The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The Man of the House

Previously: "Petted and Pampered" 

It's like I'm thirteen again! you exult as you press your cock deeper into the velvety tissues of your wife. Or seventeen or—

Oh, fuck! You heave yourself up and peer down at Carolyn as your cock, bursting with a vitality you haven't felt in years, seems to telescope out another inch inside her. Have I ever been this far up inside her? you wonder as you smirk down into her face. She looks like she's in agony. But what is she thinking? That I've never pricked her this deep, that this is one for the record books? Because I think it is! This new blood inside me, this kid inside me—

You falter a little, and the telescope slips and retracts just a hair. The kid inside me.

Is that what she's thinking about? Is that who she's fantasizing about? You're ready to take your father's place in my bed. Is it ... Elijah's boner she's feeling inside her? Fantasizing about? Because if it is—

Oh, fuck it. Like it matters. You gather up the banked reserves in your loins, and begin the final push. Carolyn's head sags even as she lifts her hips and drives herself deeper onto your already-prodigious spike, and a thin scream tears from the back of her throat.

It's like the starting pistol for a race. Something cracks inside you, and in a stormy rush—

—one that breaks the levees in your own mind, so that you are carried tumbling along in the catastrophic rush—

—you blow yourself into her in a series of bone-crunching spasms. Your head roars as you try to merge your loins with hers—one flesh, one boner, one geyser of cum; mated forever in pelvic embrace—and as she crushes your hips between her strong legs.

Then you fall onto your elbows, and press your face into the crook of her neck.

* * * * *

Afterward, you lay in bed with your arms around each other. The foot of the bed faces a dresser with a mirror, so you can study the reflections of the bare-chested, thirty-something couple with the expensive bed sheets tangled up around their waists. You smile at the man in the mirror, then shift your smile to the woman.

"Why didn't we do this last night?" you ask her.

"You know the answer to that, you goose. It wasn't us last night."

Your smile shades into a leer. "It isn't 'us' now."

"Yes it is," she retorts. "This is us now. Except when"—she kisses your shoulder, and her tone softens—"you want to do it as someone else."

"Who? Elijah?"

She doesn't reply right away. "You didn't like it much, when it was as him."

You grunt. "It was weird."

"For him? Or for you?"

You can't resist turning her own words against her. "What's the difference? That was me."

"Don't be sophistical." She nestles down under the sheets, and pulls herself closer to you, even as she continues to study her reflection. "You were pretty candid when we talked about his, uh—"

"Bed humping? It was still weird."

"Well, it's not weird for you now." She kisses your shoulder again, then turns on her side to lay with her face on your chest.

You rub her arm, but continue to study your reflection.

Thomas Anderson Cabot. Thirty-eight. You wince slightly at your disordered hair. It is a sandy color, and like the sand on a beach it is starting to erode. Your hairline is cracking and thinning and receding. A tiny bald patch has opened out on your crown.

At least everything from the hairline down is still in decent shape. And Carolyn has assured you that, even bald, you will look distinguished. "Just think of Patrick Stewart," she said.

You are tall—a little over six-foot-two—with long, strong legs and a lean torso with a solid chest. You were a tennis player in high school and college, with dreams of turning pro. But the competition was too stiff, and your junior year you fell back onto academics, getting a degree in English literature. After one or two editorial jobs in New York, you tried becoming a literary agent, and achieved some small success.

But then you met Carolyn Lowell. She came from an old and distinguished Connecticut family with strangling branches coiled around and through the establishment, like ivy. She had written a novel. You circulated it without success. But by the time the last rejections came in, neither of you cared. You were happily humping each other, even after she became pregnant.

It was through her that you got a job first at a printing company owned by one of her relations, and then via him at Parsons Collegiate Media, where you are now a senior editor overseeing a series of high school history textbooks. It pays enough that you can afford the mortgage on this house, the payments on two luxury SUVs, and a food budget that easily encompasses expensive imported cheeses and wines. The furniture and clothes, though, are paid by Carolyn from her family allowance—three-hundred thousand a year—a large chunk of which goes directly into a savings and investment portfolio for Elijah.

"I'm ready to do it again," Carolyn groans.

You mull the request, then slide out from under her and turn over atop her. The climax isn't as explosive this time. But with fifteen years of experience with this woman, you don't have to hammer her to the mattress in order to reduce her, weeping, to a puddle beneath you.

* * * * *

"I'll be playing racquetball with Terry McCann after work," you tell Carolyn as you stride into the kitchen the next morning. You are dressed in a crisp white shirt with an expensive, powder-blue tie cinched up neatly to your collar. Your pants are pressed and your shoes buffed to a high gloss. Besides your briefcase—containing the latest chapter in a new junior-level American history—you are carrying your sports bag. You set all this on the bar that separates the kitchen from the dining room, then lean across it to smooch her on the lips. "We'll probably get drinks and a bite to eat, so don't worry about my dinner."

"Don't you want to spend time with me?" she pouts.

"You know I do." You caress the side of her head. "But I've got responsibilities."

"You don't have to have responsibilities," she retorts, and glances past you at the breakfast table, where Elijah is munching on eggs and toast while scrolling through his phone. "You could change into someone else."

"I'd still have to go to school. Isn't that right, kiddo? Elijah!" you call when the kid, enraptured by his phone, ignores you.

He starts, and looks up guiltily. "You ready for the day?" you ask him.

"I guess so," he says.

"Stand up and let me look at you."

He lumbers obediently to his feet. He's dressed in faded blue jeans, new white sneakers, and an off-white pullover sweater with a green stripe across the chest. With a dog-like patience he lets you push a few stray locks into place. He never got in the habit of brushing his hair after getting out of the shower. But it probably looks better this way.

"Finish your breakfast and get on your way," you tell him, and clap him on the shoulder. Then you turn back to your wife. "What are your plans for the day?"

"I suppose I could keep the home hearth burning, if we're going to be boring and common," she says.

"Why don't you take Elijah over to the Browns after school? Start giving him, you know, whatever training we're going to need."

"It would be better if it was you I was taking over there, Will."

"Well, get him introduced anyway. Tomorrow night we'll do something with them."

"Why not tonight?"

"I told you, I have—" You break off as she gives you a narrow look. "We need a tenth, Sydney," you remind her. "At least, I thought we did. Between us three and the Browns, we're only nine."

"Terry McCann." Carolyn's eyes go distant. "Is he the one with the curly black hair?"

"Yes. The one you were flirting with at the August retreat."

"Mm. He's not married, is he?"

"I thought that's why you were flirting with him."

"No, that's why he was flirting with me."

You hold each other's eyes, and slow grins break out across your assumed faces. Terry McCann and his wandering wiener were the cause of a humdinger of a fight between Thomas and Carolyn.

"It's a provocative idea," she says.

"Well, think about it. I have to finish getting ready."

"Is that why you're having drinks with him?"

"No, there's other business we have to talk about. But I can set it up so he has ... other business ... with us."

* * * * *

It's a busy day, but tedious, full of meetings and phone calls that interrupt the task of editing Malcolm Unger's chapter on Reconstruction. I'm definitely switching places with Elijah tomorrow morning, you think. At least he's got P. E. and friends to hang out with.

You think you see Carolyn in the hallway at one point that morning, but dismiss it as wishful thinking. But then, at a little after lunch, she sweeps into your office. "Knock knock!" she calls.

"Who's there?"

She ignores the set-up. "I've got some extra candidates for you to think about besides Terry," she says after shutting your door and dropping with a satisfied sigh into the chair opposite your desk. "One's an assistant coach back at the high school. Early twenties, good looking, single. Friendly with the kids. The other's a French Lit professor up at the university, supposed to be absolutely to die for."

"We've got a whole townful of random people we could pick."

"Well, if you're going to be like that!" She starts to get up.

Then she catches herself. "Or we could pick up one of our rivals who works here with you. Spy them out directly with an infiltrator."

"Nicholas?"

She pauses. "Well, I hadn't thought of him. And we've got control of him anyway." Her eye glitters. "But you know, through him, we could catch the top guy. You could be the Sovereign Vicegerent!"

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"