Chapter 22: Morning Stories
The next morning I awoke with Kaitlyn in my arms, my little spoon, our fingers interlaced there on the bed before her bare breasts exposed to the cool morning air. How did I ever catch her? After last night, being so close to such a loving couple and yet also skating so closely to the edges of our marriage, I decided that I could no longer wait for her to tell me, I had to ask. Today’s plan would not allow me to put it off any longer.
I woke her with caresses and gentle squeezes. I felt her awaken shortly after I started, but she let me go on for several minutes before saying, “Good morning, Davie.”
“Good morning, fellow snow elf!”
She rolled her hips by way of answer, eliciting a twitch of my cock in reply.
“How did I win your heart, Kaitlyn?”
“I thought you’d have figured it out already.”
“Well, I’ll grant that our introduction was pretty flashy. I mean, ‘I’m a mage, check out my staff’ is a pretty good pickup line…”
“You never said that!” she objected.
“Didn’t I? Hmmmm… Well anyway, it could have gone so many ways after that point. We could have separated for good the next day, we could have left it at the guru and shishya stage, we might’ve just become good friends. You know, we could even have become blood enemies. ‘There can be only one!’” I quoted, my neck stretched over the back of her head, causing a dramatic rumble in her ears.
I felt a low chuckle from her in my embrace at that, then continued, “Instead, we’re married a few months after we met, off on this great adventure together, pledged as life partners. How did that happen? I mean, I was there, but half of the story is yours, my love. How did you see our introduction and courtship?”
Kaitlyn was silent for a while, then she said, “I think to answer that question, I first have to explain why it took a flashy exotic nudist mage to catch me in the first place. It’s past time that you knew anyway.”
“I’ve gathered that you were hurt pretty badly by someone,” I said gently. “I’ve also figured out that it wasn’t someone in your immediate family, so my current guess is that it was done by an ex-lover. I’m content to keep picking at the mystery from the clues you drop. You don’t have to rip open the wound again if you don’t want to.”
“Well,” she said, “you’ve got the essentials of the matter right. You aren’t the first person I’ve been in a long-term relationship with, Davie.”
“I figured. How else does someone as beautiful and smart as you get to 24 and remain single without fighting off a bunch of marriage proposals?”
“Yeah, I had a few suitors before you,” she said wistfully.
I assumed she was being modest, and that my slightly introverted wife had ended up feeling besieged rather than flattered.
She continued, “I almost proposed to my first long-term lover; only my upbringing in a conservative household had me still waiting for him to propose for as long as I did. It’d have saved me a lot of heartache if I’d proposed first.”
She spoke no more for a while, and I let the silence absorb whatever pain was leaking from her. She eventually continued, “He was my high school sweetheart. We broke up amicably when we graduated from high school, since he went north to school while I stayed here, and we didn’t try to hang onto the relationship over that distance. We reconnected in my senior year at college and clicked right back together. I willingly gave him my virginity at 16, and we jumped right back into a physical relationship shortly after finding each other again, like we were both back from separate vacations, not apart for years.”
I caressed her hair, and she went on. “He lived off-campus and visited me wherever I happened to be, mostly at my parents’ house but also at parties, friends’ dorms, that sort of thing. I got into his pants whenever I could. Youth, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, remembering.
“Well, it was getting close to graduation when I started to press him to let me visit him at his house. You see, every time the question of where we’d meet up and where we’d go after that came up, he always dodged the option of going to his house. His place was a mess, or mine was closer, or something. For our whole time together during my senior year, it was always something. I always let it go, because I wasn’t deeply in love with him. He was fun to be out with, friendly, good in bed… I was always busy with school, and he was a great social release. It was just nice being with him, you know?”
“Friends with benefits?” I asked.
“More or less, but I was starting to fall for him. I mean, I hadn’t really known too many other guys. I’d dated during the couple of years I lost contact with…” She fell silent, then let out a strong sigh. “…with Jesse. Dammit, Davie, I still find it hard to say his name.”
“Call him Turnip Tonker,” I suggested.
“Do I want to know what that means?” she asked tentatively.
“Tiny penis,” I replied.
“Yeah, that’ll do. It’s a good name for the…the Turnip Tonker!”
She said the latter with enough vehemence that I decided I’d better keep her away from whoever this guy was else I’d likely lose my wife to a prison sentence. I smoothed her hair down again to try and settle her.
“Well,” she resumed, “as I was coming up on graduation day, I finally got annoyed with Turnip Tonker not letting me go to his house, so one day I just followed him there from his office. He pulled up to a pretty nice house in town, a typical middle America four-bedroom family home. A home with children’s toys scattered over the front lawn. A house with a big front window that framed Turnip Tonker kissing a pregnant woman like a husband would kiss a wife. A wife, Davie! A wife!” She rasped this last out loudly.
She stayed mostly silent for a while, but when I heard her sniffle heavily and begin to shake in my arms, I reached around the side of her face and brushed away the tears I knew I’d find there. I just soothed her for several minutes before she chose to go on.
“So yeah, he was married, Davie. Three years by then; had a toddler running around and the wife was pregnant with their second child. Pregnant, Davie! I was just his piece on the side.” She just seethed silently, then burst out, “_Fucker!_” pounding the bed several times to drain her bottled rage, then began to bawl outright.
It all clicked together. This completely explained her deep aversion to secret-keeping. I wondered if I hadn’t managed to catch Kaitlyn if she’d have opened up to anyone else again. I wouldn’t blame her if she hadn’t.
I held her and rocked her and murmured soothing words in her ear while she got it all out.
Minutes later, when she’d calmed to sniffles, she said, “I’m not telling you where he lives or what his last name is, Davie. Don’t ask, all right?”
“Sure. I’d look terrible in orange,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Orange would look great on you, but coveralls, not so much,” she replied. “I need to see you in orange Speedos, though, Davie.”
“I’ll wear orange Speedos in the snow if that’s what it takes to dry your tears, Kaitlyn.”
“Good to know, but I don’t think it will come to that. I think this is just catharsis, not new pain, Davie.”
I kissed her hair once again, relieved.
“Anyway, to the question you initially asked, Davie, it’s not because you’re the best lover I’ve ever had, and it’s not because you’re exotic and powerful. Those are true reasons, but the core reason I fell in love with you is that you let me into your life so readily. Every time you’ve kept a secret from me, you did it for a good reason, and I’ve always been happier at the revelation than if you’d told me immediately. That’s why. Simple as that.”
She turned in my arms and kissed me soundly, soft and slow, giving love and partaking of it.
When she broke the kiss, she looked straight into my eyes from inches away and quietly said, “I suppose it’s time we shared our stories from last night, then.”
“I’m ready,” I agreed, “but who should go first? I believe you went exploring first last night, but you’ve already told such a wrenching story…”
She interrupted, “Oh, I’m okay now, Davie, and you’re right, I didn’t wait long to take advantage of the situation last night.” She took a deep breath and went on, “In fact, I think I need to tell my story first.”
She paused, waiting for me to interject something, but when I remained silent, she turned over again and said, “Hold me, and I’ll start.”
Was she unable to look me in the eyes now, or did she want the comfort of my embrace before she’d begin? Both?
I put my upper arm around her, holding her tight against me, my hand on her shoulder, my arm between her breasts, my elbow at her belly.
She began without hesitation, “My first client last night was a Latin Adonis, and I seduced him. There’s no other word for what I did, Davie.” She stopped her story with that, waiting for my judgement.
“I haven’t heard anything I don’t like yet, Kaitlyn.”
She just shook her head.
In a spoon position like that, I could only guess why, unable to see her face or eyes, so I decided it was out of simple incredulity, unwilling to believe I’d let her off like that, so I kissed her neck and said quietly, “Do go on, my love.”
“All right, he was gorgeous, Davie! Rather than let him undress behind the screen, I stripped him myself, then tempted him with the offer to undress as well, which offer he took. After I got him onto the table face-down, he still wouldn’t take his eyes off me, so I straddled him and slid all over his back. Then I had him turn over and continued this, massaging him while straddling his body, teasing him terribly, even frotting him with my pussy lips, Davie! Then…” She took another deep breath and released it. “…then I proposed that I massage his cock, all around, not just on the underside like I’d been doing, and I made it clear I wasn’t talking about a hand-job. I all but asked him to bone me!”
“Kinky,” was all I said.
“You aren’t mad?” she demanded.
“Who came home with me last night? I’m pretty sure it was a very naughty snow elf,” I replied. “More to the point, who did the snow elf not go home with? Mr. Latin Adonis, that’s who.”
“I guess,” she said uncertainly.
Her hesitation gave me pause, so I thought about it some, then proposed, “Is it possible that you’re also trying to get back at the universe some? I wonder if you’re taking the freedom I’m allowing you and using it to see if you can get your own little pieces on the side.”
She didn’t answer for a while, then said, “That’s a pretty strange theory, Davie.”
“Well, think about it,” I urged her. “After what Turnip Tonker did to you, you could have chosen to be ultra-faithful to me — demanding the same of me in turn — in utter negation of what he did, yet you’ve taken several liberties to test the limitations of our marriage, and I haven’t brought you up short yet. I’m not pushing you to do this; you’ve decided to do each of these things on your own.”
She remained silent for a much longer time at this. “You might be right. If I thought I’d ever hurt you by it, I’d back off, but you seem to be encouraging it.”
“Net increase in happiness,” I repeated. “You found a way to get a little piece, then you came back home with me, and now you’re telling me the story of your own free will. Now, what do you suppose might’ve happened if Turnip Tonker had introduced you to his wife shortly after you reconnected and proposed kinky stuff between you three?”
She replied immediately, “She’d have thrown an absolute fit! Probably chased me out of their house with a blunt object!”
“You didn’t ever really meet her, did you? How do you know what she would have done? What if she hadn’t gotten mad, Kaitlyn? What then?”
She chewed on that for a while, then said, “I suppose we might have worked something out.”
“I think that’s possible, too,” I replied; “I won’t guess about how likely it was, since I don’t know this other woman, either, but it has to at least be a possibility. Let’s say you ended up going over to their house a few nights a week, taking one or both of them to bed. When one of the two got swamped with responsibilities for their children, you could have taken them out and given them some peace, a break from the children. Whether it would have lasted past college, I don’t know, but it could have been a loving, supportive, friendly relationship.”
I paused there for a while, letting her process this. Then I continued, “Do you know what the term ménage à trois means, Kaitlyn? Its literal French meaning, mind, not the modern connotation of a sexual threesome?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Household of three, just like you and my hypothetical Mr. and Mrs. Tonker. See, it refers to this idea that you can have a working household with three sexually interactive adults in it without having it come apart on you. I’m certain you know why it didn’t work out between you three, and it wasn’t because the State of Utah doesn’t recognize a ménage à trois.”
“Actually, they do recognize it,” she informed me, then went on to tell me about historical Mormons and polygamy, then about how some sects still practice it, about the battles over this, and about the eventual federal level settlement of the issue backed by the ACLU making polygamy once again legal in Utah.
I responded to that revelation, “Well, so much the better, then! You three could have lived together in happiness if only there hadn’t been all the secret-keeping. That’s the difference with us, Kaitlyn. You made Señor Adonis very happy last night, you got some joy out of it for yourself, and then you came home with me and told me about it promptly. I’m not the slightest bit jealous of Sr. Adonis, Kaitlyn. What has he stolen from me? The way I see it, he gave the love of my life a wonderful experience.” I let that sit, then said, “Which brings me to a sore point, Miss Snow Elf: you haven’t told me the details of what he did give you!”
I could see her upper cheek blush in the spooning position we continued to hold, and I squeezed one of her breasts playfully. “Spill!”
She then told me the full story, this time without the pointless guilt.
When she finished, I replied, “I understand why you let him come without demanding your own completion. I kind of had one of those last night myself.” I then proceeded to tell her about Ms. Claus, finishing with, “I suppose that’s one of my weaknesses, even though indulging in it has come out so well several times now. It’s how we met, remember: you challenged my claim to magic, which I let slip to try to impress you. Then last night, I twice bragged that I could give Ms. Claus an orgasm in a few minutes. Later the same night, we had our session with the Alexanders, which stemmed from a similar drive starting with Maeve and ending with what we did to Molly. In retrospect, it makes me trepidatious. This could really get me into trouble one day, Kaitlyn.”
She sighed heavily, then said, “Yeah, I’m not sure how I want to advise you there. I suppose we have to come back to the rule of net increase in happiness: it’s fine to indulge that urge if it results in me, Ms. Claus, Maeve, and Molly all having such a nice time, but how much trouble are you willing to risk to get these experiences?”
“None when it comes to our healing practice,” I said.
“We already had this discussion, Davie. I think what you mean to say is none when it comes to paying clients. Our healing practice is a broader matter than our set of paying customers.”
“It’s a fine distinction,” I replied, “and I doubt everyone would draw the lines in the same places we will. I still think I need to learn some caution from this. These stories all came out well in the end, but I don’t expect that to continue indefinitely.”
She didn’t respond to this, so I lay there and thought about it. “I think where it got most dicey last night is when Ms. Claus backed me into a corner to either go bareback with her or not get any a’tall.”
“I guess,” replied Kaitlyn.
“I think I should expand my set of choices instead of relegating myself to that set of forced choices,” I continued.
“What do you have in mind?”
“We’re each going to end up with a massage kit we carry with our tables on remote jobs or special events like last night’s party. I’m thinking I should add a few tools and supplies to mine: condoms in my size, maybe some sex toys. You know: options,” I replied.
“You’d have chosen to jill off Ms. Claus with a dildo if your only other options were to go bareback or do without?”
“Sure, why not? My role at the party just then was to see to the winner’s enjoyment, not my own. Just like with you and Sr. Adonis, I used the tools available to me, but it was my own lack of foresight that limited me to only one tool to choose from.”
She wriggled her butt to tell me she knew exactly which tool I meant. Then she spoke, “What about me? Should I carry a Fleshlight to parties like those, then?”
That gave me pause. “I suppose you could if you wanted, but I’m struggling to come up with a case where I’d be upset if you chose instead to use the one tool you always carry with you.”
“So why then do you think you should carry sex toys? Why not prefer your own ever-ready tool?”
I was stuck again, so I proffered, “Men and women are different?”
“They certainly are, but I’m betting Ms. Claus wanted the real thing last night, not a dildo, and you have the ability as a mage to make that a safe choice,” she pointed out.
That set me to thinking again. “What about condoms just to make everyone less apprehensive, then?”
“Sure, why not? As long as you don’t need to do real magic, I mean; I doubt you can do sex magic with a rubber on, but otherwise, condoms are small and easy to carry, so if it avoids an awkward social problem, why not use one? I’ll start carrying a few in various sizes myself, but know this, Davie, I’ll give them out only when the other person wants one. I certainly don’t need them to use one!”
“I’m completely happy with that, Kaitlyn.” I then squeezed her to punctuate our agreement. “So what else happened last night?”
“No other sex, but I did my first unguided healing last night!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” I said this in an excited up-talk tone. Men do not squee, so I certainly did not do that. No indeed.
Aaannnyway, this news excited me, and I made sure she knew it. All of the healing she’d done prior to this had been with me watching, usually following directly in footsteps I’d laid down for her in advance. “Tell me all about it!” I prompted enthusiastically.
When she was finished telling me about the ski accident guy, I said, “That’s the true meaning of Christmas right there: a gift given without the recipient even knowing they got it, yet their happiness goes up immediately as a result of it. I’m so very proud of you, Kaitlyn!” Then I kissed her hair.
I then told Kaitlyn about the sweatered woman, finishing it by asking, “So to summarize, I fingered a strange woman to orgasm and licked her to a second. Do you have any problem with that, Kaitlyn?”
She replied, “I’d have to be a special kind of churl to be angry with you after what I did first with Vin and then Sr. Adonis.”
“It’s not about score-keeping, Kaitlyn.”
“What is it about, then?” she said, sounding confused.
“Just take each encounter on its merits. Maybe I end up with different boundaries than you do. Why not? We’re different people, after all. Why should we be trading these things back and forth like they’re fungible commodities? They’re unique experiences given to us, two unique people, by other unique people. I don’t think we can make it come out even no matter how hard we try.”
I felt her chest expand slowly, then release thoughtfully. “All right, I see nothing wrong with it as far as it goes but…”
“Yes?”
“Well, now that I think about it, I wonder if it was actually immoral of you not to achieve your own completion. Did you not withhold sexual healing from that woman with that choice, the one with the snowman sweater?”
That set me back. Probably everyone past a certain age had something I could fix with sex magic, and as our society becomes increasingly sedentary, that threshold age is likely to keep dropping for some time to come. I finally answered, “Yeah, maybe, but ultimately it’s the client’s choice, and for various reasons, we usually can’t give them a fully informed choice. ‘Hey there, Mizz New Client, I’m a magical healer, but to prove it I need to bust a nut inside you. How about it?’ That won’t fly.”
“Certainly not,” she agreed, “but if someone’s already involved you in a tryst, why hold back? Use the full power inherent in the situation to give the greatest value to the client. If you poke, you must evoke.”
I laughed at that new slogan, then said, “Yeah, that’s probably wise.” I nodded thoughtfully, then continued from where we were before we got sidetracked, “Right, so with that settled, do you want to hear more stories like these in the future, or should I keep them to myself?”
“I like the stories, and I’d be annoyed if you kept them to yourself,” she replied quickly.
“That’s how it shall be then,” and I caressed her slowly from her neck, down between her breasts, over her belly, and rubbed her clitoral hood a few times.
She groaned low at this but didn’t demand more, only told me about the reconstructive surgeon almost catching us in our deception with the ears.
I said, “Yeah, we need to build some obvious imperfections into them if we do anything like that again. Jess almost caught us out, too.”
“Speaking of Jess and ménages à trois,” Kaitlyn said, “we did promise her and Vin something last night.”
“Yes, we did,” I said decisively, “but I’m not proposing a household-of-three here. Or even four. We’re just showing them what we did last night with the Alexanders, right?”
“We’ll see,” she said, rolling out of bed ahead of me, reaching a hand back to tow me out of my warm nest. “C’mon, time to get up!”
“Is that a pun?” I accused as I put feet to floor, but she just smiled back at me, towing me across the hallway into the shower.
By my hand, by my hand!