Megan

Tuesday morning it quickly became apparent that it was not going to be a good day for writing. I was squirrely and unfocused, and of course Hope and Joy picked up on that. I got them out the door on time, but just barely. I decided to run up to my favorite coffee shop, up by the campus, and then head out someplace that would give me space to think.

I caught Espress Yourself in a bit of a lull, so I didn't have long to wait in line. I ordered a venti tiramisu cold brew—tiramisu syrup in the coffee and some sort of cold foam on top, better than what Starbucks does, with a dusting of cocoa powder—and sat down to people-watch and eavesdrop. There were a lot of people there, but there wasn't a lot of conversation, so after a few minutes I sat back and closed my eyes, drinking my coffee and letting my mind wander.

"Mr. Andrews?" asked a surprised female voice. I opened my eyes to see Isabella standing next to my table holding a drink and wearing a Victorinox laptop backpack. I grinned happily at her. "I've never seen you here before," she said.

"Do you need to leave, or can you join me?" I asked, gesturing at the table.

"I—sure, I can join you," Isabella said, putting down her drink. She carefully slipped off the backpack and set it on the floor, then slid into a chair. "I've never seen you here before," she said again.

"Haven't you?" I asked lazily. "How would you know? You only met me last week."

"I think I would have recognized you," Isabella returned stubbornly.

"Maybe so, maybe no," I replied. "It's not like you get a good look at everyone in the place unless you're trying for one."

"True," she conceded.

"But this might be the first time we've both been here at the same time," I admitted. "I don't spend

that

much time here; I come here often, but I rarely stay and hang out. So," I went on, changing the subject, "you here to get some work done?" Isabella nodded. "One of your lit classes?"

"Not exactly," she told me. "It's a history class, but it's cross-listed with the English department and I can count it toward my major."

"Oh," I said, sitting up and leaning forward a little. "Interesting. What is it?"

"It's a new upper-level course called

History, Fiction and Truth

," Isabella said. "We read works of historical fiction and study the period they're about, then compare and contrast. The prof's field is American history, so it's all American stuff, no

Wolf Hall

or anything like that. So, like, we read

The Crucible

and studied the Salem Witch Trials—and also McCarthyism, looking at what was going on that Miller was reacting to. We read William Styron's novel about Nat Turner. That sort of thing. The prof's basic thesis is that really good historical fiction can be truer than the best history because the writer's imagination can go deeper than what we can prove."

"Very interesting."

"It has been," Isabella agreed happily. "And then for our final paper, we have to pick a work on our own and do the same thing with it. So, someone's doing

The Scarlet Letter

, someone else is doing

The Killer Angels

—actually, someone's doing one of your novels, too."

"Huh," I said reflectively, sitting back in my seat. "I don't belong in that company. Not Hawthorne, certainly, and I don't think Shaara, either. I'm not likely to ever win a Pulitzer."

"Whether that's true or not," Isabella replied diplomatically, "Jay has been really happy with his choice. He says you've given him a lot of good material to work with."

"Which one is he doing?" I wondered.

"

The Ballad of Tippecanoe

," she told me.

"Well, I'm glad it's served him well. I enjoyed writing that one; Tecumseh and the Prophet are both interesting characters. What are you doing?"

"

Hamilton

," Isabella replied with a gamine grin. "It wasn't on the prof's list—I had to talk her into it. She finally agreed, but she was firm that I couldn't just do the musical and Chernow's book, and if she felt I was relying too much on Chernow, it would come out of my grade."

"You're obviously feeling good about it," I observed.

"I am," she agreed. "The book about the musical has been a real help, because Miranda's wide-open about his creative process. I'm already proud of this paper, and I can't wait to see what she makes of it."

I finished off my drink. It was time to get moving. "Well, Isabella, I wish you well finishing your paper, in every confidence that you would do well regardless of me." I grinned at her; she grinned back. I stood up and gathered my stuff. "I need to have you in to babysit soon so the girls get a chance to meet you."

"And then stay after to do a different kind of sitting?" she asked, her voice low, her grin hungry.

"Why, Isabella, I have no idea what you could possibly mean by that," I replied wryly. Her grin transmuted to a smirk. "Wicked woman," I added in a low voice, earning myself a smile that abruptly redirected my bloodflow from my upper head to my lower one. "I'll see you soon."

"I look forward to it."

*****

It was obviously "right place, right time" day: I walked out of the coffee shop and right into Nia. Not

quite

literally, but it was a near-run thing. Her face lit up. "Mr. Andrews! Sweet! I was going to text you, but now I can just ask you—I'm in a writers' group with some other girls on campus, and I was hoping you'd be willing to come and talk with us at our next meeting."

"Depending on when you all meet, I can probably do that," I said.

"We meet on Saturday mornings at 9, in 421 McCabe Hall," Nia said promptly.

"That should be fine," I told her. "My wife will be home, and the girls will no doubt be up, but they shouldn't be doing anything requiring extensive supervision."

"Thanks, Mr. Andrews!" Nia burbled. "You're wonderful. I'll text you the information, too, just to be safe. I need to get some coffee and get to work, but I'll see you Saturday!" With that, she was through the door and gone.

*****

Megan Ivy was my last scheduled interview. She was the oldest candidate, a week older than Nia, but in most respects she could have been 14. She had a sharp-featured, foxy face, rose-gold rectangular wire rims, long blonde hair that reached past her shoulders in frothy curls, and a full set of braces with hot-pink rubber bands. She was short and slender, with a runner's tight little bubble butt. The only thing about her that didn't fit that picture was her nice full pair of tits. She wasn't trying to show them off when she came to my door, but they were easy to appreciate all the same.

Like almost all the young women who had applied to work for me, Megan had an academic record which bespoke both considerable intelligence and a strong work ethic—even, in her case, a relentless one. "I started off pre-law," she told me, her clear, expressive soprano voice confident, "but I didn't like the culture of the program."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"There was a real arrogance about the profs I had, and a lot of the students, and a strong ethos that you're supposed to sacrifice your life to the firm that hires you," Megan said, wrinkling her nose in displeasure. "It didn't appeal to me. I guess I was too much of an idealist about the law, but I was thinking of a legal career as a way to pursue justice and defend people who've been screwed over. I wanted to bring healing. So I looked around and ended up declaring a major in forensic psychology—it's a joint offering of the psych and criminal-justice departments."

"I remember when they started offering that degree," I commented. "It was the third in the nation, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, behind Purdue and—what, Southern New Hampshire University? I hadn't even known that was a thing," Megan supplied with a giggle. "A lot of people seem to have missed the press release on that one, but I'm not surprised

you

paid attention."

"Oh?" I asked, unsure what she meant.

Megan giggled delightedly. "Oh, I bet you've heard this from all the girls you've interviewed, but I've read all your books, too. I knew it was you when I applied. I just didn't want to—oh, I don't know—go all fan-girl on you, I guess."

I laughed in equal delight. "Some of those I've interviewed have been fans, some have never heard of me, and at least one of the latter had a roommate who was a huge fan of mine and gave her a really hard time about it. The case that most amused me was a girl whose roommate had been after her all year to read my books; I ended up autographing all her roommate's books and one for her, too. She's a big fan now, at least of my mysteries." I smiled and shook my head. "But you know, I take it all in stride. I heard a story once that stuck with me—any chance you're a fan of

Law & Order

?"

Megan looked at me in surprise. "I am, actually," she admitted. "My dad was a

huge

fan of the original series—he'd watched it from the very first episode. I started reading mysteries and police procedurals when I was a kid; I talked him into letting me stay up late on Wednesday nights so I could cuddle up and watch it with him. For years my bedtime was 8:30 for six days a week and 11 pm on Wednesdays. I loved the show, and I loved the daddy time even more. I miss him," she ended softly.

"What happened, Megan?" I asked gently.

"He died five years ago of pancreatic cancer," she told me. "It was really ugly . . ."

Without thinking, I pulled her close; she snuggled in to me. I held her for several moments, then let her go when she started to shift. "Thank you, Mr. Andrews," Megan said quietly. She sighed. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"Huh?" I looked at her for a moment before my brain reconnected. "Oh, right. Yeah, I saw a clip of Epatha Merkerson talking about Jerry Orbach." Megan's face lit up. "She talked about going out to lunch with him and Benjamin Bratt and Jerry not being able to eat because people kept coming up to talk to him. When she pointed out to him that his lunch was getting cold, he said, 'Yeah, kid, but these are the people who make us. You can always heat your lunch up; these are the people who make us.' I've never forgotten it. He was right, and I always try to remember that . . . especially as I don't have one-millionth the number of fans

he

had."

"Lennie Briscoe was my favorite," Megan said happily. "I'll never forget the day I found out he was—well, Jerry Orbach was—Lumière in

Beauty and the Beast

. It blew my mind."

That made me laugh again. "I hear you, Megan, I hear you. But yeah, if your mental picture of the law was formed by Dick Wolf and his writers, there are certainly a lot of bad actors over the decades of the various shows, but on the whole, that's definitely a bright-side view of the legal system."

"Truth," Megan replied, nodding. "I was aiming for the defense half of the equation rather than the prosecution half—that fit me better—but there were plenty of heroic figures on that side of the courtroom, too. I wanted to be someone like Lanie Stieglitz."

I grinned at her. "I get that. Tremendous character—they should have used her more. Tremendous actress, too. She was another example of Wolf's fondness for Broadway performers."

"I didn't know that," Megan said.

*****

Like all the other applicants, Megan was thrilled by the pool, the guest suite, and the idea of using the hot tub in the master suite. She spent more time than most looking around the girls' rooms, and more time than anyone but Melody (and maybe Kylie) looking at our kids' books. She had a few recommendations for me, including a trilogy of wordless books called

Journey

,

Quest

, and

Return

, by one Aaron Becker, and an Australian book called

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge

. I made sure to write down the titles.

Megan didn't say anything sexual during the tour, but she was clearly a physically expressive young woman; she stayed quite close to me as I showed her around, with lots of little touches. I figured when we sat down to talk, she would be receptive to being seduced, but nothing would happen if I didn't. I was quite wrong. When I asked her, "What sets you apart from other applicants?" she leaned close to me and said in a low voice, "I'll let you do anything you want to me."

I swallowed hard. "Anything?"

"Anything," Megan replied firmly. "And then I'll ask you to do things to me that you haven't

realized

you want to do. Has even one of the other girls given you her ass?"

"Other girls?" I responded weakly.

"Come on, Mr. Andrews," Megan snorted. "It's obvious you'll only hire someone who wants to fuck you as much as you want to fuck her. Have you fucked any of their asses?"

"No, I—"

"Has your wife given you her ass?" she pressed.

"No—actually, she—"

"I'll let you make me your little three-hole whore," Megan purred. "In fact, I'll beg you for it. I'll beg you to fill each and every one of my tight holes with your cum, again and again and again until it's leaking out my ears. I'll beg you to fuck my pussy harder with a buzzer in my ass, then ask you to ream out my ass with my pussy vibrator going. And I keep my ass very, very clean, and I'm on the pill, so you can do it all to me bareback. In fact, I douched earlier today, on a whim, so you could take my ass bareback

right now

."

"I never would have seen this coming," I said, as much to myself as to her.

"Because I was a daddy's girl, you figured I'm an innocent?" Megan asked with a smirk. "Or a Disney-princess romantic?"

"Something like that, I suppose," I admitted.

"You figured you'd need to seduce me?" she pressed.

"The word did occur to me," I conceded.

"Mr. Andrews, I

am

a romantic where it matters," Megan said quietly. "But being a romantic doesn't mean being sexually vanilla, and it doesn't rule out having a stratospheric sex drive. I absolutely

love

romantic, sensual lovemaking—with the right guy; but I've only had one relationship where I even

thought

I was with the right guy, and I was wrong. And the fact is, I just love

sex

. Whatever you're in the mood for, I'm always in the mood, and I'm flexible enough to do it any way you want. I love it slow and deep and sensual, and I love it hard and fast and rough. Tie me to the bed—and that's just for starters; tie me to anything you like—tie me to the radiator if you have one. I won't just

let

you tie me up, choke me, and pound my tight cunt into raw hamburger, I'll

beg

you to, and call you a sex god when you make me cum so fucking hard I see stars. I'll walk around with my bullet vibrator in my pussy and give you the remote. Fuck, I'll do more than

walk around

that way—I'll cook for you that way wearing nothing but an apron, knowing you could turn it on at any time.

"I love having a man completely control me during sex—I get off on feeling vulnerable, being totally at his fucking mercy—it turns me on, it turns me up to eleven, to be commanded sexually and used as a total fucktoy, a cockslave, a cumrag. The closer our relationship, the more I care about you and the more you care about me, the hotter it is. And the more you talk about it, the dirtier you get, the better. I love talking dirty, and I love hearing it.

"I'm a perfect slut, but only a one-cock slut—I'm only happy if I have one man who's enough to satisfy me, so I would

never

sleep around on you. Like I said, it's the trust and caring that really makes it hot. Though if you wanted to keep one of the other girls—or two of them—

I'd be perfectly willing to have threesomes. Maybe even foursomes, if you made sure to give me enough dick to fill me up. Fuck, even a

permanent

threesome with the right girl

, though you might find that hard to explain to your wife."

"Yeah, probably," I agreed, though the prospect was entrancing enough to make me wonder if there could be any way to pull it off.

"And have I mentioned I prefer older men?" Megan continued. "An older man with a tight body and a big cock—mmmmm, yummy. That's the perfect recipe. That's a man who has the equipment and the confidence and the experience to own my tight cunt the way it needs to be owned. And

you

—oh, fuck, do you ever qualify. My little pussy is

drooling

in anticipation.

"Oh, and the final perfection—the cherry on this hotness sundae—you're taken. I respect the sisterhood, I won't mess with a good marriage however badly I want to, but if I don't think a woman deserves her man, there is nothing hotter than taking him away from her. She was good enough to get you to marry her, but I'm better. And your wife absolutely does not deserve you, and the thought of taking her place in your bed—of that becoming the place where you tie me up and fuck my brains out, own every one of my holes with that big fat dick, make me cum screaming on your cock, over and over and over—is making me hornier than I've ever been in my life.

"There's only one problem, Mr. Andrews," Megan breathed.

I cleared my throat. "What's that?"

"When we scheduled the interview, you didn't tell me I'd need the entire day free to fuck your brains out," she growled. "Or that I should bring my toys with me. And so I don't have my toys, and I

do

have someplace else to be. I have to walk out of here like

this

. . . I'm going to be playing with myself all day, at every opportunity, and it's all your fault."

"Well," I replied huskily, "I'll be fantasizing about you all day, too—as best as I can, anyway, since I've never seen your body."

"I have time to do

something

about that," Megan purred. She swung herself astride my lap and pulled off her shirt, flinging it over the back of another chair. Her bra was startling, a sapphire-blue cheetah print with black spots and black lace trim. "If you want it off, take it off," she continued in the same hungry tone.

I reached around Megan and unhooked her bra, then slid the straps over her shoulders and down. She tossed it to the side and shimmied, making her tits swing and bounce. They were full, ripe handfuls high on her chest, just large enough to hang down a little but not sagging at all, still perfectly round. The peaks that crowned them, pointing jauntily upward, were nicely-sized domes with neat round areolae; their tawny color stood out against her rose-cream skin, but the cobalt-blue metal dumbbells that pierced her nipples at the base made them stand out even more.

I spent several moments just enjoying the view. Megan shimmied her shoulders again and cooed, "You like my babies, Mr. Andrews? You like my juicy, squeezable 32Ds? They're

really

sensitive, especially since I got the piercings . . . that's why I did it."

"I love them," I said in a low voice, spreading my hands across her globes and tracing their contours with my fingertips, enjoying her velvet-soft skin. I rotated my wrists, keeping just my fingertips in contact, not touching the swelling peaks, until my palms were up. "They're just big enough to lift, so I can feel their weight," I added, and did so, enjoying the feel of their heavy softness resting on my fingers.

"Mmmm, I love your touch," Megan purred. "I—

ahhhhh—

" Her words cut off and her voice rose when I brought my thumbs around to toy with her piercings. This was a new experience for me, and I watched with some fascination as I wiggled the barbells. She whimpered, then moaned to feel my thumbs slide up and circle the tips of her nipples. "So good," she whispered.

I turned my wrists again and pressed my hands against the front of Megan's boobs, feeling her nipples rub along the head lines of my palms. I pressed my fingers into her soft skin, kneading and massaging her supple flesh. Finally I could resist no longer; I dropped one hand and leaned forward to tease one hard nipple with my tongue. "Oooooooh, yeah, baby, suck my tits, suck my juicy titties," she moaned. Then she squealed—my free hand had slipped under her skirt and into her panties to find her clit, which turned out to be quite large and also pierced. I stroked it gently and teased the metal balls. I sucked on her nipple, my tongue continuing to play with it, and gave the other one a light pinch. "Fuck me sideways, that's good . . ." she breathed.