Chapter 22: San Francisco ll

-- THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 2008 --

I took both Thursday and Friday off from work to supervise the move and unpack. Kim and I didn't have that much stuff, but I still hired a moving company that employed Cal Berkeley college students to do everything for us, which included shoving around and arranging the new furniture that was being delivered to the house. In particular, I was looking forward to sleeping in a king-size bed again.

June was still in the office and complained about having to work for both of us. The trade-off was that I would help her move out of her parents' house on Saturday to occupy our third bedroom.

Sasha kissed me goodbye before she left for work. Actually, Sasha did a lot more than just kiss me goodbye. She met me in the kitchen, whispered in my ear, and eventually yanked my pants down to my ankles while squatting on the floor so she could cram my cock in her mouth. Two minutes after that, her ass was perched on the edge of the kitchen counter with the strap of her panties pulled aside so I could pump my prick in and out of her pussy. I rammed her hard and I rammed her fast, and she bit down on my shoulder to muffle her scream before gasping and pleading for me to fill her once again.

My ex-girlfriend left for work with my sperm soaking into her panties. Well, she tried to leave for work, but just as she got to the front door, I called after her and waggled her stolen iPhone in the air with a smirk. She came back to retrieve it, gave me another passionate kiss, and told me we'd have to do this again.

Kim and I puttered around packing up our last couple of bags and dismantled BJ's toddler bed. The movers weren't due until 10am, so we had some extra time to spare. But just when we sat down on the couch in the living room to watch BJ play with his Christmas toys, Adrienne finally emerged.

"Hey Ben," she said softly, loud enough to get our attention but not so loud as to startle us.

I glanced back over my shoulder and gave her a tentative smile. "Hey ... Good morning."

Taking a deep breath, my gorgeous ex-fiancée tilted her head to the side and gave me a tentative smile of her own. "We should talk. I don't want our last real conversation before you leave to be one that ends with me telling you to fuck off and die."

I nodded and sat up straight, removing my arm from around Kim's back. "Do you want to go somewhere private?"

Adrienne shook her head as she came around into the living room and took a seat on the other couch. "There's nothing I have to say that can't be said in front of Kim. I'll save you the trouble of her interrogating you about it afterwards."

"I don't interrogate anyone," Kim muttered with mild annoyance.

Adrienne chuckled and reached down to pat the top of BJ's head, since he was in reach. My little man looked up at her, smiled, and stood up. A moment later, he climbed into her lap, eliciting a much bigger smile from the buxom blonde as he turned around to put his back to her and continued on playing with his trains, flying them through the air making "chugga-chugga" sounds right there in her lap.

Kim and I smiled at the sight, and Adrienne was grinning too as she gently held his tiny waist in her hands. But a moment later she frowned, staring at the back of his head. And after blinking a couple of times, she shook her head, picked him up, and set him back down on the floor.

BJ looked up at her sadly, wondering why she'd removed him from her lap. But if he minded, he didn't mind for long as pitched forward onto all fours and started crawling across the floor, continuing to "chugga-chugga" his trains toward the TV.

Taking a deep breath, Adrienne looked up at us and gave me a sad look. "I'm sorry, Ben. There are a lot of things I've said in the past few weeks that were very hurtful. I tried to shift a lot of blame onto you for my own shortcomings. I tried to use my perception of you never intending to follow through and marry me as an excuse for my own behavior. Nothing about what you did or did not intend has any bearing on the amount of time -I- spent elsewhere. Nothing excuses my lack of effort to spend more quality time with you, my lack of prioritizing you. Nothing excuses my decisions to chase young pussy instead of coming home to you. That's all on me."

I shrugged. "Nothing excuses MY lack of effort to spend more quality time with you. I got so wrapped up in repairing my relationships with Dawn and DJ that I neglected you as much as you neglected me. -I- didn't prioritize you, either. There's plenty of blame to go around."

She shook her head. "Even when I WAS home, I spent all my time cuddling with Sasha. I could've been cuddling with you."

"I was busy. I was with Kim and BJ a lot when I was at home. They deserve that much."

"I barely ever invited you to go clubbing with me. I always invited Sasha, but not you."

"Because I told you I was over the whole 'seducing hot young things' bit. I was the old fogey who wanted to stay home. Not your fault. I was happy for you to go out there and enjoy yourself – for Sasha to enjoy herself – while you two seduced those hot young things together."

"Still, I could've invited you on those spontaneous romantic getaways. I could've invited you on my international modeling shoots. THOSE you would've enjoyed."

I sighed. "Well, that one I'll grant you. At the same time, I could've ASKED to go with you. I know you would've said 'yes'."

"I would have," she agreed. "And we DID invite you to come to Napa with us."

"You did. I blame myself for that one."

"But you can't blame yourself when -I- took you for granted. I assumed you'd always be waiting for me. I thought screwing like bunnies every chance we got would be good enough to maintain our relationship. It wasn't."

"And I took YOU for granted. After we got engaged, I assumed the rest would take care of itself. I stopped asking you out on romantic dates. I stopped making the effort. And after enough time passed with someone else making the effort to love you the way you deserved, it was only natural for you to fall in love with her instead of me."

"And after enough time passed with me NOT making the effort, it was only natural for you to fall OUT of love with me."

I shook my head. "Nothing excuses me falling out of love with you. You committed to me, my complaints about quality time notwithstanding, but I didn't appreciate that enough. I didn't appreciate just how hard that was, how big of a deal it was for you to make that commitment. And then I went and took a non-crisis like you falling in love with Sasha and made it out to be a deal-breaker. I'm the one who pulled the plug on our relationship, not you."

"And I just let you go when I could've fought harder to save us. I could've demanded you try and make the three-way relationship work. I felt hurt by your apathy. I felt abandoned by my 'rock'. I was pissed off and selfishly thinking only about my pain and anger, so I wound up flying across the world over and over again to avoid you when I should've stuck around to figure out WHY you felt that way. I should've learned from Dawn's and DJ's mistakes. I should've stayed to work things out, but I didn't." Adrienne sighed and shook her head. "You pulled the plug, perhaps, but I didn't make any effort to put the plug back in."

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. "We really fucked up our engagement, didn't we?"

"Completely," she agreed, although she picked her head up. "Still, that doesn't mean I don't love you anymore."

"And it doesn't mean I don't love YOU anymore. I always will. Forever and Always?"

Adrienne gave me a sad smile. "Forever and Always."

Moving off my couch, I sidled over to sit beside her. Adrienne put up a brave face, but she started tearing up as I brushed her bangs back from her forehead and caressed her cheek. And she started crying for real as I leaned forward to kiss her lips.

Just before our lips met, the doorbell rang. Both of us turned in surprise to face the front door, and Kim winced at us before getting up to go open it.

But just before Kim did, I grabbed Adrienne's face and kissed her one last time. She whimpered and flowed back into our liplock, the initial slow burn pace ramping up with greater and greater passion until the nuclear energy took over and nearly knocked our socks off. We were still kissing when the doorbell rang a second, and then a third time.

"Just keep going," Kim said quietly. "They can wait."

I closed the driver's door on the Sienna minivan and took a deep breath. The cavernous background echo of the parking garage had disappeared, and the silence around me added to my sense of finality about the whole situation.

This was it: we were moving out.

I gave Kim a brief smile and glanced over my shoulder to make sure BJ was properly buckled in. My boy grinned at me, always happy to go out for a ride. But as I turned to face forward and reached for the ignition, Kim reached out and touched my forearm to stop me.

"It's not too late, you know," she intoned quietly.

"What are you talking about?"

Kim blinked at me and gestured upwards and to the right with her head and eyes.

"Adrienne?" I queried.

Kim nodded silently.

I took another deep breath and gathered myself. My ex-fiancée had started crying again when Kim, BJ, and I finally left. She very obviously didn't want me to go right then and there, but at the same time, we all knew I should go. We all knew that I would go. She wasn't fighting the move, and I knew she'd accepted the move, but in the moment itself, it was really hard for her to let go.

Shaking my head, I looked at Kim and stated firmly, "We're not going back. The decision's made."

"I'm not talking about just the move." Kim raised her eyebrows and gave me a frank look. "It's not too late for your relationship. Fact is: if you go back up there and ask her to marry you again, she'll certainly say 'yes'."

I snorted. "You say 'fact is' like it's a scientific truth, like 'Fact is: there's concrete beneath our tires'."

Kim stared back at me evenly. "Adrienne's certainty to say 'yes' is just as concrete as the material beneath our tires. Deep down, it's what she truly wants."

"You don't know that."

"I know what I know," she stated matter-of-factly.

I sighed and shook my head. "It's irrelevant. Even IF she'd say 'yes', she'd only be doing so in an extreme emotional state. The thought of losing me terrifies her – we know this. The physical act of me packing my bags and moving out of our shared apartment is making the serotonin levels in her brain go all out of whack, and she's liable to say anything to keep me here. I could ask her to throw away her birth control pills and let me knock her up here and now and she'd say 'yes'. But that doesn't mean it would be the right decision, for either of us."

"You sure about that?"

"You testing my resolve? Making sure that I'm sure this is what I really want to do by throwing this marriage re-proposal thing at me right as I'm about to turn the key in the ignition?"

Kim blinked a couple of times and looked away from me.

"Aha!" I pointed my finger at her.

But Kim turned right back and shook her head. "This isn't a test. It's a genuine question: Are you sure this is what you want to do? It really isn't too late. And if you go up there and ask her to marry you, she WILL say 'yes' and your relationship WILL go back to the way it was before – even better than it was before with both of you wiser about not taking each other for granted."

"It's too soon. We're not ready yet."

"When is anyone ever ready?"

"Why are you pushing this? Do you WANT me to get back together with Adrienne? Is that it?"

"I want you happy. I've ALWAYS prioritized your happiness, haven't I? The two of you are great together."

"We were great together. And we'll always be great together. As siblings. As friends. And eventually again as lovers. But we're not meant to be husband and wife."

Kim frowned and slumped a little in her seat. "She would have made a great wife for you, and eventually a great mother."

I shook my head. "Those aren't things she really wants."

"Yet."

"Why does everybody keep saying that?"

"Because it's true."

"You think it's true, but as smart as you are, you're not clairvoyant. Nobody's clairvoyant – not even Brooke. What I know is true right this very minute is that those are things she DOESN'T want right now. She doesn't want to be my wife, and she doesn't want to be a mother. MAYBE in the future she will, but there's no concrete certainty about that. And I am NOT going to go back up there to ask a woman who doesn't currently want to be a wife or mother to fucking marry me, alright?"

Kim went silent and averted her eyes at my outburst. BJ started complaining from the backseat, and I sighed wearily while rubbing my forehead. Quickly, before anyone could say otherwise, I turned the key in the ignition and started the car.

But before I could shift, Kim muttered, "Adrienne believes that YOU don't want to marry HER. That's the big problem between you."

"Well you know what? The concrete truth is: I don't want to marry her. I love her. I'll always love her, I'll always be there for her, and I'll always be her rock. If she ever really needs me, she knows I'll drop everything in a heartbeat and come running to her aid."

"She does know that. And she does love you just as much. That's why she really WANTS to be everything you've ever wanted from her. Even being your one and only wife."

"But that's just it: I know that if I wanted her to, she'd marry me tomorrow. I know she'd say 'yes'. For me. Because I asked. And because she'd never say 'no'. But I don't want her to say 'yes' just because -I- want her to say 'yes'. I want her to want all those things for herself, not just for me. I can't let her stay with me out of obligation. I could never let Sasha stay with me out of obligation. The two of them genuinely love each other. They genuinely are very happy together, and their relationship has got NOTHING to do with obligation. But me? Sasha felt like she owed me for helping her come out of her shell and discover her true self. Adrienne felt like she owed both me AND my family for taking her in after her father died. That's not the foundation for any relationship. Fact is: the ball's in Adrienne's court. If she really WANTS to marry me, if she really WANTS to be my wife, it'll be up to HER to prove it to me. Beyond any sense of obligation. Beyond her fear of 'losing' me. I want her to marry me because she wants to marry me, not because binding ourselves together legally will give her a greater sense of security. Until then, I'm moving on."

Kim leveled me with a look. "The ball is still in your court. If you really want her, you can have her, just the way she is. SHE is waiting for YOU to prove it. Being with you makes her happier. But you don't want her right now, and that's why she let YOU go. That's why SHE is moving on."

I sighed, nodded, and stared out the front windshield. "So be it. She's moving on, and so am I."

Shifting the gear into reverse, I backed up the van and drove my little family away.

-- FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2008 --

"A little to the right ... a little more ... higher ... aaand there."

I froze in place, pinning the large framed portrait of my little family against the living room wall. Kim stepped forward with a pencil and quickly marked the corners. After she stepped back, I tilted the top of the frame towards my chest and held out my hand. Kim gave me the pencil, and I peered over the top of the frame and tucked the pencil into the gap to mark where the nail hole should be in order to fit the bracket. Then, I set the frame aside, hammered in my nail, and hung up the family portrait, being careful to align the corners with Kim's pencil marks before erasing the pencil marks myself.

Taking a step back, I smiled as I looked at all three family photos lined up in a neat row: Kim's family on the left, my family on the right, and the three of us in the middle. "What do you think, little man?" I asked, turning around to look back at BJ.

My son ignored me, lying flat on his back in the middle of the living room floor with a studious look on his face. This old house still had a popcorn ceiling, and it looked like he was trying to recognize patterns or images in the craggy surface.

I chuckled and shook my head, glancing at Kim. "What's next?"

"Next we take a break," she sighed with relief. "You earned it. We're ahead of schedule."

I sighed with a smile. "Sounds great to me." And I headed for the kitchen to get a glass of water.

A minute later, I slouched on one of the new couches in the living room, drinking my water and catching my breath. It had been a busy two days of moving, unpacking, and assembling new furniture. Friends and family had come by yesterday to help, but socializing with everyone didn't make things any less busy. And even though the little details of decorating this morning weren't nearly as physically taxing as yesterday had been, I was still feeling pretty tired.

"I'm going to take BJ down to the playground," Kim announced as she slung the diaper bag over her shoulders and reached down with one hand, beckoning her son to stand up and join her. "He's been cooped up in here too long."

I sat up straight and set the water glass down on the corner table. "I'll come with you guys."

But Kim held a palm out and gestured with it for me to remain seated. "Relax. Take a break. We'll be back in less than an hour."

I shrugged and sagged back against the couch. Kim brought BJ over to me for a quick peck, one from each of them, and then she carried him out the door.

Two minutes later, the doorbell rang, which I thought was odd because why wouldn't Kim just come right back in? Had she forgotten her phone or something? The door itself popped open a second later, accompanied by the loud knocking of knuckles against the wood. "Ben? You here? Hey!!!" came a voice that definitely wasn't Kim's.

Unlike the old Berkeley house, our new front door wasn't separated from the living room by any kind of hallway. The door opened right up into the living room, so Eden spotted me immediately as she poked her head through the gap.

I sighed as my baby sister walked in, followed by her twin. "This gonna become a habit for you two? Just waltzing in if the door isn't locked? Whatever happened to ringing the doorbell and standing on the porch waiting to be invited inside?"

Eden shrugged. "We're family."

"Special family," Emma chimed in behind her, a salacious grin on her face. Her dainty tongue darted out and licked across her lower lip.

The temperature in the room suddenly got a lot warmer. The girls were dressed appropriately for the weather: tight jeans and form-fitting sweaters, but they couldn't have been any more seductive had they been wearing skimpy lingerie. The sizzle in their eyes, the hungry expressions on their faces, and the way they ... stalked ... me as they entered the house, closed the door behind them, and rather dramatically flipped the deadbolt made their intentions quite clear.

I blinked, surprised, although perhaps I shouldn't have been. While the twins had come to visit and help us unpack last night, there had been a lot of other friends and family in the house – not exactly a situation appropriate for them to seduce me. I'd been quite tired by the end of the evening, and only Kim had spent the night in my bed so we could christen our new home. I should have been expecting the twins to arrive sooner than later today.

"It's a weekday. Don't you two have classes?" I asked, my tongue a little thick as I took deep breaths to mentally gear myself up for the challenges ahead. I wasn't averse to fucking the shit out of them or anything, but I was a little tired and knew that doing so would probably dip into my energy reserves right now.

"We had morning classes, past tense," Eden explained.

"And our next classes don't start until after lunch," Emma continued.

"Plenty of time to celebrate our big brother moving into a house only a few blocks away," Eden stated with a grin as she slid into my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck.

"That is ... if you still want us to help you celebrate..." Emma gave me pouty doe-eyes and a mock frown, all while sliding her hand beneath the hem of her sweater so I could watch the outline of her fingers dent out the fabric as they crawled up her skin and over the round bulge of her left breast.

I chuckled. "We'll probably have to take it into the bedroom. Kim and BJ will be back from the playground in less than an hour."

"Ooh! Our first time on the new big bed!" Emma clapped enthusiastically.

"Sure you don't want to take me right here?" Eden growled while kissing her way across my shoulder and up my neck.

I slid both hands down her sides and grabbed double handfuls of her ass, yanking my baby sister's crotch against my growing erection, but just as I bent to kiss her lips, my phone started blaring in my pocket.

// Where'd you go? I miss you so. Seems like it's been forever, that you've been gone...

I'd actually changed Adrienne's ringtone about a year ago, but on impulse I'd changed it back to this one after she'd flown away to Hawaii with Sasha. The lyric was hardwired to my brain to express the way I missed her, and hearing it again right now instantly killed my sex mood with Eden. I jerked my head away from the horny teenager, used my grip on her ass to slide her onto the couch cushion beside me, and dug my hand into my pocket, muttering, "Sorry, I gotta take this."

Eden groaned in frustration but sat back as I fished out my phone and hit the button to answer it.

Sobbing tears erupted from the receiver.

"Adrienne? What's wrong?" I asked anxiously.

"B- Ben?" she blubbered, sounding confused. "I'm sorry. I ... I know I shouldn't be bothering you, but can you come over here? I need you, Tiger. I really need you."

"What happened? Is everyone okay?" I asked in obvious concern. The twins glanced at each other, recognizing the shift in mood.

"Everyone's fine. Nobody's hurt or anything. Sasha's at work."

"Something big hit the media? A modeling job go wrong?"

"No, nothing like that. I just need you, okay? Can we talk? Can you come over please?"

"I'll be right there." Standing up, I hustled into the bedroom to retrieve my wallet and keys. I glanced down at my attire: old cargo shorts and a crappy T-shirt better suited to housework than for going outside in public, but I didn't really care and didn't want to waste time changing. "I'll be right there," I repeated.

"Thank you. Apologize to Kim for me. I know she needs you to finish setting up house."

"It's fine. We're nearly done anyway. But you may owe the twins one..."

It took a second for Adrienne to get the implication, but she barked a short laugh in surprise and I could practically hear her nodding. "Okay. I'll owe them one."

I'd never returned my keys or access cards to Adrienne's apartment, nor formally announced that I was moving out, so it was an easy matter for me to breeze through the security gate and head up the elevator to the 35th floor without being stopped. Likewise, I was able to fit my key into the door and go right in, although I rapped my knuckles against the wood just like Eden had when she'd barged into my place.

Adrienne was on the couch by the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room when I entered. She looked up and gave me a teary-eyed smile as she slid off the couch, stood up, and opened her arms to me. I swiftly crossed the room while she burst into tears again, and she was full-on sobbing by the time I enveloped her body with my own.

"Shhh ... shhh..." I soothed while stroking her hair and spine, rocking her body side-to-side while hugging her even tighter. "I'm here ... I'm here..."

"I missed you," she whimpered into my shoulder, squeezing me like she'd never let go. Mumbling, she added, "The apartment felt so empty last night knowing you were gone. I even kept the bedroom door open, hoping little BJ would come wandering in first thing in the morning to surprise me that the three of you came back."

Sighing, I gave my ex-fiancée a squeeze and then pulled back far enough to look at her. But her gaze was centered on the middle of my chest, so I used a finger to lift her chin until our eyes met. "I'm sorry, but you're not going to convince me to move back in."

"I know, I know," she muttered with a grimace, though the way she deflated betrayed her dashed hopes. Nodding, she took a deep breath and gave me a stronger look, repeating more firmly, "I know."

Her eyes were big and sad, the golden glow in her hazel irises dimmed. She was trying to be strong but so obviously weak, sad, and worn out. I instinctively brought my lips to hers and gave her a firm, reassuring kiss.

She whimpered and flowed right back into our liplock, cinching her arms around my shoulders and clutching me to her. She took a step back, pulling me with her, until my shin hit the couch and we broke the kiss long enough to sit down together. And then, still crying, she reached for my shoulders to kiss me again.

I didn't know what to say, not that words were needed at the moment. Adrienne was in pain, and feeling lonely, and she clearly needed to feel that I still loved her. I was happy to give it to her, to show her with the passion of my kiss and the fierceness of my embrace that I would always love her, even if the romantic part of our relationship hadn't worked out. So I kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her until her tears dried up and she finally let go of me to take deep breaths and grab a few tissues from the box on the corner table.

"I'm sorry for dragging you all the way out here," she muttered before blowing her nose.

"It's okay. You know I'll always be here for you."

She sighed. "Well you won't always be here for me anymore, but it's nice to think that you're still willing to drop everything and rush over when I call."

"When you really need me, sure. Just try not to abuse the privilege, especially when there are horny twins in my house. Not for my sake, but for yours. Eden in particular might get kinda vengeful if you do this enough times."

Adrienne barked a short laugh and had to blow her nose again. She wiped her eyes with a fresh tissue, took a deep breath, and gave me a frank look. "I didn't even realize I'd called you until you answered the phone. I don't know how to handle this. I don't know how to BE around you anymore. Every time I think about you having moved out, it just crushes me deep down inside. It makes me feel so frustrated, that after everything I went through to get you back in my life, you ended up moving out anyway. I feel guilty as hell for neglecting you, for leading you into this. I wish I could go back in time, reset everything to the day we first moved in here together, and I swear I'd do everything differently."

"Really? Like what?"

She reached her hand out and put it on my knee. Giving me a sad look of regretful sorrow, she squeezed my knee and sighed, "I'd love you the way you deserve. I'd prioritize you the way you deserve. I'd stay home and spend more time with you. I'd stay here in the apartment and wait for you when you were gone. And then maybe you wouldn't have fallen out of love with me."

I pursed my lips and shook my head. "I wouldn't have wanted you to stay in the apartment and wait for me. Someone like you can never be caged. You need to be free, you need to fly, you need to go out and have fun."

"Not if 'being free' costs me being with you."

I sighed and shook my head. "The regret you're feeling is natural, as is the wishful thinking of going back in time to do things differently. But we both know that time-travel isn't possible, and if fixing our relationship were as simple as you spending more time at home so we could be together more often, we wouldn't be broken up right now. The reality is: I've moved to Berkeley, and you've got this place to yourself with Sasha. I'm happy for the two of you, and I wish you both nothing but the best. I'd like to think you wish the same for me, Kim, and BJ."

Blinking fast, Adrienne nodded. "I do."

"I want you happy, but I never wanted you caged."

"You never made me feel caged."

"I know. I worked hard to make sure you didn't."

"But you DID make me feel 'owned'. You made me feel like I belonged to you. That's the part that I really miss."

"You belong to her now."

Adrienne shook her head. "Sasha is my girlfriend, but she doesn't own me. We're equals. We support each other. But you? You owned me."

I pursed my lips again. "You're not a possession to be owned."

"Except that I am. I'm still yours." Leaning forward, Adrienne grabbed both my hands and set them atop my own knees, palms up. She then placed her own wrists into my palms, pushing down to make my fingers reflexively close around them like shackles. And there was moisture in her eyes again as she looked up at me. "When will you understand that 'Adrienne keeps her independence' doesn't apply anymore? When will you understand that this is what I want? Kim plays at being submissive because she likes to have a controlling parental figure in her life to look out for her well-being. Me? I'm a lost soul who wants to feel like I belong to someone. I want to belong to you. I WANT to be your property, your possession. I'm your fish, remember? Ain't no other man ever gonna be fucking YOUR fish! Even if we never get married. Even if you and I are never, ever going to be romantic again, I belong to you. I GAVE myself to you, of my own free will, and that's a decision not even you can ever undo. I already AM yours, Tiger ... Forever and Always. I'll love you till the day I die, and even if one day Sasha and I get married, even if she someday claims my heart, my soul will ALWAYS belong to YOU."

I blinked in surprise, breathing hard from the weight of her words. Adrienne stared right into my eyes with a look of intense emotion, the golden flare back in her irises. She started tugging her left arm free of my grip, and it took me a second to let go of her. But once I did, she reached over to the corner table behind the wadded up tissues and retrieved a familiar black leather collar.

I let go of her right wrist in surprise, and she used both hands to fasten the collar around her neck. Then, sitting erect, she proudly stared at me with a little smirk crawling onto her face as I let my eyes slowly drift across the stitched lettering that read "Tiger's Pet".

"Forever and Always," Adrienne repeated. "This is how I belong to you, how WE belong to each other. Even if you're living in Berkeley while I'm living here. Even if I'm dating Sasha while you're dating ... whomever. This is who I am. THIS is how I need to BE around you. It's the only way that makes any sense to me. Forever and Always, Tiger. Forever and Always yours."

Wrapping her up in my arms, I kissed her.

And the nuclear explosion filled my very being.

"Hit me," Adrienne hummed.

I reached out and spanked her with a resounding [thwack].

"Again," she groaned.

[thwack]

"Again!"

[thwack! thwack!]

"Fuuuuuuuuckkkk..."

Panting for breath and groaning, the beautiful busty blonde bombshell swayed back and forth on all fours, rhythmically thrusting her body back to meet my metronomic thrusts as I pounded my cock in and out of her cunt from behind.

"Hit me!" she repeated.

[THWACK]

"HIT ME!"

[THWACK]

"Again!"

[THWACK!]

"HARDER!"

[THWACK!]

"HARDER!!!"

[THWACK!!!]

"AAAAAAGGGHHHHH!!!" Tossing her hair back, Adrienne howled to the headboard as her forearms collapsed, dropping her chest down onto the mattress while presenting her big round booty up into the air.

I ran my palms over her reddened asscheeks and gripped them with both hands, really driving myself deep into her pussy with each pistoning plunge. Raising my right leg, I planted my foot atop the mattress and used the extra leverage to really hammer the hell out of her, fucking my gorgeous goddess fast and fucking my gorgeous goddess deep.

Fingers scrabbling at the bedsheets, Adrienne groaned and pressed her face into the mattress, mumbling, "Oh gawd ... oh gawd ... oh gawd..." Her litany of ecstatic bliss continued as she remained as she was, pinned down beneath my drilling dick, rapturous with pleasure to finally have me deep inside her body again.

In this position, I was able to reach around and rub her clit while continuing to pound her. It didn't take long for me to get her off again, a fourth orgasm by my count, which she screamed into the bedsheets while I spanked her red asscheeks again.

But after her body went limp beneath me, her legs going wobbly, I swiftly rolled her onto her back, raised her calves over my shoulders, and folded my sweaty supermodel in half beneath me as I slammed my cock into her cunt once more.

"Fuck ... meeee..." Adrienne crooned into my ear, at first passively letting me pound her while she recovered from that last climax. But a minute later she wrapped her arms around the back of my head and added, "Never ... stop ... fucking ... meeee..."

Turning my face, I kissed her cheek and concentrated on clenching my abs to really hammer her. I fucked her hard and I fucked her fast. This was fucking. This had always been our way of "making love". We were no longer fiancé and fiancée. We were no longer boyfriend and girlfriend. But we had always been lovers, and this was the way we belonged together.

"Fuck. Me. Fuck. Me. Fuck. Me," my lover chanted in rhythm with my thrusts. She clenched her abs and bucked her butt off the bed to bounce her crotch off my pelvis, fucking me back as hard as I was fucking her. And when I pushed her shoulders into the mattress and grabbed her buttcheeks to pound her even harder, she growled into my ear and even bit it in her delirious enthusiasm.

She tensed up and squealed when I reached around to press my middle finger against her anus. She tightened her legs around my neck and humped me even harder when I bit down on her neck. And when I groaned that I was about to cum, she grabbed my head, kissed me fiercely, and demanded that I spray my load all over her face.

Grunting at the edge of climax, I reached up to yank my lover's legs down from around my neck. Scooting up her body, I grabbed her big boobs and mashed her titflesh around my throbbing dick, fucking her cleavage with short staccato thrusts down the final stretch.

"Fuck my tits, Tiger!" she urged. "Fuck my tits and hose down my face with your sticky sperm! Cum for me, Tiger! CUM!"

With a roar, I came, thrusting forward one final time and squeezing her massive melons around my shaft until the mushroom head split open and began spitting jet after jet of scalding spunk against Adrienne's neck.

She tucked her chin and opened her mouth, catching the next spurt on her tongue. By then, I lifted myself up and out of her cleavage, taking matters into my own hands as I jacked out the rest of my load all over her pretty face.

"Mmm, baby, mmm..." Adrienne crooned, closing her eyes and smiling beatifically as I splattered her skin. "Cum all over me, Tiger. Mark me as your own. This face belongs to you, Ben. Forever yours. Mark me and claim me and never let me go."

"Fuuuuckk..." I groaned, her words egging me on to call up reserves of semen I didn't realize I had. Two more spurts splattered out, one painting her right eyelid down and across her cheek and the other coating her nose, upper lip, and front two teeth. But then I was spent, and I dropped my left fist onto the mattress to try and hold myself up as I bent over and gasped for air.

Reaching up with both hands, Adrienne kept her eyes closed while blindly searching for my cock. She quickly found it and stroked the shaft still slimy from her pussy juices, and she tugged it down to her open mouth.

I had to bend forward onto hands and knees lest I collapse atop her face. My lover hummed and moaned as she sucked every last inch of my sensitive prick, licking and swallowing until there was nothing left on my penis but her own spit. And only then did she let me go.

I sat back on my heels, surveying my handiwork. Adrienne was COVERED in cum, and I chuckled while muttering, "Gawd damn you look beautiful."

Grinning, but keeping her eyes closed, Adrienne reached out with one hand toward her nightstand. "Get my phone. Take a picture. I wanna send it to Moon."

I laughed but did as ordered. Unfortunately, her phone wasn't on the nightstand, and I remembered it was outside in the living room. I quickly darted outside and came back seconds later with her iPhone in hand. And after snapping off a half-dozen shots of Adrienne's cum-covered face, I got her a few tissues so she could blot it up.

Not that she wanted the tissues right away. Adrienne spent a few minutes licking everything she could reach and using her fingers to scrape up everything she couldn't. Only when there were just bare traces of un-swallowed semen left on her skin did she finally open her eyes and use the tissues to wipe up the remnants. And then she grinned and pulled me down for a quick kiss before rolling off the bed and heading into her adjacent bathroom to wash up.

A minute later, I found myself sitting upright against my ex-fiancée's headboard with two pillows beneath my lower back. Adrienne cuddled herself against me, naked save for her Tiger's Pet collar, her head on my chest and her hands idly stroking my legs and caressing my momentarily dormant dick.

"I love you," she said quietly, her eyebrows knitted as she stared at my chest.

"I know," I replied, staring across the room at nothing in particular.

"I would have married you," she added just as quietly, still caressing my dick.

"I know," I replied, still staring off into the distance. "And you'd still marry me if I asked right now."

"I would," she agreed. "But I still think you'd be happier if you married Dawn."

"Hmm?" That brought my chin down to look at her, and I found Adrienne staring up at me with large, luminous eyes.

"That girl loves you more than life itself. You're the air she breathes – she's said that more than once – and she's more committed to you than ever. I try to convince you to understand how much I want to belong to you. But she has ALWAYS belonged to you, from the very beginning. Even when she went away she still belonged to you, deep down in her heart."

I sighed and shook my head. "You can't possibly know that. The two of you barely spend any time together. Sometimes it feels like my life has always been either Adrienne OR Dawn, and rarely both."

Adrienne blinked as she thought about that, her eyebrows knitted again. "Be that as it may, it's still the truth. I don't have to spend much time with her to know that. You both talk about being better as best friends, but that's only because you're both terrified of losing each other again. Let's face it: even now you're much more scared about losing her than you were about losing me."

I sighed and rubbed her back. "It only feels that way for you because we just went through a breakup, and because I didn't flip out over it. I always knew I wasn't really losing you. I always knew we both still loved each other and would eventually figure things out. But that doesn't mean you matter any less to me than she does."

Adrienne sighed. "I'm not trying to make this about me, or about which one of us you love more or anything like that. You talk a lot about wanting to see me happy. Well -I- want to see YOU happy too. And from where I'm sitting, the road to your happiness leads straight to Dawn."

Taking a deep breath, I cradled Adrienne's head to my chest and stroked her hair. Taking another deep breath, I exhaled slowly and shook my head. "Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not. Maybe Dawn and I are meant to remain best friends. Maybe we're meant to become even more. But I actually don't want to think about her right now. I'm here with you. I'm focused on you. And the only road to happiness I want to walk is the one that leads through you."

Adrienne sighed and snuggled closer against my chest. "I AM happy. I'm lying naked in bed with you, aren't I?"

"For now. But you know I can't stay. I've got things to unpack, a new house to set up, and tomorrow I've got to go move June, too."

"I know, I know," she sighed, hugging me more tightly like she wouldn't let go. "But you don't have to go right this second, do you?"

"What? You're not done with me yet?" I asked with a knowing smirk.

"Yeah, right. I'm a horny nymphomaniac who hasn't gotten any Tiger-dick in a month!" My golden-haired goddess sat up and turned to grin at me. "You've cum all over my face, but I need a trifecta. I'm not letting you out of this room until you fill both my other holes with sticky spunk, you got that?"

I grinned and pecked her nose. "Whatever you need, my Tigress. Whatever you need."