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"Work clothes" to Jennlynn could mean anything from a bikini to a ball gown. When the girls were lined up, the only advantage in getting picked out they might have over the looks they had to begin with was how they dressed, so everyone tried to be a little eye-catching – in fact, more than a little eye-catching and rather hot. The only problem was that what appealed to men changed from time to time and from man to man, and what might be dynamite to one guy was a loser with the next. Most girls changed outfits frequently, trying to find something that worked at the moment, like fishermen might fiddle around with various baits and lures trying to find something that caught the magic of the moment. It was not uncommon for girls to sometimes try six or eight outfits a day; some superstitiously changed clothes between every lineup if they had the time. In a place like Bettye’s, where most of the girls were friends, there was a lot of borrowing and trading around.
As an engineering student, Jennlynn was familiar enough with mathematical probabilities to realize that it all came out in the wash. She could prove it – she’d gotten through the three weeks she’d spent at the Mustang on one admittedly very short, very tight, very clingy, and very low-cut navy blue Spandex dress she had borrowed; she’d done as well as most with it and better than some. She was not immune to the sheer "dress-up" thrill of trying different outfits, although she was less enthusiastic about it than others. She tended to go to outfits that were a little more casual in the daytime and tried for something more elegant and formal in the evenings.
One afternoon not long after Christmas, she tried something that had a new theme to it – a pair of supremely "tight-fittin’ jeans" that looked like they’d been painted on, a western-style shirt, unbuttoned well down below her breasts to show she didn’t have on a bra, a red bandanna tied around her neck, a cowboy hat, and a pair of cowboy boots she’d borrowed from Shirley for the afternoon. She looked like everyone’s dream of a hot cowgirl, and sort of felt like one, too.
It was not the busiest afternoon they’d ever had at Bettye’s. They’d only had two customers come in, and neither seemed to lean toward a cowgirl that afternoon, but Jennlynn figured that the numbers averaged out in the long run so didn’t bother to change.
Along in the afternoon, something a little unusual but not unheard of happened: a mid-thirtyish man and a woman about the same age came in. Shirley and a couple of the girls exhibited knowing smiles, but said nothing; Jennlynn figured that the couple were planning on a threesome, which she could handle and which were more remunerative than the usual one on one. Since she didn’t mind handling women now, it was no big deal. She was a little surprised, though, to see both Claudia and Cindy opt out of the lineup, just leaving her and Tina. Since both Claudia and Cindy did women, Cindy eagerly, she realized that something special must be going on.
As usual, she and Tina introduced themselves, not saying much more than their names, since anything more was considered playing dirty. The woman smiled at both of them, then made up her mind. "Miss Cowgirl," she said, "It looks like you’re ready for a helluva ride. Give him a good one."
Jennlynn smiled and headed off toward the back room, expecting both to follow – but only the man did. Wondering even more what was going on, she led the way to her room to negotiate a price – another custom, this time enforced by law – but negotiations with him were brief. "How much for two hours, open?" the guy asked.
"Five hundred is the house standard," Jennlynn smiled.
"Done," he said. "Maureen will have the credit card up front. She can take care of signing it. I need a shower before we get started, anyway."
"You want to hold on a second, I’ll take one with you," Jennlynn grinned. She headed back out the door and up to the front desk, where Shirley was waiting. "Five bills," Jennlynn told her.
"I’ll take care of it with Maureen," Shirley told her. "Give him a good one, he’s extra special."
"Will do," Jennlynn smiled, and glanced out into the main room. Over in the corner, Maureen was sitting with Claudia and Cindy; the cribbage board was out, and she was shuffling the cards. Weird, she thought, and headed back to the room.
There’s no need to be terrifically salacious and detail the next two and a half hours – time got away from them – but it was at least as intense as that time back in October when she’d broken her long dry spell with the young trucker. This guy was a heck of a lot better. He rated a solid "A" for technique and about an "A-" for endurance; easily an "A+" for intensity, although only about a "C" for general good looks, which Jennlynn wasn’t particularly concerned about anyway. It was, in short, probably the most intense and enjoyable party she’d ever had. As the afternoon was winding down, they lay on the bed drenched in sweat and other bodily juices, when the guy said, "You guys still have a family-style dinner here, don’t you?"
Jennlynn glanced at the clock. "Yeah, in about twenty minutes," she nodded, out of breath from the intensity.
"Let’s take a shower, go have dinner, and if you want we can start the clock fresh after dinner. It’ll be the last chance you’ll have at me, and you’re awful damn good. I propose to enjoy it while I can."
"Works for me, and I can use the break," Jennlynn nodded. "Hey, what’s the deal with you and Maureen, anyway?"
"Oh, she’s my wife," he shrugged. "Long story, and a sad one. Let’s not get into it now, I’ll tell you after dinner."
This definitely ranked in the more-than-odd department for Jennlynn. A guy that good – to have his wife come in, pick out a girl for him, then sit down and play cribbage in the main room with the rest of the girls while he partied – what was going on?
They took a shower that was longer than intended, and more fun, too. Jennlynn definitely needed a break afterward – something that only happened rarely with her. They got their clothes back on and went back out to the dining room as Claudia was serving up halibut steaks with dirty rice, Cajun style.
When the girls had meals together by themselves there were no limits on the topic of discussion, which often ran to sex in one form or another, no big surprise. But when there were customers or guests present, sex was strictly off limits, and once in a while the conversation got a little limited.
Not this time. They hadn’t even introduced themselves in the room; only now did he find out that she was "Rebecca" and he was Sam. Maureen was charming as she sat down across the table while they waited for the others to arrive; her only comment was, "I took Cindy three games running at cribbage, so that made it worth the trip. Rebecca, is this something you do full time?"
"No, ma’am," Jennlynn said courteously. "I’m a student at Caltech most of the time."
"Caltech?" Sam said. "Interesting. What are you studying?"
"Electrical engineering major," she replied. "I’m trying to concentrate in circuitry and microprocessor/machine interfaces. Aviation minor."
"Interesting," Sam said again. "What kind of grades are you getting?"
"Straight A’s, so far," Jennlynn smiled.
"You had much chance to work with the 80486 chipset?" he asked.
"It’s pretty good," Jennlynn replied. "I understand Intel has something hotter on the drawing board, but that’s always the case."
Again, the technical details of the discussion of the next fifteen minutes or so would be boring, except to make the point that each of them discovered the other knew an awful lot about microprocessor/mechanical interfaces and circuit design. In a way, it was enlightening for the other women around the table – they’d known that Jennlynn had a hot interest in sex, a serious interest in aviation, and a general interest in other things, but this was the first time they realized just how technically savvy she was at her main field of study. Which is not to say that Sam and Rebecca didn’t have everyone totally lost in the first thirty seconds.
Fortunately, they both eventually realized that they were off in their own world, and they needed to rejoin the friendly atmosphere around the table. "I suppose that we’d better not bore everyone else here to tears," Sam said knowingly. "You said you’re an aviation minor. I take it that’s your plane outside, then?"
"Yes, I fly every chance I can, especially in the mornings when it’s slow around here. It’s a lot easier than driving up here from Pasadena."
"Maybe I ought to look into that," Sam mused. "It’s a hell of a long haul up here from Phoenix."
"I’ll tell you, I’ve been very glad that Rebecca flies her plane up here," Shirley said. "She saved my grandson’s life with it, back at Thanksgiving."
"That sounds like a story," Maureen grinned.
"Oh, it was no big deal," Jennlynn said shyly. "Shirley and I just happened to be at the right place at the right time."
Between them, Sam and Maureen managed to drag a brief version of the story out of Jennlynn and Shirley, which lasted through the main course. "Interesting mix of skills," Sam opined finally, as Claudia was serving chocolate cake for dessert. "What do you plan to do with it?"
"I’m not sure," Jennlynn said. "Hopefully something that will mix the engineering and the flying. While I enjoy the flying as much as anything I do, I think that having to do it to the exclusion of everything else would make it get old after a while. If I can mix the two and go both ways, that should keep both interesting and lively."
"Are you planning on keeping on doing what you do here, too?" Maureen asked.
"Probably not," Jennlynn temporized. She’d begun to realize that she was going to have to come up with some way to keep her intense sex drive sublimated or satiated somehow. Working at Bettye’s was managing it for now, but how to do it in the future was another issue. "Realistically, I can see how it could cause career problems in the long run," she added.
"Yes, there is that," she nodded. "This is just something to get you through school, I take it?"
"More or less," Jennlynn agreed. "Of course, you never know what’s going to happen. A year ago I never dreamed I’d be doing this to work my way through school." That was pushing the sex talk with guests present about as far as house custom allowed, so she changed the subject. "I take it the two of you have been married for a while?"
"Over ten years," Maureen said brightly. "We have two children. John is nine, and Raylene is seven."
"Good kids," Sam nodded. "A little too early to tell about Raylene, but John shows signs of turning into a real computer nerd."
"He takes after you, for sure," Maureen grinned.
What followed was perfectly normal dinner table conversation, much of it about kids that weren’t present. As it went on, it became even more perfectly clear that to all intents and purposes Sam and Maureen were a normal going-on-middle-aged couple, quite comfortable with each other and with a considerable amount of magic evident between them. This conversation might have been taking place at a nice restaurant or at a dinner party in a suburban home, or maybe even in Bradford, not the dining room of a Nevada parlor house, which was the thing that made it so screamingly surreal.
The normal conversation continued through the after-dinner aperitif, but just as Claudia was starting to clear the table away, a couple guys came in looking for a lineup. Since Jennlynn was already committed, the other girls stood the lineup; Claudia and Tina were the ones picked out. "Guess that means you and I get to do the dishes, Rebecca."
"Oh, I’ll help with them," Maureen offered. "We wouldn’t want to keep Sam and Rebecca from what they’d really rather be doing now, would we?"
"Well, since you put it that way," Sam grinned. "Rebecca, if you’ve had an adequate break, shall we?"
"I’m ready if you’re ready, sir," she said. "Especially considering that the alternative is doing dishes."
"My feeling exactly," he said.
They got up, and he and Maureen shared a big, loving hug before he and Rebecca headed out back again. "Let’s do three hours," he suggested once they got back to the room. "I’m getting to the age where I can’t quite do another session like we did earlier, but that’ll give us the chance for a couple breaks in bed, and maybe we can talk a little."
"Seven and a half?" Jennlynn said. "Oh, let’s knock it down to seven, since we’re going to take some down time."
"No, make it seven and a half, keep it fair," he replied.
It felt even stranger to head out to the main room to settle with Shirley this time and see Maureen hauling armloads of dishes out to the kitchen. Again, it only took a second; Shirley nodded that she’d settle with Maureen some time over the evening.
She walked back into the room where Sam stood waiting. "Are you ready to rumble now?" he said, reaching to unbutton the few buttons of her shirt that were actually fastened.
"I guess," she smiled, reaching to perform the same service for him. "Sam, what the hell is the deal with the two of you, anyway? Your wife is a sweet lady, and I can see that you’re both committed as all hell to each other, so why are you here?"
"We’re here because we are deeply committed to each other," he said. "We’re very much in love. Rebecca, you’ve probably figured out by now that I have a fairly strong sex drive."
"That’s pretty obvious," she said dryly.
"Maureen has none," he said. "In fact, worse than none. She was badly sexually abused as a child, and she told me about it before we got married. We thought we could work it out. The first time we tried to have sex after we were married, she had a screaming fit, broke down in tears and was desperately depressed for days. For a while, it was so bad that I thought she might turn suicidal on me. We’ve had sex four other times, and that was years ago. Each time, she got so drunk beforehand that she was almost passed out, and she was days recovering. The last time, I told her that having her in my life was more important to me than having sex with her, and that I wouldn’t approach her ever again."
"Oh, God," Jennlynn shook her head. "That’s terrible. That makes me feel so sorry for her, and for you."
"Rebecca," he said. "Don’t feel sorry for either of us. That’s why we’re here. It was a problem between us for a while. As I said, I have a very strong sex drive. I can hold it off a while, especially if I know relief is coming, but two months is about my limit."
"I can go a month, if I’m lucky, before I start screaming at people," Jennlynn nodded.
"Then you can imagine how I was after a year," he said. "I’ll be honest, despite my promise to her, it almost broke us up. As luck had it, she got caught with John that last time we had sex, so by then there was a child to consider, too. And we really didn’t want to break up. Fortunately, where I work, we have a saying, ‘Break the paradigm.’ I think we both realized the way to break the paradigm, but it took our company president, who happens to be a good friend, to get us to admit it to each other. So, for eight years, every other month or so, we make a trip to Nevada. Maureen always comes, if for no more reason than to make it clear to her that what I do with you girls is strictly physical, not emotional, and I’m not sneaking around behind her back. That’s why we agreed to let her do the choosing. And we also agreed that I only see a girl once, and never again. Well, unless it’s social, like having dinner with Claudia and Cindy and Shirley tonight."
"You’ve been with them once, so now they’re off limits, right?"
"Exactly," he smiled. "As you will be, after tonight. It’s kind of a shame. Shirley is awful damn good, about the best I’ve ever had, and you’re not far behind her. It’s been a while since I’ve been with someone that good. Fortunately, there are always girls coming into and going out of the business, so Maureen and I have always been able to find someone new."
"Damn, Sam," Jennlynn shook her head. "That’s . . . really heartwarming. There’s an act of love going on in this building, and it’s not what we’re doing back here."
"Don’t you think I realize that?" he said. "I’ve known it for eight years. It leaves me in sheer awe to think about the love that Maureen has for me to let this happen at all. I would much rather make love to her, but I can’t. All the girls together that she’s picked out for me don’t add up to the love that I have for her, or that she’s shown for me."
"I’m . . . just speechless to think about it," Jennlynn admitted.
"As I often am," he smiled. "Now, since this is our last evening together, shall we make it a good one?"
"You’re damn right," Jennlynn smiled. "You’re getting the best I have. Maureen deserves it."
They used the full three hours and then some; at the end, they were both exhausted. As far as Jennlynn could tell, she’d finally run him about as dry as he could get, which was good because she’d never been so all-fucked-out in her life. She’d used every bit of experience she’d had on him, everything that Shirley and the other girls had told her about or hinted at, and he’d showed her some things that she’d never dreamed, too. "Think you can go another round?" he asked.
"I will if you want me to," she said in an exhausted voice. "I never thought I’d see the day that one man could fuck me until I’m sore. First time for everything, I guess."
"We probably ought to give it a pass," he said. "Mostly because I don’t think I could survive another one either. I’m not as strong as I was when I was younger. Can I use your shower?"
"Sure, I stink too," she smiled. "I think I’ll just rinse off, then go soak in the hot tub for a bit."
"That sounds good to me," he smiled. "Would you mind if I joined you?"
"Sure, whatever you want," Jennlynn smiled, then got an idea. "Hey, you think maybe Maureen might like to come and join us?"
He shrugged. "I don’t know," he said. "Sometimes when we’re in a place in the summer that has a pool, she’ll go swimming to help kill the time. We can ask."
They found Maureen out in the main room, staring at the fire and chatting desultorily with Shirley. "I take it you had a good time?" she smiled.
"Very good," Sam grinned, and asked about the hot tub.
"I don’t know," she said tentatively. "I suppose you do nude in the hot tub, and I try not to wave my body in Sam’s face. I suppose he told you why."
"He did," Jennlynn agreed. "And I think you may be the most awesome woman I’ve ever met because of it. If you’d like to join us, I’m sure I can find a swimsuit for you."
"Probably a string bikini that doesn’t cover what a handkerchief would," Maureen snickered.
"Well, yeah."
"For once, I don’t mind," Sam smiled. "Even nude. Rebecca here has just about cleaned me out."
"All right, I’ll do it," Maureen smiled. "But Rebecca, I think I will trouble you for that swimsuit though, just on general principles."
A few minutes later, the three of them were in the hot tub, all wearing swimsuits; both Sam and Jennlynn had an arm around Maureen. "Maureen, you’re an awesome woman," Jennlynn told her. "I envy the hell out of you, both of you, to have a love like the two of you have. I can’t imagine something like that ever happening to me."
"Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it’ll work out some day," Maureen offered hopefully.
"Maybe," Jennlynn sighed. "I doubt it, but maybe. I can’t imagine how lucky the two of you are to have each other. It’s like I told Sam earlier. There is an act of love going on here, and it wasn’t what we were doing."
"I can tell that you were very good for Sam, and I thank you for it," Maureen smiled. "You strike me as a rather extraordinary woman yourself, and I hope things work out for you."
Over the next few weeks, Jennlynn often thought about Sam and Maureen, and the hours they’d spent together – especially the hours the three of them had spent out soaking in the hot tub under the chill of the Nevada desert night sky. Despite the hours that Jennlynn had spent having passionate sex with her husband, there wasn’t a hint of jealousy in Maureen. She was such a nice person, he was so nice, that it seemed a real shame that they’d been dealt such a lousy hand by life. But if any couple had taken a lemon and made lemonade out of it, there they were, and it was clear that they had a powerful bond. They were nice people, and Jennlynn knew she’d be happy to do him again if she were asked – but she realized that it would never happen, and she knew she’d never be able to ask him herself, and even trifle with that powerful bond he had with his wife.