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NOTE: My apologies in advance that this chapter isn't much
of a 'read with one hand" kind of story. But if you've
been following the series, there's some developments here
that are hopefully interesting. It gets kinda dark, but
we'll find out together in future segments whether Brian,
Abby, and Lisa can work things out.
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Brian woke up to a soft weight on his chest. His bleary eyes cracked open enough to see a smiling face, smokey eyes, button nose, framed by straight blonde hair. "Is it morning already?"
"It's morning" Lisa confirmed. She bowed her head to put a delicate kiss on the center of his chest before resting her chin on her hands. He looked in her eyes, the memories slowly returning.
Ivan had arranged a party yesterday. Earlier than he expected, interrupting his study time. Lisa had made her presence known by striding into the library, naked and dripping. She managed to coax him upstairs to the big tub full of naked bodies.
Claudia with her intriguingly crazy hot and cold moods, Sandra with her matter of fact just knock me up request. Then Lisa. They'd shared something while he was in the process of doing his best to grant Sandra's request. He and Lisa had climaxed simultaneously while staring into each other's eyes. They weren't touching each other. They shared more than an orgasm.
Later, they went out, on a date. They had great conversation. He'd never felt so comfortable with a girl despite having had sex with almost a dozen different women in the last week and a half. Then they went to bed. He remembered it, being on top of her, inside her, their eyes locked.
She could be inscrutable to him, but she always seemed to know what he was thinking. "That was sweet, last night" she said.
He smiled. "It was very nice."
"Not what I expected." she said, her eyes twinkling.
"Not what I expected either." Initially, he assumed it would be essentially like the others, noisy and sweaty. Something done for purpose, to get off, specifically, to get him off inside her. That's what the three sorority sisters had come for, his seed. His almost uniquely healthy seed, the seed that represented hope for the human race, financial security for any woman who he impregnated, and, as Sandra pointed out, a fulfillment of the need presented by the relentlessly ticking biological clock. Since the virus, that clock had gone into overdrive for many women, and at a much earlier age than it used to.
But it wasn't just that. It was soft and tender, after a very nice evening of conversation and getting to know each other. They'd made a real connection. A connection both below the waist and above the neck. It was as if the two points of connection completed a circle letting something flow between them, round and round in a ring, amplifying itself with each circuit.
It was like what he imagined his first time would be like, what he'd always fantasized about even when he thought he was just fantasizing about a hot body. What he imagined it would be with Abby.
The thought brought a twinge of guilt. Theirs was a complicated relationship already, and it was just getting started. They were not in love, at least not yet. They really had no claims on each other, but he felt like he wanted to see it through with her, just her, for now. If it ended up not working out, OK, but for now he didn't want to see other girls.
But that was where it got complicated. His "mission", for lack of a better word, was unavoidable. Abby had outright demanded that he not consider stopping. That if there was to be something between them, it would have to accommodate that. Knowing he would have days like yesterday and nights like last night was going to have to be part of their relationship.
But still he felt guilty, like he was cheating on Abby, cheating in a way that having sex with all those other girls was not. Because he could see himself falling in love with Lisa.
He pushed the thought out of his head. She was just a girl that wanted his services, for reasons of her own. He was just the guy that could provide them. One of the few who could. It was an arrangement of mutual benefit, not a relationship, not in the sense that usually meant. That they enjoyed each others' company was just a bonus. It was something that made the arrangement more enjoyable, that smoothed over the awkwardness inherent to the kind of intense and invasive physical interaction inherent to this kind of arrangement.
Besides, some of his old doubts told him, she doesn't have any feeling for him. It's one sided. Yeah, she wants you to fuck her, but that's different from actually liking you.
She saw that he was lost in thought. She slid off him to one side and lay against him. He put his arm around her and she draped a leg over his waist, against his still hard cock. She moved her hand in small circles on his chest. "What are you thinking about?"
He looked at her face. Cute and sexy, but also alert, intelligent. And smiling at him. The smile of a girl happy to be where she is, a girl who is satisfied, both sexually and with the here and now. He lied to her.
"Oh, nothing in particular. Just thinking about the future."
"About your future, or our future?" she asked.
"Mine. And yours." he said, hedging, not sure whether the scope of 'ours' was meant to refer to Lisa and himself, or human beings generally.
"Oh." she said. Was that a hint of disappointment in her voice?
"You're graduating this year?" he asked. She nodded. "So do you have plans for after? A way to change the world with that philosophy degree?"
"I do, actually." she said, her eyes twinkling. "Don't look so surprised." she said when she saw his face. "A degree like that might seem pretty stuffy. Like it will condemn me to a tired old teaching job, or to writing books that nobody will read."
"Or both." Brian added with exaggerated cheerfulness.
She slapped her hand against his chest in playful anger. "That would have been true... before. When I started here." she looked down at his chest and was silent for a time. "But then it all happened. That was when I switched my major." Her hand went to his penis, idly fidgeting with it. He liked how that felt, but he knew she wasn't trying to start anything. It was the kind of thing two people very comfortable with each other could do, something so intimate yet almost devoid of sexual intent.
She looked back at his face, her hand forgotten but still fidgeting. "I knew that what.... where we're all headed, philosophy is going to become a lot more than academic."
"How so?" Brian was intrigued.
Her eyes drew tight, got darker. "It rules the world, even before." she said. "Not explicitly. Yeah, there's a lot of ideologues out there preaching some philosophy or another and trying to gain followers, to gain power. But it's not them that make much difference.
"Everybody has a philosophy, even if their philosophy is to not stick to any one philosophy too strictly. All those books that have laid it out as a system, they're valuable, and they have had a lot of influence, but in the real world, all those competing ideas filter down to everyday life, to regular people, in very non systematic ways."
Her grip on his dick had become firmer, though it still seemed like an absent-minded fidgeting to Brian. It was enough to divide his focus between her words and her hand.
She went on. "Philosophy is just whatever anybody's baseline ideas are, about things they think are right, and good. And that is what rules the world, not ideologies."
"What kind of ideas then, if not ideological?"
"Anything. It's mostly the ideas you don't even know you have, that you don't think there are alternatives to. Like, say, that you need to go to college and get a degree so you can get a good job."
"Don't we?"
She shrugged, and her hand came away to rest on his belly. "Maybe, maybe not?"
"But what's the alternative? Not get a degree and a job and just be a bum? Or work fast food the rest of my life?"
"See? You don't even consider the possibility that other ways to have a good job and a good life are possible. It's not that you reject other ideas, it's that they've never crossed your mind."
"You know other ways?"
"Not necessarily. I've thought about it. Enough to think there might be other ways. I'm not sure. But that isn't the point. The point is that most people just accept the ones they know."
"So people can't change their philosophy?"
She smiled at him, and her hand went more deliberately to his cock. "Good question. But philosophy isn't necessarily just the ideas you don't question, it's the ideas you don't think can be wrong. Either because you haven't questioned them, or because you have, and still don't see any alternatives."
She thought for a minute, looking down at her hand now overtly stroking him. "Ideas like science, or God, or that sex is good, or sex is bad unless you're married. All kinds of things." She shifted her position to rest more on his body. "It's just that most people never question those kinds of ideas. Sure, a lot of people will say they believe in certain things, the doctrine of their church, or socialism, or capitalism, or some other ism. But most people don't live by those, not really. They try here and there, but for the most part, those intellectual ideas get trumped by the more basic things."
"So everybody is a hypocrite?" Brian asked.
