The RA

Volume II: Community

By Isaac Byrne

Copyright © 20 23  by Isaac Byrne

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Edition, 20 23

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Beach Day

Chapter Two: Higgins Basement

Chapter Three: Apologies

Chapter Four: The Consultant

Chapter Five: Higgins Ground

Chapter Six: International Students

Chapter Seven: The Brick

Chapter Eight: Massage Night

Chapter Nine: Midterms

Chapter Ten: Responding to Emails

Chapter Eleven: Conflict Mediation

Chapter Twelve: Squash

Chapter Thirteen: Closing

Supplemental Materials

Higgins 3 Floor Plan

Higgins Hotties

Higgins Staff et al.

Chapter One: Beach Day

“Brah, not trying to be a dick or nothing? But the way you’re staring? It’s gonna creep ‘em out. Just sayin’. Never gonna get girls like that being some creeper, man.”

I lowered my sunglasses and looked up at the man casting a shadow over my beach chair. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Rather than fuck off, he apparently decided our shared membership in the Brotherhood of People Who Have Penises meant he was invited to sit down beside me. There was an open chair to my left. It had something growing on it, like mine, like the ones Allison, Addison and Maddison were occupying on my left. We’d at least used towels to protect ourselves from the effects of the Parks Department’s diminished investment in Bear Lake amenities.

“They are hot, though, yeah?” He whistled softly.

“Eh.”

“Oh come on! You gotta admit, so many titties, so much ass, tastiest bitches I’ve ever seen, some of ‘em. Damn fine day to be at the lake, yeah?”

I managed to unclench my jaw enough to reply. “It’s a nice day.”

God knows why, but he dragged his chair even closer. The clod  didn’t lower his volume any, though. “Nice? Look at that one with the thong. And those little half-shirts some of ‘em are wearing? Barely keep all that titty inside!”

We’d made an exemption to the Higgins only rule for the shirts today. It was an off campus trip, and I’d sort of hoped they might cover more than the sorts of swimwear the Hotties seemed apt to wear. I shouldn’t care. Marisa would have given me hell if she’d heard me think aloud that there was something wrong with a woman voluntarily showing more of her body. Regardless, if those little red half-shirts covered more than their bikinis, they made up for it in ease of escape.

“I don’t really notice that kind of thing.” Beside me, one of the triplets snorted incredulously. She did it softly, to her credit. Besides, I still couldn’t even tell them apart, so I had no high ground to stand on.

“How can you not notice? You  blind or something? Damn, brah. It’s raining 10’s  out here today! Well, maybe not that one.” He pointed. Fucking pointed . Right at Ellie, who was sitting under a tree with her Kindle in a string bikini, reading contentedly.

“I think she looks pretty good,” I said, a bit of an edge in my voice. My authority barely extended to the six floors of Higgins, certainly not to the environs of Bear Lake. Would that it did, though. This asshole deserved a write-up if anyone ever had. Absent the cudgel, I reached for peer pressure. “I also don’t think it’s cool to put numbers on women for their physical appearance.”

It didn’t land. “A 10’s a 10, yo. You’re pretty cut, I guess. No homo, I mean. You quit lurkin’ over here and get up there, you might got  a shot, ya know?”

“Thanks. I don’t want a shot.”

“What, are you gay?” He laughed, as if that were unthinkable.

“I’m their RA.”

I was spared whatever misogynist dreck he would have responded with the arrival of Casey, Sammi, Andi and Lex, trotting over from where they’d been sunning themselves on towels in the sand nearby. Casey was still tying on the string on her top, those unbelievable boobs of hers patiently waiting for her to confine them. The skimpy bikini was an odd mismatch with her woolen ski cap. Yet somehow, I couldn’t imagine her without it.

“This doucher bothering you, Spencer?” Casey asked, sneering down at him.

“Nothing I can’t handle. Again.” Earlier, a girl, a high schooler by the looks of her, had approached me and made a brief attempt at flirting before Casey and her goon squad hovered over and made cutting remarks about her until she ran off.

“Handle?” Even as he began to puff out his chest, he seemed to realize it was the wrong tactic. “Hey, you ladies want to handle me, all you gotta do is ask.”

“Sorry, but your dick must be at least this tall to ride,” sneered Lex, holding up a pinky. Andi giggled and held up one of hers, too.

“Yeah? Well belt me in, girls, ‘cause–”

“What’s your name?” Sammi asked suddenly.

“Kaiden. What’s yours?”

“What’s your full  name?” She smiled, and if he thought it was Lex being friendly, he was even dumber than I took him for.

“Kaiden Eaton. As in eatin’–”

“Yeah, let me stop you right there. We’re not interested, Kaiden,” Sammi said firmly. “And if you keep hanging around bugging us, or bugging our guy Spencer? We’ll hunt you down online and make sure your shriveled virgin baby dick lives and dies dryer than you’re making all of our pussies right now. K?”

It took him a moment, cycling through disappointment, indignation, anger, and finally sulking, but Kaiden at last stalked off and let the Hotties and I have the beach to ourselves. It was warm for early October, just barely warm enough to permit Higgins 3’s shameless flesh parade. He turned back twice, once to glare, and once to leer.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “The cold shoulder wasn’t doing much for him.”

“Sometimes you need a cold cunt,” Casey answered.

“Casey, c’mon.”

“What? You got something against cold cuts?”

Sammi grinned. “Yeah, ‘cause you look like you like to eat ‘em. You know, as in eatin ’...”

The girls broke into giggles and went back to their tanning. Casey invited me once again to help them apply a fresh salvo of lotion, and I again refused. Only Andi looked truly disappointed; the rest phoned in their disappointment as part of the on-going game of “how horny can we make our RA before he has to jump in the lake to wash the cum out of his swim trunks?”

As a community, they were running up the score all right. Casey once again untied her bikini top as she took her spot on her towel, and once Sammi followed suit. Lex and Andi had worn their Higgins Hotties shirts, which they discarded beside them. Lex, ever self-conscious about her modest bust, attempted to make up for it with a thong bikini bottom, the only one who’d gone that far.

More broadly, I supposed, Lex was the only thong in that group, anyway. The volleyball game, which had been ongoing and score-free since I’d dropped out after game three, featured six. Seven, if you counted the way Tori’s kept creeping up her ample booty. I’d positioned my chair to avoid staring too hard; Kaiden hadn’t been wrong about the frequency of nipples making a run for freedom.

Kyu-Ri was learning the cups routine and song from Pitch Perfect  from Destiny and Charlie over by the picnic tables. Her English skills were growing by the week. If the eighteen-year-old Korean girl’s breasts grew any more, they’d explode that poor bikini. As it was, it had sunk deep into those pillowy tits. Charlie, sporting a rare-amongst-Higgins-Hotties one-piece with a little flare at the hips that looked like a skirt too short to cover her panties, routinely assured Kyu-Ri she was doing a great job. I didn’t think Charlie had ever told anyone they’d done any other kind of job.

Terri had roped not only her roommate Toni into her latest tiktok, but also Jacqui, Peyton and Sydney. Jacqui, in her Lakeview tube top and booty shorts, looked distracted by an obvious desire to be joining the volleyball game, prohibited from amateur play by her status as a member of the university team. I would have been surprised to see lesbian roommates Peyton and Sydney taking part, since, like most of Terri’s videos, the main purpose of the jiggly little dance they had been rehearsing and performing on loop for over an hour seemed to be the titillation of the male gaze. However, they’d ridden in the back of my car on the ride over – hand picked because I was nervous being alone with the straight girls – and I’d heard them whispering about their intentions to lure Terri into a threesome.

“Careful, ladies. Dangerous ground, hooking up with people you have to live with even if things turn sour,” I’d warned them.

Peyton had tapped her lip, smirking. “I think I heard that advice from someone before. Was it Andi?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it was Quinn.”

“Or Leigh? Maybe it was Leigh…”

“Or Tori?”

“What’d you hear about me and Tori?!” I snapped, immediately regretting it when I realized what my lack of objection to the other names signaled. “You know what, just… good luck.”

Whatever rumors were floating around about my indiscretions, I was yet to hear anyone complain about it in my earshot. My earshot was pretty broad around Higgins 3 these days. I seldom shut my door when I was home. Too often a closed door led to someone skulking in for some one-on-one time, and too often that led to my having to remind them about boundaries. It was only this morning, a little while before departure time for beach day, that Jo had entered my room, without knocking, in her bra and panties. She’d asked if I could tell it wasn’t a swimsuit, posing this way and that. I had assured her that yes, I could tell, and no, it wasn’t appropriate to enter my room in nothing but her underwear. She apologized, and slipped back out with a smile. Since Ramona’s email and our floor meeting revising the rules, asking forgiveness rather than permission had become the law of the land where flaunting one’s body at me was concerned.

Take Angel and Leigh. I’d been surprised that they’d volunteered to work the grills, churning out burgers and hot dogs for the floor to supplement the snacks governor Tori and vice governor Katrina had picked up at the grocery store. They weren’t dressed in anything skimpier than most of the girls. Or, well no, kind of, but only because the underside of Angel’s gigantic tits were perpetually peeking out of her floor shirt, and Leigh’s metallic string bikini was so close to her copper skin tone that at a glance she looked like she was standing around naked. Anyway, they’d been amusing themselves so much fellating  some of the spare brats and laughing uproariously every time I noticed and blushed that I’d finally had to approach them directly and ask them to stop.

“Oh, sorry,” Leigh said, beaming up at me. “I was just telling her how much I like it when they’re overcooked, you know? They get all crunchy, and like, hard . I really, really like a nice hard wiener . Don’t you, Angel?”

“You are so  bad!”

“I know, right?”

“Nobody calls them that, and that’s not even a wiener. It’s a brat.”

“Aw snap, Leigh-Leigh. He got you!”

“Oh no, I guess you’re right. No wonder it tastes bad.” Her coy grin returned. If it had ever left. “Do you want to punish it? Isn’t that what RAs do to bad little brats?”

“Look, just stop wasting the left-overs.”

“You can leave me  over.”

“Oh my gosh, Leigh, you’re so into him you’re not even making sense!”

“Kinda!” She giggled. “Kidding, of course, Spencer. We’ll clean up, promise.”

“He can clean me  up,” Angel said in a high-pitched mockery of Leigh’s voice. “See, that’s how you do it.”

It was a little funny. Much as I wanted to smack the hell out of those brats, I offered up a laugh and went to find an out-of-the-way chair. If I’d known there were Kaidens about, I might have looked harder.

The triplets had arrived a while later, saying nothing to anyone, taking the three vacant chairs to my left and lying down like they’d come here to nap in the sun and for no other reason. Maybe they had. I didn’t really get them, yet. I asked one – I think Maddison? – what made them change their mind about coming to the program.

“You’re having a program?” said another, arching one neat brow.

“Um… yeah.” I gestured at the dozens of laughing, bouncing, jiggling, mostly naked girls scattered around the beach area.

“Hmm. We just like to come here sometimes,” said the third.

That was that. Until their snort during my altercation with Kaiden, they hadn’t made another sound that I’d heard, not even to one another.

“Spencer!” called Charlie. “Come see how good Kyu-Ri has gotten at cuppies!”

“Spencer!” yelled Dana. “We’re gonna do real teams again and we need a captain! Come play with us!”

“Spencer!” crowed  Casey. “I keep sweating off my lotion, homie! And these gropy-ass  bitches are creeping me out! Help ya girl out?”

The way Casey had turned to call out to me, her tits were just… out. Bare. Incredible. Forbidden.

I yelled over the din, “Who wants to play ultimate frisbee?”

“Are you playing?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Meeeeee!” called thirty voices in unison.

We even snagged a triplet.

Hours later, after trudging up the stairs to Higgins 3 after a head-turning eye-popping procession of babes in bikinis, I collapsed into my bed and tried to rub one out before one leaked out on its own. I’d never had a wet dream before in my life, but lately, if I didn’t jack off at least a couple times…

Only then there were girls wanting to know if I thought they looked cute in their outfit for a house party that night; girls wanting to know if we could do another movie night in the lounge; girls wanting to know if I thought they looked sunburnt in places Ramona would fire me in a heartbeat for inspecting; girls who wanted to thank me for setting up a fun program, a program they were still dressed for, a program Tori and Katrina had done all the work for with the insistence that I closely collaborate on them over every last detail, for hours.

Those two came down, too, to ask if I wanted to process how the program had gone. Alone. With the two of them. Our floor government meetings always seemed to be in my room, and we always seemed to hold them sitting around in my bed.

“I need to take a shower,” I grunted, squeezing past whatever girls had been next in line.

Only two of the four stalls in the erstwhile men’s room were occupied when I arrived. I turned on the water, threw my towel at the hook and missed completely, then slid down to the tile floor, ice cold on my bare ass, and beat it like I meant it. I came in under a minute, but my erection refused to quit. So did I.

Back in Rowland, the walls on the shower stalls had been obnoxiously inadequate. Cracks in the door sufficient to deny any privacy? Check. Cover nothing from the shin down? Check. Eye contact with any guy over 5’10”? Check.

Higgins at least provided near total coverage, to say nothing of a dearth of residents over 5’10” . Still, there were a few inches at the bottom of the stalls. Standing up, they were nothing. (I had  seen hands on the floor right near the edge, making me wonder if people were trying to peek at me, but so far no eyes. So far.) As I sat there, desperately trying to get the Hotties out of my head so I could think, so I could not  think, so I could just be  for a while, the fourth stall door swung audibly closed, and the shower turned on.

Under that crack, I saw not two, but four feet.

At first, I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me, seeing one set adjacent, and another set two stalls down. That direction didn’t have two more stalls, though. On my left, yep. One set close – orange toenails, that would be Nikki if memory served  – and another farther, and with no obvious clues. The stall with four feet could only be two girls. Peyton and Sydney.

Apparently they hadn’t managed to drag Terri in there with them after all. Better luck next time.

I watched those feet closely as I worked. One set behind the other at first, as they tested the water temperature. Then side by side, jostling around, vying for position as they wetted their bodies, warming up, slicking themselves for what was to come.

Then the front set about faced. Their toes were nearly touching.

I picked up the pace.

My imagination was doing a hell of a job filling in the details above the ankles. Peyton’s lithe, slender body. She was tall; her hair would be just visible if I stood up and really craned my neck. Sydney’s wouldn’t . Sydney was nothing but a noise, an odd distortion in the sound made by water rolling off of a naked body, a sound I’d come to know all too well in my half decade of living in the residence halls, a sound Sydney’s round, perky tits with their perpetually hard nipples was twisting just so.

The backward-facing feet took a step forward, resting right between the others. Two perfect racks pressed together somewhere far above. A pause, a little twist on one foot, and then one of the other girls lifted the heel in bliss.

“Mmm,” came the faint moan. It was so delicate that if I’d been taking a normal shower, I wouldn’t have heard it at all. With my entire mind focused on the happenings in that shower stall, I heard it like a trumpet blasting down the walls of Jericho.

For the second time in my life, I came so hard it was aimed at the ceiling. Only the ceilings in the bathroom were eight inches higher than in my room, and I was on the floor, not a bed. I missed .

But it went right over the wall between our stalls and out of sight.

I gasped. No. No fucking way. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh–

There was no reaction. Were my lesbian residents staring in horror? I braced myself, motionless, huddled in the corner of my stall as a prisoner of my own dread. Seconds passed like hours.

Nobody screamed. Nobody ewwwwwwed . Nothing. Cautiously, I stood up. When the world didn’t end, I peered, and there indeed was the very top of Peyton’s head, aimed towards the exit to her stall. If I were an inch taller, I knew I would see Sydney standing there pressed against her.

Suddenly, a slender, darkly complected  arm reached past Peyton’s head and grasped one of the newly installed shower nozzles. It fell from its perch, disappearing into the unseen realms of the stall.

“Mmm.”

“Mmmmm.”

The second one came from behind me. I spun around so fast I nearly slipped on the wet tile floor. My stall was the only one with a nozzle still in its appointed place.

Lying on the floor, my towel had gotten soaked. I threw it around my waist and fled the shower area at a trot. Jordyn and Georgia were both standing right outside it, wrapped in towels themselves. Shauna, Destiny and Danielle were each taking up a sink, the first two applying makeup in bras and panties, Danielle studying her skin in a tight leather dress that showed more legs and cleavage than any woman I’d ever dated had ever worn for me.

It was the most covered up I’d seen any of my residents all day.

Towel dripping, I hurried past them back to my room, ignoring the way my cock refused to die down. Mercifully the halls were vacant for once. Doors open, but I was moving too fast for anyone to see that I was dashing dick-first down the hall of Higgins 3. Once in the safety of my room, I locked the door behind me, dropped my towel on the floor with an audible sploosh , and stared angrily at my cock.

“Haven’t you had enough yet? They’re people , for fuck’s sake! And what do you do? You–”

The door knocked. “Hey, Spencer? It’s Savannah.”

Speaking of jizzing on the unaware. “Um, hey. Gimme a sec, just got out of the shower.”

“Yeah? Oh. OK. It’s nothing, I just figured we’re on duty tonight, and I’m all caught up on homework, and I’m stuck in on duty tonight, and I’m super super super bored, so I didn’t know if you wanted to–”

I opened the door. Hopefully my arm, holding my towel in place, was obstructing view  of my cock. Savannah was her usual effortlessly gorgeous self. (Plus, she was wearing a sweater and jeans. Her very welcome modesty was the sexiest thing I’d seen all day.) “That sounds great.”

She looked me over, arching an eyebrow. “Um, maybe you wanna get dressed first?”

“Oh. Sorry, I just… yeah.”

“I was thinking about multitasking? Putting some laundry in, I mean. I could save you a couple machines, if you want.”

“Right. Yeah. Save ‘em. Sounds cool. I’ll be down in five . OK?”

Savannah smiled. I wished her dipshit boyfriend Price would spontaneously explode. “See you in five. Take ten, if you need it.”

I followed her eyes down, and there was the head of my cock poking out the top of my towel. I sighed. “See you in ten .”

Chapter Two: Higgins Basement

Without stopping to jerk off again, there was no taming the serpent. I probably should have, but I was done letting the stupid thing dictate my actions. Trying to, at least. I just had to make sure I never gave it what it wanted. Once it got a taste for Hotties, there would be no curbing its appetites again.

For now, Savannah was waiting.

In years past, my laundry habit had been to do what dudes living by themselves did. Namely, drop clothes where they landed and bulldoze them into a closet whenever a girl was  coming over. Two spritzes of Febreeze, and nobody was the wiser. Then I’d gotten a steady girlfriend, and along with her, a modicum of self-respect, and I improved. Any more , I had  girls in my room ten times a day. Dirty laundry went in the basket immediately. I’d slipped up once and left a day’s clothes on the floor, and I was pretty sure my blue checked briefs had grown legs. I’d visited home last weekend to see my folks and the Kraken, so maybe I’d left them there? I didn’t think so, though.

I’d promised Savannah ten minutes, but thanks to my new laundry-prepared lifestyle, I made it in eight.

Savannah was waiting for me, sitting astride a bench looking at something on her phone. She’d changed, presumably to wash the outfit she’d been wearing, and looked as casual as I’d ever seen her. Her outfit was obviously laundry day clothes, a pair of sweatpants and a baggy old t-shirt with an old stain on the tummy and a hole so big under her left armpit it showed with her arms at her sides. One of the building’s eight washing machines hummed and whirred as it swirled a load of her clothes; a dryer was running on the adjacent wall.

“Aw, no towel?” she teased as I made my way over.

“You know me, always losing my towel.” She laughed with a little mock scandalization at the memory of that fight she’d helped me break up in the shower. “Looks like you changed, too, eh?”

“Spencer Lawrence, are you paying that much attention to what I wear? I’m spoken for, you know.”

She was only teasing, but the memory of being blown off for her boyfriend Price still chafed a bit. “I mean, kind of, yeah.” I shrugged.

Her reproving look was still tempered by that million-watt smile, though. “You’re so bad.”

“Oh I’m the worst, for sure.”

I started a load. Saturday duty nights were the best for doing laundry. Most of the residents were out partying or otherwise socializing, and most of the rest were curled up in bed with a tablet or a book enjoying the peace and privacy of that rarest of all residence hall pleasures: solitude. Back when I was a freshman, you’d still needed quarters for the laundry. Now you could just swipe your student ID and it took the money out of an account. Modern marvels. Once it was running, I fished the old folding chair from behind the dryer stacks and sat down near Savannah.

She looked at the chair. “I literally did not know that chair existed. Is that yours?”

“Nah, found it down here with Ramona during RA training while we were setting up rounds training. Remember the scenario…?”

She giggled. “Oh, I won’t be forgetting that one any time soon. Whoever that kid was – I think she’s on ground  floor? – she should be on CSI playing corpses. I seriously thought she was freaking dead! I’m over here panicking my butt off; meanwhile Vickie’s doing color commentary on why they’re training us to handle dead bodies. Meanwhile, you’re over there with that ‘omg why isn’t everybody as wise as me’ look of yours–”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“–wondering how long it’s gonna be before we realize the scenario is passed out  drunk resident, not dead on the floor resident. We took so long figuring it out she probably would’ve been dead if it was real.”

“Back before your first confirmed kill. How innocent you were back then.”

“I’ll catch up with you yet, don’t you worry.”

“Fat chance. I already bribed Ramona to stock my floor with violent psycho girls, ripe for the culling.”

Savannah sighed. “I wonder what ever happened  to that girl. Quinn, right? Or Quincy, or…”

“No, you had it. Quinn. Yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her around campus, but she’s one girl in ten thousand others at Lakeview. Glad I haven’t. Hopefully she’s getting help.”

She shook her head. “Hopefully she was expelled. You joke about that fight because of the whole ‘oh gosh no towel’ thing, but seeing it from the outside? That was really scary. I saw a couple fights at my high school, but none of them came close to that. That girl was… It was like she was out of her mind.”

“Yeah. She was pretty upset, I guess.”

“I wonder what makes someone get like that. That… I don’t want to say crazy, but…”

“But… crazy.”

“Yeah.”

The washers tumbled undisturbed. “Maybe you were just that good, huh?” she joked, finally.

“I promise you, I basically laid there barely knowing what was happening.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah right.”

“Why yeah right?”

“What? No, I only meant… I don’t know. I didn’t mean anything.”

“You meant something .” Even in the moment, I could tell I was overreacting, but a whole day of women objectifying me, throwing themselves at me, the thousand times I’d had to say no I can’t, no I won’t, no I shouldn’t… It was starting to bubble up, and I could already tell I wasn’t going to like what spewed out.

Savannah looked pretty embarrassed. “Spencer, I’m sorry. Forget I said it, OK? Please?”

“So some hot guy walks into your room, you’re naked under the sheets, but he settles right in. Decides he likes what he sees, makes a move, and before you know it there’s a finger in your ass.”

“Whoa, hey, I didn’t–”

“Then he’s just gone – until he comes back the next day to try to beat the hell out of Price, which your whole floor witnesses you breaking up bare-ass naked, and that kicks off a semester of every one of them thinking hey, maybe we have a shot, too? But ‘yeah right,’ huh?”

“Spencer!”

“Thirty women thinking maybe let’s just flirt with him until he explodes, having to ignore veiled offers, unveiled offers, flirty smiles and goddamn walking around half-naked, fucking half-shirts, goddamn motherfucking beach day!”

Savannah was staring wide-eyed as weeks of pent-up sexual frustration burst out. Somehow that touched another nerve. “And you! You’re the worst of them!”

“Me? What did I do?!”

“You’re so  perfect. Like, nobody should be this  perfect. And I don’t just mean the hotness, either – even though you’re the hottest girl on the freaking planet. But you’re always so nice . I mean obnoxiously  nice. Like, look, look here, look at that.” I pointed accusingly at the washing machine where her whites were tumbling in some frothy water. “How many washing machines are there down here? But you only took one, even though you have like three loads to do. See!”

“Um…”

“Because you were like ‘oh, saved some for Spencer,’ because you’re sweet, and you’re goddamn thoughtful, but then ‘what if someone else comes down to do laundry, better make sure there’s room for everybody’ – or maybe, no, that’s it, you were like ‘what if Spencer has like eight loads to do and he wants to do them all at the same time, better just do one by one even though it’s going to mean sitting down here in the stupid laundry room all by myself all night!’ because you’re always being so goddamn–”

For the second time that semester, the recently annointed  hottest girl on the freaking planet kissed me. Some voice in the back of my head that had possessed the good sense to be screaming at me to shut up but had lacked the forcefulness to make it happen died on those lips, mortified by its error.

My blood was up. Besides, I’d wanted this ever since she’d first given me a taste. No, that was bullshit. I’d wanted this since I’d first laid eyes on her when I’d helped interview her for the job. I drove her into that washing machine, her perfectly padded ass thudding against it. The aggression was working for her though, I guess, because instead of telling me to dial it back, she hopped up backwards onto the machine and pulled me after her. We could both feel that lazy vibration against our genitals. It was a nice bonus, but really, all I wanted was her lips.

Then her tongue was in my mouth. All right, all I wanted was those lips, and that tongue.

I don’t know how long we were making out like that. Making out was as far as we went, too, which felt amazing, bizarrely enough. Something sensual, yet still so wholesome. It was an outlet for all those thoughts that had collided together in that somehow charming ranting moments earlier. Where I could lash her tongue like I was pounding Leigh’s ass after her latest bratty stunt while her henchwoman Angel cheered her on. Lightly grasp her breast through her t-shirt like I was finally going after Kyu-Ri’s constantly half-exposed mega-rack, and then have my hand gently nudged back to her waist like Dana’s mom was on hand to make sure I saved something for her when I was done with her daughter. Her laugh when I accidentally tickled her, delighted and exhilarated, pure joy, like that sparkle in Charlie’s eye when I gave her an opportunity to bestow a little kindness.

Then she let me put a hand on her ass and give that marvelous globe a squeeze. That ass was all Savannah.

Thankfully, when the girl whose clothes had been in the dryer entered the laundry room, she was wearing some nice, loud flip-flops that gave us enough warning to disentangle and smooth down our clothes. She entered while I was still swiping my hair back into place. It was probably still pretty obvious what we’d been doing, a foot apart with Savannah sitting spread eagle on the washer, but better that than being caught in the act.

“Oh, hey Emma,” Savannah said. Her Emma, not mine.

“Sup,” was all the girl said. Classy of her to let us pretend. She unloaded her dryer into a basket and made her retreat with smooth grace.

“I really like kissing you,” I said, before she could bring up the potential embarrassment of being caught, complications of hooking up with coworkers, or Price. I wanted it said.

“Well, duh. I mean, apparently I’m the hottest girl on the planet and all.” She beamed. Maybe that was the way to compliment the beauty of someone so obviously beautiful. Sneak it into the middle of an unhinged tirade, accuse her of offensive levels of niceness and beauty.

“Hey, look, sorry I got so weird there. Just been dealing with a lot of–”

I was silenced by her finger on my lips. “It’s OK. OK?”

I smiled a smooshy smile against that finger and gave it a little peck. “Thank you.”

“I have a boyfriend,” she said softly. I didn’t hear guilt, though, but rather regret. Or maybe that was merely what I wanted to hear. What I was used to hearing.

I gave the tip of that finger a little suck. “I don’t care.”

She grinned. “I bet you don’t.”

“One more kiss. Then I’ll go back to caring. One more.”

“One more kiss, and you’ll go back to wanting to put your hand on my butt.”

“Hey. Savannah.” I leaned in, pushing the finger on my lips ahead of me until it was all that separated mine from hers. “I’ve never stopped wanting my hand on your butt.”

Then she threw back her head and laughed, and I knew I had her. “You are incorrigible, Spencer.”

“You are gorgeous, Savannah.”

My flattery was rewarded with more kisses. Not many more, this time. She gently, then more firmly, pushed me away. “All right! All right. It has nothing to do with you, but I’ve been thinking about breaking up with him – again – for a while now, so I need to just bite the bullet and do it. This distance is killing me, and I’m just tired of being lonely and guilty and…” Horny , I thought. Not a self-assessment that sounded like it had nothing to do with me, but far be it from me to argue the point. “ Then I’m not cheating, total integrity. Right?”

“Total.”

“OK. So, I know, I know, it’s horrible of me to make you wait after… that,” her cheeks flushed, “but let me deal with Price, and then I’ll get cleaned up and come find you. Is that OK?”

“That sounds great. One question, though.”

“Shoot.”

“If we cross paths while we’re still finishing laundry, do I get to kiss you, or do I have to wait?”

“You freaking better kiss me.”

I kissed her. Stopping was hard.

“OK. Now I can’t believe I’m saying this, because trust me, I cannot wait to pick up where we left off, but I will get it if the break-up puts you out of the mood. Don’t let that be a reason not to come find me, all right? Even if it’s just to talk, or cry, or whatever. I actually can be patient, believe it or not.”

“You’ve been patient for over a month now, Spencer. I know.”

Another kiss. “All right. Good luck with Price.”

“Breaking up with him took me an hour the first time. I’ll see if I can get it down to half on round two.”

What a dizzying evening. After a day of fighting off gnawing lustfulness at the hands of my too-well-intentioned Hotties, then a chance rendezvous with an incredible girl who let me blow up at her and still made out with me anyway, I was back in my room, twiddling my thumbs, literally pacing back and forth.

My ears perked up every time I heard someone in the hallway. Somebody dropping off a bag in the trash room across the hall from me. Someone (Dawn, I thought) yelling  down the hall to ask if Emma was ready yet. Ellie and Tori standing around by the water fountain talking about an assignment in their freshman comp class. Nikki groaning  for the world to hear that her UTI was going to be the death of her on her way to the bathroom.

The Hotties – the ones not out living it up as campus queens, at least – were there for her.

“Drink more fluids!” called Ellie.

“Cranberry juice!” added Tori.

“I love you and you got this!” yelled Charlie.

They might be the death of me, but I loved my girls.

Finally, the sound I’d been waiting for arrived, the familiar jangling of the RA duty keys. Keys to the custodial closets, circuit breakers, utility room, boiler, keys to the center desk, the computer lab, the loading dock, the exterior doors to the center building, even the roof. (We weren’t supposed to know about the roof keys hiding among all the rest, but Ramona had confided in me during training, and before long somebody else figured it out. Carmen, probably, since now everybody knew . Classic Carmen.)

I opened the door to my room. Sure enough, there was Savannah, striding down my side of the split part of the Higgins 3 hall, conducting ten o’clock rounds. She wore the key ring worn as a bracelet, duty walkie talkie clipped to the belt of her sweat pants. She hadn’t changed after all, I noted. Bad sign, couldn’t go through with impromptu date night? Good sign, so eager to get up here she couldn’t bother slowing to cutify? My heart was in my throat.

Savannah nodded to me, stone-faced, and I was sure something had gone terribly wrong. Then she got to my room, grabbed me by the waist of my pants and shoved her tongue down my throat. I’m not sure she ever stopped walking, it happened so fast.

Once she passed, I held up my hands to ask how it went. She glanced back, gave a thumbs up, and then she was gone.

Hell yes. Hell the fuck yes.

Savannah struck me as the sort of woman who would want to look good – better than she looked just by existing, that is – for a hook-up. I’d done my own touch-ups. A shave, microdose of cologne, a little combwork, some subtle manscaping. It was harder doing it in my room without the aid of a sink, but I wasn’t about to let my girls find out I was primping for someone. Good lord, if they found out I had a girl in here, they’d–

Knock knock.

“Yeah?” I called through the door.

“Ya in?”

“Yeah, Casey?”

“Can we talk, homie?”

“I’m in the middle of something. Can it wait until tomorrow? You can call the center desk if–”

The door swung open. There she was, still in her bikini top from earlier in the day, a pair of baggy cargo shorts over her lower half. They looked like she’d borrowed them from a much bigger brother. The thin belt around her waist was working overtime to hold them on. As usual, she had her signature ski cap on. “So, who was that chick?”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on in, why don’t you.”

She came in, shutting the door behind her. “You said your door is open any time. Something change , yo?”

“What can I do for you, Casey.”

“I already said, who was that chick?”

“What ‘chick?’ There’s thirty chicks on this floor.”

“Oh, right, I can see how you wouldn’t know which one I meant. The one who just did a driveby on your tonsils, that chick.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“She’s one of the other Ra’s, right?” She eschewed the acronym and went for a more sun-god approach in her pronunciation of the title. “From the basement?”

“Her name is Savannah and yes, she’s the RA for Higgins Basement.”

She flopped down on my bed, incredible tits bouncing freely in their bikini. Nothing I hadn’t seen a dozen times already that day, though I never did seem to get used to it. “So you guys hookin ’ up?”

“ What’s it to you how  I spend my Saturday nights?”

She laughed, half-giggle and half-guffaw. It was off-putting. “I meant, like, in general? Not tonight only. I guess that answers the question anyway, though.”

“Are you high, Casey?”

“As the north star, baby.”

I glowered. “I’m your RA. You’re not supposed to tell me that.”

“I’m not hurting anybody, homie. Don’t be a snitch.”

“It’s not being a snitch; it’s doing my job!”

“So do a bad fuckin’ job for a change. If it makes you feel better I didn’t do it in my room. Me, Lex and Sammi and Andi went out to the parking lot. You know she’s never smoked weed before? Girl is–”

“Now who’s snitching?!”

“It’s all good, homie. We’re not driving anywhere or anything stupid. Just being so chill on this fine Saturday night. Promise.” She gave her left tit and experimental poke, watched it roll side to side until it finally fell still. I suppose I couldn’t fault her fascination since I was watching too.

“You’d better not. I happen to like those three.”

“You know you like my ass, baby. You better. Boyfriend gonna  be hella let down if his girl can’t turn the head of the only dude in the dorm, yo.”

“You have such a twisted relationship, I swear. I’m still not convinced this boyfriend of yours really exists.”

Rather than offer proof, Casey deflected. She made a sort of snow angel type stretch, exploring the expanse of the effective king size. “This super bed setup you got is nice, you know? I heard you let Kendall and Georgia sleep in here one night. Is that like a thing you do, or one-time only?” RA rooms had two beds like all the others, and while some left them bunked to maximize space, I liked to spread out. Plus, as often as my Hotties like to invite themselves to sit on or in my bed, it was nice to have somewhere to retreat. Quinn had taught me the value of that.

“You can’t sleep in my bed. Now unless there are any other policy violations you’d like to cop to…”

“Oh come on, I’m only saying ‘cause I know you’re one of the real ones.” She propped herself up on her elbows. For a girl who seemed to eat whatever she felt like and I had never once seen work out, she had a ridiculously slender waist. “ We good ?”

I let out a sigh. “I mean it. Don’t you dare drive anywhere. And stop corrupting Andi. She’s a nice girl.”

“You know I wouldn’t hurt her. Now, speaking of girls you’re hooking up with… what’s the deal with the basement Ra?” Casey grinned toothily, slumping back down onto the bed.

I didn’t think it was blackmail, her referencing my one night stand. Casey liked being in my business more than most was all. “You’re not going to leave until I give you something, are you.”

“You got something you wanna give me, I’m all about that.” Her thighs parted gamely. “God, I miss my guy. I haven’t been loved on in so long.” They didn’t close.

Casey, the sluttiest devoted girlfriend who ever lived. “All right, back to your room, before I carry you back.”

“Give you a hundred bucks if I can hang out in the closet and watch.”

“Gross, Casey. Even for you.”

“Two hundred if I can join in.”

“Out.”

“Oh come on, lemme at least stay until she gets here.”

I rolled my eyes. “And how do you think she’s going to react if she comes in here and finds another woman in my bed? Another woman wearing that .”

“Don’t like it?” She reached behind her and plucked at the bikini string. “You want me to take it off?”

“Casey…!”

With another low-pitched giggle fit, she finally tried to get to her feet. I helped her up, escorting her back next door to her room. To my surprise, it actually didn’t smell like weed in there . Maybe she wasn’t lying. “You girls have fun, but not too much fun, OK?”

“You got it. And you and your girl have too much fun, but not too fun. Much. Or… fuck. Words. Whatever. Rock that Ra’s world, homie.”

I gave a rueful smile. “I’ll do my best. Wish me luck.”

“Ow ow ow ow OWWWWWWW !” she howled in my wake.

Once more, I found myself counting the minutes until Savannah’s rounds reached my door. This time, there was no Price coming to steal her away. No Andi baiting me into a pity fuck. Only me, and her. She had to do rounds again at midnight and two, but that could work to our advantage. You didn’t stay an RA as long as I had without learning that the time it took to go on rounds doubled handily as a refractory period.

I heard Savannah coming once more. This time she had most definitely changed. Wow. A blue and white striped dress cinched with a belt at her waist. It was tasteful, but sexy as hell. Too much for sitting around my room, but I’d overdone it a little too. Damn, she looked good. My hotties could take a lesson in fashion from her. A little bit of cleavage, little  bit of thigh, little  bit of makeup, little  bit of shine to her brownish blonde hair from fresh brushing. I was impressed she’d managed to get it dry that fast, thick as it was.

“You look amazing .” The words spilled out reflexively as she sauntered by – without a kiss, this time. Just a smirk. A well-deserved smirk.

Carmen, her rounds partner, had apparently been making faster progress on the far side of my floor rather than swaggering along for theatrical effect like Savannah. She emerged from the hall to the left directly ahead of Savannah. “Doesn’t she? I keep asking if Price is coming to visit tonight, but she won’t tell me!”

“No man deserves all that,” I said.

Carmen seemed to notice me, then. “Hey, you’re looking pretty hawt yourself, Spencer! Big date tonight?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“This late? That’s crazy!”

“I’m in for the night actually.”

“Oh. Didn’t go so hot, huh? Don’t be sad. You’ll get ‘em next time! Or hey, if you get lonely…” She made a playful rumbly sound in the back of her throat. “Ha! Just teasing.”

“Thanks, Carmen. Don’t let me keep you two.”

“Byee!” she waved as the two departed. Her thin voice still reached me as they made their way toward the stairwell. “How does that boy not have a girlfriend already, you know? Isn’t he just too freaking adorbs? I have so many cute friends I would set him up with if I could just make myself not want to keep that little booty all to myself, you know? Don’t you just wanna…”

The stairwell door swung closed behind them. I didn’t make much of it. Typical boy-crazy Carmen stuff. She’d fit right in on Higgins 3 if she ever lost her job.

Friday and Saturday nights, there were an additional set of rounds at 2 AM. Was I going to have to wait until after then before Savannah came back? I didn’t know if I could keep my shit together that long. Should I text her, or was that too–

My phone buzzed. Savannah. Can I come up?

If you don’t I’m coming down , I answered.

Ew no no no my room is gross right now! Sit tight. omw

I sat tight. She didn’t bother knocking.

“So how did it go with Price?” I’d had time to ponder my strategy. She hadn’t made it seem like I’d need much of one, but this wasn’t my first rodeo. She knew I’d had hours to ponder my approach, and she’d be disappointed if I didn’t bring the A game. I opened with empathy, the Spencer classic.

“About like I expected. Half hour  was waaaay  off. It was a long time coming, but it still blindsided him. He was always one of those guys who’d make one big romantic gesture and thought that was all he needed until we had a fight and he needed to win me over again.”

Standing for this was weird, but it was a little weird, the two of us dressed up and looking fly, sitting cross legged on my bed. At least the latter would be comfortable, so I offered her a seat and took one a respectful distance away. I’d said I could be patient, so I needed to show it.

“Like driving three hours out to see you after a dumping?”

“Like driving three and a half   hours after a dumping. He’d never let me forget that extra half hour.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t have let him get away with that. I still feel awful for standing you up that night.”

“Hey, you did what you had to do. I’m sorry if I was a jerk about it. I was in a bad place.”

“You were fine.” She reached out and patted my hand, inching closer. “I never really thought about what all you had on your plate. Quinn taking advantage of you, the fight, Leigh making a move on you, then that other girl, with the glasses, that night when you…” When I jizzed on her, she meant. When she came up to see me and I pulled out of Andi and came on her. Top three most humiliating moments of my life, for sure. “You’ve got a lot of forbidden fruit in your fruit salad, Spencer.”

“Which, by the way, you are too,” I acknowledged. “I know, I should be trying to be suave and all,” like I’d planned, good god what was I saying right now, “but RA’s aren’t supposed to hook up with other RA’s.”

“I know. And I’m sure after everything else, Ramona’s probably already on your case, huh. So, um, if that means you don’t want to…”

“No! Oh god, no. I do. I so do . I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

“I know.”

“They can make exceptions. It’s more guideline   than law . We can talk to Ramona.”

She smiled, eliminated another inch. “Spencer, we’ve only made out a little. I don’t think we need to sign waivers yet. Why don’t we just see how things go, and if there’s something we need to tell her, we tell her.”

I nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. After all the stuff that’s happened up here, I’m probably a little paranoid is all. But you’re right. Anyway, you were telling me about Price.”

Savannah shook her head. More scooting, fewer inches. “If it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to talk about Price right now, Spencer. I want to feel like you made me feel in the laundry room again. So let’s do that now. OK?”

Challenge accepted. “To moderate expectations, you were sitting on a washing machine at the time.”

The joke landed. I got a laugh, a swat, and a few more inches. “You know I’ve never done that before? Yeesh, I say that like it’s something everybody does. But no, I mean I’ve heard  of women doing that, but… I gotta say, it’s not bad.”

“Well don’t give the machine all  the credit now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You were easily … ten? No, twenty percent of it.”

“Wow, personal best!” Her laugh was softer this time, which meant it was time to pivot. “You really do look amazing, by the way. Or maybe I should shout it at you like it’s something you did wrong again.”

“Saying it pleasantly was fine, thank you.”

“Thank goodness. I can huff and puff fine when I’m doing laundry, but for some reason, right now, I can’t think of anything unhappy at all.”

“Mmm, me either.” Savannah lowered herself to her side, and I lay down in front of her.

“You know, I had all these smooth things I planned to say to you, was ready to hand you tissues and let you cry about whatshisname. But now you’re here, and your face is right in front of me, and you’re letting me stare at it, and I can’t do anything else.”

Her hand landed on my hip. She pulled our bodies together. Nose to nose, and what a cute little button nose. No wonder Vickie was so salty about her. It really wasn’t fair to the rest of her sex. “I hope you’re ready to do more than stare.”

I pulled her on top of me. “One more minute?” Weirdly? I wasn’t just being cute. That face, the serenity behind all that beauty, it made me feel safe and calm in a way pretty girls hadn’t in what felt like a very long time. Her hair hung down over my face, curtaining off the rest of the world.

Savannah nodded, sensing I really meant it. “OK. Take your time, Spencer. I’m not in any rush tonight.”

Those were the sexiest fucking words a woman had said to me in months. I took a moment to bask in them, then gently pulled her lips back to mine.

“Can you hear anything?”

“No, shut up!”

These two hissed whispers came from nearby. Not in the room, but nearly. I tried to ignore them as I once again began making out with the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

A few minutes later, I’d gotten back on that butt. Over the dress, but that was fine. Not hurrying was turning out to be one of my kinks. Who knew .

“What’s going on?” This one not   whispered . Was that Katrina?!

“Shhhh!”

“Sorry!” Definitely Katrina. Then she finally remembered she could whisper. “What’s going on? Someone in trouble?”

“No, he’s got that stupid hot Ra from the basement in there.” Casey. The whispering masked it, but good job coining a phrase. Revealed by her own success at branding.

“Oh my gosh! Are they, you know…?”

“They’re playing Scrabble. He’s tryna play ‘gangsta’ on a double word score but she’s bustin’ out the official dictionary.”

“Seriously…?”

Savannah was fighting hard to suppress a giggle.

“No! Now shut the f up!”

“Sorry!”

Although Savannah was being a trooper about it, it was damaging my calm fast. With her on top of me and showing no signs of backing off, I had to squirm to get my mouth free.

“I’m sorry. Want me to go get rid of them?”

But she pounced right back in. To further make her point, she took my hand and slid it right up underneath her dress and onto her ass.

“Are you not wearing underwmmm …?” I couldn’t get the whole question out before she was back on me. Her answer was to move my hand higher until I hit what had to be the straps of a thong, and then right back to the cheek. She moaned softly as I gave it a long-anticipated squeeze.

“Keep doing that. Keep touching me,” she whispered between breaths.

I clamped down with the other hand, kneading that lovely bottom of hers with a hunger . Her pelvis began grinding against me, and I thrusted up against her. This was getting intense fast, more foreplay than mere makeout session. Were we going to have sex tonight? I wouldn’t say no, not on my  life. It was moving fast, but Savannah Grey  was the kind of woman I wouldn’t hesitate on. Looks alone might have sealed that, but in the short time I’d known her, I’d begun to consider she might be a kindred spirit. Hard to say if she felt the same. She’d just dumped her boyfriend for me, and I was sensitive to that. I wouldn’t rush her, but I wouldn’t disrespect that sacrifice by not giving her my best–

“I told you idiots, the peephole only lets you see the middle of the room. They’re probably on the bed!” someone whispered way  too loud, way  too close.

“Let me see!”

“Should we be doing this? Can’t we just listen?”

“Shh!”

“Did he just moan? Oh fuck, I think I just heard him moan.”

My eyes squeezed shut, but it did nothing to block the sound. What the hell was wrong with these girls? It wasn’t like we were fooling around in the lounge, or taking a page out of Peyton and Sydney’s playbook and using the showers. (Had that really been mere hours ago?) No, this was my private residence, and someone was trying to squint through the peephole!

“Someone has to say something to him,” said Someone. “He can’t treat us like this.”

In response, Savannah rose up on her knees, and with impressive ease peeled off her dress.

I gaped at the sight of her, a body that didn’t just deliver on the promises it whispered from beneath its clothing, but revealed it had in fact been underselling matters by orders of magnitude. Savannah’s thong was pale yellow. The bra matched. It was so thin I could see her nipples through it with ease. They looked painfully hard. Come to think of it, she was sweating.

“Holy fuck .” Smooth. Real fucking smooth.

She stiffened. “What? Is it the scar?”

Oh yeah, her scar. I’d forgotten all about it. There it was, though, a nasty pink and orange pucker of a thing right in the side of her abdomen. It was about the width of my hand. Clearly not surgical, but whether it was a burn or an injury or what, it gave no clue.

“The…? No! Oh my god, no!” Using my grip on her behind, I pulled myself into an upright position. “No, that was a ‘holy fuck she’s perfect’ holy fuck. That’s all. I didn’t even notice it.”

“Yeah, right.”

Another whisper from the hallway. “What are they saying?”

“She has some kind of scar.”

“Look who’s mortal after all.”

“What about him? Is he grossed out?”

“No, he’s being chill about it. It’s Spencer .”

“ Shh!”

I gritted my teeth. “Would you guys shut up out there?!”

“ Shhhhhh! ”

I sighed and turned my attention back to Savannah. “I’m serious. I mean, now that you mention it, yeah, there it is. But I kinda like it, actually. It–”

She had not relaxed. “If you say it humanizes me or some bullshit like that, I’m going to leave. Right now.”

From her tone, it seemed I wasn’t the first to arrive at this epiphany. That Hottie in the hall had gone straight to symbolism of her mortality as well, and these were all girls who had well-earned lacks of humility themselves. I backed off. “Sorry. But really, I don’t care. It’s such a big deal to me I literally forgot it was there from the last time I saw it.”

Finally, a slight softening of her spine. “Really?”

“Really. I remember telling you at the time that someday, when we weren’t mid-makeout, I’d ask you about it. I’m still curious, because I want to know you better, but I’d also be more than happy to forget my faux pas and go right back to where you took your dress off and I was contemplating whether or not you’d let me take your bra off, too.”

A slow smile bloomed. “I mean… I could be convinced…”

I rolled, dumping her on her back. After tossing off my own shirt – then my pants, just to keep it fair, I eased down to kiss along the exposed portion of her incredible breasts. She arched her neck back, groaning, the moment I started, dragging her nails softly through my hair across my scalp. It was heavenly.

“He’s going for the tatas!”

“Lucky bitch.”

My hands, supporting me hovering over Savannah’s body, balled into fists.

“Seriously. I’ve basically greenlit him to suck mine a hundred times.”

“He’s actually seen  mine and he still won’t.” Leigh, presumably. How was she  not out partying? Maybe back in already. Were there four of them out there now? Good lord!

I focused on the tits in front of me, banishing the image – and feel – of Leigh’s wet, soapy tits pressed against me as I defended her from Quinn that evening. And when she’d come to my room later that night to “thank” me. And when–

No. Focus.

“ Spencer if you  don’t take my bra off soon I think  my nipples might cut their way out.”

“Fuck, she’s begging  him to get her tits out!”

“Tits out!”

Dammit, Lex! That made five!

Still, Savannah Grey  had just flatly demanded I take her bra off. It took a little effort with her lying down on the clasp, but I was motivated. There they were, two plump, pert bubbles of lightly tanned tit. Her nipples were perfect symmetrical brown circles; the areolae jutted out, the size of thumb tips. She held my face to her breast as I sucked down one delectable nipple, swiping it with my tongue. Every so often I was rewarded with a needful little–

“I think I hear whimpering!”

“That’s so  hot.”

“Why doesn’t he just fuck her already?!”

“Who says he’s not?”

I threw my hands in the air. “OK, how is that not driving you crazy!”

“They make a good point though…” Savannah grinned, eyes wide, panting  with unmistakable desire. “We could have sex, if you want. I mean, I hope you want.”

“Are… are you sure?”

“Spencer, I need  this. I need it so bad. I’ve been thinking about this ever since RA training. Ever since I saw your perfect freaking dick in the goddamn shower…!”

Damn. No wonder she’d been so ready to write off my girls’ flirtations as “girls get horny too.” I’d never been with a girl this turned on. She threw her legs in the air and wriggled out of her thong. They came back down on either side of me, widespread and ready to make good on her request.

Shaved. Shaved smooth as glass. So smooth she must have shaved them only just now in the shower before coming up to meet me. Two glistening pink lips, crested by a prominent pink clit. She began to rub it as I stared.

“I don’t ever even talk like this, but god, I just need you to fuck me, Spencer. I need it. Please. I want you so bad.”

“She’s begging  for it, you guys!”

“I knew I liked her.”

“What’s he saying? Is he doing it?”

“Are they doing it?”

“Shhhhh!”

Every muscle in my body clenched up. “Hold that thought, Savannah.”

Tossing my sheets over Savannah’s naked, ready-to-be-fucked body was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I didn’t even bother to cover up myself . I meant to tear someone a new asshole and get right back to it with as little delay as possible. Savannah had made damn sure I didn’t dawdle.

I threw open my door and took a single imperious stride into the hall so I could close the door and let Savannah maintain her privacy. Not that she seemed to notice, masturbating with her eyes closed beneath my sheets, panting  with lust. “Hurry,” she whined.

“All right, that’s…!”

The girls packing the hall outside my room didn’t comprise the entirety of the floor. No, maybe only half. A little over, I deduced, counting. Almost twenty. Some still in party clothes, some in their PJs, some in comfy night-in attire, some in nothing more than their underwear. Some literally in  their underwear, hands jerking out of waistlines with startled gasps at being caught pink-handed.

“What in the hell…?!”

Casey, whom I had long since deduced was the eavesdropper in chief, stood before me. “Oh. Uh, hey homie.”

“What in god’s name do you all think you’re doing?!”

“Oh. Um, yeah. Just, you know… Hangin’ out. How bouchu ?”

I surveyed the eavesdropping assembly. Most of them had the decency to look ashamed. Most. Of course, most of them were staring at where my cock was tenting  out my boxers, too. Because of fucking course they were.

“Everybody, every last one of you, in the lounge. RIGHT NOW! ” I thundered. It was unlike me to raise my voice in confrontation, but I had Savannah goddamn Grey  in my bed, naked, pleading for intimacy, and these pervy clowns were the only thing standing between me and giving it to her.

As I had a chance to take stock, I was surprised by some of the faces in the crowd. Tori and Katrina, both people I expected more maturity from. Two of the triplets, betraying their usual disdain for floor goings-on. Dana, Charlie, Destiny, Lex, Jo, Andi, Nikki… Shit, even Peyton and Sydney were there! Evidently their desire to be part of the clique had overridden their non-hetero leanings.

I was still in my boxers, still achingly hard. That ought to have intimidated me, but by now, with this crowd, I knew it was one thing that would absolutely hold their attention. I stood in the doorway, blockading them in as they shuffled to find seating. Jordyn, in a powder blue bra and panties decorated with candles and barrels for some reason, made an effort to conceal herself with her arms, but after a moment, seeing half a dozen of her floormates dressed in hardly any more, gave it up.

“All right. I am in the middle of what had started as an excellent date. A fact you all decided to make yourselves aware of! So I am going to make this short and sweet.” I surveyed the lot. “I am not your surrogate boyfriend. I am your RA. I am here to support you, not be a target for whatever excess lust you can’t take care of on your own. Listening at my door while I have a woman over? Do you have any idea how… how… creepy  that is?”

Chins lowered. Not many of them low  enough not to still be checking out my madly throbbing manhood, though. “Unacceptable. Unacceptable! To think, at the start of the year, I thought they wouldn’t trust me  around the lot of you , but now I can see we got that all the way backwards! Tonight was the worst, but it’s not only that. The way you carried on at the beach today? Not all of you, but if you’re even wondering if I mean you, I absolutely do.”

Casey spoke up. “It’s on me, brah. I was feeling maybe a lil jelly, and I got stupid, and then they wanted to know what I was creepin’ on. It’s my bad. You don’t gotta  yell at everybody.”

“Noble, for someone I just caught playing with herself while trying to leer at me through my peephole,” I observed dryly. “Did you go up and down the hall inviting everybody to join in? No? Yeah, I thought not.”

“We’re sorry, man. We just really like –”

“Save it. Apologize to me later, when I’m not with anybody. When I’m fully dressed, and while you’re  fully dressed. How about that for starters. I swear, tomorrow I’m going to make it my mission to find every last boy-crazy one of you a goddamn boyfriend.”

Tori looked up, frowning. “That’s not your place to–”

“Is your  place staking out my bedroom, listening to me with a woman?” That shut her up. “For now… if I hear a solitary peep outside my room tonight, I’ll write up every last one of you for harassment. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in the lot of you right now.”

I set my jaw. “Now get back to your rooms, and give me a few minutes of goddamn privacy! ”

It felt like my voice was still echoing around the lounge as they began shuffling out. A good number of them were crying, almost all of them at least sniffling a bit as they marched past me. Good. Served them right.

I gave myself a moment to calm down. My own tears weren’t far off. What a fucking day. Once I thought I could keep it together, I headed back to my room. For once, every door was closed, and there wasn’t a single person in the hall.

I knocked softly to announce myself before entering my room. Savannah was right where I’d left her. The sheets shuffled softly over her. What a good sport, keeping herself warmed up for me. I flopped into bed next to her. When I didn’t immediately dive on top of her, her hand fell still and she turned to look at me.

“Are you OK? What the heck was going on out there?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just twenty peeping Tom’s lurking outside my room listening to us.”

“Twenty…?” Her eyes widened.

“Ish. God, these girls.”

“So, did you stage a little orgy to calm them down, tide them over for the night?”

“Pff, they wish. I swear, I don’t know what I’m going to do with them.”

Something sultry lurked at the corner of Savannah’s lips. “Maybe instead, think about what you’re going to do with me?”

“I promise you, I have thought of very little else since the first time we kissed.”

That something bloomed into a pleased smile as I planted one on her chin. Rather than move up to the lips, though, I began trailing them down her slender neck, between her breasts. (I slowed down a bit there, but only a bit. I was on a mission.) Down her stomach, where she craned her neck to watch. My sense was that she was curious, or maybe nervous, that I meant to go near the scar, but instead my trail went straight down, across that perfectly smooth pelvis, stopping only when we found a clit. There I stopped for a nice long while.

Savannah clutched at my pillow and threw it over her face to muffle her moans. Sexy as hell. Finally those nosy girls had something worth listening to – the pillow didn’t do nearly enough. Fresh off of chewing them out, my tongue now had a lashing it actually wanted to deliver.

She came so much faster than I’d expected, smooth, damp thighs clamping down around my face until she remembered I’d need to breathe if I were to continue. Which I heartily did. I’d always been a giver. Credit my first girlfriend back in high school and my buddy who’d assured me cunnilingus was the surest route to a woman’s heart. She’d certainly led me to believe that he was right.

Each orgasm hit her harder than the last. The second time, I wondered if she might be faking, being  nice, but as I studied her, she rammed her hips forward and buried me in soft , gooey pussy. Fakers weren’t so desperate for more. I indulged her. For this incredible woman, I would have gone on until my jaw fell off. Honestly, it threatened to. She didn’t complain when I had to slow a bit, nor when I let my fingers take over for a while. She didn’t stop coming, either. Finally, as she gasped, even squeaked, out another orgasm, I pressed my tongue firmly against that swollen little nubbin until she fell still.

She was still wide-eyed and panting at the ceiling when I crawled up a bit and gently pressed my lips to that scar. For a few seconds only, but for a few seconds. Then I climbed up next to her, face to face. I thought we might kiss, or if she was squeamish about her cum all over my face, maybe just cuddle, let me bask and feel like a stud for a bit.

Instead, suddenly she threw herself over me and hugged the ever-living hell out of me. With her arms, yes, but also her thighs, her neck curling around mine, even her belly pressing to mine like it was trying to find some way to keep them stuck together. Neither of us said a word. We just lay there like that for a while, sweaty bodies pressed together in pure happiness.

Eventually, before she could fall asleep on me – god, even then I hadn’t forgotten she had rounds to do again at 2 – I spoke up. “I did OK, huh?” A shameless bit of fishing for an attaboy, but hey.

“That was… wow. Unbelievable.”

“Good. You were amazing.”

Savannah giggled softly into my shoulder. “Oh whatever. I just lay there like a sponge while you worked your magic.”

“No, I know. I’m just really into spongey chicks is all.”

She laughed, sat up and hit me with my pillow. “Oh my god. I’m seriously dizzy right now from all that. I’ve never  come like that before. Not even close. That was so good, I’m not sure I ever have  come before. Maybe I just got close and thought I did.” She shook her head.

“You know, all I was hoping for was a little pat on the back. You don’t have to lay it on that thick.”

“I’m serious!” She rolled around nimbly until she was kneeling between my legs. “You think I’m just being nice, but if you know me at all, you know I’m never fake nice. I call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

I rolled my eyes with a laugh. “Oh please, you’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t. I just said I wasn’t fake.” She inched back, and then bent down, hands sinking beneath the waistband of my boxers. “So why don’t you lie back and let me… be nice.”

I wasn’t about to say no to that. Right then, I didn’t think I could say no to her for anything.

She pulled them down and tossed them behind her. They hadn’t hit the floor before her tongue was on my cock. Savannah’s big hazel eyes stayed locked on mine as she licked and licked and kissed and licked up and down my shaft. She didn’t take me into her mouth for more than a few seconds, nor more than a couple inches. Not for some time. Like she was edging me. Like she wanted her blowjob to go on all night.

I did my best to grant her wish. Marisa had possessed unparalleled skill at oral; she’d literally studied it at a postgraduate level. She was generous about it, too, or really, she liked showing off. At any rate, her prowess had been cause to learn a few strategies to drag it out so she didn’t get to gloat out how easily she’d gotten me off.

Unfortunately, my best trick was to think about the things that were presently stressing me out. In this case, that meant the Hotties. Strutting around the beach three-quarters naked, flirting and giggling and bending at the waist – from the front, from behind – and long, steamy side by side masturbation sessions in the shower, masturbating again while a pair of lipstick lesbians fucked on the opposite side of an inch-and-a-half divide. Camping outside my room to catch trace whispers of me fooling around. Sweet little Dana, unable to resist slipping a few fingers into her panties while Casey whispered details.

I should call up Dana’s mom. We could discipline her daughter straight. Make sure she knew what a bad, bad girl she’d been. Cuff her to her bedposts so she couldn’t masturbate while we proved, right there on Danielle’s bunk right over her head, that I could fuck whoever I wanted, and that she was absolutely not allowed to touch herself while she listened.

I blinked, returning to my present moment. Oh, shit. How in the fuck did I come to the thought of Dana’s slutty mom while a naked Savannah Grey licked my cock like it was her favorite dessert?

At least I missed her. It went all over my sheets, and a little on my torso, but no accidental unwarned  facial for what I was already praying would become my new girlfriend. Savannah didn’t let up, though. She looked surprised by the suddenness of it, but then wrapped her lips around the head and slurped softly up and down, sucking down what was left.

Then she kept sucking. And kept sucking.

“Oh, you don’t have to keep on, um, wow, doing… that. Wow.” She was really sucking. Before, it had been teasing . A gentle, sweet, adoring tease. Her eyes had been doing as much of the work as her tongue. Now, those eyes were closed, but her eyelashes fluttered as if in apparent bliss. It was a hell of a show. Even so, compared with the redoubled enthusiasm of her lips, it was nothing. Was she squeamish about cum, only going full speed ahead once the threat was past? I didn’t know, and I sure as hell didn’t care. She never let me soften a hair , tongue and lips and neck working with saintly devotion. At some point, she even did that technique I’d only ever seen in porn where she was jacking  me off with one hand while sucking what her hand wasn’t working.

Her intensity grew. And grew. And grew. I’d never seen anything like it. She was tireless. Insatiable. Almost… worshipful. For a moment, my brain opened itself to that sexist old question: how much practice at sucking cocks does this woman have…?!  Though the more I watched her go, the more I suspected that the answer to that question was “little to very little.” She wasn’t employing techniques; she was slaking her own thirst. Not expertise, but rather raw enthusiasm. She was loving bestowing this gift to me as much as I had with her. No, more.

She really was the nicest girl in the world.

“Savannah? Where you  at, girl? Over.”

Fuck. Carmen’s voice issued from the walkie talkie buried somewhere in the sheets beside me. How was it already 2 AM? I swear I’d seen it was barely 1 when I finished going down on her. I must not have read the clock right.

I sighed in exasperation. After masturbating in the shower earlier, twice, and my earlier explosion with Savannah, I wasn’t all that close to another climax. “So close, and yet so far,” I grumbled.

Only Savannah didn’t let up. Not a hair.

“Carmen to Savannah, do you hear me, over.” Snippier this time.

“It’s OK, I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “You’re freaking amazing, though.”

She still didn’t stop. Had she somehow not heard me? Or the walkie…? The whole “I’m oblivious to everything but your cock” treatment was flattering, don’t get me wrong, but an aggravated Carmen complaining about it on the walkie was a big push in the opposite direction.

“Did you fall asleep or what, chica? EARTH TO SAVANNAH, WAKE YOUR DIVINE BOOTY UP PLEASE,” Carmen called, plainly annoyed. “Overrrrr.” 2 AM rounds usually came with a bit of added irritation. At Rowland, some of the RAs skipped them altogether if they thought they could get away with it. Bigger staff, easier to avoid getting ratted out. Higgins was just the six of us. I used to be part of that whiny camp, but once you’d found a resident or two passed out drunk in a lounge, vulnerable to predators or choking on their own vomit, you started to take it more seriously. I did, at least.

“I think you better go,” I said gently, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She didn’t open them. As she plummeted her lips down almost to the base of my shaft, the veil slid right back into place.

“WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP,” barked Carmen into her walkie. The two secondary RAs began on the basement floor, so she was probably outside Savannah’s room, banging on the door. Certainly annoying whoever was on primary duty, but hopefully not waking up her residents. Except she definitely was, and I knew it. Shit.

As Savannah’s tongue threatened to initiate tornado drills around my cock, I sighed and picked up the walkie. Deep breaths. “Hey, Carmen. She and I are, um, addressing some issues up on my floor. We’re wrapping up, and she’ll be down in a couple, OK?”

“Spencer? Over.”

Savannah moaned into my cock, then shifted to a two-handed jack as she sucked greedily on my balls.

“The one, the only. Over.”

“Hey big bro!” she chirped. She’d tried to make the nickname stick during training, but it had never spread beyond her. Didn’t stop her from trying, though. “I’ll just come on up and meet you guys up there. Over.”

“Come for me,” whispered Savannah, her breath soft and cool against my slick wet shaft. “One more. Give me one more.”

I made sure her mouth resumed its erstwhile occupation before pressing the talk button. “No, this is, um, sort of personal. But she’ll be down in a couple. Promise. Over.”

“Fucking come for me, Spencer. Fucking come, please,” Savannah whimpered, attacking with a frenzy of lip and tongue, desperate to please me yet her know-how permitting only scorched earth cocksucking. I was getting lightheaded.

“Oh. If you’re sure,” grumbled Carmen. “Over. Boo. You’re totally sure?”

I hadn’t thought she could get me there this fast. She was sucking my cock like a woman possessed. I pressed down the talk button even as Savannah wrapped her lips around the side of my cock, flying up and down one side, then the other. “I… I…”

“Come for me!” she wailed.

“Oh FUCK ,” I groaned. As I came. She’d felt it readying  in my balls. The woman didn’t miss a drop this time. My cock could feel her gulping down splash after splash.

Then I let go of the button.

“Wow. So… you two have a good night,” said Carmen with a knowing giggle. “Secondary over and out.”

Savannah was still licking, still sucking.

“Well, that was embarrassing.” Not much, though. Only so embarrassed you could be having someone find out you were fooling around with the likes of Savannah Grey . Even other girls would have to be pretty impressed I’d managed to–

“You two are so  disgusting!” came Janis’s voice over the walkie. Then a couple chastising  thuds from the ceiling.

Oh right. The primary was on this channel, too. All right, now  I felt  embarrassed.

“I think that’s all I got in the tank,” I said gently, stroking her hair until finally her eyes opened and she looked up at me, my flagging (but barely flagging) cock splitting her cheeks. After a moment, she finally let it slip out.

“I wanted to finish,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? No no no no no, you don’t get to apologize for doing that . Except maybe when we go to talk to Ramona Monday morning, before Janis can get in there and snitch.” Professional snitches, that was what I’d called us, wasn’t it? There was no universe where Janis didn’t make a complaint.

“Yeah. Ramona’s totally in your pocket, though. If she didn’t care about Quinn and Leigh and the shower–”

“Don’t forget the skanky half-shirts.”

“–and the half-shirts, she’s not going to mind me.”

“How could anyone mind you. ”

She grinned, then crawled up my body and nestled in under my arm. “So I did good?”

“I am going to think, and then probably dream, all night to get the right word for how good you did. That was probably the best sexual experience of my life.”

“Probably?” she snickered.

“Well, like you said, the mini-orgy out there. None of them as cute  as you, but they have numbers.”

“I’ll try harder next time. Promise.”

I gave her a little squeeze. “Now that, ah, rounds are done, do you want to stay the night? I promise, you can barely hear Janis snoring upstairs.”

Savannah looked at me, those dreamy eyes of hers broadcasting her delight at my offer. She laid down her cheek on my shoulder and smiled. Her eyes slid shut, and the both of us drifted off to blissful sleep in moments.

I’d promised her I’d dream of her, but instead somehow, there was Dana’s mom of all people, waiting to help me train her naughty daughter. She was very, very inventive.

Chapter Three: Apologies

I had to hand it to Dana’s mom. I’d met her once, for a few minutes, and I remembered her face vividly. Not only was she achingly beautiful, but she knew her way around a dreamscape. It started where we’d started, me on my hands and knees soldiering through my door tags (though in this dream, I at least had the right names), and suddenly there she was, wolf-whistling at my behind.

“Mom, gross! He’s my RA. He’s in charge of me for a whole year. You’re gonna get me in trouble!” whined Dana .

“Don’t you worry, sweetie. Mommy’s going to make sure you don’t ever get in trouble again.” She leered down at me. “Is one of these room’s my Dana’s? And does it have a bed?”

“At least one,” answered dream me. “C’mon, follow me.”

We were suddenly in Dana’s room, though it was fully decorated already. No unpacking, no missing sheets. “You’re going to make sure my baby girl is well taken care of, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’ll take care of her.” Dream me was kind of a pig, it turned out. “She got  any special needs I ought to know about, Mrs. Dana’s Mom?”

“She gets really fussy when she’s horny,” the woman answered. Topless, suddenly, somehow. Her tits were right out of the cheesiest porn, same as her dialogue. “And her pussy leaks like a sieve until it gets nice and plugged. Do you have anything to plug her with?”

At her side, Dana nodded pleadingly even as she eyed her mother with mortification. “So leaky.”

It was my turn to be naked and porny. “I think this should keep her plugged nice and tight, ma’am.” I waved my cock around. It was several feet long, swinging around the room like a wrecking ball. Very self-assured, dream me.

“See, sweetheart? You were so worried your RA wouldn’t have a nice, big, delicious cock to fill you with.” She laughed at Dana’s embarrassment at having this fact exposed. “Poor girl has only ever known high school boys. She hasn’t a clue how to satisfy a real man.”

Even in my dream, I cringed a bit at my own apparent subconscious desire to be heralded as “real man” material.

“Well before visiting hours are over…” My god, I was still concerning myself with policy enforcement during a sex dream. If there were a way to tell her without being disciplined, Ramona would be proud. “Would you like to give her a lesson?”

“Isn’t that nice, sweetie? Your RA is going to help you learn how to satisfy him. Now watch me, and try to do what I do. All right?”

It got blurry then. I was on the bottom bunk, cock upthrust like the mast of a pirate ship, as Dana’s naked mom crawled up and took me into her mouth. She was a pro. Literally, I think; somewhere in there the dream decided she was a real porn star, sending her daughter to college as a legacy admission to follow in her footsteps with a B.A in the pornographic arts. Anyway, she went to town on it. Spitting, slurping, gagging, an unnecessarily theatrical blowjob of the highest caliber.

Simultaneously, I was also on the top bunk, Dana practicing what she was learning, or had already learned, or something. She gripped my shaft in two hands – two hands at least a foot apart – and pumped gently as she planted kisses on it. Not sexy kisses, even. More like the way she might kiss her pet kitten. Sweet, innocent, adoring. Dana’s mom was on that bunk too, taking a handful of her daughter’s hair and nudging her down the pole. It must have been tickling the pit of her stomach, Dana’s mom pushed her so deep.

“That’s my girl. She was on varsity last year! We’re so proud.” Varsity what, she didn’t say, but I interpreted it as varsity blowjobbing.

Dana’s mom pumped her mouth up and down, not even looking at her. She merely stared at me with a proud parental smile as she fucked my cock with her daughter’s face. “Do you think she’s cut out to be a Higgins Hottie?”

“She’s a natural, Mrs. Dana’s Mom. She’ll be ready to join in the shower dogpile orgy fuckathons by fall break, mark my words.” Marisa was due credit for the presence of that word salad in my brain, I had no doubt. “We’re having a floor program for it on Sunday.”

But I was also still on the bottom bunk, where my cock was getting wetter and stiffer by the minute as Dana’s mom still moaned and slurped away, drooling unremittingly along my preposterous dream shaft. So  wet. So, so hard. Was she getting… less good, though? No less determined – if anything, she was sucking more doggedly by the minute. But… Hang on. Something was… What was…

“Look who’s finally awake!”

“Dana’s mom, you’re destroying that cock,” I murmured as my eyes fluttered open, mouth dry and feeling like it was filled with cotton.

Savannah, still hovering – naked – over my actual, regular-sized cock laughed. “Dana’s mom…? Should I even ask?”

Oh fuck. “Whoa, were you… in my sleep…?”

Savannah graced me with a nice long lick. Then a couple more. I thought she was simply going to continue when she finally remembered words. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up forever. You seemed like you were having a really fun dream, though, so I thought I’d give you a nudge. How did I do?”

“They were – you  were, I mean – incredible.” I rubbed my eyes as she resumed her leisurely sucking. Every time I blinked, Dana and her mom were there, teaching and learning. No. No falling back asleep. If Savannah was going to cement her place in the hall of fame with a wake-up blowjob on day two of our relationship (not that we’d decided to have one) (not yet) then I wasn’t going to let some dream sluts steal any of her thunder.

It occurred to me it was fairly dark outside to be waking up. After a yawn, I looked over at the clock.

“Savannah, it’s not even 6 AM.”

“I know. I’m sorry. You can sleep after. You were just so cute, making all these little noises, and you were so… oh my god, Spencer.” She engulfed me between her lips for a moment. A thin line of saliva threatened to trickle out when she slid back up. “You were so hard. I swear, I have never  said anything  like this before, but I really, really  like your penis.”

I propped myself up on my elbows, but she went right back to work anyway. “Hey. I really like you, too, you know. You don’t have to do this, to like, show off or whatever. I’m crazy, crazy attracted to you already.”

She snickered, an awkward thing with a cock in her mouth. “Have to? Spencer, I…” She shook her head, searching for what she wanted to say, all the while jacking me off two-handed. Apparently also not a dream-exclusive happening either, though it felt better in the dream. Savannah didn’t seem to know quite how to avoid putting a little twist in it, each hand unfortunately doing so in a slightly different axis. I didn’t have it in me to invite her to stop twice, though.

“Let’s stay right here in bed all day,” she said finally.

I grinned. “You’re too much.”

“I’m serious! You don’t believe me? You turned me on so much last night that I literally dreamed  I was doing this. Guess you were dreaming along similar lines, except about some girl’s mom.” She grinned again, stole a few sucks.

“You’re crazy.”

“Crazy about this thing.” Three eyes-closed licks. Left, right and center. “So be crazy with me. I’m serious. You and me, right here. All. Day. Let’s stay right here and give your snoopy residents something to be jealous of.”

“I think they’re already plenty jealous.”

Savannah didn’t acknowledge my grumbling with a cessation. She kept right on sucking me off, her incredible ass up in the air, the dawn light making her glow like some kind of cocksucking goddess. Or she-demon.

Then I was back on my back, staring at the ceiling. For a time, I tried to pick out the spot I’d hit that night with Quinn. Then I imagined Janis sleeping in her bed directly above us, glowering judgmentally at Savannah and I through pillow , mattress, frame, floor and ceiling for our iniquities. In fact, though the floor-to-ceiling sound buffering was pretty solid, I thought I heard her moving at some point. Probably getting ready for church, to tell her church buddies about the sinners who’d gotten each other off live on air last night.

She wasn’t wrong to be pissed. That was pretty gross, objectively, no matter how fucking hot it had been in the moment. We’d have to apologize. If we were lucky, and if we really, really  groveled, maybe she wouldn’t rat us out to Ramona. If she hadn’t already.

I barely managed to not chuckle at a stray thought (never a good look when your cock is in a woman’s mouth), that if Janis kept quiet, I’d give her a turn. I wondered if any of my residents would take up that offer. I wondered what Dana was wearing to sleep right that moment. What her mom was wearing to sleep. How many of my Hotties had gone to bed with damp panties on account of their boy toy of an RA lecturing them in his underwear with his cock aching to burst free.

I came. Savannah sucked down every last drop, and then slurped deeper for more.

She crawled up and flopped on top of me, her hair piling on my neck, its scent filling my nostrils. Her body wasn’t merely warm, it was hot. Hot like it was hot in the way I usually thought about it being hot. She sighed happily against my shoulder.

“Good morning.”

“I’ll say. That might be the best wake-up of my life.”

She peered up, eyes narrow. “Might be?”

“I mean, stiff competition. Like this one time, my high school girlfriend, on my birthday…” I affected   an expression  of rapturous nostalgia. “She woke me up with a pony .”

The joke played. She squeezed me tighter. “Maybe in a bit you can give me a ride, make a fuller comparison.” Then she clapped a hand over her mouth, giggling. “Oh my god, I did not  just say something that  slutty!”

“I still like you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Enough to let me do that again when you’re ready?”

“Sorry, I have a once a day maximum on blowjobs.”

“You think I’m kidding.”

“I think it’s my turn.”

“You don’t have to, like, pay me back or anything. I actually… kinda, um, like? Doing that? With you, anyway.”

“Yes, because duty is the only reason a man might want to go down on you.” I rolled my eyes, though Savannah at least had the grace to look sheepish at being called out. “It’s actually kind of unfair. Like, you’re really  pretty. I know you know that. I’m not even complimenting you right now. I think I’m accusing you of prettiness.”

“Ugh, at this hour, with no makeup, I think I can still plead not guilty.”

“Oh whatever. But still. Even pretty girls, you know, same as good-looking guys probably, sometimes, you know, surprise you when you get their clothes off. If you know what I mean. But my god, woman, you are… flawless.”

But she didn’t smile, didn’t laugh, didn’t banter. After a moment, I craned my neck so I could make eye contact. “Hey, did I say something wrong?” I’d only meant to tell her, in whatever stupid way that tumbled out of my mouth, that she had a really nice pussy, on top of everything else. Had I fucked it up that badly, that quickly?

“No, you’re fine.”

“Hey, Savannah… Hey. Talk to me. If you don’t like the way I’m complimenting you, say so, OK? The last thing I want to do is upset you.”

It took her a moment to work the words out, but to my relief, she did. “It’s just… you don’t have to pretend to be all cool with it, you know. Like, the little kissing thing last night, that was sweet, but you really don’t need to.”

It took me a minute – the sun was still coming up, for crying  out loud – but I eventually realized what she was talking about. “Wait, you mean… the scar?”

“No, the tiny mole on my hip. Of course  the scar. ”

I shook my head. “I swear I am not just saying this, but I honestly forgot it was there. Hand to god. I’m not some creeper who’s like ‘oh, check it out, super hot’ or something, but I really couldn’t care less.”

“But I care.” She sat up. That long, nasty pink and orange gash drew the eye. Impressive, considering all the other attention-worthy bits in the periphery. It was the sort of thing that assholes on the internet would complain about in an instagram pic of this perfect 10 rocking a skimpy bikini, a test of character for the viewer that couldn’t begin to tarnish the quality of the view. I didn’t try to hide noticing it. “I care that it’s there.”

“Can I ask? I don’t want to pry. I can tell it’s a sore subject.” I grimaced. “I really didn’t mean that to be a pun. Sorry.”

“I didn’t notice it was one until you pointed it out.”

“Sorry,” I repeated. “But really, what happened?”

Back during RA training, we’d been split into teams for an activity. During the activity, Vickie had pointed across to where Savannah sat on the other team. Her shirt had ridden up a bit, and the scar was conspicuous from our angle. Where it was, right on the side of her lower abdomen, probably made it a veritable certainty that if any midriff was showing, the scar would be, too.

I don’t remember any more what  Vickie had said, exactly. I remember I hadn’t liked that she’d pointed it out, but also that it wasn’t anything so bad, and that I was a little annoyed with myself for being so overprotective of a woman I barely knew. Then Janis chimed in that we should start a pool. I really  hadn’t liked that, no self-recrimination needed that  time.

That said, discussion had ensued, and I’d put forth a theory.

“It’s not even a good story, really,” Savannah said, looking down at it. She probed it with a few fingers gently. “No bear attack, no you-should-see-the-other-girl stuff. About as un-badass as it gets. I don’t talk about it pretty much ever. Not even because of how it looks, but it’s just so–”

“The suspense is killing me.”

Her lips twisted upward, if only for a moment. “Sorry. So anyway, yeah. I was… I dunno, twelve? Eleven? Hmm, summer before seventh grade, so twelve. I was at camp – I did this church camp thing every summer. It was this really cool camp where they paired up seeing kids with kids with visual impairments – blind kids, that is.”

“I think I’ve been an RA long enough to speak fluent  politically correct.”

A full chuckle, this time. “Right, forgot  my audience. So yeah, we were out in the woods, and we were looking for flowers, my campy buddy and I. Steph. Err, I was looking, anyway. You know what I meant. We were trying to find the best smelling flowers we could for this medal. Not a real medal, just these tin can lids the  counselors wrote ‘first prize,’ ‘second prize,’ and so on on . Anyway, and I wasn’t paying attention to where I was stepping, and I tripped over… I mean, basically nothing? Like a bump on the ground. Stepped on it wrong and down I went. Right down a frickin’ hill.”

“Ow.”

“Yeah, ow. So when I picked myself up, I remember looking at my hands and knees first. My one knee hurt so  bad, I was sure I’d mangled it or something. I was scuffed up and all, but I could walk, and I thought about Steph stuck out in the woods with no guide, and I was like ‘oh snap.’ Not that she was actually in danger. Other groups were in earshot and all. Anyway, I was apparently in shock, because it wasn’t until I went to brush the dirt off and saw my hand was totally covered in blood that I even noticed anything had happened.”

To my mild surprise, Savannah disrupted the story by hefting her boobs at me, but she quickly explained. “These stupid things were just sprouting, and I wasn’t really used to not being able to see my tummy, you know? You probably don’t know. Why would you know? But yeah, I was so in shock it didn’t even hurt at first. Can you believe it? My stomach has a giant hole in it, and I’m worried about my skinned knees. That’s actually how I could tell you were in shock after the shower fight.”

“You weren’t wrong.”

“But yeah, to this day I have no idea what actually punctured me. The doctor said it was probably a stick, or maybe a jagged rock, but it wasn’t really rocky out there. So yeah, probably a stick.”

“All that from a stick? You’d think you would’ve been, I dunno, disemboweled or something.”

“It did some damage to the muscle tissue, but missed my organs, thank god. One thing to say ‘it’s all good, we’re in earshot’ and another to think Steph might’ve been scarred for life in a totally different way trying to find me by grunts and moans to give me first aid while I bled out.” She shrugged. “So yeah, that’s the tale. Three surgeries later, and this is as good as it gets. This disgusting freaking thing. I know, I know, you don’t think it’s so bad, but … yech.”

“Man. I’m so sorry that happened.”

Her smile was brighter than my paltry condolences merited, but still not bright. “Thanks. That’s why I never walk off of paths any more. Sidewalks only, please and thank you. I don’t know if I’d still panic, but I used to.”

Something clicked when she said that. “Is that why you sat out the trust walks during training?”

“You remember that?”

“Yeah. I thought you weren’t feeling well or something, sitting off by yourself on the courtyard picnic table.”

“I wasn’t. But yeah. Thank goodness Ramona was understanding about it.” She shivered. “Yeesh. Last night was the best night I’ve had since… I don’t know, maybe ever. And I still get queasy thinking about doing that. Takes  me right back to camp.”

I looked at her. Looked hard. Gradually, my eyes were drawn to the site. “Just so I understand…”

She put a hand over it. “What.” Then both hands. Fine by me – kept her from covering anything else.

“You were walking in the woods with a blind  girl, but you  managed to fall down a hill and almost kill yourself. And then the blind girl came and saved you .”

She telegraphed the pillow slug, but I let her have it. “Shut up! It could have happened to anyone!”

“Didn’t happen to your friend Steph. You’re sure she shouldn’t have been leading you?”

She laughed and punched the pillow for its inadequacy in stopping my teasing. “See, this is why I don’t talk about it. It’s so  embarrassing! Everybody thinks it’s like a knife fight or a weirdly shaped burn scar or something.”

“Actually? I thought you were an organ donor.”

Savannah balked. “Organ donor? What butcher of a surgeon would leave a scar like that ?! And what organ do you take from there? Did your high school not teach human anatomy or something?”

Organ donor had been my guess in the hypothetical pot back in training. Vickie had rolled her eyes so hard I’d worried they might unscrew themselves from their sockets and fall out. It had been Janis, actually, who’d sarcastically asked if I thought they’d removed her intestines.

“I guess I didn’t think it through. I just thought you seemed like the sort of person who would donate an organ. I guess it sounds pretty–”

Her mouth fell on mine and silenced me with every inch of her. I’m not sure anybody had ever hugged me so tight. She kissed me so fiercely my head banged back into the headboard after a minute, which at least earned me a little pampering before cuddles resumed.

“So. Um. Are you ready yet?”

“For…?” I blinked. “Oh! Really, I’m OK.”

“And really, I want to suck your cock again. And again, and again, and again. I don’t have anywhere to be until tomorrow afternoon.”

“We’ll probably need to eat at some point.”

“That sounds like a you problem . I got all I need right here.” She gave my slightly invigorated manhood a little stroke.

I squeezed her ass right back. I definitely would not mind an opportunity to get used to that. “It might be a little while before it’s ready to do much. That was a long night. Early morning, too.”

“Feels like it’s perking up to me.” She arched her eyebrows a few times.

“Perking up, yes. Trust me, though, you could suck on that thing for an hour before you coaxed out a drop at this point.”

“Mmmm, sounds wonderful.”

Honestly? Right up until the moment it re-entered her mouth, I’d thought she was merely being cute. Slutty cute, but cute. I gave her a minute – I couldn’t not  give her a minute – before I redoubled my statement. She’d gotten me off several times the night before, and then awakened me with a scorcher of a blowjob.

She was Savannah Grey, yes, but as for me, I was still only human.

“I really don’t mind,” she said in a brief – so brief – pause.

I brushed her hair out of her eyes. It was a move that always went well, brushing the hair out of the eyes. Savannah, however, was not deterred in the least. She adopted exactly the sort of no-rush, suck-all-day pace that a woman would need to make this thing happen.

“Hey, so while you’ve managed to upgrade yourself from most amazing woman at Lakeview to most amazing woman in the known universe, unfortunately I think biology isn’t on our side at the moment. You’re sure I can’t–”

“I don’t mind,” she said between breaths. That was it. Then back in her mouth. Her sweet, adoring, insatiable mouth.

“I know, babe.” I winced. “Oh man, we hooked up last night and I already ‘ babed ’ you. Yeesh.”

She smiled. Kind of. Kept  sucking.

“Anyway, yeah, I was just thinking, you know, I was kinda hungry. That was pretty intense last night.” The most intense night I’d ever had with a woman without having sex with her, in fact. “What say we get up, clean up, and we can meet up for breakfast over at Penderdast. Or we could go off-campus. Kinda be nice  not to eat with the girls pointing and snickering.”

“Shhhh.” Kept  sucking.

“Come on, I’ll be up for it later. Just give me a bit to recover, yeah? And you need to return the duty walkie. Those things are older than I am. They die before midnight if you don’t get them on the charger by eight.” I laughed awkwardly.

Savannah looked up. It was almost a glare, if a woman could glare with a cock in their mouth. After a moment, she let it plop out. Damn. I really  was pretty hard. “Do I not turn you on?”

“What? Oh my god, no – I mean, yes! Yes. Holy shit, yes.”

“So then why won’t you let me? Are you tired of blowjobs?”

“It’s not that I’m ‘tired of blowjobs’ – pretty sure you have to be an especially lecherous sultan before you tire of blowjobs – but just, what’s the rush?” I wasn’t ready to tell her that “especially lecherous sultan” had been a favorite sex game of Marisa’s, though for my part, roleplaying the harem boy hadn’t always been my fav.

“I’m just horny ,” Savannah whined. Then gave me a lick that turned into another minute or two of sucking me off. “So do you want something other than a blowjob?.”

“Do I… what now? It’s not a matter of want , I promise.”

“We could do other things. If you really wanted to, you know, go down on me or whatever, maybe we could try that thing where we both do it at the same time.”

Sixty-nining? The way she was struggling to get the words out, I was surprised she’d even heard of that, much less offered to try it. Luckily, she improved upon her offer before I had to spell out to her what I’d learned about the act and its tendency to put nostrils adjacent to buttholes.

“We could have sex. I want to. I so  want  to. Do you want to?”

“Oh. Wow, yes. I do. I would love to. Just… not in the next ten minutes, you know?”

She frowned, somehow drawing the complete wrong conclusion. “So if you don’t want my mouth, and you don’t want my vagina…” Savannah glanced down at her unbelievable teardrop tits in a rather pointed manner. “Do you have some lotion or something? I’ve never used them like that before, but I know it’s a thing. It’d be fun to try. Do you want to? Please?”

“Hey, seriously, why don’t you lie back and let me–”

“ I don’t want that ,” she said hotly. Her cheeks flushed at the intensity of it. “I want you . That’s all.”

“I’m sorry, just… why  the rush? Like you said, we have all day. I’m not saying no. I’m only saying… later. That’s all. Showered up, with some food in us for a little energy so I’m not just a spud. I’ll have a little time to say something cute and clever instead of talking like an idiot like I have been all morning.” I sighed. “Figure out what we’re going to do about the Janis and Ramona situation. And what I’m going to do about those nosy freaking Hotties of mine.”

“Could you stop being an RA for ten freaking minutes? Did you not hear me say that was the best night of my whole stupid life? Because you didn’t say anything back except to remind me about the cheap shitty walkies! God, Spencer, I’m throwing myself  at you, but all you can talk about is work! Did I do something wrong?”

I could hear Vickie’s voice saying something snarky about hot girls and drama going hand in hand. She’d say it more cleverly than I could – not that she had any room to talk.

“Savannah, whoa. You’re amazing. Last night, this morning – amazing. Whatever we do next will be amazing too.”

“Then why are you so worried about Ramona? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re thinking about your little ‘Hotties.’ When are you ever not  thinking about them.  When I went to wash off my makeup last night, one of your girls was in there  brushing her teeth, and I swear I thought she was going to try to shank me with her toothbrush. No surprise they’re  the ones you’re thinking of while I’m  in here with your penis in my mouth. ”

“Hey, whoa there. I’m thinking about them because they’re a bunch of weirdos who were grouped up listening at the door last night. Listening to us fool around.” I didn’t tell her about them masturbating. “That’s it. I had a great time with you, and I want to keep having a great time with you without them acting like we enshrined voyeurism into our community agreement.”

Before I knew it, Savannah was on her feet. And… fuck. She was gathering up her clothes. Fuck! “Oh my god. I do not get you, Spencer. You have a naked woman in your bed – one you say  you find attractive – begging to go down on you. But you want to go eat crappy food court waffles and talk about our boss and PR and freaking Janis?! You’re seriously more interested in talking about what the jerk upstairs thinks about us hooking up than you are in taking me up in an offer to mmhrrmm  with my boobs?! I broke up with my boyfriend to be with you!”

Unfair, but I wasn’t one for counter-arguments. I didn’t want to be right. I wanted to be with Savannah. If I had to settle for a day as a lazy selfish blowjob recipient from the hottest girl I’d ever been in the same room with, then fine. But I wasn’t going to fight back, even if she was being crazy.

“Savannah, don’t be mad. Please. The sun is barely up, OK? I’m not thinking straight. Come on back to bed. I’m sorry. You’re right. You were being incredible, and I was being stupid.”

“Don’t grovel, Spencer. It’s a bad look on you.”

She was already halfway clothed, tugging her dress back into place. I stood up, put my hands on her shoulders in what I hoped was a manly fashion. “Stay. I want you to stay. Please.”

I would spend a lot of time in the near future pondering that morning’s events. Everybody was different when it came to sex and relationships. Had I pushed her that hard? It felt like it hadn’t taken much to persuade her to dump Price, but maybe diving into bed while the corpse of their relationship was still room temperature was too much for her. Maybe she was the sort of girl who couldn’t handle being single, even for a day, and she’d thought her aggressive approach would seal the deal. Maybe she was just horny, and very, very generous. Or – and it felt even more arrogant than the notion that I’d driven her mad with lust – perhaps she’d been into me for me even more intensely than I’d been into Savannah for Savannah.

No, no way I’d been that  charming. Ridiculous.

What else… Could it have been some kind of test? Certainly possible. Girls that hot could get away with stuff like that, and with her ex-boyfriend being an out-of-towner, I knew very little about Relationship Savannah.

Or…

No.

It couldn’t be, like… drugs. Right?

She’d been acting really  weird. Marisa was the most sensual person I’d ever met, and even she had never pleaded for me to give her a titty-fuck just because she was horny for me. Girls didn’t get  horny for that.

Did they?

Well, one did.

And god, that dream. What the hell was wrong with me.

When I asked Carmen to keep Saturday night’s goings-on under wraps, her response was a chipper “oh totally! I hope you guys had fun is all !” That was that. (She asked how far it went, but didn’t press when I said we were still feeling things out.)

Time to talk to Janis.

Not a single door was open on her floor. A fluorescent light was flickering at the north end of the hallway. One of her residents was exiting the bathroom in a robe as I walked by; she glared at me suspiciously as I walked past. It was the antithesis of my floor. Quiet, private, solitary.

And bathroom  girl had been a four , tops.

I knocked on Janis’s door. Her car was in the lot. I recognized it from car pooling  to a couple events during RA training. Hopefully it meant she was in.

The door swung open after a moment, and there stood Janis in sweats and a tank top. No bra, I noticed, though I wished I didn’t. Not my fault – she looked like she was auditioning to replace Rachel in a Friends  reboot with those things. Her hands were already on her hips.

Fuck. She was in.

“Well, look who it is. Where’s your little girlfriend?”

Savannah was older than her, and bigger, so I didn’t quite know where she got off with the “little” bullshit. This was a pride-swallowing mission, though, so I swallowed like I was Savannah on her fourth blowjob. “Just me. Can I come in? Please?”

“I’m not sure I feel comfortable with you in my room, considering.”

“Considering…? Janis, come on. It’s me. I screwed up, but I’m not dangerous or something.”

She was loving how unconvinced she was managing to look. “Hm. Let’s go to the lounge.”

Swallow swallow. “Sure. Sorry if I interrupted something. If this is a bad time, I can–”

“Lounge,” she repeated.

I preceded her. She said she wanted to get shoes on with a tone that was a plain condemnation of Higgins’ custodial staff. There were two girls in there  studying when I came in. They looked up, perplexed by the sudden presence of a strange male. Maybe not strange; as the only man in Higgins, most of the residents recognized me by now just from working the center desk and doing rounds with their RAs. I wasn’t sure what to say, but Janis arrived a moment later and spared me the need to say anything.

“We have important business to discuss. We need the room,” she said imperiously.

“We’re studying,” protested one.

“Yeah, we were in here first,” said the other.

“Give us the lounge or I’m writing you both up for insubordination,” Janis snapped.

“Janis!” I exclaimed.

Her residents were already moving, though. “Hi, Spencer,” said one. I didn’t think I liked the way she said it, but so be it.

“So. Come to apologize for that disgusting stunt last night, I take it? Beg me not to tell Ramona?” She took a seat on one of the sofa’s on the opposite side of the lounge from where her residents had just been evicted. To her it was probably some power move, showing off that she’d had the space we needed and had chased them out for sport. It was exciting her , all right, because her nipples certainly hadn’t perked down.

“Basically, yeah.”

She smirked, but it was a smirk that said my straightforwardness was preferable to some roundabout tactic. “Go on, then.”

“Do you want the short version or the long version?”

“What makes the long version long?”

“A bunch of details about how Savannah and I hooked up.”

“Ew!”

“Not how we… god , Janis. No, I meant how we decided to, not… that. Good lord.”

She folded her arms, queen of her petty domain. “Hmm. Let’s go medium. And nothing gross, please. I already got way more than enough of that.”

So, I explained. How we’d talked – “talked” – during Welcome Week after the fight, but Price and his big romantic gesture had nipped things between Savannah and I in the bud. Then how we got to vibing last night, her decision to break it off with Price permanently, how we thought to make it a bit of a date night.

Considering how many times Savannah had gotten me off, that euphemism was doing some real work for our fervently Mormon colleague.

“So yeah, Carmen was freaking out on the walkie–”

“Oh my gosh, she is so flipping annoying, right?”

Carmen was one of the most delightfully chipper and upbeat people I knew, but I wasn’t about to disagree aloud. “So while we were in the middle of a moment, I tried to calm her down and explain we needed a minute, and… we timed it badly, you could say.”

“That’s one way of putting it. That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the sort of thing I thought only happened in pornographic videos.”

“Let’s try to modulate a little here, huh? I’m pretty sure a little grunting over a walkie talkie doesn’t make for good porn.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never watched one.” Her chin rose haughtily. Ordinarily, I’d think the lady doth protest too much, but Janis might be the one person I’d ever met from whom I would sincerely believe such a claim.

“Well I have, trust me. My ex-girlfriend works with the Hancock Institute. For her, it was just bringing work home.”

“The Hancock Institute? Is that some sort of porno studio?”

“Huh? Janis, come on. They did a whole training session with us. The sex ed thing…? Remember?”

A sniff, this time. “Oh. Them. I wasn’t listening. I tried to tell Ramona they can’t make us listen to that kind of thing, but she made me attend anyway.”

I swallowed down my sentiments about people who didn’t take the campus’s myriad brushes with epidemic chlamydia seriously. “Anyway, I know that was uncool of us, to say the least. If it means anything, I really did feel bad, and not only because we could get in trouble. I know we’re not friends, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect you. You wouldn’t be here if some folks didn’t think you were cut out for the job.”

The past two years, I’d been selected to serve as Rowland’s representative to the RA Advisory Committee. There was one rep from each hall, and we met monthly with Bob to provide feedback and discuss issues impacting campus housing or RA’s specifically. It was mostly a hifalutin name for Bob wanting to get info from the trenches without going through his hall directors or having to sucker one of us young fellas into taking him on at the squash courts. Carmen was taking it on for Higgins this year.

At any rate, in regards to my sentiment that of course Janis had been qualified, my mind wandered back to the year before when Bob was opining about the hiring pool for the coming year’s RA candidates. It had been, I quote, “wading room only.”

“So that I put you through that, I want to apologize. Sincerely, I’m sorry.”

I stopped myself there. My mother had always taught me that a sincere apology wasn’t attached to a request. When dealing with someone like Janis, it was even more important to be forthright. After all, she’d made it plain she knew what I wanted without my having  to say it. For now, she was enjoying mulling it over, the power surge of holding my and Savannah’s fates in her hands. Not that a report from Janis would be a guaranteed firing, but it might end that way. Ramona had endured too many excuses for my behavior towards women that year already. Valid or no, there came a point.

“So are you two, like, a ‘couple’ now?” she asked in lieu of pronouncing judgment.

Oh boy. The entire Higgins staff had learned during training that chit chat with Janis was like chit chat with a toddler. The other party didn’t understand most things with any degree of sophistication, and its values and priorities were so anachronistic to adult life that it could be a struggle to communicate even basic concepts.

Still, here I was, the idiot who’d climaxed over the walkie.

“I’m not sure. I hope so. I think. It’s complicated.”

“What, did you two just have your little sex session and then not talk afterwards? You know, for me? When I get  married? I can’t imagine my husband would ever try to do that.”

For my part, I found it rather easy to imagine someone wanting to fuck Janis and then run away before her mouth opened. “We didn’t have sex – not to put too fine a point on it. We made out some, et cetera. Then this morning, we sort of… I don’t know. I wanted to talk, and she wanted… other stuff.”

“Ugh. Of course. I must be one of about five girls in this whole building who don’t want to get with you. How they left you on that floor with all those… Pardon my French, but gigantic megasluts is beyond  me.”

Most days, I would have fought back against her slander, even when I needed something in return. But after their over-the-top flirtations at the beach and then that trampling of my privacy last night, I let it slide. “I think the same thing sometimes, honestly. Not about the, you know, gigantic bit. It’s a challenge at times, but we manage. Most days.”

“Oh please. I’ve done rounds on your floor. I’ve seen less boobies and patooties hanging out in a locker room. It’s shameful, honestly. Half of those girls would sleep with you in a heartbeat. Assuming they haven’t.”

“They haven’t.” Except Andi. And Quinn, kind of. Leigh had only stripped for me and made a request. Twice. “And yeah, they’re… You don’t know the half  of it. It’s a pretty weird situation, sometimes.”

“Oh yeah right. I was there during training. The other girls on staff were drooling all over you, too. I don’t understand it, myself. It’s one thing to think a boy is cute, but all the whispering and giggling, and…” She shook her head, lips pursed. “Even Ramona.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, like you didn’t notice our boss has a crush on you. Please. You had intimate and sexual relations with one of your residents, showed your you-know-what to the whole floor on the very first day, and treat the place like your own private stripper peep show. But she lets it all slide, because you’re her little manager’s pet.”

My jaw set. This was about how I thought this would go. You couldn’t simply walk up to Janis and tell her you were sorry. Not without her recriminating you for every other thing she thought you ought to be sorry for, most of which was a laundry list of her own hang-ups, phobias and prejudices.

“Ramona and I get along. That’s it. I’ve been doing this a while, and she sees herself as a mentor figure. I’m still not sure, but I might try out grad school for higher ed student affairs myself. I dunno. But yeah, plus we’re in a weird situation with this coed but not coed thing so there’s been a learning curve. But that’s it.”

“Oh, right, she’s leaving her husband because she’s not looking around at other men. That’s how people are these days, you know. They marry, they divorce like it’s nothing, and then they’re right back out there trying to… you know. Like animals.”

Why was it so hard to choke down a barb about the divorce rate amongst animals? I was focused on the news, however. “She’s getting divorced? What? Where did you hear this?”

Ah, the smirk of a woman who’s usually last to know but for once isn’t. “How could you not know? Apparently Vanessa overheard her talking to him on the phone while she was waiting for their one-on-one last week, and Ramona was saying that he could stay the weekend if he needed to, but after that she wanted him gone.” Janis nodded. “It sounded very serious, she said.”

I was dubious when she first said it, but it seemed too specific for Vanessa to have made up, and I couldn’t think why Janis would invent a lie like that. Man. Poor Ramona. “That’s so sad. I don’t know that she and I have the kind of relationship where I can say something, especially since it’s just gossip, but… geez. Divorce can be hard.”

“That’s why people should take the covenant of marriage more seriously before they enter into it.”

Taking things seriously? Hard to manage when you were dealing with a woman who casually tossed around the word “covenant.”

“Anyway, I have no idea why you would think that has anything to do with me, if that’s what you were suggesting.”

“I didn’t say it did.” Hadn’t she, though? “But don’t pretend she doesn’t bend over backwards for her precious Spencer. If I’d done half of what you’d done – flashing my girls my private parts, inappropriate relationships, residents in and out of my room in states of undress night and day. And my residents are the same gender as me!”

“I don’t have naked residents swarming my room on a daily basis. Come on, Janis.”

“Right, because those booby shirts you made are soooo  appropriate. Ugh.”

“I didn’t make those.”

Then, Janis let out a sigh filled with more condescension than I’d known a sigh could hold. “You know, Spencer, you seem like a smart enough guy, but if you can’t see how weird every single girl you know acts around you, I don’t even know what to tell you.”

Worse, however, she’d finally said something that I actually had to concede was a fair point.

“I suppose it’s been a bit of a wild semester so far.”

“Uh, no doy. I’m just glad I can’t hear what all you’ve been doing through the floor of my room.”

“I haven’t been doing much.”

“Coming from the guy whose girlfriend orgasmed him over the walkie talkie last night.” Her eyes flitted down to eye my crotch distastefully. Then lingered, until it was less like a flit and more like identifying the guilty party in a lineup.

“Yeah, that’s not… that’s…” My turn to sigh. “But she’s not my girlfriend either. Not yet. I like her, so maybe, if I’m lucky. But if you tell Ramona about last night, there’s no chance.” There. I didn’t come right out and ask for it, but I’d at least made sure Janis understood the stakes.

Janis studied me . Like, eerily. I held still, like she might misfire if I made any sudden moves. “You know,” she said, telegraphing her lack of intent to give me a straight answer, “I don’t get what people see in her.”

“Uh, Ramona?”

The contempt in those cold blue eyes. “Savannah. Like, she’s pretty. But so what? American culture fetishizes female youth, clear skin, physical fitness. That’s all it is. By societal standards, she’s not any prettier than I am.”

I prayed my eyes didn’t disagree too loudly. Janis was plenty attractive, but she’d embraced resting bitch face to the point that she’d made a lifestyle of it. Plus, Savannah was… Savannah.

“Plus, beauty doesn’t even matter, does it? Like yes, I want to be in good shape, but I wouldn’t want a boy to want to date me just because of my body. That’s so superficial. I want to be recognized for my faith, my values, my work ethic. The important things. No wonder people are getting divorced all the time.”

“I’m pretty sure ugly people are getting divorced, too.”

“So now just because you’re the local super hot guy, you have something against ugly people?”

“What? No, I… Wait, I’m what now?”

“Please. Unlike every other girl on staff, I’m not going to sit here and inflate your ego gushing over you. It’s gross.”

“What are you even…?”

Only then, when Janis merely assaulted me with the depth of her incredulity, I actually stopped and thought.

“Hey big bro! Lookin’ sharp, boy!”

“Hey, Carmen. What’s goin’ on?”

“Not much, just heading to lunch. What about you?”

“Rec center. Haven’t worked out in days.”

“You don’t even look like you need to!”

“Even Captain America works out. But hey, enjoy your lunch.”

“No wait. Can I come with ? I hardly ever work out, but I bet you could teach me all kinds of stuff.”

“Well the first tip is that you don’t want to work out on an empty stomach. Go on, eat your lunch. Some other time.”

“Pleeeeease?”

“I am fucking bored. Saturday night duty sucks llama cock. So guess what? You’re keeping me company.”

“Oh. Yeah, sounds cool, Vickie.”

“Your room. Fail to entertain and there will be consequences.”

“No pressure, geez.”

“No. Pressure. Just because you’re the only halfway cool dude on staff doesn’t mean I won’t take my boredom out on your sweet little ass.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Your best, eh? Uh, oh. I was only angling for high  middle effort. Not sure I can handle Spencer’s best.”

“SPENCER LAWRENCE. Get in my office RIGHT NOW!”

“Oh god! I’m coming. What did I do? I’m sorry. Oh god. I’m coming!”

…

“Oh my god, Spencer, for such a sweet guy, you have the guiltiest conscience of anyone I know. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. You’re too precious.”

“Holy crap! You scared the snot out of me, Ramona.”

“Yes, well, now we are even for all the hijinx you’ve put me through. Oh lord, you’re white as a sheet. I’m so sorry. Do you need a hug, or are you going to pull through?”

“I wouldn’t hate a hug…”

“Too. Precious. Come on in. The couch missed you. Tell me what you’ve got planned for your next program and we’ll see if you deserve a hug.”

“Spencer?”

“If you talk that quiet while we’re walking down the spookiest corridor on earth, I’m going to pee my pants, Vanessa.”

“Sorry. I was just gonna say, I hate checking the loading dock, because… yeah. Like you said. So dark. Who uses a blinking red light bulb? I always think it’s going to blink on and I’ll see someone standing there.”

“I think I just dribbled a little. Thanks for that image.”

“Sorry. It’s just… I’m always glad when we’re on duty together. You make me feel safe.”

“Yeah, well, if the boogie man manifests at the end of the hall, I’m using you as a human shield.”

“Spencer! See, there you are, making me laugh when I’m always so scared down here with everybody else.”

“I do what I can, human shield.”

“You do good.”

“I swear, I have never said anything  like this before, but I really, really  like your penis.”

“Hey. I really like you, too, you know. You don’t have to do this, to like, show off or whatever. I’m crazy, crazy attracted to you already.”

“Have to? Spencer, I… Let’s stay right here in bed all day.”

Janis snapped her fingers in my face. “Earth to Spencer…”

“Sorry. I just… whoa. Thinking of something somebody said.”

“Ooookay. Don’t let me interrupt you thinking back on your sex call night with Savannah just because I’m sitting here in front of you.”

“I’m sorry, but… ‘sex call night?’”

She frowned, puzzled at my puzzlement. “What?”

I smiled. At Janis. For the very first time, I was sure. Could this snarky, churchy, self-important jerk really be the only person in my life who wasn’t into me? “Janis, you and I need to hang out more.”

“Why? If you’re trying to flirt with me, you aren’t my type. Like, at all.”

“No, I just mean… You tell it like it is. I’ve got too many people telling me what I want to hear these days.”

In spite of herself, Janis’s cold visage offered up a tiny glimpse of some hidden inner warmth. “ I try . Though, didn’t you come up here to get me to say what you want to hear?”

“I suppose I did, at that. Look, I don’t have anything to defend what happened, so ‘sorry’ is the best I can do, and promise it won’t happen again.”

She mulled it over a moment . “Fine. I’ll do my best to forget it ever happened. Like, it’s not a lie if I just don’t say anything.” Gotta love a religious sort who found a way to twist god’s laws to suit their actions. “But I’ll need something in exchange.”

“Name it.”

“Two somethings.”

“Name them, then, I guess.”

Janis nodded. “First, I want an apology from Savannah, too. She’s even guiltier than you are. You were at least trying to shut Vanessa up. She was cheating on her boyfriend so hard she didn’t even care.”

“She…” I bit my tongue. “I’ll let her know. She said she wanted to apologize anyway. What’s the second thing?”

“I’m not sure yet. I need to think on it .” Janis tapped her chin pensively.

“Sure. Take your time. I appreciate the hell out of this, really. Very cool of you, Janis.”

“What can I say,” she answered with an awkward smile. Not a girl who was accustomed to being called cool, and with good reason.

Janis escorted me off of her floor. Building policy was to escort guests in order to keep people from worrying about strangers and to keep strangers from doing anything weird or annoying. Rowland had had a big issue with departing visitors pulling fire alarms on their way out. As an RA, escorting me seemed more than a little superfluous, but I wasn’t about to criticize technique at this point.

In fact, I barely noticed. My mind was still on that… epiphany, I guess. Had my coworkers been flirting with me all semester, too? My boss?! Savannah was obvious, but we’d had a moment. She’d seen me naked for crying out loud. But the rest? The more I thought, the more I kept thinking of little moments like those. Was I just, as Carmen liked to call it, the staff “big bro?” Or was every last woman I spent any appreciable time around this year… into me?

Except Janis. Thank god, not Janis.

I texted Savannah. After a lot of drafts vacillating between cute, contrite, concerned, collegial. Ultimately I kept it short and let her know about my talk with Janis and her condition. It didn’t feel good, telling the girl I liked that she needed to march upstairs and apologize to our most irksome coworker, but it was necessary. Beyond that, it was only fair after what had happened. What had happened because Savannah had been so focused on going down on me last night that she wouldn’t stop for ten seconds to say something to Carmen in the first place. Carmen, who laughed off my apology for coming through the air waves and into her ear. Coming, something I’d now effectively done in one manner or another on three of the four other RAs in Higgins. Higgins, where half the girls on my floor had been glued to my door, listening to me get hot and heavy. Hot and heavy, like some of them had been getting with their own bodies right there in the hallway.

It was like cobwebs were being brushed away. Vickie had been right. People didn’t behave like this. How long had I been ignoring it, making excuses because deep down I knew…

Nothing. Nothing explained all this.

I had no theories, no ideas. For the first time since RA training had begun, though, my eyes were open.

“What’d I miss?”

“During your forty minute bathroom break, you mean?”

“You’re timing me in the john now? Jesus.”

“If you need to go beat off, just say so. If you say you’re gonna use the head, I expect you back in five. It’s basic courtesy, letting folks modulate expectations.”

“From now on, expect I’ll take forty minutes then. Anyway, unless you have anything further on your narc checklist…”

“Oh, fuck off. Actually, sucks  to be you. He started wiggling, I guess – hard to tell from thermals – but 8484 has been going to town. In his sleep . Good girl, meet your inner wild child.”

“At what point did red, yellow and orange blurs start turning me on? Damn. And look, the dumb fuck is still sleeping through it. You logged it?”

“Obviously. And the blowjob she started right after. I tried to tell the director that amping him up for their little beach excursion was a bad idea, but you know how he gets. Like ‘Phase 2’ is code for ‘knock up every girl in Higgins’ instead of ‘lightly intensify and objectively record.’”

“Eh, after a point, what’s the difference? Pretty sure if he left his door ajar at night he’d wake up to find the whole floor sleeping on top of him like a pack of dogs.”

“The ones who weren’t blowing him in his sleep, you mean. Which would probably be most. Do you think he tastes different to them? Like, they could  detect a conscious distinction?”

“His cock, or his cum?”

“Either. Both.”

“No way. We’re talking .0004 ppm. Way below what a human could detect. A shark wouldn’t notice it at these levels.”

“.08, actually. Remember, beach day.”

“Holy fuck, are you serious? That’ll teach me not to read full diagnostics – how did those girls not gang-rape him on the shore?”

“Outdoors, far less direct dispersal. Plus, the beach is lacking all the residual saturation that’s been hitting them where they live. Still, next time you go to take a ‘shit break,’ bring the reports. Got art, this time.”

“God bless liberal public recording laws. Damn. Was 4697 there?”

“Look at you, finally learning numbers.”

“I had 4697 down day 1. ‘But mo-om!’ God. Still ringing around my ears.”

“ More of a 3283 gal myself. That girl could make you come with just her hugs. But–”

“Hey shut up shut up shut up. Shh. We got audio. Turn it up!”

“Dana’s mom…? Should I even ask?”

“Whoa, were you… in my sleep…?”

“Transcribing.”

“Ha! 4697’s mom, baby! Great minds, right? Me and Prime, on the same fuckin’ wavelength!”

“Shhh!”

“…seemed like you were having a really fun dream, though, so I thought I’d give you a nudge. How did I do?”

“They were – you were, I mean – incredible.”

“Jesus, he’s still up at .04 ppm. If I’d realized last night he was going to… Fuck. I don’t know. Still. Hope he doesn’t scramble her fucking brain with that shit. Maybe she’s lucky enough to be a spitter…?”

“Would you please  shut up? I can’t hear them and you at the same time.”

“Savannah, it’s not even 6 AM.”

“Hey, sorry. C’mon, you can play it back later for the transcript. Live a little, yeah? For now, it’s damn  good theater. God, fuck orange. Look at all that red.”

“Crimson.”

Chapter Four: The Consultant

Something was wrong. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became. I consulted the log I’d started last time things had started going off their rocker. It hadn’t lasted a week before I’d forgotten it. My final entry read, simply, too many nipples, too much to recount. Now, weeks later, I couldn’t even remember what I’d been referencing. Of course there were tons of nipples around here. Half the shirts I saw them wearing were dented outward by them. Half of them (at least) ditched their bras the moment they got home and stayed that way until they left. That was just life on Higgins 3.

What, though? Not like it was some sex dream I’d wake up from and jerk off to for a week. That made more sense than anything else, though. This was some kind of crazy, hypersexual tsunami, and it was all of it aimed at my floor. Maybe Higgins more broadly, if the other RAs were affected. It wasn’t me , though. The women in my classes, my two woman professors, the women at the rec center, the food court – they weren’t swarming me, horny and adoring like the Hotties. (Overstating, of course, but I didn’t have the terminology for something like this.)

I didn’t know what to do. It was already Sunday night. Not only had I gone all day without addressing last night’s flagrant intrusion by my residents, but also I had to get myself on Ramona’s calendar. Ideally with Savannah there, too. Interstaff relationships weren’t a crisis level event, but the more up front about it we were, the better odds we could make a case that we could handle things. I still hadn’t seen or talked to her since that morning. She hadn’t responded to my texts about Janis, nor the subsequent one telling her I really wanted to talk to her. This made the Ramona situation all the harder to figure out. Randomly sleeping with the girls on staff was going to be a harder sell than dating just the one.

Relationship drama, work drama, home front drama. At the center of all of it, a simmering cauldron of arousal just waiting to spill over the brim. There was only one person I knew who was equipped to talk me through this.

“Spencer! Hey, buddy. Pretty late in the weekend for a booty call, huh? Hmm. Gimme half an hour to take a shower and get cuter, and you can come on over. I’ve been having kind of a lot of sex lately, so I can’t promise I’ll be at my craviest , but I’ve been missing your bod a bit, so–”

“Marisa. This isn’t a booty call.”

“Oh. Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Oh. Well shoot, don’t I feel skanky. So… what’s up?”

“I need someone to talk to. It’s… sex stuff.”

“This isn’t going to be some kind of relationship therapy or something, is it?”

“No.”

“Hmm. It’s Sunday night. How about… dinner Wednesday? No, Thursday. Date Wednesday.”

“Tonight, Marisa. Please. This is big.”

“Uh, oh. Got a plus instead of a minus sign with one of your kiddos?”

“What?”

“Many over-the-counter pregnancy tests use–”

“No, I got it. Just… what? No! Come on, please. I promise, you’ll want to hear this.”

“Hm. I’d better.”

Marisa hadn’t moved since I’d last visited. She rented the third floor of a house not far off-campus. Her old downstairs neighbor had been an ill-tempered old man who worked concessions at Lakeview home games. Ill-tempered to me, anyway; whenever he saw Marisa, he was all smiles. I’d wondered, once, if she’d ever given the old bastard a cheap thrill, flashed her boobs or something, just so he wouldn’t care how loudly she conducted her affairs on his ceiling. Maybe if I showed Janis my–

Nope. Nope nope. That was what we were here to address, after all.

She heard me tromping up the steps. If the old man still lived on the second floor, he’d gone too deaf to grump about it. The door was open for me when I rounded the corner. It was still classic Marisa. Like it hadn’t been vacuumed or dusted in years, but every available surface devoid of objects. If I looked under the couch or behind the entertainment center, no doubt I’d find the empty containers and miscellaneous papers and ads that always cluttered her place. The charade of removing them gave her plausible deniability towards performative feminine cleanliness, however, and she was big on performative femininity. “Bad at being a girl, but good at acting girly,” she’d called it. Or maybe it was the other way around. She was always more clever than wise.

For her person, Marisa had applied no such efforts. Her hair was mussed and shaggy, her t-shirt speckled with chip crumbs and her sweat pants literally held on slender hips in a clenched fist. The elastic had probably failed before she and I did, but if it was comfy, she’d abandon it when it broke down into its constituent molecules and not before.

“This better be good,” she said, showing me in. A smile, but merely polite.

“So I woke up this morning with my cock in this girl’s mouth,” I began. Like that, the smile was intrigued, rapt, and it didn’t budge until I’d babbled it all out. The floor meeting with the sexy new rules, my suspicions about interactions with my coworkers, the much more involved tale of Savannah specifically, beach day, the masturbatory shower heads she’d inspired at our floor program, girls playing with themselves in the hallway listening to my makeout session. All of it.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I finished. “I don’t know what to do. Help me.”

“All right. So… what percent of that is not hyperbole? You know, hold that. I’m gonna put tea on, then we’ll talk.”

I wasn’t much for tea, but Marisa wasn’t much for giving an opinion without having a chance to mull things over. I let her. She knew more about sex and sexuality than anyone I’d ever met. If anybody could give me an sociological explanation for what the hell was going on, it was–

“This makes no sense at all,” she said as she came back to the living room. With a mug in each hand, her sweats fell down far below the point of propriety, but she was a firm believer in the “nothing you haven’t seen before” school of dressing herself. Or maybe she still wanted a quickie before she dismissed me. With that adorable way she scooted along with her pants around her ankles, she might get it.

If not for Savannah, I mean. I didn’t know if there was anything there to cheat on, but I wasn’t going to risk it.

“That’s what I’ve been saying to myself. Come on. Give me something. I’m not coming here with blinders on. I know I’m not a bridge troll or anything. I told you about those two girls in my high school who–”

“Who had a literal fight over you, yes, like fifty times.”

“Twice, tops.”

“Twice is fifty when it comes to brags like that, darling. But yes, I grant, two catty high schoolers is not a masturbatory coven frolicking in the wake of your coital rituals.”

“No kidding.”

Miranda finally seemed to notice her pants were off, and pulled them back up. Mostly. “All right, so let’s brainstorm. Why would all these girls act like this around you?”

“And no other  girls,” I pointed out. “Only the ones I know around Higgins.”

“Right. So, since you’re here, we can rule out what would otherwise be the most logical suggestion, that you’re behind it.” She took a slow sip.

“Me?!”

“No, not  you. Logically, that would make most sense, right? You were abusing your authority, or buying your girls alcohol, drugs, fidget spinners, whatever. Maybe working that wholesome Spencer game of yours on your coworkers, playing them against each other. But if that were the case, then you’d be at home, feeding Savannah’s happy little kitty some cream. Instead, here you are with me, even denying what would have probably been a very satisfying – albeit suspicious to our current topic – booty call.”

“Right.” That had been my first thought when she’d offered on the phone, in fact, but Marisa had been to Higgins only once, for a few hours. If the locale was the thing, she would make no sense.

“So. Not you. At least, nothing you’re doing. Stand up, let me look at you.”

I arched my brow, but quickly gave in with a shrug. I saw where she was going with it. I stood, spun in place slowly, let her take in an eyeful. “Looking good. Working out more?”

“A little? The guys all graduated, so I got a lot of time on my hands.”

“Hmm. Take your clothes off, let me see.”

“What? I’m not stripping for you, Marisa. Jesus.”

“They’ve seen you naked, haven’t they? And the ones on your floor see you in your towel on a daily basis, don’t they? I’m only trying to see if there’s something to see. It’s clinical.”

“Taking my clothes off is more than clinical and you know it.”

She rolled her eyes. “A woman can have more than one reason. Of course I’ll also enjoy it. Feel better? Or would you really be less offended if I didn’t enjoy it?”

A fair point. With a grunt, I shucked off my shoes, my shirt, my pants. I left the socks and underwear, at least until she said the socks looked stupid like that. I studied my reflection in the mirror on the closet door. I looked pretty good, yeah. Still, I didn’t know what a guy had to look like to merit the attention I’d been receiving. Whatever level of hotness it took to inspire that, I didn’t see.

“Yeah, looking very tasty, but not mass stalkerization tasty,” Marisa agreed. “But leave them off. I–”

“I am not going to sit around here in my underwear!”

“If you’d listen ,” she grumbled, “I was going to say, it’s possible there’s a chemical causality, at least partially.”

“A… what?”

“Chemicals. You took biology, right? Chemistry? They taught those at your high school?” I folded my arms across my chest irritably. “I’m saying, what if whatever body spray you’re using has some kind of ultra sex appeal or something.”

“It’s the same crap I used when we were dating. I don’t remember you ever sitting on the floor outside my room diddling yourself over Old Spice body wash.”

“Maybe they changed the formula. Maybe it’s reacting with a subtle change in your shampoo. Maybe something in your diet combining  with something on your skin. I’m only trying to gather empirical data. Your girls bask in your musk all day every day. And isn’t RA training like a solid week, locked in the same room together?”

I had to admit, it was intriguing. “Two weeks, actually.”

“See? Not saying I think it’s likely, but it’s at least a theory. And hey! Yeah! Savannah, you said she went from ‘gee I sure think you’re swell’ attraction to ‘shut up and let me suck your cock all day’ overnight, right? What changed between?”

In spite of myself, I plopped down on the sofa in nothing but my boxers. “She spent the night. And, um…”

“Drank your semen. God, Spencer, if you can let her do it, you ought to be OK saying the words.”

“You’re right, Marisa, she guzzled down a fountain of my cum. Happy?”

After another swig of tea, she set her mug down and leaned in closer, sniffed. “I don’t smell anything weird. Has anybody told you they smelled anything weird around you? Some ditzy freshman all moon-eyed about how dreamy you smell or anything?”

“No. Of course not.” They hadn’t, had they?

“Hmm. Well, it’s not much. Plus, even if you had stumbled upon the formula for feminine arousal – which if you have, you should be sprinting to the patent office yesterday – it wouldn’t explain everything you described.”

“No?”

“Think about it. I know you’re a romantic, but I’ve seen you pretty turned on. Hey, yeah! OK, so you remember the night I wore that black lingerie with all the see-through everything, and we stayed the night at your place in the dorms, and–”

“They’re residence halls, not dorms.”

 “–and I said I wanted to brush my teeth before I went down on you, but I acted like I didn’t care if I went down to the bathroom in my underwear, and you insisted on escorting me, because you’re you, and some of your guys saw me, and they were all ‘ daaaaamn , son’ and then I stopped outside your door like it was locked and made sure they could hear me tell you how horny I was, ‘hurry up, I need it bad ’ and then your cock turned into a jackhammer and you fucked me for a whole weekend?”

I licked my lips. They were dry, that’s all. “Yeah. I remember.”

“OK. So if we put that as a relative  high bar for your arousal… How close were you to whipping it out and jacking it while you watched the way my ass bounces when I brush my teeth? ”

“What? None. Zero percent close.”

Marisa’s eyes narrowed just slightly.

“Fine, maybe half a percent.”

“Accuracy matters. But see, that’s what I mean. I remember you were like savage  ape level turned on that night. It was actually a bit too much on my cervix, not that such feedback matters any more. Or conversely, take my high bar. I was maybe fourteen – no, thirteen, and–”

I held up my hands. “Whoa. I’m going to stop you right there. I get it. You got turned on.”

“Spoilsport. Anyway, yeah, never came close to camping outside Mr. Li’s door, masturbating in the bushes. It’s off.  T he flirting, the shower stuff, those rules you described… Those aren’t things people do because they’re horny. Or not just  because they’re horny.”

I shook my head. “Surely in all your studies you’ve come across some behaviors like this, right? I’m not pioneering the next phase in human sexuality, am I?”

“I’ve read about it, sure, but that’s what used to be called ‘abnormal sexuality,’ or before that ‘sexual deviancy.’ ‘Alternative’ is the buzz word  these days.” It went unsaid that Marisa didn’t believe any sexual behavior could be considered abnormal, only less reported. “Still, some of this stuff is frankly criminal. Not that I agree with those laws, but public masturbation? Imagine you left here tonight and found Mr. Himschoot jerking his gnarly old cock on the landing. The only difference is he’s conventionally unattractive and your Hotties are on the opposite end of that spectrum. That’s not your shampoo driving someone to that, much less multiple someones, simultaneously. If you were exuding anthrax, there wouldn’t be enough that it would insta-kill folks through a shut door. There has to be a psychosocial element at play – perhaps also  at play – or they wouldn’t be forming a line for it. ”

“I don’t disagree. So pigeonholing the biochemistry angle, what else you got? And by the way, I’m already glad I came to you.”

“Same. This is really interesting stuff, Spencer. If there were some way to ethically observe and record, I’d be begging you for the opportunity. Something like this would make me a legend at the Hancock Institute.”

I chuckled. “Surprised they didn’t already think of it. Make a killing, developing a successful human pheromone.”

“Pheromones aren’t real,” she said, as dismissively as my retort to her invocation of dorms. “And they probably did think of it. You can’t run experiments like this on people, though. Not legally. Not even if you made some sort of so-called ‘pheromone’ like in the comic books – which you can’t, by the way. In insects, sure, maybe some birds, but the human olfactory centers mostly select for odorlessness, actually. We evolved a preference for cleanliness – and look at you, on the forefront of evolution.”

“But you were saying, even if…?” I nudged.

“Right. So even if someone could could fabricate something like that, you can’t just pump it into a building’s ventilation and stand back to see who starts fucking whom. It would be exceedingly unethical. Nobody would publish it, and anybody who helped out would wind up in the ‘residence halls’ down at Rikers Island.”

Something she’d said had stood out. “Hang on… the building’s ventilation?”

Marisa nodded. “Sure. You’re the only man in the building, right? That’s what you said.”

“Yeah. I mean, if we’re talking biochemistry, I guess there’s a trans woman downstairs, I think on Vanessa’s floor, so I don’t know if…” I shrugged. “But more or less, yes.”

Marisa reached down the front of her pants, rubbed at her pussy, then gave her fingers a sniff. I have no idea what she expected to learn, but whatever it was, she quickly moved on. “Again, presuming this is possible. With most people identifying as more heterosexual than bi- or homosexual, and since male and female brains, while very similar in their coding for sexuality, do have several core distinctions in their chemical triggers for arousal, such a chemical could cause that arousal to happen, and to fixate it on a nearby available specimen. One conventionally attractive, close at hand, familiar.” She gestured to me. To my underwear, more specifically.

“You sound like you’re taking this seriously. Should I… check? I have lots of keys. I could probably get at the furnace, the boiler, that stuff.”

“I’m only saying we haven’t ruled anything out yet. It’s still far-fetched, and even if you checked those and found nothing, it could be something affixed to the water line, or something stuffed in a duct somewhere you could never find it. So sure, check, but…” She looked at me, then looked over me, then looked at me again. “Sorry. This is exciting. OK. So maybe something chemical. Maybe. What else.”

“Maybe I’m just that good of an RA?”

She laughed giddily. “I’d fuck you right now if it wouldn’t shatter objectivity.”

“Aw shucks. You’re going to make me blush, Marisa.”

We stayed up late, chugging tea and storming brains . The chemical (emphatically not  a pheromone)  remained our most hopeful theory, flimsy though it was. We talked through a variety of options, but they were all of them flawed . That I’d spurned a girl whose wealthy family bribed all these girls to mess with me for some grandiose reprisal; that Bob was sponsoring some kind of weird cohabitation experiment; that they’d injected me with some kind of nanochemicals during my wisdom tooth removal last summer. We covered some more non-science-fiction theories, too. That I was simply misperceiving and needed therapy, which actually struck me as pretty reasonable; that it really was a huge coincidence, a million monkeys with a million typewriters successfully producing fetish erotica, however unlikely; that Marisa was conducting some sort of sexual research through the Hancock Institute, paying women to simulate a scenario of intense physical arousal, using me as a guinea pig, relying on my own ethical strictures to prevent a giant orgy from ensuing.

She’d suggested that last one herself; when I eyed her a bit too suspiciously, she simply shrugged and assured me that if it were that, I’d never find out from giving her shitty looks. Still, if somebody could pay dear sweet Andi to sleep with me as a research experiment, my ability to read people was officially dead.

I gave her a huge hug of gratitude before I left, then put my clothes back on and went back to Higgins. In spite of the tangled situation with Savannah and Ramona and Janis, I felt energized.

I checked what I could that very night. Went right into the center desk, told Carmen I needed the master key ring for a trouble on the fire board, then let myself into a bunch of places I was not intended to go. I didn’t know what I was looking for, of course, but I didn’t see anything that struck me as especially noteworthy. They’d renovated the residential rooms last year, but the pipes, the boiler, the furnace, the air conditioners, they were mostly untouched. None of them had weird devices sticking to them, no conspicuously newer-than-the-rest parts. What vents I could see were screwed shut, no obvious signs something had been inserted. Like Marisa had said, the lack of evidence neither confirmed nor disconfirmed any of our theories.

After checking my phone one last time, I went to bed. The few residents I passed on my way to my room avoided eye contact. Either they’d been there for it and been rebuked, or they’d heard about it and knew to tread lightly. I went to my room, shut out the light, and eventually managed to get some sleep.

I woke up to find still no word from Savannah. After my early class, I called her one last time, but no response. I really miss your mouth on my cock,  I typed. Maybe she was… No. I erased the words unsent. No way that would work. Like Marisa had insisted, pheromones weren’t real. Savannah wasn’t just sitting around, waiting for me to relent and give her my blessing to go down on me. That was impossible.

I didn’t go to my room after class. I got in my car, went to Walgreens, and bought a different shampoo and body wash. New skin care line, too. The works. It cost me almost half my meager monthly stipend. Back at Higgins, I took a quick shower – alone, for once, perks of waiting until the middle of the day – and braced myself to face Ramona. Theorycrafting was fun, but I had real problems to deal with first.

Higgins Hall’s manager was in her office, but was on a call with a resident’s parent and held up a finger to have me wait. Suppressing recent dreams of a certain resident’s mother, I offered Marcus a hand with the mail sorting while I waited.

“How’s it been, my man? You look tired.”

“Yeah. Weekend went by too fast.”

“I hear that, I hear that. Too fast on account of too  busy, or too fast on account of too  free? Always one or the other.”

“Huh?” I was trying to strike a rhythm stuffing mailboxes with junk mail and was having a hard time conversing at the same time.

Marcus was not only out-stuffing me, but had no trouble making a point, either. “Too much on your hands, and your responsibilities eat away your whole life before you can live it. Too little, and you walk through the world lost, not knowing where you’re supposed to be. Either way, world  passes you by before you know it.”

“Uh, bit  of both, I guess.”

He pitched a mail sack from his chest to mine like he was launching a medicine ball at the gym. I grunted as I caught it. “Right. That’s what you got to strive for, my man. Balance. Freedom and responsibility. Hedonism, temperance. Great company, and profound solitude. You put some of that in your weekends, you watch people not go saying, ‘Spencer my man, you look tired.’ No. They’ll look at you and say, ‘Spencer, yo, you look like you have seen some things, my man. Seen some things!”

It was all a lot more than I was ready for on a Monday afternoon after two nights of little sleep. It all felt very profound, I supposed , but when Ramona’s door opened a moment later, I set down the mail, wished him well, and rapped on the open door.

“Spencer, hey. Come on in. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” She took stock of my sulky demeanor. “Why do I feel like it’s going to be something dramatic and disruptive to my general harmony. ”

“Because it’s going to be something dramatic and disruptive to your harmony.”

Ramona shook her head with a wry smile. “I know. One of these days, you’ll pop in to tell me there’s a sticky door knob. A roommate conflict. Hair clogging the shower drain. No – strike that. I do not need any more reports on the happenings of your showers. Did you know that since we installed those new shower heads on Higgins 3, the entire building’s water consumption is up 6%? Custodial swears they’re not leaking, but I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Correlation isn’t causality …?” I tried.

“I think we have enough on our hands with your girls without taking on water consumption. Now, come on in and let’s talk about these big dramatic issues. Tell me how you’re doing.”

“Me? I’m doing, um… You see, that’s sort of the drama.” I closed her office door behind me as gently as humanly possible. “I wondered if you could talk to me about the policy on inter-staff relationships…?” I asked with a grimace, taking a seat on her couch. She perched the far end. I tried not to notice her very fetching pencil skirt. Then I tried harder to remember what Janis had told me about her divorce. Was this the first divorcee I’d ever been attracted to?

Had I just realized I was attracted to my boss right before I asked her permission to date Savannah? Nice timing, libido. That accent of hers always killed me.

Her arms folded across her chest. I knew a couple RAs who’d dated back during my first year, Theresa and Andy. I’d heard rumors of others since. Theresa and Andy were  married now. Precedent  existed, but whether I secured permission or not, I would receive a talking first. Assuming Savannah even wanted to pursue a relationship, but when you jizzed on the radio, it was too late to consider keeping secrets.

“Have a nice weekend, did we?” She was not smiling, not even a little.

“Things… just sort of happened, so I made sure to come talk to you as soon as I could.”

“Alone, I notice.”

“Right. There were some… scheduling issues.”

“Well, fret not, young sir. I won’t rake you over the coals any harder than I already have. So you know, I’ve already spoken with her this morning and gave her the same speech I’m about to give you.” Savannah had beaten me to it, huh? I smiled in spite of the severe look on Ramona’s face. That she’d come here and subjected herself to this meant she was looking to give it a try, too! At last , some good news!

So I sat back and let Ramona lay into me. There was a rehearsed sound about it, probably because she’d already done it once today. I focused on her accent, that trace of something vaguely European that lent her an almost lyrical quality. Not that I didn’t pay attention, too. The pitfalls of dating a coworker, keeping it from disrupting staff culture, weathering a breakup if it comes to that, the possibility of termination if said weathering doesn’t work out. Nothing surprising, but I made sure to listen attentively.

“Do you have any questions about any of that, Spencer?”

“No, I got it. Makes sense. Do we need to, I dunno, sign anything?”

“No. I’ll put a note in your file that we had this discussion, same for Vickie, and that will suffice. You’re a responsible …” She paused, registering the consternation that must have been showing on my face. “What?”

“Did you say ‘Vickie?’”

“Yes…?” She chuckled. “ Why, did  you fool around with someone else on staff this weekend?”

What the actual hell?!

I didn’t know what it meant. My contemplative energies were already completely invested elsewhere. Maybe the right thing to do was to correct the record, but in that  moment, with Savannah incommunicado and Vickie playing at god knows what, I couldn’t handle any more chaos. Tell Ramona it was Savannah, not Vickie – Vickie!  – and it would land the three of us in here for the most awkward conversation of our lives.

“No, sorry, just… yeah. Making sure. You said Vickie. Because why wouldn’t you.”

She looked at me closely. “Spencer… Are you sure there isn’t anything else I ought to know about?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, no, totally. Sorry, I guess it’s sort  of an awkward conversation to have with your manager, maybe. Ha. Haha.”

She scooted across the couch and put the back of her hand to my forehead. Was it normal for her legs to rest against mine like that? “You feel OK. I have a thermometer in my  desk. Why don’t we make sure you aren’t–”

“Have you noticed any weird smells in Higgins?” I blurted.

She jerked back. Guiltily? Or merely surprised? “Come again? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing, I just mean, some of my residents have said, and sometimes I think maybe I’ve noticed… I don’t know. Just a weird smell.”

“Your girls probably need a reminder to keep food containers sealed, Spencer. One of Vanessa’s rooms had problems with that a few weeks ago. She might still have some signage you could use if you ask her.”

“No, it’s not that. Sort of all over? Halls, rooms, bathrooms…”

“What does it smell like?” she asked, head cocked to the side.

“I’m not sure. It’s… subtle. It’s been there since I got here, but some of my residents, well… I dunno. We got to talking, and wondered if maybe it was something from the renovation? Like, did they put in new air filters, or something like that?”

“The filters are cleaned and changed regularly, like any building. The renovations were almost entirely furnishings, paint job, carpets. Higgins’ bones are the same as they’ve ever been. If it’s something so subtle you can’t even describe it, it’s probably nothing. Maybe the glue from the new carpet tiles? I am not sure what to tell you.”

Hmm. Once more, no evidence, but neither was anything disproven. I just needed one data point, something to get me started. I’d hoped springing it on her out of the blue might yield fruit, but–

“You look great in that skirt today, by the way.”

She what?!  

O h fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh

“Spencer…”

Where in the hell had that  come from?! Complimenting my boss’s looks in such a familiar way because she hadn’t handed me the key to the mystery that probably wasn’t even a mystery on my first request? Where did I think a stunt like that  was going to–

“I probably ought to say something about boundaries, but I think for once I will simply take a compliment,” Ramona finished with a thin smile. “I suppose an old broad like me could use a little validation from my very own Higgins Hottie.”

Did she just bat her eyelashes and call me a hottie? What the what?

Fuck it. If Marisa could indict herself as a potential conspirator, I could at least look under this one rock. This one rock  in its very tight, alluring pencil skirt.

“Old broad? Come on, you and I are closer in age than I am to any of the other Hotties. Heck, we ought to be forming our own clique of super-Hotties, just the two of us.”

Not only did she not slap me across the face, she smiled wider. “How old do you think I am, Spencer?”

I happened to know she was 30 on the nose thanks to Carmen, staff birthday coordinator, who’d settled a debate for us in training. “Just the right age, I’d say. Your husband is a heck of a lucky guy.”

Hard to read on that one. I don’t know if I’d expected her to blush and fan herself or what.

“Didn’t we just have a talk about staff relationships? Or were you paying too much attention to my skirt, instead?”

“You never got around to the policy on RAs and hall managers.” I made sure to laugh that off quickly. Only teasing! haha!  “I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t cross any lines.”

“Lines? Suddenly the Higgins heartthrob respects lines? Well now, isn’t that something?”

“Bosses and married women. My only two.”

“And residents, I hope,” she added dryly. “And as it so happens, I only cross one of your lines.”

“They’ve demoted you?” I said with sarcastic shock. “No, I, ah, heard a rumor. Sorry to hear it’s true.”

“Really? I wonder how anyone heard. Ah well. Easier to let it leak that way than add it to a staff meeting agenda, I suppose. Well, it’s true. If you’ve noticed I’m not at my best these past few weeks, there you have it.”

Ramona’s mournful look made me forget my investigatory flirtations and revert to authentic concern. “Um, I know I’m one of your RAs, but… do you want to talk about it? I mean, I guess you have friends and family for that, but–”

My boss took a step closer and placed a soft hand on my shoulder. She had such gentle hands. “Actually I haven’t spoken to my family in some time. They are Travellers – what some would call ‘gypsies.’ Not a term you should use, if you didn’t know, but it often saves many words of explanations. We are not true Romani, but not many would appreciate the distinction. It’s a long story. Anyway, you spoke of friends and family, but… I’ve only been here at Lakeview a year, and haven’t really… well.”

I was learning a lot, suddenly. “Oh,” I said brightly. “Well, I can be friend ly , at least, if you can’t be regular friends with an employee.”

Ramona looked unsure. Not hostile, but as someone who routinely wore that I shouldn’t, according to the rulebook, but I want  to   expression , I knew how to spot it on someone else. “You know, with the ears lurking around this office, maybe it’s best I don’t.”

“We could go off-campus. You like Walt’s Other Pub? I used to do one-on-one’s there sometimes with my manager at Rowland. We’d run some errands, grab a bite.”

“I don’t know Spencer. I’m not sure I should be–”

I took the hand from my shoulder into my grasp and gave it an entreating squeeze. “Come on, you’re going through some stuff. Let somebody be nice to you. You’ve done so much for me, the least I can do is let you vent and buy you a drink. If you decide it doesn’t feel right, we can talk about winter training and that dreadful spike in water consumption instead. C’mon.”

We each had the afternoon open, so we arranged to meet up when she finished her office hours. I’d need to be back in time for duty, but that was that.

So… yeah. In less than 48 hours, I’d hooked up with one coworker, came in the ears of two more, unknowingly started a relationship with another, and arranged a casual date with my married, soon-to-be-divorced boss.

Like the rest, it didn’t prove anything, but it sure as hell wasn’t disproving it.

Chapter Five: Higgins Ground

“Vickie, I know you’re in there. I can see you through the peephole.” I knocked again. Not quite a pound. Next time, I would pound.

The door swung open. Pale blue eyes fixed on mine piercingly. “Wow. Stalk much?”

“Oh come on. You can’t see detail, but I could see a microscopic figure. Don’t hate because a veteran knows some tricks you don’t.”

A pair of Vickie’s residents strode by. They had the good graces to glare at me, this strange male who had the audacity to harass their RA. Inwardly, I commended them for their protectiveness, but they had a ways to go. If Vickie had tried the same strong-arm tactic on my door, she’d have had two dozen Hotties swarming her, ready to throw down.

“We need to talk.” She had planted herself in the doorway to keep me out. Moreover, she’d answered it in a sports bra and gym shorts, her hair woven into a pair of tightly braided pigtails. If she thought that that little sheen of perspiration on her chest was going to put me off, she had another think  coming.

“You talked to Ramona, I take it.”

“Yeah. I talked to Ramona.”

She didn’t budge. “Well, you’re welcome. When I think up how  you can thank me, I’ll let you know.”

“I’m sorry, thank  you? You lied to her! Plus you made me lie with you so I didn’t turn the whole thing into a complete clusterfuck, which I almost did!”

“Did I. ”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Get in here.” Before the words were out of her mouth, Vickie had grabbed my belt and jerked me into her room, throwing the door closed behind me. “Spencer, boy, you got some goddamn nerve coming down here and barking at me after what I did for you.”

“Did for –?!”

Her finger jabbed into my chest, compelling silence. “You haven’t talked to your shag hag since yesterday morning, I take it.”

“My what now?”

Vickie flopped down on her bed. Her room was messy, bordering on pig  pen. Half the floor was littered with clothes, and every available surface had notebooks and papers and textbooks sprawled across it. Discarded food wrappers were present in abundance. I knew I could be a neatnik, but this was a bit much. It left me with nowhere to stand, and with her desk chairs sporting an open biology book and a wad of used napkins respectively, I could do nothing but stand in place.

“Seems you left her in quite a state. Never took you for the sort to catch and release, especially a nice mantle-worthy fishy  like that. Tsk, tsk.”

“Catch and release? Could you please knock off the metaphors and tell me what you think you know, because this is ridiculous.”

“Seems like you’re the only one on staff who hasn’t heard. But yeah, word is you kicked her out of bed bright and early so you could grab breakfast and go make nice with Janis for your little–” She caught herself on the cusp of another witticism this time, and humored my request. “For jizzing over the radio.”

“I don’t know who told you what, but that is not at all what happened. We had an amazing night, an amazing morning, and then we decided not to rush things. Yes, I apologized to Janis – and Carmen – but because they deserved apologies after what happened. Sincerity and remorse aren’t some cover-your-ass tactics, you know.”

“My white knight!” She put the back of her hand to her forehead, fainting with maximum sarcasm. “Maybe you ought to tell Savannah about all this, because that’s not quite how she put it to Carmen. And not how Carmen put it to Vanessa and me when she called us down there because Savannah was losing her fucking mind over how you did her dirty. Very sincerely, though, I’m sure.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“To be fair, I didn’t get it from Savannah, who was still crying so hard she couldn’t talk, but from Carmen, she said you worked that infamous Spencer charm, talked  her into dumping her boyfriend. The girl then wakes you up with a fucking blowjob, which…” She threw her hands in the air, presumably irate over my undeserved good fortune. “And you tell her thanks but no thanks, best you get out, since my girls are hella involved in where I poke my pecker.”

“She said what ?! Believe me, my girls knew she was in there, and I had to chew their asses out for trying to get in the way. They… It doesn’t matter. That is not  how it happened! I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve been texting her all day yesterday and this morning, and she won’t even let me try to apologize!”

Vickie cocked her head to the side curiously. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why do you need to apologize. ”

“Look, none of that is any of your business. I’m only here because you told Ramona that it was you and I, instead of me and her! What the hell gives, Vickie? I know you’ve been jealous I’m interested in Savannah, but–”

Her pillow hit me square in the chest. Good thing she gave me a warning shot, because her TV remote followed right behind it. I barely dodged in time; the hard plastic shattered against the wall behind me, batteries and fragments landing all over. The main piece landed, I wish I hadn’t noted, inside a filmy pink thong on the floor near the closet.

“Fuck you, ‘jealous!’ I tried to warn you that she was drama, that she was stringing you along until she got bored. That she’d get in your head, twist you up. Shit, I even gave you an out. Tasty piece of armor to protect you from all that. Remember?”

I remembered. Not at all how I would have categorized it, but I remembered.

“So imagine my surprise when I find out she – you guessed it – sucked you into a big batch of drama. I can read between the lines. Damn, boy, a girl can spend an hour in a room with you and know she was spinning the hell out of whatever went down.”

“Um, thanks…?”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment. Half the problem with girls like Savannah Grey is that they haven’t been kicked out of enough beds. Get to think that their lips are some sort of favors, that anybody who gets a taste and doesn’t immediately fall Rufus Wainwright Hallelujah  in love is a scoundrel. That you showed up here today, singing her tune and laying into me, only shows you did fall for her, only not in the precise way she wanted.”

“None of this explains why you lied to Ramona.”

She shifted position. Her gym shorts rode up so that her legs were completely bare. Cheater. “I didn’t. But I could read the graffiti on the wall, boy. Your girl didn’t want a rebound guy. She wanted some rebound drama. You think she was about to march down to Ramona’s office with you and sign some love contract? Hell no. I spent all yesterday evening in girl gangsta mode, convincing her not to skip down there first thing and convince our boss that you… I dunno, whatever way you prefer to phrase catched-and-released. I don’t speak Spencer, sorry.”

I frowned. “She wouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you’re right. What do I know.  I obviously totally misread her emotional state after four goddamn hours of going around in circles about how she told you that your dick was the bestest thing she’d ever slobbed on and you were like ‘aye, verily, let us venture forth to charge the walkie before all hope is lost’ or whatever.”

“That is not how it happened!”

“Duh.”

“Still, why did you…?”

The other pillow flew, again, striking true. “Because I like you, you knuckle-dragging dumbfuck. I figured I could go down, do a sneaky ‘say, what’s the policy on staff relationships?’ So if Janis narced, I’d take the heat, and if you were stupid enough to go down there and ask the same thing, she wouldn’t call Savannah down and give you a front-row seat to the tearquake you obviously didn’t realize you’d set off.”

I didn’t miss the valiant part of that, but I was still muddled and angry enough that I pursued my main point a moment farther. “What if I’d gone down there and simply told her straight out, ‘hey, Savannah and I hooked up this weekend?’ She would’ve thought I was messing around with half the RAs in Higgins!”

“Bah, only forty percent. You round for shit. Unless your apology to Janis got way out of hand.”

“Vickie…”

She rolled her eyes. “If you opened in that, the most awkward way in the universe to start that conversation, then all I had to do was say I’d heard about you two, worried you might be in trouble, so I came asking on behalf of my buddy and didn’t correct her false assumption.”

“But now she thinks you and I hooked up.”

“So? You’d be the first guy I’ve ever known whose rep was hurt  because people thought he got a taste of all this.” She gestured to all that.

“So, we didn’t!”

“So then… why don’t we?”

Christ Almighty, but this woman knew how to strike a pose on short notice. Suddenly her hands were planted between her thighs on the bed, leaning forward. Breasts shoved together, thrust out, back arched so I couldn’t miss the roundness of her ass, the fullness of her thighs.

“Vickie… no. No. I’m not… interested.” Damn that pause. Damn that kiss! A month ago, now , but I hadn’t forgotten a single detail.

“OK. Can I ask you a question, though?”

“No. I mean sure. Whatever. But–”

“What color is the thong the remote landed in? After you dodged it like a little bitch.”

“I’m not–”

“What color?” She shifted in place, ever so slightly. Fuck.

“Pink. I think.”

“You think, or you know?”

“Fine, I know it was pink. So what?”

“So, you stared at it like my ass was still in it. Guys don’t stare like that if they ain’t thirsty for it.”

“What, I looked at your dirty underwear so obviously I must want to sleep with you. Is that it?”

She slithered to her feet. “You prefer to look at a pair that’s still nice and fresh?”

Her shorts must have been held on by the barest of friction, because the minute the elastic passed the wide point of her hips, it hit the floor like it was on its way to hell. Vickie stepped right out of it. Beneath was another thong. It looked just like the pink, but bright yellow. It was a happy, sunny thong, and it looked delighted to be sharing its mood with the rest of us.

I must have been staring again, because through the gauzy yellow curtain of her underwear, I noticed something. “I’m sorry, but… is that a V?” I grinned, in spite of how much I ought to be yelping in terror and running for the door.

She nodded, then peeled the front of her panties down with her thumbs to reveal her pubic art. “It’s a V.”

“Little narcissistic, don’t you think?”

“Don’t hate because you can’t make an S out of that python.” For the second time that day, she seized my belt. “Besides, it’s not for Vickie.”

“Oh no?” I really ought to stop her. Had Savannah really said–

“It’s for ‘Virtue.’”

My belt hit the ground as the laugh hit my belly. “Bullshit.”

Vickie was grinning ear to ear. My back was against her closet; my shoe nudged the broken remote, the discarded panties, to the side. She leaned close, licking up my neck and whispering into my ear. “OK, fine. It’s for ‘Vagina.’ You know how I remember?”

I shook my head, eyes sinking shut. Had she really gone to Ramona to protect–

“I have this little mnemonic device I use. It goes like…”

As she spoke, she guided my hand down the front of her panties where my fingers fast  confirmed that there was indeed a vagina down there, as advertised. Vickie gasped in my ear, punctuated by a ghost of a whimper. Then I was a man at work, and she a woman  possessed. Her lips rained kisses up and down my neck, around my ear, her tongue darting out with animalistic desire.

“I told you,” she hissed against my neck, clamping down on my wrist with both hands. I had no intention of pulling back. I barely knew what was going on, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. The only thing even slowing  me down was that I was an accomplished practitioner of both two- and three-finger methodology, but frankly, I was having a hard time even fitting two, much less maneuvering them. Vickie sure didn’t seem to mind, though. Her teeth sank softly into my shoulder along with her nails, which were holding her up as her body trembled atop my penetrating grasp.

I drove her back to the bed, as much to get away from the unsure footing of the debris all over the floor as to get into bed with her. Her fists gripped my shirt with vicelike firmness, denying me any chance to escape. With that soft wet warmth clenching down on my fingers, I didn’t mean to. I could hardly believe she’d gone out of her way to–

“If I asked you to fuck me, would you fuck me?” Vickie’s whisper came so quietly I wouldn’t have been able to hear her if it hadn’t been poured right down my ear.

“Oh, Vickie, I don’t know if…”

“Shhhh.”

She threw me onto my back and rolled after, straddling my waist. She was lighter than I’d expected, somehow, a horny little bird perched on my pelvis. I let her tug, almost tear  my shirt off. I made damn well sure her sports bra followed.

“What, no ‘B?’ How will I remember what you’ve been hiding under there?”

Vickie grinned, but only half a grin. She was a joker when affairs were light, but she plainly took this seriously. “Well if you forget, you just come pound my door down again and I’ll give you a little reminder.”

Then they were in my face, in my mouth, smothering me, while she aggressively removed my pants. Had I said I didn’t intend to fuck her? I shouldn’t. It was awesome that she’d tried to cover for me with–

The boobs withdrew, and the jungle of heat on my fingers suddenly began to cool. I looked down, and caught her jerking down my boxers. My cock sprang forth. Vickie went cross-eyed at the tower of flesh splitting her face.

“Jesus fucking Christ, how did you even fit this thing in that prissy little box.”

Before I could deny that I’d had sex with Savannah, much less muster a defense of her box’s virtue, she slurped me into her mouth in a go. Damn. It wasn’t fair to compare, and it wasn’t relevant, but hot on the heels of yesterday’s blowjob, it was impressive what a difference a little commitment to the craft made. Vickie’s pig tails tickled at my thighs as her neck undulated left and right, in constant pursuit of fresh angles, new places to connect her tongue with my cock. When she finally held a fixed position, it wasn’t because she was tired, or dizzy, or weary of showing off. It was to fix those two pale blue eyes on mine. Every so often she released me to lick up and down my shaft, splitting her gaze between them. It was making her cross-eyed, and if it was a bit theatrical, I was fucking there  for it.

“You are really, really good at that. Holy shit.” I flopped back onto her bed. Firm as the Higgins mattresses were, I missed the pillows immediately.

“Only when I want to be.” Vickie sucked one ball into her mouth, tongued it lavishly, then the other. “Lucky for you.”

For a moment, I remembered my talk last night with Marisa and wondered how much of this was luck, and how much something else. While I was making comparisons about blowjob proficiency, though, it was best not to think that  name. The woman was unparalleled. If Savannah was a girl who liked to lounge around the hot tub, Vickie would be one who did laps in the pool for fitness. Marisa? She was Michael fucking Phelps. Still, blowjobs were blowjobs, and Vickie’s enthusiasm and dogged commitment to creating and overcoming friction were clear signs of an accomplished sucker of cock. Good enough she knew to watch for the signs I was getting close, something that had sent Savannah choking.

“You’re ready to come,” she observed aloud.

“To explode, more like. You’re slaying me.”

Her tongue dragged across the length of me, snaking back and forth and finally swirling around the top. “That’s what I do when I see a dragon.”

I couldn't help but smile. I was as susceptible to cock flattery as the next guy. “How do you want to finish? I can do it, or…” I’d once felt awkward talking about such things – as if doing it was no big deal but saying it, yeesh! – but Marisa had coached me out of that. Since her, my experience had  been that most women preferred  a direct question. Especially when the alternative was a guy who would just gasp once and spray them in the face a second later.

“I want you to put it inside my pussy, and fuck my tight, wet hole until I squeeze every last drop of cum out of you.”

For context, Vickie said this as she rose up, pigtails bouncing merrily at her sides, and sat down straddling my waist. Her slit found my cock with incredible precision, wrapping around it in direct affirmation of her claim of tightness. My fingerwork had done its job well; she was so wet that if she hadn’t changed these sheets recently, she’d need to after this. Her body rocked front to back, grinding a slight frame that, from the way it filled my hands, had to be at least fifty percent ass.

Which is to say, she made a compelling case.

“I don’t know…”

“I know. Listen to Vickie. You want to fuck Vickie. You’ll love Vickie’s pussy. You’ll come so good inside Vickie.” She smirked, charged by her own egotism. It made me think back to the last girl I’d had sex with, Andi. It made me appreciate the allure of a woman who knew her worth.

“You can’t hypnotize me. I don’t care how spooky hot your  eyes are.”

They twinkled in the room’s dim light. “Come in Vickie. Say yes to Vickie. Let Vickie make you feel good .”

“I didn’t actually bring a condom,” I admitted. “I sort of didn’t see this conversation going this way.”

“Oh come on, I already told Ramona we were fucking. How did you not?” But she laughed, even as she rubbed her pussy up and down my shaft. “I’m on the pill. It’s OK. You can come inside me all you want. Let Vickie milk your cock dry with her thirsty, thirsty pussy.”

“Yeah, but, um…”

Vickie rolled her eyes, again, and climbed off me. She dug her purse out from under a backpack, and some dirty clothes, and fished out a packet. In what I was learning was classic Vickie fashion, she threw it at me. Birth control, the pills removed right up through today’s date. “Satisfied? And I’m clean. Actually,” she said, expertly resuming her position and picking up where she left off, “you’re kind of… my first.”

“Wow. Seriously?”

Her eyes nearly got stuck in the back of her head this time. “Yeah, ya dildo, I learned the whole sexy fuck-me talk thing during my middle school dry hump phase. You’re not gonna get fucking chlamydia, all right? Now shut up and put it inside me.”

The interlude had cleared my head somewhat. If not for the gorgeous woman astride my cock, I might have gone soft. “Quite the sales pitch.”

Her palms rested on my chest, fingers teasing through my chest hair. Once more she put her lips to my ear. Her tongue, too. I wasn’t always big on liberal spit coatings, but Vickie wasn’t just licking at random. She knew what she was doing.

“I’m sorry, Spencer. Let Vickie make it up to you? She’ll make you forget all about whatever bad, bad thing she said.”

“I don’t think I’ll, um, forget…” Fuck. What was it she’d said?

A throaty giggle rewarded me for my distractedness, and Vickie for her lasciviousness. She went back to her go-to. “Let Vickie put your dick inside her. Fuck Vickie. Let Vickie make you come. Let Vickie have your cum.”

“I don’t know – been a while since I broke in a  virgin…”

She didn’t laugh, though. She was on a mission. “Maybe it makes me weird, but I love the feel of cum in my pussy. I love it. It makes me feel sexier than anything in the world. Come on, Spencer. Let me feel that. Let me feel you. I want you in me. Not just your cock. I mean, yes, your cock, obviously. Let that monster stretch my little pussy out, let my little pussy slay that fucking dragon dick. And then the cum.”

She rose up, took my shaft in one hand, aimed it at her allegedly tight little pussy. The tip sunk in, but only that. It was snug all right, though hardly a surprise. It must be leg day that I interrupted, because she held the position motionlessly, ready to lower herself at my behest.

Had Savannah really  said…?

Oh fuck it.

“Go ahead,” I consented.

To my dismay, she instead twitched upward, not down, and that small but very contented part of my penis was suddenly cold, and sad. “Say ‘please fuck me, Vickie.’”

“A second ago, you were pleading with me, and now I have to beg you?”

“Say it. Say ‘please fuck me, Vickie,’ and I’ll do everything I promised. But I want to hear you say it.”

I grit my teeth. I did not  want to say it. I’d had so many women throwing themselves at me of late; was I really going to stoop to begging, just because–

Her needy, slobbery whisper in my ear: “Say it, Spencer? Please, I want your cock so bad but Vickie’s pussy needs to hear you say it first.”

I took a breath. “Please…”

Her eyes brightened, smile flourished, pussy dribbled down my shaft. “Please…?”

“Please fuck me Vickie.” I blurted.

My coworker sunk down, head lolling back in apparent ecstasy as the V on her pussy widened. But only partway . “Mmm, yes, now say it right .”

I grabbed her tits. “Please, fuck me Vickie.”

All the way. Holy fuck, she wasn’t kidding about how tight that thing was. My eyes shot wide as I was engulfed in the snuggest little cunt I’d ever fucked. Only then, she didn’t move.

“So close… So close to letting Vickie give you all the pleasure she knows how…”

I slapped that big round ass of hers, opened-palmed, hard. “You better start fucking me or I’ll go find someone who will!”

Like that, her hips fired into motion. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” she chanted, her slackened jaw making each utterance come out more a “ yuss ,” each one pitched higher than the previous.

Vickie got her workout in. She wended  her way between rhythms and techniques faster than I could keep up, and displayed no interest in consulting me on the proceedings. Up and down, side to side, these divine little circles that I couldn’t help but implore her to continue.

And all the while, she went on with the dirty talk with a devotion that made me worry her head might start spinning in circles. And that it might turn me on if it did. “You like fucking Vickie’s pussy like that? Yeah? You like your fat fucking monster dick ripping up my skinny little cunt? You like the way Vickie’s titties bounce when she rides your cock? Has she earned your cum yet? Don’t give it to Vickie until she deserves it. Vickie wants to see the look on your face when her tiny little pussy squeezes your giant cock dry. Yes, yes, yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes OH FUCKING GOD YES!”

That was the first time she came. For a moment, I wondered what my girls would make of this, a dog pile of drooling, slackjawed, dazedly masturbating Hotties overwhelmed by the certainty of how good their RA was fucking the little slut from ground floor. Crawling to the showers to give themselves those hard, steamy o’s they’d come to enjoy at my side. Too needy, too horny to stop pleasuring themselves even when I caught them in the act.

“Not yet not yet not yet!” she squealed. “Vickie needs more!”

I told myself how wrong it was, thinking of these girls, young women I was charged to guide and support and watch over, as mewling sex kittens, eager willing sluts single-mindedly obsessed with using every tool in their kits to entice me to fuck them, use them, fetishize and exploit their perfect, slutty bodies, how very very wrong that was and–

“Sorry,” I muttered.

I don’t think Vickie heard me. If she did, she was good enough to permit me the dignity of pretending otherwise. Regardless, whether she’d faked that second orgasm when I came like a volcano or if she’d really wanted it as badly as she’d made out, the woman kept grinding, gyrating and bouncing her little body on my cock until nature forced it out.

She collapsed on my chest, sweaty cheek on sweaty shoulder. Her thighs still gripped my waist. “Vickie got her cum,” she murmured contentedly.

“Sex like that, I’m surprised Vickie didn’t sprain something in the process.”

She glanced up. “Don’t do that. That’s my thing. It’s hot when I do it. It’s condescending when you do it. You’re allowed exactly zero third person Vickie jokes. One, and you never get that again. Dig?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. You were incredible. That was probably the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Pff, probably. Like the girl downstairs ever even  tried to get you off like that.” Vickie was the Higgins Ground RA. The girl downstairs in Higgins Basement, only a handful of feet below our naked bodies, was none other than Savannah.

“You’re not wrong,” I relented. Not one to kiss and tell, but still, she’d gone above and beyond and deserved at least a little placating of her jealousy for it. “That was insane. Seriously.”

She gave my cock a few delicate strokes. “Good insane?”

“ Amazing  insane.”

“I can’t believe you waited this  fucking long after I kissed you at the desk. I’ve been bottling that up for freaking ever.”

“I thought you were just making a point.”

“Yeah, about hot and horny college girls, ya stupid. If I’d let you feel me up, would you have thought I was prepping  you for breast cancer awareness month?”

I gave a squeeze. “They feel all right to–”

“Oh hey, no, no no, don’t joke about that. That’s cancer, man.”

“But you just–”

“I really like your cock, I think.” That stalled my protests in a heartbeat. “Do you think you wanna do that again sometime?”

“I would. Oh man, would I ever. Frankly, I’d be getting ready for round two right now but I told Ramona we could do our one-on-one this afternoon. Can’t show up smelling like sex.”

“Like amazing  sex.”

“That would be even worse. You know how Ramona gets about amazing sex smells.”

“I saw her husband at training. Good-looking dude. I bet she knows a thing or two about it. Wonder why he dumped her.”

With no pillows, I had to use my arms to crane my head up to look at her. “Who says he dumped her?”

“I dunno, she just has that kind of wholesome, I take so much pride in myself and look at me working at my little desk being so serious, lame, ultra-dumpable vibe. You know?”

“Totally.” It was not at all how I would have categorized Ramona, nor frankly how I would categorize any person, ever, but Vickie’s instinct for envy was not worth braving in a spirited defense of another attractive woman, even if she was our boss.

“All right, go smell pretty for your meeting.” She pulled herself up to a sitting position.

I sat up and went in for a kiss. She came away grinning, even brighter than one might expect for post-amazing-sex kisses. “What?”

“No, it’s just… I like guys who don’t mind kissing dick breath. That’s all. It’s sweet. A turn-on.”

I swirled a finger under her chin. She let me, which I thought was nice. “I’ll be honest, I am much  more inclined to kiss you after you suck my cock, so if you like being kissed, ya know…”

“And me without a third pillow.”

“I’ll show myself out.”

Chapter Six: International Students

Marisa wriggled until her head was hanging backwards over the edge of her bed, eyes cast upwards in thought. Which was actually downwards, because she was upside down. Did she remember the time she’d asked me to try fucking her throat in that position? (“You know, just to see what all the fuss is about.”) Her baggy Hancock Institute T had  fit like a trash bag when she’d greeted me at her door, yet now delectably outlined the twin peaks of her breasts with assists from worn fabric and gravity. The logo was only partly visible, but the slogan was lost from my vantage in the corner bean bag chair. I remembered it, though. You couldn’t exactly go out and about wearing “ WE FUCKING LOVE TO LEARN ABOUT LEARNING TO LOVE TO FUCK. ” Ergo, she’d gotten hers two sizes too big and enjoyed traipsing around the house in it – almost as much as she enjoyed having me take it off of her so she could traipse around without it.

Which was to say – it had been two days since I’d had sex with Vickie, and I was goddamn horny. Marisa was not the person to be around in such a state, but she’d demanded an update, and after all that had happened, I deemed it would be wise to have someone help me process. Even if it meant sitting in this gross, sweat-inducing cushy leather prison.

“Hmm. So, love  triangle. Kind of high schoolish, but if we’re sticking to our theory that something is inducing women to lust after you, you get a pass. Do they know about each other?”

“Vickie knows about Savannah, but Savannah is still screening my calls, so no vice versa.”

“Hmm. Better get on that. Slip on that banana peel and you’re going to be out of a job, which means evicted from your little fiefdom. Then we’ll never figure out what’s been going on.”

I shrugged. “I need to tell her because she deserves to know, and because I like her. Where my job is concerned… I’m not sure how worried I need to be about that.”

“Oho?” Marisa’s legs began a bicycle routine in the air. She was wearing a tartan skirt because she liked to mismatch clothes, but while I’d be getting a great view of her panties if I stood up, from the bean, I was mostly seeing knees down. Or up. Upside-downness was weird.

“I think I’m on pretty stable footing. For two reasons, actually.”

“Reason one. Go.” Her dangling hair swished side to side as she pumped her legs.

“Reason one: I met with Ramona.”

“Yeah, where  you found out Vickie tried to intercede, to keep you from dragging Savannah into a love contract it looks like she might not want. I was listening.”

“Evidently not about the part where I told you, twice, there’s no such thing as a love contract. But that was just filling her in on the weekend. I didn’t tell you about us going out to dinner later that night.”

Her head cocked to the side, legs froze mid-air. “Hang on. You took your supervisor out to dinner? Like on a date?”

“I used to do it with Drew all the time, remember? We’d drive around, run errands, go to the park, hit the pub, whatever? It was nice. One-on-ones in the same stuffy office get old. We liked the change of scenery.”

“Is your boss hot?”

“She’s ‘conventionally attractive,’ as you like to put it.”

“How old?”

“Thirty.”

“Single?”

“Soon-to-be. She’s getting a divorce. It’s moving fast, sounds like. She hopes to have it tidied up by the end of the semester.”

“Oho.” Her legs resumed their rotations.

“What?”

“One more thing. Sexy young boss, happily married in July, starts spending forty hours a week in Higgins, weeks locked in with Spencer Lawrence for training, exposed to whatever’s in the air, water or karma same as the others, suddenly files for divorce, suddenly wants to spend time with you, outside the office, away from prying eyes.”

“I was the one who asked her, actually.”

“O- ho . Hmm. Go on.”

I explained about my pivot from filtration to flirtation, skipped over rehashing matters with Vickie, and on to Walt’s Other Pub.

“So you drove separately. Interesting.”

“So she could go home after, without having to go all the way back to campus to drop me off.”

“Makes sense. So. You’re in the pub. You sit at the bar? Table? Booth?”

“We met in the alley, so nobody could hear her cries of passion. Good god, Marisa, it was a meeting over dinner. I’m all out of sex stories for tonight.”

“The night is young, my former lover.” Leave it to Marisa to say that straight-faced. “What did you two talk about?”

“Mostly boring stuff. Normal one-on-one topics.”

“Come on, humor me. I can’t read between the lines if you don’t give me the lines.”

I sighed and nestled down deeper into the bean. “All right. We started with a backed up work order. The card reader on 317 stopped working a couple weeks ago, so Emma has had  to use an old school physical key. Only she’s forgotten it in her room four times now, which means me having  to walk my butt down to the center desk to get the master key to let her in, two of those times after one in the morning.”

“Ugh, sack up. You can’t be the guy she’d gladly thank with a blowjob and  the guy whining at me about losing his beauty sleep.”

I held up three fingers. “Read between these  lines. Anyway, then we talked about programming. We’re doing a massage night with a woman from the health center Thursday after movie night. Wonder Woman , this time, with a discussion about contemporary depictions of strong women in film.”

“Ooooh, that’s a good program.”

“Right? After their bullshit the other night, I was tempted to cancel out of spite, but I didn’t want to be rude to Diana. The massage lady.”

“You’re going to get massage lessons from a woman named Diana right after you watch a movie about an Amazonian warrior princess named Diana?”

“Should I ask her to change her name? What do you want me to do?”

“Sorry. Go on. More thoughts on the program later, but for now next  meeting topic.”

Marisa was slowly sliding off the bed; every inch gravity pulled her downward was three inches more I could   see of her  thighs as they drew closer, and closer. She probably knew it, too. For all she acted like she was a simple goofball with energy to burn, I’d not known many women more aware than Marisa of just how they were displaying their bodies.

“I almost told her about the girls, what they’d done outside my door, but I thought better of it. For one, it’s kind of insane to say it out loud, and for two, after that rage  email she sent a little while back, I worried she’d go up there and start cracking skulls. Which they might deserve, but it’s also a fast track to her finding out it was Savannah in my room, not Vickie.”

“Smart.”

“So… yeah. We usually wind down the meeting with her asking about how I’m doing personally, classes and stuff. So we did. I blushed a little when she said… oh man, I forget exactly how she asked, but basically ‘other than your sex life, how’re things?’ I hadn’t even gotten a shower after Vickie; I got caught up helping Kendall and Georgia hanging new curtains. They’re not allowed to take down the university ones, see, but they’d bought–”

“Yeah, I don’t care about their curtains. Like, at all. Go back to how you still had Vickie cum on your dick and your sexy young soon-to-be-single boss was asking about your junk.”

“She didn’t ask about my junk.”

“Your affairs.”

“Well, there wasn’t much to tell. But then, since we were out, I asked her how she  was doing. I guess I usually do a ‘how about you,’ but this time when she said ‘oh, you know, can’t complain’ like always, I flagged down our waiter, ordered her a martini, and did the old ‘no, really. I want to hear how you’re doing.’”

Marisa sighed nostalgically. “Aw damn, you were always fantastic at the ‘no, really. I want to hear how you’re doing.’ I probably slept with you for the first time for your ‘I want to hear how you’re doing.’”

“So… yeah. She talked, and talked, and drank a little more than she probably should’ve, and talked some more. We met up at 4, talked about my stuff for half an hour, and she filled in the rest until I had to leave to start duty at 7, and I barely made it.”

Marisa had slid enough now that she lowered her hands to help keep her off the floor. The hem of her shirt was now dangling higher, or lower or whatever, forming a sort of inverted scoop neck from her navel down towards her throat. The back of her shirt was holding it in place, though. Her bra was riding up her chest, too. If she was fine showing off her underboob, I wasn’t about to say no. We still had our staff meeting tonight, all the Higgins RAs plus Ramona, and I had high hopes to follow Vickie back to her room afterwards. Marisa made for a hell of an amuse-bouche .

“What’d she talk about? Spare the pointless crap; I’m not a wanna-hear-how-she’s-doing type. But anything weird?”

“Nothing… weird,” I said after some consideration. And some appreciation of the way her boobs jiggled when she was kicking her legs like that. “She started by saying it wasn’t appropriate to vent about her marital issues to a subordinate, but two martinis in, that went out the window. I guess they only married late last year, and were only together less than a year before that. He works at Lakeview, I guess, or did? It wasn’t clear, but she said he is or was some kind of adjunct professor. Sounds like his career’s not  going well.”

“I said skip the boring stuff.”

“Anyway, I finally got bold enough to ask if she was breaking it off, or him, or mutual, and she said it was her.”

“Oho?”

“Marisa, your boobs are falling out. Come on. I have a girlfriend now, kind of.”

“Two, kind of. But also really zero, kind of. Remember? No love contracts.” She grinned up – down? downside-up? “See? I listen.”

“Put ‘em away or I’m closing my eyes for the rest of our discussion.”

“Fine, fine. You know how I get fidgety about puzzle-solving. Plus I think better when I’m uncomfortable with how much I’m revealing.”

I had never actually made that connection, but in any case, as Marisa squirmed and wiggled back atop her bed, only barely flashing me most of her boobs in the process, I went on. “So yeah, she said she’d been feeling more and more unhappy, like it just wasn’t working out. I didn’t know what that meant, so I stayed quiet, sipped my drink when she stopped talking until she started again, and before long she just lays  into the guy. How he doesn’t have real professional goals, he doesn’t understand hers. She was raised – I’m not sure exactly how long, but I think only a little while, like ten-ish or fifteen-ish? as sort of a gypsy, actually.”

“They prefer to be called Roma, I believe.”

“But she’s not technically Roma, just that kind of lifestyle. She was the one who used the term, but I guess what they call themselves translates from the Polish to Travelling People? Like something out of a book. Anyway, so yeah, I guess settling down in a mid-sized suburban home wasn’t exactly gelling with all that. How it was a lot more boring than she was ready for.”

“Boring? No joke. You know, if you’re going to play-by-play your date with your sexually frustrated gypsy boss, I don’t see why I can’t at least air out my tits. I’ve been wearing this bra almost all day. Yech.”

“I never said she was sexually frustrated.”

“We’re all guilty of projecting sometimes. My date last night? Blech. Three out of ten, do not recommend. All hands no mouth.”

I breezed past her sidebar. “Well, there was one interesting thing.”

Marisa, now seated on the edge of her bed, crossed her legs much too obviously. “Thank goodness. What did she say?”

“Well, part of my brain was still thinking about our situation, and since that part of my brain was the one that talked her into coming out for drinks, talking like friends, or at least coworkers…” I shrugged. “Maybe I was a little bored of it, too. So I said, like a joke, ‘well if you need any pointers in spicing things up…’ You know, because we’d just had the talk about me and Savannah. Or Vickie, or whatever. But just to poke the discussion back towards sex. I guess I wanted to see how she’d react.”

“Nice. So how did she ?” She snapped her fingers suddenly, shaking her head. “No – first, how would you have thought  she would react? If I’d asked you a month ago, ‘Spencer, how would your sexy barely-older lady boss divorcee react to you jokingly offering her sex tips?’ what would then-you have answered?”

“I don’t know. ‘You’re fired,’ or maybe, ‘Spencer, if you ever say anything like that again, you’re fired.’ Something like that.”

“That was my sense of things. Good to hear it confirmed. All right. So what did she actually  say?”

“It wasn’t what she said. I mean, she said ‘I’ll keep that in mind’ in a sarcastic way or something. But there was this look , she  had…”

I thought back. I could remember it vividly. She’d drank more than I did, but I’d been heading back to start a shift, and she was going home to weather her unhappy marriage until she could retreat back to the safety of her office. Before she answered, though, she’d looked at me. Through me, almost. Like her eyes were looking down another timeline. Then also, like they saw me noticing, and for the briefest of instants, like she was inviting me to follow her. It had been profound, in a way, something deeply intimate, too fragile to survive being said aloud, too intimate to share with someone with whom she hadn’t yet become that intimate.

No matter what Marisa said, I had left a lot out. I’d learned a lot about Ramona that night. She’d told me about her family, not true Roma, but animated by the same spirit to live a similar lifestyle, always on the move, their homes in the hearts of their loved ones and nowhere else. Ramona had befriended an Irish-Polish family near one of their campsites, and came to spend more and more time with them, eventually deciding to enroll in a local high school, from there opting to go to college all the way overseas in the United States. To see the world. Her intention had been to study criminal justice, to go to law school and help advocate for people like her family who needed help but lacked both the money and the faith in a system that spurned  their existence. She’d pursued a job as an RA just for the room and board, like a lot of us, but surprised herself when the lifestyle took her back to her roots. Homes built by and of people, temporary and transient, chaos fended off only by the nexus of residents’ integrity and need for membership in a community. It had spoken to her, and before she knew it she’d seized on it as a window into her old life, one she’d mostly left behind going on twenty years prior, a piece of herself cut away and left behind but tended by trusted souls.

She’d spoken of it all with such passion, such nostalgia, such a fervent belief in her calling, that I could have listened to her all night. When she shared her belief that I had that calling too, it had been humbling and inspiring in a way that Bob’s pitches to me in years past with his “we’re short on people who give a shit” rhetoric had not been. When I saw the time, that I soon had to stop living in Ramona’s dreamy rendition of residence life and actually go back to Higgins to live it, I cursed that I’d signed up for duty that night, that I was too afraid of ruining this special evening to press her for the paltry favor of a late start. The whole night had been like a meeting at a campfire with a spirit from mythology, trading lore for wine – or backstory for martinis, anyway.

And there had been that look.

“The look…?” Marisa nudged. Literally, with her foot.

“Like she was thinking about fucking me,” I edited for conciseness.

Marisa of course demanded a demonstration of the look. I did my best. I actually think I conveyed it pretty well, considering I wasn’t so far away from a timeline in which Marisa and I could be having sex.

“Oho, ho, ho.” She shook her head. “Indeed. That is not a look that fires you.”

“It is not.”

“And speaking of, way back you said there were two reasons you’re not worried about your job. That look was one, I take it. What was the other reason you’re so sure nobody’s going to fire you?”

It took me a second. “Oh, right. You see… I think somebody set this up.”

“A person with agency is more likely than the random biochemical reaction, sure, but… why? Who?”

“Who, I don’t know. I started thinking back to the start of the semester, though, and how this whole ridiculous setup began. Expecting a coed floor, winding up with an all woman floor of almost all hot girls. By itself, a massive coincidence, but when you factor in these behavioral components, it can’t be just that.”

“Makes sense. But who? Why?”

“Why, I can’t say. Who? That’s a shorter list. I’m not intimately familiar with how housing assignments work, but there’s a pretty small list of people who might be able to influence that. The Director of Housing, a guy named Bob.”

“Does this ‘Bob’ have a last name?”

I told her what he’d told me when I asked him that same question. “Yes. Anyway, then there’s some people who work in his office, white collar pencil pushers. I was told whoever screwed this up had been disciplined, but it wasn’t clear if that meant yelled at, fired–”

“Or promoted,” Marisa suggested.

“Right. And then, of course, Ramona. That’s a really short list, when you think about it. If somebody was forcing this weird scenario where you have all these cute girls, one boy–”

“Also cute.” She flashed a smile.

“–and then all these wild, horny goings-on… that’s somebody forcing that scenario to exist. So I was thinking, if we don’t have any guesses as to what  is causing it, maybe we can figure out who .”

“Whom. And that’s smart thinking. Though why someone  in the housing office would want  to simulate such conditions… That’s harder to guess. Stick close to Ramona. If she isn’t involved herself–”

“She isn’t.”

“Hey, I’m trying to help you. Don’t interrupt. But assuming you’re right and she’s another uterus caught in your wake, she might be a window to greater insights. Maybe you can get into her computer, or find a way to ask some nosy questions.”

I found myself frowning in distaste at the prospect of using my supervisor’s benevolent outlook as an avenue to conduct clandestine research. Marisa was only suggesting, however, and the ethics of it aside, it was a good suggestion. Ramona might let slip who the housing employee who’d screwed up my roster had been, or contradict the story to give me some insight. I couldn’t imagine her subjecting dozens of innocent girls to this fog of lust, not for any reason, but maybe something she knew, or thought she knew, could shed some light.

“I’ll keep my eyes open.” I checked the time on my phone. “Oy. I should probably head out. Staff meeting tonight, and I want to change first. Never know what I’ll encounter running the gauntlet.”

Marisa chuckled, darkly. “Oh yeah, what did you ever wind up doing about your girls creeping on you the other night? Bet they didn’t cover that in your two-week training.”

“They did not. But honestly, by the time I had time and energy to address it, it had been two days already. May as well have been last year. Still, two days of them looking guilty and embarrassed, and a lot less banging on my door night and day.”

“Don’t sit there and pretend that you don’t love them banging on your door.”

“I… actually have an open door policy, so there’s not a lot of banging.” I reflected a moment , and decided I ought to share the one  major exception. “There was, um, one thing. More… direct. As a response.”

Marisa’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t a jerk about it to somebody, were you?”

“I… no. I don’t think I was.”

More narrowing. Her pupils were like blades. “Spencer, if we’re right, and these women are being manipulated, it is not all right to go around punishing them for these indiscretions. Yes, I realize it’s at times uncomfortable for you considering how closely you draw your boundaries.”

“How closely I …?! Marisa, they were masturbating in the hallway outside my room! You don’t have to be a nun to take exception with that!”

“You don’t have to be a psychologist to appreciate that they probably don’t want  to be behaving that way,” she countered evenly. “I think we’ve both accepted that there is no simple explanation for these phenomena. If so, then that means something is creating, causing these behaviors, so unless you think the cause is something these girls are doing voluntarily, it’s not fair for you to judge them for it. Not to subject them to your precious campus judicial system, so they can be further shamed.”

“Further shamed? They’re the most shameless–”

“What was the more direct response?”

I scowled. Marisa had said her piece, and didn’t see a reason to hear mine. The root cause of most of our fights, and a big reason things hadn’t worked out between us. “Oh, not another of these ‘phenomena .’ Just some girls who played a mean prank. I dealt with the prank, and the pranksters.”

“Do I have to wheedle every detail out of you? Are we working together on this or what?”

I think it was the way she licked her lips. Maybe it was just dry; autumn was on its way, after all. Still, this was the girl who, mere weeks ago, I’d caught in her cubicle at her job watching busty bikini-clad women splashing around their hot tubs, studying whether or not it amounted to porn. Considering what had happened, I didn’t know that I wanted to turn the incident into fodder for Marisa’s academic curiosity.

It had happened after ten o’clock rounds, later that night after I’d hooked up with Vickie, after taking Ramona to dinner, after pleading for Savannah to open up her door and talk to me for so long I finally accepted she really wasn’t in there.

For a change, most of the doors on the floor were closed, and I could make it from the stairwell to my room without stopping to hear a story, weigh in on a conundrum, praise  a new fashion choice. I passed by Dana on her way back from the bathroom; her cheeks flushed crimson the moment she saw me, and she studied the floor intently until we passed each other by.

Then I got to my room.

I’d left it unlocked, like usual when I was only briefly heading out. We hadn’t had any thieving issues on Higgins 3 and I liked to project trust in my community, even if nobody was watching. You never knew.

I opened the door, and there it was.

An ass.

It arrested my attention completely for a moment, so much so I didn’t even notice the rest of the woman attached to it. It was huge. Not too huge, but big. Padded, round, more than two handfuls, the kind of ass that looked like it might wobble in a strong breeze. That it emerged from such a slender waist, tapered down to heavenly thighs, hid just enough to be merely indecent rather than scandalous, these things helped. But that ass, it needed nothing to justify it but itself.

A door opened in the hall; mine closed before someone could see I was harboring a barely covered booty. There were skimpy gray shorts on it, maybe, or perhaps a skirt that simply rode up the middle because there was room to. I didn’t need another mob forming, or another trip to Ramona’s office to explain why a resident had been spotted standing at the foot of my bed, her palms on my bedspread, her ass jutting up higher than her head. She was bent almost double, her face hovering an inch over my mattress. Lucky for her, I washed my sheets more often than Vicky, but unluckily for her, not since laundry night went literally tits up with Savannah.

“Kyu-Ri…?”

“Spencer.” She didn’t turn her head to look at me. It was curtained by thick waves of hair pooled atop my sheets that somehow I was only  then realizing  was extremely dark brown, not black. Her top was a cream-colored tank top; the outfit looked like she’d been in bed or on her way there. Somehow she’d wound up at the  wrong bed, though. The tank top wasn’t especially loose, but on account of the sheer enormity of her breasts, it needed to be big enough that if I were crouching rather than standing behind her, I’d be seeing a lot more than some butt cheek.

“Um, did you… lose a contact lens or something…?”

“Contact lens?” she repeated uncertainly .

Right, her English proficiency. For a rube like me, it was a fascinating thing, the way she’d mastered the jargon for her studies, while still often struggling with conversational words and constructions. What English she’d learned before arriving at Lakeview had been British English as well, so our American accents tripped her up still further. Hers did for me sometimes, too, but I made sure to be patient and accommodating.

“Like eyeglasses, but the little circle, put it in your eye?”

“Ah. No, I do not wear contact lens . My vision sees  perfect.” It wasn’t the only perfect thing she had going for her.

“Right. I was kind of joking, though. What, um, brings you in here?”

She didn’t move. Her head was twisted slightly toward me so that her voice didn’t get lost in the mattress, but even so I had to stay close to hear her. Not that it helped at first. Her response came in a not-so-concise burst of her native Korean. I let her get it out; she’d told me before that sometimes it helped her to say it the way she knew how, then pick out ways to express it in her less robust English vocabulary. Frankly, with that spectacle of an ass staring me in the face, she could take all the time she needed. It wasn’t right to stare, except her pose certainly seemed to suggest that it was what she’d come down here for.

Then she tried it out in English. “I have embarrassed myself, and embarrassed you. You, who have been so kind to me, so welcome . I am so embarrassed.”

I would be too if I was posed like that. “Embarrassed? Come on, you can stand up. Or sit down. What’s wrong?”

She shook her head vehemently, her button nose nuzzling right against the sheets, though. “No! It is my turn. I will not embarrass myself more – further – by refusing to take my turn. Go on. I am ready.”

Her turn? What turn? There was no logical answer except, considering her pose…

Did… did she want me… to fuck her…?

In spite of myself, I studied her ass. Again. It was goddamn glorious. Korea’s greatest export to the US, bar none. Down the crack, those shorts – I was sure they were shorts, now – sunk down like it was a fault line poised to send me screaming to the bottom of the world. Beneath each loosely hanging cheek covering, the line demarcating thigh from booty was visible, no squinting required.

“Please,” she murmured when I didn’t do whatever it was she thought it was her turn to have done to her. “I am so embarrassed. Please do not make me wait longer.”

“I’m sorry, but… wait longer for what? I’m not quite sure what’s happening here.”

She glanced at me, above and behind her. Her first attempt at eye contact was stymied by too much hair for me to read anything in it. “Like you do to the other girls. I could not bear waiting for you to come find me. They… they tell me I can…” Something in Korean. “Cheat? Cheat in line?”

“Um, maybe ‘cut’ in line? Where  you go ahead, take someone’s turn ahead of them?”

She nodded. “Yes. They tell me I can cut in line. So I come . I submit. I will take my turn. Please.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to mess with you. Um, confuse you. See, I’m confused. I’m not sure what you think I’m going to do to you, standing there like… that.”

“Oh. Yes. I embarrass myself again. I thought, maybe, you would be all right if I…” Another somber head shake. “I am sorry.”

Before I could ask what she was sorry for, Kyu-Ri kicked that apology into overdrive. With both hands, she coaxed the waistband of her shorts down over her butt. She had panties on, which, with as much of her ass had been peeking out of those shorts, I wouldn’t have thought possible. They were plain white cotton, no pattern, not even a bands  at the legs and waist. They were wholly inadequate to the monumental task with which they’d been charged, sucked down the middle of her crack and exposing  several inches of it above  the top.

Or maybe that was  the task with which they’d been charged. In which case, they were knocking it right the hell out of the park. (And what did it say about me that I immediately chastised myself for thinking of them in an idiom she almost certainly wouldn’t comprehend?)

On top of that, I hadn’t realized how much the position of her arms had been doing to hold her tank top in place. When she reached behind her, the top plunged, and there were those stupefying, jaw-dropping boobs, spilling toward her chin like… No. No idiom covered those. Maybe Korean  had something, but in English, they were just tits. No bra, no anything but huge, incredible, tits. I wasn’t even a guy who went gaga for big boobs, but there was a certain Texas to them, something commendable in their sheer insistence on their greatness by merit of size alone.

She put her palms back on the bed. If she noticed her shirt, she did nothing about it. What in the flying flippy flap was going on?! She couldn’t be expecting me to have sex with her, could she? She was too short to do it standing up, for one, and why would she stop with her panties still on? But then, why…?! Why any  of this?

“Kyu-Ri, hey, wow. I really, really  do not know why you’re standing in my room in your underwear. Whatever it is, this is very inappropriate! Do you know that word, inappropriate?”

“I… think so? I am sorry. My school back home did not do this, but my mother, she did , when I need  it.” Her frown intensified, then burst into a thin smile as she found the word she’d been looking for. “Deserve! I deserve this. For being such a bad girl.”

WHAT?!

Kyu-Ri went right on. “She is my mother, though, so she did not have me give her my naked bottom, not since I was little  girl. From the sounds, from when my friends get their turn, I should have known. I was embarrassed, however, like I said. I apologize again.”

Down went the panties.

Kyu-Ri sniffled. Or sniffed? Marisa had me paranoid. The girl left her hands on her ass, spreading her cheeks wide and invitingly. Not that it needed it, frankly. Kyu-Ri’s pussy, her asshole, were both completely available. The former was a cute, puffy affair that matched both her skin tone and her overall roundness. I didn’t miss a soft glistening near the entrance, though I wished I had. Shit, I’d just had sex with Vickie like eight hours ago and here I was, another gorgeous wet pussy inviting me in!

“Please, Spencer,” she said simply. Her mouth was pressed to my mattress now, her words directed straight into the sheets.

“Kyu-Ri, I can’t! You’re my resident! It wouldn’t be right. I like you, I really do, but I… I can’t. I shouldn’t! I can’t.” I shouldn’t , I think was  my subconscious making a bid to talk me down, but I stuck the landing. No more fucking residents. No more.

“You… you will not give me my turn?”

“No. And I know maybe it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s because I care about you too much to let… this… mess everything up. To make things bad between us. You understand?”

Slowly, Kyu-Ri stood up. Bent over, her tank top had slipped down her back so that now, standing, it was bunched under her armpits. Her tits – breasts like that have to be called tits or there’s no reason for that word to exist – were uncovered except by the few strands of hair that veered to this  side of her shoulders. From the front, I saw her pussy was completely bare, smooth as glass. Saw it better than I ever should have.

“You care about me too much to give me my turn?” Another sniffle.

“Yes. Does that make sense? Don’t get me wrong, you’re incredibly beautiful, Kyu-Ri, but… I just can’t.”

Suddenly her arms were around me, her chest pressed against mine. Except hers was bare, and hers was hers . Some dull instinct in me even hugged her back, with as little touching as possible. Surely patting her bare back wasn’t so wrong, was it?

(How could any person be so soft ?)

“I was so scared!” she cried into my shoulder. “I have not been punished with…” She tried a few words in Korean. “Spunking? That is what   it is  called? Not for years now!”

I genuinely didn’t know if that was her accident or simply the malapropism of the year. Still, as comprehension dawned, I think it popped my eyes even wider than all the rest of this bizarre encounter. “Hold on, you thought I was going to… spank  you?!”

A peal of giggles erupted in the hallway. Unfortunately, Higgins 3 was home to so much giggling I couldn’t identify the culprits by laugh timbre  alone. I began to understand the situation even as Kyu-Ri disentangled herself from me and explained. With her tits and her pussy still out, I noted.

“I am one of the girls who… listened to you… make sex? With the pretty girl, the downstairs RA. This weekend, do you remember? I was very embarrassed, but I see  all the other girls listening, and…” She shook her head, and as a result, her giant tits. It took them quite some time to stop. “I will not make excuses. It was wrong of me. Like Sharon Carter said, ‘Even if the whole world tells you to move, tells you something wrong is something right, you must plant yourself like a tree and tell them “no, you move.”’ From the Captain America movie?” She stamped a foot, clenched her fist, shook her tits like thunder. It was one of the ways some of her Korean friends were learning English, and in this instance, I was impressed almost as much by the quote as the pose.

“Kyu-Ri, we don’t spank people at Lakeview. Nothing you ever do here gives anyone the right to touch you. Do you understand?”

“But… they tell  me… and I heard…!” She folded her arms behind her back. Covering her butt, protectively I thought. It somehow made those things pop even bigger.

“Who told you what, and what did you hear?”

Her eyes darted down furtively. What they could see besides two fat, yet impossibly buoyant tits, I had no idea. “I cannot say names. I will lose all my friends. But they bring  – brought – me to your door, and I heard…!” Her face pinched up like it did sometimes when she felt overwhelmed. Rather than describe the sounds, she gave her own butt a handful of swats. They sounded pretty hard, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Her nipples actually started to poke out before my eyes.

“I have no idea what you heard or how they did that, but I promise you nobody was spanked over the incident the other night.” Not even Savannah, and I’d had her  butt all to myself. “They were playing a trick on you. You understand?”

She nodded. “I think so. I am sorry. Now I am embarrassed all over again, but for a very  different reason!” Kyu-Ri giggled self-consciously, but somehow still  didn’t cover herself. In fact, her shorts chose that moment to escape their space around her thighs and fall down around her feet. Her panties stubbornly persisted for the time being.

“I’ll bet. I’m very sorry this happened. You don’t have to tell me who sent you in here, but you should know I do have to try to find out. OK? I’m gonna go play detective; you take some deep breaths, get dressed, and try to enjoy the rest of your night. All right?”

This time I saw the hug coming, but I was nevertheless powerless to stop it. “Thank you, Spencer! You are the nicest boy I have met  in America. You somehow make even the very bad things seem like they are OK.” She kissed my cheek softly.

“I’m only doing my job,” I said, blushing in the hubris of my modesty.

“Before you go,” she said quickly once I released her. “You say you like me?”

“Of course I like you.” Hard not to like a girl with that body, waiting in your room practically tied up with a bow for you.

“I like you, too.” She giggled self-consciously. “Would you like to make  sex to me ?”

“Uh…”

“I find you very nice to look at, and I see you like looking at me.” How a naked girl with all that strapped to her could manage to sound innocent, giggling at her suggestion that we casually fuck, I don’t know. She did it, though. “I would very much like to, if you would like to. I think we would have a great amount of fun!”

Once more, I left a mostly naked, sniffling resident behind in my room as I left to go do my job. I’d get over the icky feeling of rejecting her soon enough, I knew; not like her prospects were limited, nor did she say anything to make me think it was more than a little crush. Like half of the other girls on the floor. As for getting over my self-loathing for turning it down, that might take longer, but such was my cross to bear.

The list of suspects wasn’t long. I started on my right. Angel answered the door in a sports bra that had its work cut out for it and a pair of panties. Par for the course on Higgins 3. “Oh hey, Spencer. Everything OK?”

She was responding to my Somebody Broke One of the Important Rules glare™, and her response was the correct one. Leigh answered right before I did  from somewhere deeper in the room. It was dark in there . “Who’s knocking this late? I have a fucking 8:00 in Ramos Hall tomorrow. Fuck off, or I will cunt punt you my own self–”

“Hi there, Leigh, sorry for the hour.”

Suddenly she was standing behind her roommate, the Barbie-esque blonde’s height leaving her own skimpy sleepwear on display behind Angel’s head. Her fingers were reflexively teasing out her hair. If there was one girl on this floor who I knew would fuck me in an instant if I gave her the go-ahead, it was Leigh. And Andi, I supposed. Casey, obviously, whatever she said about her long distance boyfriend. Kendall and Georgia, come to think of it. Maybe even threesome potential there. Kyu-Ri apparently needed her name added to the list. Emma. Dana, I suspected. Shauna. Amy. Charlie, though she might only want to get naked and cuddle. I’d started getting a vibe from one – at least one – of the triplets, but I was shit at telling them apart, so–

“Do you wanna come in?” Leigh offered. “You look upset. I know we’re not doing the massage night until Thursday, but I give a killer –”

“No, I don’t want to keep you up, but thanks. You two haven’t talked to Kyu-Ri any time tonight, have you?”

The look they shared told me all they needed to know. That they looked at all told me they’d known something was up. That they looked so relieved told me they were glad they’d kept themselves out of it. That they glanced in the direction of my second suspects told me it was time to go calling on my other next door neighbors.

“Do you wanna talk about it? You can vent to me, I can totally  keep a secret. And the massage offer stands, you know. Least I could do for you after the other night. Let me make it up to you, yeah?”

“Good night, Leigh. Good night, Angel.”

The door closed, but their voices carried through.

“Oh my god, you are such  a slut.”

“I know, right? But ungh , I just wanna…” The rest was apparently body language.

“Oh my god, sames !”

Add Angel to the list.

I knocked next on 308. “They’re down in the lounge,” responded Nikki through the door.

“You’re my favorite,” I replied as I set out. Microviolation  of quiet hours, but it was always wise to reinforce good behavior.

There they were in the lounge, Casey, Sammi, Lex and Andi. Also Jordyn, dabbing paint on a canvas in what I was pretty sure was an abstract but might also have been a rainy day.

“Can we have the lounge, Jordyn? Won’t take long.” She didn’t answer. Didn’t even glance. I finally caught a white cord leading out of her mess of hair and realized she couldn’t hear us. The other girls, meanwhile, had frozen mid-conversation, watching me with bemusement (Sammi), chagrin (Lex), terror (Andi), and undisguised lust (Casey).

“Do you want to confess, or do I have to torture it out of you?” I asked, folding my arms.

“Careful, girls, I think he’s going to choke us with that python!” Sammi smirked.

“I didn’t think she’d really do it!” blurted Andi. “Did she? Oh my god she did. You look so mad! Don’t be mad! I’m sorry. We’re all sorry!”

“Forgive me for pointing out that some of you look a little sorrier than others. Andi, you can go back to your room. Thank you.”

“Andi, stay,” commanded Casey. That was the command that won the day. Andi didn’t budge, much as she looked like she wanted to sprint out of there. “Come on, it was a little prank, Spencer. Nobody got hurt.”

“You humiliated Kyu-Ri, Casey. That’s hurting someone.”

Lexi raised a hand  timidly. I nodded permission to speak, which she made me regret almost immediately. “Um, I think it’s worth pointing out that Japanese girls are spanked as punishment in school, like, all the time.”

“No, they’re not! And she’s not Japanese, she’s Korean!”

“Yeah, Koreans I meant.”

“They’re not either!”

“About a million of my little brothers’ Asian comic books would disagree with you on that one, Jefe,” Sammi supplied, smirk broadening.

I folded my arms, not amused at all. “Really? Because I saw some American comic books where they had this school where everybody had mutant superpowers. Are we done being stupid, or can we have a real talk here?”

“What is there to talk about?” Sammi retorted. Casey was usually the leader of these girls; I was surprised she was letting someone else take point. “We did you a solid.”

“A solid? Even leaving aside what you just put that poor girl through, sure, let’s take on the angle of what you thought you were doing for me. You know I could lose my job if people thought I did anything remotely like that to a resident, right? What would have happened if I’d had someone with me when I walked into my room, and she was standing there like that?”

“Gee, I guess you’d both get a cheek, huh? Tag team dat ass!” Sammi held up a hand for a high five, but the others read the room and left her hanging.

Sammi was clearly not ready to take any responsibility and Andi looked like she’d burst into tears if I so much as looked at her, so I turned to Lex. “Do you mind telling me how you even talked her into that?”

“Well, um, we thought – Sammi thought – that they did that in Japan. We thought she was Japanese because she’s got that name.” I let it slide. I couldn’t cure all this phrase by phrase. “So, after you got so super pissed at everybody Saturday night, we told her you were taking us in one at a time and, you know, doing… that.”

“She didn’t believe us at first,” Andi added, “but we, um, that is… one of us…” Clearly Sammi, from her furtive glance. “Had an idea to… I’m so sorry, I feel so bad!”

Casey picked up where she left off. Not as smug as Sammi, but more nonchalant than I’d like, considering. “We found some spanking porn, slid my phone under your door with the charger running up Sammi’s pant leg, then took her down there and let her listen at the door. I didn’t think she’d buy it, myself. I put some blush on my ass and made ready to tell her I’d just taken my turn. Ruined a perfectly good pair of panties, lemme tell ya, and didn’t even need it.”

“Then retrieved  your phone with the cord. My door was unlocked. Why bother?”

“I, um, thought if we got caught, we might get in more trouble if we went into your room without permission.”

I shook my head. “Well nice going, MacGuyver. So what then, you told her if she volunteered, I’d go easy on her?”

They looked between each other. It was Lex who answered, “We were, ya know, going to, but she volunteered on her own, actually. So technically, we didn’t–”

“There’s no technically. You played a mean prank on a sweet girl who’s seen just enough of the wrong movies to believe your bullshit.”

“Oh, whatever!” exclaimed Sammi, exasperated. “So you came home to find the world’s bustiest Asian chick bent over your bed. Not like she actually got spanked or anything. Why are you even making a big deal out of this?”

“Sammi! You’re going to get us in even more trouble!” hissed a panic-stricken Andi.

“Oh boo fucking hoo. God, if you can’t even tease a foreign exchange student, what’s the point of letting them come here? Sneaky fucking Asian fucking devious little–”

“Sammi, at this point you’re working hard at transitioning this from bullying to a full-on hate crime.” I shook my head. “I’m going to be writing this up and passing it on to my supervisor.”

“You’re narcing on us ?!” Sammi demanded. Jordyn finally glanced over, seemed  surprised to see me in the lounge. Considering how stoned she looked, it behooved her to get right back to ignoring us and focusing on her painting.

“I’m letting my supervisor know so she can help decide how best to make sure Kyu-Ri gets justice, if she wants it, and so we can protect the community from your doing anything like this again.”

Sammi rose to her feet, a classic intimidation attempt. I’d written up raging football players before at Rowland; little Sammi did not shake me in the least. “Right. Like a fucking narc. This is such bullshit!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. If you’d shown any contrition, I might not have had to.”

“It was a fucking joke!” yelled Sammi.

At that moment, Casey decided to reassert herself. She grabbed Sammi’s jeans and jerked her back into her seat. “Sammi, shut up.”

“What?! Are you taking his  side?! Or that  little anime bimbo’s?! You can’t–”

“Shut up, right now, or I will handle you some other way. You feel me?”

I had no idea what that meant, but it sure worked. Sammi was fuming, but at the admonition   from  her friend, she at least put a cork in that bottle. Casey turned back to me. “Can you and me talk, homie?”

I looked between the four of them. “ Any  of you have anything else to add before I let you go?”

Sammi glared balefully between Casey and I, but kept her mouth shut. Lex shook her head, as did Andi, though the latter then said, “I’m gonna go apologize to Kyu-Ri.”

“Yeah, same,” mumbled Lex.

I nodded appreciatively, and waited for the three to go. Jordyn glanced at Casey and I, once, but otherwise didn’t react as she worked her brushes.

When the door shut behind Sammi, I took a deep breath to calm myself and focused on Casey. “So, you wanted to say something in your defense?”

“Nah, not defense. More a so-you-know thing. You write what you got to write and all that. I heard the judicial shit is mostly bullshit anyway, and not like I ain’t been in trouble before.”

“The judicial system is meant to be educative , not punitive. We’re not cops or judges.”

“Yeah, cool line for your postcard, Ra. Whatever. I’m just saying, we really were trying to do you right. Now Sammi didn’t know that. None of them three did.”

“They seemed pretty aware of what they were doing.”

“They think they were. Naw, homie. I wanted to make it up to you, ‘cause of the other night when you had your girl over. I know that shit was kind fucked up. I was just dropping some eaves, and before I know  it half the goddamn floor turnt out. And… yeah, I guess you don’t need me to remind you.”

“I do not.”

“Then next morning, through the wall, I wake up to hear your sidepiece, that divine-ass bitch downstairs – no disrespect – running out, crying, making fuss. I wasn’t meddling or anything, but these walls are hella thin, you know, and I was having trouble sleeping. Anyways, so I feel like I owe you for wrecking your night with shenanigans.”

“Please don’t tell me you sent in Kyu-Ri for a spanking as your version of an apology note.”

“I mean, kinda?” My eyes narrowed, the rebuke forming in my mind as she hurried on. “But hang on. I’d’ve done it myself, you know? Just between you, me, and the hippie, you know you could  tap this any time  you want. I know you know. Shit, my boyfriend even said he’d be down for it.”

Hard to muster a counter-argument when I’d been enumerating the various girls for whom I suspected that was the case not an hour ago. “Look, hey, whatever you and he are into…”

“Not even that. Just, you know. You make me horny as fuck, homie. Boyfriend’s just the lucky recipient of all that energy your thick swingin’ dick stirring up over here. He never had it so good. I went back home and we got up on each other last weekend, and I made him come like one of those shook-up champagne bottles, you know?” She scratched her fingers at either side of her ski cap, then burst them toward the ceiling.

“That is way  more information than I need about–”

“Sorry. I get all describey  when I’m this horny. And I know you know how you are for me. You make me wanna do sinnnnnful  things, homie. But I know you think I’m just some ho, or at least some ultra-fine ho, so I know you won’t let me make it up to you for drying out your gear.”

I made sure to keep my hands folded precisely where they were. This was a lot more frank than my libido was ready for. “So yeah, you used her in your place. Like an apology note. Like the problem with your behavior that night was disrupting my sex life and not the lewd, intrusive scene I stepped out into.”

“You can have more than one problem, right? I onliest want you to be happy, homie! That’s it. You ain’t even touched me, and you’ve been making me happy as fuck all semester. And I know our Korean connection been  aching to get some linguistics lessons from you since day one. We all keep telling her, you’re gonna get our boy fired, but any time you try to explain ‘no, you can’t do that with him,’ suddenly her Engrish not so good.”

I sighed. “You were doing OK right up until the racist part.” Annoyingly, I even believed her. I’d been too dazed by what I was seeing to do much critical thinking, but the pose, the prolonged nudity, the hugs, and, as if all that shouldn’t have clued me in, she’d pivoted from “oh darn they tricked me” to “hey wanna fuck while we’re here?” a bit too greedily. Had she known she was making a double entente  with that stuff about her mother giving her what she needed?

Fuck. Sammi had been right – she really was a sneaky, devious Asian. Not that she’d known that when she said it.

Casey waved off my concern, like she always did. “Eh. So yeah, I told her I could get her in there, give her her audition at you . I figured maybe hearing it from you might finally stuff a little ice in her panties, or shit, maybe you’d just have yourself a good goddamn night for once and stop giving two fucks what your boss says about where you poke your pecker.”

“I. Can’t,” I said, again, slower.

“You. Didn’t. Trust me, I picked Andi’s brain wrinkle-free trying to figure out how she got at you, and came up with squat . If I hear you’ve started sampling the buffet, though, and you don’t stick your fork in this…? H o boy , you best watch out.”

“You have a weird number and variety of sex metaphors. Do you know that?”

“I’m all kinds of weird and varied when it comes to fucking, homie. I’ll show you, if you want.”

“Well now what the fuck do I write up.” I sighed, her   offer  mere water off a duck’s back. Didn’t ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises? If I couldn’t figure out how to tamp things down around here, that metaphor was going to be all too apt before long.

“Oh, just do it. Give country  girl a naughty story for this fall’s big hayride. Lex too. She pretends to be a lot badder than she is, just because she likes airing her lil’ ass titties out.”

“She does like airing her titties out.”

Casey looked at the lounge door, frowning thoughtfully. “And who knows, maybe y’all really will teach that cunt Sammi something. God, what a bitch sometimes.”

I nodded. “Thank you for telling me that, Casey. You’re weird as hell – not in a bad way – but you know what? Every time we talk, even when you’re telling me what you’ve done wrong, I somehow trust you more than I did before.”

“Trust me, homie, you want–”

“Let’s leave it there on this nice note, yeah?”

She grinned. “Deal.”

I stood up, extended her a hand  and helped Casey to her feet. She went on ahead of me. I paused to wave at Jordyn until I got her attention and called out loudly, “I like your painting!” Whatever it was supposed to be.

She frowned at her work distastefully and responded in an even voice that instantly confirmed she’d been listening to everything we’d said. “Eh, fuck expressionism. By the way, I could use a nude model for–”

“Hard pass.”

“Can you at least get one of these chicks to pose for me? If they think you’ll wind up seeing it, I’ll have models for days. Make me a legend at the studio, especially with the fellas.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Just more horny Hotties, Marisa. More of the same.” I stood up, tugged my clothes into place. “I’ll be in touch, OK? And thanks again.”

“For the show, or the company?”

“The company.” I allowed her a thin  smile. “Mostly. But I really gotta go. It’s our bi-weekly staff meeting tonight.”

“There’s probably a solid pun to be made, something about your staff, bi… I dunno. It’ll come to me.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Though before you dash, there is one other thing I wanted to run by you .” She kept her seat, tethering me with conversation.

“Sure. Make it quick, though. Meeting starts in twenty .”

“Yeah, sounds like your supervisor would make you buy her more expensive drinks next time out if you were late,” she observed dryly. “Anyway, it’s a simple point. I was thinking about this on and off over the past couple days since we spoke, and… Yeah. I was thinking that I’d like to have sex with you.”

Well, shit. So much for my sounding board. What do you know, yet another sneaky solicitation. How many of these was  I going to have to fend off this week? “Marisa, no. I told you, I’m serious about this girl Vickie. Or at least I want to try to be. I don’t know where it’s going, but it got off to a fun start and I want to see.”

She folded her arms, like she was waiting for me to make an excuse worth listening to. I proceeded. “I mean good god, Risa, I came here to get your help because I already had too many women throwing themselves at me! Now you too? I can’t! How can we be objective in our investigation if we just casually drop our pants and go to town on each other just because we’re horny!”

She drummed her fingers.

“No. OK? I’m saying no. I care about you, and I always will, and yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re a sex goddess and I’d be lucky to have you and you taught me everything I know – which you didn’t, by the way, though I am grateful, mostly, for what you did teach me – but no. No. Final answer. No.”

Marisa’s shove was aimed perfectly, and I fell back onto the bean bag and whacked my head right against the drywall. It was louder than it was painful, but it wasn’t pain less . “Are ya done? Egomaniac. I was saying, I had been thinking I’d like to have sex with you. As a thought. Of a thing I would like. Not something I was going to chloroform you over, you egomaniac.”

“Ow! Marisa, what the hell?!”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always – or at least usually – enjoyed having sex with you, but it’s been a long time since I found myself wanting  it. Outside of your company, anyway. Which struck me as strange. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that your plight would engender such desires. You know how I feel about jealousy as an emotional position.”

I did. Marisa was incapable of it. If a guy wanted to sleep with someone other than her, that immediately turned her off to the point that she no longer wanted to sleep with them. Last spring, a few months after we’d broken up, I’d bumped into her at a bar. Marisa had flirted with me shamelessly. (“Spencer! Oh my god, you look great. Should we go get our cum out somewhere, or are you too drunk to consent?” Typical Marisa pickup lines.) She’d kept it up right up to the moment my date got back from the bathroom. I introduced them, and Marisa had said  hello and promptly walked away without another word. The woman had too much self-esteem to lower herself to competition.

With good reason, I thought, remembering happy times beneath what that skirt was doing such a weak job of concealing.

“Then why did you shove me?”

“You were being presumptuous, and it was ugly. Now, as I was saying, it’s unusual for me to let a guy, even you, live rent-free up here. So I wondered, was I slipping? I have my pride same  as the next girl, so I considered whether it was the thought of stealing you from all those girls. I remember that floor program. Some of your residents are… I mean, I’m pretty far into the hetero region of the spectrum, but damn.”

“They do like to show it off.”

“Still, I don’t think that was it. The more I thought about it, the less turned on I felt. So I wondered about our theory, that you were some kind of walking feminine arousal machine, or that you were unknowingly deploying chemical signatures to that effect. That, strangely, made more sense to me. So, as a little experiment, I went ahead and sat down on that spot on the sofa where you’d sat the other day, took off all my clothes, and masturbated.”

“Uh…” No sense accusing her of TMI. The only TMI Marisa avoided was drama. No such thing as TMI for her when it came to sex.

“It was… Hmm. I almost said ‘surprisingly intense,’ but that’s overselling it. I seldom come more than a 4 or 5 in intensity from masturbation these days, especially if I’m not using toys. Still, I feel like it might have been a bare-knuckled 6, almost. Unusual.”

“OK…”

She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them and splayed wide, covering her panties with her wrists planted in front of her. “Then I waited my usual refractory period, plus a couple hours, and repeated the process here in my bedroom, where obviously you’ve not been in quite some time. Minimal risk of ‘contamination.’ I almost did the shower, but there’s too many variables with how I pleasure myself in there. Anyway, in here , it was back to normal. A 4, maybe even a 3.”

“Oh no.”

She ignored my sarcasm. “Now I know what you’re thinking. This doesn’t prove anything.”

“That is one of several things I was thinking, yes.”

“So, if the theory – a  theory, anyway – is that something on you, in you, near you, whatever, is causing and heightening women’s arousal and sexual conduct, I was thinking it might be worth conducting experimentation to that effect.”

I stood back up, and this time, I braced myself. “And I told you, I’m not going to sleep with you!”

She snorted derisively. “Right, and that’s fine. Still, I was thinking it might be worth gathering some evidence. I can volunteer as tribute, as it were, since I have a pretty solid conception of my baseline arousal, my baseline attraction to you, and have a background in clinical sexual research.”

“I don’t follow. If we don’t sleep together, how are you going to–”

“My goodness but you are a dense one sometimes, Spencer. There’s other ways to tell if you’re impacting my behavior without penetrating me. In fact, that’s probably one of the worst ways. I’m already attracted to you, and you have working knowledge of how I like to fuck and be fucked. It would be all but impossible not  to have my arousal surge out of control under such conditions, even if nothing were out of the ordinary. You and I simply don’t have bad sex.”

True, if blunt. “So then what are you proposing?”

“Let me handle the science. For now, just know I’m thinking up some experiments, and get used to the idea that I may ask you to gather data from your, ahem, ‘Hotties.’ Maybe your coworkers, too.”

“What do you mean, ‘gather data?’ That sounds ominous.”

“It means gather  data.” She leaned forward. “For instance, did any of the women you had intense sexual interactions with share periods of close proximity preceding the events?”

I thought back for a moment. “Some, yeah. Quinn climbed into my bed next to me, while I was, um, naked; Leigh is my next door neighbor and spent the whole day strutting around in front of me on a campus tour; Andi and I spent hours in my bed before we had sex; Casey and I never messed around, but she’s by far the worst flirt, and she lives next door on the other side. Still, I’ve spent plenty of time with plenty of other girls, and had far less results. Or hell, take Dana’s mom, who was fucking me with her eyes the moment we met.”

“Interesting. Interesting indeed.” She stroked her dainty chin pensively, flashing her panties consequentially. “Would you mind if I took a blood, urine and semen sample before you go?”

“Yes! Yes, I mind.”

“Hmm. So be it. For the time being. Now get to your meeting while I see if I can’t get a little sweat out of that bean bag chair. Shoo, shoo.”

I hurried down the stairs and out to my car. All the while, I couldn’t help but wonder how she meant to extract that semen sample. If I asked, might she…?

“I’m coming, Vickie.” I stepped on the gas, and focused on the road.

Chapter Seven: The Brick

“Big bro! Well, don’t you look nice!” Carmen said as we bumped into one another in the breezeway. She said it in a knowing way, though whether she knew about Savannah, who wasn’t talking to me, or Vickie, who I very much hoped wasn’t blabbing our affair all over Higgins, I couldn’t have said.

“Thanks. Mint?” I’d been in the midst of popping one in myself. I hadn’t kissed Vickie in days now, and boy howdy, I meant to. If we could sneak one in before the staff meeting, great. If not, neither of us were on duty, so we had all night to practice. Kiss Vickie. Vickie likes kisses , I thought.

Mmm. Third person Vickie.

Carmen accepted the tic tac graciously. “So. How’re things?”

I smiled sideways at her. “Things are pretty OK.”

“Yeah? Well that’s goooood .” She giggled. “I miss being on duty with you. You always keep things… interesting.”

“That’s one way to put it. You know, thanks again for not… you know. That was huge.”

“Don’t mention it! Honestly, it was kinda… I dunno. Like, not something I wanted ? But once I heard it, I was like… huh. Maybe I should have   wanted . Does that make sense?”

It did not. Hearing me grunt out an orgasm over Higgins’ lousy turn-of-the-century quality walkie talkies should not be something anyone wanted.“Hey, as long as you don’t hate me for it.” Like Marisa had said, however, if she were being influenced somehow, it wasn’t fair making her feel weird about it.

“Hate you? Come on. I keep saying you’re like a brother to me.” She stopped, so I stopped a couple paces ahead until she caught up. “No, not a brother, that’s not what I meant, but like… you know. A guy who’s a little older, who I can trust, who can help teach some things but doesn’t take it too seriously.”

“Like a big brother?” I laughed. “It’s OK, Carmen. I’m not offended.”

“No! I just mean… I dunno. Whatever. Big brother, fine.” She didn’t sound satisfied, though. It was the first crack in her determination to make “big bro” stick as a nickname I’d seen since training, and I’d take it.

I held the door to the center building open. Marcus, working his bi-weekly evening shift to cover the center desk while the rest of the staff was in our meeting, gave the two of us a wave. There was a lounge tucked away around the corner from the computer lab where once upon a time generations ago, coed cohabitation had been graciously permitted during select hours on weekends, and was otherwise a site of formal occasions. Nowadays, the digital age and the better equipped floor lounges meant that it hardly ever saw use. Most Higgins residents didn’t know it existed, no doubt. We’d done a lot of our RA training up here, and I know some RAs used it for their one-on-ones with Ramona.

Apparently they hadn’t hit upon taking her out to dinner.

Carmen and I were almost to the open lounge doors when suddenly, a hand lanced out of a side chamber and seized my wrist. Carmen screamed. I… also screamed. Though in manly fashion.

“I need him for a minute, Carmen,” said Savannah. Carmen blew out a distressed breath, nodded, and let us be.

Another relic of a bygone era, there were these three cubbies along this hallway. “Cubbies” was putting it gently. They’d once been phone booths, way back before every room had had its own phone line. If my grandparents had gone to college, thenabouts. The phones had been removed long since, the only remnants the  patches on the wall that nobody had ever bothered to paint over. The closet was maybe three feet by three, lit by a flickery old bulb that probably hadn’t been changed in my lifetime. It was cramped, and hot, and I was suddenly trapped in here with Savannah Grey.

“Savannah, what the heck! You scared the hell out of me!”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you, and I couldn’t wait until after the meeting.”

“So you ambushed me from a spooky closet?”

“I’m sorry. I am, really. Don’t be mad. After how we left off and how it’s been since, I didn’t know how to approach you. You probably hate me.”

“What? Of course not! No, I thought you  hated me !”

Savannah sniffled, eyes big and dark and watery soft. This alcove had a funk to it, but as I did a sniffle myself (sympathetic crier), I also detected Savannah’s perfume. She smelled great.

We had already made up. We just needed to say the words.

“I was mad. I was so  mad. I’d just broken up with Price, and he was so hurt and he put a really big guilt complex on me, but then there you were and you were so sweet and adorable and… and those other things.” She smiled bashfully.

“You were pretty ‘other things’ yourself. And I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. You told me how special that night was to you, and like an idiot I was so afraid of ruining it that I didn’t tell you how perfect it had felt, being with you. You were being amazing, like way more amazing than I knew what to do with, and I panicked and tried to hit the brakes and I just ruined it anyways. For good, I worried.”

“I was being selfish and manic and pushy, and you had every right to tell me you wanted to slow things down. Heck, you were doing me a favor! Even when you were pushing me away, you were doing it to try to protect me. I don’t know what I was thinking. Pressuring you like that! I feel awful. I’ve felt awful for days, but I didn’t know how to apologize, and the last thing I wanted was for you to think I was invading your room to try to force you into something you weren’t ready for again!”

My hands found their way to her shoulders. She was made for close spaces. “I wish you had. I so wish you had. I’ve felt  awful, thinking how  we ended things the other morning. I, um, sort of heard you leaned pretty hard on some of the others. Which, I’m  so glad you had someone.”

Her hands found their way to my waist. My back was against the wall, and I think hers was too, but I could feel her chest brushing against mine. “I kept thinking of sitting next to you tonight, knowing what you must be thinking about me, and I felt sick inside. I couldn’t wait until afterward to talk to you.”

“I was going to sit by Janis, actually.”

It got the  laugh, and a little pinch. “Just kiss me already, OK? I can smell that mint on your breath and I want to taste it for this whole stupid meeting!”

She pulled me in. I resisted not at all.

We were still kissing when Ramona’s voice sounded in the hall outside. “Spencer? Savannah? Hey, we’re getting ready to start! Has anybody seen those two? Vickie, you didn’t come in with him, did you?”

Oh fuck. It was around the time I realized I was no longer sucking on a mint, but sucking on a tongue that was sucking on my mint, that I realized…

Vickie doesn’t like Savannah. And Vickie wants to make Spencer come.

“We should probably get in there,” I whispered. I understood now how Savannah had been able to snatch me with such accuracy through a closed door. No soundproofing at all.

“Or, we could ditch the meeting, stay in here, and keep making out.”

“OK.”

After a final bookmark of a kiss, she swatted my butt and opened the door. Contemplating the fallout of the two of us slipping out of this tiny little closet, I darted out. Savannah was probably considering the optics of the two of us being seen popping out together and counting on me to buy her a moment. Which I did.

“Sorry, folks.” I patted my tummy cryptically. Finishing dinner? Upset stomach? Spraying the men’s room with diarrhea? Take your pick.

Ordinarily, there were a few extra seats around the conference table, but tonight Ramona had handouts occupying several spaces, plus coffee and donuts. She was drinking from her usual mug, a checked pattern with something written in Polish on it. With only two spaces left, and with Vickie giving me some pretty loud non-verbals, I took the spot across from her. A few seconds later, Savannah strode in. The only other seat was the one at my left side, which she promptly settled into. Carmen had to fight to suppress a grin, having seen me get snatched into the closet. She’d been there to console Savannah after our spat, and she looked elated to see us coming in hiding relieved grins.

“ All righty ! Welcome welcome, ladies and gentle man ,” Ramona opened with her standard salutation. Polite chuckles, as usual. It was weird, in a way, how routine it felt. We only met every other week, so we’d only met a handful of times so far this year. Still, there was a closeness to this assembly. Ramona had built a tight-knit group out of us.

Heck, I’d already slept with 40% of the rest of the team. Vanessa hadn’t even seen, heard, or felt me come yet, which was more than the rest could say.

Ugh, what was I even doing.

“Janis, would you mind passing around the agendas? On your left, there. Thank you. Now, to get the really dry stuff out of the way first, the Lakeview Art Museum has asked us to do some promoting  for their upcoming…”

Vickie. She wasn’t one to smile, not where just anybody could see it, not unless she’d done something to make herself smile. Our eyes met over our fliers, though, and for a moment, there it was. She looked… great? Not actually great. She looked like she’d picked up clothes off her floor and thrown them on. Considering the state of her floor, perhaps she had. But the way  she looked like shit. She looked like those clothes meant nothing, were nothing. Like the moment she could, she meant to strip naked once again. It would take two seconds, tops, and she’d have them off. The smile was the silent suggestion as to why.

I tried not to be too obvious smiling  back. It wasn’t easy. For one, that had been some of the best sex of my life. If we hadn’t been doing it on heaps of filth and garbage, I might omit the “some of.” Still, it had been  incredible. Vickie was so intense, so fierce, so sexy . And my god, the way she ran her mouth… I didn’t know if I’d be satisfied with talk-free sex ever again.

“… should be done closing down for fall break by around 10:30 next Saturday morning, I expect. Some of you were asking, so as long  as we kick the residents out in time and stick to procedure…”

Then again, Savannah hadn’t needed to say a word. Had it been as wild and heady as with Vickie? No. Still, it had been very good, and it had also been Savannah. I’d have been interested in her even if she didn’t have her looks. The better I got to know her, the more I liked her. I made it a point not to look at her, but then I felt a hand pat my knee. Just a few pats, discreetly, and no more. Enough to signal her excitement to be at my side, that we’d patched up whatever that stupid fight had been about. I was already forgetting.

I’d come into this school year thinking I would try my best not to date, or at least not date seriously. Marisa was still around thanks to her internship at the Hancock Institute, and she was usually good for when I had an itch needing scratching. As for more serious involvement, I was graduating in the spring, though, and I knew that I tended to get attached a little too easily. It was a recipe for heartbreak, when I could instead just enjoy my last year and then figure out companionship issues wherever I wound up next.

“… fire department to look at the trouble box, but for now, if you’re on duty and the trouble goes off for Higgins 4, go ahead and check it, then reset it on site. Just know the trouble will keep flashing until…”

Only then, along came Savannah. Beautiful. Kind. Straightforward. A smile that you felt as much as saw. She was the kind of woman you didn’t let slip through your fingers if there was anything at all in your power that could prevent it. When she first kissed me during Welcome Week, all my notions about not dating my super duper senior year flew right out the window. When she rejected me for Price, it had hurt , yes. Not enough that it had slowed me down a whit in the laundry room the other night, though.

Still, the situation hadn’t changed. I was graduating, and she was only a junior, which meant at least two years to go for her, maybe more. All well and  romantic to pretend love would find a way, but sometimes love just made  people make bad decisions, to ask too much or sacrifice too much. Could I put my future on hold, keep hanging out around Lakeview for two, three years ?

Though it said a lot that we’d known each other not even two months, and already I could imagine that maybe, just maybe, I could.

“… good question, Vanessa. Did anybody remember to bring their manual? Ladies, you need to start remembering to bring those to every meeting, all right? The answer is in there, in the section about…”

Vickie, on the other hand, was exactly  what I’d had in mind for my hiatus from conventional dating. Fun, and plenty of it. She didn’t give off strong attachment vibes. Come to think of it, I remembered her saying something during a get-to-know-you team-builder in training that her greatest love thus far in life had been the heated steering wheel in her car. Compared to that, she’d said, men had been a serious disappointment.

I felt pretty confident that I  hadn’t disappointed her, at least. Her foot rubbed against mine under the table as if reading my thoughts and wishing to reassure me. I didn’t really need it though. One of the many nice things about a girl like Vickie, a girl who plainly took her sexual satisfaction very seriously, was that she wasn’t going to phone it in for my benefit. She’d enjoyed herself, and wanted to enjoy herself again. Exactly what I’d thought I’d needed back when she’d been nothing more to me than a portion of some vague and minor anxiety about being the only boy on the Higgins staff.

“… talk about upcoming floor programs, yeah? Savannah, why don’t you start with what you’ve got planned for the basement, and then we’ll work our way up to Janis. If anybody has constructive ideas to help, don’t hesitate to…”

The more I dwelled on my chemistry with Vickie, though, the more it made me think about Marisa and her pheromone theory. Last night with Kyu-Ri and Casey would have been proof enough even if I hadn’t already been convinced. How crazy was it that less than twenty-four hours ago, I’d had one girl make the most convoluted effort to get me to sleep with her I’d ever heard of, and another tell me I turned her on so much that her boyfriend would consider it a favor  if I cucked him? I couldn’t even remember her logic. If there had been any. These weren’t desperate, horny freshmen who’d been unlucky in the dating scene. These were two incredibly attractive young women, girls who could chew through candidates for their attentions  and spit them out on a whim.

Was that what had moved Savannah from semi-interested  downstairs neighbor to leaving her boyfriend so she could sleep with me on the spot? Was that what had taken Vickie from irked by my attraction to Savannah, to dragging me into bed in a glorious feat of one-upsmanship? Would I have ever gotten anywhere with either of them, if not for whatever force it was dialing my sex appeal up to eleven?

“Spencer? How about you?”

“So we’re still having our Thursday movie nights,” I answered. Naturally I’d still been paying attention to the meeting; I wasn’t a savage. “This week, opening with Wonder Woman .”

“The first one or the newer one?” asked Carmen. Right as Vickie’s bare foot slid between my thighs. I could feel her toes massaging at what she guessed, correctly, was my cock.

“Oh! Oh. Wow. Yeah, the, um… the older one. For sure.”

“I was gonna say! The newer one…”

Ramona cleared her throat. “Perhaps we can play movie critic after the meeting…?”

Carmen’s cheeks colored. Less than mine, though, I bet. Vickie’s toes had split right around my penis and were rubbing up and down. Having spent the entire meeting to that point thinking about my sexual encounters with her and Savannah, it was already semi-turgid and on its way to bigger things.

“Right. So yeah, we’ll talk about women. Strong women. In film. You kno-ho!” I tried to make it sound like a cough. Savannah had surprised me, if not so lewdly, by locating the gap between my shirt and my shorts, teasing at the available space on my lower back with a feather-light touch. I was a sucker for that. Marisa said everyone was, and like usual, annoyingly, she was probably right. Savannah was being casual; I didn’t think anyone could see. I sure hoped not, at least. Likewise it was a lot less disruptive than Vickie’s footjob, but put together, it was an exponential increase in stimulus. I coughed harder, stalling.

Ramona frowned, then bent over the table and patted my shoulder softly. I could see right down her blouse. Black bra, no frills, silver clasp in the front. The way her breasts were bulging out, I wondered if that was gravity, or if she was in need of a bigger size. Were those… some kind of tattoos? It was dark in there, but I’d swear I saw something. Either way, holy fuck. “Are you all right, Spencer? Would you like me to get you a drink?”

And… yeah. Staring at my boss’s impressive tits, two women unable to resist the impulse to covertly pleasure me, I… came in my shorts. In a staff meeting.

It was noteworthy for the obvious reason, because holy shit, I just came  in a fucking staff meeting . Additionally, though, it was one of the weakest, most feeble, sad little orgasms of my life. If Vickie had been a barbaric yawp, this was a effete  sneeze. One where, when you apologized, people looked up and were like “you sneezed…?”

It also marked the official point at which the entire staff of Higgins Hall had seen me come. No more hold-outs. I also officially lost count of how many times each had been given the privilege.

Clarity chased on the heels of pleasure, however mild. I shook my head. “Sorry, no, choked on my own spit. Sorry, gross. I’m fine.” Ramona’s concerned expression lingered a moment, then she withdrew. Savannah, sensing she might have put me off a bit more than her mild teasing had intended, pulled her hand back on her own. Vickie required a stern look before her foot slipped away.

“Anyway, yeah, we’re doing the movie, and then we have someone from the health center coming in to do a massage night. Just in time for midterms, I figured.”

“That’s great thinking. I bet it’ll be a hit.”

“I bet those Higgins 3 girls get into a fight over who gets to be his partner,” mumbled Janis, way too loudly. Janis being Janis, she wasn’t expressing jealousy, only a dig at what she undisguisedly  perceived as a troop of cock-starved sluts sheltering under her feet.

“Try to keep your clothes on when you break up this one, yeah?” Vickie chimed in, smirking.

“Or at least invite the rest of us,” Vanessa joked, though she looked incredibly embarrassed to be heard doing so.

“That’s enough, ladies,” Ramona cut in. She looked a little red in the face herself. Remembering that first fight? She’d had a front row seat. How had I compared to her husband? Had she ever thought of me, when they were…? No. No, that would be crazy.

“So Janis, what about your next floor program?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll just play a movie like Spencer.”

Ramona’s eyes narrowed, but Janis’s half-assed programming was a one-on-one issue, not a staff meeting discussion. “All right. Lots of great initiatives, everyone. Keep it coming. Now, time for the brick!”

Some polite applause, an even politer cheer from Vanessa, who had won it at the last staff meeting. It had been sitting in front of her the whole meeting. Ramona handed her the sharpie to add her signature and the date she’d won it, then it was set in the middle of the table.

“So, nominations! Who on staff has done a really solid job over the past two weeks? Did you a favor, showed exceptional competence or courage, weathered something difficult? Who goes home with the brick this week?”

It wasn’t my favorite staff appreciation initiative, passing around a literal brick she’d pried up from the Higgins sidewalk. Like, it was a brick. Still, she’d made it gel with our training theme about the paths we take, and I liked the discussions that came up from the nominations. In fact, I went first.

“I want to nominate Janis,” I said. She – and everyone else – looked puzzled. “We had a situation come up Saturday night while she was primary, and she was a huge help. I feel bad, because I’d been worried it had been too much for her, but honestly, I came out grateful she’d been on duty. Thanks again, Janis.”

Carmen covered her mouth to keep from giggling. Janis, however, seemed to take the praise at face value, surprised and pleased at a rare burst of accolades sent her direction. Savannah, to my relief, caught my meaning and followed suit. “Second. Thank you, Janis. Rock star job.”

“Great! Sounds like Janis was in the zone this weekend, whatever it was.” Ramona didn’t press for details, though, thankfully. “Anybody else?”

Vickie lifted a hand. “Shout out to my boy Spencer.”

“Oh? What for?” Our supervisor was guarded this time, likely on account of her misapprehension that Vickie and I had begun a relationship. Was that a misapprehension? She’d just made me come in the middle of a staff meeting. Or helped. I didn’t know who deserved the credit.

“For offering to come over and help me finish up my bulletin board tonight. It’s got like a thousand little pieces. Was  gonna take me forever to cut it all out.”

“Good on you, Spencer,” Ramona said, relieved her wittiest staff member didn’t seem to be sneaking in some quip about her new boyfriend. “Anyone else?”

Carmen nominated Vanessa for trading her a duty shift so she could make the intramural ultimate frisbee semis with her team; Vanessa nominated Carmen for making the semis. In the end, Savannah, Janis and I voted Janis , and she was awarded the brick. She lifted it over her head with tepid excitement, as if she won so many popularity contests that this one was merely one more.

Had  Janis been popular in high school? Maybe she’d gone to some kind of religious institution where her oddities were less odd. A graduating class of 12 kind of place, where her looks had stretched her peers’ patience farther. I never could make sense of that unearned confidence of hers, but I did like to theorize.

“Great meeting, everybody. Congratulations, Janis. Let’s all keep up the great work. Better worlds!”

“Better worlds,” we echoed.

I checked my shorts, just in case, but it looked safe to stand up. Just… a little uncomfortably soggy. Ugh.

Savannah turned to me even as she stood up. “So, you’re helping Vickie? Is that a now thing …?”

I turned to Vickie, who was of course watching us. “Is it a now thing , Vickie?”

“Now’s fine, but if you need to do anything first, Vickie can wait.”

Goddamn third person. Goddamn her for having noticed she’d hit the footjob bullseye. “All right. If you want to get ready for me, I’ll be down in a little bit.”

“Coolest of the beans,” she said with the precise amount of dryness appropriate to making a bulletin board. Savannah hadn’t moved, though, so I waited for Vickie and the others to head out. Ramona was tidying up, picking up the last bits of paper left behind, grumbling that Carmen had forgotten the fliers she was supposed to hang.

“I’ll take them to her,” Savannah and I said in unison, then giggled at our mutual offer of aid.

Ramona looked at the two of us. “Oh, you two. Actually, Savannah, would you mind going on ahead? I remember I had one little thing I needed to talk to Spencer about that almost slipped my mind.”

“Oh. Um, sure. I’ll… yeah.” She didn’t hide her disappointment at being brushed away from me very well. My being stolen by Vickie had no doubt annoyed her, but not even getting to canoodle with me on the way out the door stung.

I held up a finger to Ramona, then darted after her into the hallway. She barely spun around before I planted a quick but heavy kiss on her. “Can I come down later?” I whispered.

There was that radiance with teeth she called a smile. “You better.”

I watched her go just long enough to provide her the opportunity to smirk over her shoulder when she caught me staring at her butt. Then, back into the formal lounge, where Ramona was checking something on her phone.

“Sorry about that, we were talking about something before the meeting, and… anyway, what’s up? If this is about the massage night, don’t worry, I wasn’t going to partner up with anybody. I figured either I could sit it out, let them have their fun, or if there’s an odd number, I could let our instructor demonstrate technique on me.”

She chuckled. “Spencer, I’m not concerned that you’re going to get drawn into a massage night scandal. At this point, frankly, I’d be stunned if the event passes without some salacious goings-on, considering where the event is taking place.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. We were just doing it down in the lounge. “Um, so then, what’s, you know, up?”

“Were you looking down my blouse, earlier?”

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck

“Um, was I… what? I don’t… I mean, I wouldn’t… If it seemed like I…”

“During the meeting. When Vickie and Savannah were… let’s charitably call it ‘teasing you.’”

oh FUCK oh fuck oh fuck OH FUCK oh

“When… what? I don’t know what you’re, um, referencing…?” Good lord, even if nothing had happened, the guilt in my voice would have convinced even me that it had. Shit!

“Spencer, there were seven people in the room, and I was the only one standing. Maybe the rest of the staff didn’t notice. I hope not. I, however, am not blind. I could see your lap, see your back. Even if I hadn’t, the way you looked like you were about to start floating out of your chair didn’t help matters.”

“I… Uh…” All right, time to stop stammering. Shit. Fucking shit!  “I’m so embarrassed. I had no idea that was going to happen. I sure didn’t ask for it! I didn’t know what to do, so I froze. I should’ve stopped them. I’m sorry. I swear, that will not  happen again. Hand to god. I’ll talk to Vickie and Savannah. I was going to tonight   anyways . I’ll make sure they know, nothing  like that during meetings.”

“That’s a start. That brings me to my next question, however. Do they know about each other?”

I sunk into a chair. Ramona stayed standing. It felt like the right dynamic for the chewing out I was about to get. Or firing. That dread in the pit of my stomach when I felt like I was about to lose my job was getting really annoyingly familiar. It hadn’t lost its edge from Welcome Week at all.

“No. I mean, not yet. There wasn’t even anything to know until like two minutes before the meeting. You see, it wasn’t actually Vickie I hooked up with this weekend. It was Savannah. But then we had this really dumb argument because I wanted to take things slowly and she…” I was babbling, I realized, and stopped myself. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you don’t care about the petty details.”

“I care. Don’t stop now.”

“OK. So yeah, we accidentally sort of… made a little noise? Over the walkie?” I grimaced.

“You moaned while you were ejaculating, you mean. While Carmen was trying to rouse Savannah from her slumber, while she was in fact wide awake and otherwise occupied.”

I almost fell out of my chair. Ramona didn’t move to help this time. “You knew about that?”

“Janis emailed me. She contacted me within minutes after it happened.”

“She told you?!”

“It’s Janis.” She shrugged. “Besides, I don’t think there’s a telling of that story that condemns her more so than you and Savannah.”

“Oh my god. I apologized! She told me she wouldn’t…!”

“And got the brick for it, too, I noticed. Won’t that make for a fun bit of nostalgia when she signs and dates it. Come April, we can look back on the time you squawked your masculine triumph over the air waves and thought Janis of all people could keep that to herself.” She sighed irritably. “So, you two had a lovely time. Tell me how Vickie enters the picture, please? Because once I read that email, I have to say, I was quite surprised to find her asking after the staff relations policy instead of Savannah.”

I nodded. “Right. So I guess Vickie heard Savannah’s version of our argument through the rumor mill. Considering how, erm, public things had gotten the night before, Vickie asked about the staff dating policy so if you heard anything, it’d muddy the waters, maybe keep me out of hot water. She, erm, kinda likes me, I guess.”

“Who, the girl giving you a footjob during our staff meeting? You don’t say.”

“I didn’t know Savannah had gotten so upset she’d melted down to the rest of the staff and stirred up all this unrest–”

“Almost as if there’s a reason we discourage interstaff relationships.”

“Right. But I thought we’d just had this tiny hiccup, and that we’d patch it up. So I went to you to ask about her and I, which was when I found out Vickie had beaten me to it. So I went to confront her, ya know, because what the heck, and somehow in the middle of it, we…” I grimaced guiltily.

“You.” She nodded, folding her arms beneath her breasts. Breasts I could still picture much too well. “I see. And then I take it you and Savannah made up?”

“I mean, right  before the meeting. In the hallway in fact. We both apologized, and told each other there was no need to apologize, and… yeah. And then you yelled for us, so I didn’t even have a chance to figure out what to say to either of them about the other of them.”

“Maybe start by asking them to keep their hands – and feet – to themselves during meetings,” Ramona retorted.

“There will not be a ‘them’ about it after tonight. I promise. I’m not that kind of guy.”

“Hmm. Well then maybe we should talk about what kind of guy you are.”

“Oh. Right. The… other  thing.”

Ramona leaned her butt against the table right next to me. She was close. Imperious. Other things I was not presently going to acknowledge. “Which other thing?”

I winced. “Um, when you… when I…” I took a deep breath and made my admission in a huff. “When I was looking where I shouldn’t have been looking.”

“Ah yes. That thing.” That was all she said.

“I am so  sorry. That was so inappropriate of me, and I am so, so embarrassed. Yes, you’re beautiful, but you’re still my supervisor, and you’ve been nothing but good to me, and even if not then that still doesn’t give me the right to look at you like that. It will not happen again.”

Delicately filed nails drummed on the tabletop at either hip. Her breasts were much too close to my face for me to apologize without stammering. I felt like such a lowlife, ogling her.

Rather than respond to my pleas, however, she pursued a different subject altogether. “How many of your residents have you had inappropriate interactions with, Spencer?”

The temperature of my blood dropped ten degrees. Ten more, that is. “None!”

“None? Not one?”

“No!”

“Good, good. So not Quinn, then? The young woman who swore to me, sat in my office and swore on her mother’s life that, the night before, you invited her to put a finger in your bottom?”

“She lied,” I lied. More or less. I hadn’t invited her, but I sure hadn’t put up much of a fight to talk her out of it.

“Not your next door neighbor, either, then.”

“Which one?”

“Which…?” She laughed. “Fair enough. Let’s start with Leigh, the girl Quinn assaulted? Leigh never came to your room, took off her clothes, invited you to be intimate with her?”

I licked cracked lips. “I told her no. Both times.”

“Both…? Never mind. So I’m to understand  you also deny the rumors that you allowed two residents, the young women from 302 if I recall, to accompany to your  room after they’d been written up for hosting a party serving alcohol, and stay the night with you?”

“They were freaked out about getting in trouble. I was trying to calm them down, and we fell asleep watching TV. That’s it. Nothing unprofessional happened!”

“Oh, of course, I’m having Vanessa at my place for a sleepover this weekend. So how about your other next door neighbor.  The young woman whom even I have  heard routinely sexually harass  you? Who is so flagrant, so vulgar, that your fellow RAs have on multiple occasions written her up for it?”

They had? “Casey, you mean? She’s got a twisted sense of humor, that’s all. Don’t I get to decide if I’m being harassed or not? Isn’t that my prerogative?”

“It is. So your judgment is that her writing ‘choke me daddy’ accompanied by a lewd drawing on your dry erase board of a woman performing oral sex on what I can only assume is you… That wasn’t sexual harassment, in your view?”

“How was I supposed to know that was her?”

“The report I received included a photo of it, a photo which included her signature. With a heart in place of the A, if memory serves.”

“Anyone could have put her name down.”

“Were you aware that I’ve had… You know, I don’t actually know the number. Eight, last I recall? Let’s call it eight. Eight of your residents in my office or sending me emails asking me whether it was true RAs cannot date residents? At least three of whom followed up to ask if exceptions could be granted.”

Eight? Which eight? “I… was not aware of that, no. But doesn’t that prove that I’ve been telling them I’m off limits?”

Was she scooting closer, or was I simply feeling overwhelmed? “Any comment on Ms. Sin, the young woman yesterday’s report indicated was tricked into submitting herself to corporal–” She rolled her eyes. “No, let’s call it what it was. A spanking. Waiting in your bedroom for it because you never lock your door, you wrote.”

“It was all there in the report.”

“Your report didn’t indicate that she removed her shorts and underpants, nor that she propositioned you for sex afterward.”

“How did you even… I mean, I said no! I didn’t touch her! Well, she hugged me, but I’m not going to flee my own room! It’s not my fault!”

“How? I called her down to talk to her about the incident, and she told me herself. Afraid she’d get in trouble for it. Come to think of it,” Ramona said, tapping her chin pensively, “I suppose she makes nine.”

“I didn’t want to embarrass her further. That’s all.”

“Like the night you distributed your floor half-shirts?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“When the whole floor stripped off their shirts in front of you and changed into their new, oh, let’s call them shirts too, why not, while you turned around and waited?”

My defensiveness was starting to get feisty. The fact that she was right and I was wrong, and/or lying, was only making it worse. “What was I supposed to do, Ramona?! We skipped ‘in case of spontaneous mass toplessness’ during RA training!”

“Nobody is faulting you for not knowing how to handle the situation. It’s just that it’s one more incident involving you, sexual impropriety with women, and my only learning of it from others.”

“If I can ask, who are  you hearing about all this from?”

“Ordinarily I’d tell you that my sources aren’t your business, but in your case… Everyone, I’m pretty sure? Your coworkers, your residents, concerned parents. Spencer, I’m hearing stories of girls literally forming lines to get into the shower stall next to you so they can use those new nozzles (which I cannot believe I signed off on) to pleasure themselves?”

My jaw clenched for a moment. “I didn’t know they were forming lines.”

“Of course you didn’t. Spencer, either you’re the most oblivious man I’ve ever met, or the most beguiling. I honestly don’t know which.”

“Oblivious, trust me.” How quickly had Marisa started to deduce things that had slipped right past me, recognizing patterns where I’d been confounded by isolated incidents? This time, it was me doing the folded arms angry glower thing. I was caught off guard and much of the accusations were about matters outside my control. Shit, I’d been investigating to try to get things back to normal! I’d like to see any other male RA on campus plopped down in my situation and show more restraint! It wasn’t fair!

My frown threatened to bloom into a scowl, but I was trying to keep it in check. “So why bring all this up now? If Janis emailed you Saturday night, why didn’t you call me out during our one-on-one? Hell, some of this is over a month old, and you’re just now calling me out? We’ve been meeting every week and you’ve just been sitting on all this? What gives?”

Ramona sighed. Much of the venom drained from her voice. “That’s a fair question. Honestly, I’m at my wit’s end with the whole business of the great Spencer Lawrence, Lord of the Ladies, Hoarder of Hotties.” She shook her head. “Don’t think I didn’t run all this up the flagpole. Every time, though, I hear the same things I’m hearing tonight from you. You didn’t ask for this. It’s not your fault if women make advances on you. There’s no proof, or where there’s proof, it only reveals you to be the victim.”

“I am  the victim!”

“Really? Because tonight, the ‘victim’ ogled my breasts in full view of everyone while his two girlfriends, each unaware of the other, titillated him in the middle of my staff meeting!”

All right, that was a fair point.

“I’m sorry.”

I stopped myself there. Not that there wasn’t plenty more I wanted to say: points in my defense, clarifications, confessions to things she hadn’t mentioned, elaboration of those two simple words. Like I’ve said before, though, a sincere apology doesn’t come with strings attached.

I’d choked down some awfully valid excuses in my day, but sometimes that was the price of integrity.

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” The tension that had been building in her shoulders released, and she looked like herself again. “Now, I owe you an apology as well. All these goings-on with your residents, once I saw that folks higher up than me meant to keep you out of hot water…? Rather than confront you or offer you guidance, I let things slide. Plus it was – is – uncomfortable, acknowledging the attractiveness of a supervisee . So I told myself that since I’d been stripped of the power to reprimand you, I’d simply dodge the issue altogether. It was a coward’s evasion.

“And as for your little love triangle, well… That’s…” Ramona spun the adjacent chair to face opposite mine, then slid down into it, hip to hip, facing me. “I’ve been standing here lecturing you for not being open and honest with me, so I’ll make this an opportunity to role model a better way. Isn’t that something we’re supposed to do?” She offered a weak smile.

“I do remember something like that coming up in training.”

“I know you have a bit of a crush on me, Spencer.” She patted my arm even as it tensed up. She did? I did? In spite of myself, I couldn’t manage a denial. I did like Ramona, and no, it didn’t end with her skills as a hall director. “It’s all right. I’ve… well, I would be lying if I pretended not to notice, or if I acted as if I weren’t attracted to you, too.”

“You are…?!”

“Spencer. You’re a good-looking man, and I’ve seen you naked. Naked and… ahem. At your fullest. Not an easy image for a woman to get out of her head, as I can imagine you have some experience with.”

That fight had been traumatizing in some ways, but she was right. I would never forget the sight of Quinn and Leigh, buck-ass naked, water spraying off their bodies, rolling and sprawling and… “Yeah. I get it.”

“There’s just something about you. Yes, you’re an exemplary RA by most standards, and in some ways you’ve made my job considerably easier. They all watch you, follow your example. Even Janis, believe it or not. She’ll sit there on my couch, letting me push her into realizing that the happenings on her floor are problems and that she needs to address them, and time and again, she’ll ask me what you did when confronted with her situation.”

“She does? I didn’t know she even remembered I exist when I’m not sitting in front of her.”

“I think you underestimate the impact you have on people, Spencer. But forget Janis. We were speaking, I think, as people. Believe it or not, ‘responsible RA’ isn’t something I look for in a man. I enjoy your company, Spencer. You know that, right?”

“I enjoy yours, too. I know Monday was only a meeting, but I still had fun. I like talking with you. I could have listened to you talk about your life all night.”

Her smile grew teeth, if barely. “Ah yes, Monday night. You asked why I didn’t tell you what I knew. Part of it was that I knew you’d already done what you could. You apologized to Janis, and to Carmen, and they both told me they were convinced of your contrition. As was I. The one recurring theme of all these incidents with you and women is that you never seem to be instigating, and I believed that this one was no exception.

“So I ran it up the chain that once more, that Higgins’ golden boy had once more trampled across a line, and once more, he dismissed it. Said something like ‘not gonna fire ‘im for accidentally rolling over on the walkie at a dumb moment. Yell at him if you like, but we was all young and dumb once.’” Her impression of Bob wasn’t exactly charitable, more apathetic redneck than the cantankerous old man I pegged him as, but I didn’t fail to identify him.

“I really want to resent being called dumb, but I’ll allow it.”

“You know what, though? I didn’t want to yell at you.”

I looked away. “You should have. I lied to you.” I wasn’t sure that lie made it OK to corner me like this, but I was in no position to push back.

“You had two pretty girls fighting over you. What to tell your boss about it probably wasn’t your top concern.”

“It was, though! It’s–”

Ramona laughed. Her eyes laughed with her. Good to know one of us was enjoying this. I tried to smile. I don’t think I succeeded. “A serious violation of the RA code of ethics, I know. I know, but I was explaining myself, not demanding more explanations from you.” Her hand had never left my forearm. It squeezed. I felt my muscle  knot tighter. “I’ve been just… miserable, Spencer. Missing my family, losing all interest in my husband, seeing how that’s hurting him, professional woes that I won’t bore you with… But then there’s this sweet, handsome fellow with his sweet, unspoken crush. He asks me to dinner, buys me drinks – American girl drinks, the kind of thing I’d never order myself!” She laughed harder. “He flirts with me, listens to my stories like I was Scheherazade herself. That look we shared. You know the one I mean.”

I knew. I turned back toward her, but there was no replicating the moment. What was that stray look going to cost me?

“So… I told myself, what the hell. I’m enjoying myself for once. So I allowed myself to indulge in the tiniest piece of my fantasies for a few hours, and let you figure out your troubles with girls who, unlike me, have the luxury of vying for your attention.”

There was the sound of footsteps, distantly. Ramona shook her head. “Just Marcus heading home through the loading dock exit. He’s not coming down here.”

Still, we waited for a moment to make sure. They passed. No one coming  to bail me out after all.

“So, why bring up all this stuff tonight?”

“Oh Spencer, as if I even know what I’m doing with you any more. Maybe I’m simply tired of pretending I don’t know. Maybe I’m annoyed that you’ve been withholding things from me. Maybe I worry you’re in over your head.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s exciting to me to talk about Spencer the man instead of Spencer the employee.”

“Really…?” I was twenty-four years old, soon to be twenty-five, and I’d been a student that whole time. It was unnerving – exciting, a bit, but also unnerving – to hear a real adult woman talking about me as an object of her excitement. Especially a boss. Should I be flattered? I didn’t know what to feel.

“Let us look forward. I’ve been, I think, very honest with you tonight, so I hope you appreciate I am still being honest when I say that I can keep my fantasies and my conduct separate. From now on, though, I hope you’ll tell me about what’s really  going on up on Higgins 3. All of it. You’ve got some… passionate young women up there, and that’s a lot for one man to handle.”

I attempted levity. (Ramona was still  touching my arm.) “I thought me handling  them was the problem.”

“Don’t make puns, dear. But I would like to help, or at least let you vent about your frustrations the way I do the rest of the staff. And I would like to know about things from you, because I trust your perspective and judgment more than I do any of theirs. To say nothing of their parents.” She sighed. “Parents weekend is going to be… an experience.”

I banished Dana’s mom from my thoughts and gave a sympathetic nod.

“So how does that sound? We can keep meeting off-campus. Perhaps on nights when you’re not on duty, so we don’t have to cut ourselves short if we don’t want . So I won’t have to be the only one drinking.”

My head was swimming. “Are you… sure this is OK?”

“I feel like contemplations of what is ‘OK’ went out the window around the time I had to make peace with my male RA having a floor full of beautiful young women he could evidently do whatever he likes with all to himself.” Her head cocked to the side though, and her wry bemusement faded. “But it sounds like perhaps you’re not OK. I don’t want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable.”

It was a sweet thing to say, but unfortunately, it was a thing I’d said more than once when I was hooking up with a girl. Probably innocent, but it had hidden sexual connotations for me that only made me feel more jittery.

“No, I… I don’t know. Just, this all sounds… weird.”

“Weird how?”

Weird how? My supervisor knowing  about my indiscretions. Leaving it up to me to decide how to handle the wave of horny Hotties constantly throwing themselves at me. Signing off on masturbation shower heads, glossing over lines forming to use them at my side. (Lines! I really was oblivious.) Running things up the chain, supposedly, where, supposedly, nobody cared, like the housing office couldn’t be sued for turning a blind eye to all this? Sneaking off campus for dinner and drinks, late at night, to – how had she put it? – indulge in tiny pieces of her fantasies?

What did I say, though? No? What room did I have to negotiate or protest? This was an olive branch to a staff member she had by the balls. Balls still saturated with dribbles of cum from when I’d looked down her shirt during the meeting. Something for which, combined with the Vickie/Savannah situation, she could fire me for here and now, the rest be damned. For which she could fire Vickie and Savannah, too. Which she knew.

Which she’d sort of been hinting at for the past twenty minutes.

Could… could Ramona be… extorting me? Coercing me into having these meeting-dates? What would I do if she made a move on me at our next one-on-one?

What would she do if I refused?

Maybe I was misreading her. I had to be. Marisa was making me paranoid. That had to be it. Marisa and her theories.

Hmm.

“I don’t know. A lot to take in. But yeah, let’s… yeah. How about I take time to process instead of blurting something dumb for once? We’ll have our whole next one-on-one to talk.”

“I look forward to it, Spencer.”

Her hand finally withdrew from my arm. I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Here, why don’t I help you clean up. ”

“You don’t have to do that. It won’t take me long.”

“The least I could do. Come on, let’s knock this thing out.”

Her husband, a man whose life I might be ruining, whose name I still hadn’t learned, texted her in the midst of things. She excused herself to call him back and explain  why she was running late. She was annoyed to have to explain herself, I could tell.

While she was in the hallway, lying to him that we’d had a team-building exercise that went wrong, I reached into my underwear, fished out a few blobs of cum, and stirred them into her coffee with my finger.

You’re not the only one who can conduct experiments, Marisa , I thought.

I finished tidying up before she returned, and had just enough time to top off her mug and my styrofoam cup. I held it out to her as she returned.

“Thank you, Spencer. That was… It doesn’t matter who it was. What’s this?”

“There was a little coffee left; figured we may as well finish it off. I have to go figure out what I’m going to say to Vickie and Savannah yet tonight, so I know I could use it. Figured you could use a little something after that talk, too.”

I raised my cup. For a moment, she looked like she might set it down, then took a whiff at the mug. “You’re probably right. Thank you.”

She chugged it all right down, and when she didn’t complain of any unusual taste or texture, the ice encasing my heart melted and it resumed beating. Hammering, in fact. If the additive had anything to do with why she watched me retreat all the way down that long hallway from the formal lounge, I didn’t know. So much I didn’t know.

Chapter Eight: Massage Night

To almost no one’s surprise, I went to bed the night after that staff meeting with two girlfriends. I  was surprised. Anybody who’d been paying any attention to my incorrigible mistreatment of women this semester would have indubitably agreed it was par for the course.

Vickie came first. My intention was to go up there and let her down gently. I was attracted to her, and I did like her, but when it came to who I thought I might develop feelings for, there really wasn’t a contest.

Ten minutes in, Vickie reminded me that Savannah and I had only had one date, had made no promises, and that no woman liked a guy who got clingy after one hookup. Then she took off both of our pants and threw me on her bed, right on top of at least two pairs of scissors and all the construction paper cutouts for her bulletin board, which she had started without me. She fell on top of me, squeezing my cock between her thighs right down the length of her gushing slit, and kissed me and whispered how good Vickie makes my cock feel until I shot off into the air, most of it splatting down on her butt. It did get a couple of her construction paper people a little cummy, though. She laughed and said it’d save her a staple when it came time to stick them up.

“Still, I want to make sure you understand. I really like her. I have for a while now. It’s nothing against you – you’re amazing, seriously–”

“I know, and you said that before we fucked, remember? Then I proved it again.”

“But if she wants to, you know–”

“Yeah sure, hey, if watching your chicas give each other rub-downs tomorrow night gives you the blue balls, come down here and let me take care of it, OK?”

“Oh man, I can’t imagine it won’t.”

Then she nudged me out the door while I was still zipping up. At least I’d managed to convince her not to give me any more footjobs during meetings. I hoped.

Savannah was trickier since she hadn’t known about Vickie. After Ramona’s litany of my lies of omission, I didn’t want to put myself on that footing here. So I told her all about what had happened with Vickie, including the sex, the footjob, and my attempt to break things off with her only hours earlier.

(Hours, because I’d bumped into Tori in the interim. She had sprung a spontaneous floor government meeting on me to discuss some thankfully unsexy issues, which helped clear my head even more than my dynamite orgasm with Vickie. She and Katrina and I collaborated on signage reminding girls not to flush their tampons; I apologized for neglecting to schedule such meetings; and we agreed to touch base soon to talk about some ideas they had for off-campus programs. A pleasant, normal interaction with my residents.)

(Aside from the two of them wearing their skin-tight Higgins Hotties half-shirts, anyway. Close enough.)

Anyway, Savannah listened patiently. She said that after our fight, she understood if I wanted to take things slower, and that when she’d talked it over with some of her friends, they’d agreed that it was unheard of for her to rush things the way she had, and that slowing down might be for the best. When we both felt ready to be exclusive, we could, and until then…

We made out for an hour; breathless and red-faced, she said she was fighting the urge to ramp things up and go down on me again. Thanks to Tori and Katrina, I’d forgotten my intention to take a shower and wash Vickie’s pussy off my shaft, so we set a date for the weekend and I made my exit.

I texted Marisa an update. A lengthy response email awaited me when I woke up, pointing out what an outstanding research opportunity it was, willing and approved sexual partners, both already “symptomatic.” She went on, but I hadn’t needed her to point out how fucked up it was for Vickie to agree to share me with a girl she plainly disliked, or for Savannah to agree to share me with anyone at all. Either way, I reminded her they weren’t guinea pigs; she haughtily replied that I was the only one with the power to reduce them to such.

I didn’t tell her about Ramona and her coffee. I couldn’t make my fingers form the words.

Speaking of, I saw her when I checked my mailbox the next day. I waved; she waved. What I’d done was gross, but apparently I hadn’t actually damaged her. Silly to think it would. Savannah had gulped down a gallon of the stuff and she wasn’t any more compromised than anybody else, so far as I could tell. So… yay. Now just to figure out how to work with a boss who wanted to hear my every sexual interaction, who wanted to take me out to dinner and hear me describe in detail all the women who’d flirted with me that week.

Yeesh.

Thursday evening came, and I couldn’t have been more relieved. No love triangle, no domineering boss, no ex-girlfriends trying to put my every interaction under a microscope. Not that I hadn’t played my part in causing all my headaches, but knowing where it came from didn’t beat a couple tylenol, as my mom liked to say. Tonight would be back to usual. A fun movie, a productive discussion, a massage night that I knew full well would the Hotties would Hottiefy  but hopefully also benefit from. Midterms were coming up next week, their first midterms for most. My own were already half-over, just a group project and a couple essays to write, nothing I was stressed about. Then fall break, so I could head back home and have a week with my family away from all of the drama.

Program attendance was at its usual sterling levels, twenty-two of thirty-two girls present at the start of the movie. By the time it was over, we’d picked up six stragglers with evening classes or social lives. Of the four not in attendance, two were triplets (aloof as usual). Jacqui had volleyball practice, and in any case wasn’t permitted to receive massage from anyone but the Lakeview volleyball team’s personal trainer. Sammi, I presumed, was still sulking over the write-up. Those who had shown up had, like previous floor programs, all shown up in their half-shirts.

Wonder Woman  was fun even the third time around, having seen it on a date when it came out, and once again with Marisa when she’d been doing a research project about sexualization of female comic book heroes. We’d paused for a sex break while Diana stormed through No Man’s Land, Marisa riding my lap on the couch so we could both watch. I’d asked her after we finished if it felt at all, like, disrespectful, considering it was set in a real, horrible, war zone. She’d pointed to my XBox and asked me if I’d played any Call of Duty lately, and went back to taking notes.

These girls were gorgeous all right, but there were plenty of sharp minds in there, too. The post-movie discussion was still going strong when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

Hey, I’m here in the parking lot. Can you let me in?  

The number was unfamiliar, but it had to be Diana, the massage therapist from the Lakeview Health Center. On my way down.

“I’m going downstairs to escort our guest up. Remember, let’s try to give her a warmer reception than you did our last guest, yeah? Friendly smiles. We’re gonna have fun. OK?”

I got a bunch of puzzled looks. They seemed to remember Marisa as the girl who’d told them a bunch of sexy stories about their RA and linked them to their beloved shower heads, not the hot chick they’d initially been ready to claw out of their nest. Ah, well.

It didn’t take long to find her. I didn’t recognize her, but there was only one woman standing in the lot looking lost. She was a slender woman, more accurately skinny, tall and fit. Mid-thirties, I’d guess. Not the same woman who’d done programs with my Rowland guys and whatever woman’s community I’d managed to pair us with, but no big deal. When we’d planned this, I’d suggested to Tori and Katrina (and Andi, during her brief reign as secretary) that I find a guy’s floor to group with, maybe over at Penderdast across the street, but they insisted on keeping it in-house. Maybe their usual Spencer-only preference when it came to guys, but maybe just knowing that pairing with a boy’s floor meant some of my 8’s, 9’s and 10’s would be matched up with 1’s, 2’s and 3’s. Vanity gonna vanity, as Marisa used to say.

We introduced ourselves. Her name was Diana. The way she stressed her job as massage therapist  made clear she was no masseuse, touching for pleasure. Stress relief and physical wellness only, please and thank you. This was a woman who took her occupation seriously. With that in mind, I warned her that my residents could be a little goofy, but that they’re a good sort, and try not to take offense if they act up a little.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry. I spend a lot of time around you college kids. This program’s usually a crowd pleaser. I think we’ll be…”

I swung open the lounge door. The Hotties were in a ring around the door, smiling brilliantly. “Welcome to Higgins 3!” Charlie led them in chanting.

The door swung closed. With Diana and I still in the hallway.

“They told me this was a co-ed floor.”

“Thanks to me,” I said with what I hoped was a disarming laugh. “It was supposed to be, but… anyway, we’re just another thematic community now.”

“What’s the theme? Teen models?” she muttered. Perceptive, considering she’d seen them for all of four seconds.

“There’s some lookers, yeah. Sorry, maybe I should’ve warned you. Shall we…?”

“Yeah, let’s.” She eyed me askance, but let me usher her into the lounge.

“Sorry gang, we were in the middle of discussing something – but great job on that welcome. Was that your idea, Charlie?”

“It was all of us!” she insisted, beaming.

“So everybody, this is Diana. She’s a massage therapist with the Lakeview Health Center. I want to turn it over to her to talk to you a little bit about what she does, field whatever questions you have, and then she’ll give us a little lesson in some of the basics. Sound  good?”

There were some happy cheers, and I turned things over to Diana. She recovered from her awe quickly. Quicker than I would have if my Rowland guys and I had blundered into this bevy of beauties. My girls listened mostly attentively to Diana’s talk. I only had to give a few dirty looks and but a  single cleared throat to keep them from side conversations and phone distractions. Diana didn’t go on very long; this clearly wasn’t her first rodeo. She knew these girls wanted massages, not an involved lecture on a career they weren’t pursuing.

“So, who’s ready for a massage?” Diana transitioned to another round of cheers. “I’m going to need a volunteer, but the rest of you can pair up, and…”

She read that I wanted to cut in, and allowed me. “Real quick, ladies. A few things before we start. One, remember, this might be our floor lounge, but it’s still a public place. Whatever your personal comfort level, nobody takes off their bras. Understood?”

As Diana’s eyes bobbled out of her head, a flood of complaints flew back at me.

“But they’ll be in the waaaay !” whined Leigh, echoed by Angel.

“I didn’t wear one tonight because of  the program!” griped  Amy.

“I barely even have boobs!” pointed out Ellie.

“I don’t own any bras!” claimed Lex.

I seized on that one. “Nonsense. I’ve seen you wear sports bras before, so don’t give me that. The rest of you, you can keep your floor shirts on if you don’t want to go put one on, but this is Higgins 3, not a Turkish bath house.”

“What happens in a Turkish bath house?” Kyu-Ri asked the group at large.

“I’ll give you time in just a minute to let folks who want to change, change, but let me finish. I did a count, and we have an even number. So to resolve the debate, Diana, is it OK by you  if you use me as a volunteer, so everybody has a partner?”

“Sounds good,” said Diana.

The girls complained some more, but since they’d only had a one in twenty-eight shot to be my partner in the first place, nobody complained for long. I dismissed them to change clothes; all but a few scurried out.

“This is… an unusual group,” observed Diana.

“Honestly, it was probably unnecessary, but they think it’s funny to tease, make the boy RA uncomfortable, that kind of thing. They don’t mean anything by it.”

“Is this bra OK, Spencer?” asked Jo, dropping her Higgins Hotties top on the floor.

“It’s fine, Jo. If you’re comfortable, I can live with it,” I said without looking. I’d gotten better about remembering not to feed the trolls.

One by one, the Hotties returned. Some had opted for sports bras. That made sense. Even when I’d been just another dude with a floor full of just some other dudes, some of the girls we’d been paired up with had  been comfortable with that. Not many, not nearly as many as came back to the lounge in them tonight, not if I took four years of doing this program and put them all together, but still, it wasn’t unheard of.

Then came the rest. I’d counted on them to carry out some sort of zany, slutty shenanigans, and here they were. It was like a fashion show for bras, one sexy body after another bobbling into the lounge in whatever their confidence let them get away with.

They were confident.

Shauna in a chocolate brown bra that matched her eyes and hair exquisitely. Sydney and Peyton, the lesbian couple in matching blue booty shorts and matching yellow lace bras, straps wrapped behind necks. Toni following  suit with Shauna in a bra as brilliantly red as her hair. Dawn in a black bra with so much lace I made her turn around to try again. I heard her warn someone in the hallway, “no nip policy, I guess,” but Jean tried her sheer blue bra out anyway.

“Nice piercings,” said Amy. “Did they hurt?”

I invited them to discuss it on Jean’s way back to put on something decent. Then Casey came in wearing a bikini top, backless, and that sent more than half the room back out to follow her example. Some, apparently, were either comfortable enough in what they had, or were having too much fun taking the rare opportunity to sit around in front of me in their bras.

“Two minutes, and we’re starting!” I bellowed down the hall, then apologized to Diana again.

“No, this happens all the time,” she remarked dryly.

Finally, the girls were back. There hadn’t been this much flesh on display on beach day. From the waist up, at least. Once I made sure everybody had a partner – roommates, mostly, but some exceptions – we started up some Enya for ambiance and settled in. At Diana’s behest, I took a spot on the floor, folding my arms under my cheek.

“Aw, come on, with your shirt on?” griped  Casey.

“Yeah, how are we supposed to learn proper technique if we can’t see it demonstrated under optimal conditions?” Katrina chimed in more lucidly.

“Unless somebody’s got a bra in my  size…?” I joked.

Diana, this time, cut in. “You can actually do a perfectly serviceable massage through a t-shirt. It’s more important that a patient be comfortable than to have full access. Ultimately, the point is to be able to place pressure in the muscles, and a shirt, especially a relatively thin, relatively tight one like his won’t get in the way. Now I realize this isn’t therapy, and maybe some of you are contemplating massage for pleasure.”

I wish I didn’t see so many lips being licked at the drop of the p-word.

“In that case, yes, skin on skin contact can be a helpful component. One that, ah, I see many of you are ready for. But if Spencer here prefers not to, you can still do a fine job. The important thing is comfort.”

“Our boy is fuckin’ jacked, yo,” said Lex. “He oughta be hella comfortable showing that off.”

“Oh I am not–” I rolled my eyes. “You know, fine. Diana, is it OK if I…?”

“Like I said, whatever you’re comfortable with.” If there was a sparkle in her eye, it wasn’t much of one. I was a decent-looking younger guy, I supposed; hard to blame her if she took a little enjoyment in it. Not like she’d said or done anything unprofessional.

I took off my shirt and laid it beneath me to keep from having to lie down on the lounge’s less-than-fluffy carpet. I was grateful for it, actually; I’d cranked up the temp in the lounge in anticipation of the girls’ state of reduced clothing, and I was already sweating a little. The girls cheered, but I brought them to heel with a quick threat that anybody making inappropriate comments from then on was being sent to their rooms.

“Without dessert?” Jordyn asked, giggling, as Shauna settled down straddling her back.

At last, the interruptions died down and Diana could do what she’d come here to do. I’d never gotten to be the recipient of the professional grade attention before; I’d always paired off with the other floor’s RA. Diana guided them from place to place, technique to technique. She started with the shoulders, spent some time on the arms, down the back. At first, she only used me for short bursts, less than a minute, then stood and walked around checking out the girls’ techniques, giving pointers and praises here and there. A steady chorus of soft moans from those doing well kept me lying almost  on the floor.

“You have such beautiful skin,” Charlie whispered to Destiny, running her fingers across Destiny’s bare, freckled back appreciatively.

As time went by, Diana must have decided they were doing all right on their own. (I briefly entertained the idea that she was uncomfortable with the sensuality of so many beautiful women touching each other, but she was a pro. I admonished myself for thinking it .) She spent more time demonstrating, less time monitoring.

“You’re gonna gay me right up with that shit, Andi,” groaned Casey as her partner massaged her arms, Andi’s pert breasts dangling in her black satin bra right against the blonde’s neck. “No offense Peyton, Syd.”

“None taken,” Peyton answered as she worked an elbow in her girlfriend’s shoulder blades. “If she does, you let us know.”

I must have had more tension in my muscles than I realized. When Diana instructed partners to trade positions, I tried to get up, but she planted a hand on my back. “You still need some work there, RA man. Sit tight.” She probably just wanted to still have a training dummy.

Enya inducted us into a fresh round of groans, moans and whimpers as freshly relaxed Hotties poured themselves into reciprocation. Diana demonstrated a technique she’d omitted in the first round and showed them how to use their body weight to really apply pressure. Tiny little thing that she was, she knew her stuff. With her torso riding on them, the massage therapist’s fingers drove deep into my mid-back, her breath hot on my neck as she pressed in.

“I will literally pay you to get him to moan like that again,” Kendall said right before a moan of her own.

“Kendall…” I warned .

It was Tori of all people who came to her defense. “You can’t make sounds like that and blame a woman for reacting, Spencer.”

Diana asked what my comfort level was with the legs. I said I was fine with it, which I was. Honestly, her face right behind my head was making me a smidge  self-conscious. As the on-top girls complained that they hadn’t gotten their legs done, she reminded them that she was only booked for an hour so she wanted to show as much as she could, and they were free to continue after she left.

I hadn’t expected her to straddle my back. She started with my calves, but before long she was working up my thighs. Way up my thighs. Way  up. The farther she climbed, the further she crawled backward, until her pelvis was resting – lightly – at the base of my neck.

It was awfully, awfully warm.

“I, um, I think you’re getting my butt, a little,” murmured Dana like she was half-asleep. Or drunk.

“Do you want me to stop?” Danielle whispered.

Dana didn’t answer, though I suppose any of the dozens of sounds spilling out of the throats of elated Hotties might have been hers.

Diana suddenly climbed off of me, then patted my side and told me to roll over. I had definitely never seen the massage  therapists in years past do anything on the front side. I guess I felt weirder about starting a dialogue about comfort levels than I did going along with it. The girls were all having fun, after all, and I didn’t want to ruin it. She was a professional, I reminded myself. I rolled over, carefully placing myself back down on my shirt.

“Holy…! You guys! He’s…!”

Hard as a rock , I finished for whichever triplet it was who’d said it. I really ought to learn to tell them apart.

Every woman in the room was staring at where my shorts were jutting up inches above my pelvis.

The professional poised herself right over my cock. “That’s a normal reaction,” she explained, smiling at me I think apologetically. “Some of you may be experiencing something similar. It’s not necessarily sexual, just the body responding to touch and relaxation.”

With their view obstructed, the girls went back to their aping, bottom girls rolling over to face their partners. Some of them swapped places altogether, returning the first recipient to their starting position. The second “half” had definitely been longer than half. Diana used her palms and fingers across the front of my shoulders, then went on either side of my waist. She explained how to avoid tickling, which novices sometimes struggled with. Then the front of the arms, working my biceps, her face hovering right above mine.

“Your boobs are on my boobs,” Terri said to Toni.

“Shhh,” said Toni.

Diana’s hands moved to my pecs.

“This is a technique you may well feel uncomfortable with on one another, but, um, you can watch, if you want.” Diana suddenly looked away from my chest, toward the girls. “So you can try it with your boyfriends. Or whatnot.”

The invitation to watch was all they needed. I tried not to feel so many eyes on me, but there was no missing it. All their little noises had stopped, the subtle sounds of skin on skin friction that I hadn’t noticed were being made suddenly palpable in their absence. There was still some sound, I noticed after a moment, but with Diana on me, I couldn’t break up where Peyton and Sydney were each “massaging” the other’s chest per Diana’s example, their mouths locked in hungry kisses. They were each massager and massage recipient, caressing each other’s breasts forcefully, endlessly.

I said their names (twice) and they realized they’d gotten carried away, and stopped. They didn’t even look embarrassed, merely impatient to be permitted to continue.

In the midst of that distraction, I suddenly felt Diana’s tongue on my neck.

“Uh…”

Her eyes widened. “Oh my gosh! I’m so…!” She looked out to where the girls stared , rapt. “Sorry for that, ladies. Um, sometimes, if things are going well, you might find yourself, um… employing other techniques, without thinking.”

“You licked him,” breathed Jo in what was indeed a very nice bra. I should have looked sooner.

“Yes. Um, like I was saying before, there are massage techniques for relaxation, releasing lactic acid and so on, and there are techniques for pleasure massage, that  are intended to, um…” She looked back down to me. “Give pleasure. So, if you want, and if you really want to give your partner, um, a little thrill, you can…”

With Diana’s face in mine, I didn’t see how many girls bent down and licked their partner. But I heard. And it wasn’t hard to hear. Our instructor’s tongue slipped out, extending, looming closer.

“You gayed me real good on that one, gurl,” murmured Casey appreciatively.

“All right, ladies, let’s thank Diana for her time and expertise!” I announced, loud enough that Diana snapped back from my face. I kept her moving and deposited her on the floor as I hopped up.

The girls applauded. It was the kind of tepid applause you’d expect from a weak performance, but looking around, I was pretty sure it was simply a case of a lot of them still being busy with their hands.

“Keep on going, ladies – I’m just going to show her out, thank her, and I’ll be back in a minute.”

I didn’t quite drag her out, but I sure nudged her pretty firmly. Not as firmly as I would have if I’d been wearing a shirt, but still. “Hey, um, Spencer, right? Are you seeing anybody? I don’t know if I’m allowed to, you know, with a student, but whatever, right? Are you free after your little program, because–”

“Good night, Diana. Thanks again,” I said, planting a hand on her ass and shoving her out into the stairwell. I closed the Higgins 3 door behind her and made sure I heard the lock click.

In hindsight, jeans would have been a smart choice of attire. I was still hard as fuck, and these shorts weren’t doing shit to contain it. Well, this was no time to scurry back to my room and find some. With a deep breath, I steeled myself and strode back into the lounge.

It looked like an orgy. Somewhere, there was someone in Turkey admonishing their comrades that this was a bathhouse, not Higgins 3. Only the night before, I’d been forced into a stammering apology for ogling my boss, swearing I’d maintain better control of where I fixed my eyes, but there was nowhere to look.

Angel’s heavy tits were not merely threatening to spill out of her bra as she caressed Leigh’s bare back; they were making a run for it, half of her silver dollar nipples peeking out and more on their way. Leigh lay there with a dazed smile on her face, eyes closed and fluttering, thighs flexing and slackening in a slow rhythm.

“Am I doing this right? Does this feel good?” asked Katrina softly, perched atop the front of her next-door neighbor Amy. She was working on Amy’s shoulders and the upper portion of her chest. When she saw me re-enter the room, she smiled brightly at me, but at the cost of losing focus on her hands. They drifted downwards in search of flesh to knead. Right before they hit the edge of Amy’s bra, but well onto her breasts, Amy caught her wrists gently and stopped her. Stopped her from going lower, but also stopped her from stopping.

Peyton and Sydney had taken advantage of my absence to resume making out. I had to hand it to them, they’d tried to behave. With the green light to lie face to face having been lit for them, Sydney was face down on her front, Peyton atop her, rocking her pelvis against her lover’s ass. Sydney’s neck was twisted as far as it could so Peyton’s mouth could reach hers as she caressed her breasts. Her hands were inserted in Sydney’s yellow bra, teasing closer and closer to nipples she couldn’t quite get at in their position.

Destiny was collapsed  face down on the floor, her red hair splayed out like an erupting volcano. No, scratch that. She was collapsed  face down on her partner. I didn’t remember who she'd partnered with for a moment, and couldn’t see another face under that flow of fiery hair. As I looked closer, though, I recognized her not from any part of her body, though those legs should have told me by themselves. Two arms encircled Destiny’s back, grazing delicate pink-frosted fingernails up and down her bare, befreckled skin. I couldn’t tell if her shuddering was pleasure or crying, but if it was crying, it was happy crying. It could only be Charlie, I thought, as slender legs joined slender arms in wrapping up Destiny in a gently caressing hug.

A deeper groan than most drew my attention to where Lex knelt beside Kyu-Ri, using that elbow technique to go deep. Kyu-Ri’s body was lying off the ground on the huge cushion of her breasts; every time Lex pressed down, they squished outwards, her floral bikini top gradually disappearing as its grip on the sides of her tits failed. Kyu-Ri murmured something I couldn’t hear, but Lex must have, because when she untied the string on her partner’s back, Kyu-Ri only smiled bigger. Lex ran her fingers over the acres of sideboob revealed, and I heard her confide that she wanted a pair exactly like them. Then she realized what she was doing and hastily returned to the back.

“I can’t believe he wouldn’t spank you,” Lex said, eyeing Kyu-Ri’s ass in awed bewilderment.

One of the triplets–

“I’m sorry, but remind me which sister…?”

“I’m Addison,” said Addison.

Addison sat with her lithe blonde body on the small of Jo’s back, caressing up and down full thighs. Jo had been wearing black leggings, but had pulled them down around her ankles once she realized they were doing legs. Addison seemed to have shed whatever she’d been wearing over her panties as well, when it had been her turn. With each up stroke, Jo’s soft, round bottom jiggled up and down as Addison squeezed it up and released it. “Higher,” she implored. Addison hesitated, but when she saw me watching, she sunk her fingers into Jo’s tender buttocks and drew a moan that nearly ruptured my shorts.

Casey was dragging her tongue across Andi’s tits. Right where Diana had done to me.

“Peyon, Sydney,” I said. The moans fell silent. The lesbians broke off their kiss, a trail of saliva linking their mouths for a moment as Peyton sat up.

“Are we in trouble?” asked Sydney into her roommate’s backside.

“I warned you. Go to your rooms.”

Their cheeks were already flushed. “Yes, Daddy,” crowed  Lex in a falsetto. Now they were blushing. Chins down, the the embarrassed girlfriends accepted their punishment. Both girls’ shorts had climbed deep up their asses; both girls’ bras betrayed the presence of devilishly pointy nipples.

The girls all looked to me  as the two departed.

“Do we have to stop?” Georgia asked in a small voice.

“Seriously, this is the most relaxed I’ve felt in … ever,” added Emma.

“Please let us keep going, Spencer,” came Shauna’s small voice from behind a coronal frizz of Jordyn’s wild hair.

I looked around at the half-undressed girls, hands still toying with one another’s bodies even as they awaited my permission. “All right. But the rules still apply. Nobody gets topless.”

“Except for you.” Tori was giving me a look that might have been an actual accusation of hypocrisy. Nobody else joined in to complain, though.

“Can it be just underwear?” asked Jo, her leggings still bunched up around her ankles, black panties hugging a sculpted rear. “The thigh massage is the best part, and some of us don’t have easy access to our legs.”

I considered , but not for long. Why not? Ramona had admitted she considered me beyond reproach, and if I’d already allowed bras, why not panties? “All right. But everyone keeps all of their underwear on. No exceptions. And let’s try to keep those nipples covered, ladies.”

Across the lounge, more than a dozen girls shed their pants. Ellie almost fell over in her haste to peel off her skinny jeans. I caught Charlie squirming out of her shorts beneath her roommate, revealing a sterling white pair of cotton panties.

“Charlie, you were wearing shorts already.”

She peered around Destiny, brushing her hair aside and smiled happily. Destiny, feeling awkward about it, crawled out of the way. She looked nervous that Charlie’s decision to kick her shorts off might land her in trouble, like the lesbians. “But you said we could!”

“The point was for people who wanted to try the thigh massage.”

“I do! But don’t you think these look super cute, Spencer?” She rolled onto her back and then climbed up onto all fours. The panties weren’t even skimpy; they just adorned a perfect ass.

“Very nice, Charlie. Now go on, this program is for you to relax, not for me to play panty judge.” I opted not to embarrass her by paying heed to the damp spot visible where her thighs met.

I took a space on the couch where it had been shoved to the side of the room, and watched. My mind wandered, but mired in quicksand. I thought about what Marisa would make of this, what strange fuck fog surrounded me that had made these girls so uncontrollably aroused. Diana, too, no mistaking it. Was the lounge some sort of focal point for whatever it was? Something in my sweat? I’d have to get her that sample she’d asked for.

I thought about what I would tell Ramona about this. She knew about the massage night, of course. Suddenly, though, she felt like we were BFFs who told each other everything. Maybe I could try it. Take her at her word, let her know I’d sat back with my cock trying to stab through my shorts while I watched Jordyn add scalp massage to the menu, the Hotties arranging themselves on the floor with one partner between the other’s widespread legs, fingers teasing through the other’s hair, poised so close that the bustier partners were tit to tit, and all of them just inches from kissing. This wasn’t them. It wasn’t me. It was… whatever this all was. The more I thought about it, the more I worried she was part of it. I should be fired for this, but she’d let that go if I described it to her in detail. That wasn’t right.

I thought about Savannah and Vickie. What would they make of this if they saw it? Well, if they saw a recording of it. I was pretty sure if they saw it with their own eyes – if they smelled the cloud of leaky pussies flooding the lounge – they’d be joining in. Was this cheating? I hadn’t touched them. I could have insisted the girls remain fully clothed, but I’m not sure they would have listened. I’d stopped Diana the moment I realized she was making a move on me. If I took my shorts off, there would be a full-on melee to determine who got first crack at me. Surely denying myself that counted for something. Didn’t it?

I thought about my girls. I adored them. Shameless flirts that they were – that they’d become – I’d liked them even before all that. I liked most people; it’s part of why I’d always been good at this job. I took people as they were, and if they weren’t hurting anybody, I tried to stay out of the way. Or if I could, get in there and give them a boost. So when I realized someone had stolen my shirt, I told myself it was an old shirt and I wouldn’t miss it, and sat there shirtless just to make them happy. When girl after girl invited me to join them, I stayed out of it and didn’t play favorites. When they waited for me to be looking to give their partner’s breasts a lick, I told myself that they’d had to watch me receive the same and not complain, so let them have their fun. They had midterms coming, after all. If I was going to be some part of turning them into depraved fuck sluts, the least I could do was help them have all the fun and success I could.

I caught at least two of them coming.

Kyu-Ri was first. Lex evidently got too aggressive working her upper thighs. The Korean girl’s incredible, puffy pussy was still fresh in my memory, so I could imagine how easy it would be to tease it while going after those ample thighs. Kyu-Ri was loud about it, too. She came like a bull horn and then looked around with a self-conscious giggle. I told myself it wasn’t cultural, that Koreans didn’t just come in public and laugh it off routinely, but she was the only native Korean I knew. Could such shamelessness be an artifact of her homeland? No, that was ridiculous. As she fanned her hot, juicy pussy, I reprimanded myself and promised to do better. Then Lex offered to walk her partner back to her room. I wondered just how thorough the other night’s apology had been. They’d been awfully chummy tonight. Or at least handsy.

Charlie had been much quieter about it, but her and Destiny’s scalp massage had gotten so involved that they’d practically been scissoring. I knew Destiny was very shy outside of the online gaming worlds she spent most of her evenings inhabiting, so I opted not to call them out for their gentle genital grinding. It was hard not to watch, though, especially since they were one of the few groups not preoccupied with watching me. Suddenly Charlie’s eyes flew open. She backed away, looking down, and we both saw the dark spot I’d noted at her pussy blossom, widen . Her eyes watering, she bolted for the door. I gave chase.

“Charlie!”

“Um, sorry, I need to, um…”

But she’d stopped, and let me catch up. “It’s OK, Charlie. Nobody saw.”

“You saw.”

“And I’m telling you it’s OK.”

She sniffled. “I’m not even like that. I don’t like girls!”

“Everybody likes being touched like that. You got carried away, and you experimented a little. Maybe it’s a cliché, but that’s part of what college is for.”

She blinked, those long, baby doll eyelashes of hers, fighting down her tears. “Did you ever…? With a guy?”

“Sure I did.” As if I could date Marisa without having my place on the spectrum probed. “He was a friend of my ex-girlfriend’s, came  to stay with us for a weekend.”

That sort of gossip was too good not to summon a smile back to her face. “Yeah…? How was it?”

“It was an interesting weekend,” I answered vaguely, “but a long one. Don’t ever feel bad for feeling whatever’s in that big heart of yours, OK?”

I received a Charlie hug. Only she didn’t let go. I was starting to feel the wetness of her cum through the thin layers between us when I finally felt her lips descend onto my neck. I let go, but her fingers sunk deeper into my skin.

“And don’t feel bad for this, either,” I said gently, “but you know I can’t. C’mon. Go clean up, put on some fresh, cute underwear, and come back and join us. OK?”

Charlie sniffled, big eyes sparkling. “You’re the nicest person in the wide world, Spencer. What’s your favorite color underwear?”

“In general? Or on this? Because  this  is something special. ” I know, I know, I shouldn’t have, but I gave it the littlest pinch. Just to make her feel better.

She changed so fast, I was barely back on the couch before she pranced back in wearing fresh baby blue lace panties, climbing back on Destiny with an adorable high-pitched roar.

Diana had been gone for over an hour when the door swung open. “Hey guys, how’s… whoa.”

“Heya, Jacqui. How was practice?”

My nonchalant greeting was such utter bullshit. Nothing like having someone walk in and see the mostly naked grope fest you’ve been coaching to make you realize you’ve been coaching a mostly naked grope fest. Jacqui had come in looking like she meant to join us, despite her prior communication to me that she couldn’t. She was still wearing her sports bra and a pair of spandex volleyball shorts with the Lakeview crest on the pelvis. Her hair was up, and she looked like she’d been hard at work. Ordinarily, I’d think she looked pretty dang cute, but that night, in that lounge, she may as well have been wearing a burka.

“It was… All right, then, I’ma just…”

Maybe incidents like this were where Ramona was getting her information. Girls who’d simply been too late to the party to be part of whatever salacious events we’d cooked up.

The girls barely noticed her arrival. Funnily enough, at that moment they were less distracted by their on-going pleasures than by Casey permitting Andi to dig her hands beneath her ski cap to massage her scalp. She held it on over  Andi’s hands, kind of, but it was as close to taking it off as we’d ever seen. She wore the thing into the shower for crying out loud.

Once more, I chased a girl into the hallway. There was no reason to worry, really, and though it seemed Ramona didn’t care what we did, it still felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong. It was a childish reaction, caught with my hand in the cookie jar, but my gut reaction was to try to cover for it. For all of us.

“Hey, Jacqui. Look, I know that looked …”

“Like an orgy?”

She was fidgeting with her ID, about to swipe her way into hers and Sammi’s room. I stood as close as I could without it being weird. Weirder, anyway. “Heh, I was going to say ‘intense,’ but yeah. The massage therapist showed us some things, and then folks got pretty into it. Guess she did a good job.”

“Yeah, looked  like. Anyw–”

“Too bad you couldn’t join us. Only one instructor for that many… We could’ve used another somebody who knows a thing or two about letting the tension out of sore muscles.”

She laughed, kind of. “Eh, the team trainer basically just wrenches stuff around until it hurts instead of just being sore. Usually I just ice it, myself.”

“Pretty sure those girls could use some ice, too.”

She rubbed at her nose. Was she smelling the invisible chemical love cocktail Marisa was convinced permeated the floor? “No joke.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to join us? I promise I won’t tell your coach.”

“The NCAA is death  on that stuff. On everything, really. I heard a few years ago, a girl’s RA gave her a Christmas card, but she didn’t give one to everybody on the floor, so the team got fined like ten grand or something for special treatment.”

“Well, everybody on the floor was invited. So are you.”

“I dunno. That looked kinda…” She grimaced. “Sapphic?”

I didn’t want to tell her that in fact the only girls to be kicked out were the authentic lesbians, and that whenever we weren’t actively talking I was pretty sure I could hear them moaning in their room next door to Jacqui’s. “Actually, we have an odd number, so I’ve been stuck without a partner. I mean, if you want. I don’t want you to do anything that would make you uncomfortable, obviously.”

Suddenly, her ID card fell from her hand, dangling from her keyring. I hadn’t wanted to play it like that, but if there was a surefire way to persuade a Hottie, it was one-on-one physical contact from their RA. “I thought you weren’t allowed to do anything, like, sexual . With us.”

I laughed. “It’s just a massage, Jacqui. I’m not asking you to have sex with me.” I stuck out my index finger and poked her on the shoulder. “See? Virtue intact.”

Her response laugh was  clumsy. “Heh. Yeah. Still, I just got from practice. You don’t wanna touch me right now. I need a shower first, and by then…”

“Well, you’re right, it’s going to be a lot trickier to massage you in the shower.” I laughed again, but I could see it was working. “Come on, I don’t care. I’m sweaty too, see?”

She looked me  over. And then some more. And then saw that my shorts were still tented out. “Oh wow. Um, maybe, um… Fuck…”

“Come on. Give it a try. If I do a bad job or you start to get bored, you can leave and it won’t hurt my feelings. If you smell too bad and I can’t stand to touch you… well, let’s just say it would surprise me an awful lot.”

The pretty, freckled young volleyballer looked at her door, then me, then at my crotch, then toward the lounge. “I guess we could give it a try,” she mumbled, helpless.

“Lead the way.” I followed her back, my hand on the small of her back.

When we made it back to the lounge, the girls were apparently in the process of realizing that I’d slipped out, but there were smiles all around as I returned. “Folks, Jacqui is going to be joining us. Since we’re an odd number now, I’ll be partnering up with her.”

“What?!”

“That is such bullshit , yo!”

“Yeah, if she gets a turn, I want a turn!”

“We should all get a turn!”

“Gimme a couple minutes and I can make a spreadsheet and we can do random assignments – for arms, chest, thighs… lick…”

“I want the thighs!”

“I want the lick!”

“No, I  want the lick!”

“GIRLS!” I barked. They quieted down, but not happily. “Jacqui is my partner, period. No spreadsheets, Katrina. Now if you want to help coach me so I do a good job, you may, but otherwise, you have your partners and I have mine, and that’s final.”

“Jacqui, you mother…” I cut Leigh off with a stern look.

“Um, what was that about… licking?” Jacqui asked me as she took a spot on the floor. She kept near the door, just out of range to get smacked by it if it opened. Maybe so she  could bolt if things got too sex culty.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her as I straddled her volleyball shorts. As I bent down to get her shoulders, I knew she could feel my cock sandwiched down the line of her butt.

I kept my back to the girls and worked patiently, firmly, on Jacqui’s well-toned body. She was a jock, but only now that I was touching her did I realize how much power she had on her frame. Those muscles were tense, too. That ice would have had its work cut out for it.

“I can feel you, back there,” she murmured as I pressed my fingers down either side of her spine.

“You’re supposed to. That’s the idea.”

“No. I mean, I feel… you ,” she said.

I ran my fingers up her sides, along her sports bra. She shivered happily. I leaned down and spoke softly in her ear. “You’re supposed to,” I repeated. That was the last she protested, if that feeble thing had been protest rather than gratitude.

“Spencer?” said someone softly.

“Mm?” I didn’t glance back. I’d not looked back for ten minutes, at least, and I knew, simply knew, that if I did, I’d see who knows how many Hotties quietly pleasuring themselves. Maybe each other.

“Do you think… um, do you think we could, you know, massage you, while you massage her?”

“We could take turns,” said someone else. Katrina, I thought, simplifying her spreadsheet proposal.

“I could time it, to make sure.”

“And we’d all be real chill about it, homie, swear.”

“We just want to do something nice for you like you’re always doing for us.”

“Please?”

“Yeah, please, Spencer?”

“Please?”

“We promise we won’t–”

I cleared my throat. Their begging fell silent, but the need still hung in the air. “Any bickering, and it stops, understand?”

“We understand.”

I kept my attention on Jacqui. She clenched up all over again at her floormates’ pleading, but when it culminated in her still getting a rub-down from her beloved – or at least, belusted  – RA, she let me work the tension back out of her. Somebody approached from behind and started kneading my shoulders. Somebody with fingernails, but they were careful. It felt nice. Of course it felt nice.

Then we heard a soft snap of someone’s fingers, whoever was timing it, no doubt. My mystery massager leaned down, licked from the middle of my back all the way up to my shoulder, then withdrew.

“One lick each,” I said firmly, before someone could get greedy.

That set the tone. The next girl in line came up behind me and did their best to practice technique. I’d do Jacqui one-armed if they needed an arm, or I’d sit more upright and focus on her lower back if they needed me too. There would come a snap, what soon became a soft round of snaps like spectators at a tennis match. A lick down my neck. A lick between my shoulder blades. A lick all the way up my spine.

“Do her front, Spencer,” someone said. Their voice   was  weak, tremulous.

“You sound like a simp   begging a streamer .” That could only be Terri. She didn’t sound like she was judging them, though.

“Jacqui, would you like to roll over?”

She nodded. The girl behind me took her lick (a zigzag up my tricep this time), and I rose up so Jacqui could flip over. Before I knew what was happening, she slid the straps off her sports bra and jerked it down around her waist. Her bare tits, two pert little things that I found myself rather disappointed when I saw they weren’t as freckled as her face, stared at me.

“Is… is that OK? Was I not supposed to…?”

“It’s fine,” I said, to make sure she was part of things and couldn’t rat us out. And because she had great tits. And because my cock had been wanting me to take off every sports bra, real bra, and bikini in the room for over an hour. “So long as you’re comfortable.”

“I’m comfortable,” she promised.

As I started on Jacqui’s tummy, the next girl started on mine. For a moment I wondered if it was Charlie sneaking in another hug, but this was much too gropey. Whoever she was, she caressed my abs, my pecs, and when she was being snapped out of rotation, she put a hand over my eyes and licked across my jaw.

“ Do her  shoulders, Spencer.”

“Yeah, do her shoulders.”

“The shoulders, yeah.”

I massaged Jacqui’s shoulders. The girl behind me worked the lowest part of my back. I could feel the waistband of my shorts slipping down, down to where I could tell part of my ass was hanging out. That was where she took her lick.

“Lower, Spencer.”

“Do her lower.”

“Please? If she’s OK with it. We want to see.”

I looked at my partner calmly. A placid, dazed expression decorated her slack-jawed face. “Do you want me to go lower, Jacqui?”

“I-if you w-want,” she said.

“I want to do what you want. That’s what we’re all here for.”

“Go lower,” she said.

The next girl came right up behind me, her body pressed hard against my bare skin. It was hard to gauge tits by feel  alone, but they felt big. Her hands wrapped around to the front of me, and like her predecessor, she worked at the top of my shorts and then down. It was wildly inappropriate. Another inch and she’d be rubbing my cock. Less than. Hell, she was rubbing it, moving my shorts so she was grazing it with sweet friction.

“You can come for me if you want, homie,” she whispered in my ear.

“Casey…”

“Let me lick it. Just this once, yo.”

I heard plaintive, horny gasps behind me. Not of shock. Who the hell on Higgins 3 could be shocked Casey wanted to lick my cock. No, these were gasps of arousal, girls climaxing at the prospect of being privy to seeing such a lick.

“Behave, or we’re all done here.”

After a brief huff, Casey crawled around and took her lick as a series of flicks at my nipple.

From then on, that was the standard. I closed my eyes when I heard the snaps, and each girl would come around the front for their reward. Most licked my chest. Some bolder ones took my neck. Someone licked all the way along the waistband of my shorts. Somebody made a circle around my lips.

“Do her tits, Spencer.”

“Yeah, do her tits.”

“Mm, tits.”

“Yeah, go lower.”

“Lower, Spencer.”

“Do her tits.”

“She wants it.”

“I want it.”

“Shh. Do her tits, Spencer.”

I looked at Jacqui, who heard all this with a blissed out expression and did not react in the least. “I don’t think I should be rubbing your tits, gang,” I said. It was not easy to say.

Jacqui frowned, an especially sad look on her adorable freckly  face. “Um, you could do your lick there,” she said softly. “If you want.”

“Oh god. Lick her.”

“Lick her, Spencer.”

“Lick her tits.”

“Lick her fucking tits.”

“Lucky fucking titties, man.”

“Lick them, Spencer.”

“Take your lick, Spencer.”

I studied them. They were so cute. They deserved this. I deserved this. “You’re sure?”

Jacqui nodded. “I’ll try not to come. I… I don’t know if I can stop it. But yeah.”

“From having your nipples licked?”

“You’ve kind of been humping my clit with your erection, so like…”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I have. My bad.”

She shook her head. “It’s OK. I, um, just thought that was part of it.”

“Lick. Her. Lick. Her. Lick. Her.” For once, one of Casey’s chants caught on, and soon the entire floor was chanting it. Except for Jacqui, whose trembling body lay beneath mine and awaited a demonstration of Diana’s final technique.

I bent down, extended my tongue, and gave a single slow lick across Jacqui’s left breast, ending at the nipple. I gave it a little flick as I passed it, and the whole breast jiggled softly in my passing. Her body shuddered, trembled.

I repeated it on the other tit .

“Oh fuuuuuuuuck …”

I don’t know how many girls hit their climax along with Jacqui, but it was more than a few. She grit her teeth, but pleasure won out and her little cry of ecstasy joined the chorus of her peers.

“Allison is going to be so pissed she missed this,” said either Maddison or Addison to either Addison or Maddison. “I’m so glad we moved back into the dorms.”

“Best program ever,” her sister replied. All around them, their fellow Hotties agreed.

“Those were licks, right? They’re licking him?”

“You’re looking at the same thermals I am.”

“Can’t you, I don’t know, zoom and enhance? We’re missing so much detail!”

“Oh, right, zoom and enhance! It didn’t occur to me to push the zoom and enhance button! This isn’t CSI, dumbfuck, and this shit isn’t military spec ops grade. It’s for perving on one dude.”

“The whole goddamn floor is perving on one dude, right now! And all you can give me is this purple yellow fucking blur!”

“Um, yeah. It’s a thermal scan. The room’s around seventy, the bodies shy of a hundred. Do you even appreciate how insane it is we can literally see through walls? Jesus.”

“This is no time to marvel at modern… marvels! Fuck! They’re licking  him!”

“So to your mind, the modern marvel here is the thermal scan, which is like a century old, and not the kid turning his dorm into ground zero of the orgypocalypse . That’s where you’re at.”

“What? No, I’m… Never mind. Do you know what this could mean?! Ever since the Director cranked him up to .02 ppm, they’ve been climbing the walls. 6818 even took him off-site  Monday night – for all we know, she made the short list.”

“Heh. Gave  the little lady something to get divorced about, eh?”

“Excuse me if I don’t think destroying someone’s marriage is something to joke about.”

“Eh.”

“But if they’re ingesting his fluids? Even if it’s only a little body oil–”

“You need to learn to read your thermography, man. Look at the ambient color. It’s gotta be, I’d say, seventy-six, seventy-seven degrees in there?”

“So? You know, it’s really rude to interrupt–”

“So, it’s not just body oil. They’re probably sweating their asses off up there. That warm, plus that chick he’s riding. Did we confirm that’s 4239?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, that we can’t tell who fucking anybody  is in that mess! And if they’re slurping down his sweat, I mean… yeah, at least it’s not blood, semen, or god forbid, some of his–”

“Pretty sure that’s 4239.”

“You are driving me fucking crazy right now.”

“Not as crazy as those girls up there. I say, god  damn , son! You know if you look at the scans really close , you can actually see who’s about to come?”

“I’m notifying the Director. If we don’t put a lid on this, it’s going to blow the fuck up. One thing to edge them week after week, but this will…”

“Will what?”

“We don’t know what this will do. Nobody’s ever done anything like this before.”

“They have now.”

Chapter Nine: Midterms

“Spencer, I know that’s you in there. Can we talk?”

It was a testament to how insanely out of hand I’d let things get that I woke myself up at 6 AM to shower and flee the building. It was a testament to how badly I was doing correcting  that mistake that I opened the door to my shower stall and let Jacqui in.

(We were both in towels, I guess, so compared to last night, a shower chat with one of my residents was pretty tame.)

“Good morning, Jacqui.”

“Good morning yourself.” She eyed the obvious presence of my erection. I wasn’t proud of it. Well, I guess I was a little proud of the erection itself. Not the cause, though. Standing face to face with a girl I’d given a topless massage to, capped off by making her come her brains out while I slurped her nipples… I’d had to finish myself off. It hadn’t tided  me over for long.

“About last night…”

“Yeah, about last night.”

We both waited for the other to start. After an awkward moment, standing there awkwardly close in the changing area of the stall, we were both overwhelmed by discomfort at the same time.

“I’m sorry I let that happen.”

“We shouldn’t have done that.”

We both blinked, and to my relief, both laughed. I let out a slow thin sigh. “I’m glad I’m not the only one with regrets.”

“Don’t get me wrong. It was… incredible,” she assured me. “Like I can still feel your hands, your mouth, on my body. But this is such a bad time for this. Middle of the season, I’m slammed with practices, workouts, tutoring, classes, meets, away meets…”

“No, I get that. And I have, um…” I didn’t know how to end that sentence. A girlfriend? Two girlfriends? A hot supervisor with boundary issues? Thirty-one other residents who are already assuredly going to be driving me crazy now that they’ve seen my willingness to cross the line? “… a lot on my plate, too.”

“Totally. So… we’re cool?”

“So cool.”

Jacqui smiled. “All right. Well I got my morning run coming up, so guess I better…”

“Yeah.”

She opened the shower stall. At that same moment, walking in from the bathroom area, was Shauna. She was in a robe, cleavage displayed fetchingly. “So, are we just showering with the RA now, or what?”

“You may have noticed we’re not wet, Shauna.”

Jacqui nodded. “We were just talking.”

Shauna eyed my protruding hard-on. “I wanna just talk.”

“I only do one talk a day before breakfast. Pick a stall, talk to your shower head.”

We both knew that was Higgins 3 code for “shut up and get yourself off.” How had  that become a part of my vernacular? I soaked for quite a little while in there . Jacqui was long gone when I got out, but Shauna was still having her chat.

It was the start of a long weekend. Academically, too. I had those essays I needed to finish, one of which was pretty involved, plus a couple Zoom meetings for my group project. I’d had an ex-girlfriend (not Marisa, not anybody I was going to even let get a toehold back into my insane, over-femaled life) who had been the sort who could pack up her laptop and go work at a coffee shop. I had no capacity to work through distractions. If I were going to get anything done, it meant turtling up on Higgins 3.

The distractions there didn’t start until early afternoon.

Peyton and Sydney kicked it off, coming down to apologize for letting their behavior get out of hand. Sydney did, anyway; Petyon’s sulky glare made it obvious she’d been pressured into accompanying her girlfriend. I couldn’t blame her. I assured them I wasn’t mad, that it had been a sexually charged atmosphere and that their overstep had helped draw the boundary for the rest of us, so I was grateful they’d taken one for the team, albeit accidentally.

The two shared another look. It felt like we were done, but then that look. “Was there something else?”

Peyton shook her head at her girlfriend. “No.”

But Sydney ignored her and focused her attention on me. “We, um, heard that you… let the other girls… practice? On you?”

“Oh. Yeah, while we were winding down, I… they… Yeah.”

“Is it true that they got to, you know, do what that woman did?”

I feigned ignorance. “Massage? Just briefly. Only one of me, not a lot to go around,” I laughed.

Sydney wasn’t to be put off so easily. “I meant, did they, um, lick you.”

“Ah, that. Erm… yeah? I guess there was a little bit of that. I think they just wanted to tease me a little, you know? Har har, right?”

Peyton squeezed her roommate’s wrist pleadingly. “Baby…”

But Sydney didn’t relent. “Do you think that… I don’t know. Maybe we… could…?”

oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh

“Could… what? Get a massage? I think you’re better off with one anoth –”

“Lick.” Sydney licked her lips, though I think it was incidental. “Lick you.”

“Baby!” hissed Peyton.

I folded my hands in my lap. “You want to lick me…?” Hang on, why did I not just say “no, absolutely not, and I’m writing you up for asking” like I would have in August? The conversation was happening now, though.

“Just… we heard everyone else got to. Err, did. And, I don’t know, I guess we were just… curious. What it would be like. With, you know… a boy.”

I glanced at Peyton, her blue eyes hard as ice. “I think you might want to check with your girlfriend, Sydney.” Wait, not “no, absolutely not, there are thousands of boys on this campus, go lick one of them” or something? Damnit, Spencer!

Sydney gave Peyton an annoyed look. “It was her idea.”

“BABY!” Peyton barked.

“Well it was.” The dark-haired vixen shook her head, then turned back to me. “She was just too chicken to come down here and actually ask. But I figured, since you let everybody else, it’s only fair. Plus, this way, everybody else doesn’t have to know.”

“Everybody saw everybody else do it. I don’t think it’s quite the scandal you think it would be.”

Peyton finally said something other than to chastise her girlfriend. “Yeah, right. Everybody looks at us and just goes ‘oh, right, the hot lesbian couple’ like we sit around our room eating pussy all day every day. It’s just that’s the only thing they know about us. So if everybody knew we, you know, were a little curious, kind of, about just one guy – and only a little bit, mind you, not like we’re bi, but more to see what all the fuss is about? – then if everybody finds out we, you know, like they did, then we’re going to be hearing ‘oh, so the dykes in 313 are into dicks now’ over and over and over while all these straight chicks freak out that sexuality is a spectrum and not some exact point you decide when you hit puberty and–”

Sydney took Peyton’s hand and pressed the back of it to her lips. “Love.”

Peyton’s fire drained into that kiss. “Sorry, baby.”

“That sounds stressful.” I nodded, projecting empathy. It wasn’t hard. I did empathize. It was simply a little trickier with all my own issues competing for emotional energy. “I’m sorry you have to deal with all of that. Maybe this is something we can look at addressing with a program.”

“Or, you could not make our lifestyles a public spectacle,” said Peyton hotly. Another kiss, and she muttered an apology.

“And just let us have a little taste,” finished Sydney. “To satisfy curiosity. And be fair.”

“If I recall correctly, the two of you were sent to your rooms ‘without dessert,’” I quoted from last night. “Maybe this is the consequence for you two getting a little out of control.”

Peyton’s eyes glittered darkly. “Really? What was the consequence for you sucking on volleygirl’s tits?”

So, long story short, I let the lesbians each have their lick. They insisted on doing it together, their tongues touching together as they dragged a slow line across my chest.

“Do you, um, want to lick us?”

“Baby! You know I love you, but you cannot go around inviting men to lick me!”

“I’m sorry, love. So, um, just me then.”

“Hang on, I didn’t say he couldn’t, just that you’re not allowed to pimp me out!”

I did not lick them. They didn’t like it, but such is life.

Next up was Tori, right as I was putting on my shoes to go grab dinner.

“Hey Tori. What’s up?” I noticed her expression. “Something wrong?”

“Spencer, I think we’ve gotten along fairly well so far, haven’t we?” She helped herself to a seat on my bed. Her perfume was intense, freshman girl Friday levels. Apt, but still heavy-handed. I could taste the stuff when my mouth opened.

“Absolutely. Tori, you’ve been a godsend. This floor wouldn’t be what it is without you.”

“Thank you. You see, that’s actually what I’ve come to talk to you about.”

“Last night.”

“I lost respect for you last night,” the floor governor said bluntly. Considering I felt the same way about my behavior, it seemed the least I could do was shut my mouth and let her elaborate. I took a seat in my chair to show I was ready to settle in and listen and nodded for her to start.

“You started the night – we  started the night – with a discussion of powerful women. Do you remember that?”

“I do.”

“I do, too. I felt good about it. You said the right things, helped ask questions that got some of the other women think  about female empowerment, female sexuality, and female equality in some useful ways. I was impressed. I thought, and not for the first time, this is a guy who gets it. Not some lip service buffoon, repeating what he read on a forum. A soldier of feminism.”

“ I try . It’s an important issue to me.”

She barely let me finish; I could tell it was a strain not to talk over me. “Then there was that obscenity that followed. Do you even appreciate the message you sent with that? Women as performers. Women as spectacle. Women as objects for your gratification.” Tori took a slow breath, smoothed out her skirt against her legs. “You brought in a woman as an expert, then before you know  it, you shoved her out the door so you could be the only authority in the room.”

“Tori, I shoved her out the door because she started to lick me in front of the  lot of you.”

Her eyes narrowed. By the time the program had ended, people being licked had gotten pretty thoroughly normalized, so this was a perspective she had not considered, and did not like discovering. It clashed with her message. Still, she took it in with a curt nod of acknowledgment. “All right. That’s fair. I’m sorry that happened to you. Still, what you did after… I was hella disappointed. I thought better of you.”

“You mean with Jacqui? I know, that was out of line. Peer pressure can get to all of us, including me. I’ve spoken with her already, and she’s all right.”

“Jacqui, sure, but before that. Spencer, you know how most of these women feel about you. They adore you. I know for a fact that some of them honestly think they’re in love with you. One, and I won’t name names, whom I’ve heard more than once express a desire to have your babies.”

“What…?!”

“Then last night, you took that pool of good will and you leveraged it into that… obscenity. You used our affection, our attraction, your looks, and you lessened us. Lowered us to nothing more than sexual objects. We came to relax a little, unwind before our midterms, and…” She looked down at her lap. “Do you know what it feels like, being ordered to strip down to your underwear and let a man sit back and watch you massage and get massaged by another girl, also in her underwear? While you’re sitting on the couch, hands folded behind your head, staring, leering, watching things spiral further and further out of hand? And then the only girls you have anything negative to say toward are the only two you know aren’t into your kind?”

“You mean Sydney and Peyton? They were making out in the middle of the room, Tori.”

“So you embarrassed them, for one, and removed the floor’s sole openly LGBTQ couple from the premises so that you could focus on your straight girls.”

“OK first off, pretty sure you only need the L there. Second, they were making out in the middle of the room . Am I supposed to offend you for watching, or am I supposed to offend you by putting a stop to it?” I shook my head. That wasn’t productive. “Whatever else I screwed up, I did my job there.”

“So what you did with Jacqui, that was normal RA stuff, right? If I go downstairs, I’ll find your girlfriend rolling around on the floor topless with her residents?” She stood up, frowning in a very effective imitation of my mother’s I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed . Not that I’d seen much of it, but my sister sure had. “I don’t want anything from you tonight, and I don’t want to hear any apologies. You’ve apologized before, and that still happened. I just want you to know, I lost respect. If that matters to you, then do better.”

My phone buzzed while I was still scowling at my reflection in the mirror on my closet door. Unknown number, but the text made it clear who it was even without a name.

I’m so sorry about last night. I hope I didn’t offend, but ur a very attractive person and I got carried away. Can I buy u dinner  sometime to make it up to u ?

I deleted the message and blocked the number.

So the Tori meeting was less fun. Still, in some ways, it was my favorite one of the weekend. It kept me tethered to reality, knowing there were women in Higgins who still expected something from me beyond providing them a slab of man meat.

Speaking of, Vickie popped in around seven. She asked how the program went, expressed her disappointment I hadn’t  stopped by after. I told her I’d been exhausted, which was true, and that I wouldn’t have been much good to her, which was a damn dirty lie. I could have rocked her world for a solid hour, at least.

I mollified her by offering to show her what I’d learned. She was wearing a swimsuit as a top with jeans over the bottoms, which had somehow started catching on as fashion around Lakeview this semester. I wasn’t complaining. Just weird. Anyway, she ditched the jeans and laid down in my bed in a strappy black swimsuit, ironically making her the most chastely dressed woman I’d seen get a massage that week. She would have let me go all night, she said, but she was on duty. She needed to go down and sign in at eight.

At a quarter til, she pulled the crotch of her swimsuit out of the way. “Vickie needs a quickie,” she said, and rode me like a cowgirl. She made enough noise that I could have had a couple dozen girls out there listening in again, but I didn’t hear them, at least. Maybe my Hotties had developed an ounce of class and were simply holed up in Casey and Nikki’s room next door, dog  piled in the closet with their ears to the wall.

“I’m on with your other girlfriend tonight,” Vickie said afterwards, dabbing at the cum dribbling out of her with one of my shirt’s she’d snatched from my laundry hamper.

I tried not to let my full distaste show. Not like I was going to wear it again before I washed it, but still. “Oh man. Is that gonna be OK?”

She looked up, tossed the shirt at (near) the hamper. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Oh. Well… good.”

“In fact, I’m such  a good secondary girlfriend that I told her if she wanted to hang with  you tonight, I wouldn’t get in the way.”

“Who said you were ‘secondary?’”

She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, someone told me – I forget who – that you’d rather date her than me? And I was like ‘aw snap, I straight-up suck, yo’ but then I drained their balls dry, worried their other girlfriend was gonna let those things fill up and explode, because I fucking rule.”

“Yeah, you do.” I pulled her back to bed and kissed the hell out of her.

It was getting down to the wire, though, so I didn’t get to do it for very long. Vickie pushed herself back off of me with flattering reluctance. “Anyway, have fun with your number one tonight. Tell you what. Get her to suck my dried cum off your cock, and I will make it worth your while.”

“Ew. Why would I do that?”

“Because you know how worthy I am at while-making.”

“And you just want me to be on the honor system?”

Vickie laughed. A loud, derisive laugh. “As if you could lie to me.”

I looked her firmly in the eyes. “You’re not my secondary girlfriend.”

“Oh yeah? So what am I?”

That was a fair question. I did my best to give her a fair answer.

Savannah showed up twenty minutes later.

“Mmm, freshly showered. You smell nice, Spencer.”

I pulled her close and kissed her. In all the frenzy of sexual activity around me since she’d pulled me into that derelict phone booth, I still hadn’t forgotten how much I wanted to keep kissing her, and still felt cheated not to have gotten the opportunity. Yes, we’d canoodled a bit when I came to her after the meeting, but it had been diminished considerably by the admission of what I’d done with Vickie. Tonight, it was me and her and no one else.

She had my cock in her mouth inside of  ten minutes.

At ten o’clock, it was time to do rounds, and she finally let it out.

“Wow,” I said, catching my breath from her vigorous finish. She’d wanted to finish me off (again) before rounds, and had worked her tongue with gusto. “I don’t think I’ve ever been with anybody who liked giving head that much.”

She grinned bashfully, evidently taking it as a compliment. “I never used to. Just with you, I don’t know. It feels… right.  The way you stare at me, the way you feel in my mouth, solid and full and those little twitches when I do something good. It’s as if I don’t even need you to touch me, because you’re already inside me, except in my mouth I don’t just feel you, but I can taste  you, caress you with my tongue, not just hold you inside me but love  on you inside me in ways I couldn’t if we… you know.”

The walkie suddenly cut in. “Number one, this is Alpha. You coming? Over.”

I rolled my eyes at Vickie’s “sly” use of her new girlfriend designation. Then a moment later I caught the other joke in there and rolled my eyes. Ignoring her, I pulled Savannah in again. It was the best part of letting her go. “If you keep talking like that, we’re going to cause another scene on the walkie.”

She giggled. “I suppose it is her turn.”

Vickie took my side of Higgins 3 on rounds. I left the door open, so she slowed only long enough to peer in. “And…?”

“You’re gross, and no.”

“Pussy.”

I pinched her ass, and she swaggered it right back to rejoin her rounds  partner at the far end of the hall.

A few minutes later, first rounds complete, Savannah was back, tearing into my pants after only the most perfunctory responses to my question of whether it was weird being on duty with Vickie.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, OK? I, um, don’t know how much a guy can take.”

“With you, I’m not sure I have an upper limit.”

Her eyes slid closed as she proceeded to lick, and lick, and lick up and down every angle of my shaft. When she wasn’t licking, she was kissing, and when her lips were too tired for that, she’d sometimes just rub it across them, or on her cheeks. Most of the time, though, she wanted it in her mouth, and I saw to it she got what she wanted. That fight the other morning had done a number on me. This was the easiest time avoiding a round 2 I’d ever had.

“Isn’t your neck getting tired?” I asked after an hour.

“Neh,” she answered, tongue still extended.

Midnight came; she and Vickie helped Carmen shut down the center desk and did another set of rounds. I heard some asshole making a fuss out in the parking lot, yelling some pretty awful stuff at a girl’s window. Not one of mine. Vickie and Savannah got after him pretty quickly, then finished second rounds, then she was back to me.

“What was that guy’s problem?”

“Oh, his girlfriend dumped him and he apparently left some stuff in her room after and he was being a jerk about it. Surprised you didn’t go down there and take it on yourself.”

“I didn’t want to step on your toes. I was watching to make sure he didn’t get out of hand, though. You know I’d be down there in a flash if I thought you needed me.”

Savannah eased my pants down and planted a kiss on the end of my cock, jumpstarting its reinvigoration. “It’s funny. He kept yelling at her, over and over, all ‘you f-ing cocksucking bitch, blehhhh.’”

“What a jerk.”

She gave my cock a few introductory licks. “I’ve always thought that’s such a weird insult. Like, to a guy, sure, normal homophobic stuff, but to a girl? You’d think that would be a compliment. Considering how we’ve been spending our evening, I had to fight not to giggle. Especially, you know, with Vickie right there.”

“Well I’d be happy to pin that medal on you if you want it. I can’t believe your neck and your tongue and everything aren’t just dead by now.”

She ignored my concern and focused on the first thing. “Would you really call me a cocksucker?”

“Well, technically I think you’ve been a cock licker  at least as much as …” She didn’t laugh. “Savannah, hey, no. You know I wouldn’t. And I’d do some very manly intimidatey  stuff if I heard someone else do it.”

She kept licking for a minute. Then, in a small voice, so small it barely found its way to me as she murmured it into my shaft. “Would you? If I said I wanted you to?”

I watched her carefully. “Do you?”

She swept her hair back where it had fallen forward, sticking to all her spit. “I dunno. I guess… I dunno.”

Hmm. Fair enough. Marisa used to get in the occasional mood where she wanted me to talk shitty toward her. It had felt weird, calling my girlfriend a bitch while we were in the midst of enjoying ourselves. Still, if Savannah wanted to hear it, I could try it out for her. At least here, like she said, it applied.

I propped myself up, leaned forward, and took my cock from her grip into my own. I aimed the tip right at her lips. She went cross eyed, staring down its length. Her tongue slid out of her mouth like it was a toy, waiting to be played with.

“I hear you’re one hell of a cocksucker, Savannah Grey.”

I placed a hand on the back of her head and, gently yet firmly, impaled her face on the spike of my dick. She opened wide, and didn’t resist until I felt it reaching the back of her throat.

“So show me how good you suck cock.”

So that lasted until two o’clock rounds.

“Say it again.”

I grabbed her ass with one hand and slipped two fingers of the other inside her mouth. “Cocksucker.”

She suckled, whimpered. “God, this is so bad. Just… I never get this… wild! I mean never . Price, he– I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t talk about my ex while we’re…!”

My thumb located her clit, and she gave me the satisfactory involuntary gasp I’d been looking for. “I don’t mind comparisons if they’re flattering.”

“O-OK. It’s j-just , he always said he… oh… he… oh…” I withdrew my thumb so she could get words out. “Sorry. That was… But yeah, he said he asked me to do it once, like on our second date? And I said I wasn’t ready, and after that, any time it came up he always said he, um, respected me too much to ask.”

“Huh. Well for what it’s worth, your willingness to suck my cock is probably the thing I respect about you most, cocksucker.”

I got a smile, if not a laugh. Savannah didn’t strike me as the sort of woman who did a lot of laughing during intimacy. That was fine by me. I could lie there all night staring into those soft brown pools without saying a word – whether my cock was jutting up between them or not.

Still, six hours of intermittent dick-sucking? Even with pauses for rounds, responding to jerks in parking lots and a noise complaint on Higgins 2, fresh memories of an orgiastic frenzy of massaging Hotties, and the gentlest, most patient blowjob technique known to womankind, I was only human. Savannah generously permitted me to at least finger her a little while she coaxed one last splurge of dribbles out of me. She came like it was a distraction, a whine and a groan and a redoubled urgency at her lips, but I didn’t let up until she’d finished me for the night. Not that it stopped her from continuing to try for a few minutes after.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her. I let her suck, and suck, and suck, until she accepted reality for what it was.

Another whimper as she slumped down on top of me. “Spencer, I… God. I know you probably can’t, um… again… But do you think I could try again in a bit? Even if it doesn’t, you know, I don’t care.”

I kissed each cheek, then her lips. “You’re amazing. Almost too amazing. Give me until our date tomorrow to recover a little, yeah? I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

We were both thinking back to our fight last weekend, how silly that we’d wasted all that angst over a little disagreement about the pace of her cocksucking. Savannah nodded, glumly. “Sure. Sorry, I probably sound like some total slut or something.”

Her ass received a two-handed squeeze this time. “A cocksucking slut. The best kind.”

“Oh god, I can’t believe that actually sounds hot to me. Maybe I need a day to get my head on straight, too.”

I aimed for another early shower Saturday morning. Pre-dawn, this time. In the halls, the only sound was the occasional snore. In the bathroom, not even that. I picked the middle stall. It usually seemed to have the best water pressure, which could just be in my head, but–

“GAH!” The door to my stall bumped into something after I nudged it shut and suddenly flew open. I jerked my towel back in front of me. “What the actual FUCK, Casey?!”

“Thought you might try to sneak around like this again. Caught you, homie.”

“Casey, I’m taking a goddamn shower! Whatever you want, this is not the time!”

Except she stepped into my stall and shut us in. I backed away anxiously, holding my towel. Casey had an off-the-shoulder t-shirt and some scrub pants and a pair of hot pink crocs. She looked comfy. I felt anything but.

“What’s this I hear about you and Jay’quelin ?”

“Me and who?”

Her lips pursed to one side. “Jacqui.”

“What? Nothing. You were there in the lounge. You saw what happened. You got your goddamn lick – and then some. How did you even get in here that fast? Were you sneaking along behind me?”

She shrugged. “I slept in the next stall.”

“You what?  How is that even possible?”

“I’m like a puppy, yo. I can sleep anywhere. Especially if I’m partaking.”

“Partaking of…” I stopped myself. “Never mind, I don’t need a criminal confession on top of you breaking into my shower stall.”

“Just weed, man, chill.”

“You’re not old enough, and you’re not supposed to have it in here!”

“I ate some edibles at a house party. And I can pass for twenty-one no prob.”

“You don’t pass for twenty-one. Bartenders just don’t card you because hot blondes with giant tits are good for business.”

She considered that. “Yeah, that’s prolly right. Anyway, you owe me an explanation, homie.”

“I owe you a write-up for invading my privacy. That’s what I owe you.”

“What’s this I hear ‘bout you showering up with Jay’quelin ?”

“What is that nickname? And no, I didn’t shower with her!”

“It’s from a thing. But I got credible sources that placed you and the she in question in this here very  stall just yesterday morning. Do you deny ?”

“Do you fucking kid me? She ambushed me here because we happened to be early risers and she wanted to clear the air about what happened at the program. That potentially job-ending stunt you pulled, chanting ‘lick her,’ and I went for it like some complete idiot, which I regretted and apologized for! Happy? Any other business of mine you feel entitled to know about, or can I shower in peace?”

She took a step closer. My back was already to the wall. There was nowhere I could go. “You liked it. Yeah… Don’t front. Washboard-ass abs, dem perky lil’ titties. They taste good?”

“They tasted like skin tastes .”

“Naw, I heard her say she was coming from practice. All sweaty, with her sweaty little volleybuddies . But I think you liked her sweaty . I get that. I like the taste of a little sweat on a boy, too. Taste like a person, you know? Not some nasty body spray. You liked it. Didn’t you.”

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Casey, but…” But what?

She kicked off her crocs. “I’ma shower with you.”

“What? No! You can’t.”

She gave a sharp tug on a drawstring on her scrubs. They fell to her ankles, and she took another step toward me. Her chest was only inches from mine.

“Sure I can. Here we are. I don’t hear no sirens . I think we’re good.”

“We’re not good, because I’m saying no. I can’t. We’ve been over  and over this , but I can say it again if it helps.”

Casey tugged on the one shoulder of her shirt. It was so big and loose it slipped down and fell right down on her scrubs. She’d worn neither bra nor panties. Her pussy had been shaved recently, but looked like it had a little stubble to it. Her tits, on the other hand, were…

“Holy shit , Casey.”

“Yeah, they came in nice, right? Lefty used to be almost a cup size bigger than Righty, but they finally learned to share. Thought you’d like ‘em. Been looking for an excuse to show you for a while now.”

“They’re… very impressive. But you can’t. I… I can’t.”

Casey kicked her clothes back toward the stall door. Her body pressed firmly against mine as she reached behind me. The water sprayed down, cold for a second, but heating almost immediately. She hadn’t take n her hat off, and it took the spray directly. It soaked in what it could, but after a moment, the water was spilling down her face, down her body, down mine.

“Well gee whiz, Spence, looks like I can.”

“I could get fired,” I repeated feebly.

“Everybody already thinks you showered with Jacqui. If you’re gonna get fired, may as well at least get something out of it, ya know?”

I hated how logical that sounded to me in that  moment. I hated that this didn’t even feel like cheating. Nothing romantic about it. I was just trying to figure out how to help a resident with a problem.

I was building community.

Casey took my towel and tossed it over her shoulder by her clothes. It was already damp. After the blowjob marathon last night, my manhood wasn’t responding quickly to the gorgeous naked blonde in front of me, but it was responding.

“You want me to get you clean, homie?” Her hand found my cock and gave it a few soft, slick strokes. “Or you want me to get you dirty.”

Faced with a binary choice, I selected the less objectionable choice. “Clean,” I mumbled. Then I remembered “no” and “stop” and “I have two or three girlfriends” and some bullshit about how I could get fired for taking on a resident as my bath buddy.

I’d only gotten four hours of sleep. I was legitimately tired. So I placed my palms against the wall, slumped my head under the water, and allowed Casey to bathe me.

I had a luffa in my shower caddy, but she managed to ignore it. I could hear her snapping the cap on my shower gel, the farty sound when she squirted some into her palm, and then she smeared it on my body by hand. Only, once she’d gotten a bit of a lather going, she started rubbing it in with her tits. I could feel her nipples as two hard spots in those vast, fluffy fields of girl . She had to get my neck and shoulders by hand, and eventually my feet, but everywhere in between was a slow, gentle caress with two of the most perfect tits I’d ever seen. She wrapped them around my arms, crouched and eventually knelt to get at my ass, my thighs. It felt incredible. All the more so because those loving rubs were tits. Casey’s tits, which had been literally hanging in my face since week one.

I stiffened for only a moment when a hand re-entered the process to get my ass. She wasn’t shy about it, but no more evasive or invasive than required.

“Turn around, yeah? Lemme at your front.” She spoke in a whisper, right in my ear. It was soft. Sweet. Completely unlike her. This must be the side she normally only showed her boyfriend. The guy who would supposedly thank me for how insanely turned on I made his girlfriend.

I turned around. Her nipples were redder, and so hard it looked like they must ache. She let me stare for a moment, then with a serious face once more applied the body wash by hand. My cock, parallel to the shower’s tile floor now, was simply one more part to soap up, a few rubs and onto the balls, and then onto the thighs. Top to bottom.

Then, with no more vigor or force, she took my wrist and pinned it to the wall, then the other. The only way our bodies could be locked closer together was if she climbed onto my suddenly upthrust cock. I’d sorta forgotten I could – was required to – stop her. For now, however, it was simply squished down against her lean belly. More tit-washing, then. My eyes lid closed . At one point, I relaxed so much I almost fell asleep standing up.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Just tired. Not you.”

She nodded seriously and continued undiminished. When she sandwiched my shaft between those big pillow boobs of hers to squeeze it clean, I thought she might… but then she moved on. Once she finished, she unhooked the shower head and used it to rinse me clean. She shampooed and conditioned, using those scalp massage techniques from Jordan, but with painstaking slowness. I thanked the heavens for unlimited hot water, and issued a silent apology for our contribution to the uptick in Higgins water consumption.

“I could get you all over, if you want. I was paying attention,” she whispered. Weirdly, her discretion was almost as pleasing to me as her touch. That she asked instead of just doing, even when I was too weak to contemplate resistance.

“It’s OK. I’m good.”

Her hand reached down without looking and seized my shaft, caressing it in her slick, silken grip. “You don’t feel good.”

I groaned softly. “You do.”

Casey grinned that cocky, lopsided grin. “I wanna tit-fuck you. Can I tit-fuck you, homie?”

I looked at her tits. A little soap bubble persisted with impossible persistence right above her left nipple even as microdroplets spattered down against it. “OK.”

She sank to her knees, and I only had to crouch a little. “You ain’t worried about getting fired?”

I mussed her hair. Or rather, her skip cap, a sodden sponge on her wet blonde mop. “Shut up and tit-fuck me already, Casey.”

She sighed rapturously, and even in the dense, close, humid confines of the Higgins 3 shower stall, I could feel her breath on my cock, hotter and wetter than any shower could ever be. “That’s all you ever had to say, homie.”

The water was all the lubricant she needed. Thanks to Savannah getting me off more times than I could remember last night, I worried she had her work cut out for her, but no. After that rub-down, it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before I was coming all over Casey’s huge, soapy wet tits. She didn’t stop until I was spent. I was barely coherent, but didn’t miss her shoveling my cum to her lips and slurping it down.

“I wanted to taste you for a while now. Don’t hate.”

I said nothing, but simply lifted her to her feet, took the shower head in hand, and rinsed her down. “I can do me. You’re cool.”

I didn’t bother replying. I was tired of arguing with her. Months of bickering, and minutes of her tits, had worn me down. I had to use my own body wash, which was a guy kind of scent, but Casey stood there and let me. I was using those freshly honed massage skills to really dig into her; her skinny, hippy, busty body trembled and softened palpably in my hands. I covered her with all the thoroughness she’d covered me.

Except her hat. “Leave it,” she said.

“But–”

“I hide my soul in there.”

I didn’t know what that meant. No matter. I respected her wishes and left the thing in place.

When it came time for her pussy, I paused, rinsed off my hands, and slid two fingers inside her. She stumbled back against the wall, panting, mewling. Most women, I’d have taken my time, explored, savored. With Casey, I made sure she could take me, and then I thrust my digits into that tender elastic cunt like a piston. She clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. I didn’t slow, even as her back slid down the shower stall and her ass hit the floor. Her legs splayed, tits bobbled, pussy spasmed. The shower head stayed fixed on her clit as best I could; it was Marisa, after all, who’d introduced them to these things. I’d known how to use them before these girls ever heard of the  things.

Finally, after an orgasm or three, I slowed to a stop and pulled out. “That… that was…”

She was crying, I noticed. Crying tears of pure, whorish bliss.

For the life of me, I didn’t know why I liked this girl so goddamn much, but did I ever. I scooped her little body up in my arms and cradled her there for a moment. She sniffled, wiped at the with her arm, and finally squirmed to signal she wanted to be let down.

“I have a date tonight, so tomorrow morning is weird, but… same time Monday?”

She nodded. “Have fun on your date, homie.”

I wondered, for a moment, how that might have gone differently if I’d asked to get dirty. I supposed I could find out some other morning.

I fell asleep again after the shower. Another knock woke me up at what my phone insisted was half past eleven, but surely couldn’t be later than seven. “Coming,” I muttered.

There was a tall, comely blonde on the other side. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and still the identity eluded me, though no longer because tall comely blondes were a dime a dozen on Higgins 3. “Hi…”

She strode past me into the room. “Allison.”

“Of course. Sorry, I was sleeping in. What’s, um, up?”

This was the first time any of the triplets had been in my room. “Are you going to close the door?” she asked expectantly.

“Oh, right. Sure.” I did. “So what’s going on? Is everything OK?”

“I hear I missed quite the show the other night. My sisters say it was pretty wild in there .”

Oh right, Allison hadn’t made it. She and Sammi were the only two who’d never made an appearance. “Yeah, it was a good time. Sorry you couldn’t make it, but we’ll probably try again next semester. Maybe even for finals, if we can schedule it.” And if I could find somebody to guide it who won’t try to lick my face off.

“I want my lick,” she said, quite directly.

“Oh. Good grief. You know, that wasn’t a thing where I was like handing out Halloween candy. It was just a weird thing that happened. People got a little excited. I’m really embarrassed.”

“Addison and Maddison won’t shut up about it. I want to know what the big deal is. I mean, sure, you’re hot, but they’re acting like you’re PewDiePie meets Timothée Chalamet.”

A nice backhanded compliment, I supposed. Still, this had to stop somewhere. “Sorry, Allison. That was a one-night thing.”

“That’s not what you told the lesbians. They came in here and you told them it was fine. Or were they lying?”

Fuck. I was tired, and more than that, tired of playing catch-up with every girl on the floor who felt she hadn’t been given her due piece of me . Sammi was a hard no, considering her behavior the other night with Kyu-Ri. Once Allison was satisfied, it was done. I walked up to her and gestured invitingly.

“All right. Go ahead.”

She sneered coldly. “You don’t have to sound so disinterested. You do know most boys at this school would sell a testicle for this opportunity, don’t you?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I’m pretty sure most boys anywhere would sell a testicle for it. But here I am, both intact, and there you are. So go ahead and do it, or don’t.”

Her chin rose haughtily. I could imagine being one of a set of insanely hot triplets had a way of escalating one’s sense of self-worth. I was all for that – self-esteem was a big turn-on for me – but there was confident , and there was bratty. “I thought RAs were supposed to be nice. Encourage  and support and all that.”

“If you’d come down here because of a broken chair leg or a problem with a roommate, I’d bend over backwards, I swear. But you came down here to find out how I taste, which I promise you is not part of my job description. I just want this to be over with, and I don’t want a fight, so go ahead.”

“Now I’m not even sure if I want it if you’re going to be so disinterested about it.”

“Groovy.” I flopped back down into bed. “You can find the door, I’m sure.”

My eyes had just closed when a person-sized weight joined me on the bed. Allison lifted my shirt and took stock of what she found. “Dang. You work out.”

“I do.”

“Can I just… anywhere? Or does it have to be somewhere sexual? Because I’m not going to… yuck.”

“If you can see it, you can lick it. Knock yourself out.”

Her tongue extended, and Allison brushed it with experimental slowness across my abs.

“Well?”

“That was… I dunno. Maybe they overhyped it. I didn’t not  like it. Kind of… interesting. I guess. ”

“Glad I could interest you. Now if there’s nothing else…”

An hour later. No knock this time, but I was awake at my desk.

“Hi…”

“Allison. Still.”

She’d changed clothes since earlier , in my defense. “Oh. How can I help now?”

“I want my lick.”

“Ah, you had it. That’s a one-time thing. I mean, did you really think you could come down here and do that whenever you felt like it? I’m your RA, not your boyfriend.”

“Um, what are you even talking about? I just got back from tennis lessons, and before that, I was at lunch with my publicist.”

I blinked. “You have a publicist?”

“ We  have a publicist. Obviously.” I wanted to be annoyed, but really, smoking hot teenage triplets who’d gone viral tearing down a sorority? Yeah, it should have been obvious. “Now I want my turn. You’re not unattractive, and unless you want whoever runs this place to know you’re engaging in these behaviors, I think it behooves you practically and ethically to be fair.”

“All right, but then… who was down here an hour ago? Pretty blonde girl, looked a bit like you.”

Her eyes narrowed, then she sighed in exasperation. “Ugh. Maddison and Addison ragged on me and ragged on me for sitting out your little program until I said fine, I believed them, maybe you were something special or whatever. So I told them I was planning to come down here later. One of them must have come down and pretended to be to   uslurp  – ugh, um, I mean, usurp – my right.”

“It’s not  a right . But fine. Whatever. Just… lick me, and let’s be done with it.”

After another bout of pouting, Allison decided to go for my neck. “Interesting.”

“ I try . Anything else I can do for you?”

“That will be all for now.” Satisfied, she flounced out of the room.

An hour later came another one. Or one of the first two. Or maybe the first two had been the same one. I had no clue.

By this point I was earnestly endeavoring to get classwork done, and I was past caring. I drummed my fingers as she went through a spiel about how clearly her sister had heard her plan and worked out a way to sneak in extra turns. I pointed out that I didn’t actually have a way of knowing who had been who. She instructed me how it was obvious, you just had to look for the nose job, the wider gap between eyebrows, and then the baseline, which was her. The real her. I promised I’d keep them straight from then on, then told her I was done being disrupted, and to please let her sisters know I’d appreciate apologies for lying to me – and to make them some other day.

It wasn’t until the following afternoon that the three of them asked me down to their room. Grudgingly, I accepted. I hadn’t seen the interior since we’d done roommate agreements back in August. (A united front; they hadn’t disagreed or even discussed a single item on it.) 319 was a bit larger than the other rooms on the floor, hence the availability of triple occupancy, but these three kept everything off the floor and off to one side so that the place looked palatial, by residence hall room standards. There was almost as much open floor space as in the lounge next door. It still looked as tidy as it had the day they’d finished unpacking, too. The three were dressed identically in pale jean shorts and white blouses with a hint of cleavage. It put  me further on guard; beware of women who’ve wronged you and are trying to look cute.

“We’re sorry,” said the girl on the left.

“We agreed that since we were all at fault, we’d take the blame together, as sisters,” said the middle.

“We shouldn’t have lied to you just for a little fun,” said the right.

“We want to make it up to you.”

“All three of us.”

“If you’ll let us.”

I sighed. “Forgiven. Look, I’m not mad. It’s just been a weird week, and this was one more thing. I was in the middle of finishing up a bunch of classwork, but it’s done now and I’m me again and… blah blah blah, whatever. Don’t worry about it.”

“But we want to apologize.”

“Really, it’s fine. I was glad to see the two of you that came to the program hanging out. The girls are always excited whenever you make an appearance. A little starstruck.”

Their floormate Terri worked on her social media like it was a full-time job. Two full-time jobs, maybe, and that didn’t include the diet and exercise she maintained to foster the physique that was so central to her branding. The last Terri had mentioned her metrics, she had almost 8% of the following of the notorious triplets. For people who were into that sphere of the social mediaverse, and most of the Hotties were, they had some impressive numbers, easily the highest of anybody at Lakeview.

(Or, to paint things in a less complimentary light, Terri had confided in me one afternoon while I was helping her with her lighting that she’d asked them if they had any tips for her. Their advice, she said, had been to invent a time machine, go back in time and split her zygote a couple times. Then lose fifteen pounds. I’d pointed out that was only five pounds per Terri triplet, but there wasn’t much to be done to mend that slight.)

“We wanted to offer you a massage!” blurted middle.

“Triple team.”

“One of us missed the program, but, um, was grateful you, you know, let her get that sneak peek yesterday.”

I tried to be gracious. It was hard; there was no protocol for this interaction. “Oh. That’s really thoughtful of you, really. I’m so flattered. But I have some errands I’ve been putting off. I’m sorry. But thank you.”

I smiled. It wasn’t my easiest smile. These girls had condescended to and looked down upon the rest of my girls all semester so far, but suddenly things got spicy and they wanted to be coequal in the community. The little red hen was baking her bread, and once they’d heard the rave reviews, they wanted to knead my dough. Nothing to be gained by calling them out for it, though, so with a nod I turned to go.

“Please?”

“Yeah, please?”

“Please?”

I paused. “Please, let you give me a massage?”

“Or even just, you know. Our lick. One of us really didn’t get to.” Middle glared both left and right. “It’s not fair.”

“Please?”

“Please, Spencer?”

“You know, I’ve been lied to enough by the women in this room that I have a hard time seeing why I should cut you any slack. I think this is how you learn your lesson about treating your floormates respectfully.”

My hand was on the doorknob when left squeaked out, “We’ll do it in our underwear!”

“Like the other night. Like everybody else did.”

“Just don’t go. Please.”

Six hands met on my back, sides, arms and shoulders. Six hands, caressing me imploringly.

My date with Savannah the night before had gone amazing. We’d attended the exhibit at the Lakeview Art Museum, which turned out to be these really cool interactive displays of light waves and sound frequencies. It was like you were playing a harp, but the harp was a grid of multicolored lasers. The lines weren’t even long. Then it was off to dinner and drinks at a karaoke bar. Savannah hadn’t quite turned twenty-one yet, but I knew the bouncer and he did me a solid. We sang A Whole New World  from Aladdin, hamming it until we were giggling so hard we could barely sing. The bar hated it, but we enjoyed ourselves. Then we walked back to Higgins, stopping by the gazebo near the Post Gate on the west end of campus. It was in the middle of a field of grass, and though she trembled in my arms as I walked her across the expanse, I knew how much faith she was placing in me to let her do so. She sat on my lap and let me hold her, rubbing her scar and watching the stars come out.

Back home, she’d gone down on me so fast after getting back to my room that I had to remind her to close the door. She blew me until we fell asleep, and once again woke me up in like fashion. I stroked her hair and told her she was the hottest cocksucker for a thousand miles, and then I fingered her until she came right in time with me filling up her cheeks. Then, at her urging, she suggested we slow down and go to breakfast. We held hands the whole way there and the whole way back. I was fighting not to fall in love.

So when these three pushy blonde tricksters started pleading for my time and attention, I have to say, they had a long fucking ways  to go to close the gap.

Ultimately, I was still a sucker for pleading, and I did want to encourage them to become more involved in community events. I didn’t let them massage me, but I let them take one single lick, all three of them in unison.

One on each ass cheek, and one on my balls. Just so they knew the score.

“And give Terri a follow, would you? It’d mean a lot to her.”

Monday I finished the last essay, presented my group project, and met Ramona for dinner at Walt’s Other Pub once again, which suited me well as a location. My misgivings about our discussion after last week’s staff meeting had only festered in the days that followed. The bar was public, but townie public, so I didn’t have to worry much about bumping into anyone I knew. I’d picked it the week before because I liked the atmosphere, but now I’d moved on to hoping people didn’t see my supervisor flirting with me. Or worse.

She had said something the other night about “running things up the pole” where my misconduct was concerned, but the more I thought about it, the less I believed it. Up the pole from her was Bob and an Assistant Director who I’d met once but basically just managed the bureaucracy. I knew Bob a bit from my years as an RA, especially that committee I’d been on at Rowland, and he’d talked at me  more than once about the possibility of my entering the student development field after graduation. Every housing professional I knew got stoked when they thought they’d reeled one of us in. That was about it. If Bob could have any reason to thrust me into a hotbed of horny coeds  and ignore the consequences, I couldn’t imagine what it would be.

Ramona, on the other hand, was at the end of an awful lot of clue trails. She was the one who’d given me that shoddy roster with the guys’ and girls’ names to belay suspicion. When the Hotties showed up instead, she was the one I’d demanded answers from, and she was the one who’d come to me with that story about the renegade clerk snafu. She was the one who’d encouraged me to stay, even after the naked shower fight, even after one of the parties involved accused me of sexual misconduct with her. She had perplexingly intricate knowledge of the oddities and improprieties endemic to Higgins 3, yet nothing had been done to curtail it. She hadn’t even mentioned them to me. Just Wednesday night she’d watched as two members of her staff (both of whom I’d embroiled in a big lie about my romantic affairs) try to get me off, and her response had been to tell me how much she likes me and suggest we throw what caution she’d apparently never been employing to the wind.

My only other theory was that she was as ensnared as the rest of the staff, as the Hotties. It could be. It required foisting off an awful lot of coincidences onto Bob, which didn’t sit right with me, but I supposed it was possible.

It sure didn’t make it easier to meet with her, though, knowing this was feeding into her fantasies of having a sexy male subordinate.

“Spencer!” Ramona waved me over to her table. She looked nice. Sexier than usual? I wasn’t sure. Her blouse was sleeveless, snug; her skirt was brief, snugger. No stockings tonight, but no heels either. Her makeup was on point, but it always was. Wasn’t it?

I took a seat, and we exchanged pleasantries like any other meeting. I told her about the banal parts of my weekend – footnotes and thesauruses and zoom meetings and karaoke – and she about hers – garage cleaning and fall coat shopping and this guy at her gym who sort of looked like Cillian Murphy. It all felt ominous by virtue of how safe we played it.

Our food arrived. I’d ordered a water, and she a  beer. She’d offered me one, but I had to drive back to campus, I said. She didn’t pursue it. From there she pivoted into business.

She dragged a french fry through my salsa. “So, how was movie  and massage night?”

“Really good. By the end of the night, thirty out of thirty-two residents in attendance . Movie discussion went great. The massage therapist from the health center was OK, though I probably won’t ask for her again. M assages  went over great, though. Relaxation achieved , and I even kept them from stripping past their underwear, which for them, you probably know, is an accomplishment unto itself.”

The stub of her fry returned for a second go. “Good work! Probably set Janis or Vanessa’s hair on fire, but for Higgins 3 standards, sound s tame. Honestly, I’m jealous. I haven’t had a good massage in ages.”

“I still have the number of the woman from the health center,” I said with a chuckle, shuffling my salsa closer to me. For ease of access. Also, double dipping? Gross.

“So that’s it? Just a few bras peeking out, happy girls with happy muscles, huh?” she asked. A bit too casually .

“Yep. Pretty much.”

Our waiter popped by. I asked for a refill on my water. Ramona ordered another beer.

“Spencer, didn’t I prove you could talk to me about things the other night? Come on. I can see it in those big sweet eyes of yours that you’re not telling me something.”

I didn’t want to tell her more than I had. I was ashamed, for one. That more than anything. Tori had told me I was taking the community to a bad place and I’d agreed with her, but all weekend long I kept skipping down that trail. My conscience had gone into a coma or maybe died somewhere along the way, probably sucked out and guzzled down Savannah’s bottomlessly cum-thirsty gullet. Was I some kind of scumbag, switching off between Vickie and Savannah hour by hour, or was I allowed to take them at their word and be casual? Was I a creep to let my lesbians indulge in fantasies that I had every reason to think were unnatural, or would I be a creep to shame them? Had I been wrong to give in to Casey, or had that been a kindness, a pleasure and an intimacy we’d both long craved and stubbornly denied ourselves? Was it cruel of me to make those blonde tarts plead for the chance to lap at my ball sweat, or…

OK, yeah, that one was less ambiguous. Shit. How do you make amends for that?

No bones about it, I was losing my way. Or at least, as Marisa put it, moving into unknown territory. She insisted that just because it felt good didn’t mean it was wrong, but I was pretty sure that if it felt good with a dozen different girls over the course of a single weekend, something was pretty wrong. It was more than I knew how to process. Every time I told myself I’d gone too far and needed to take a step back, there was another knock, another girl pushing her way into my room, into my bed, into my shower stall. They all – we  all – wanted sex, and it felt dumber and dumber to deny ourselves the satisfaction. Still, even if I wasn’t some prude, I was grounded enough to know decent guys didn’t behave like this. Except nobody complained, so why not, right? Except everyone should be, damnit!

(Shouldn’t they?)

Now here I was with a woman who might well be at the head of it, or at least the middle, and she wanted to treat it as gossip over beers and appetizers?

“I didn’t ask for any of this, you know,” I found myself saying. Of all the times for my inner monologue to start bursting free. “I didn’t ask to be the only guy on your staff, much less the only guy in the building. I didn’t ask for a bunch of perfect babes to fill my floor, for them to all get crushes on me, for them to smash through every personal, social, ethical, sexual boundary I’ve ever set up. I didn’t!

“My first college girlfriend used to wear thongs with these straps that stuck way up out of her pants where everybody could see them, and at the time, I thought it was the wildest, most uninhibited thing I’d ever seen. Yesterday, one of my residents busted into my shower stall and demanded I let her bathe me . I was tired of saying no a hundred times a day so I guess I let her, though that probably doesn’t excuse letting her – pardon my French – tit-fuck me to finish it off, or the cluster orgasm I drove into her after. She has a boyfriend she swears she’s in love with, which I knew, but she said the hotter I got her the happier he was so no harm no foul, right? And that’s what’d I’d been up to by 6 goddamn AM! It’s OK, though, when she bathed me this morning, she told me they’d had the best phone sex of their relationship afterward. So, ya know, as long they’re happy, right? Why not let her instate herself as my daily shower attendant?”

“Spencer…”

I’d somehow managed to keep my volume low aside from those last few words, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Not that any of it was funny, but it was all so goddamn absurd. “No, hang on, you wanted to know. What else.  Let’s see, had  sex with Vickie Friday night. Then Savannah popped in a few minutes later, sucked me off for six hours or so because, ya know, she thinks I’m such a sweetheart. Had a parade of girls in and out of my room demanding I permit them to lick me. That was weird.”

“To… lick you…?”

“Ha! Oh, so you hadn’t heard? I’d wondered if massage night was one more thing you were holding close to the vest, waiting for me to confess. Yeah, the massage therapist got so into me she stuck her tongue out and… yeah. Before I knew it, that was the law of the land. Girls in bras and panties rubbing backs, shoulders, arms, and oh yeah, thighs, butts, breasts. With a nice sweet lick as a cherry on top!

“Not Jacqui, though. She showed up late, kinda freaked out at everything that was going on. But it’s me, and it’s Higgins 3, so I talked her back in, where I’d just kicked out the gay couple from 313 for tongue-fucking each other in the middle of the room. You would have been so proud. I set one hell of an example. Role model, right here. The whole floor watched me rub Jacqui down. The girls talked her – me – both of us – into a nice ‘chest massage,’ like that’s a thing, while they took turns on me and each got their own lick. I was practically dripping from it by the time they were done, when I gave the crowd their little show and got Jacqui off with a few little flicks to the nipples.”

My tongue demonstrated crudely. Ramona stared , jaw slack, meal and beer forgotten.

“Don’t worry, the ones who missed their chance got it later. Like I said, in and out of my room. Write a paragraph, get licked by a triplet. Rehearse my presentation for a bit, let the lesbians apologize for their misbehavior with their tongues. At least Tori had the decency to point out what a fucking pig I’m turning into. She’ll be an RA next year, mark my words. Leadership potential like you wouldn’t believe. Had the guts to confront the living lust legend to his face, even if it cost her a shot at him. That’s integrity, there. Sexy quality – maybe I’ll stop by and give her an extra lick, ya know?”

“Ah, Spencer, maybe we–”

“Might even lick her back, honestly. Incredible body on her, scads of integrity plastered all over her. You know, I saw her tits weeks ago when we found out she’d gotten her Higgins Hotties mini-booby-shirt a size too small. One too many Extra’s  on the Skimpy. Darn thing  kept slipping over those whoppers, you know? I mean, of course you know. You know every misogynistic thing I’ve let myself do this whole year, right? Stack of reports yea  high, I bet, just waiting to be filed away and forgotten so it can all keep on happening.”

I reached across the table and seized her glass of beer, pounding it down so fast that it was running down my neck by the time I slammed it down.

“Spencer,” she said softly, “what exactly are you accusing me of?”

That  was her takeaway from all that? The threat to her career?

“Oh come on, boss. If I can lick, tickle, finger and fuck my way down the Higgins 3 roster and nobody says boo, why not join me? I’m apparently untouchable, so I’m told. That’s a good horse to hitch your wagon to. I guess Bob thinks it’s fine for me to have all this cake and eat it, too. Stay back and let me at it, and I might even let you have a few crumbs, share the tawdry details. Maybe even let you work on that crush of yours. Say, there’s still beer sticking to my neck, if you want to take your lick now.”

“Are you… are you saying…” She looked around. I’d drawn some attention our way, but strange eyes were strange eyes. “What are you saying?”

“No? Well, later then. Everybody gets a free lick  on Spencer Lawrence! Say, does your husband know you’re out with me right now? Does he know you’re out on a date with a younger man you’ve admitted you’ve got a thing for? Well hey, I guess if I’ve stooped to  helping girls cheat on their boyfriends, what’s a husband on the midden heap, huh? C’mon. I guess they don’t have a shower around here, but you’re a smart lady. You’ll think of something.”

There were members of the staff watching us now. They didn’t look happy. Ramona noticed, too, and hastily dipped into her purse and dropped a wad of cash on the table. “I think we should go. Now. Come on.”

She was halfway to the door before I accepted that sulking there all alone was pretty pathetic. I hurried out not far behind her. God, why had I let that all spill out? To her, of all people? It was like I was waking up from sleepwalking or something and suddenly saw what I’d been doing all night.

Ramona was sitting on the front of her car, waiting. I was parked down the street, so even if I wanted to storm off, it would have meant storming right past her. I stopped in front of her and looked down, ashamed and angry and confused and disgusted, mostly at myself. Unless Ramona was the one pumping the building full of pheromones, in which case… I found myself turning a suspicious glare on her. I should be apologizing, begging her forgiveness, but right now, she was the focus for all my self-loathing over how much I’d fucking enjoyed the best week of my entire life.

She spoke first, though, and it was not what I expected. “You win,” she said softly.

I did? “I win… what?”

“I need this job, Spencer. I’m leaving my husband, so if I lose my job, too? It’s bye bye America. With what you know, you could have me terminated like…” She snapped her fingers. “God, I could go to   jail even , maybe. So from now on, as you say, I’ll stay out of your way. Do what you will, and I’ll stay out of your way. Help you hide whatever needs hiding. Make your excuses. And if you want me to… be like your ‘Hotties,’ then… I have no choice.”

“Uh…” No choice but to do what? What the hell had I missed in this dialogue?

“Only… give me the night. All right? I beg you. Give me the night to wrap my head around it, and tomorrow…” She looked down. Still, I couldn’t help but notice how hard her nipples were straining through her blouse. “Whatever you need.”

“Whatever I… what? What are you talking about?”

“I understand, Spencer. I thought you wanted me to be, like a friend? Now I realize I only heard what I wanted to. Fuck, I don’t know what I was thinking, sitting there, watching all this… But I thought I wanted… I thought I could…” She shook her head, eyes squinting shut for a moment. “But it’s too late. I have made myself complicit, and I’m at your mercy.”

Huh. A lot of things were coming together in that  moment. She had  been running things up the chain, and had  been told to ignore it. She’d tried to stop me with her authority as a supervisor, and when she couldn’t, she’d tried to befriend me. Maybe she’d thought she could talk me out of all the fucking and sucking I was doing with amicable counsel. Except I’d blown up in her face, ranted about all the amazing fun I shouldn’t be having, and she’d thought I was gloating, rubbing it in her face, taunting her. If she really had been given the impression I was to be left alone, and there I was lording my misdeeds over her…

Had I just accidentally blackmailed my boss…? “Ramona, I–”

Except I needed answers. Answers that she might be the only one who had. I’d told Marisa I couldn’t hack her computer, but apparently hacking her resolve was no problem at all.

Was it the cum? Or was she, like me, suddenly realizing how out of control we’d become?

“I’ll see you in your office first thing tomorrow.”

Chapter Ten: Responding to Emails

The phone line stayed quiet for a while after I finished bringing Marisa up to speed. This time, I held nothing back. Things had gotten much too far out of hand for more secrets. Even the stuff that made me look the worst – the lickings with the triplets and the lesbians, showering with Casey, chewing out my boss so hard she thought I’d meant to blackmail her. All this with two women I was calling girlfriends, both of whom I really liked, both of whom I was flagrantly cheating on with each other and so many others.

“It’s extortion, not blackmail, first of all,” she said finally. “Sorry, I had to google it.”

“What an important distinction. Thank you. Do you have any non-googled perspective to lend me here, or should I just hop on my laptop and figure this out myself?”

“That segues nicely with my second point, which is that I’m increasingly worried you can’t figure this out on your own.”

I kept my voice down. I could hear footsteps in the hallway, and I was doing my best to keep a low profile. It was going on midnight , and somehow the Higgins 3 norm of maintaining courteous hours of dropping by seemed to mostly be intact. I didn’t want to blow it by revealing I was awake and feeling chatty.

“What do you mean? I think I’m doing pretty OK. I may not be Encyclopedia Brown here, but I’m making some connections.”

“Encyclopedia Brown was a lousy detective. He only ever solved cases because they always dropped a solitary prominent clue for him. That said, you’re no Nancy Drew, either. Budget Hardy Boy, tops. It’s not your fault, though. For one, it’s never been your forte. Remember the time I was staying over at your room in Rowland and I had to be the one to tell you that all those times you thought your next door neighbors were working out really loudly, weights hitting the floor… Boom, boom, boom . But every time you stopped in, you never saw any weights?”

I stuck my tongue out at the  phone. “How was I supposed to know they were gay, or what gay sex sounds like?”

“You obviously weren’t supposed to know or they would have told you, and it sounds about the same as hetero sex, but with an average lower vocal pitch. Which is why you’re a budget Hardy Boy. Anyway, leaving that aside, you have to look at your own behaviors. I think you’re as compromised as they are.”

“What do you mean, compromised? They’ve been throwing themselves at me since day one, and I’ve only started crumbling here on day eighty-five or whatever.”

“Sure. You have to take other factors into account, though. Namely, they’re a bunch of normal, horny teenage girls, and you’re you.”

Marisa had always had a way of setting me to pacing around when we were on the phone. I missed the days when it was because she’d started phone-sexing me without me realizing it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How many dates did we go on before we had sex?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t counting. I’m assuming you–”

“Six. I was ready to have sex with you on the first date. On the second date, I asked you to come upstairs, and you said you didn’t want me to think you were only interested in me for that. You must have said it in that charmingly stupid way you have, because somehow I didn’t bail then and there. Date four, I flat-out offered. Date six, when you finally said yes, we both know it was because you thought I was going to stop seeing you otherwise, which I was.”

I did remember thinking that, though this was the first she’d confirmed it. I was glad I’d done it. This was no time to give her the satisfaction of hearing me say it, however. “So?”

“So, you’re a slow operator. That’s not a judgment. You just take your time. Romance means more to you than pleasure; compatibility more than attraction. It’s why you prefer your Savannah to your Vickie. It’s why you liked your boss better when she was  a soft shoulder and a kind word than when she bent the knee.

“These behaviors of theirs are obviously aberrant, and they’re worsening. So is yours, though. I wish I could write it off as the corrosion of willpower, but you aren’t the kind of guy who ever wanted this.”

“Pretty sure every guy – every straight guy – would say yes to this.”

“Except you  wouldn’t. And you shouldn’t. These women are being manipulated into these behaviors. You think their college dream was to get stuffed into a vat of raging hormones until they were so aroused, their arousal so fixated on one object – you – that they couldn’t help but throw themselves at you night and day? That they’d get together with their sisters to lick your ass?

“But then there’s you. You never wanted this for them, either. Whatever’s happening, it’s going after the gaps in that very lovable yet incredibly frustrating shining armor, and it’s getting through.”

“I don’t know. For them, yeah. The evidence is irrefutable. For me? I mean, everybody has their breaking point. I’ve said no so many times I hate the sound of the word in my own voice. Then once I said ‘OK, maybe this once,’ and that felt good, and so the pleasure principle kicked in. It felt good, and no harm came of it, so I kept going.”

“All right. Let me ask you this. Did you ever cheat on me?”

“What? No. Never.”

“Did you ever want  to cheat on me?”

“No.” That was a reaction, not an answer. I thought for a moment, and came back with, “There was a girl in my psych class who flirted with me, and I flirted back a little. I thought, briefly, that maybe we had some chemistry. I never acted on it, though.”

“Were you attracted to her?”

“Oh yeah.”

“More than to me?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. So what?”

Marisa giggled. “Sorry, that one was just vanity. Still, that’s my point. We were a bad fit, you and I. Sexually, no, but we want very different things for ourselves, and I think we knew that for a long time and papered over it with lots and lots of sweat and cum. Yet even with the opportunity in your psych girl, and motive in our middling-at-best chemistry, you never even considered infidelity as an option.”

“Well of course not. I told you then, and it’s still true now, that if I were ever at a point where I gave real thought to infidelity, it was time to break up, and I’d do that before I owed apologies.”

“Exactly.”

I waited… She did like to make me ask her to explain. “Exactly what?”

“Do you like this girl, Savannah?”

“I do. A lot.”

“And in the past week, you’ve had how many women’s tongues on you, and your tongue on how many women?”

I didn’t have a number, which pretty much said it all. “Fuck, Marisa. You’re right. I need to tell her. Until I’ve gotten things under control, I can’t keep on like this.”

It was Marisa who needed to think for a moment this time. “Maybe. I don’t know. Part of me thinks you should absolutely stay with her. You obviously really like this woman. This isn’t your doing, and I care about you enough that I hate the thought of letting this mess steal that away from you. Plus, I wonder what it could do to her in this addled state she’s in, to live there in your building and hear the whispers about all that you’re doing and have to wonder why she’s the only one left out. Your reasons are valid, but I doubt that’s how it would feel to her. I don’t know. I’m bad at the ethics of monogamy.”

“You’re not so  bad.” It was food for thought though. I could see my sleep disappearing already.

Marisa shushed me. “You’re getting me off-track, though. My point with all this is, you’re not acting like you. Your willpower is fading, but your judgment might be dying alongside it. What happens if you go down to your boss’s office in the morning, she’s waiting for you in her underwear and seduces you? Could you resist? Could you keep investigating a woman you’re being intimate with?”

“Of course I could!”

“No, darling, you couldn’t.”

“What makes you so sure? I’ve been doing OK.”

Marisa sighed. Then she was quiet, and then she sighed again. Whatever she was about to say, it was something she’d thought about before and had put off saying. “Spencer, you know me better than anyone. Better than I know myself in some ways, I’m sure, the same as I know you. Yet this whole time, you haven’t even asked me the most obvious question in this whole investigation – because you’re afraid it would hurt me, hurt us, to ask it.”

I bit my tongue. I knew exactly the question she meant, and even as I heard myself say it aloud, I wasn’t asking it. Only acknowledging that she was right.

“Is the Hancock Institute involved.  And are you helping them.”

“Exactly. You’ve been so focused on Ramona and Bob and the Housing Department, which makes some sense considering the limited evidence, yes. Where’s the final explanation there, though? Is this aging bureaucrat, your boss’s boss, also a biochemistry genius getting his kicks helping some random employee sleep with a bunch of teenage girls? Or, could one of the world’s foremost research foundations on human sexuality be conducting some sort of experiment on, that’s right, human sexuality?”

“Is… Are you saying…”

“I’m saying that’s something that should have occurred to you by now. That it should have been your first fucking guess! God, Spencer! ‘Why me,’ you keep asking yourself. How would you even get on anyone’s radar? How would anyone – anyone  – at the Hancock Institute be able to select you out of all the dudes in all the dorms?”

“Residence halls,” I amended.

“It’s been staring you in the face, but you haven’t let yourself ask about it because you care too much about me to consider that I could be part of it! Even after I suggested it to you, you dismissed it without a second thought. Why? Because I looked extra cute that day. And because you still love me. And because of whatever’s happening to you, you can’t think past that!”

I didn’t know what to say. Of course I still loved her. Not the same way I once had, but love was love was love. If Marisa knew that, knew it the way I did, then I shouldn’t need to tell her that I’d never needed to wonder if she could be in on this whole crazy mess.

When she went on, I could hear the tears behind her voice. “So yeah, that’s first of all. And second of all, I’m out.” Her cry-snot-laugh was painfully loud in my ears. “I was going to tell you I was bailing because I didn’t want to be an accessory to whatever you’re up to with your boss, but that’s not it.”

“Accessory…?” Was I… Huh. Uh, oh. Maybe I needed to do some googling, too.

“The thing I found most attractive about you was never your body, Spencer. It was that moral certitude of yours. I’ve never known a guy who so effortlessly… gave a shit. I actually hated it at first. I thought it was this act, one of those toxic nice guy assholes who was showing off how much empathy he had for all the world’s sadnesses. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, to find out this hot guy I’d been having fun with was just that, nothing more, a big dick, hot bod, pretty face, and nothing more. Then one day, you were over at my place, and I was going down on you. Reciprocal, I remember. You’d already eaten me out, and I wanted a turn. Then in the middle of things, you got this text, and you actually read it . Like, with your dick in my mouth.”

It was my turn to mix some emotion into a laugh, a grimace, but with a little nostalgic ah, yes  factor. “I remember. Greg. His dog died.” I had bumped into him earlier that day, before going over to my new and exciting crazy hot sex geek girlfriend’s place, and I’d asked him to keep me posted. Bad timing was all it had been.

“Greg’s goddamn dog. And you stopped me, when I could have finished you in another couple minutes, so you could go back to your dorm and sit with this dude-bro resident you didn’t even like–”

“Pretty sure he was one of the guys who tore down my LGBTQ Awareness Month bulletin board.”

“–and you sat with him and cried with him for like hours , letting him show you pictures of some ugly mutt you’d never even met.”

“I can’t believe you came with .”

“I can’t believe I did either. I figured you’d be done in five minutes and we could get back to it. Pretty sure I tried.”

“You did. But, I mean… his dog.”

Marisa’s crying was getting louder. I let her go on for a bit, but it only grew worse. “Do you need me to come over?”

I had one shoe on when she finally suppressed it long enough to reply. “I’ve never seen you untethered like this before. Worse, I’m part of the problem. I want to be able to kiss you and fuck you without you melting my brain, without you having to worry it’s anything but your Marisa missing your touch. So I’m getting out of your way before you get washed away, Spencer. Now get to the bottom of this, all right? Whatever you have to do.”

“I’ll Nancy Drew it the best I can.”

“Good. Now remember what I taught you, and try not to beat yourself up too bad for the fun you’re going to have along the way.”

“I’ll try.” Fat chance of that. “And when the pheromones are gone, I can call you again?”

“Biochemical reaction,” she amended. Then, simply, “I’ll call you.”

“How will you–”

The line went dead.

I was still up when a gentle knock sounded at my door shortly after six. Then a moment later, it opened, and there was Casey, wrapped in a blue floral towel, peering in through a crack in the door. The sliver of light from the hallway hit me right in the face.

“You up, homie?” she whispered. I hadn’t actually recognized the silhouette until she spoke, but then there could be no doubt.

“I’m up. You  need something?”

“Just wondered if you wanted a run through the carwash.”

“Sure,” I answered. “Men’s room, middle stall. Get it ready for me.”

“On it.” The door closed.

That was one decision I’d arrived at overnight. There was no denying that Marisa was right. I was as wrapped up in this as all of them. I could pretend I was the master of my fate all I liked, but clearly there was no evading it all. The hundred little concessions along the way were a road map to my present hell. Sleeping naked with my door unlocked had let Quinn hop into bed with me, let her flirt, let her touch me, let her bury a finger up my ass. Even then, I should have known something was wrong with me. If it was affecting the girls more strongly, that only meant that when I figured out who was doing this and why, they could be even more pissed than I was.

I declined Casey’s tit fuck that morning. After indulging her in our first two showers, she was disappointed, but I still fingered her cross-eyed before I left her a quivering puddle on the shower floor in my wake. The vigor helped perk me up. I grabbed breakfast at Penderdast, took a jog around campus. The sun was still climbing over the treeline, and the early fall air was brisk and delicious. On my way up the hill toward Higgins, I ran past Savannah, not much of a fall person, bundled up in a poofy pink coat.

“You’re a machine,” she said when I stopped her, kissed her, apologized for the disruption. She didn’t look like she minded.

“Says my cocksucking machine,” I answered (after making sure there was nobody in earshot).

“Mmm, sweet talk like that I might just need you to oil me up and let me run for a while.”

I was still jogging in place. “I’m going to. I miss your lips. Now go ace  a midterm, OK?”

“Two, actually.”

“Come on, only two? Like that could stop my  girlfriend?”

She laughed and pulled me in for another, much deeper, kiss. We made out right through the passage of a group of students; a car honked appreciatively as it drove by. I didn’t recognize it and didn’t get a good look at the driver, but indubitably someone from Higgins.

“I should be back by 2,” she said. It was a throaty little purr she was speaking in, even with nobody close enough to eavesdrop.

“I should be in my room waiting for you at 1:30 in case you finish stomping that test early.”

“You think if I blow the professor he’d let me out early with a passing grade?”

“I think if you blow the professor half as good as you do me he ought to hand you a diploma.”

A final quick kiss. I wished her luck, and she slapped my spandex-covered ass as I turned to finish my way up the hill. I ran past Danielle, who received a less thorough well-wishing, and Katrina, less necessary. Back at Higgins, I headed for the center building instead of the residence and made my way to the center desk. I was right in time to see Marcus keying in.

“My man. Look at you, working up a sweat already. Don’t you have tests to be saving all that energy for?”

“For which to be saving all that energy,” I corrected our resident grammar fiend.

“Oho, you passed that test, yes you did!” We high-fived. It felt good. I was so-so at grammar, but sentences ending in prepositions were low-hanging fruit. “ You  here to see Ramona?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Yeah, a little early for her. She probably won’t be in for a bit yet.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

For the next half hour, I pitched in at the center desk. Midterms week always meant a lot of care packages, so I dove in and filled out the notification tags and stuffed them in mailboxes. By the time I ran out, she still wasn’t in, so I sat myself down and filled out some encouraging notes for midterms for the other RAs. I felt awkward about Vickie’s – she wasn’t really the sort to gush over an attaboy – but I wasn’t about to set myself up by leaving her out of it.

I was working on Carmen’s when Ramona arrived. I looked up; she was looking back. She looked good, just a pinch sexier than usual in her all black ensemble. Pencil skirt, a hair shorter than her norm. Blouse, a hair  tighter. Heels, a hair taller. Stockings, a hair of lacy stay-ups showing.

“Good morning, Marcus. Good morning, Spencer. Did you want to see me?”

I let Marcus answer, then me. “I’m finishing this up. I’ll be ready in a few minutes. If that’s OK with you.”

“I always have time for you,” she said, her voice dry, the strain behind it subtle enough I doubted Marcus would notice.

I finished my notes. To be honest, I took a little more time on the last few, just ‘cause. Once they were tucked into mailboxes, I let myself into Ramona’s office and closed the door behind me.

“I need to talk to you about last night,” I began.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said quickly. “Tell me what you need. If I can, I will.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk about. This whole ‘blackmail’ thing. I don’t think I made myself very clear. I was upset, and confused, and I was probably letting some of what you said about our being attracted to one another get in my head, and…”

And… Ramona slipped out of her chair, and onto her knees.

It was then I noticed she’d undone a couple buttons on that blouse. Her bra, a hair more visible, I added to my assessment.

Dominating powerful women had never really been one of my fantasies. Honestly, I’d sorta looked down on people who did. Certain ex-girlfriends whose names I was trying not to think of would slap me upside the head for kink-shaming that way, but it felt like there was a little bit of wiggle room for a fantasy that explicitly diminished women of status who, as I understood the appeal of it, had little to no desire to be diminished.

Looking down at my gorgeous boss kneeling at my feet, her eyes downcast, I told myself I still didn’t see the appeal.

“You didn’t have to say it. I understood. I’ve taken care of everything. I moved out of my house and told my husband I was done negotiating, that I wanted things finalized as soon as possible. I notified my lawyer, too. He’ll contact his  today.”

“You… what…?”

“I didn’t want to be unfaithful, but I could see you were serious, so I didn’t want to test your patience,” she explained, undoing another button. The strap of her bra was now visible in the middle. Black, like the rest. There was definitely some ink down there too, but I couldn’t see enough to tell what it was.

“Test my… Ramona, I never told you to leave your husband!”

“Not in words,” fingers circling the next button. “I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at me. All the way back during training. The way you were always looking at my skirt, probing at what I concealed. The way your body melted into mine whenever we touched. It wasn’t until you came along that I remembered what I had been missing.”

I’d been having such a confident morning, a positive  vibes only start to the day. I’d thought to stroll in here, correct her misgiving, explain my situation to her and ask for her help. If she refused it, that would at least confirm which side of it she was on. If not, I could accept her assistance guilt-free.

What the hell was this?!

“Whoa. Whoa, whoa whoa. I really was not asking for this, I swear, Ramona.”

“No, you were demanding  it.” There went that button. “I can’t remember the last time I was so turned on. I’ve thought of nothing else, all night.”

“Oh god, Ramona, I never… I, um…” Another button. Past her navel now. There was only one more showing. And holy shit, so much ink. What I could see of her skin through that crevice was more tattooed  than not. “You did?”

“We’ve spent so much time together in our short acquaintanceship. Every week, an hour, two hours, sometimes more when those girls of yours were really testing you. I scolded myself at first for how wrong it was to look at you and see more than an employee. Then I saw you looking back, but I told myself whether we both want it or not, we couldn’t.”

Oh god. How had I not thought of this? I lived on Higgins 3, spent most of my time on Higgins 3, but in my room, often as not with the door shut. The other RAs, two of whom I was now sleeping with, I went on rounds with, worked  the center desk with occasionally . The Hotties, my coworkers… Once Marisa had started talking about my biochemical whatever – the pheromones – those “victims” made sense. I saw them all the time.

Ramona, I’d been seeing once a week for our one-on-ones, and an hour or so every other week for staff meetings. It had seemed like a lot less time than I spent with the others. Maybe because the power differential between us made things feel more formal, or maybe because duty felt like six hours, even if only a sliver of that was I actually  around the other RAs on duty. Rounds only took fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour if we were chatty or something happened, and half of that we were splitting up around the central corridors of the floors.

How much time had I really spent with Vickie in a week before we hooked up? I’d bet less than an hour in arm’s reach of each other, or less depending on the duty calendar. Less than an hour a week had given me Vickie wants Dicky. (I didn’t love the phrase, but she did, so who fucking cared.)

Ramona was right about our one-on-ones, too. They’d started at an hour we’d blocked out in our schedules, and we hadn’t used it all. Week by week, though, they ran longer, and longer. I was thorough, and I had lots of issues. Was there anyone else I was sealing myself in a room with for multiple hours on a weekly basis? The first time I’d sat alone in a room with Savannah had been the evening of that fight, and within hours, we’d been making out. I gave myself some credit for that hookup, but if every other sexual happening was blamed on Higgins, it likely played at least some role there, too.

The effect had never been about Higgins Hall. There were no hidden air filters, secret chemicals in the water. It was me. This woman, presently shrugging off her blouse and offering me my first glimpse of the mass of tattoos covering her torso, was proof. Ramona had been positively bathing in whatever effect I was exuding more than any other woman I’d been in contact with all semester. If one didn’t believe in magic – and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure at this point I didn’t – then that meant what had driven Allison, Addison and Maddison, who had spent all of half an hour in a room with me in the past two months, to beg for the chance to kneel on the floor next to their sisters and get a taste of my ass and balls.

Ramona had been locked in an office half the size of my dorm room for hours at a time. I had been fucking marinating this woman in lust. I thought about Casey, next door, how we bumped into each other once every other day, said hi when we were brushing our teeth, had  a few good heart-to-hearts in the lounge. Twenty minutes a week, maybe? Call it half an hour. Half an hour, and she’d woken me up this morning to wash me and get her pussy plumbed so hard it left her purring on the bathroom floor in my wake with a ditzy grin plastered on her face. Half a fucking hour.

The Higgins hall director folded her blouse and set it neatly on one corner of her desk. “I understand if you felt like you needed to control me to make sure that what you’re doing with your girls stays secret. I do. I can tell you how envious I am of those girls until I’m blue in the face, but how could you believe me? So I have to show you. I know you would never subjugate me sexually, but… you can. You can, and I will thank you for the pleasure.”

Hour after hour, week after week after week. The clasp on her bra fell. Her breasts were as decorated as the rest of her. When I could make myself see anything but tits, it was a mesmerizing display. Polish script (I was pretty sure). A woman’s face, her long hair wrapped in a shawl, along the side of one breast. The moon – and what I first thought were odd bumps were, on closer inspection, tiny people dancing on it. A lamb with red eyes. A web of vines, two bleeding hands clasping at them from behind. More.

“Do you like them?”

“Um, yeah. They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.” That’s what I said instead of “oh my god get off your knees and put your clothes back on.” Marisa was right once again. I’d have to tell her, once she could trust that it was safe to be a woman in my life without being overwhelmed by the need to find new ways to pleasure me.

Ramona turned around and let her hands join her knees on her office floor. Her bare thighs made an appearance between skirt and stockings. There were more tattoos on her back, as varied in style, size and theme as the front of her.

“They keep going, if you wish to see.” The slightest waving of her behind drew my eyes right to the zipper on her skirt.

“I… I probably, um, shouldn’t.”

“Why not? You’re worried we’ll get in trouble?” She laughed. “From whom? I’m at your mercy. Show me none.”

If this was inside me, if this was why Savannah couldn’t get enough of sucking my cock… I’d fed her my cum. That hadn’t been incidental. That had been me, testing a theory. No amount of wide-eyed Spencer innocence could mask that the only experiment I’d been running there had been to see if a taste of my cum made me irresistible to a woman.

“It’s important to me that you know you have complete control over me in this office.” She arched her back, whipped her head around to look at me, lustrous hair flying over her shoulder.

“Take it off,” I told her. Because if I didn’t strip her myself, it wasn’t my doing? Because I wanted to take this power she’d given me for a stroll, try out an order? Well, fuck it. It was happening. The look in her eye made me wonder if she’d let me leave before I took at least some advantage of her supposedly compromised position.

“Gladly, Spencer.” My supervisor held that bent-over position with both hands reaching back to ease down the zipper. The skirt slid down her thighs, and then she crawled the rest of the way out of it in a little circle, stopping at my feet, her ass pointing up at me invitingly.

Ramona’s panties obscured some of it, but what I could see was as transfixing as the rest. A crow pierced by an arrow, but it looked angry, not wounded. More words – no, names. Family, I presumed. A gloved hand with seven fingers over her hip. Another moon, but this one nestled against a seductively illustrated sun. They stopped short of where a mini skirt might reveal them, but not by much.

“Take off the rest. I want to see all of you.”

Ramona peeled down her panties. I really hadn’t missed much; there was less art towards the middle. There was a pussy, though. Her panties, black like the rest of her outfit, hadn’t shown what must have been a massive wet spot from her arousal, but as they fell, I couldn’t miss her juices glowing in the soft light from her desk lamp.

Then she turned around and rose back to her knees. There was a single tattoo that hadn’t been visible from the back, with her skirt on. A pink and white lotus flower, right above her pubic hair. The quality of it was incredible, much more detailed than most of her tattoos. Even frozen in place, I could tell it was mid-bloom, the petals opening.

“Is there anything else I can take off for you?” she asked softly. Submissively.

The only thing she had left was her heels and stockings. “I don’t think you have much left to remove,” I answered.

“I didn’t mean off of me , Spencer.” Her eyes slid down to where my erection was testing the integrity of my spandex running pants.

“I’m not blackmailing you,” I said. Just to be official. I’d said it.

“I wish you would,” she whispered. “Having you take control of me like this is the most turned on I’ve ever been in my life.”

In case I didn’t believe her, she ran a finger down between her breasts, across the moon, through the vines, swirled once, then twice around the dewy lotus, and between her legs. It dragged slowly across her pussy, pausing to tease her clit, and came up coated in fresh wetness. Then she sucked it clean.

“Is there anything else I can take off for you?” she repeated. “Please?”

“I… I’m not sure I…”

She twisted at the waist and reached into her purse, suddenly but not quickly. Her phone was in her hand when it came out. She tapped a few keys, and then I watched – because where else could I look – as she turned this way and that, holding the phone at odd angles, photographing herself in her naked glory. When she had taken whatever she felt like must be enough, she tapped a few more keys.

“Why did you–”

The chest pocket in my workout clothes buzzed. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I realized what it was immediately, though even with the real thing staring me in the face, I wasted a moment scanning through the dozens of naked selfies she’d taken for me.

“What would a woman do to persuade a man not to reveal such things?” she mused. “Before, you had angry words and conjectures about my misbehavior. Now, you hold my future in your hands. With a few presses of a button, Spencer, you could end my career, let my husband clean me out, penniless and homeless. Humiliate me.”

“I don’t want to–”

Her accent was just a bit thicker today, I’d noticed, and her silken whisper cut through my protest like a blade. “With those, you could make me do anything you want.”

My boss crawled to my feet, craned her neck to gaze up at me imploringly. She pawed at my thighs pleadingly. Her fingers pressed my flesh hard. They’d wanted this for a long time. “Absolutely anything.”

I could fuck her whenever I wanted, however I wanted, with impunity. I could make her beg me for the honor, cum on her face and walk away, throw the door open and strut out with her still curled up on the floor coming what was left of her brains out, naked and helpless.

Not that I wanted to do any of that, but I finally saw the appeal of the kink.

“I need to use your computer.”

Her eyes scrunched, became confused, but I had to hand it to her. As ready, eager, and expecting as she’d been for me to fuck her face, she scurried over to her desk and powered that thing up in one heck of a hurry. I stood behind her as we watched it load. When my hands rested on her shoulders, she gasped, her nipples hardening before my eyes even from so mild a touch.

Ramona eyed the login screen for a moment, then looked up at me. “Do you want to know my password?”

Jesus, why did that  turn me on?

“Depends. Are you going to be willing to enter it for me when I need it?”

“I promise you, ‘willing’ is not a problem.” She nuzzled her cheek against my hand on her shoulder.  

“Then no. Now let me sit down. I’ll need privacy.”

I’d been going to ask her for her help, but I had to admit, simply brushing her aside and looking through her emails was going to be a lot more instructive and unbiased than asking questions and hoping for honest answers. Besides, she was plainly enjoying this power shift scenario, even if it was only roleplay. If bossing her around a little made her happy, well, it was the least I could do.

“Where would you like me to wait?”

Hmm. I’d sort of imagined having the office to myself when the command popped out of my mouth, but… she was naked, and even if I thought she looked ready to handle getting dressed and leaving me alone in here without jilling herself in the mail room, which I didn’t, she’d be conspicuous as hell stepping out flushed and panting, to say nothing of Marcus knowing I’d just gone in there. I remembered how obvious her nipples had been through her bra and top the other night at the bar. It wouldn’t be a good look if I sent those torpedoes into the water armed.

The office was small. In my defense, options were fairly limited if I didn’t want her to see what I was doing. Her fantasies of being my helpless blackmail victim seemed pretty ironclad, but I didn’t know who else had influence over her to make her keep all this under wraps for so long. So much I thought  I knew, so little I was sure of. For now, t he less she knew about my suspicions, the better.

“Behind the–”

“Under the desk?”

“–desk. I mean, under. Right. Under the desk.”

Ramona crawled under her own desk, just off to the side of her chair – which she graciously slid back and spun to face me. “Your chair, Mr. Lawrence.”

I was pretty sure the last time someone had called me Mr. Lawrence, it was my high school basketball coach yelling at me for my shitty dribbling skills. “Spencer is fine, Ramona.”

She said nothing. Just knelt as I took a seat in her desk chair, the close-by warmth of her palpable through my thin spandex pants.

Her email had over a dozen unread messages. Last night’s duty log from Carmen; a couple updates from maintenance; miscellany  from some names I recognized from elsewhere in campus housing; a receipt from Doordash. Thai Palace, 10:35 last night. Right, she said she’d moved out of her house. I checked the delivery address, then googled it. Holiday Inn Express. Oh, man. I had to fix this situation. Maybe her failed marriage wasn’t my fault, but… I had to fix it.

Ramona’s fingers teased at my exposed ankles.

I navigated to the search window and typed in my name. Time to see what she’d been saying about me.

484 messages.

Well then.

For a moment, I’d gotten excited at the prospect of huge threads devoted to discussion of me and my plight. Instead, what I found were months of duty logs, memos she’d send to the Higgins staff along with our replies, correspondences about work orders on my floor, and all sorts of others. I sorted by date, but the earliest emails were back in the spring, notifications of who had been placed on her staff and some discussion between hall managers on the subject. I’d told my manager Drew at Rowland that I’d put in for one of the new coed floors, which I’d known Rowland would not have; he’d bantered with Ramona trying to barter me back in jest, then singing my praises when she missed the joke and apologized that she didn’t think she was allowed to trade staff members. Some of the stuff he said was actually pretty touching. No wonder Ramona had thought so much of me from the get-go. Solid manager, Drew.

With Ramona’s hand drifting up my calf and being joined by her other , though, I have to say my new manager came with some perks, too.

Time to narrow it down. I refined the search by adding Bob’s name to the search. That narrowed it down to only 38. I recognized many of those at a glance, correspondences about the training sessions I helped lead, and a thread between the three of us from the summer when I’d tried to get backing to attend a conference for prospective housing and residence life professionals. I’d sort of forgotten about that; it had gone belly up when my toothaches wound up necessitating wisdom tooth extraction. Bob and Ramona had both been excited to see me attend. Still, even in my current paranoia it was hard to see anything nefarious in it. The thread ended with an email between the two of them that didn’t include me, Bob commenting not to worry, that “we’ll reel that one in yet,” and instructing her to try to get the payment refunded for my conference pass.

I yelped in surprise as the chair suddenly dropped to its lowest level. Ramona leaned sideways, her body resting against my leg, her cheek atop  my now-lowered knee.

Again, I went by date and scrolled back to Welcome Week. Only two emails, and neither of them about my all-girl coed floor. Maybe a situation like that probably merited a more urgent communication than email? Of the two, one was from Bob to all housing staff, myself of course included, thanking us for our hard work that week, generic morale stuff. The other was about the fight. Ramona had included my report and written one of her own. Nothing untrue or unusual in it, though it did include that during her followup  conversation with Quinn, she’d alleged that we’d had a sexual encounter the night before. Not the sort of thing one would pass along to the highest levels if she were covering for me. The body of Ramona’s message asked whether she should follow up on the allegations, or dismiss it considering the girl’s probable expulsion from Lakeview?

Bob had not replied. That was strange. A cover-your-ass policy against leaving a paper trail disregarding Quinn’s statement? Or… something else? No telling. Maybe he’d picked up the phone the moment he read it, nervous about fallout. Maybe he hadn’t bothered because he was leading a shadowy cabal to turn me into Spencer Lawrence, Fucklord of Lakeview.

Ramona’s hands moved up to my thighs now. Incremental. Testing boundaries. Waiting to be told no. Like Bob, I told her nothing.

Email by email, I sought answers, and email after email I found tedium.

Bob: Can Spencer lead a campus-wide session at winter training. Sure.

Ramona: Update: three calls now from parents complaining about a male RA. No response.

Ramona: Question from Spencer about budgetary concerns raised by his floor governor. Blah blah.

Bob: Looking for worthy squash opponents, anybody on your staffs  play?

Ramona: Concerns about the fire alarm trouble box, raised by me.

Bob: I’ve got boxes of condoms up here. Let your people know. Especially Spencer.

Hmm. Because I was a guy on a girl’s floor? Or…?

I spread my thighs and eased the chair back a little. Ramona impressively managed to crawl between my legs without slamming her head on the bottom of her desk. Better than I’d have done stuffed down there. Then back to her sensual caresses, her cheek back on my leg. Only then I felt her lips beside it.

Nothing else of note. It felt weird he’d asked for me by name as a prospective squash player (squasher?), but he’d named half a dozen other guys from other halls, too. What was I missing? Had she never emailed him about any of the slutty stuff from Higgins 3? Hm, there was a thought. I tried another search, this time for Bob and Higgins 3, san “Spencer.”

One email.

Trying to ignore the kisses inching toward my inner thigh, the fingers sneaking toward the waistband of my jogging pants, I read, and re-read.

Saturday, September 24, 22:44

From: Bob <housingbob@lakeview.edu>

To: Ramona Tinsley <rtinsley@lakeview.edu>

Subject: Re: Higgins 3 shower heads

Leave it alone. Leave them alone. Leave him alone. Read the code, R. If you find any prohibition against consenting adults consenting to adult behavior, to whacking off, or to the specific types of goddamn shower nozzles then you let me know. Otherwise, unless someone says the kid did something they didn’t want him to do I don’t  give a sewer rat’s rotting dick what adults do in our buildings. Let them have their fun. Have some of your own ffs. Sounds like you might need to knock something loose.

I’ve got HMs with flood damage, hate crimes, on-going construction. Some with 3x the staff you’ve got. If you can’t figure out why your 180 girls sharing 1 boy have some issues with flirtation or you can’t figure out how to handle it without alerting Congress, let me know. I bet Jens in Penderdast would scoop up your 6 RAs for half your salary.

And I don’t care if you’re on a couple’s weekend. Check your damn texts so I don’t have to waste a thousand words on this shit next time.

- Bob

<Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S18+ 5G, an AT&T smartphone>

She tugged plaintively at my pants. Without thinking, I lifted my hips to help her out. “Oh, god …” she moaned. I shushed her and reread.

Why was my boss’s boss emailing her at close to midnight on a Saturday to tell her my girls and I could do anything we wanted to each other short of sexual assault? His attitude, aside from being even more prickly than I’d seen from him, flew in the face of everything RA training had ever told me. Sex positivity was one thing, but it sure sounded like he’d told her to go get laid! Even if it was sarcasm, it was way across the line.

Was there really no written policy against residents and staff? It was possible it wasn’t a formal rule. Lakeview had had single gender floors since its establishment, and like most schools, hadn’t bothered explicitly acknowledging the possibility of same sex relations in its rulebook, so perhaps no one had seen a need to update it as time rolled by.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to do for you, Mr. Lawrence?”

I was thinking; her question was disruptive. I knew what she wanted, so taking a page out of Bob’s playbook and not wasting words on her, I reached under the desk and pulled her face onto my cock.

There was no resistance, only a moan of profound gratitude as she contorted her neck to the side so she’d fit, and started bobbing and lapping at my cock. She wasn’t bad, especially crammed in there as she was, but that was as much as I dwelled on it. I had bigger things on my mind than whether my boss’s sub fetish was my doing or she was simply horny and it had always been there. Another girl, another itch somebody needed me to scratch. Next, please.

This email was something, I decided. Nobody’s boss said stuff like this, especially not a guy whose employees were barely old enough to consent, who oversaw housing for almost exclusively teenagers, with the odd 20-year-old thrown in for diversity. This was my fifth year as an RA, and every year there was some rumor that went around that somebody had crossed the line with a resident in one hall or another. One year, there had been a situation where an RA’s boyfriend moved into a male floor in her building mid-year, and she’d had to choose between breaking it off and resigning. I’d known her, so I happened to know she’d chosen the former because things hadn’t been serious enough to lose her job (and, as an RA, her room and board), but still. Bob had been Director of Housing then, and that had been the way things went.

Suddenly when Ramona was telling him about masturbation shower heads – and it sure sounded like a lot more, I inferred from his response – the department’s policy was “let him eat cake.” Except cake was Quinn and Leigh and Andi and Kendall and Georgia and more recently Jacqui and Casey. A cake buffet.

Also, where were the emails where she’d notified him of any of it? Bob’s email was a reply, but (Ramona’s blowjob started to gain some slop volume in her enthusiasm) where was the original message? I frowned. It made no sense. I looked again.

Sent from his smartphone… Hm.

“Keep a steady rhythm, Ramona. I’m trying to think.”

“Sorry, Mr. Lawrence. I will do better.” Sluttiness really suppressed her usual effort at an American accent. If this charade continued, I’d have to remember to mandate she keep it up. Ramona’s technique became robotic in its precision, yet ravenous in its vigor. Good enough. Meanwhile, I went back to the old messages. Only a couple of them ended with that. The rest were presumably sent from his computer. Did it mean anything? What was different about…

There it was. The second I realized it, it became clear in a flash of my boss’s tireless cock slobbering.

The emails from his work computer included the original message indented beneath his reply. The ones he set from his phone did not. That meant that Ramona’s shower email had, from the context of Bob’s response, almost certainly mentioned my name. His complaint about emailing. His insistence that this message was a reminder to butt out of my sex life, despite no other records of it. Every other email with my name was part of some boring dead end – except this one, a reply to an email where the original had born my  name, but the reply, devoid of the original because of his smartphone app settings, did not.

Someone was poking around in her email and deleting whatever messages pertained to me, and to her concerns with sexual impropriety with the Hotties. Only they’d missed this one, because they were doing what I’d done and looking for my name – which, thanks to the email settings on Bob’s phone, this one didn’t have. More likely it was an algorithm, scanning for emails with particular search terms – “Spencer,” “Higgins 3,” “sex,” “inappropriate,” “begging for his cock” and so on. This one had simply slipped through the cracks.

There it was. Or wasn’t.

The conspiracy. And right there in the middle of it – Bob. Silencing the whistleblower.

Not the only thing Ramona was blowing. She was absolutely purring around that cock. As much as she was enjoying herself, I didn’t think anybody could silence her from blowing that.

I rolled her chair back (after making sure the wheels would miss fingers and toes – safety first). My cock slipped from between her lips; she lunged after it with such desperation that it bounced back and slapped her in the nose.

“I’m sorry!” she blurted. “I’ll do better! I didn’t have enough room to do a good job. But please, just let me… I’ll try harder, I swear!”

She looked genuinely penitent. Was it an act, part of the roleplay? She didn’t really think I’d send her pictures to… I didn’t even know who. (Did you just go to pornhub or something and hit upload?) Regardless, that look, that fear that she hadn’t been doing a satisfactory job blowing her employee while he snooped on her computer…

“Well then, try harder.”

Oh my god, how she tried. I’d thought Savannah was dogged when it came to sucking me off. The bar was raised that morning, and raised with a forklift. It was… athletic. At first, it was Ramona’s hands, roaming her body, caressing herself like she was used to a dozen men feeling her up while she did this and was trying to replicate the sensation in their absence. Then she started masturbating. Two-handed – one at her pussy, the other groping frantically at her breasts.

“Don’t distract yourself,” I said. Just to see what she’d do, I guess. After a babbled apology (addressed once more to Mr. Lawrence, which I tried and again failed to suppress), she started one of those blowjobs like I’d only seen in pornos. One hand working my shaft, the other gently playing with my balls. Her mouth, meanwhile, targeted only the top couple inches, letting her work her tongue with masterful precision.

Which all would have been quite good, except she also did this standing up, straddling my lap, bent double at the waist with her ass in my face and her breasts bouncing around between her widespread thighs. For the life of me, I couldn’t believe she made it more than a couple minutes without passing out.

I played with her tits for a while. I’d had my eye on them since those buttons had started flying off – no, since the staff meeting last week – no, since I’d shown up for RA training – and now there they were, hanging upside down right in front of me, jiggling for my entertainment. I swept my fingers across them, starting with a tattoo of an oak tree, its roots spread out around and even across her nipple (and how the hell bad did that  have to hurt!). From the moment I touched her, her hips started trembling, a needful whimper squeaking out of her throat.

“Please,” she whispered whenever she let my cock out for air. “Please. Please, Mr. Lawrence. Please. I’m sorry. Please.”

When I started feeling like she was bringing me close, I seized two handfuls of her tight, delicious booty, and pulled her pussy to my lips.

Ramona lost her fucking mind.

I don’t know whether she decided to deep throat me, or if she lost the ability to hold herself up. Either way, the moment my tongue brushed against her clit, I was suddenly so deep in her throat that I could feel her nose pressing between my individual balls.

I gave her ass a slap with my right. She cried. Or sounded like she was crying. It didn’t sound like an objection, so I followed up with my left. She sobbed harder, and if I could discern anything from those unintelligible wails reverberating through my shaft, it was that she was decidedly not  requesting that I stop.

I extended my tongue and gave her clit another flick. Just one.

It was like she’d been struck by lightning. A wail as every muscle in her body thrashed – except from the neck up, where she held my dick inside her throat like she could breathe through it. Like she could only  breathe through it. She came so hard there was a little splash against my chin. A few seconds of her arms and legs like that, and then her whole body slumped against me, her pussy pressed heavily to my mouth.

Instincts I’d never known kicked in, and I shoved her off. She slumped to the floor, landing on her hip rougher than I’d wanted her to. She didn’t complain, though. She was smiling as brightly as I’d ever seen her smile, in fact.

“You did a good job before, and helped me through some important thinking. For that, you’re going to get a reward. Are you ready?”

I’d ever condescended to a woman before, much less to my boss. That she made some sound of obeisance deep in her throat, deeper even than the end of my cock, told me that as far as she was concerned, this was a very good instinct.

“I’m going to let you choose where I come,” I said.

The Higgins hall manager pounced into my lap, thighs spread wide, scooting towards me. “Let me take care of you, Mr. Lawrence,” she purred as she rose up just enough to ease me into her pussy.

This had definitely not been what I’d meant. Prior experience had taught me that when you told a woman she could choose where you came when your cock was in her mouth, a choice that as far as I was concerned she’d always had, you were bringing up the possibility of a facial, or maybe coming on her chest, in addition to the obvious spit/swallow dilemma. Mileage varied. Some girls had thought  it was too porny. Some had liked that it was too porny. Still, at least none I’d ever been with had complained about being invited to decide, so I’d stuck with it.

I’d never had one decide it was an invitation to pound their pussy on my cock so hard that I thought I could see it emerging from their throat out the other side.

“Remember,” came her whisper in my ear as I groaned through the flood of cum gushing into her, “absolutely anything .”

I indeed let her get dressed before I departed her office. Order her to, in fact, after she invited me to stay and watch her work, or…

“Or…?” she’d said. We knew what my other options were.

The mail had been delivered already. More care packages, I noted happily. It was a cheery sort of mail dump. Marcus was busy filling out fresh notification slips.

“You’re being good to her, I hope,” he said.

I almost tripped over a mail bag. “Uh, I mean, I wasn’t, um…”

“With all she’s going through, she needs all the love and support we can give her.” Oh. Thank god. He kept his voice low, though her door was closed. “Our Ramona, she’s a strong woman. Sometimes, though, that strong woman is a mask she’s wearing for the rest of us, so we can give our strength to these kids and she doesn’t take up any for herself.”

“Yeah.” What did you say to that? Marcus was always ten feet too deep for where I was ready to meet him, but I liked that about him. “No yeah, totally.”

He clasped my shoulder. “You know, she tries to keep that mask up, but I hear her crying in there sometimes, like I heard her cry with you just now. I’m glad you were there for her, my man.”

“Yeah, me too. Happy to.”

“Me, too. Glad we got two good men in this Higgins, you know? Feels like I hear it more and more these days. Sometimes that’s her afternoon, is lying  in there letting that mask down, when she thinks nobody knows. I think she knows you’ve got an open soul, Spencer. Good listener, soft heart. Soaks  up a lady’s cares, heart like that.”

Did I still have her cum on my face? I thought I’d wiped it off. “I hope so.”

I went back to my room and collapsed in bed. I had plenty to think about, but I’d been thinking and thinking about this for weeks. New information, my first real breakthrough, brought with it a sense of closure, unlike most days, which simply brought more questions. Those would come, but for now, I meant to sleep.

Savannah finished her exam early. She let herself in. I felt her suck me into her mouth and passed right back out. Even if it took me a good deal longer to come in my  sleep, she was perfectly content to savor me. While she didn’t request that I rule her life with my cock, I was happy to savor her, too.

This was what Bob wanted for me, yes, but for a few hours, I could let him have his way.

Chapter Eleven: Conflict Mediation

“I… actually don’t think I’m hungry,” Savannah said, looking down at her belly, perplexed. “Man, that’s wild. The only thing I’ve put in me all day is, you know, you , but I feel… full.”

I frowned. “Seriously? I… I didn’t think I was producing that  much.” Oh shit. This was bad. It had felt like my refractory rate had diminished, but I’d chalked it up to simply having so many hot horny girls acting slutty around me that I was simply rising to the occasion. But if my balls could actually feed a person…?! I needed Marisa. This was–

Savannah fell over in giggles. “Oh man, the look on your face. Boys are officially ridiculous. I’m starving . Let’s go get dinner. You’re on duty tonight, right? We gotta get you fed quick .”

I’d slept through any chance of catching Bob in his office today. To the extent that I had a plan, that was it. He knew something, and that was all I knew. Marisa seemed sure that the Hancock Institute was involved, and she was right that I’d turned a blind eye to them because of her. What connection could there be to a guy like Bob there, though? He’d worked for the Lakeview Housing & Residence Life office since the early nineties, according to his bio on their site. He had an undergraduate degree in English and a master’s in Higher Ed Student Affairs. No way he could know the first thing about biotech. Moreover, the Hancock Institute wasn’t even officially part of Lakeview University. It was located on campus, but it was no more a part of the same umbrella governing Bob than was the Pizza Hut kiosk in the student union.

Regardless, even if Hancock were involved, what did I do with that hunch? Storm in there and start demanding answers? From who? I’d met a few of Marisa’s work buddies, but they were grad students like her. I didn’t even know their last names. She was right, their proximity was suspicious, kind of, but I at least needed to know why my own people were keeping Higgins 3 and its Hotties under wraps first.

That meant confronting Bob.

So, after mostly sleeping through five-ish hours of Savannah’s insatiable cocksucking, I felt less rested than I’d like, but enough for a quiet Tuesday night of rounds. midterms were by nature low-incident. People were busy with classwork, and on top of that we had 24-hour quiet hours in effect to help out. It should be a breeze. Girlfriend One and I ran over to Penderdast, got burritos and scarfed them down in time for me to make it back to Higgins to check out my duty walkie. I kissed Savannah good night; it felt weird to taste hot sauce and avocado on her breath at the end of a date instead of the usual tang of my semen.

I was on with Vanessa tonight, too, which seemed good. She was one of the most timid RAs I’d ever known, avoiding confrontation as a survival mechanism. It would make rounds go fast, I hoped. I was already done with my own midterms, a fortunate coincidence of assignments and due dates, so I was hoping for an uneventful night in to unwind  and contemplate my interrogation technique.

The knock came less than ten minutes into my shift. It was a courtesy knock; Toni let herself in.

“Spencer? Do you have a minute?”

I was lying in bed, composing a text to my mom and dad about what plans we had for fall break next week. We Lawrences were a play-it–by-ear people usually, but with how life had been going, I didn’t want to risk sitting around the house all week. Distractions were in order. Because I’d spent the summer here at Lakeview taking a couple classes and working orientation, we hadn’t done our usual summer camping trip, so I’d been thinking that could be fun now in the fall. Mom would need some coaxing, but I knew Dad would back me.

I set the phone down and wiggled myself upright. “Sure, Toni. C’mon in.”

“You’re sure this isn’t a bad time? I mean, you know, midterms and all.”

“All done. Spencer the student is already on break. Just Spencer the RA here.”

“OK. I mean, if you were texting somebody or whatever, I can come back.”

“Toni.” I gave her a fixed, you’re-all-I’m-paying-attention-to smile. “I’m all yours. What’s up?”

Hands fidgeting before her, she accepted a seat in my desk chair and spun it to face me. She was wearing her Hotties half-shirt, a peach-colored bra peeking out the bottom, straining at her rather prodigious bust. “I’m actually all done with midterms, too,” said my redheaded resident. I wondered, and not for the first time, if the shade was her natural color. I’d never seen anything in her roots to betray it, but the combination with those bright blue eyes was so unusual, it made me wonder.

“Oh yeah? How do you think you did?”

“Pretty well, I think. Two of the tests were pretty easy. For me, anyway. And I had this big paper for my composition class, but it’s done and over and I’m done thinking about it.” Her nose wrinkled. “I guess I still have a test tomorrow morning, but it’s in my best class so I’m totally set.”

“That’s great, Toni. Good for you. When are you heading out for break ?”

“Well, I wanted to go home tomorrow, but my parents couldn’t come pick me up until Friday evening, so… bleh.” That cute wrinkle of distaste again. “Actually, that’s kind of why I came down here.”

“Talk to me.” I braced myself. Why had she come down here? Was she going to offer to come home with me for break ? Invite me to come home with her? Request another lick for the road? See if I needed another shower girl? Or maybe–

“Terri is driving me freaking insane  and I don’t know how much longer I can take it and if it’s still happening when we get back from break I am going to seriously lose my mind.”

I perked up. Oh my god. An actual  roommate conflict! Girls bickering! Mediation! Revisiting the roommate agreement! Normal fucking things I’d actually been trained to do!

“Um, why are you, uh, smiling like that…?”

Oops. “Sorry. My brain took a very short vacation, apologies, but I’m back with you. So Terri. What’s going on? Last I heard you two were getting along great. You were helping her with all that streaming stuff, peas in a pod.”

“I was. And we were. But she keeps getting…” She shuddered. “It’s different now. Back in August, when she showed me all her socials, I was like ‘whoa, my roommate’s like a model, she has fans , like whoa!’ It was kind of intimidating, but really cool, you know?”

“Sure, I can imagine.” As if Toni weren’t also unbelievably attractive, as if most women wouldn’t be intimidated as hell moving in next to all that .

“But she asked me to help, and you know, I have  an insta, but it’s just like people I know. I keep it a private account so I don’t get a bunch of creepers or whatever, so it’s only like fifteen, sixteen hundred.”

“Intimate,” I teased. She didn’t seem to recognize it as such.

“Anyway, I was cool with it. Like, go her . She’s working it, every platform and she has promotions and paid subscribers and the whole deal. I was happy to help. I got to play photographer, even pretend to be a model sometimes. It was fun! Only…”

“And then something changed…”

Toni nodded. “Lately, she’s been getting more and more into streaming. You know, where you’re doing live, like, shows?”

She was monitoring me for cognition, so I gave her a nod. “Sure, I know what streaming is. I’m twenty-four, not forty-two. I’ve seen you guys at it sometimes, remember?”

“Right. I didn’t know if you knew that was live and not just making a recording. So yeah. I was a little uncomfortable, having a live camera with thousands of random guys, and I guess maybe a few girls, watching in my dorm room. We talked about it, though, and she sectioned off one corner of the room so I didn’t have to worry I’d be caught accidentally.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. But I’m taking it that’s not working.”

“It’s just… she’s doing it more and more. And yes, she stays behind the curtain, but the sounds . And, um, some of the things she’s doing…? It’s really  weird being in a tiny dorm room with someone doing that!”

“Is she taking it out from behind the curtain?”

“Well, no, but the sounds ! Sounds don’t care about curtains, Spencer. Plus, um, I’ve… looked at it. Like, I’ll check it out on my phone, just to see what I’m hearing.”

I had some reservations about whether it was fair to be upset with one’s roommate over things you could only see because you were peeping on her online, but my judgment was beside the point. This was about their feelings, not mine. “So what has she been doing?”

“Do you know what ‘ASMR’ is?”

A short time later, it was my turn to knock on Toni’s door. It was always a bad idea to follow one roommate down and ambush the other for this kind of talk. It made the RA look like they had already taken a side. Instead, I’d sent  Toni down to talk to Terri, tell her that she wanted to talk to her, then send for me when they were ready for me to come down – especially if things got heated. It had only taken a few minutes, and Toni’s text hadn’t indicated I’d be arriving at a screaming match, so I entered with optimism.

The door opened immediately, Toni waiting for me to arrive. The white screen arranged around Terri’s desk ate up a surprising amount of space considering how small I was sure it was inside. The rooms in Higgins were big enough that some residents set both beds at floor level, but in 307, bunking was a must. With those precious square feet consumed by Terri’s streaming nook, it was nearly claustrophobic. Multicolored lights shone through the white panels from the other side. Terri was sitting on the lower bunk in a brief green sarong and some lacey pink thing that was either a thorough bra or a slutty top. (Either way, it covered more than Toni’s Higgins 3 shirt.)

Toni took a seat in the other desk chair. I took mine on the floor. In my early RA years, I’d done these kinds of things standing, to keep control with dominant body language, but the more I did them, the more I realized I got better results with keeping things level. Speak softly but carry a big nerf bat, that was my style.

“Hi, Toni. You look really nice tonight.” Ordinarily I wouldn’t compliment a woman’s appearance right off, but she’d sought my opinion on her outfits so many times, I knew that for this particular woman, it would be welcome.

“Thanks.”

“Before we get too involved here, I wanted to make sure this isn’t intruding on midterms? Studying, writing, whatevering. This is important, but–”

“It’s fine,” Terri said. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Having already heard Toni confirm she was set, I cut to the chase. “So as I think you know, Toni has some concerns. She told me a little bit, but I don’t do venting when it comes to roommates, so I sent her back down here so the three of us could see if we can make everybody a little happier. Now I know, there’s probably already a little tension in the room, a little anxiety maybe. Perfectly normal, but I promise you, this is going to be a good thing if we all remember the goal isn’t to score points, just to make your living situation better. So to keep things moving in a positive direction, let’s each do our best to talk about our own feelings, and not how we think anybody else is feeling or ought to feel. OK?”

“I cannot believe this is happening,” groaned Terri.

“I hear ya. It’s a little hokey, but trust me. I’ve done this kind of thing before, and all I want is for my Hotties to be happy.” Oof. I’d been thinking of them as “my Hotties” so much I’d said it out loud. Both girls gave a soft smile at the term, though. I suppose it wasn’t that hard to see why it would be taken as complimentary.

“Now Toni, since you got the ball rolling, why don’t you tell Terri what’s concerning you.”

Toni nodded, and I could see she was anxious. That was a good thing in my book. Conflict mediation was a lot easier like this, with people nervous about disrupting relationships, than when they were already at one another’s throats, pulling no punches.

“OK. So, like I was saying a minute ago, I feel like I feel uncomfortable with the way you’ve been streaming lately. I’ve been bottling it up and trying to ignore it, but I feel like it’s not fair for me to have to wear earbuds in the room all the time so I don’t have to hear what you’re doing.”

“Do I get to respond?” Terri said quickly. This one was a lot less anxious, I could tell.

Terri nodded. She was doing great at this. No ranting, no laundry list of minutiae. “Sure, Terri. How do you feel about how things have been going in your room?”

“I feel like this is what you have to do to make it as an influencer, and I told her that was my goal – my dream  – when we first met, and she said she supported that. Honestly? I feel like it’s been going better and better lately. I’m hitting peak subscribers, crushing my daily goals, and where I used to feel a little, I don’t know, awkward? Now, I’m in the zone. I’m actually doing a lot less than what I want to because I don’t wanna, I don’t know, weird her out or whatever. But that just makes me feel like I’m holding myself back, short changing my subs. I wasn’t going to go snitch or whatever, but I’ve actually been kind of, well, pissed off, I guess, that she’s slowing me down.”

“Wait, I’m slowing you down? Jesus, Terri, are you trying to start up an onlyfans or what?”

“I already have one, thank you.” The room’s taller, darker red redhead’s cheeks flushed a bit as she looked at me. “It’s not nude or anything, just some lingerie and bikini stuff with some sexy outfits in the mix. A little cosplay. It’s free. The experts say that you need to get a following going on a free one so you have an audience ready if you decide to start a paid one. I don’t know if I will or anything, but it seemed smart to at least prepare.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it, and you know I wish you all the best.” As a future porn star. This was still Higgins 3 after all. “Now Toni, since I’ve seen you helping her with some of that stuff–”

“I did not  know I was helping her make a porn site!”

“Right, but it’s not actually porn, from what you’re describing, Terri, is it?”

“No! Like, sure, lots of guys probably beat off to it, but I’m not naked or anything. Or if I am, there’s blankets or towels or a pose that hides the pink bits.”

Wow. “OK. So Toni, you mentioned ear buds. Obviously those aren’t to avoid seeing  things. What are those for?”

“The freaking slutty ASMR shit!” Toni snapped.

“Whoa, what did we say about accusations,” I cautioned her. “So I hear you saying some of the sounds being made are sexual in nature, and you’re uncomfortable with it.”

“Yes. God yes. Sorry I yelled. It’s just been going on for–” I held up a hand, and she nodded another apology.

“Terri, tell me about these ASMR streams. And talk to me like I’m five, because I learned what that acronym meant like ten minutes ago.”

“If you were five, I’d have to tell you to leave the room,” she said with an impish giggle. “It’s just making noises to relax people. Like you hit a tuning fork and hold it up to a microphone, or drum your fingernails on some crystal.”

“Show us a tuning fork, then,” Toni grumbled.

“OK, so I’m hearing one of you say it’s relaxing noises, and I think I’m hearing the other say it’s doing the opposite of relaxing her. Now I can’t be the one who decides on the merits of something as abstract as a sound. Heck, I’ve had roommates on my guy floors in years past who used to sit around listening to porn together. Different strokes for different folks. So Terri, maybe you can describe what kinds of sounds we’re talking about?”

That Toni had called it “slutty” ought to have prepared me that this might be a little weird. Not me, though. I followed her behind that screen with my eyes wide open. She had quite the little setup. A veritable rainbow of neon lights making palm trees and a flamingo and, oh hey, an actual (but I think technically still veritable?) rainbow  glowed behind her chair. In front of it were three monitors, two side by side and a third looming above the other two. I couldn’t make head or tails of all the windows and interfaces she had open; to the extent I’d ever imagined it, I’d just figured she switched on a webcam and hit a button. It was, to say the least, involved.

That wasn’t what commanded my attention, though.

“Are those… ears?”

Terri was plopping down in her station. On one monitor, a window showed her taking her seat, breasts bouncing in her top. I didn’t even see where the camera was amongst the other gadgets and wires, but then she set the ear apparatus in her lap. It was a thin column of black plastic a foot or so tall, and then a box at the top with, on either side, what looked like a white rubber ear. I didn’t know what to make of it.

“They’re microphones,” Terri explained. “Here. Put these in your ears.”

“You’re not broadcasting right now, are you?” I asked with a nervous chuckle. I accepted the headphones, though. They were bright pink and had something in what I thought was Japanese written over each earpiece.

“No, of course not. If I were broadcasting, that red light would be on. I leave the camera on pretty much all the time, though. It’s way better than using a mirror.”

I didn’t miss a pointed look from Toni, who presumably had some feelings about having a webcam on in the room 24/7. In any case, my curiosity about these freaky rubber ears was overwhelming other concerns. I adjusted Terri’s headset and put it on.

“OK, so now I just switch them on, and…”

I could barely hear her speak. These things canceled noise big time.

Then her fingers brushed around the rim of the right ear, and I swear to god, I thought she was touching mine.

“Whoa.”

Terri leaned in, and I could see her lips moving, and while I couldn’t hear her , I could hear the broadcast through the ears down the internet and into the headset. “Can you hear me, Spencer?” Her whisper was so close, so clear, it was like she was in my soul .

I nodded. “Yeah. Wow. That’s, um, really…”

Terri’s tongue slipped out and licked up the length of the ear, then back down, and then she sucked on the ear lobe. I liked a little lobe suck as much as the next guy, but I’d never been big on getting spit in my ear when a girl got carried away. Not a deal breaker, but the sort of minor sex glitch Marisa and I had always been good about fixing. This was the sound, and my god, somehow the sensation, with none of the mess. I don’t know how long I stood there, my eyes threatening to slide shut on me, but finally, Toni tugged on my sleeve and snapped me out of it.

I had to nudge the headphone off my ear – partway  – and caught most of what she said. “… what I mean ? I have to hear that – and worse – for hours and hours every day!”

“Worse?” I asked. Probably not in the right tone.

“I think she means this,” Terri said.

She licked the ear. She kissed the ear. She purred into the ear. She moaned, a happy, I-love-you moan. They all blended together so smoothly it was like they were happening all at once.

I’d never been anywhere near that hard from a sound before.

Then she did the other ear.

And back, and forth, and back again.

I melted into it. Before I knew it, I was standing behind her, resting my hands on the back of her chair. Hell, my knees felt weak. This shit was hypnotic.

“Spencer…?!”

Toni had probably said my name several times before finally shouting it to get my attention. Again, I eased one side of the headset off a bit. “Sorry. It’s just… I’ve never heard anyone do that before. Just… yeah. Really good headphones.”

Terri went back to the licking, even switched to the ear where I still had the headset in place. Her whisper echoed in my head. “You like this…?”

I didn’t answer. Had to stay impartial. “OK, so… yeah. So… yeah. Yeah. Right, so this is what you were objecting to, Toni?”

“Yes. The licking, and the moaning, and the sucking and the kissing… It’s constant . And it’s, no offense, but there’s already…”

Terri sighed  into my ear. It was the sound of the world’s slowest, laziest come.

“… happening on this floor already.”

Huh. A missed opportunity for feedback. But that sigh.

“But you said, um, that you do other sounds, too?” I prompted. It wasn’t a request. That was what I told myself.

She answered in her normal voice, to my disappointment. “Oh sure. Almost anything that has a distinct sound to it. Here, like…”

Her desk drawer held all sorts of items. There was indeed a tuning fork among them, something she made sure to wave in her roommate’s face. She sounded it in front of a normal (non-ear) microphone. A makeup brush she used on the ears, like a sultry breath on my neck. A wood block she tapped with her fingers, moving from ear to ear. It sounded like it was raining. Kinda nice. Compared to how she’d started it was the difference between a girl telling you that you looked nice and one begging you to fuck her. Still, kinda nice.

Toni’s curiosity got the better of her. To the naked ear, most of what Terri was doing was nothing all that special. Toni squeezed behind me and knelt beside her roommate, who handed over one of her ear buds to share. Before long, Toni looked as blissed out as I did as she listened to handfuls of paperclips dropping on the mic, two hands gently rubbing those fake ears, a dreamy whisper so soft I wasn’t sure what she’d even said, but my heart told me was something profoundly moving. I got chills.

She pressed an ear to her breasts. Her heartbeat drummed in my ears. Terri exclaimed in delight, and then gently took it from her roommate and did the same. Then they twisted so that they could each do one ear. Their breasts touched around the base of the stand.

After a long moment of that, Terri placed the left ear against the front of my jeans.

I was startled for a moment. So many of her sound effects had made me feel  like something was touching me, but then something actually was. It grew much quieter, though I thought I might be hearing my own heartbeat then.

Then Terri scratched her fingernails across the denim right next to the ear mic.

“Oh, fuck …”

Oh fuck. That was me. In my ear, in my pants. Fuck.

Terri pulled the mic back, but mere inches. Her fingers drifted across my zipper, beneath which my cock was straining for freedom. I could hear the scrape of her nails over the fabric even as I felt it pulse through my burgeoning hard-on.

My eyes slid closed. A moment later, in the other ear, fresh licks and kisses. I let it go on for what was probably way too long before I made myself say, “Terri, we should probably get back to it.” I didn’t have the strength to open my eyes yet. Not until this siren released me.

Then, loudly, but the sheer innocent delight of it made it enchanting nevertheless, came a giggle. “It’s Toni, Spencer,” she whispered.

“It’s both of us, Spencer,” came Terri’s soft voice on the other side. They each had an ear, and they each licked, sucked, kissed, rubbed and moaned for all they were worth.

Dimly, I rationalized that the roommates were bonding over what had been a source of tension mere minutes earlier, and patted myself on the back for the most efficacious mediation of my RA career. Not that I dwelled on it long enough to make a more objective counterargument  about what I was allowing to transpire. I couldn’t. When they both started rubbing at my crotch, there was no more room for rational thought.

I don’t know whether they got my zipper down before or after they began in earnest with the whispering. My eyes were glued shut by then. The world of sound demanded that the seeing world yield the floor. The nature of whispers being what they were, I didn’t know which ear was which Hottie.

“I love your cock, Spencer.”

“I can still taste you from massage night.”

“I want to taste you again.”

“Ungh, you’re so fucking hard ,” as two silken hands began rubbing my now bared erection. They must have used lotion, or maybe lube. There was only enough friction to give pleasure.

“I’ve wanted this since the day I moved in.”

“Your cock is my favorite cock.”

“This is what I imagine when I touch myself at night.”

“When I touch myself in the shower.”

“When I touched myself outside your room.”

“When we touched each other in the lounge.”

“Mmm, when she touched me in the lounge.”

“When you let us put our tongues on you.”

“Where they belong.”

“Where they belong.”

Someone’s tongue licked up my shaft with unbelievable patience. I should have known who from where they’d been positioned, but I was dizzy from it all, feeling that lick even as my ear supplied the sound of licking with a volume and intimacy I’d never before encountered. I couldn’t be bothered to remember which way was north, or down, or whatever.

They took turns. One licking – never sucking, only lick, lick, lick – and the other narrating in breathy whispers – “she looks so happy!” “I could come just from tasting you.” “you could split us in half with that thing.” – and sometimes merely supplying the sound effect of slobbery, girly, giggly bliss. At some point they moved my hands, which had been supporting me on the back of Toni’s gamer girl chair, to their heads, two soft, silken manes for me to explore as they maneuvered up and down the length of me.

Eventually they put a rubber ear against my shaft. It was warm and slick from their attentions, but still a strange enough sensation that it popped my eyes open. The girls had both exposed their breasts at some point, Terri unclasping her pink top, the front now hanging beneath her arms and her tits resting on the back of her chair; Toni had simply let the Hotties logo slip up toward her neck, abdicating the task of containing that impossible burden. Her bra was gone. Maybe it had been already   when  I first walked into the room to mediate .

Oh right. The roommate conflict.

Both girls were attacking my cock with their tongues now, lashing around the area around where the ear mic was pressed to me so that the auditory sensations traveled to my headset to my brain and right back down to my cock in perfect time with the physical sensations of their abject cock worship.

“So Toni, it looks like you feel a little more comfortable with it now that you’ve gotten to try it yourself, yeah?”

Their eyes had already been locked on mine, but Toni’s sapphire blues sparkled as she replied. I only heard her through the ear. Through my cock. “So comfortable. I’m sorry, Terri. I should have said something weeks ago.”

“I should have invited you on the first stream,” Terri answered.

“We should have invited him  on the first stream.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Mmm, god, I love you.”

“I fucking love  you.”

I don’t know if any of us knew whether they were talking to one another, to me, or to my dick more specifically. Earlier, with my jeans and underwear in the way, the sound effect had been muffled, but now, all three of us were hearing the rolling thunder of my escalating heart rate as it echoed up and down my cock.

I erupted. After Ramona and Savannah taking their time on me earlier, there was no splatter on the ceiling this time, but rather a series of cum spurts that landed mostly on Terri and Toni, and a little bit on that weird, wonderful ear mic stand. Both of them had been masturbating – obviously – and this unspoken symbol of my appreciation was what they both needed to cross the finish line. Their mouths met around my shaft, tongues spasming as they moaned and panted out their own little orgasms, tongue kissing around their RA’s explosive shaft. After a moment Toni slumped down from her knees down to the floor, gasping, eyes wide and delirious. Terri was a bit more coherent, taking the opportunity to crawl down out of her chair after her roommate, where she slurped every bit of my cum she could find off of Toni’s heaving chest.

“Now her turn,” I said when she seemed to have gotten it all.

Equity was important. Toni smiled gratefully at me as she slurped Terri’s tits clean.

“And now the ears,” I said. The girls nodded. I let my eyes close for a moment as they tongued every nook and cranny for more. That one wasn’t part of the conflict mediation; that was a little pat on the back for yours truly. Win/win/win, we’d called this mediation technique during RA training.

We excused  ourselves one by one back out of the screened-in nook and into the main part of the room. I had to remind them that their breasts were still exposed; I don’t think they meant to cover them. We reviewed the negotiation, and both girls were more than satisfied with the compromise. Terri could continue her ASMR streams, as often as she wanted, but Toni could join in any time she  wanted. Toni pressed to add to the agreement that if they got her horny, she could masturbate even with Terri in the room, but I firmly insisted that I couldn’t make details like that part of an agreement. Only after I said it did I realize that Ramona would have loved to get to hear about my securing exactly that sort of compromise in our next one-on-one.

They were already discussing how they might rebrand Terri’s channel, or a name for the segments where they “collabed.” I asked why they couldn’t just say “collaborate,” and Terri rolled her eyes like I was her grandpa complaining about the price of gas these days. They were already forgetting I was there, though. I was halfway out the door when I had an idea.

Terri was saying, “Or what about Room, new word, Mates? Mates is ‘friends ,’ but it also sort of suggests ‘mating,’ so there’s some implicit sexuality.”

“That’s not bad, but ‘roommates’ also kind of says ‘we’re not friends, we’re not lovers, we just live together,” Toni countered.

“What about Hotties?” I said.

Their eyes went wide. “ Ohmygawd  that’s it ,” Terri declared immediately. “Holy fucking shit, like, I’m already seeing all the levels. Like, Hotties, because we’re hot, obviously. But then there’s like Terri and Toni, T names, so we’re Hot T’s!”

“And we’re teasing them, getting them hard and everything, so ‘hot tease!’” Toni echoed.

“And T for tit-T’s, so like, check out our ‘hot T’s!’”

“Oh snap! And for the logo we could do like three lines. H-O on top, right? And then double T’s, which works for the name thing and the boob thing, and then we could do E-Z on the bottom!”

“Shut up. Oh my god, shut up, you fucking genius. You are officially my manager for fucking life , you gorgeous brilliant devious busty saint of a streamsaver!”

I excused myself, and left them to it.

I headed back to my room and googled “ASMR.” That tided  me over nicely until ten o’clock rounds; I left my ear buds in even as I headed down to Higgins Basement to meet up with Vanessa. When we got to Higgins Ground, Vickie had her door open, so the three of us chatted for a few minutes. Once Vanessa went ahead, I told Vickie we needed to “collab” sometime soon and she looked at me like I was a psycho, which felt validating at least in terms of shared levels of comfort with slang. I clarified that I was horny and I needed her.

“I dunno, I’m pretty tired and I have a huge test in the be up in twenty .” She slapped me on the ass to prompt me on my way.

Then, we got up to Higgins 3. The two of us froze. We both heard it, but… from where? My ears were struggling to pinpoint. Vanessa put her ear to the door to 301, Katrina’s room, and nodded.

“Do we… do we  say something…?”

“It’s 24-hour quiet hours.”

“Yeah, but I mean, it’s not that loud… It’s just…”

“The point is noises  from your room shouldn’t be disturbing people in other rooms.”

Vanessa eyed the door warily. “But, you can’t write someone up for quiet hours if they’re being, you know, quiet…? Right…? She’s not that  loud… ”

“Let’s get this over with.”

I knocked softly on Katrina’s door. No answer. I waited a moment, tried to ignore what I was hearing, and knocked again. The noise continued.

“Maybe she just, you know, left her computer running, and stepped out…?” Vanessa was still searching for excuses not to deal with it, but I wasn’t having it.

“Maybe, but we still can’t just ignore it.”

Protocol for someone violating quiet hours in absentia – an alarm going off non-stop while a resident was out of the building, for instance – was to knock three times, then key in, fix the problem, and leave a note explaining that staff had entered the room and why.

This was gonna be an interesting note, if it went that way.

I knocked one more time, but still no answer from Katrina. “All right, let’s try the knob before we have to run down to the center desk for a master key,” I told my rounds  partner.

Vanessa looked like she wanted nothing more in the world than to not open that door, but there was no choice. Soft though it was, it was like it was echoing down the hall. Vanessa grabbed the knob, and twisted. It swung open all on its own.

There was Katrina, salutatorian of her high school, lying on her back in her double-sized bed. When Quinn had been evicted, she’d pushed them together, like I did with the extra bed in my room. She was naked from the waist down, and her legs were in the air, spread wide, as she masturbated. She was really going at it, too, hips bucking, mouth open, her tongue lolling out to one side. Her phone was held aloft in her other hand, the faint light coming from it shining on her face. The light from the hall alerted her that something was amiss, and she jumped up with a yelp, clutching her sheets in front of her.

I let Vanessa handle it. She needed to learn to be more assertive, and this was a fine opportunity for a trial by fire. “We’re so, so, so sorry, miss, but, um… We could hear you, um, talking?” Moaning. So much moaning. “In the hallway. You need to keep it down? OK? All right, bye!”

“WHAT?” shouted Katrina. Her sheets still clutched in one hand, she reached up under her hair and removed an ear bud, then another from the other side.

“WE COULD HEAR YOU MOANING IN THE HALLWAY,” Vanessa answered. Confrontation and the supreme awkwardness of the moment had her adrenaline going, so she wasn’t processing the lack of need for volume in real time.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I’m so so so sorry, I didn’t mean to… oh my GAWD!” Katrina squeaked.

I tried to play it down. No mean feat, but it wasn’t like I could do anything to make it more  awkward. “Have fun, Katrina. Just do it a little quieter, OK?”

I shut the door and ushered Vanessa back into the stairwell.

“That was good, Vanessa. Quick, to the point, spared her all the dignity you could,” I said softly. “Nobody could have done it better.”

“That was so  embarrassing. I feel so bad. I can’t even apologize, though!” She frowned at the Higgins 3 door.

“She’ll be OK. I’m sure she’d rather have somebody point it out before the whole floor heard her. Hell, it’s midterm week, so it could be somebody’s dad coming to pick them up for fall break that stumbled into it. You did her a favor. Katrina’s my vice governor, so we talk a lot. I’ll make sure she understands.”

“Man. Your floor is crazy sometimes, Spencer. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Years of practice. Come on, let’s finish up.”

I opened the door.

“Well goddammit,” I grumbled.

Someone was still masturbating.

One never knew, with my Hotties, if their appetites were quenched by conventional means. Like having a stranger open your door and tell you that you were being such a ho that the whole world could hear. A quick listen at Katrina’s door, however, confirmed that it wasn’t her this time. My ears still told me it was coming from nearby, though 303 was still vacant from when Marta and Kim had moved out. I moved down to 302 to take a listen at Kendall and Georgia’s room while Vanessa did the same on Amy’s door, 300.

“It’s this one,” we both said.

Uh, oh.

I checked 304, Jean and Andi. There too. Tori and Ellie were quiet in 305, but from there, I could hear someone having a grand old time in the bathroom, masked though it was by the sounds of the shower running.

Vanessa was looking around in panic, like we were being harried on all sides by a pack of ravenous wolves. She’d done all right with Katrina, but the virgin crisis manager was definitely not ready for Higgins 3 at its most depraved.

“They’re pranking me again,” I told her. It took more effort to force that laugh than it had the time I’d taken a date to amateur stand-up at the Lakeview Lounge. “The girls think it’s funny to make me uncomfortable, and they’re lashing out because I gave them a hard time about quiet hours. Why don’t you go on up to 4 and make sure Janis is keeping her people under wraps, and I’ll handle this.”

“Um, sure. You’re sure? That girl we talked to… That didn’t look like a prank. She looked super embarrassed.”

“It’s either a prank, or the whole floor burst into a spontaneous need to masturbate at the same time.”

She chuckled. “Good point. Man. Some prank.”

I patted her shoulder. “Don’t let them see you sweat, Vanessa. See ya at midnight, OK?”

“Good luck,” she muttered, and fled.

I took a lap around the floor, ignoring the sounds of feminine pleasure that seemed to be emanating from behind almost every closed door. I followed my gut and headed back to 307 and gave a commanding knock. There, I heard voices, not vaginas.

Terri answered the door. “Hey! Forget something?”

I stepped back and crooked a finger, beckoning her into the hall. Puzzled, she followed. I said nothing, waiting for her to hear what Vanessa and I had heard. Conveniently, either Charlie or Destiny chose that moment to gasp out a muffled orgasm.

“Oh. Well that’s… wild, huh.”

“You said you weren’t streaming.”

“I wasn’t!”

“And that’s your story? If I start knocking on doors, I won’t find any of them watching the three of us?”

Her eyes darted around evasively. “I, um, didn’t say I wasn’t recording ,” she mumbled.

“And you posted it to the freaking   internet?! ” I hissed. Not that I needed to be all that quiet, considering the whole floor was lying around jilling off with their ear buds in, listening to me moan at these girls’ slobber fest.

Terri shook her head. “I just posted it to the Hotties discord, that’s all.”

“Wait, there’s a Hotties discord?”

“Yeah, I started it back in August. The Hottie Haven. Catchy, right?” The dangerous gleam in my eyes conveyed my sentiments on her master of phraseology. “I figured I could use it for promos and stuff. It’s mostly just gossip and, um, you know.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“I mean, some of the girls are into you a little, that’s all. Nothing you didn’t know. So, you know, there’s just… some art. And pictures. Some Spencer fanfic, that kind of thing.”

“Fanfic? What the hell is Spencer fanfic?!”

“Look, it’s super top secret and they will literally kill me if they find out I told you about it so please just don’t worry, OK? It’s just harmless fun, I promise.”

“Harmless…?! They’re masturbating  to a pornographic video  starring me! ” My voice came out in a hoarse roar. “ Take it down. Right now! You had no right to do that! I came down here tonight to help you two!” Toni was peering around the door frame, mortified, but I wasn’t about to leave her out. “And this is how you repay me?”

For once, I couldn’t even complain that they were going to get me fired. Ramona would just ask for an invite to their discord server, and Bob would, I dunno, give me a medal from his alien overlords studying me. A promotion from his cult leader. God, what even was this.

“I could do that–”

“You will  do that.”

“But! You can’t even see your face in it. If I take it down, everybody will know it was because you made me. So maybe instead, I could just tell everybody I was obviously kidding and it’s some random hot guy with an amazing cock and I thought they’d get a kick out of it if I told them it was you.”

Pissed off as I was, it took me a moment to be rational. I hated that she was right, but she was right. The only way the girls would ever think that wasn’t me was if she deflected. A fake video didn’t need to come down; only the real thing was scandalous. I mean, beside Terri and Toni slurping a guy off, but obviously they were comfortable sharing that.

“Fine. But if you ever record me without my permission again…”

“I won’t! I won’t, I promise. I swear to god.”

“Me too,” echoed Toni in a small, remorseful voice.

Terri took a step at me and gave the front of my jeans a fond caress. “But if you ever wanted to make another appearance…? We decided we’re going ahead with the paid site, and we could use all the support we can get.”

The girls watched me anxiously for a reaction.

“Good luck, girls.”

I rushed downstairs, catching Vickie on her way up and promptly initiating an about face. Her room was a little cleaner than usual as she’d begun what was for her a week-long process of packing for fall break. In effect, some of the random junk on the floor was now in an open suitcase near the window. “You would not believe the night I’m having.”

“You would not believe the night you’re about to have.” She wasn’t in the mood for venting or gossip, apparently. Her pants came down in a flash; she bent at the waist and guided them down to the floor.

I stared at the little black handle sticking out of her. “Is… is that a…?”

Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment as she twisted the plug out of her with a little plop . “Vickie needs your cum in her butt,” she said.

I didn’t waste any time getting my pants off. As she lubed me up and prattled on about “Vickie’s butt is so empty, Vickie needs the biggest, fattest, hardest dick she’s ever seen to fill it,” I did my best to keep up. It would have made for some decent ASMR, I thought.

And what the hell was Spencer fanfic?!

Chapter Twelve: Squash

“I’m sorry, but he’s out of the office all day. I can relay a message if you’d like, or else I can get you in his schedule…” The woman scrolled her mouse wheel, tapping her chin right where that distracting tuft of gray hairs was sprouting. “It wouldn’t be until the week after fall break.”

She looked to me for a response. What sort of message would I leave? “Hey, Bob, just wanted to see what you know about why Higgins Hall is ground zero for some sort of mind-bending fuck bomb, call me back, I’m in your staff directory. It’s Spencer.” Ugh.

I left the Lakeview Housing & Residence Life office without the appointment. If he had someone digging around in Ramona’s inbox deleting records of conversations about me, he sure as heck wasn’t going to keep an appointment.

There was only one thing to do.

I went to the rec center.

The indoor track was, as indoor tracks go, pretty impressive, an eighth of a mile up on the second floor. The interior of the loop was hollow, a steep drop-off partitioned with a steel railing that overlooked the main weight room. On the exterior, one of the two long sides had row after row of aerobic machines – bikes, treadmills, stair machines and so on, aimed at a massive window looking out at Swanson Park. The chapel was just visible, its steeple poking up between trees just beginning to change colors. The other side of the loop had an interior window, looking down at a series of athletic courts. The open-air, exposed feel of the rec center was one of the things I’d always liked about working out here. Everyone could see everyone. It kept people accountable.

After some thorough stretching and a warm-up routine, something I hardly ever bothered with, I hit the track at a leisurely pace. A friend of mine who’d since graduated had been big into distance running, and he’d conned me into marathon training with him one summer. I only ever completed a half, which was at least a quarter too long for my tastes. Today, however, those techniques were going to be essential. I was rusty, so I started by running two laps, walking one. Run two, walk one.

For an hour.

Then two. Three. Four.

Shortly after noon, I took a fifteen minute break. The vending machines had vitamin water and protein bars, priced so that it hurt my meager $200 a month salary to do it, but I knew I wouldn’t make it through the afternoon without the fuel.

Back to it.

As a super duper senior, it felt like I couldn’t go to the rec center without running into bunches of people I knew, another aspect of working out here that I enjoyed. Classmates, residents, former residents, RAs from Rowland, RAs from other buildings I’d met at campus-wide training, professional staff from Housing, from cultural centers, from the health center, the occasional professor. Made a guy feel popular. Three days out from fall break, with most people either focused on midterms or already done with them, it was pretty sparse in there. I’d only recognized a couple people that morning, and nobody I knew well enough that it had required stopping to converse. One nod, one wave. Today, that was a positive . I was on high alert for–

“Spencer!”

Oh hey, it was Emma. “Oh, hey Emma!” I was already running towards where she was doing her stretching. Pausing her stretching, actually, as I approached. I didn’t know Emma as well as a lot of my residents. She was quiet in social settings, though I didn’t think she was shy. As a sophomore, she had friends elsewhere on campus, so she hadn’t formed the same close knit bond the freshmen had. For Jordyn and Amy it was the same, though Shauna had gotten sucked into the Hottie clique despite her seniority. Beyond that, my sense was that Emma didn’t feel like competing for attention, especially amongst a group of women like her floormates, who were used to receiving plenty of it.

Hers was a more approachable sort of prettiness, not the flashy, airbrushed toothpaste commercial look a lot of them had. If I had ever harbored doubts that she was a true Hottie, though, she’d cleared those right up on massage night. Her body was… Well, suffice to say I wasn’t surprised to bump into her at the gym. Her workout attire, a sports bra that had its work cut out for it and a pair of shorts that had given up altogether, to correct that misapprehension. The girl might not wear much makeup or spend an hour a week tweezing eyebrows and perfecting her hair, but she had a Hottie body, no mistaking it.

“Working up a sweat, huh?”

I nodded, slowing to a stop as I drew near. “Yep. Finished midterms early, so I gotta fill the hours somehow. How about you?”

“I have a couple normal classes to go. Tests and stuff are all done, though. I just wanted to get out. I like having a single and all, but sometimes I miss having a roommate.”

“Yeah? Were you and your freshman roomie tight?”

She nodded. “It’s funny. She joined a sorority last year, so now we barely see each other, but we were inseparable until she rushed.”

“That’ll happen.”

“You’ve been an RA for a long time, right?”

I nodded. “Fifth year.”

“Dang. A friend of a friend of mine started this year down in Wilkins. I saw her at a party a couple weeks ago and she said she couldn’t imagine doing it again junior year.”

“It’s not for everybody. I’m just lucky I wound up with you all this year. Easiest job I’ve ever had.”

She snickered and started stretching her shoulders. “Pff, I don’t know about that. Our floor is… pretty wild sometimes. Nice girls, but I’ve never seen so much boy drama.”

Emma left it unsaid that I was the boy in all the drama, but it was implied. “It’s a bit much sometimes, yeah. Well-intended, though. Or so I tell myself when somebody gets out of hand.”

Had Emma watched Terri’s unsanctioned video? Probably. Did she believe the retraction, that the penis she’d masturbated to hadn’t been mine? Did any of them? So many of them had seen it firsthand, I had my doubts. That, of course, assuming Terri had even followed through on it in the first place. I hoped so, as much for the sake of my tattered dignity as for my desire to have placed my faith in people wisely.

Emma didn’t decide to dive into the snarl of hyper-amplified teen hormones that was our home on Higgins 3. “Say, you want some company? I was going to use the treadmill, but a partner beats captioned CNN  any day.”

I hesitated, though I hoped not for long enough to offend. I wasn’t here for a social call, though I doubted she’d be in the way. “Sure. I’m taking a slow pace, though – been at it for a while. I hope that’s OK.”

“Slow pace sounds fantastic. Though if you pull something trying to keep up, don’t worry, I have been trained in the fine art of the massage.”

With a laugh, I set out. She let me take a lap while she stretched, then fell in beside  me. As before, I jogged two, walked one, round and around.

Three hours later, Emma was still running with me.

She’d fallen behind me – right behind me – not twenty minutes in. “Drafting,” she’d claimed, and since we were both breathing too heavily for laughs or even much smiling, I didn’t know if she was kidding. If our positions had been reversed, and the man in the scenario were someone else, I might have told him to back off, let the lady run in peace. Instead, I was the one trotting along with someone’s eyes locked on my backside.

“You’re not getting tired?” I asked during a walking lap.

“This is the best workout I’ve had in months,” she said.

That was our one and only exchange.

Three hours of that, and then finally, there that sonofabitch was.

I didn’t know the man entering the squash court with Bob. The stranger probably split the difference in our ages, salt and pepper next to Bob’s solid gray. He was the doughiest of the three of us; when I saw them enter the court, rackets in hand, I immediately pegged Bob and his lean, almost wiry physique as the favorite, advancing years be damned. As I continued my run, keeping to the innermost lanes so as to be less conspicuous to my quarry, I had no means of discerning the score. Whenever I was looking though, Bob seemed to be more than holding his own.

God, I was tired. This was mild exercise, but so much of it. I’d been near to calling  it when Bob showed , but the success of my plan gave me a second wind. I’d heard for years from my managers and the grad assistants interning in the Housing office that Bob’s passion for squash was legendary. It was widely known to be the fast track to getting on the director’s good side – if you could give him a good match, that is. Wasting his time with amateur effort was said to achieve the opposite. I was younger and fitter, though I’d never learned the sport. Just as well, because I wasn’t here to cozy up to him. I was here for some goddamn answers, and while he might dominate me down there on his court, he had to leave eventually, and good luck outrunning me.

To quote Kyu-Ri quoting Marvel movies, I could do this all day.

Reinvigorated, I gave up on walking. He wasn’t getting out of here without going through me.

Their game went on for quite some time. Nothing dragged out a run like watching the clock. Even though I had no concept of how long a game of squash ran, I couldn’t help trying to time it. They paused thirty-six minutes in and my heart leapt – finally – but after a water break and Bob’s partner taking a moment to retrieve his phone from his gym bag and fiddle around with that for a few minutes, they went back to it. I kept watching the clock. Fuck. Any minute now, I told myself every thirty seconds or so.

Emma’s energy never flagged. If I’d been thinking, I would have had Katrina make me a spreadsheet and invite the girls to run in front of me in half-hour shifts. Having a scrumptious ass to chase evidently made things easier.

At fifty-four grueling minutes, Bob bounced the ball up and caught it gracefully. His partner bent over, spent, with his hands on his knees, then came over and the two shook hands. This was it.

“I have to go, Emma,” I said, not even turning my head. That seemed like too much effort.

“Cool. Back home?” she huffed.

“Gotta talk to somebody first, then yeah. See you there.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue it out. I hurried through this final lap, still running when I hit the stairs, Emma doggedly trailing behind. The both of us were dripping sweat. Bob’s opponent was already shuffling down the hall, without Bob. Had I missed him? Had the old bastard darted out so swiftly?

I ran to the glass door to their court. There he was, inspecting a skinned knee that was still bleeding a little. I paused, meaning to catch my breath before confronting him, but he saw me coming. Seeing that I’d clearly stopped right outside his court, he invited me in with a jerk of his head.

“I’ll be out in a few,” I told Emma, and in I  went.

Time to find out what the fuck was going on.

“Spencer,” he said simply, his attention still mostly on his knee. “Up for a match?” Some gumption, considering he’d just been playing for an hour. Ordinarily, I might have been impressed.

I’d been rehearsing this confrontation in my head all day, though. In a way, I’d been preparing for it for five years, and at this man’s direction. Confronting people who’d been caught red-handed doing something they knew they shouldn’t be was a big part of my job. The ladies in Higgins might have let me get a bit sloppy, but this wasn’t my first rodeo.

“Bob.”

I was breathing too damn hard, and it gave him an opening. So much for my big opener. “Or did you just stop in to ask me for a condom for that cute little thing out yonder?”

I followed his eyes. Emma was standing in the hall catching her breath. Her sweat glistened on her skin. She saw us looking, smiled at me, waved .

Having an authority figure casually offer to assist me getting laid, I have to say, threw me off my game.

“She’s one of my residents,” I said testily.

“I know. Emma Himschoot.” He tapped the scrape on his knee, winced, sucked  the blood off his finger. “Little thing  like this wouldn’t used to have  bothered me. Never get old, Spencer. Hear me?”

“How do you know her name?”

“She’s in the system. I could give you her Social Security number too, if you want.”

I very nearly growled. “No, I meant   why  do you know her name? Why do you know any of my girls by name? What the hell are you doing on Higgins 3?”

“Yeah? That what  you tried  to barge into my office about this morning? What you’ve been hovering up there sweating your little balls off over for the past hour?”

“The past eight. I figured you’d wind up here eventually. You’re predictable.”

“If I was so damn predictable, you wouldn’t have been waiting for eight hours.” He finally stopped fixating on his knee and looked at me. “So, say what you came to say. Some of us can’t afford to sit around the gym all day.”

“You want to make me ask twice? Fine. Why did you set me up on Higgins 3?”

It wasn’t the most pointed way of asking it, but it was the answer I needed, the point where the craziness had begun, and the point where my clues ended.

“This again? I told you before, mishap. The mishapper was fired. What more do you want? Write a complaint. Or a thank you card, whatever. I’ll hand deliver it to ‘em for ya.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Bob smirked, then walked right past me, his arm brushing mine but not quite shoving me aside. He bent over his gym bag, fishing out a container and putting the squash balls inside. “Yeah?”

“You really expect me to believe that it’s a coincidence that you put a guy RA on a floor full of women. Gorgeous women. That even when accusations of sexual misconduct started to pile up, you let it sit.”

“Spencer, at this point, I can’t even tell you how little I expect from you,” he said, taking off the sweatband around his forehead and tossing it in the bag.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How long did it take you before you thought you were anything but lucky and handsome? When you felt a finger up your ass? Nah. When Ms. Grey cheated on her boyfriend after getting a sneaky peaky at your pecker? When that homesick little chit – what’s her name? Andrea?”

“Andi,” I said. Why was I answering his  questions?

“Right, Andi. When she showed you how farmgirls do? No?” Bob fished a rolled up bandage out of the bag and started winding it around his knee. “How long, Spencer, my boy? At what point before they were jacking it in the halls did you think something just might be going on?”

“I guess I wasn’t anticipating having my employer use me as a guinea pig in some kind of sick experiment.”

“Yeah? Sick? Poor boy, I bet it’s been just awful. What’s your cunt count up to now? Five? Six?”

“My what ?!”

Bob tied off his bandage, grabbed his bag, and strode up in my face. “Look. You’re a nice guy, and a good RA. Drew raved about you, all your evals top notch I’m told. You’ve been a good boy, so call it the fruits of your karma and don’t look too close. All right? Now get out of my way.”

I folded my arms and braced myself in case he really tried to body check me this time. “Not until I get some answers.”

“You’re the fortunate recipient of a coed harem. Which you knew when you came down here and started this pitiful dick-measuring contest. What more is there to know?”

“Everything! Why? How?!”

“Yeah? I'll tell you what. I’ll answer some questions for you. But first, call that girl in here, do me one little favor, and then sure. I’ll give you some answers.”

My head whipped around, but Emma was still standing outside the squash court, looking bored. I made eye contact through the glass door, and she brightened immediately, giving me another little wave.

“What favor? Why should I? No.”

“Then fuck off.” Bob pressed the butt of his squash racket pressed into my sternum and drove me backwards, off-balance and in a bit of pain. Hadn’t been braced for something so blunt. “Have a nice break.”

“You’re not going to hurt her?” I asked quickly.

Bob stopped, at least, and looked back like I was an idiot. “You think I’m going to just, what, punch her? No wonder you’re on the six-year plan.”

I looked between them. I suppose it was silly to think he was going to harm her somehow. Embarrassing me seemed a lot more likely. Against my better judgment, I gestured for Emma to come in. She stepped in, looking self-conscious but, like any Hottie, glad to be in my presence.

“Emma, this is–”

“One of Spencer’s teachers,” Bob interjected. The lie redoubled my apprehension.

“Oh. Hi. I’m Emma – which I guess he already said. I live on Spencer’s floor. He’s my RA. Hi. Um, again.” She smiled awkwardly. We were both exhausted. I probably didn’t sound much more composed.

“Spencer’s told me a lot about you. Sounds like he’s got himself quite the little crush. I can see why, pretty girl  like you.”

She brightened, faded at the creepy comment, but then looked to me  again, brighter yet. “He… he did? He does? You do?”

“Emma, I–”

“I consider myself something of a relationship guru, Emma, so I thought I’d save you two some time and tedium and just get the ball rolling for you. Spencer, I can tell by the way she looks at you that she likes you, too. Why don’t you just kiss the girl already?”

“What? I’m not going to–”

“Then we can finish that conversation we were having,” he added weightily.

Emma’s eyes were widening, her fair skin beginning to blush. “Um, did you really…? I mean, do you want to…? I didn’t think you… I mean, I like you too, but I just didn’t… Like, you could, I guess, if you want. Ugh, I’m so gross right now and I’m talking out of my butt and… wow, classy Emma. But I guess you’re sweaty, too, so maybe it’s OK. If you want. I mean, I want to. If you do.” Like that, the prospect of kissing her beloved RA had made her forget about the lurking old lecher.

Emma had only got to babble so long because I was so caught off guard. What point was Bob trying to make? Just to embarrass me? Throw me off-balance? Well, fuck it. I’d done a lot more with my girls, and for a lot less cause. Emma was still sputtering anxiously when I walked up to her and kissed her.

It took nothing. I was exhausted, emotionally uninvested, and, as she’d pointed out, gross. Emma moaned deliriously, and wasted no time offering her tongue. We were both still breathing hard, but she was giving it her best. I suppose I didn’t want to disappoint her either.

“There you go. Young love, nothing quite like it,” Bob said, approaching the two of us. Before either of us knew what was happening, he was grabbing Emma’s hands and placing them on my backside. Then lifting the back of my shirt and placing them on my bare skin, right above the waistband of my shorts.

“ Whmmf …?!” I attempted, but Emma’s lips never left mine. Even being grabbed and posed by this total stranger, she only kissed me harder. It was like she thought he was some eccentric fairy creature, there to grant her wish. Not an old pervert acting out his own. One arm snaked up my back until her hand popped out behind my neck, nestling into my sweat-soaked hair and holding me to her.

“You two make such a nice couple. You know, Emma, Spencer was getting pretty frank with the locker room talk a minute ago, I hope you don’t mind my saying.”

“Mm, he was?” she asked, mostly into my mouth.

“Oh yeah. How’d he put it, ‘I want to drag her in here by her pussy and fuck her against the wall, right here, right now,” Bob said.

Emma didn’t let go of me. I squirmed, but she was holding on tight. She should have let go, slapped him right on his foul mouth, but instead she hooked a leg around my waist. “You… you do? I mean… if you want… if we were, you know, alone…? God, that would so…”

“Oh don’t mind me. I Have three kids of my own, so I know where they come from. Here, let me help.”

I was powerless to stop him. With Emma basically hanging off of me, I was restrained better than if he’d handcuffed me. So when Bob suddenly jerked down my shorts and boxers, it was let it happen or fall on my suddenly bared ass. What the fuck was he doing?! God, Emma was hot. Still!

“And now you, girl,” A moment later, my cock, hard in spite of everything surrounding the stimulus it was interested in, was resting against Emma’s sweat-slicked belly, my balls tickled softly by the hair on her pussy. Her exposed pussy. Her own shorts and panties removed, my resident’s leg went right back around my ass, locking me against her. She’d hung there, letting a stranger take her clothes off, rather than risk displeasing me. Holy fuck.

“Mm, don’t touch me,” she griped, still kissing. That was the extent of her resistance.

“Oh I’m sorry. I guess Spencer didn’t tell you, he likes to share, and he and I are such good friends. He was just asking me to share with him, so I figured he’d be happy to share with me. It really gets the boy hot. You want to make him hot for you, don’t you, girl?”

Emma’s lips pulled back, barely, but she was still coiled around me with python-like tenacity. “Really? I mean… I don’t… I mean I will, if that’s what you’re into, but…” She grimaced. “I guess it’s OK.” More kissing then. If I let her keep kissing me, she had no more pressing concerns.

“What do you say, Spencer? You feel like sharing?”

Bob didn’t wait for an answer. He helped himself to a handful of Emma’s exquisitely toned ass, squeezing, looking like it met whatever standard he was using for ass squeezes. “Well, Spencer?”

I glowered hatefully over her shoulder. If he felt threatened, he gave no sign. Emma needed her hands to hold her up in her one-legged pose. She didn’t mean to let me go, and from the smirk plastered beneath his thin gray mustache, Bob knew it. I saw his arm shift, just slightly, and Emma’s body trembled from where his hand had moved.

“Y-you’re really into this?”

“I…” Fuck. FUCK! I wanted my answers, but not like this. “Emma, you’re amazing. We’ll finish this up back home. For now, can you give me and my friend a few minutes?”

I had to repeat most of it, as well as physically remove her hands, but she finally relented. Once we broke contact, she seemed to realize she was standing there with her pussy and her ass exposed in public, in front of a stranger. Bob had apparently kicked them across the court. Emma looked around frantically, then darted over and tugged them on. She was beet red. I wanted to believe it was from the running, or even the kissing, but I doubted it.

“I’m, um… thank you,” she blurted, then fled the squash court.

In the meantime, I’d gotten myself clothed again. “What the fuck  was that about?!” I roared.

“Something in your sweat,” he said, watching Emma – Emma’s ass – as she retreated. “ It’s  the main thing. Or I guess your body oil, but your sweat transmits the stuff, too. Catalyst, I think it’s called. Gets on your skin, gets on everything you touch. Every one  you touch. It’s in your other juices, too. Your blood, your piss, even your stool, though that’s probably not been doing much to anybody. I hope not, at least. Your spunk’s a bit weaker, though to my mind, if you’ve got a girl’s mouth on you, she’s getting more of your spunk than she ever would your sweat, long haul.”

“What is it?” My temper over how he’d humiliated Emma went into stasis. Answers. Finally.  “What the hell did you put in me?”

Bob went on like I hadn’t spoken. “Residence halls are as perfect a dispersal system as you could hope for, at least if you can get an RA involved. Two weeks of training cooped up in a room with the staff. Meanwhile you were in every room on that floor, checking for damages, positioning furniture, touching every goddamn thing. Plus the showers, once your fillies arrived at the corral. Aerosolizes  it, makes it so they breathe  the shit in.”

“The showers…?” Lines, Ramona had said. Lines formed to be near  my stall.

“Oh yeah. Damned if I know how it works, not in any way that’s useful to anybody. I barely understand the layman’s version. Gets inside them and kicks the right parts of their brains into overdrive. Pleasure centers. Arousal. Bonding, like the kind of shit babies do with their mamas. A bunch of crap I half-understood about this lobe and that gland getting coated in the stuff, and then along comes another dose of you. Every little taste, and they’re teaching themselves that Spencer equals pleasure, Spencer equals happiness, without even knowing it. Some psychology, some chemistry, but every time you pass them in the hall, pop in their rooms for a how-ya-doin’, fart in the hallway, their addiction to that feeling they’re barely aware you’re causing gets burned in just a little harder. Every whiff of you they get is more of those fancy little particles triggering that dampness in their panties.”

“That’s why it’s getting worse,” I said, mind racing. Marisa had been so close in her speculation. God, had  she been in on it? No, she couldn’t be. Not her.

“It’s getting worse because it was always going to. It’s not some conspiracy to harness the power of those strangled noises you make before you spurt. It’s just data. Nothing more. How much Spencer-juice does it take to get a smile? A kiss? A hummer? To get your slut of a manager to make herself your slave?”

I gasped. My aching ribs zinged me good for it, too. “She told you.”

“She didn’t have to. You’re welcome, by the way. Couldn’t have done it without Ramona. She sure got what she had coming, eh? Take all that piss and vinegar you’re glaring my way and dump it on her, why don’t you? She’ll thank you for it, and better yet, you’ll actually get away with it.”

“What was her role? What’d she do?”

“Were you not listening? She locked you in her office and fell in love with you, breath by breath. Covered your messes, kept your secrets, took my shushing as an excuse to coddle her boy toy. And hey, I could’ve set you up with Lana over in Franklin, let that tubby bitch soak you in and tear you up. I knew you’d catch on eventually. Even a starry-eyed believer like you can only get so much pussy thrown at him before he questions if he really earned it. So before you start barking accusations, maybe start with a thank you. Wasn’t easy, shunting all that trim your way, but thanks to yours truly, you’re the only man in line at the Higgins Premium Pussy Buffet. Congrats.”

“So it only affects women?”

His eyes narrowed. Curiously? Accusingly? Bob’s eyes were kinda narrow by default. “So you don’t feel ‘affected’ yourself?”

“If it’s coming from inside me, and worked  on me like it does them, I’d be…” The horniest monkey in the zoo, I thought. “A mess. It obviously can’t be hitting me as hard as them. I’m still myself.”

“They’re still themselves. But since I asked, and since they told me, the chemical soup in your particular version of the thing hits the ladies a lot harder than the fellas. Feed a buddy a jug of your blood and he might take a shining  to you, but shy of that…” He shrugged.

“‘My version?’ Of what? Did you drug me or something?”

“Look, Spence. I know you think I’m the bad guy here – god only knows why – but on this one, trust me, I’m doing you a solid when I say: you’re safer not knowing. Don’t fuck around with your innards, or you’ll break some things inside you that you’ll miss. Like your brain.” His lips twisted consideringly, and as he paced around me, he paused to nudge me with an elbow. “Maybe you won’t miss it so  much.”

“Whatever.” Nice comeback. “You said something about data? What data?”

“I don’t know, and what does it matter? Nothing you can do about it. Nothing you should want  to do about it. You know everything I can tell you, so why don’t you go home, do that little girl a favor and fuck her brains out?”

“Who’s doing this? You know more than you’re telling me!”

“Of course I do, and if your head wasn’t stuffed halfway up Miss Emma’s ass, you’d be wondering if I’ve lied about some of what I’ve said. Keep pestering me, and I’ll really spin you about. You’ve gotten your answers, kid. Right now, you’re dialed up partway , but it looks like it’s hitting them pretty hard from what I’ve heard. Massage night was a big hit. Probably test out the next step up soon.”

“No they won’t. It’s three days to fall  break. Then I’m getting the hell out of here, going home and I’ll have my own doctor figure out what the hell you put in me!”

“Is that so. ”

“Yeah. It is.”

Bob laughed, raw contempt. Or shit, maybe that was what Bob’s amusement sounded like. “After what I just told you, your first thought is to head home? Expose sweet Mrs. Lawrence to all that? She still do your  laundry when you go home? And you’ve got a sister, too, right? Will she be on the premises? Picture that, her huddled outside the bathroom while you’re taking a shower, losing her goddamn mind, diddling herself blind, too amped up by her big bro’s fuck sauce to care.”

The temperature of my blood was dropping a few degrees a second. “You wouldn’t.”

“I don’t have to. I don’t have an on/off switch for you, Spencer. Untested science, though, so while it’s not meant to be permanent… who knows. Probably best not to dick around with it. If it were me, I’d just live my life, have a great last year of college, and not keep begging my gift horse to bite my dick off.”

This time, Bob wasn’t so gentle when he brushed past me. My bracing skills needed some work. Whatever was in my sweat didn’t seem to intimidate him any more than whatever was in my anger.

“Why would you do this? What possible appeal could this have for you?”

He picked up his gym bag and paused near the door. “You really have to ask? Well, no, I guess ‘money’ would be the obvious answer, though that’s a wrong guess. Better than ‘ buh   whaaah ,’ though.” He snorted. “Spencer, I was you once, a long ways  back. Good boy, by the book, held the door open for little old ladies. Unlike you, never  had much luck with the girls then. I’ve lived thirty-six years since then, and I’ve gotten less and less lucky every one of them. Grayer and grayer, while these girls stay young, and I feel unluckier by the day.”

Bob grinned. “You’re going to help them perfect it. Then I’ll get mine, and retire with some Emmas of my own. I’d been thinking maybe five, but the more I hear about all the fun you’re having – or fucking ought to be – the more I think maybe I’m shorting myself.”

“But… they’re people . We’re supposed to be taking care of them,” I said feebly.

“You’re the only one who who  doesn’t think lining them up and dropping your pants would be first-rate care. The more fun you have with them, the happier every single person involved in all this will be, Spencer, my boy. Make ‘em happy. That’s what we pay you for, isn’t it, to take care of your residents?”

Bob jerked the zipper on his gym bag, reached inside and came out with a handful of those same condoms he’d been trying to get rid of in his office the last time we’d met. He threw them at me. They pelted me in the face, then rolled down in a pile on the squash court floor.

“Now go take care of them.”

“So are we fucked or what?”

“Not yet. Prime got back… fuck, over fourteen hours ago now. Hit the bed and hasn’t  moved since. Didn’t even answer the door when 8484 came up for another blowjob marathon.”

“Which one was it at the gym? 7131, I think I read?”

“Um… fuck, I forget. Emma. Whatever her number is.”

“Yeah, that’s her. Do we have a feed on… there she is. God, she’s glowing in the fucking dark still. Did you say fourteen hours?”

“Yep. Hasn’t stopped masturbating since she got back. Not until she dozed off anyway, and if you look close, right at the top of the legs…”

“What am I looking … Oh fuck me! Is that thing switched on?”

“Wouldn’t be the deeper color if it wasn’t.”

“Shit. Shit! I can’t believe that old codger sold us out!”

“What was he supposed to do? You heard Prime talking to Marisa the other night, that – blech  – big deep heart to heart. He knows. From the report, it doesn’t sound like ol’ Bobby told him anything the kid wasn’t already guessing at. Tried to scare the shit out of him about it, too.”

“Yeah, goddamn brilliant. Why go with the carrot – you know, three dozen babes infatuated with him – when you could go with the stick and try to make him feel bad about doing the one goddamn thing we built him to do?!”

“Hey. Whoa. Fucking whoa . I’m not the housing guy, OK? Don’t yell at me.”

“Sorry. Just… fuck! You know I have a bag packed in the car if I need to flee town? That’s where we are right now. You know, obviously he doesn’t know the first thing about how the tech works, but he’s not wrong. Prime convinces a doctor to give him an MRI and they try to excise that thing? Even if it doesn’t rupture, which is a big if, every woman in the OR not wearing a hazmat suit is going to be lobotomized. Fuck!”

“It’s going to be fine. Better than, actually. That b.s. about nympho-izing his family seems like it struck a nerve, so now we don’t even have to dial him down. That means he’s still got to finish out the week with no classes, nothing to distract him but the fruits of our labors and the company of his neighbors.”

“I guess. Not ditching that bag, though.”

“You are such a pussy sometimes, I swear. Come on. This is a win. There’s nothing to hold him back now. 2629 and 8484 are breaking his monogamy pattern. He knows now what that lick fest at massage night did. Heard it himself in every room on the goddamn floor thanks to 6582’s trampy little video. 6818 offered herself as his goddamn slave, and the head cheese officially told him his only job is to kick back and enjoy himself. The Director is going to call this a win, mark my words. We finally get to see what Prime does without–”

“Oh hey, look who’s waking up.”

Chapter Thirteen: Closing

My mom was a maternity nurse back when I was born. She’d always been baby crazy. Dad had once admitted her openness about it had made him nervous when they’d first started dating, but by the time they’d gotten married she’d won him over. (So much so that, by my math, I’d been a covert +1 at their wedding myself.)

Mom remembered everything about my sister’s and my early years. I’d been the baby she’d always dreamed of, she liked to brag. I’d been a good sleeper, and I always, always, always  wanted to be held. Even after my needs were seen to, put me down and I’d scream bloody murder. Conversely, I’d nap through rumbly tummies and poopy diapers so long as I got that skin on skin contact. It had set her up for all sorts of disappointment with my sister, who wouldn’t stop  crying until she was put down and left the heck alone. To this day, the best way to deal with her when she was in a bad mood was to back off and let her self-soothe.

As I sniffled up an ugly mess of tears and invited whoever that was tapping their fingernails entreatingly on my door, I suppose I hadn’t changed much either.

It was Charlie, I deduced by the waif-thin silhouette in the doorway. I didn’t know what time it was. 8 at night? 4 in the morning? I could have believed either. I was still exhausted from all that running, but I was at least as weary in spirit from the rest of it.

“Oh hey, Charlie. What’s up?” I said, sitting up and wiping my eyes on my sheets. I didn’t have a shirt on or I’d have used my sleeve. Nothing Charlie hadn’t seen before.

And tasted.

Her face was still shrouded in darkness. Squinting against the light from the hall wasn’t helping. “Not much. What’s up with you?”

“Oh, same old,” I said, laughing shakily. Not very convincing. “You need something?”

She nodded. “Yeah, can you come here for a sec?”

I slid off the bed, pushing myself upright off my nightstand. Damn, I was tired. I was only wearing boxers, but right as I was about to ask her to give me a sec to get dressed, I felt a pair of slender yet implacably firm arms wrap around me from behind. A soft cheek rested  gently on my shoulder blade.

“Um…”

“I heard you crying,” she whispered.

“Oh gosh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”

“Shhhh.” A soft kiss pressed against the back of my neck. Only the one, and only briefly, and then I was simply being held.

Then I was crying again. My infancy in reverse. Charlie escorted me back to bed before it became full-on blubbering, laying me down and then crawling into bed beside me. To my surprise, she kept a little distance, curling up on her side nearby, our bodies separate but close enough that her fingers found a purchase in my hair, caressing my scalp with her fingertips. She didn’t say a word. When her kindness sparked the start of a real meltdown, her fingers moved to my neck and shoulder and I was favored with a gently   murmured , “Oh, hon.”

I basked in her selflessly  offered pity, all the while thinking about what all I had done to her. What, if Bob was to be believed, I was doing to her right now. This whatever inside me, coating my skin, soaked into my sheets, filling the air around us. I marveled that she never made a move, never did anything but lie there and lavish me with kindness and support. The more I let her, the more deeply she was compromised. Even knowing that, it was quite some before I was able to make myself sit up and turn away from her.

“You really don’t have to do this,” I murmured.

“Of course I do,” came her soft reply. “You’d do the same for any of us.”

“Yesterday, maybe,” I said sulkily.

Charlie was quiet  a moment, clearly not knowing how to respond to that. “Come on, hon. Come with me. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I sniffled, but it was also a sniff. Pointless – my nose was much too stuffed up to pick anything up. “That bad, huh?”

The gentlest of pressure moved me forward, out the door and down the hall. She paused next door, knocking as she opened the door. “Casey?”

“Yo. Oh, hey Carebear.” Carebear? I guess it sort of fit my escort. Charlie opened the door a bit wider so she could see me, nodded her head down the hall and resumed walking me. She led me into the bathroom, into the showers. Careful not to get her clothes wet, she turned on the water and stepped back to where I was standing like a doofus in the changing area. Casey showed up a minute later with a pair of towels, one over her arm and the other wrapped around her body.

“Be extra nice to him, OK?” Charlie said to her assistant comforter. “He sounds like he’s been having a hard day. Emma told me he ran himself half to death at the rec center, and still practically sprinted back home. She said she tried to follow him in, make sure he was OK, but he slammed the door in her face.”

“Yeah, I heard something. Heard her pounding for a while, too. Seemed pretty worried, but I was high as fuck so I didn’t wanna make him have to write me up when he was down, you know.”

“You’re OK now, right? You don’t need help?”

“I got him. But you’re mighty tempting, ya lil’ snack, you.”

Casey accepted a quick squeeze herself, then it was one last Charlie hug for me. “Spencer, I’m getting you some mac and cheese. Fresh homemade, no microwaved junk. Is that OK?”

“You just have homemade mac and cheese sitting around?”

She had to lean hard to pat my shoulder, since Casey was squatting at my feet pulling down my boxers. “I got it ready the minute I walked past your door and heard you crying.”

“You’re amazing. Thank you, Charlie.”

“My pleasure. Go on, try to relax.” She gave Casey and I each a nudge towards the steamy water, and excused herself.

“Damn. You fuckin’ reek, homie.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you worry. I’ma clean you up good.”

I put my palms on the wall, my head under the water, and Casey began to gently sponge me clean.

Aerosolized, he’d said.

I sighed. No sense worrying I was going to compromise the judgment and sexual integrity of the girl who’d been bathing me all week.

The mac and cheese was pretty good, too.

Thursday sort of disappeared. As my body slowly forgave me for what I’d put it through staking out the squash court, I spent the day googling. Pheromones – real, but nowhere near as potent as what I’d been seeing. For all intents and purposes, Marisa had been right. Biochemically triggered arousal, in dozens of permutations and keywords, led to porn more often as not. When it didn’t, it was poorly sourced theory, failed experiments, successes that couldn’t be replicated. The Hancock Institute. Everything I’d ever heard from Marisa, corroborated by everything I could find online, said their research was psychosocial, and where it verged  into biology, it was to better understand things like the neurochemistry of an orgasm, some work towards identifying a genome responsible for larger penises, the side effects of various forms of elective cosmetic surgery. They weren’t even studying the medical aspect of STDs or pregnancy that I could find. They were trying to understand human sex and sexuality, not control it.

Not that they’d admitted, but I granted, it seemed an odd place for shadowy cabals.

In the meantime, there was steady traffic through my room as my girls, sweet and doting as could be like always, popped in to say goodbye as they left for fall break. I met a few parents. Nobody quite so memorable as my first, back in August, but I did hear Jo’s mom exclaim “Wow, you weren’t kidding!” when she thought she was out of my earshot. The whole thing was unheard of, this excess of attachment. Most of my Rowland guys hadn’t bothered with so much as a handshake at move-out time in May, much less demanding a farewell hug for a one-week break.

Data. To somebody, some subhuman bastards keeping tabs on us, that’s all these girls were. How they were getting it, I didn’t know. It couldn’t be something medical, or they’d need someone examining us. I’d given directions to the Lakeview Health Center a few times, but that just wasn’t plausible. As for surveillance, I scoured my room looking for hidden cameras, even though I had a hard time believing it. This was an era in which renting from airbnb meant inspecting your room for nanny cams in the clocks or some microcam in a vent pointed at the toilet. Young women like mine had been raised to it, and I had a hard time believing that if that was how they were getting their intel, nobody had stumbled across anything.

I had nothing to go on, really. They could be planning to conduct exit interviews somehow, or using Bob or Ramona or both to get reports of news, allegations and gossip. Shit, for all I knew it was some kind of spy movie conspiracy and they were gassing us in our sleep and putting electrodes on our heads, or monitoring us through the walls with infrared scanners and long-range microphones. Anything could be possible, and none of it could I do anything about.

Bob’s advice had been to dive in, help generate this precious “data” of theirs. That fucking pig. Then again, here I was in the thick of it, but at least I hadn’t asked for it, taking advantage of these women on purpose.

So what were my options?

Much as I wanted to find a doctor – a trusted doctor – to see if we could figure out what was wrong with me, I kept running into doubts. The more I thought about it, the less optimism I had for it. Most doctors I’d been to didn’t have “turns women into obsessive nymphomaniacs” on their checklist of symptoms. Even if I could convince them to run some kind of scan, would whatever this was show up? If it did, could they safely remove it? If they could, what might its removal mean for my Hotties? Could they go into withdrawal? Blame me? Shit, prosecute me?

Was it kinder to them to let them live in ignorance? God knows I’d been  happier when I’d thought I was just a lucky guy in a weird living situation with some eccentric hot girls.

That meant leaving it in place for now. Only, I’d seen how my willpower was failing me. Shit, one of the first interactions I’d had after that debacle on the squash court had been to let Casey bathe me again. I could try harder, find ways to hold myself accountable. What did I do about Savannah, though? And Vickie? And Ramona? And, and, and.

Bob wanted me to get out there, take advantage, get that data. He’d suggested it wasn’t permanent, but he’d also said he might be lying. Besides, impermanent could mean it would wear off in a month, or it could mean they’d be imagining me when they fucked their spouses twenty years from now. I needed perspective. I could rationalize a lot of different paths, and as Marisa had made me realize, I couldn’t trust myself. Easy to say that the path of least resistance would be the one where everybody had the best time. I could even make use of this, use the influence it gave me to make a difference for the better in a way I’d never imagined possible. Every hour of community service earns five minutes massaging yours truly! Attend a cultural event? Win a blowjob! Earn straight A’s and your RA will fuck you while the rest of the floor watches in envy!

All I had to do to create my perfect community, the perfect college experience, was to have tons of amazing sexual encounters with dozens of hot women. Ugh. It was the least subtle behavioral incentive since the invention of electroshock therapy.

Every friend and confidante I had left was already under my unwanted yet insidious influence. Who could I trust for guidance?

“Can I ask you a hypothetical question?”

Savannah grudgingly released my cock from between her lips. We’d met in her room this time, so we could talk without interruptions from my girls. “Sure. Though if you’re after a threesome, let me save you some time. No.” She grinned. “Unless he’s really  cute.”

I laughed. “No way. I don’t think I’m ready to share my favorite cocksucker just yet.” Indeed, a dozen or more hours this week were starting to bear fruit. I’d come to her room right after breakfast. She’d still been in her PJs, hair a mess and makeup absent, but when I whipped it out, she grinned and pulled me to her bed and sucked me right down like we were at the end of a hot date and I was due a reward.

A couple hours of slow, sensuous blowjob later, I thought I could try a coded request for insight.

“OK. So remember when we did those scenarios when I interviewed you last year?”

She blinked once for yes. We’d worked that out as a time-saver quite some time ago. (In blowjob-hours, that is.) “All right, so this is another scenario. So, you’re going to a party, but you don’t know anybody there. When you get there, somebody mistakenly identifies you and tells everybody you’re actually the daughter of a megabillionaire . As a result – oh fuck, that feels good, but slow down, I can’t talk when you’re doing that.”

Savannah’s eyes glittered excitedly. She loved it when she stumbled into some new pleasure spot or exciting technique, especially since so much of her cocksucking retinue was slow, nonstop sucking and licking. She obviously loved it and it was a hell of a way to pass a few hours, but once in a while it was nice when she mixed it up. A guy liked to come eventually.

“OK, so. Billionaire heiress,” I said when she coaxed a nice gentle orgasm out of me, slurping my cum down greedily. Less potent than the sweat, Bob had assured me. “So you’re the life of the party. Everybody wants to talk to you, get to know you, and the guys are flirting hard . You’re pretty sure you could have your pick of any guy to take home.”

Savannah fell off my cock, laughing. “Right, I’ve never been to a party where a bunch of horny guys wanted me to go home with them.”

“Sure, but this is a fancy party. Smoking hot guys. Educated. Smooth. Nice guys who call their moms and love animals and children and always tell you they’d ‘love you even if’ no matter how horrible your ‘if’ is.”

“So basically a party full of Spencers. That’s what you’re describing.”

“Suck my cock and let me finish,” I chuckled, thrusting my hips at her face. With a smile, she sucked me back in. “So you’re having a great time, and the attention, it’s getting you really turned on.”

I was pretty sure the incoherent thing she babbled around my dick was “so it really is a Spencer party,” but who knew.

“So. The question is: would you hook up with somebody at the party, even knowing that they might only be into you because of their misunderstanding?” I gave her a minute, then pulled back out. We were both used to having conversations this way, full of long pauses for her to savor me, long pauses for me to enjoy being savored.

“So you’re saying I could be the lucky gal to give a bunch of horny dudes the chance to run a train on me? Is that it?” She laughed, but with eyes full of distaste.

“No – unless you wanted them to. I don’t kink shame. But I’m saying they’re so into you, you could have them do whatever you wanted. Take you on a trip around the world. Pay off your student loans.”

“Why would the daughter of a billionaire have student loans?”

“These guys are real, real dumb, I guess. Come on. Would you take advantage?”

Savannah was still wearing her pajamas. As she thought, she slid down to her knees next to the bed and pulled me in front of her. She unbuttoned her top, then pulled my cock between her breasts. Sometimes if we were having a serious discussion, she’d switch to this until she didn’t need to talk any more. It still gave her an excuse to suck on my cock every so often to keep it nice and slick between her boobs.

“I mean… no, right?” she said finally. “I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t really know me for me . I don’t think I would even be all that tempted. How could I be attracted to someone who only likes me for some superficial reason?”

I made myself smile. With Savannah rocking up and down titty-fucking me with that contemplative look on her radiant face, it wasn’t too  difficult. “That’s a good answer. Now let me put a twist on it.”

“You and your twists!” she groaned, adjusting her grip on her tits. She had a hard time keeping me between them, oftentimes. Putting on a sports bra and tucking me underneath would have solved the problem, but me, I preferred the view to the friction.

“Me and my twists?”

“I still remember that interview question you brought up. You asked me, what would I do if I overheard some students in the floor lounge telling racist jokes? Then, after I gave a very smart answer about how I would confront them, you spun it around with how I’d do it if everybody in the lounge was a member of the race that was the butt of the joke.”

“That’s the point, to get people thinking on their feet.”

“It sucks.”

“Not as much as you, and I think you’re the cat’s pajamas.”

“Only because my pajamas are wide open so you can stare at my boobs.” She bent down and spit on them, rubbed it in, and continued her tit-fuck.

“So the twist. Instead of someone mistaking your identity, right before you go in, somebody takes you aside and tells you that you have to pretend to be this heiress and play the party convincingly, make  sure these guys believe you’re the real deal. If you don’t keep it up until you’re the last one at the party, they’re going to burn the place down as soon as you leave.”

“Whoa. That’s dark. Fall break isn’t coming soon enough for you, huh.”

“It’s only a hypothetical.”

She arched a brow, incredulous, but opted to humor me. I had a heck of a nice girlfriend one . Great tits, too. She slapped my cock against a plump brown nipple while she considered. “All right. So… how does this twist change anything?”

“Because you have to play ball. Be convincing. If you don’t sell it, people might get hurt.”

“OK. So then, yeah, I guess if that was the stakes, I’d flirt back. Hell, if I have to , I’d probably take that vacation and the loan money. If they’re going to make me play their dumb game, I should at least get paid, right?”

I nodded. That was an answer.

“Can I come on your tits?”

Savannah frowned. “I don’t like that word, ‘tits.’ Usually. Though for some reason, when you say it, ‘tits’ sounds… cute.”

“So… yes?”

“OK. But only if you let me suck your cock again after.”

“I am going to miss you like crazy next week.”

Savannah looked up at me, then down to my cock, and back, and again. There was love in her eyes. No other way to describe it. “I’m going to miss the both of you.”

Leigh and Angel took the final two seats at the lunch table. It was pretty dead in the Penderdast food court, which would close this evening and not reopen until the following Sunday. I’d shouted an invite to what few Hotties were still waiting for Friday night and Saturday morning rides home, and this was what had  tagged along.

“What are we talking about?” Angel asked, seeing the pensive expressions on her co-Hotties’ faces.

Kendall looked to me . With my mouth full, I nodded for her to go ahead and repeat the conversation starter. “OK. So. You get an app on your phone. Any time you take a picture of someone, that person will be totally dtf you.”

“But the microtransactions! Three stars, tops,” laughed Amy. Nikki gave her a high five.

“So who would I use it on?” Leigh asked. “Present company excluded, or…?”

“That’s one vote for team Use It,” Kendall said, shifting one of her green beans to make a tally mark. “The question was going to be if you would use it at all, ya ho.”

“Oh come on, like anybody would not use it.”

Angel was more reserved. “So like, they’d wanna sleep with you. But what happens after? Do they snap out of it?”

Kendall deferred to me, between bites now. “They’ll be glad you did. Cupid’s arrow, totally smitten.”

“Is it a one-time thing?” asked Nikki.

“Nope. Over and over, as much as you want.”

“OK, maybe four stars,” Amy amended.

“Use it,” declared Angel, nodding her solidarity with her queen bee, Leigh. “For sure, use it.”

“Use it,” echoed Nikki.

“I mean, I’d use it once, but just once,” said Kendall, glancing at me a little more pointedly than was cool. Four green beans lined  up now.

It was Amy, however, who opted to quit the jokes and do more than echo the popular girl’s opinion. “I don’t know. Isn’t that kind of… rapey…?”

Leigh sneered. “It’s not rape. You said the app makes them want to do it, right? If they want to do it, what’s the difference?”

“But they only want to do it because you made them,” Amy pressed. She looked around the table for support. “It’s, like, mind  rape.”

Nikki shook her head. “People make people want to do things all the time. I’m taking an intro to advertising class, and that’s pretty much the whole deal is finding tricks and traps to manipulate people into wanting to give you money.”

“But Wendy’s french fries don’t penetrate you if you if use  your cheat day,” argued Amy.

Nikki frowned. “OK, that’s a horrible enough thought that I change my vote. Eat that bean.”

Kendall shook her head, talking with her mouth full. “No no no. The app makes them want to do it. You’re over-complicating things. They want to do it, period. I mean, they’re happy with it, right? They fuck you, they love it, they thank you, they go home. Right?”

The question was pointed to me. “Total satisfaction, yes.”

Leigh wagged a finger in agreement with Kendall’s point. “Hell yeah. Shit, you’re doing them a favor. Think of all those sad bitches out there having weak sex, worried about cheaters and players and fuckboys. I point that app at our boy – um, whomever he may be…”

She paused. All the girls giggled. A round of high fives, hell yeah’s , and at least one “OK, fine, I’d use it once ” transpired.

“And bam! ” Leigh finished, pounding the table.

“Bam!”

“Bam!”

“Bam!”

Every phone at the table was pointed at me as the girls, Amy included, chanted, “BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!”

Lakeview RAs signed up for duty shifts at the beginning of the semester, for the entirety of the semester. It was in a lot of ways a big perk. Not many shift workers got such micromanagement over their shifts, or knew so far out what their schedule looked like. Like most of us, I’d signed up around my course schedule, though unlike my coworkers I’d employed a secondary consideration of whether I could get more shifts alongside Savannah without being too obvious about it. Janis, by contrast, had taken as many November and December shifts as she could get, leaving her August, September and October comparatively wide open. It would make for a restful start to the year for her, as well as causing her to forget half the procedures and policies she’d been trained on thanks to disuse. Not that anybody had complained they weren’t getting enough shifts with Janis.

Friday before fall break should be one of those ultra-easy nights. Residents had to be out of the building by 10 AM Saturday, so the building was mostly empty and very quiet. Not many nights so reliably placid. Easter weekend, Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the last nights of winter and spring break closures. “Lemon squeezy!” as my rounds partner dubbed it when we met up at 8 to get walkies and sign in.

Then at 10:12, Carmen and I arrived at her floor and heard the telltale clinking of bottles, and with a resigned sigh, knocked on the door. I generally disliked alcohol busts. They were draconian, and rubbed my desire to see the drinking age lowered the wrong way. That was the job, though, and the campus judicial system was educative , not punitive. No fines, and unless they threw a massive tantrum or tried to mob and intimidate, no cops.

It was Carmen’s floor, so she took lead and I just took down info for the write-up and escorted the residents to the bathroom to pour out what we found. It was  the night before break and they crumbled pretty fast, so we didn’t look around too hard. Just a couple girls who’d invited over a couple guys and downed a couple six-packs of fruity booze. One of the girls, Cheryl, was pretty drunk, but her roommate swore she’d keep an eye on her, and Carmen vouched for the roommate as a generally trustworthy sort. Between the confrontation, the discussion, the pouring out and the writing up, it was forty-five minutes of time down the drain, but at least they’d been chill about it, as I would note in the report.

Once we sent in the documentation and continued rounds, Carmen went on about the incident conversationally. “Cheryl is going to be totes  bummed. She’s had a crush on that guy since Welcome Week. Finally got him to come party with her, and she passed out.”

“Does her roommate know?”

“Well I mean, yeah, but still, I don’t think she’s gonna just go ‘hey, she’s into you, go right ahead’ when Cheryl’s hammered like that.”

We entered Vanessa’s floor, right beneath mine. Nice and quiet here. “I hadn’t meant that. Though, now that you mention it, there’s a question. Is it ever OK to hook up with someone when they’re drunk? Not buzzed, not tipsy, but drunk . ”

The two of us reached the bathroom. After a student had passed out and nearly died from a combo of alcohol poisoning and drug overdose in a bathroom in Eggerton last year, RAs made cursory sweeps of the bathrooms. In an all-woman’s building, I took my own floor, but otherwise my rounds  partners did the other floors in respect for the women’s comfort.

Carmen called back to me as she hastened down to the shower area and back. “I mean… no, right? You have to get consent, and they can’t consent if they’re under the influence. Right?”

“It’s not a quiz, Carmen. I’m just… I dunno, making conversation. Probing complex issues of social interaction. Think about it, tell me your thoughts on the far side.”

We split up, me taking the fork with the RA room, and Carmen the other. We rejoined at the  far bathroom, Carmen again darting in and out. A girl brushing her teeth directed her stinkeye  at the presence of a strange authority figure in their personal space.

“OK, so some thoughts.”

“Go.”

“If they’re already a couple, or they’ve hooked up before and they’re both sober enough to start, then I think yeah. Like obviously if they’re like ‘oh, no, I’m drunk, you gotta stop’ or if they’re like passed out, then obvs, but I mean if they’ve been cool with it before and nothing’s changed…”

“OK. So consenting, getting-along-great couple, nothing obviously horrible. That’s it?”

We peeked into the lounge, nice and empty, then headed up the stairs to Higgins 3. “OK, well like, maybe if you pre-consent? Like, say you and I were going to a party, like a date. Hypothetically, I mean. And, hypothetically, you were all ‘err my gursh, Kerrmerrn, I’rrm serr   interr   yerr !’ and you just made it really clear that after this party, we were gonna go back to your place and ERRM , YERRR .” She made some crude gestures and hip motions.

The Hotties in my lounge, waiting for me to return to finish the movie we’d paused when I left to do rounds an hour ago, looked at her antics with bemusement as I held the door open. Carmen yeeped  when she saw them, and hastened down towards the bathroom.

I ignored the embarrassing stuff and pursued her answer to the question. “So nothing creepy, pre-consent, and couples.”

I made a quick check of the first bathroom while she considered. “I don’t know! I mean… Look, it’s not so cut and dry. Like, I’ve had some really  good drunk sex before. I don’t want some freaky weirdo groping me when I can’t even see straight or anything, but like, if the guy’s hot, if I’m into him, if I’m in the mood for it, I mean… it’s complicated!”

I processed her comment as we split. I let her take the side of the floor with my room, just to sweep the side I spent less time on. Dead silent except for some flagrantly pornographic noises generating from Terri and Toni’s room. Friday night. How had they put it? Payday for simps? Something like that. I didn’t follow the business acumen behind it, but I silently wished them well.

“It sounds complicated,” I continued. I’d gotten pretty good at maintaining the thread of conversation despite the unavoidable disruptions during rounds. “So, say it really was you and me.”

Carmen froze in her tracks. I turned to see what was the matter right as she started back up and we nearly collided. “You and me! You’re with Savannah! And Vickie!”

“Look who’s up to speed on the rumor mill. But say I wasn’t. Like you said, we go to  a party. You know I’m attracted to you, we’re having a good time, the booze is flowing and making it a better time. Would you make a move?”

We reached the end of the hall. Katrina’s room was open. She was in the middle of packing, clad in her socks, a tank top and some tight, skimpy boxers, obviously on her way to bed. “Hey, Katrina.”

Katrina approached me with a dead somber face. “All my midterms are posted. Straight A’s, and one A+.”

“That’s great! Congratulations. You worked your ass off for it. I’m really proud of you.”

She broke into tears and threw her arms around me. “I was so scared when I moved here. But this is the happiest I’ve ever been. I love  it here. I love it. I hate that I have to leave for a week.”

I hugged her back as Carmen stared . Her head was cocked to the side, perplexed. “I love that you’re here, too. Our home wouldn’t be the same without you,” I assured her softly.

Her arms squeezed, and she whispered into my ear. “C-can I…? For doing good?”

I wish I had to ask her what she meant. “Go on. You deserve it.”

The high school salutatorian bent her neck down and took a solitary, lengthy lick, dragging her tongue in a zigzag across my neck. “Thank you,” she sighed.

“Make the dean’s list, and maybe I’ll give you a real treat,” I joked. Yep, as if I’d had any doubts about those incentives I’d been dreaming up, there it was. Her eyes lit up. Carmen’s jaw dropped. Apparently it wasn’t a very good joke. “We gotta finish rounds, but some of us are watching a movie in the lounge, if you want to hang out.”

“I think tonight’s already as good as it’s going to get, Spencer. I’m going to end on a high note, I think.”

“If I don’t see you, have a great break.”

“You too. And thanks again.”

Carmen waited until we were back in the stairs, on our way up to Higgins 4, Janis’s floor, before speaking. She’d darted ahead, her soft round ass undulating with each step, right in front of my face. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to turn me on or if it was just some Higgins thing.

She paused outside the stairwell door. “I pre-consent.”

“I wish I knew what to tell you, but Bob made it pretty clear he didn’t want to talk about any of my concerns about you and your girls any more. I still send updates when I hear something. He doesn’t complain about updates. Even if he did, I would send them. A cover-up like that? If the paper trail ended with me, could  land me in jail.”

I gave her a nip on that moon tattoo on her breast. “What have I done that’s jailable?” I asked irritably.

She hissed, but not unhappily I thought. Then she shoved her tits back in my face and I became certain. “Apologies. You asked and I answered, Mr. Lawrence. Please let me make it up to you.”

The other RAs and I had closed down Higgins, making sure the residents were out and procedures followed. (No repeats of two years ago when we’d returned from winter break to the stench of four pounds of rotten ground chuck in a resident’s unplugged minifridge, please and thank you.) Meanwhile, I’d had Ramona remove the armrests from her desk so she’d fit better on my lap. More bluntly, so I could make her fuck me in her office chair. We’d said our farewells to Savannah, Vickie, Vanessa, Carmen and Janis, then I’d snapped my fingers and had her heel at my side back to her office. Presently, we were sitting naked, her straddling me with my cock snugly held in the cleft between her legs, while I studied and amused myself with that art gallery on her torso.

I gave her ass a slap. She stiffened, then moaned and humped herself against my cock for a moment. “It’s fine. I believe you. Do what you have to do. If you get yourself fired, it won’t do me much good to have my boss as my…” I sucked in her nipple as I thought for a moment. The nipple was not instructive, merely tasty. “What do I call you?”

“Whatever you like. You control me completely. If you don’t like ‘Ramona,’ call me something else.”

“Oh no, you do much too good a job putting the ‘moan’ in ‘Ramona.’” This time, I rubbed my cock against her clit, and she handily proved my point. No Marcus today. Nobody anywhere else in Higgins quad but the two of us. I could let her howl as loud as she liked. “But I’m talking about our relationship. You’re still my supervisor and I’m still your employee, but it’s different now. You keep telling me you’re not just roleplaying, but then… what is this?”

“You hold my life in your hands. Call me your bitch. Your pet. Your toy. Your slave.” Each suggestion was accompanied by another hump, and finally she couldn’t help herself and started kissing me. I let it go a moment until giving my boss another smack on the ass.

“Those terms don’t… offend you?”

Ramona guided my mouth back to her tits. “I would be relieved to be your slave, Mr. Lawrence. Not only so you’ll use me like a slave, which I think you know by now is my favorite perk of my employment, but… You see, matters of power are different among the Traveling People. Here, power is control. Hard power to give orders, soft orders to persuade compliance. My people see that as duty . Obligation. You’re familiar with the sword of Damocles?”

“Mm.”

Her head leaned back, whimpering at her ceiling as she let me make her let me play with her tits. “I was raised with the idea that true power is freedom. Choice. To do favors or withhold them as one pleases. We begin life with great power, and by increments we lose it to the weight of responsibility.

“You’ve taken away much of my responsibility. When the choices I make are yours to decide, then I can do as I wish instead. For instance, I choose to take off my clothes for a man whose attention sets a fire in my cipka .” From my command to embrace her native accent, I was learning all sorts of interesting Polish terms. “I can choose to sit on his lap, and choose to put my tits in his mouth, and choose to show him how wet he makes me in the hopes he’ll see the obligation he has to fuck his slave delirious.”

Just to toy with her, I lifted her up with two handfuls of her ass. As she tried to lower herself onto my shaft, I bent it down so she instead sat down with it throbbing along her slit. She pouted, but it gave way to a smile. The more I teased her, the more she seemed to enjoy my doing so.

“So you’re saying, you feel more ‘empowered’ as a slave than you did as a hall director?”

“Hall manager, and yes. The slave is free from obligation. I realize that the term is problematic, especially to Americans with your nasty history with it, but in our context, as a woman who has ceded control to you of her own choice, I find this enslavement a tremendous relief. I have slept better this past week in a hotel room than I have for years in my own home.”

“I thought you only let me take control because you had no choice.”

“Then you weren’t paying attention. I gave you control because I chose you, a choice I desired greatly, over alternatives I desired not at all. Besides, this is my explanation of an aspect of my culture, not a truism we consciously live by. The same way Americans brag of the home of the free while locking up more of their own people than those Russian pizdy  in the Kremlin. ”

“You’re hot when you make comparisons about geopolitical humanitarianism. You know that?”

“Your slave thanks you for praising her thoughts on freedom, Mr. Lawrence.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. As fucked up as this was, more fucked up than even my cocksucking girlfriend, my lick-obsessed residents, my next door neighbor showermate… Even so, it felt great to have a good relationship with my supervisor again.

“All right. Put the tip inside you. But only the tip.”

“Oh thank you!” Ramona gushed. My boss rose up, and my cock rose to the occasion the moment her weight was lifted. She aimed it at the entrance to her pussy and lowered her body until it was just barely inside her, snug and tight and oh so very fucking wet. Her legs trembled at having to hold herself off of it, staying on her tiptoes to comply with my command.

I let her hold it for a minute. “So you really like this?”

“Yes.” Her breath was tremulous, her chest heaving with exertion and with need.

“What if I could do this to the whole staff?” I asked, massaging her buttocks. She found herself slipping downwards, groaned, and forced her body back up. She wouldn’t let me make her fuck me until I told her.

“You mean, blackmail the whole staff?”

I gave her another little spanking, three sharp swats. “You know I’m only blackmailing you because you want it so badly. Slave.”

I didn’t know how much longer she could hold it. Ramona wasn’t an athlete, and this was not an easy pose. Besides, she really, really wanted it. “I know,” she murmured submissively. “Thank you, Mr. Lawrence.”

Holy hell, I loved this woman’s body. Those tattoos… Maybe I could see if the Hotties had any interest in getting matching tats for the floor. I wouldn’t do it, of course. I mean, that was way too far. I wondered if I could even talk Katrina and Tori into funding such a thing. I bet I could. Not that I would.

I put my hands on Ramona’s hips and lowered her, bit by tantalizing bit, onto my eager cock. I guess this would be one more report of me banging another Higgins slut she’d have to make. Give that asshole Bob some reading material for his fall break.

“So, what if I could? Think about it. Savannah and Vickie, I already have, but what if I could get to Carmen, Vanessa and Janis, too? What if our staff meetings were the six of you taking turns pleasuring me? The bullet points of the agenda just  a list of which girl, which holes I wanted?”

“I adore those girls almost as much as I adore you. They should get to know how good you can make a woman feel,” she sighed, enraptured. Enslaved. “Tell me how I can help.”

I looked her over. “Do you think I could get a tattoo on you? Something for me?”

Ramona began to rock her hips. She looked… whole. Like she’d been half of herself, and now, filled with her employee’s cock, was complete again. It was a look of contentment. Relief. Ecstasy.

“I’ll see to it today, if you like. My artist, he does great work, and we have a relationship so I can probably get in quickly. I know just what to have him put on me. Unless you’d rather postpone your departure, talk about how we can bring Carmen, Vanessa and Janis into your hands.” As she said it, she placed my hands over her tits to demonstrate the full extent of her meaning.

“I was being hypothetical. I’ll think about it. And I’m not departing. Something’s come up, and I can’t go home.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lawrence. You’re welcome to stay here in Higgins, of course. I’ll give you my key so you can still get in while the locks are disabled over break.”

“What about you? You  like hotel living?”

She smiled. “Do you always talk this much when a woman is fucking you?”

Another slap on the ass. The more I spanked my boss, the more I found I liked it. She sure didn’t complain. “Answer the question.”

“I was going to… mmm… going to look for an apartment this week, Mr. Lawrence.”

“303 has been vacant for months. I want you to move in there. I want to keep you close at hand when I need you.”

“You want me at your beck and call, night and day, to use me and touch me and fuck me whenever you want, you mean.” Somehow, her pussy squeezed me a little tighter for a moment. “Oh fuck , I hope that’s what you mean.”

“We’ll go to your hotel when you’re done here. I’ll fuck you again there, just so I can say I took my boss to a cheap hotel and fucked her.”

“Mmm, god, promise me you’re not teasing me…”

“And then I’ll help you get your things up to Higgins 3. I’ll hook you up with a spare floor shirt. You’re hot enough to be a Hottie, I figure.”

“I’ll wear nothing but until your  girls come home, Mr. Lawrence.”

“You sure won’t. Now bend over your desk. I want to study your back canvas.”

“Gladly.”

I took back control of our sultry morning fuck. I’d been tired for days. No, for weeks, it felt like. My energy was finally beginning to return.

I did as I’d promised and rode with her to her hotel, fucked her in the rented bed. She begged me to come inside her; I pulled out and came on her face. I hadn’t dated a sex guru on and off for two years without learning you didn’t satisfy a sub by giving them what they asked for. She loved it. Then we ordered food and fell asleep together watching good movies with tons of commercials on the hotel’s cable TV. At three in the morning, I got up to pee; when I crawled back into bed, I lifted the sheets to expose my sleeping, naked boss’s body, then slapped her ass open-palmed. As a favor. Because I liked slapping it, and she liked that I could slap it whenever I wanted it. She squealed, then growled, then purred. I rolled over and went back to my sleep.

In the morning, I pretended like I meant to grab a quick breakfast in the lobby and then go back up, shower and head out. I barely touched her. She accepted it, but right as she opened the door, suitcase in hand, I told her that on second thought, I wanted to see how it would feel to watch my married boss crawl across a hotel room floor and beg me to come on her face again.

She indulged me. Which was really me indulging her, I guess.

After a quick stop at her house for some boxes of clothes she’d already packed and some personal effects – I stayed in the car, but thought I saw someone peeking through the blinds at one point – it was time to go back to Higgins. I insisted on carrying the heavy stuff up to her new home in 303, while my supervisor, my slave, donned her laughably skimpy Higgins Hotties shirt and arranged an appointment to be tattooed in commemoration of her enslavement.

The sight of Ramona in that shirt did something to me. It was an article of clothing she’d excoriated when she’d first learned of it. Now she wore it to titillate the very employee she’d chastened for creating it. The only ones I had left were much too small – too many Extra’s  on the Skimpy, she reminded me – even for a top that was much too small by design. Hers tended to expose her nipples if she didn’t tug it down every few minutes. It somehow embarrassed her to have to do it, even more than it embarrassed her to wear it at all. Nudity, she said, was easy, because we were all born to it before we were taught to be ashamed of it. The slutty, inadequate Higgins Hotties shirt was hard, because now she had learned that shame, and shame was its constant threat.

Needless to say, I forbade her to wear anything but the shirt – not only in regards to her other shirts I’d lugged up four flights of stairs, but pants, bras, and panties, too. It only made her hornier, which only made her happier. She even joked that perhaps those words were what the HH on the shirt should stand for.

For a week, those would be our only two concerns. Then we’d have residents return, and jobs to do. What would my job look like if I accepted all this terrible, libidinous advice? I’d been having fun with Ramona because there was no uncrossing the line we’d crossed. Could I let myself become this uninhibited, selfishly generous Spencer to the  lot of them? What would my life look like if I gave them what they wanted?

That Friday night, Ramona returned from the tattoo parlor. I’d made her wear her floor shirt, and she’d stripped out of her pants and underwear at the door to Savannah’s floor in the basement. She couldn’t wait to show me. Along her ribcage, there it was. Held in two hands – my hands, she told me, though they looked much more powerful than mine – was a length of shattered chain.

Supplemental Materials

Thanks so much for your support. I had so much fun writing this book! As a token of my appreciation, I’m including exclusively in this version of the book a catalogue of reference images for the characters of the series, as well as the Higgins 3 floor plan (if, like me, you want to know who’s rooming next to whom). This roster is as of beach day, omitting Quinn after her removal from 301, and the departure of the Three in volume I.

 Higgins 3 Floor Plan

Higgins Hotties

Amy (300)

Katrina (301)

(revised)

Quinn (301)

(Removed from Higgins Hall)

Georgia (302)

Kendall (302)

Andi (304)

Jean (304)

Ellie (305)

Tori (305)

Dawn (306)

Kyu-Ri (306)

Terri (307)

Toni (307)

Casey (308)

Nikki (308)

Jordyn (309)

Spencer Lawrence

310

Destiny (311)

Charlie (311)

Leigh (312)

Angel (312)

Peyton (313)

Sydney (313)

Shauna (314)

Jacqui (315)

Sammi (315)

Jo (316)

Lex (316)

(Tits out time)

Emma (317)

Danielle (318)

Dana (318)

Dana’s mom (non-resident)

Addison, Allison and Maddison

or

Addison, Maddison and Addison

or

Allison, Addison and Maddison

or

Allison, Maddison and Addison

or

Maddison, Addison and Allison

or

Maddison, Allison and Addison

(319)

Higgins Staff, et al.

Savannah Grey (RA, Higgins Basement)

(Revised)

Vickie (RA, Higgins Ground)

(Revised)

Carmen (RA, Higgins 1)

Vanessa (RA, Higgins 2)

Janis (RA, Higgins 4)

Ramona Tinsley (Hall manager, Higgins Hall)

Marisa Gutierrez (Intern, Hancock Institute)