When the driver stopped in front of the address I’d given him, I pointed at a three-story brick building with lots of bay windows. “I’m thinking about buying this place,” I said. “Would this be a good area for our new people to live?”
“I honestly don’t know this part of town very well,” Samuel admitted. “But it’s fairly close to downtown, and it’s known for being diverse,” he said, pointing to the Ethiopian restaurant a little down the street, then the Thai restaurant next to it. “There’s a bus stop there on the corner, and we’ve passed two grocery stores in the last few blocks. I think this is a neighborhood I would be comfortable living in, so it should be good for them.”
“I’m not going to house them all in the same place,” I said. “So maybe, if Robbie and Joseph have a home that’s acceptable, I’ll just help them out wherever they are. If they’re happy there, why shake things up? Maybe I’ll just set the two others up in their own apartments here.”
“This place is only about twenty minutes from Donny and Sana’s place by car, so they could come and check and help the new ones gets settled easily enough,” Samuel added.
“Yeah, that was a consideration when I was looking at properties,” I replied, taking one last look at the old apartment building.
Getting out of the car, I told the driver to take Samuel home. “I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow,” I said. “Emmy will be with me.”
“She will?” he asked, surprised, his dark face lighting up in delight. “I’ll be there early!”
Watching the Mercedes sedan pull away, I thought about the wisdom of keeping the Night Children more or less where we found them, rather than bringing them all to a single city. The idea was that we wanted people to see them out in public, and this seemed to be the best plan at the time.
Musing on the topic, I texted Mia to come to the address there on Cherry Avenue and let me know when she arrived.
A simple “On my way” was the immediate response.
Slipping my phone into my pocket, I rang the buzzer for the unit I knew was occupied by the on-site manager. A woman’s voice asking, “Can I help you?” came from the small speaker.
“My name is Leah Farmer,” I said. “We had an appointment this morning.”
“Oh, right, O.K.,” said the woman. “Give me just a minute.”
I waited outside on the front steps, just looking up and down the street and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood. On maps, Cherry Avenue had looked like a fairly main street, but Google Street View had showed me that it was mostly residential in that area. It was an older district with plenty of Craftsman-style bungalows, some in better shape than others. Mixed in were smaller apartment buildings like the one I was standing in front of, and a few shops and restaurants as well.
It seemed to be working-class but not necessarily poor, which was perfect for our new recruits.
When the front door opened a middle-aged woman in faded jeans and a tie-dyed T shirt stuck her head out. “Leah Farmer? I’m Skye Blue.”
Thinking ‘Of course you are’, I held out my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
She must have seen the look on my face, because she said, “Blue is my married name. I was born Skye Rosenberg.”
I followed her inside to the ground-floor right rear apartment. The hallway and staircase looked nice, the paint and the tile flooring in good shape.
“To be honest, this is nicer and lighter than I expected,” I said, looking up at the varnished wood balustrade.
“My husband,” Skye said with a shrug. “He keeps the place running.”
“If I do buy the place,” I said, “I’ll definitely want to keep you guys on.”
“Thanks!” Skye said, gesturing for me to enter her apartment.
The place was absolutely classic hippie, with more than just a passing aroma of weed and incense. I took a seat on the low couch, amused by how Skye fit the Pacific Northwest stereotype so well.
“Right, so the management company told me that they want to sell the building,” Skye said, bustling around the small kitchen. “Would you like some tea? I have mint, chamomile, and Oolong.”
“Chamomile, please,” I said. I don’t think I’d ever had chamomile tea in my life, but why not give it a try?
“I own a property management company, and we’re looking to expand here in the Seattle area,” I said. “We have three apartment buildings and a few single-family homes so far, mostly in the northern half of town. This place came up for sale, and I’m thinking of adding it to the portfolio.”
“But you’d keep me and Jasper on?” she asked.
“I don’t know what arrangement you have with Rainier,” I said, referring to the selling management company. “But we have a lot of on-site managers and our system is free rent and a small salary, dependent on the number of units under management. You’d have a general property manager you’d report to at our headquarters down in San Jose, since we don’t actually have a local office here yet.”
“And how about the work that Jasper does around the place?” Skye asked, handing me a coffee cup and saucer. I grabbed the little tag and dipped the teabag up and down a few times, then set it on the coffee table to cool for a minute.
“Again, I don’t know what your current arrangement is, but we’d pay him for any work done. The way I look at it, anything he can do saves us from calling in a contractor, right? Well, he should get appropriate compensation.” Raising the cup to my lips, I could tell it was still too hot, so I blew on it a bit. “If you don’t mind me asking, and if you tell me it’s none of my business, that’s fine- but what do you and Jasper do, besides manage and work on this place?”
“I teach music and play in a band, and Jasper is a counselor and teaches shop at the high school,” Skye said. “He also makes these bowls,” she said, pointing at a large wooden decorative bowl on the coffee table.
I picked it up, surprised at how light it felt, and how thin the wood actually was.
“This is really pretty,” I said, meaning it.
“He sells them at a lot of the local crafts places around town,” Skye said. “They’re food grade- you could use that as a salad bowl, for example. You can wash it- by hand, of course- and all you ever need to do to keep it in good shape is rub it down with a little bit of vegetable oil every now and then.”
I set it back down, wishing there was a way I could take one with me, but of course I wasn’t headed home after Seattle.
“That really is nice,” I said. “He’s talented.”
“Thanks,” Skye replied.
I took a sip of my chamomile tea, which tasted pretty much like every other cup of tea I’ve ever had. “So, we’d keep you guys on, and pay you to manage and Jasper to do any work he could. As units come up vacant, we’d take the opportunity to refresh them, too, and if he could do a lot of that work, we’d be happy to pay him standard rates for his time.”
“So you could bump the rents up?” Skye asked, a bit suspicious.
“Maybe a little bit,” I admitted. “But I don’t want to try to get above the local market. No, I’m not talking about granite countertops and travertine shower stalls, I just mean that we at Royal Holdings aren’t known for being, well, slumlords. We aim for the mid market, but provide high value in the segment.”
“Fair enough,” she said, leaning back. “So, and don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re telling me all this, but why are we even talking?”
Smiling at her direct approach, I said, “I wanted to see the building in person, and I wanted to meet you. You and Jasper are part of the package, and if you tell me you’ll walk if we buy the building, it changes my position.”
“It’s nice to be thought of as a commodity, to be bought and sold,” Skye said wryly.
“No, not a commodity, an asset. A value-add. According to the guys at Rainier, you were here when they bought the building thirteen years ago, and they’ve never had a single issue with you two. In my business? That’s gold. If you agree to stay on I’m much more likely to proceed with the purchase, knowing that there’s a steady hand at the helm.”
“Interesting,” Skye said, a pensive look on her face. “How soon do you need to know?”
“I’m not the one creating any sort of deadline,” I said. “If I don’t hear back from you one way or another I may or may not take the deal, but it could be that some other investor swoops in while I’m on the fence.”
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“Right,” Skye said.
Changing the subject, I said, “You know, my wife’s in a band, too.”
“It still sounds strange to me to hear women talk about their wives,” Skye admitted. “I’m a little bit glad every time that things have changed the way they have, but I still get, I don’t know, a kind of little thrill, I guess? Every time.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve gotten used to it, but for a long time I got a sort of rush every time I mentioned ‘my wife’,” I said, making air quotes.
“What kind of music does she play? What are her instruments?”
“She’s in a rock band. She plays guitar and sings,” I said.
“You’re from San Jose, right? Does her band ever tour? Is there any chance I might have seen them?”
“We used to live in San Jose, but we’re in LA now,” I replied, sipping my tea. “Her band is going to do a national tour in a couple of months. If you want, I could get you tickets, maybe backstage passes, if you’re interested. I think they’ll be playing at the baseball stadium, if I remember correctly. Safeco Field, I think it’s called?”
“You’re kidding me,” Skye said, sitting straight. “They’re national recording artists?”
“The Downfall,” I replied.
“Emmy De Lascaux is your wife? Seriously? Holy shit. Emmy- and let me tell you this from the perspective of somebody who’s taught guitar for over thirty years now- she’s a genius. I mean that. She… Wow. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Would you like to meet her?” I asked.
Just then, my phone buzzed in my pocket. “Parked” was the message from Mia.
“Ten minutes,” I replied.
Seeing Skye’s quizzical look, I said, “My ride just arrived. I just told her I’d be out in ten.”
“Oh, well, shit,” Skye said. “You wanna take a quick look at the one empty unit we’ve got right now?”
“Sure, sounds good,” I said, standing up.
Back at the hotel, Emmy was still in bed, but all by herself. Looking around, I heard the shower running in the suite’s bathroom. I peeked in and saw the shape of Angela through the fogged glass of the shower enclosure. I watched for a little bit, tantalized by the blurry, indistinct but distinctly sexy shape under the hot water.
When Angela turned her back to the shower head to rinse her hair, she spotted me by the door. She wiped away some of the fog to get a better look, then smiled when she saw it was me. She stepped forward and kissed the glass, slow and sexy, brushing the glass with her breasts. Most of her was blurry from the fogged glass, except for her saucily smiling face where she’d wiped the moisture away, and of course, her two boobs, sliding side to side. She could see the effect it was having on me, so she gave me a wink and turned around, rubbing her amazing bottom against the glass and swaying so the round globes moved hypnotically.
Needing no more of an invitation than that, I quickly kicked off my shoes and socks and dropped my pants like a bad habit. I’d just thrown my shirt to the side when I felt delicate hands hook under the bottom edge of my sports bra to help me lift it up. Once it was off and I was totally nude Emmy wrapped her arms around me and kissed my back.
“What are we waiting for? We should join Angela,” she said.
“That’s the plan, baby, that’s the plan,” I agreed, turning around to give her a good morning kiss.
A moment later we were all enjoying the hot water, soap, and each other in the roomy shower stall.
“This is the way you two must wake me up every day,” Emmy declared as Angela and I trapped her in between us, the soap allowing us to slip and slide against her lithe body.
“That sounds like a good plan,” Angela said, trapping Emmy’s lips in a kiss. “I’d be happy to do this every day.”
As good as the soapy time was, we did eventually get out and dry off. I collected my clothes from the floor and brought them into the bedroom as I followed my two lovely naked wives out of the bathroom.
Sitting on the bed and watching the two of them, I said, “You know, I really hate it when you guys do that.”
“Do what?” Angela asked, puzzled.
“Put clothes on,” I replied, making Emmy laugh in that pretty way of hers.
“Do you like it better when we take them off?” Emmy asked, starting a sexy striptease dance. Dressing, she’d only gotten as far as her underwear, so her impromptu lap dance really didn’t involve any actual stripping, just teasing with pulling on her thong’s waistband or dropping a bra strap off her shoulder. Still, it was very erotic, and I found myself heating up again.
Angela had crawled across the bed and was kneeling behind me, her knees on either side of my hips and her naked boobs pressing into my shoulder blades. As Emmy continued to dance, Angela’s hands slid up the sides of my ribs and cupped my still-bare breasts, pinching and squeezing while she nuzzled my ear.
“You guys are going to send me right into beast mode,” I said, not complaining at all.
“I love your beast mode,” Angela whispered into my ear.
“It is the very best mode,” Emmy agreed, the cups of her lacy bra just barely holding on for dear life as she swayed.
“I am completely into this,” I said, “But if we’re going to get anything done today we’d better stop now.”
“But what if this is what we want to get done today?” Emmy asked as she turned her back on Angela and me and reached back and unhooked her bra.
“I’m with Emmy,” Angela said, nibbling on my shoulder. “It’s been too long.”
“What, since the shower we just took?” I protested, but to be honest, I was perfectly O.K. with not going shopping.
“That was just the foreplay,” Angela replied, pinching my nipple with one hand while the other slid down my belly.
I glanced up from Angela’s hands in time to see Emmy slide the waistband of her thong panties off first one hip, then the other. She slid the tiny little garment all the way down to her ankles by bending at the waist as she lowered them, rather than simply letting them drop.
Still bent all the way over, Emmy gave me and Angela a very saucy upside-down smile from between her ankles. She wrapped her hands around the back of her calves, then slowly slid her hands up her legs, drawing our eyes up to where her long legs made an ass of themselves.
This was my breaking point- now there was no way we were leaving that hotel room for the next few hours.
I stood up, pulling myself out of Angela’s grasp. I grabbed Emmy’s hips and slid one arm around, scooping her up off the ground by her waist. She shrieked in surprise and delight as I swung around and tossed her onto the big king-sized bed. I leapt up and straddled her, my knees on either side of her hips.
Emmy was playing along, wriggling and trying (somewhat weakly) to escape. I caught her wrists and pinned them to the bed above her head and lowered my face down to hers.
“Now I have you right where I want you,” she said, her breathing ragged.
I couldn’t help but laugh, and in my moment of distraction Angela pushed me over and off Emmy. The two climbed all over me, doing their best to pin me down as the three of us wrestled naked on the bed.
Eventually I let them win, happy to be buried under their bodies. Ironically, we’d ended up in almost the reverse of the position we’d started in. Emmy was astride my chest, holding my wrists above my head, her breasts hanging tantalizingly close to my face.
Seeing that I was about to take one of her nipples in my mouth, Emmy sat up a little straighter. A wicked gleam in her eyes, she slid farther up, maneuvering herself until she straddled my face- exactly where I wanted her.
While I put my lips and tongue to work, another pair of hands pulled my knees apart, gently roaming up and down my inner thighs, tickling me with anticipation.
I freed my wrists from Emmy’s grip to take hold of her hips so I could move her exactly as I needed to for best effect. I didn't just want to eat Emmy- I needed to do it.
Angela, meanwhile, was busy slipping first one finger, then two, stroking my clit with what must have been the pad of her other thumb. It felt amazing- she’d really learned how to hit just the right spots. She had become such a talented lover in the year since she switched sides that it was hard to even remember her first few times and how awkward and self-conscious she’d been in bed.
Emmy, meanwhile, was thrashing around in ecstasy as I worked her in exactly the way that I’d learned long ago sent her wild. As much as it was delicious torment, Emmy couldn’t escape my grip as I continued at just the right speed to keep her teetering on the edge for as long as I could. Feeling my own orgasm rapidly approaching, I finally showed Emmy some mercy and finished her off. She collapsed in that boneless way of hers as she climaxed, falling in a heap. If I didn’t still have a hold on her she probably would have fallen off the bed with her loss of muscle control.
Once Emmy was lying safely on the bed next to me I looked down to see what Angela was doing, only to see her bright blue eyes shining up at me from her face buried between my legs. All this time I’d thought she was fingering my clit it was actually her pretty pink tongue as she fingered me relentlessly.
The sight of her down there, looking pleased with herself, was enough to send me over the metaphorical edge with an orgasm that could be measured on the Richter Scale.
As I felt the aftershocks subside I looked down at Angela, who was kneeling between my legs, proud of herself for what she’d just done.
“I have conquered the beast,” she gloated, raising her arms in a victory salute.
“But not before the beast devoured me completely,” Emmy said in a languid voice.
“You know what?” I asked, reaching down to take Angela’s hands in mine.
“What?” Angela asked.
“I’m still hungry!” I growled, suddenly pulling her up on top of my body.
Angela squealed in delight as I rolled us over so I was on top, then started working my way south, kissing a path down her body.
“Oh, no!” she cried, draping an arm across her forehead. “The beast has me!”
“Yes I do,” I said in a deep rumbling voice. “You are mine, you tasty little morsel. And now I’m going to gobble you up!”
“Oh, no!” she wailed again, obligingly parting her legs to let me sample her moist, tender flesh.
Angela was so aroused, so wet, it was a true feast for me. I’d long gotten used to playing with her little piercing with my tongue when I ate her out, but the simple truth was that Angela was just much easier to navigate than Emmy’s little innie.
After a little while, when I realized that I was no longer hearing Angela’s cries of mock dismay, I glanced up to see that Emmy was just as busy plundering Angela’s mouth as I was doing to her pussy. Emmy’s hand was squeezing Angela’s breast, pinching and gently tugging on the little gold barbell adorning the rosy pink nipple.
Pleased that Angela was getting her fair share of both of our attention, I went back to sliding my tongue up and down between those vivid pink folds.
Sometimes sex was just physical fun and sometimes it was an expression of tender love. This had started out the first, but was quickly turning into the second as I slowed down and became more tender in my efforts. I started mixing in gentle kisses on Angela’s labia and hot breaths across her mound to go along with light touches of the tip of my tongue on her pink pearl. I threw in the occasional broad, flat lick from the bottom of her slit to the top for variety, too, just to mix things up.
My hands roamed all over her thighs, her hips, and her amazing abs, too, but gently, keeping a light touch. I wanted her to feel loved, not merely fucked.
Glancing up, I saw that Emmy had her arm under Angela’s head, helping prop it up as the two watched what I was doing.
“Enjoying your meal?” Emmy asked, teasing.
“Very much,” I replied, smiling up at the two, knowing my face was absolutely covered in their nectar. “This is the very finest dining any beast could ever ask for.” To prove my point, I dropped my tongue down to Angela’s entrance, sliding my tongue in far enough to slip past the opening, then drew the tip up, up, ever so slowly, all the way to her golden barbell. I captured it between my lips and gently tugged on it, eliciting a gasp of pleasure from the beautiful woman that I was proud to call mine.
Later, the three of us cuddled together in a sweaty heap. Our limbs entwined and our hearts beat together, blissful in the afterglow.
“Can I tell you guys something?” Angela asked after a while.
“Always,” Emmy assured Angela, stroking her back.
“You know when I said I was the happiest I’ve ever been? Like, a few months ago?”
“Yes?” Emmy replied.
“I’m even happier now,” Angela said. “I want us to be like this forever.”