Chapter Seventeen
December 23
rd
, 2020
Andy Rook was happy to be home. Los Angeles had turned from a one-day stop to a two-day stop because it seemed like the meetings kept piling up before anyone could stop them and a number of people needed to take meetings with Sarah, Emily, himself or, occasionally, Piper and/or Fiona. Getting an additional day at the hotel hadn't proven any real challenge, so it enabled them to get more work done before heading back to the private airstrip midday on the 23
rd
. He'd even sent a message home, making sure everyone was in control of their faculties, and Whitney assured him that as long as he was back on the 23
rd
, everything should be fine.
The flight between Los Angeles and Livermore was only an hour and a half, and after the fifteen minutes to stow and secure the plane, they loaded back up into the SUVs and headed back to New Eden. He'd been on signing tours before, but never on his own private plane, and he'd certainly never had a mansion full of beautiful women waiting for his return. The cats were probably still impatient for his return, though.
As they drove back from Livermore to New Eden, Andy was pleased to see more cars on the highways, people actually out and about during the day, hopefully traveling out to see friends, neighbors or even just getting out of their houses for a while. There was even a car pulled over by a CHP for speeding, by the look of it.
'Cops writing tickets again,' Andy thought to himself in amusement. 'Nature is healing.'
The cars pulled up to the gate of New Eden, and Niko checked the lot of them in. The security checkpoint for people coming and going from the walled garden that was New Eden hadn't relaxed in his absence, not that he was at all surprised by that. The mirrors checking the undersides of the vehicle were new, though. It was supposed to make him feel safer, he suspected, but it didn't.
When they got back to the house, Andy was a little surprised there wasn't a welcoming party waiting out in the driveway for them, but they made it into the long garage without anyone meeting them, and it wasn't until they were rolling suitcases into the main house that nearly everyone came out to welcome them home, Andy suddenly swarmed by nearly a dozen women all at once, each of them surrounding him like ravenous piranha, forming a giant seal around him as they clung to him in one colossal monster hug.
"Hello ladies," Andy chuckled, his arms raised, but mostly already woven between bodies all surrounding him. "I take it I was missed?"
"There's an appointment schedule waiting for you, Master Rook," Whitney said to him, standing just off to one side, not part of the hug brigade. "You're going to be rather booked up for the next few days getting caught up with partners who are in need of their fix, so I hope you didn't have anything else scheduled between here and Christmas."
"No no," Andy laughed. "Other than a brief check in at the base, I'm at the tender mercy of all you ladies and your wanton desires."
"We tried to pace your appointments so you wouldn't be too overwhelmed, Master Rook," Whitney said with a slight giggle, "but I'm certain you'll find that some of us are a great deal more... voracious than others. But we made certain that we scheduled you with enough recovery time in between that you'd still be able to get things done before Christmas Eve. As per your request, there will be no sex on Christmas Day."
"I take it Amazon's been here a bunch while I've been gone?" Andy laughed, still unable to wriggle free of the buxom pile of flesh smothering him.
"Indeed, sir," Whitney said. "And I haven't opened any of the packages, as per your request, although I did recall you saying you'd bought almost all of them wrapped by Amazon."
He nodded. "Like, all but one are wrapped in either paper or bags by Amazon, with cards attached, but there was one thing that I had to special order and they couldn't wrap it, and it's
for
you, Whitney, so I couldn't risk you accidentally opening it."
"We've placed almost everyone else's gifts under the tree, Master," Nicolette said to him with a smile from her position on the edge of the squeeze squad. "Although we're going to have to start opening as soon as people are awake on Christmas morning and be opening nearly all day if we're going to get through them all. It's quite the collection of loot."
Andy had done the math, and even with everyone in the family just getting one present for each other member, they were looking at over 500 presents, all said and done, and that didn't include things that had been sent from people outside of the immediate family. One thing they'd all agreed upon was no thank you notes to people inside of the family, lest they go out of their mind handwriting them all.
"Can I get at least a few minutes before I start filling appointments, Whitney, or am I completely swamped for the day?"
"You've got about an hour before you need to start fucking, sir," she said with a wry smile. "You're welcome to spend that however you like, although Mistress Mali has asked that she have ten or fifteen minutes to talk to you as soon as possible."
Andy glanced around and saw that Mali was in the outer ring of the hug spiral and nodded to her. "Well then, I need to check in on the cats and put my laptop down in the office, Mali, so can we walk and talk for the first bit?"
"Absolutely, Mr. Rook," Mali, one of his newest additions, said as the cluster of women around him started to break off, each of them kissing his cheek or his lips before moving to peel away, heading back into the house. A few of them gave his ass or crotch a squeeze, but Jade, to his surprise, practically took half a minute of stroking his cock through his jeans, a devious smile upon her lips, her other hand holding a fingertip over his lips to keep him quiet before she pulled away, saying nary a word.
Andy and Mali hadn't had a chance to speak since he'd imprinted her, and the conditions under which she'd been imprinted had left Andy a little bit uneasy, simply because the imprinting wasn't exactly done in line with all the others.
"Do you mind if Emily joins us, Mr. Rook?"
"Only if you stop calling me 'Mr. Rook,' Mali, immediately and forever more," Andy teased.
Mali smiled shyly, nodding a little. "Yes, Andy. Thank you."
Emily scurried over and gave Mali a hug, and the Welsh woman returned it with a touch of shyness still, but Mali clung to her for a moment longer than it seemed like Emily had anticipated. After the two broke from their hug, they moved to follow Andy, who refused to let anyone wheel in his suitcase. Niko had apparently decided to take on security details for the moment, so she followed along a handful of steps behind, even knowing how much it irked Andy that she did so. He wasn't going to argue with her, though, because he'd agreed never to tell any of his protectors how to do their jobs. Melody had taken Niko's bag and Sarah had taken Emily's, which left him as the only one pulling a bag along as they headed into the house.
The hard part of this conversation, Andy thought to himself, was going to be talking around the elephant in the room without making any mention of it. The effort to erase Mali's memory of her deceased high school sweetheart had caused quite a rift between Emily and the rest of the family, simply because Emily had kept it secret until right before he'd imprinted Mali.
Mali was quite a gorgeous young woman, a round face with thick brown eyebrows and a mysterious, almost Mona Lisa smile, but there was something still slightly sad and tragic about her, and she still moved with a slight lack of energy and enthusiasm.
"I'm hoping you've settled in okay while I was gone, Mali," Andy said to her. "I probably shouldn't have left you just after you'd been imprinted, but, ah, you asked for—"
"I didn't forget anything, Andy," Mali said to him, looking like she was going to break into tears. "Not a god damned thing."
"Oh Mali," Andy sighed, setting his bag down before turning to wrap his arms around her as she practically collapsed into him, sobbing softly. "I'm so, so sorry. I knew it was something of a longshot when Emily told me about it, but I understand what it's like to have a memory that you just want to rip out of your brain. But the grief that we carry with us is a reminder of those who are gone, and so they aren't entirely lost to us. A part of his light still carries on in you."
"I don't mean to be disrespectful to you, Andy, but I miss him so fucking much," she moaned, pressing her face against his chest, unable to look up at him. Emily stood behind her, one hand stroking the Welsh woman's dark brown hair. "I know you've done such a generous thing by bringing me into your family, in taking me in and keeping me safe from DuoHalo, and here I am, bawling up a storm because I can't forget a man I spent half my life with."
"Hey hey hey," Andy said quietly. "There'll be none of that. I'd offer you the chance to pair with someone else, but I think you're just going to have the same issue there that you would with me, so we'll do what we can to get through it, take each other one day at a time. We can be sexual without being intimate if that's what you'd prefer."