Life In The Oasis Ch 04

Author's Note

This is the next chapter in the final series of the Elysium Trilogy. If you haven't yet, I suggest you read

Part 1

and

Part 2

, although you do not need to have read the previous two parts to be able to completely understand the story (or enjoy the sex!), so don't let the size of this series intimidate you. You are welcome to start here and go back later or simply continue from here. If you like what you read here, there's plenty more in the previous two books!

Be aware, this series includes a variety of adult situations, and I do my best to ensure that the tags are correct and comprehensive for each chapter. These stories touch on a variety of sexual subjects, like male and female bisexuality, gay sex, lots of interracial sex, some incest, oodles of group sex, voyeurism and exhibitionism, all set in a near future universe where sex is far more open than in our world. You'll find a lot of the standard tropes turned on their head here, so don't be surprised to have your assumptions challenged!

For those who want to know why this is late, I don't have a good excuse, other than life got in the way last week. I think we're back on track now for weekend posts, so I appreciate you bearing with me. Don't worry - I'm not going to walk away and leave this story unfinished!

As always, if you like what you've read, give us a vote, leave a comment, and a follow. I do my best to respond to every comment! Thanks for reading!

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Saturday Morning, June 5, 2032

The Elysium, Las Vegas

"Oh, Jack," Avery said, stepping over to me and helping to adjust my ascot. "You look gorgeous, love," she gushed.

I smiled at her, giving her a quick peck on her forehead before she took a step back to admire her handiwork. I turned to look at my image in the full-length mirror on the wall of the walk-in closet. I had to admit, I looked pretty good.

Today was Mom and Sol's wedding, a day we had been working up to for months. I remembered way back to last December, only seven months ago but what felt like two lifetimes, when she first told me she was engaged. It had been a wild ride since then, but after today, the Sinclair and Fisher families were finally going to be one. Sol Sinclair would be my stepfather, Nyla my stepsister, and Miles my stepbrother.

This was going to make some of you incest loving porn readers happy, I knew. No more "stepfather-to-be" nonsense. It was going to be official. We'd be one big, happy, very loving family. Mom was still going to be disappointed, though, because until the Governor's bill passed and until Avery and Eva signed off, there wasn't going to be any hanky-panky between the two of us. November was months away, and Avery's opinion on incest changing was eons away, so the chances of Mom ever getting her heart's desire were almost nil.

But she didn't need me as a stand-in for Dad anymore. She had Sol and the rest of the family now. I hoped finally being married again would cool her ardor for me and help reduce the tension between us.

There are times when my naivety, which I have been steadily working to banish, still comes roaring back. It seems to be there to remind me that while I may be a very smart guy, I'm still just a kid. Life hasn't gotten nearly enough time to beat me into submission, apparently.

Mom wanted as traditional a wedding as you could get. At least, as traditional you could get for a wedding being held in a Vegas casino, rather than a church. The men of the wedding party, which included me, were dressed in formal morning dress -- a black cutaway morning coat, black and gray striped ascot over a white turndown collared shirt, a dove gray waistcoat and gray cashmere striped pants. I looked like I was heading to the Kentucky Derby or the Royal Ascot, but Mom had been adamant that this was what was appropriate for a "social, summer wedding." I took her word for it.

The full wedding party was a bit larger. Miles was Sol's best man, and Nyla was Mom's maiden of honor. The Terrible Trio of Lucy, Gabby, and Chloe were serving as Mom's bridesmaids, and I was one of Sol's groomsmen, along with Miles' husband Mikey and Lionel Jefferson. I was also giving away the bride, which was both an honor and weird all at the same time. So much of this wedding was weird to me.

For example: we might be one of the only wedding parties out there where every member has been with every other member sexually. The thought turned me on a bit, and it didn't help that Avery and Eva were with me in the closet, the pair of them wearing nothing but filmy lingerie.

Neither of them was upset about not being included in the wedding party. They were the newcomers to the family, after all -- Avery and I had been together for just six months, and Eva had joined us barely more than two months ago. Plus, not being in the wedding party meant they didn't have to wear the pink monstrosities that Mom was dressing her bridesmaids in, and that suited the pair just fine. Avery had opted for another of her bright red gowns, and Eva had chosen royal blue. Each color was tuned specifically to my girls, and each dress brought out their best features. Avery's breasts were front and center, as her red, strapless gown showed as much cleavage -- probably a little too much, to be honest -- as you could get away with at someone else's wedding. Eva's blue gown was sleek and slim, making the blue in her eyes sparkle and hugging her curves.

Both of those gowns were hours away from being filled by their owners, though. I didn't need to get dressed this early, but I was feeling restless and wanted to get out of my apartments before I had to be downstairs to handle groomsmen's duties. My duties included serving as an usher and greeting VIPs as they arrived. For this edding, I knew there would be many. This was the one part of the day I wasn't looking forward to. Not all of the VIPs ere friends.

"You look like James Bond in that getup," Eva said, laughing and swatting my ass playfully. "Where are you going to carry your gun?"

I smiled at the James Bond quip, but the smile faltered when Eva made the gun comment.

"Shit, I'm sorry, Jack," she said, realizing what she'd said.

The last time I was in this kind of formal wear was at the NARC Gala last December, which had ended in a shootout that left four people dead, and during which Sol and I had shot multiple attackers. It brought back a flood of bad memories, and I could feel my right hand -- my gun hand -- start to shake.

"It's okay," I said, waving her off, using the wave to hide the shakes. "It's been a long time since I've needed to wear a gun with my formal clothes," I told her. "But maybe I should go see if my shoulder holster fits under here," I added with a half-smile.

My stomach knotted as my brain went into overdrive.

Should

I go downstairs to the gun range and find my old shoulder holster and P232 pistol? The police had never given back the one I'd used last December, but Lionel had gotten replacements almost immediately for Sol and me. I had taken it to DC with me last year, but it had never left the drawer in my bedroom. Now it was downstairs in the armory.

The truce between all the casino owners had held since the Big Five meeting in April. That meeting, asked for by Sol, agreed to by Vex Romano, and presided over by Sally Hemingway -- the only Big 5 owner the other owners all respected -- had set the terms of the truce, and they had held. For now.

But I couldn't help wondering when, not if, the truce would be broken. Who would break it? And would they do so in spectacular fashion?

Interrupting Sol's wedding would certainly be spectacular, after all.

I resolved to head down to the range.

The wedding was at four, and it was a quarter til noon right now. Guests would begin arriving after two, so I had about two hours to kill. As much as I would love to spend those two hours with my girls, I knew I needed to give them space to get ready. I was already high-strung -- this was an exciting day, even though I wasn't the one getting married -- and the reminder about last December had spooked me.

I kissed Eva and Avery as they started dressing and went downstairs.

The gun range in the sub-basement of the Elysium served a dual purpose. There was the obvious -- it was where the security staff could practice with their service weapons. Not every organization in Vegas was as serious about security as we were at the Sinclair Group, I knew. When Eva had seen some of the lengths our security staff went to, and the requirement for security training for executives, it boggled her mind. Empire Luxe Holdings did nothing like we did. Our security staff trained like a mixture of a police force and a small army, and thanks to our political connections, the armory connected to the range could have outfitted your average Army battalion.

The other purpose of the range was to give Solomon Sinclair a place to relax, let off steam, and think. I often found him down here practicing his marksmanship. He came down here even more frequently than I did, and I had to admit I was far better at keeping up my range time schedule than my workout schedule.

I pushed through the double doors to the range and found it bustling, with nearly every lane of the twenty-five-lane range occupied, even on a day as important as today was to the entire Sinclair Group family. And there, in lane #1 as he often was, I saw Sol Sinclair.

At least I'm not the only one here overdressed

, I laughed to myself. Sol had taken off his morning coat and hung it from the hook behind his stall, where his holster and eye protection normally hung when not in use. He had rolled his sleeves up, but otherwise, he was wearing the same thing as I was.

The range boss saw me step in and loudly snapped his fingers. One of his assistants raced off to prepare lane #2 for me. The security staffer who was on lane 2 started to object when the assistant tried to shuffle him off the lane early, but the staffer pointed back at me, the security officer nodded abruptly and packed up his stuff. A few minutes later, my P232 was out of the armory and prepped on my lane, two boxes of 9mm ammo waiting.

Rank has its privileges.

I slipped a pair of ear protectors into my ears and stepped out onto the range. The bangs, which had been muffled through the glass and the doorway of the vestibule that paralleled the range, grew much louder, even with my ears on.

The security staff was training with a variety of weapons, from handguns and automatic rifles to shotguns and even one long-range sniper rifle, which shook the room whenever it was fired. I knew they were probably just sighting the rifle in, because the range wasn't long enough to be able to truly practice over the distance that rifle could hit.

I stepped over to lane #2, took off my jacket and hung it on the hook behind me. Once done, I took a step towards the firing line and looked over at Sol. He hadn't noticed me yet, as he was in the middle of doing a timing drill, and his attention was focused. His pistol was set on the tray in front of him, loaded and ready to fire. The target was sideways, a dozen yards from him, and Sol was waiting for it to present itself.

A few seconds later, the random timer on the range computer hit zero, and the target, a silhouette of a human body, snapped sideways. In a flash, Sol picked up the pistol, sighted, and sent two rounds into the chest of the target, and one round directly into the target's forehead. It was a standard failure drill -- a close combat technique designed to make sure a target coming at you goes down, permanently. You fire two shots center mass, which should disable most humans trying to attack you. If those first two shots don't stop the attacker, you fire one more decisive shot right between the eyes.

It was one of the first things I had learned when I was taught to shoot. Sol had used this exact technique on one of the two gunmen who had tried to kill us at the NARC Gala on New Year's Eve. New Year's Day, technically, since it was after midnight when the attack began. His two shots to the body dropped the target, and he hadn't needed the coup de grâce.

The attackers had been dressed in the red sashes of the Anti-Debauchery League, and it certainly seemed like they were part of that group's attempt to bully the casino owners into ending their flirtation with sex-themed hotels. But we knew the ADL and their backer -- Edward Liao and his Lotus Entertainment Group, the Chinese casino conglomerate that owned a handful of hotels in Vegas and was one of the Big Five -- hadn't been behind the attack. The gunmen killed had all been local gang members, apparently hired by someone to pose as the ADL while attacking us. We still didn't know who. My money had been on the Russians, but both the Russians and the Chinese had disavowed the attacks.

It was just another mystery in a long line of mysteries that included the biggest unsolved crime in Vegas today -- who had killed Solomon Sinclair's first wife? Lena Schuyler Sinclair had died in a plane crash in 2019, which ostensibly had been an accident and had killed a dozen other people, including the junior Senator from Alaska. The investigation had ended inconclusively, but Sol was approached a few weeks after by a shadowy figure who had told him the attack was a message. Since then, he'd worked hard to protect his family while pushing the government to reopen the investigation.

"Damn," I said, stepping up next to Sol as he brought the target in to look at it. "Nice shooting, Sol!"

Sol looked startled for a second, his features flushed with anger. His eyes were narrow and hard, his face framed in rage, like he was off in another world. I almost flinched as he turned that glare my way, and it wasn't until his eyes focused on me and he realized who had spoken to him that they softened, and his features broke out into a smile.

"I should have been using the holster, but I don't want to mess up my clothes," he said, laughing. "Your mother is going to kill us when we show up at the wedding smelling like gunpowder," he added.

"A little cologne and she'll never notice," I told him, grinning back at him. The change in his demeanor was abrupt, and part of me wondered where exactly his mind had been when he'd fired those shots. Nowhere pleasant, it seemed.

After that interlude, the two of us got down to business, and I put two boxes of 9mm downrange before clearing my pistol and stepping away from the line.

Sol had finished a few minutes before me, and we met in the bathroom off the range, where we washed our hands free of gunpowder residue and the heavy metals that accumulate when you're shooting.

"I'd say I'm surprised to see you down here," I told him, "But that would be a lie."

Sol smirked at me. "Am I that predictable?"

"Last time I wore clothes like this was the Gala. Made me think about that night. I guess they may have had the same impact on you as they did on me," I told him.

He looked in the mirror over the sink as he scrubbed his hands. He was watching himself, and I wondered what was going through his head.

"That's exactly what I thought," he told me, finally breaking away from the staring contest he'd been having with himself, turning to look at me. "But I would have probably been down here anyway. This is the best place to calm my nerves, oddly enough."

"Nerves? What are you nervous about? It's only the biggest wedding in Vegas this century," I joked with him. "I mean, it's not like the President is going to be here or anything."

The President had sent her regrets, as she was overseas at a G7 meeting, along with the heads of government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK. The Vice President, Vegas' own Doug Stone, would be in attendance and Governor Silas Prescott was officiating. We expected a lot of other VIPs from around the world, as well as many of the other casino moguls, plus another two hundred guests. Most of those were friends, family and employees of Sinclair Group.

Other than the NARC "King of the Strip" awards, which would be held next month at the Empire Luxe, this was the biggest social event of the summer. And Sol was one of the centers of attention. No pressure.

Sol smiled at me as he dried his hands. "I honestly can't believe this is happening. After Lena, I never expected to get married again," he said. "A part of me is still unsure if this is the best idea," he said.

I blinked. Was Sol having second thoughts?

He could tell I was shocked at what he said, because he quickly went on. "Don't worry. I love your mother. It's not about that. It's just..." Sol trailed off, and I could see he was wrestling with those internal demons that were born the day Lena's plane went down. "No matter how far we've come, I feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with this town. Some kind of blight on Vegas' soul. For all the shiny, bright hope and fun we project to the world, lying underneath all the glitz and glamour is some kind of monster that just sucks people in, steals everything and then spits them out. It's like an endless cycle. And as much as I don't want to be alone, as much as I want a life partner again, I'm scared what this town is going to do to her. And me. Getting married makes me feel so vulnerable. Like... before."

I would be a liar if I told you I understood what he meant. I'd seen a bit of the underside of this town -- the blackmail, the violence, the greed. But I'd also seen the good side of the city, the joy and happiness people felt in this hotel, my own joy at meeting and falling in love, seeing Mom happy.

Sure, Vegas had its dark side. After all, I'd been shot at, been shot, stopped a kidnapping, held my girlfriend as she shook in fear after her apartment was ransacked, interrogated a traitor, watched my private business get splayed out on the front page of the newspaper... and all this happened in the last six months. But it wasn't

all

bad. The good, at least for me, outweighed the negative.

Coud Sol say the same thing? I wasn't sure. Sol had been here for decades. Others, like Vex Romano and Winston Chesterfield, had been here for more than half a century. 'd never experienced the kind of loss that Sol had. Nobody I loved had been taken from me permanently, and I said a little prayer that none of them would be. I knew how devastating it would be if I lost Mom, Eva, Avery or any of my friends. We'd come close a few times, and that was scary enough. But Sol had lived through it and there are some wounds that just never heal. Maybe that's why he was so down on Vegas. There

were

times this city felt like a gaudy prison.

That being said, things felt like they were starting to change. The truce was holding and there'd been no violence for months now. Nothing but the typical drama of any big city with people and big companies competing against each other for customers, the popular acts, and trying to come up with the next big thing to bring people in the doors and get them to spend money. But who knew how long this was going to last?

I tried to put the best face on it. "Sol, you don't need to be worried about what this town is going to do to Mom. This town should be worried about what

she's

going to do to

it,

" I said, with a laugh.

Sol smiled again. "I like that attitude. I don't expect anything to happen today," he went on, straightening up, pulling on his morning coat and then fiddling with his ascot. He looked at me in the mirror as he spoke. "There's enough security here to lock down Fort Knox. But we thought the same thing about the funeral, too, so keep your head on a swivel. And... thanks," he added quietly.