34 - End

Chapter 31 -- Arizona II

"I've never done what we did last night before," Trish said in a sheepish tone.

"Fucked a stranger?" Dave sounded surprised.

"Well, not that way. I'd meet guys that I was going to do a porn flick with and we'd be fucking a few minutes later, but I mean as a 'civilian' ... somebody not in the industry that I'd then fuck right away. I liked Jeff. Come to think of it, I didn't know any of the band members at the After Party. I guess I'm still a super-slut."

"You kind of fucked me on our first date -- our first appointment. I am really glad and you seem to be." He chuckled.

"It didn't feel like a first date with you. I knew Alice, and she told me even more about you than I'd learned from the TV series. She had me read Cricket's book, too. You were featured in it. When I knocked on your door, I knew you were a sure thing if I could only seduce you. Alice made some suggestions; nudity was a key element to your seduction apparently."

"Regrets?"

"Oh, God, no. I'm in love with you, plus you're going to change my whole life. Do you know that when I pause and think about what I'm feeling, besides love for you, I feel myself expanding like a balloon filling with helium to sail into deep space? I'm growing, I'm getting smarter, I'm feeling more expansive about life and love for other people, I'm ... better, every minute that passes."

"That's good. It'll pass, and you'll feel the need to integrate all those feelings into your life more. Then you'll find some other opportunity or meet someone, and all that will start up again."

"But YOU made it happen for me. You're making it happen for me. That just makes me love you that much more. What can I ever do to repay you? I'll do anything you can think of."

"Don't repay me. Pay it forward."

"Huh?"

"After you feel you're on solid ground on your own, reach out and help someone else. Make it specific so you are directly giving something of value to you to another person -- maybe your time to help them in some way. This isn't about sending money to a charity. Do something for someone you've met. Make sure it takes them in a good direction -- something that helps and lasts in their lives. Education does that, but there are many other things including lasting friendship and love. Find a way and do it. Pay it forward and tell them to do the same."

"Thank you. I will. That just makes me more excited about this journey. I know I'm going to love the Circle and everyone there."

"I got you a little gift."

"You did? When?"

"While you were in the shower, I booked you into the spa for the afternoon. They're going to pamper the devil out of you all afternoon -- manicure, pedicure, exfoliation, mud pack, and a few other things I'm told women like, including, so you might have the experience -- a massage. I have to go in town and meet up with the band for a rehearsal session for the afternoon."

"What are we doing tonight?"

"I think Jeff wants to plunder your hot little body again. He said his brother and his wife were coming to stay with them, too; thus, there'll be at least a couple of new players. If you don't want to, we can bow out."

Dave looked at Trish to gage her feelings and response.

Trish smiled with a saucy expression, "I liked being naughty. Let's get together with them and fuck like bunnies. If you didn't like Barb, I can say skip it, however."

"Barb was nice. She's got great tits, the best money could buy she said. I don't know about her sister-in-law."

"Artificial tits?"

"Still great."

They both laughed.

* * * * *

Dave and Trish changed hotels on Friday to one in downtown Phoenix to be with the rest of the band the night before the Saturday concert. Trish met more band members and discovered a new intimacy with many of friends she'd already made. Friday things weren't as raucous, and everyone seemed to head to bed around eleven p.m.

Dave got Jeff, Barb, his brother Steve and wife Victoria VIP tickets. They also appreciated meeting the band and attending the Pre-Concert Orgy, as well as the After Party. Barb was a big hit -- so were her tits, which would be talked about for weeks, Dave felt sure. He'd got their contact information in Austin for when he had a concert there. They wanted him to stay at their house and promised a great visit.

Dave Prentiss and The Hawks had a Wednesday evening concert in Tucson. He rode south from Phoenix on his bike on Sunday, with Trish following in her new Honda CRV loaded with all her belongings. She stayed the following four nights with him and they made sweet love and bonded in a large way.

The Wednesday night concert had been at the University of Arizona's McKale Center. The place was a sellout -- fifteen thousand fans. Dave and the band stayed at the Tucson Marriott University Park. The suites were more like upscale rooms without the square footage or luxury furniture. The band took one wing on the upper floor; later that became their party area.

The After Party was as raunchy as ever. Dave didn't personally pick anybody worthy of bringing to the party from the crowd of fans. The woman he brought on stage to sing a love song to turned out to be a gray-haired grandmother. The audience seemed to love the contrast to the women he usually picked. He didn't even offer the party to her, although the lively woman with sparkling eyes might have attended.

Trish headed east for Sarasota and the Circle on Thursday morning, after the concert After Party the night before. Dave had armed her with fist full of cash and instructions for her safe travels -- good restaurants and safe, brand name motels, and safe gas stops. The parting from Dave was a teary event in the morning. Her crying made him cry. He promised he'd be seeing her again and off she went to her new life.

When Dave got back to his room in the hotel after bidding goodbye to Trish, he found a note on hotel stationery slipped under his small suite's door. The note was hand printed and said,

'Stay and have lunch at 1:00 p.m. at the pool bar. Important.'

There was no indication who sent the note. Since it was already ten a.m., he decided to just have some coffee in the room and skip breakfast. He exercised in the hotel gym instead.

Dave went to the pool bar and got a seat about ten minutes early. He ordered a diet coke and nursed it, wondering what would happen or who would appear.

At exactly one, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and gasped in a whisper. "Wendy -- oh, my God." Tears of joy immediately came to his eyes as he hugged her. She put a finger on his lips and hushed him.

"Ssssssh. Quiet. Don't call attention to us or our meeting. Come with me." She looked around to see if anybody had noticed. They hadn't.

Dave signed his bar tab, and followed Wendy out of the hotel. There was a car illegally parked at the curb, and she walked around a got into the driver's seat. She gestured to the passenger door, and Dave got in. As soon as the door closed, she sped away from the curb and made an immediate turn onto some side streets. She wove back and forth through streets and even an alley, and then got on a major thoroughfare and followed traffic to the north.

Dave was all questions, but finally just studied Wendy Connor -- Dev's wife. The wife that had been plucked out of the Circle years earlier by some clandestine government agency for her and her family's protection because of some deed her husband had done while on a mission. He was on death's door in a Houston hospital after that happened, shot repeatedly as he escaped from whatever mischief he'd done.

Wendy said, "Dev and Sharon both want me to wait and we'll tell you together what's been happening in our lives. We have a home in a suburb here -- Oro Valley." The gorgeous blonde hadn't changed much; her hair was longer, a different shade -- redder, and the large sunglasses hid part of her face. Her beauty remained as evident as ever.

Dave still probed, "He pulled through all that shit, last I knew he was on death's door from being shot up?"

"He pulled through, although there are some scars and damage to prove it. You'll see. Moreover, you will find that Willow Ray has grown considerably. She's very smart and is now a tween -- fourteen years old. She was your first child in the Circle." She smiled at him.

"Does she know what happened?"

"She does and she remembers the Circle all too fondly. We have not told her about you being her father. Maybe someday. She's promised herself to go back there someday. There are other options in the wind, but it's too early to talk with her about them."

Wendy shifted the conversation to Dave, "So, I'm listening to the radio about a year or so ago, and suddenly a duet comes on of Ashley Steerman and Dave Prentiss singing

Texas Dawn

. I only know one Dave Prentiss, and I only knew one Ashley Steerman, and the odds of the two of them singing together were pretty low when I had to leave the Circle. So, I find you changed careers in a big way."

Dave chuckled, "She got me singing in a rehearsal, and then a few days later on stage I did pretty well. I guess the rest is history. I've been surprised as anyone."

"Pretty well? What an understatement. You have two recordings in the top ten, and from what I can tell your concerts are all sell-outs. We joined your fan club, so I know you're on a cross-country trip on the motorcycle your girls all bought you. That's how we found you after a little detective work about where the concert entourage stayed."

"And I guess you saw that I had a concert appearance?"

"Dev, Sharon, and I were there with Willow. We were in the back of the crowd, but there. You're good -- very entertaining. That girl that sang with you, Shiloh, was super, too."

"I discovered her almost the same way Ashley discovered me," he explained.

Wendy pulled into an upscale neighborhood, and then into the driveway of a home that really deserved the term hacienda. It was very Spanish in its architectural style and laid out on one story. They got out of the car in a carport and walked into the house.

Dev got up from a living room chair as they entered the room. Tears came to Dave's eyes and the men hugged and slapped each other on the back. "God, I've missed you." Dave cried.

Dev said in a choked up tone, "There were days I thought that the risk of going back paled under by our need to return. I think we may slip back in the near future, however. I assume we're still welcome."

"Fuck, yes! If you think you'd be safe, please come back." Dave looked around, "What about Sharon and Willow?"

Wendy explained, "Willow's in school -- eighth grade, and Sharon is selling real estate at an office near here. They'll be home later this afternoon. By the way, we all have different names: Dev is Darren or Dar, I'm not Wendy but Wren, Sharon is Skylar, and Willow is now Raye -- her middle name. Collectively, we're the Crawford family."

"A threesome?"

"The neighbors know and don't seem to care. Our keepers decided that we'd attract less attention by just being open about our relationship rather than inviting gossip and trying to hide it. We insisted and we think it's worked. No one seems to care. We have neighborhood parties occasionally and everyone knows that Dar and his two wives will show up."

Dev or Dar started walking towards the kitchen, and Dave saw he was limping. He commented on it.

"I spent a year in the hospital getting stitched back together. My right femur was shot out from under me. There's metal in there now - Titanium, but I'll never be a hundred-percent again. I'm lucky to be walking. I spent a year in PT and getting more operations on my body and legs. They shot me up pretty bad, but my team got me out."

"You took out some warehouses in Columbia?"

"How'd you know that?" he asked in a curious tone.

"I saw an article about the destruction of cartel warehouses on the news the day we flew Wendy, or Wren, to Houston to see you. I kind of put one and one together and got two. There has always been some uncertainty in my guess though. We never talked about it except that day."

"You're right. The last estimate I heard was that we'd wiped out over three-billion dollars of drugs -- mostly pure heroin and cocaine. The street value would have been twenty or thirty times higher. The results were better than we hoped for, plus one of the cartels was forced to disband. There were a lot of unhappy people and about fifty murders as the thing unraveled and the supply chain emptied out, at least so I'm told. The crooks decimated themselves."

"As a citizen, I say Thank You."

"Come. Wren fixed lunch for us before she left to get you. I still keep a low profile, especially with the limp. I want to hear about your singing career. We also want you to come and stay with us until you have to leave to head to San Diego for your next concert."

"You always did seem to know more than the rest of us about what was going on."

"I was just reading on the Internet before you arrived that your concert venue there has been changed to the Padres stadium -- a sell-out crowd of forty-four-thousand. I guess they call it Petco Park, too."

Dave was shocked. "I've never had a crowd that large, even when I was tagging along with Ashley. That's amazing."

Dar teased, "You must be raking in the money?"

Dave paused and frowned, "You know, I have no idea what I'm making or what I make for a concert. That's not why I sing. It's fun and I enjoy making people happy."

"Well, I bet you're getting handsomely rewarded for doing that. If I were you, I'd ask."

"I'll check with Kyle Hanks, my agent, someday soon on that. He's also Ashley's husband and agent."

Dave and the 'Crawfords' had lunch and then Wren drove him back to the hotel. He checked out and found his way to their hacienda, being sure he wasn't followed. The motorcycle went under a tarp in the carport.

Raye, or Willow Ray as Dave had known the child, arrived home from school about four p.m. She was in awe that someone so famous as Dave Prentiss was really friends with her parents. She asked about the other children she remembered from the Circle, many of them her half-brothers or sisters, although she didn't know that.

After she'd left the room, Dave asked about whether Raye understood the importance of keeping their secret.

Wren or Wendy winced. "She does. The agency comes by and reinforces the point with her every few months. If anything, they've scared the shit out of her. She knows we're fugitives from some people that wouldn't just murder us, but would torture each of us, and that death and destruction would rain down on family and friends if she utters a word or even makes a casual mistake. She also had to memorize a lot of details about her fictional life prior to coming to Tucson. We're pretty sure she's safe.

"FYI, Dar is officially an Internet trader of various securities, and I run a web design business. I've actually learned the trade, too. Among others, I maintain the real estate site for the company Skylar works for. It's complex -- lots of bells and whistles."

Skylar or Sharon arrived home about five-thirty. She threw herself into Dave's arms and sobbed several years' worth of tears of separation from one of the dearest friends she'd ever had. Dave ended up holding her on his lap with his arms wrapped around her for over an hour as the adults all had some wine. Skylar barely moved and her glass remained untouched as she held onto him and often cried. Her release showed the years of tension she'd held and her feels about the loves she left behind.

Wren and Skylar eventually prepared dinner. Dave sat with Dar at the kitchen island so they could all be together. They ate and then sat for a couple of hours talking, often about old friends in the Circle as well as the newer members. Dave talked about some of the women he'd met and aimed at the Circle for membership. The implications about sex were unstated, but the adults knew what transpired in terms of Dave's 'recruitments'. Raye was clueless yet still impressed that the Number One country singer in the country was sitting next to her at dinner and talking with her frequently.

Wren, Dar, and Skylar eventually thought up a storyline that would allow Raye to tell her friends about Dave coming to visit. He'd invested some money in her father's investment business and they'd become good friends, but seldom saw each other. Since he had a concert in town, they were able to visit. Dar thought that would pass muster and give the teen some freedom to tell her friends about the 'star' visiting with them. Raye understood the need to keep a lid on things, as well.

There was so much to catch-up on from both sides. Dave regaled them about some of the Circle stories and events. Dar, Wren, and Skylar told about their sequester journey through three different locations, their training, the development of their cover story, and, of course, the healing process Dar (Dev) went through.

Dar said, "Now, I am completely out of the business. I was being held in reserve for special assignments as most everyone in the Circle guessed, what with my clandestine comings and goings. Lacking the mobility and flexibility because of some errant bullets, I am off their roster. The younger guys are doing the duty. I turned down a desk job. I'd miss the action too much."

About ten o'clock, Wren announced, "It's bedtime. Dave, no arguments, you are coming to bed with Skylar and me." Dar laughed and waved over his shoulder as he limped off down the hallway to the guest room. Raye had already headed to bed a half-hour earlier.

"Are you sure?" The question seemed superfluous, but he felt he had to ask.

"Very."

"Me, too," Skylar said in a pleading tone as she floated into his arms. "There is one thing in my case you should know. I'm not on birth control ... and I'm so glad. I really want you."

Wren said, "When Dar got shot up, one result was a bullet in his groin. He's still a divine lover, but none of the reproductive plumbing is connected. He's sterile."

Skylar said, "This isn't my most fertile time, and with some luck one of your swimmers will stay active long enough to find my egg. I really want a baby -- YOUR baby, just like Willow Raye and Wren."

Dave nodded, "I'm fine with it. This isn't the first time, as you know. Ashley Steerman's children are mine, to mention two of them. Kyle thinks it's great. I've told others, I'll play whatever role you want me to in terms of fatherhood, though you do have a built-in situation here."

Wren said, "We do. If she does get pregnant, we'll all point to Dar. It wouldn't be that much of a surprise. No one knows about any shooting or mission in our social circle. Dar was just in one helluva car accident that nearly killed him."

A few minutes later, their three naked bodies clustered together on the large bed in the master bedroom. The atmosphere in the room was one of love as well as lust.

Later, as Dave wrapped his arms around Wren, he glanced at the clock. So many orgasms in creative positions had passed since they started together. The clock indicated 3:12 a.m.

Wren was up about four hours later to see her daughter off to school. Everyone else slept in. Dave got up to see where Wren had gone. He found her making coffee in the kitchen as Raye ran down the driveway to a yellow school bus.

"Good morning."

"Oh, you didn't have to get up."

"I want as much time as I can with you," Dave told her.

Wren came into his arms and they kissed. Breaking from the kiss, she opened her robe and dropped it on the floor. She was naked. She pulled his briefs down his legs and sucked his cock to hardness.

"Sit," she instructed.

He did, and she straddled his legs and worked her pussy down onto his cock, sighing and finding sexual satisfaction every millimeter of their coupling. Dave wondered whether he'd be able to cum he'd had so many ejaculations in the past ten hours.