into the wilderness and never look back."They must love you a lot, to plan a big wedding for you - and build you a house! My father expected my match to do that with his own two hands.""Nah, they mostly just like being a spectacle in town, and a big wedding's the best way to ensure that everyone's talking about you. As for the house, I'd rather build it myself, honestly. I feel like a child with them paving the way for me like this.""I'll bet Salvia's bragging to everyone who'll listen about her fairy-tale wedding and big stone house - at eighteen!"Mason shrugged, looking stormy. "She keeps asking me when we can have our first baby boy. A baby? I'm not ready for a baby. I could go another decade before I would even think about having kids. I'll be nineteen when we get married, for gods' sake.""Nineteen?""I barely missed the cutoff for the last age group, so I think I'm probably the oldest in ours."A chill wind snuck down Livia's collar, and she shuddered, enjoying Mason's immediate response of wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back up against his chest. She could get used to being held that way. She lay her head back against his shoulder, and he sighed happily."Mason?""Hmm?""Do you still intend to marry her?"He shook his head, tousling her hair where his chin rested on it. "That big house will be ours - yours and mine - or they can give it to one of my sisters, for all I care. All I want is you."The chuckling scream of an owl broke the silence of the night, foreboding as the lustrous moon lay silver-lined shadows over the pair. "What are we going to do, Mason?""What do you mean?""What are you we going to do? I mean, you're supposed to get married in a month, to Salvia, and I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life unhappy and alone. People are going to notice if either of those things don't happen.""We could tell them that I prefer you to Salvia, " Mason said doubtfully, and Livia didn't even bother to reply. That was clearly not an option. "Or we could run, like I said originally.""There's nowhere to run," Livia murmured."Then, I suppose, this is our only option.""What is?""This. Meetings, like this.""What, you mean you want to keep meeting me in secret like this?""Sure, why not?""Won't someone in Salvia's house notice that you sneak out every night?" Mason was living with Salvia's family until his own house was built in Micrague, but, to Salvia's dismay, he was not taking advantage of sleeping just down the hall from her."Probably not, and even if they do, I told them the very first day I went home with her that sometimes I preferred to sleep outside, under the stars." He chuckled. "They probably think I'm quite odd, but it really is nice, sometimes, to just lay out here and look up at them."Livia snuggled closer to him and followed his eyes up to the dancing points of light in the rich blue-violet night. "But then, what happens next month, when your family send word for you to come home with her?""Hmm, the guys from Micrague probably don't remember what my match looked like, and you could answer to Salvia for the rest of your life, ""But the girls who matched those boys would know I didn't match you. They'll definitely remember that I was the one who ended up with no one to love but a dead boy I never met.""Gods, Livia, I don't know," he said, sounding frustrated. "What do you want me to say? That this can only go on until I'm called home?""Can't it?""Maybe it'll have to stop when I'm called home," he said, then shook his head fiercely. "No. No, one way or another, I'm going to marry you someday, Livia Russing."Hearing her last name from his lips sent a jolt of reality through her system. "I don't know your last name, Mason," she said, eyes still fixed on the glittering treasure of the heavens."It's Griersley. Don't let that be the deciding point against me when you're deciding whether or not you want to marry me," he said with a grin."It's not bad.""Is bad enough.""But I still don't know you well enough to say that I love you, Mr. Griersley," she said, grinning a little herself. "For all I know, you could be an axe murderer.""Well, you've been alone with me for hours now. Have you seen any signs that I'm going to be a danger to you?"She giggled, then settled into seriousness. "No, I don't think you would hurt me."He was still in a silly mood, grabbing her lightly around the neck and cackling evilly. "Now I've got you, princess!" he said in a nasal, grating voice. "You only thought I asked you here because I'm falling for you. In fact, I'm a hideous villain, bent on killing the loveliest and most brilliant girls in every community. You're my next victim!"Livia laughed, twisting to kiss him again. It felt more natural every time their lips met; after hours of it, she felt like she'd been born to kiss him.Dawn bleached the horizon and made the trees stand like motionless skeletons. Livia savored the taste of Mason's lips on hers as she clambered back into bed, wishing her quilt-shrouded mattress was half as comfortable as his arms.With the promise of seeing him again that night, having him all to herself for hours and hours, she could make it through another day. She just wished night would come a little sooner.There were moments, in the next few weeks, that made Livia wonder if the gods were making up for tormenting her with Bracken's death by saturating every moment with exhilarating euphoria.Mason, his face glowing with the radiance of the simple joy her presence brought him, danced with her in the moon's spotlight, humming a song he made up on the spot, her twirling feet sending leaves spinning all around them and making the breeze whirl and seethe with jealousy.His teeth stood like pearly bits of star against his tan skin as he laughed, dipping her low enough that her hair brushed the dirt forest floor, then bringing her lightly back to her feet with an easy, undemanding kiss.Combing his fingers through her hair, he poured nonsense pieces of poetry into the night, laughing occasionally at a particularly horrible rhyme, calling for her to contribute as well. But she wouldn't interrupt the uninhibited rhythm of his deep, pleasant voice; she let his words roll pleasantly over her soul while his fingers did the same to her scalp.Electricity lanced the night as their lips mimicked each other's shape, and each of them drew life from the other's wholehearted ardor.Livia whispered, "I do, after all.""Do what?""Love you."Mason wrapped around her, keeping her warm as her discarded clothes could not. His lips were drawing a lazy line of kisses from her forehead down her nose, over her lips and onto her neck. He sucked gently at the spot where her neck ended and shoulder began, then dusted kisses across her collarbones.His hands ran lightly along her sides, fingers brushing her skin from tits to hips and back again. She brushed her fingers through his hair, tugged on it in a mute request for him to make his way back to her mouth and kiss her as he had been for weeks, but his mouth was quite busy venturing to previously unexplored territory.Mason's lips pressed against her sternum, and the softness just above her belly button, and then the softness just below. He shifted back onto his heels so he could more easily massage his way down her thighs and to her knees. Hungrily, he eyed her body."Mason?" She could barely manage the breath to whisper his name. Something was making her chest tight, making it hard to bring in air; she realized after a moment that it was fear. That was the thing with Mason ,  he frightened her. Not because he would ever hurt her, but because he looked at life and asked for more than he was given. He pushed boundaries.His fingers were testing her boundaries now, working their way back up the inside of her legs and finding the intersection of her legs. He bent low, kissing her thigh just south of where his fingers rested, and his breath was both hot and cold on her body. It made her suddenly aware of a dampness there she did not recognize."Mason," she said again, more forcefully this time, and his eyes met hers."Yes?"She licked her lips, trembling as he continued to breathe on her slick folds. "Are you planning to do what I think you're planning to do?""Only if you want it," Mason replied. He stared up at her for at least a minute before she realized she was meant to respond positively or negatively, but she had no answer. How could she think with his mouth practically pressed to her lips there? "Livia? Do you want to?""I, " She observed the tenderness with which he was stroking her thigh, and melted a bit. "Yes. Please."Mason grinned. He leaned in just a bit closer and touched his lips to her, then slid his tongue between her folds, trailing it up to the nub of her clitoris ,  she gasped and tried to keep from shuddering, not wanting to break the contact ,  and then down until he circled her slit. His eyes sought hers, looking for approval; he must have seen it in her face, because he began to move his tongue in earnest, sliding it up and down, then delving into her opening as deeply as he could.Livia squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate on the feelings, but the intensity gave her a sense of vertigo so intense she almost felt herself sliding along the forest floor, as though the world had tipped off its axis. She clutched at Mason's shoulders to steady herself, digging her nails in harder than she realized.As Mason's warm mouth moved against her most sensitive places, she began to feel something completely new. It was a need she had never experienced before, an urgent and desperate desire so foreign that she could hardly guess how to fulfill it. She would have thought that Mason's current activity would relieve it somehow, but it was only sharpening the edge on her hunger."Mason, I need;” she started. She wasn't sure how to finish. Mason stopped immediately, sensing her distress, sitting up and wiping his mouth."What? What do you need?""I don't, know." She spoke quietly, distractedly. When Mason sat up, he revealed the entirety of his nude form, and Livia found her attention drawn to his sizable manhood, standing at attention. She stared, beginning to get an idea of what it was she needed.Picking up on her thoughts as though she was speaking them aloud, Mason abandoned his eager, if inexperienced, efforts to please her with his mouth and bent to press his body against hers again. He held himself just far enough off her that his weight would not oppress her, but the full length of his feverishly warm body covered hers, and the full length of his member pressed against her mound, pulsing slightly with each heartbeat.Slowly, painfully slowly, Mason slid his hips down, pulling his cock down her body until the head rested just where her lower lips parted, and then gravity and her own moisture pulled it the rest of the way. It came to rest just where it belonged, against her opening."Is this what you want?" Mason asked. With his mouth on her throat as it was, she felt more than heard his words.She nodded, eyes closed. "Yes."There was really no pain. Livia was surprised; she had heard from other girls that it was quite unpleasant the first time, sometimes even traumatic, but perhaps they had not had such tender first lovers, or perhaps they had not been so achingly, drenchedly eager to have their lover inside them. Livia hadn't even been aware of how badly she wanted Mason within her until he was, and all her tension drained out of her with a long sigh."It's perfect," she said, marveling at the fit of him in her. They were made for each other.For many long minutes they were motionless, sharing each other ,  they were no longer two people, but a single entity, joined intimately."I'm yours, Livia." Mason's voice was husky, and Livia saw that it was costing him something to remain still, not to just claim her from the inside out; she saw also in the way he wrapped his arms tightly around her and squeezed as if he would never let go that he was happy to remain frozen in place and share the moment, happy even as he strained for more."And I'm yours. Take me, Mason."And he did.Eventually they fell asleep, still connected, and didn't wake until larks' songs began to break the stillness of the air with the dawn.Just when she thought nothing could be more perfect, more beautiful, the gods realized their carelessness in letting too much rapture concentrate in just two small hearts, and they began to set things back to rights.Livia picked her way through the now-familiar path from her house to their meeting place in the trees, stepping lightly over fallen branches and dodging snags and thorns with ease. She'd sat at her window all afternoon, watching the sun in its path, wishing it haste as it progressed toward the horizon. Her mother wondered what had gotten into her, but didn't mourn the change. It had been painful to see her daughter in such misery after Matching Day.Just a little ways now, she thought cheerfully, wanting to whistle but deciding that would be imprudent. The fear of what they were doing didn't eat at her anymore, and she could almost forget, in the flawless moments with Mason, that there was anything wrong in what they did. When she saw Salvia, her face did not burn with blood, as it did at the beginning, and she did not hunch her shoulders against imagined accusations as she crossed the town now.At the very moment it always seemed she had been walking too far, that she must have passed the clearing completely and needed to turn around, she saw Mason.He was standing much as he had been the first night they'd met here, his hands balled into fists in his pockets, his eyes on the sky, standing in what she now recognized was his tensest stance, directly in the center of the clearing. He was wholly illuminated by a moon that approached full, and she could see the glistening tracks of tears on both cheeks, the slightest quiver to his bottom lip. Pain spiked just beneath her breastbone as she wondered distressedly what had upset him."Mason?" she called, tumbling out of the trees and into his arms. He barely caught her as she tripped over the undergrowth, landing ungracefully against his chest, and when she looked up into his face, she had never seen such despair."You came," he said brokenly. "I hoped you wouldn't.""What?"Rustling footsteps all around them told of the presence of others, and Mason's hands tightened on her upper arms as if he could somehow squeeze her out of sight.Livia's head swiveled frantically from side to side as she tried to see each face as they appeared, grimacing, out of the shadows; at the front of them all, she saw Salvia's triumphant countenance.And Mason's eyes never l

Is it fact or fiction? On this episode of The Wake Up Call on Froggy 99.9, Tank brings some "facts" about North Dakota to the table—but are they real or totally made up? Scotch and Mandy put their North Dakota knowledge to the test in this hilarious and surprising game of "North Dakota or NAH?" Tune in for laughs, local trivia, and a few curveballs that might just stump even the most seasoned Dakotan. Perfect for fans of quirky state facts, morning radio fun, and anyone who loves a good guessing game!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Isn't Therapy... it's a discussion about the mind-body connection~ wooOOoO!! Nah, in all seriousness, Jake and Simon unpack some interesting data about the gut and how it's being considered a second brain for its ability to drive instinct, help us refocus, and hone in on what really matters. In this episode, we discuss through some final lovely listener submissions and hear what y'all are thinking about as it pertains to this important, and often overlooked, piece of the mental health puzzle!P.S. This is our final episode of the season. Stay tuned for epic encore replays all summer long and keep your eyes peeled for an announcement about our next season in Fall 2025!Got an episode idea? Or maybe even a quandary, query, or question? Submit your thoughts (anonymously) to Asking For A Friend...Creators & Guests Simon Paluck - Host Jake Ernst - Host Hello, hi! Follow us on Instagram: @notatherapypodcast⁣Jake Ernst: @mswjakeSimon Paluck: @directedbysimonOriginal music composed by Kat Burns and performed by KASHKA.

In this powerful episode of Nah, Not All Hood, Dr. Keiji Fukuda—former Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization and globally respected epidemiologist—joins Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Candace Kelley for an eye-opening conversation. From his global travels to frontline pandemic response, Dr. Fukuda unpacks the social and environmental roots of health inequity, particularly within Black communities. They explore vaccine skepticism, mask mandates, why some illnesses never seem to disappear in certain populations, and how public health has been politicized. Dr. Fukuda opens up about his creative passions like cello and filmmaking, and how spirituality and balance keep him grounded. The episode also digs deep into pandemic preparedness, why pulling out of WHO would devastate global safety nets, and what's really at stake when science, politics, and personal freedom collide. This episode is a masterclass in clarity, compassion, and cultural awareness from someone who has been in the room where the world's biggest health decisions are made. #notallhood #malcolmjamalwarner #candacekelley #nahmorethanamonth #companyx #publichealthcrisis #blackhealthmatters----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not All Hood (NAH) podcast takes a look at the lived experiences and identities of Black people in America. Infused with pop culture, music, and headlining news, the show addresses the evolution, exhilaration, and triumphs of being rooted in a myriad of versions of Black America.   Hosted by Malcolm-Jamal Warner, and Candace O.Kelley   Executive Producer: Layne Fontes Producer & Creative Director: Troy W. Harris, Jr.

Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!WE ARE BACK! With another amazing episode of AYDTMOn this episode of AYDTM the crew updates you on their weekend. Then they get into a conversation on hating on the new trends that's going around. Then we move into talking about if the girls have any plans for the summer. Then we talk about Travis Hunter getting married and not having a prenup, dating preferences and arranged marriages.Wanna know if you doing the most!!??Got a crazy “doing the most” story?Send in your voice notes and/or ask us for advice!Email us @ Ayeyoudoingthemost@gmail.com… put in the subject “Am I doing the Most or Nah!?”Or send it in the DM!!!Please comment, like & subscribe.. Share with your friends!!Now streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio!!!!!Follow us on IG @Ayeyoudoingthemost- @CinnamonJaye && @BraneeDianeProduced by @RemyTheBrain  @ZoatShotMe

Classy People, siapa sangka, banyak tokoh public speaker keren yang merupakan seorang introvert, walaupun introvert sangat lekat dengan stigma pendiam dan pemalu. Nah, di Classy Bebas Pusing kali ini, kita akan kupas tuntas bagaimana cara jitu seorang introvert jadi seorang public speaker keren, bersama choach Yeni!Cermati Classy Bebas Pusing " Introvert juga Bisa Public Speaking" only on Classy FM!

Was This Coffee Date Guy Rude or Nah by Maine's Coast 93.1

  BOSSes Anne Ganguzza and Lau Lapides dive into how to cultivate hope and resilience in the ever-evolving voiceover industry. Their inspiring conversation explores discovering your strengths, overcoming challenges, and taking action to achieve your dreams. They emphasize the importance of self-love, nurturing your community, and understanding your true purpose to remain joyful and hopeful. Anne and Lau share practical strategies for educating yourself on industry trends, adapting your marketing approaches to reach diverse clients, and even exploring self-production to build your skills and discover new passions. By embracing change and leveraging your entrepreneurial spirit, they empower voice actors to not just survive, but truly thrive and build the best year ever in their careers.   00:02 - Anne (Host) Hey, are you looking to unlock a better you? My Life Transformation Coaching Services are here to help. We'll work together to discover your strengths, overcome your challenges, and achieve your dreams. Let's take that first step towards your best self today. Visit anneganguzza.com to get started. 00:23 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:42 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here with my absolutely wonderful friend and lovely co-host, Lau Lapides. Hey, Annie. Hello, I'm excited to be back. Hello Lau. I love chit-chatting, and you know what, it's been so long. I know, and we're here at the top of another year. Well, actually, a few months into another year, and I'll tell you what, it's been a little turbulent in a lot of ways. Gosh, I've had a lot of friends who have had some health issues. It's a new administration out there. The voiceover industry is still fighting against synthetic voices and AI, and I think let's talk about what's happening in the industry and what maybe our predictions are for this year, because I am determined and committed to have the best year ever. 01:33 - Lau (Guest) Oh, I love that. I mean, I just went to see a theater show, a professional theater show, in Connecticut. That was a big topic of conversation: how do we have hope? How do we still have hope in what we do as people in the world and also in our professions, and really coming in with that mindset, despite all odds, despite what's happening, despite whatever oppression you're feeling and moving through, how do we find hope in what we do? I'd love to hear, you know, start out with some of those mechanics of like how do I wake up and get hopeful about our profession? I love that. 02:10 - Anne (Host) What a great way to start. I love that. So I think that, now more than ever, we need self-love, right? We need self-love, we need to find the things that we're grateful for in our lives, and we need to have our community, and that, I think, is going to help us continue to have hope. I mean, I feel like those are the three necessary things that I need for me to remain joyful and be hopeful and continue to see progress in everything that I do and have a purpose, right? I really think that understanding what is your true purpose in life, finding your true purpose—which I think might be a lifelong search—but I have a good idea of what I think my purpose is and what I want to do in my lifetime, and I try to keep my eye on that mission, and that keeps me, along with people who I love and who love me, and that keeps me hopeful. 03:06 - Lau (Guest) That's great. I also feel like the next step for me is to start with that and then to take action. Because for me, I'm very much an action-based, execution-based person. So I wouldn't be happy staying in a zone where I have a thought, I'm excited about the thought, or I'm connected to something larger than myself. I'm really investigating that thought, but now I want to do something. 03:34 - Anne (Host) Yeah, and in that action, now you have to execute. Now you have to execute. I love that. I think that's a natural progression for anybody that wants to realize their goals is that you can write them down. All you want, right, but you've got to take steps and have action. You've got to take steps. 03:49 - Lau (Guest) So in our industry, that is the question: how do I go ahead and take a step every single day, whatever is going on in the industry? We see a lot of moves and changes in the industry. How do I take a step every day towards being hopeful and towards being optimistic and towards really something that's action-based? That's the question of the day. 04:12 - Anne (Host) Well, I think number one, if we step back and we take a look and we realize that we are indeed not just creatives, but we are entrepreneurs, we are business builders. First of all, take solace and give yourself props and be prideful in the fact that you are a business entrepreneur. And bar none, if the voiceover industry dropped tomorrow, right, you are an entrepreneur, you are a business owner, you know how to take something from nothing and build it, right? Because that's what you're doing now, building your voice acting career. And wherever you are in the journey, you just have to realize what an entrepreneur you are. And so, no matter what it is that you do, right, you can build your business and move forward in it, or move forward in it. There are always choices. 04:59 And so that's number one: stepping back and looking at it, I think, from the larger perspective and the fact that we have built skills, not just in our voices, not just in acting, but in our business acumen, and that is helpful, right? And so if voice acting kind of takes a dip, right—and I don't honestly, it's not—I really believe that, I don't think that it's going anywhere, I think it's right where it always has been and might even be more important this year. But for whatever reason, we always have to have like what's our plan B? I mean, this is why I always like to have like my different side hustles, side gigs. We've talked about that multiple times. So looking at that picture and there's my hope, right, I've got skills beyond voice acting that can help me to survive no matter what happens, right? 05:46 No matter what happens, no one can take that away from me. No one can take away my education, no one can take away my intelligence, no one can take away my work ethic, right? And that, to me, gives me hope. 06:00 - Lau (Guest) You go, girl. I love that, my resilience. You know, I think you're talking about too, Annie, something that's really important, and that is when we hone in and we GPS into our career. I think we do forget that we're whole people. Yeah, we're whole people that have a lot of skills. 06:16 - Anne (Host) We don't just have one skill. A lot of craft, no, no, no, we can do an awful lot of things. Now. 06:25 - Lau (Guest) We love to call it side hustle, but it may not be a side hustle. It may be an integral part of your life, your business, your world, that makes you feel whole, that makes you feel stabilized. You know, oftentimes with actors, we'll call it a survival job, but it may not be that. It may be something that helps you build your world. So I think that's important. I also think you should be looking at the market. You and I are always like, what's happening? 06:46 What's competition doing? What's this one doing? What's happening here? What are the trends? 06:51 - Anne (Host) Right, very important. 06:53 - Lau (Guest) But what's important about doing that, besides the logistical stuff, is to inspire yourself, sure. 07:01 - Anne (Host) If. 07:01 - Lau (Guest) I can't think of anything else. Like I am really out of thoughts today. I feel burned out, which is very common now. Entrepreneurial burnout. I don't have any more to give. I've been doing this a long time. I don't know what's going on. Ah, let me go into the world and let me see what others are doing to inspire me. 07:17 - Anne (Host) Oh yeah, I love that. Get outside my bubble. 07:19 - Lau (Guest) Goodness, there's. So not to be a copycat, but to feel like there's a lot of options, there's a lot of ways of thinking about what we do. I'm just stuck like a writer. A writer gets writers, they get stuck, writer's block, writer's block, right, and they have no more ideas, or so they think. And then some action gets them unstuck and opens up the floodgates. 07:40 - Anne (Host) Absolutely. Go on a vacation, go people-watch in New York City or, you know, that kind of—I used to do that all the time—to step outside of your bubble, and that will help you to really get that mind going. So I'm going to say that number one, there's so many things that we can do for ourselves to continually see success and find fulfillment in what we do. Continually see success and find fulfillment in what we do, and I think if voice acting is it for you, right, don't forget about continually building up your business skills and don't forget about, like as we just talked about, educating yourself and really going out there and understanding what the trends are. Now there's been a big shift in the administration, right? How is that going to affect sales of companies? How is that going to affect advertising? There's so much we can go out there and learn, right, and we don't know it all right away. I don't know it all right away, but I can certainly see that there's probably going to be trends. 08:34 Now, depending on what we're talking about, in the corporate world, we're going to be talking slightly differently. A few years ago, what was a big trend was DEI, and no matter what you think about DEI—diversity, equity, inclusion—how are people going to be talking about that today? How are people in the energy industry going to be talking? Is it going to be sustainability these days? Is it going to be alternative energy or is it going to be fracking? And again, like I'm saying, understanding—you don't always have to be in agreement with these things—but understanding where the trends are going and how companies are speaking. 09:08 If you want to work in that world, right, you have to at least be educated on how that world wants to talk to its clients or potential clients, because you will be representing that world with your voice. 09:21 And so, again, I'm not suggesting that you have to agree with any of it. But again, that's also like what is your moral compass? Would you work for a company that maybe is no longer concerned about sustainability or that's not in their agenda? I mean, there's so many people going back and forth on different companies that, based upon their policies, right, "Oh, I don't want to buy from this company anymore because they no longer support this particular idea or this particular policy," and so that's okay. I've had so many people are like, "I don't want to look, I can't," and they want to like shy away, but I'm going to tell you, look enough so that you can be educated, right, because you got to survive. You got to survive in this world, and I'm very, very confident that you will be able to survive in this world. But you have to remain educated and informed. 10:04 - Lau (Guest) Great advice, Annie, great advice. And you know, it's interesting, I had a talent I was coaching the other day and she said, "I'm very interested in medical, I want to do medical work, I'm interested in that, I have a background." I said, "Great!" I simply hopped on Google with her. I hopped on Google with her and I looked up and, sure enough, and she said, "I can't get into it. It's very hard to get into. I've been trying to knock down the doors. I don't know how to direct market. I'm stuck." Now. That is not my forte. And I was honest with her. I said that's not my forte. But let's have fun together, let's go on Google. We looked it up and what did we find? We found two sites, sort of like an Indeed ZipRecruiter-type site, specifically for voiceover, for medical narration. And she started in that rabbit hole and she went down. She said, "Oh, my goodness, that was like the simplest thing to do and I had already self-talked myself out of it before I even tried the most basic things." And she got into it and it was a casting site and da-da-da, da-da-da. And then that opened up her whole world to potential clients. 11:08 So why not go for a genre that you want to be going for and take new angles to how you find your information out? Don't go the same route you go every day. Try a new route. That's the feng shui of the soul, isn't it? They say if you drive to work this way, take a new route so that you can feel differently. If you drive to work, or you drive anywhere, take a new route. Well, this is the same thing. If I'm marketing and I tend to do the same thing all the time because I know it and I'm comfortable, go a different route. 11:37 - Anne (Host) And shameless plug, because medical is one of my specialties. There are ways that you've got to be seen by the people who can hire you, people who can hire you, and I do have a VO Boss Blast that has specific lists that can cater just for agencies and companies that work in healthcare and in pharmaceuticals. So there are lots of ways that can help and so just I'm throwing that out there. So if anybody's interested in medical and wants to find out how to market to them, I can absolutely chit-chat about you. 12:03 - Lau (Guest) And right, but I think the point is is like yes, you found a new way, Google. 12:08 - Anne (Host) I love Google, and I'll tell you what. I will be completely—a Chat GPT, sorry, Chat GPT, is a great answer of hey, tell me what's trending, but you have to have a professional version because it's now up to date or it can be as close up to date, so it's becoming a search engine. But Google is wonderful. 12:32 - Lau (Guest) Again, that's why they call me Anne Gang Google. You can Google anything. 12:33 - Anne (Host) I didn't know. They called you that. That's funny, Anne Gang Google, that's great. 12:35 - Lau (Guest) I love it. 12:35 - Anne (Host) So that's a wonderful thing. So, yeah, make sure that you educate yourself and stay informed. Don't stay in your little bubble, because that's going to help you. I mean, long ago, when I worked in technology, it was one of the things that you had to just be out there educating yourself on all different styles of technology, whether you like them or not, or thought they worked or not. It just was something. So it's always good to be more educated. So, so, absolutely, so important. That's the one thing that I have when you say to me, "Okay, Anne, when you've lost all hope, what do you have?" Well, I have my community. Lost all hope. What do you have? Well, I have my community, I have my family, I have love, and I have me, I have my intelligence and I have my desire to want to know more and to learn more, and that nobody can take away from me, right? 13:15 - Lau (Guest) And there's one more thing that's important, and I always bring this up. Mama always brings this up. You got to work your fanny off. Yes, because I'm tired of hearing people whining and complaining and being victims like, "I'm not getting anything and there's enough work." I'm like, no, you're not working hard enough, because there's plenty of work out there. You got to find it, you got to get it. You got to work at it, right, Annie? You have to go after it. They're not going to come after you. You have to go after it. 13:44 - Anne (Host) And the stories you tell yourself also. They're a big deal. "I can't, I just can't. I'm not, I'm not enough, or I'm not good enough, or I don't know where to look, or I can't." All that negative self-talk does not help you at all, believe it or not. I mean? 13:59 - Lau (Guest) And what if you are on Annie Gang Google's search site and you look up voiceover talent in your area or not? Either way is fine, and they are in your range. Maybe they're female, they're in a certain age range, and you look at them and you see what they're doing and you see who their clients are, because you can go right to their websites and you're going to go and you're going to go, "Oh, I want to do that, I want to work in that. I never would have sat here and thought that up on my own, but now I see this fabulous woman that I found somewhere in Texas is doing all the things that I want to do," and then you make a list of all the companies she's worked with, and then you create a fabulous letter for those companies. And then you look up all the email addresses at that company, and then you send that fabulous letter to that company. What are the chances that someone from that company may ping you back and say, "Hey, yeah, we kind of work with voiceover talent. Who are you?" 14:56 - Anne (Host) Absolutely. Well, and I know, marketing is never an easy task, guys. It just isn't, and again, remember. 15:03 Remember, there are multiple ways. How is marketing changing this year, right? And it's funny, because I did a lecture for a college class the other day and I said to them, "How do you like to communicate? If you were in voiceover today and you had a business, how would you like to find your potential clients? Or how would you communicate or reach out to your potential clients?" Not one of them. They said, "Well, we hate email, text." And I'm like, "Okay, that's fine for you and maybe everybody else. 15:28 Your age, however, you got to realize where are these potential clients? Some of them are older than you. Some of them have different methods of communication that they prefer. I mean, ultimately, in 20, 30 years, you'll all be the same age and you'll all—we'll all evolve to that method of communication. 15:43 But right now, if you're trying to get work in the corporate world and you're trying to get in with a company that has someone who might be, you know, in their 60s managing the company, they might prefer email. 15:56 They might prefer a method of communication that's not just text or pick up the phone are something that I think that every voice actor needs to understand and get on board with, that you are dealing with people in business who are very different. 16:15 There's lots of people that, yes, they do a lot of work via text, but a lot of people do work via groups, Microsoft Teams, Zoom meetings. There's so many ways. 16:25 Pick up the phone, talk to somebody, and, really, if you are uncomfortable with one method and you want to work in an area where you might be working with people from all different ages, all different styles, you need to get familiar with those methods and that, I think, is important again for you to stay afloat this year to be able to communicate with all different types of people, with all different styles of communication and hiring, really, and hiring methods, and so that is something that if you're not on board with, if you're like, "Nah, I don't want to email," or "I hate email and I think it's stupid," honestly, there's a bunch of people that still use email quite a bit, and especially now that maybe social media is kind of scattered everywhere. 17:12 Now it may not be as easy now on social media. Remember, we lost TikTok for less than 24 hours and the world panicked, right? All these people who had put all their eggs in one basket. So don't put all your eggs in the texting basket if you're young, right, as a means of communication or getting work, right? There's multiple ways that you can get work, multiple ways you can communicate and make your product known to people. 17:36 - Lau (Guest) That's great advice. It's so client-centered, which I love about it, and I think whole generations of people need to keep that aware of that. The mode of communication you need to keep open, whether it's a telephone, a text, an email, a DM. You need to keep that open and what your client or your rep is comfortable with is ultimately what you have to get comfortable with, and most agents do not want you texting them. They're going to work on email. 18:01 If you don't want to work on email, you're not going to be able to get reps. It's as simple as that, right? If you don't check your email. 18:07 - Anne (Host) You could lose out on jobs. If you don't check your voicemail, believe it or not. I mean, I have people that leave me voicemail still, and it's one of those things. I'm like, "We've gotten so much. We've been bombarded." Email, voicemail, text, and spam, right, because people are trying to get in touch with us, and so make sure you're checking your spam as well to make sure somebody hasn't reached out to you that wants a potential connection to maybe offer you a job, and not only that, but if you don't like email, you're really in trouble, because agents will expect you to answer within a reasonable amount of time, which is a matter of hours, not days, on email, so you can miss out on that job. 18:55 And you have to be adept at utilizing technology when you're submitting auditions. You have to make sure that you understand how to submit an audition. We've run our audition demolition multiple times. I'm running now a scholarship submission where people are like, "I don't know how to submit," and I'm like, "Well, you've got to read the instructions." So, guys, get yourself familiar with all different styles and ways of communicating and handling files and audio and that sort of thing. Now, Lau, we talked about first of all, like making sure that we're educated on different styles, on different trends. What do you think is going to be big this year? Is there a genre that's going to stand out? Are they all going to be similar to how they were last year? What do you think? 19:34 - Lau (Guest) That's a really good question. I think one of the things that I've seen more and more of as a commercial agent is I've seen more and more really fun and creative advertising campaigns that have come in the last, even in the last couple of years, that I would gather are going to come this year as well. Like, for instance, I've seen more animation. I've seen more of that character style come into the commercial world, which is really interesting because it's so oppositional to what we've been saying about be real, be relatable, be this, be that, which is predominantly, yes, still there, but we're also seeing these characters come in. 20:10 Like, if you notice, watch commercials, you'll see a lot of animals, tons and tons and tons and tons of animals. In commercials, the animals typically have personas of people, have personas of people, and whether they're speaking in their natural, everyday voice or whether they're doing a character sound, there's just a lot of it. There's more of it. So what's coming across my desk is just more character and more animation. Even in the pharmaceutical world, we're seeing a lot more exciting, dancey, musical animation, moving stuff, colorful stuff. 20:45 - Anne (Host) They're vying for our attention in the pharmaceutical. They're vying for our attention, so we want actors. 20:50 - Lau (Guest) I'll use that word, actors. We want actors that can shift from just a real, down-to-earth sound to playing that duck or playing that pigeon. 21:00 - Anne (Host) Well, I'm going to say, medically speaking, because medical is one of my favorite genres, is, I also feel like, because there are changes this year with administration and how they're dealing with healthcare funding—a lot of it—and so I think that healthcare companies, which have always been very traditionally corporate America, money-centric, I think, are going to be vying for our business, and so I do feel like there's going to be a lot of competition between hospitals and medical products that are looking to get us as consumers to buy into it, because their funding might be less than it was and I think for a while it's going to make them compete more with each other to get the business and the money that they are used to having. Where they might have gotten some money in funding before, now they might, who knows? I'm not even going to speculate about prices, but I feel like, because it's going to be more competitive, it might work to our advantage for a little bit. It may not be regulated. I mean, I would hope it's somewhat regulated, but as a breast cancer survivor, I will say that I don't love the fact that it's been defunded or that kind of a thing. 22:08 I feel like certain things are important to be funded in this, but without getting political, but just know that, right, I happen to know that is one of the things that I have been hearing, so I'm like, "Okay, so how is that going to affect those companies that ultimately relied on that funding to operate?" 22:25 Right, are they going to now transition into healthcare and so maybe there'll be more demand in hospitals, right, so hospitals can get that money easier? So now maybe the context and the content of what we're going to be talking about will be slightly different or more centric on hospitals versus organizations, slightly different or more centric on hospitals versus organizations. So that's just something to be aware of and to know. And, again, like I say, I try to remain a little bit neutral on it because, again, if you want to work in those genres and you want to work for a company that is going to be in America in the next years, right, figure out how things are changing for them and then figure out how your voice and how their voice brand is going to change and then evolve with that or not. Choose to not evolve with that if you don't agree with it, yeah, and I don't know. 23:11 - Lau (Guest) I can't really predict, Annie, what's going to happen in the pharmaceutical market, because that's a really, really moving and shaking industry right now and everything is being shaken up with that. But there was a time that I remember that it was not legal to advertise on TV pharmaceutical products. 23:27 I remember that when that came in, that that was passed, that it was legal. Suddenly, we saw 24/7 advertising of pharmaceuticals, which is a very controversial issue for many people, but I'm just going to speak on the side of our industry and talent. It was a virtual candy land. It was a Disneyland of opportunities for both actors and voice talent that they were and still are auditioning for pharmaceuticals all the time. Will that change? I don't know. It could. 23:55 - Anne (Host) And will there be more? I mean, in the pharmaceutical side, yes, the commercial aspect of things, that corporate side, but there's also the educational side, right? Again. How is that going to evolve? How is that going to change? And so, keep your eyes open. That's I think my best advice would be for talent, to keep your eyes open and to really be as educated as you can, without suffering consequences of maybe getting too much division or toxicity from your news source or your social media, wherever you get that from, but make sure that you're educated and I think that, honestly, if you can again prove to yourself. It's like when the pandemic hit, right? How did we evolve as businesses? Here we are with another large kind of transition or, you know, maybe change that might be happening that can affect our industry. How can you, as a business, evolve along with that? 24:46 And I think you'll be fine. I mean, I really believe there's still a necessity. Nobody's saying that voiceover is illegal. 24:53 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) I'm just going to say it like voiceover is not illegal, so therefore the opportunities are endless, right? 25:00 - Anne (Host) Just if you step back and kind of look at the humorous part of it. It's not illegal to do voiceover, right? So guess what, the opportunities are what we make of them, right? We can create as many opportunities as we want, right? Again, it's up to us. We are the entrepreneurs, we are the creators of our businesses and of our destiny. I can't lose hope in that. 25:21 - Lau (Guest) And, of course, we're always going to need human beings. We're always going to need human voices. It may shift and pivot in different directions, but the industry does that anyway. It really has done that the whole way through. And I want to throw in one more before we wrap, Annie, I want to talk about self-producing. I think it's very important that people feel empowered to self-produce their own work. Like maybe you say, "I always wanted to do this. I haven't gotten hired." Well, produce your own, write a script, create it, clean it up, throw some music in, put it on YouTube, put it on your channel, make it known that you want to do this work by doing the work, right? That's the power of a demo. The demo is demonstrating the kind of work that you want to do. 26:05 - Anne (Host) But I am going to say, as a demo producer, Lau, that again, you've got to be careful, you've got to be really careful. I mean, yes, you can create samples, you have to be careful. 26:13 - Lau (Guest) But I'm not saying to create a full demo. I'm saying if I want to do animation and I have no work under my belt and no one's going to be looking at me, I want to say, "Hey, I want to do a 15-second spot," and produce that and see what that's like. 26:28 - Anne (Host) But make sure that you have the license for the music, make sure that everything is legal on that end of things, because, again, there's a lot of DIY going on in the animation world and there's a lot of again. Remember, what you do speaks volumes. Yes, right, and yes, DIY is great for education, absolutely. I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I think you can learn a lot by doing that and, as a matter of fact, it's probably a great way to get to know better what you want. Ultimately, when you have the money to invest in a professionally produced sample or demo. 27:06 - Lau (Guest) So if you do it yourself, you know what's involved in it. Yes, and that is so great that you brought that up, because I'm seeing so many talent getting into audiobooks, which is fantastic because it's such a wonderful world, but I see so many talent getting out of audiobooks because, guess what? They're doing it and many of them don't want to do it and they don't realize they don't want to do it until they do it, until they do it. And then others do it and they say, "I have fallen in love, this is it. I didn't even know how wonderful this is." Absolutely, and this is really my calling. So the point is, I think what I'm trying to say is, of course, work under qualified coaches, work with demo teams. Of course, what I'm saying is dabble your toes in water of doing the work to see how you feel about it. 27:47 You know, the idea is different than the reality. 27:50 - Anne (Host) Agreed, agreed, and I don't think there's anything wrong with a DIY that educates you. Yeah, really, always, because, like I always try to learn from when I create videos, I'm trying to learn my video editing software. Does it mean that I'm a video editor for reals? Right, I mean, but I want to be able to know the steps and what's required so that I can direct somebody else that can maybe do it for me, right? 28:11 - Lau (Guest) So yeah, there it is. There it is. There's a plethora of actions you can take and go with the trends and pay attention and see what your competition is doing and see where it leads, but also create your own path. 28:23 - Anne (Host) Pioneer your own way. 28:25 - Lau (Guest) That's the best entrepreneur, isn't it? 28:28 - Anne (Host) The future is bright and I'll tell you what, I'm excited. And again, I am excited for evolving, I'm excited for changing if I need to, and I'm excited to see. I mean, honestly, you have to embrace the change. You have to embrace evolving along with change and allow it to be something that ignites you and excites you. And I have all sorts of positive thoughts about this year and for you guys, for bosses out there, positive thoughts. Absolutely. All right. Thumbs up, big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too, can connect, network like bosses, and move your businesses forward. Find out more at IPDTL.com. You guys have an amazing week. Lau, thank you so much. We'll see you next week, guys, see you next time. 29:13 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.

Clubhouse Plus Subscription: Joining or Nah? Breaking Down $4.99/mo or $49.99/yr on Clubhouse App (Explained) with Favour Obasi-ikeThis Clubhouse Plus conversation primarily discusses the new Clubhouse Plus subscription, outlining its features such as anonymous room entry, multiple profile links and images, and profile view tracking. The participants offered various perspectives on the subscription's value, debating its utility for businesses and individual users. The conversation also touches upon strategies for content creators on the platform, emphasizing SEO, consistency, and purposeful networking to maximize engagement and monetization.Enjoy and welcome to Clubhouse App!Read the articles on our website to learn more with screenshots: ⁠Clubhouse Plus: 4 New Feature Updates to Boost Profile Engagement & DiscoveryClubhouse Plus Subscription: The Ultimate Guide to Premium FeaturesClubhouse Plus: Features, Strategy, and Business Growth | FAQs1. What is the new Clubhouse Plus subscription, and what are its core features?The new Clubhouse Plus subscription offers users enhanced features for a monthly fee of $4.99 or an annual fee of $49.99. It includes four main features:Anonymous Mode: Allows users to enter rooms and listen without their profile being visible to others. While some find this useful for discreet listening, others express concerns about safety and the inability to block anonymous users.Expanded Links: Users can now add up to eight (or potentially more) links to their profile, moving beyond the previous limitation of just Instagram and Twitter. This is a significant benefit for businesses and creators, allowing them to direct profile visitors to their websites, podcasts, other social media, or specific offers.Multiple Profile Pictures: The ability to upload several images to a profile, which can function like a slideshow. This offers creative opportunities for presentations, showcasing services, or simply providing a more comprehensive visual identity.Profile Views: Similar to LinkedIn Premium, this feature allows Plus members to see who has viewed their profile. This insight is seen as valuable for businesses to identify potential connections and follow up intentionally.2. What are the benefits of the expanded link feature for businesses and creators?The expanded link feature is highly beneficial for businesses and creators. Instead of being limited to just Instagram and Twitter, users can now strategically place up to eight (or potentially more) direct links to their website, LinkedIn profile, podcast, Medium articles, or any other platform where they generate income or connect with their audience. This essentially turns a Clubhouse profile into a "walking, talking Linktree," making it easier for interested parties to explore a creator's offerings and connect with them off-platform. The speaker explicitly mentions using this to link to his podcast, training programs, marketing news feed, and even a form for podcast features, simplifying the connection process for potential clients and collaborators.Access to Resources ⬇️Need SEO services?>> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our club community for exclusive information

The Tragically Hip Top Forty Countdown: Song 20 — Neil from Arroyo GrandeHey, it's jD, and this week I'm joined by a die-hard hockey fan and Hip convert who hails from California. Meet Neil from Arroyo Grande, the west coast wizard of late-night YouTube rabbit holes and deep-cut reverence.Neil didn't grow up with The Hip in his backyard. He had to find them — through hockey, through Trailer Park Boys, through a fascination with Canadian culture that led him down a road paved with Gretzky, Jericho, and yes… Gord.We talk about getting into the band via Yer Favourites, chasing context across albums and eras, and how discovering The Hip opened the door to new perspectives on art, identity, and memory. He shares what it's like being an American Hip fan (“Wait, they're not on the radio here?”), and how Phantom Power, Man Machine Poem, and some Gordon Edgar Downie solo magic helped him through hard times — and made the music his own.From WWE finishers to vapor trails to songs that hit like Shakespearean tragedy, this one's for the late bloomers, the lyric heads, and anyone who ever found themselves singing along to a song they didn't fully understand… until they really did.

Welcome back to Virgo Season—where the pop culture is unhinged, the takes are unsolicited, and the Beyoncé praise is non-negotiable.This week, Joyhdae and Ryan are still recovering from Cowboy Carter at MetLife. It was cold. It was chaotic. It was everything. Rumi Carter tipped her little hat and said, “Blue, scoot over—I'm the moment now.” Meanwhile, Joyhdae had to sprint through a stadium to secure exclusive merch, and Ryan's outfit didn't even get five minutes of airtime before the wind said “Nah.”We also dive into a messy Am I the Asshole? situation involving an unruly child, a pizza shop, and a whole lot of entitlement disguised as parenting. You already know we have thoughts—and yes, we might get dragged for them.From there, it only gets messier. The Diddy trial updates are wild, J.Lo tried to dance to Kendrick and somehow nobody stepped in (truly a hate crime), and we are formally introducing you to Quan Millz—author of This Ho Got Roaches in Her Crib and I Got Both My Homeboys Pregnant. No, we're not making that up. Yes, we are screaming.And if you've been wondering what's going on with Miss Shirley—the viral four-year-old with the boots and choreography—let's just say it's time to have a serious talk about kids, clout, and why meet-and-greets for toddlers should not exist.Subscribe, Like, and Share!Send this to your group chat. Argue with us in the DMs. Yell in the comments. Just don't say you weren't warned.Connect With Us:• Email: Virgoseasonshow@gmail.com• Website: Virgoseasonshow.com• YouTube, TikTok & Instagram: @VirgoSeasonShow• Ryan: @OhBlackRyan• Joyhdae: @Joyhdae----CHAPTERS00:00 Intro00:05 Vibe Check07:13 For Jasmine07:41 AITA17:25 Cowboy Carter Tour33:33 Diddy Trial Update40:01 Teyana Taylor Is Doing Things41:37 JLo & The AMAs47:33 Obama Musical49:41 Quan Millz54:51 Muni Long Stray55:12 Ms. Shirley (Lariyah Jesireé)01:02:20 Dad vs. Auntie Jokes01:06:31 Find Us On All The Things!01:07:22 One More For The Road...01:07:50 Credits

Oh, did you expect us to stick to the nine games that we planned last month? Nah.Today we're talking about The Children of Clay by Balázs Rónyai! A game about examining a little guy and NOT GOING BACK TO THE CAVE. This game was suggested (once again) by Adam aka BrittleMoon! If you'd like to suggest a game head over to our website!Play The Children of Clay on Steam or the game jam version itch.io! Check out Balázs Rónyai's other games on their itch page!Discussed in the episode:The Children of Clay - The Making Of on SteamCthulhu's Mom, Yog-Sothoth - on WikipediaRemina by Junji Ito on The StorygraphTyphonian Order on Wikipedia---Visit our website!Support the show on Kofi!Follow us on Twitch!Follow the show on Bluesky!Check out The Worst Garbage Online!---Art by Tara CrawfordTheme music by _amaranthineAdditional sounds by BoqehProduced and edited by AJ Fillari---Timecodes:(00:00) - dotMom (02:21) - A game for children! (03:27) - What is The Chimdren of Chim? (06:19) - Game is spooky! (11:06) - It's haunted | Spoilers (22:21) - It's cthulian | Spoilers (27:14) - Actually it's folklore | Spoilers (31:48) - The Bogeyman | Spoilers (36:19) - Apocalypse fiction | Spoilers (49:58) - Big Takeaways (50:11) - Kim's Big Takeaway (53:26) - Chase's Big Takeaway (57:34) - Are you charmed? Sound off in the Discord

Analizamos principalmente los recientes fracasos técnicos de SpaceX con el cohete Starship, destacando tres vuelos consecutivos (7, 8 y 9) donde la nave explotó por problemas distintos: vibraciones resonantes, fallo de motor por mezcla de combustibles y fuga de propelente durante la fase orbital. Comentamos cómo estos contratiempos impiden probar avances críticos como el escudo térmico reutilizable y el despliegue de satélites Starlink, retrasando significativamente la hoja de ruta hacia Marte. Conversamos sobre el regreso de Elon Musk a SpaceX tras su salida de la administración Trump, notando su aparente decaimiento y el impacto negativo de políticas como los aranceles en sus empresas. Analizamos su reciente charla interna donde renombró el proyecto como «Starship 3», confirmando retrasos en hitos clave como la transferencia de combustible en órbita necesaria para la misión Artemisa 3 de la NASA, y cómo los plazos para colonizar Marte (inicialmente previstos para 2026) se posponen indefinidamente. También abordamos otros desarrollos: el éxito comercial de Starlink (con 7,000 satélites operativos y proyecciones de superar el presupuesto de la NASA), la creación de la ciudad Starbase para gestionar logística y atraer talento, y brevemente mencionamos los próximos lanzamientos de robotaxis de Tesla en Austin. Finalmente, reflexionamos sobre la viabilidad de habitar Marte, cuestionando su atractivo frente a desafíos técnicos y humanos aún no resueltos. - El divorcio entre Musk y Trump: 100 días de amor interesado y una larga lista de enemigos en la Casa Blanca - Trump manda a Musk al ‘rincón de pensar', crónica de una ruptura por los aranceles - Starship ha llegado al espacio, después ha perdido el control. A SpaceX le está costando horrores salir del bache - SpaceX on X: «The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary: an update from @elonmusk on SpaceX's plan to reach Mars https://t.co/d2cnsVKK80» / X - X - Space Nøsey on X: «Este es el lanzamiento numero 250 de satélites #Starlink. https://t.co/F8jvRP1kxI» / X - El Proyecto Kuiper de Amazon se prepara para el primer lanzamiento de un satélite a gran escala - SpaceX's Starship Flight 9 Lift Off Date Potentially Revealed In New Notice! - Texas tiene una nueva ciudad. Hasta hace unos días, sólo era la base de SpaceX en Boca Chica - Recortes de la NASA afectan a la ESA y misiones a la Luna – DW – 08/05/2025 ELON está presentado por Matías S. Zavia y Álex Barredo. Su tema original está compuesto por Nahúm García. — Alojado en Cuonda

From Chummy Studios, Hye Jams Radio presents, “Paisan and Friends,” brought to you by Haig's Kabob House. They say some grandmas pass down recipes. Others? They pass down rhythms. On this week's wild and wonderful episode of Paisan & Friends, your favorite Italian loose cannon tells the never-before-heard tale of Tatik Hasmik — a sweet old woman from the Armenian countryside who spent her days baking gata and secretly spinning vinyl in her cellar. When she passed away, people thought her music was gone forever. But legends began to swirl: turntables spinning by themselves... speakers thumping with no power... neighbors swearing they could hear beats under the apricot trees. Then, years later in a packed club in Los Angeles, something changed. Superstar DJ Sammy Flash hit the decks… and it wasn't just him up there anymore. His hands moved like an 87-year-old woman making dough, his transitions smooth like softened butter. The spirit of Tatik had returned — and this time, she was bringing the heat. Dolma? Nah. DROPMA. Tune in as Paisan tells the hilarious ghost story of Tatik's Turntables, spins the hottest NEW HYE JAMS from Armenia's best like...Sekou King, Dayana and Minor Blend.  Plus drops bangers from legends like DJ Hakop, Tatul Avoyan, Arkadi Dumikyan, Ara Martirosyan, Sammy Flash, Elie Berberyan, Marco Mr. Tam Tam, Paul Baghdadlian, Artur Safoyan, Diana Harutyunyan, Arman Hovhannisyan, Andy, Super Sako, Marat K, Silva Hakobyan, Anette Aghabekyan, DJ Arman, MXO Ghazryan and Rafael Tunyan--to name a few. Only on Hye Jams Radio — where the music's so good, even the afterlife tunes in.

Will, Allie, and Grace join Geoff over zoom to discuss Kelsey Grammer, being junguncular, and play Greenlight or Nah, before participating in the auditory nightmare Oops All Anxiety segment!» FOLLOW Geoff on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geoffreyjames/» FOLLOW Will on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willconover/» FOLLOW Allie on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/gluingshitonpaper/» FOLLOW Grace on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chorlesborkley/Rate The Headgum Podcast 5-stars on Apple PodcastsRate The Headgum Podcast 5-stars on SpotifyJoin the Headgum DiscordSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In today's show David and Chas discover that Jordy's Tour career is older than his competitor's girlfriend, explain why you should never paddle back out for another, advise how to transition from heartbreak to mad love, and wince as a favorite pro takes a bone breaking wipeout. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know what's fascinating about asking world champions for their best advice for Muay Thai?They see through the noise and cut to the chase.You may expect a ONE Championship double champ like Regian Eersel to talk about secret training methods or advanced fighting tactics.Instead, he shared something simpler – and far more powerful.One of the most dangerous strikers on the planet, standing there telling me his biggest regret wasn't about training harder or learning more techniques...It was about being too damn stubborn to listen to his coaches.“I was really hard-headed, I didn't listen at all,” he told me. When his trainers told him to punch more in sparring, he'd think, “Nah, I don't like doing the punch now. I'm gonna kick more.”Sound familiar?KEY MOMENTSFollow along using these quick timestamps:00:00 Regretting Not Listening More!00:10 Young & Hard-Headed00:28 Coaches Saw It Coming00:49 Having Eyes On Your Sparring01:21 Exploiting a 3rd Person PerspectiveFurther notes and resources at https://heatrick.com/2025/05/30/regian-eersel-didnt-listen-to-best-advice/

This episode, we're joined by DREA from Asbury Park! She pulled up to talk about her new music, upcoming moves, and what's next in her journey.  We also had some fun with our crowd-favorite trivia game, "Real Talk or Nah?", where Drea had the chance to win a FREE custom candle!Sponsored by: Just Bees Candles – Handmade beeswax candles, natural, and always a vibe.

Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!Tell us a time when "YOU' were doing the most !!WE ARE BACK! With another amazing episode of AYDTMOn this episode of AYDTM we start off with Remy throwing the room for a loop when he reveals he is not circumcised. Then we move into talking about the news in the Diddy trial. Then we talk about the Netflix show FOREVER, Hallie & DDG and the Met Gala outfits.Wanna know if you doing the most!!??Got a crazy “doing the most” story?Send in your voice notes and/or ask us for advice!Email us @ Ayeyoudoingthemost@gmail.com… put in the subject “Am I doing the Most or Nah!?”Or send it in the DM!!!Please comment, like & subscribe.. Share with your friends!!Now streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio!!!!!Follow us on IG @Ayeyoudoingthemost- @CinnamonJaye && @BraneeDianeProduced by @RemyTheBrain  @ZoatShotMe

On today's MJ Morning Show: Manta Ray spotted off Dunedin Morons in the news Duffy the Bear Stupid baby name stories JLo sued for using photos A Fester shoutout Today... Southwest Air's new bag policy Woman arrested in Sanford Airport for hitting a kid Türkiye will begin fining people for being 'aisle lice' Julian's Best Buy purchase was fake Don't change lanes over solid lines! Things told to us as kids that are totally erroneous... We took calls Chloe - "Little girl" Plane hit by lightning... don't worry, it happens all the time What's the filthiest thing you touch daily? What ingredient are people adding to their summer wines? Beware of low-flying helicopters around Tampa... Nah, they're just checking out the power lines for TECO "Rapid unscheduled disassembly" Fester's visit to Burlington Dolly Parton has a new line of products Guy needs to explain to his well-educated father that he's watching AI Celebrities in the news/Diddy trial update Taylor and Kelce timeline Miley Cyrus explains her voice Item from Jennifer Grey up for auction

Welcome back chat! What are the "rules" to your partner going on a friend's trip? Join the conversation. Meet us in the comments. Sign up on our website to be alerted on anything Nah, That's Crazy! Live shows, merch and more!https://www.thenahthatscrazynetwork.comon Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1qxmz6dcNlNCcaiB7QDulq?si=ad661b3659b644fd& Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nah-thats-crazy-podcast/id1632261810

You thought the AMC Dune bucket was crazy? Wait until you see what Jurassic World cooked up for their popcorn. Plus, Disney just changed the ending to their live-action Lilo & Stitch—and yep, we're definitely in the bad place. And E.T. wants to phone home? Nah, he wants to chill in your tub. Lush just made it happen. To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems. It's The Reluctant Adult Podcast. Email TheReluctantAdultPodcast@gmail.com Save and get Free Shipping on in-stock items on Entertainment Earth TikTok @TheReluctantAdultPodcast Instagram @TheReluctantAdultPodcast Twitter @Reluctant_Pod Facebook The Reluctant Adult Podcast YouTube The Reluctant Adult Podcast Paul's Amazon Wishlist Bill's Amazon Wishlist

Need more reddit nice girls? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTz_vyR-zjcBNwAp2auWWsmje3m8_6umGIn this episode of r/NiceGirls we meet some nice girls. Nah, just kidding. They're horrible people to be around and they just seem to stick like nothing else can. How do you get rid of them? Simple. Starve them of what they crave. Don't give them even a drop of attention and your nice girl problem will solve itself seemingly magically overnight!YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/reddxyDiscord: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWuPayPal: https://www.paypal.me/daytondoesPatreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoesTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/daytondoesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddXD/Teespring: https://teespring.com/stores/reddx

In today's episode Chas and David explain where to go when your peak converges with another's, discover that poor spelling reveals you may be “light-brained”, marvel at the sanitation power of the pee-pee touch, and find themselves flummoxed by the power of blowing a kiss. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artificial Intelligence isn't just changing our work—it's reshaping who we are. In this compelling Not All Hood conversation, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Candace Kelley dive into the unseen influence of AI on our creativity, our thinking, and our emotional lives. As AI tools make it easier for anyone to sound brilliant, the question becomes: what makes us truly original? They discuss how tech like auto-tune and AI-generated writing have blurred the lines between human and machine-made, and why the real power lies with those who know how to use AI without losing themselves. From students fiercely defending their AI-aided essays to professors requiring handwritten work just to ensure authenticity—this episode questions what ownership, authorship, and creativity really mean in a digital world. We also tackle the shifting landscape of DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) and how language and branding around it are being reimagined in real-time.

Need more reddit nice girls? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTz_vyR-zjcBNwAp2auWWsmje3m8_6umGIn this episode of r/NiceGirls we meet some nice girls. Nah, just kidding. They're horrible people to be around and they just seem to stick like nothing else can. How do you get rid of them? Simple. Starve them of what they crave. Don't give them even a drop of attention and your nice girl problem will solve itself seemingly magically overnight!YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/reddxyDiscord: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWuPayPal: https://www.paypal.me/daytondoesPatreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoesTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/daytondoesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddXD/Teespring: https://teespring.com/stores/reddx

Ep 364: Dr. Keith and @PaSuburbsGuy here/JC's hat/Election rundown/Biden Illness/New Bit: Bug Deal or Nah?/USAid/Dem POTUS primaries/Eddie Vedder/Scott Pelley/Tim Walz/Shapiro/What We're Watching

Headgum's contractors - Amelia, Richelle, Kevin, and Sam - join Geoff and Allie to play Would You Wear That, Cut or Nah, before getting to know each other better by answering Geoffrey's many questions!» FOLLOW Geoff on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geoffreyjames/» FOLLOW Allie on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/gluingshitonpaper/» FOLLOW Amelia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skidmark4/» FOLLOW Richelle on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/yard__sard» FOLLOW Kevin on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kevinjbartelt» FOLLOW Sam's Band on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guckband/Rate The Headgum Podcast 5-stars on Apple PodcastsRate The Headgum Podcast 5-stars on SpotifyJoin the Headgum DiscordSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.