Aftershocks Ch 02 Negotiation

All Characters In This Story Are 18+ Years Old

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Monday, November 9, 1992

7:40 a.m., Los Angeles, CA

*

Ruth Cohen entered the University Counseling Center's main office, locked the door behind her and walked to her desk. After hanging her lightweight wool blend cerise London Fog topcoat on the coat tree, she sat down, stowed her handbag and looked at the blinking red light on her telephone. Sighing softly as she began a new week at the old grind, the thirty-five-year-old buxom brunette picked a pen from her middle drawer and centered her carbonized two-part message pad on the desk blotter. Then, decisively, she stabbed the speakerphone button and pressed '1' to playback the waiting messages.

A woman's voice, with a distinctively Californian Spanish accent, said, "Hello, this message is for Dr. William J. Carter. My name is Mariana Guerrero and I may be reached at the Casa Cody Hotel in Palm Springs. Please ask him to call me as soon as possible. It is an urgent matter. Thank you." Ruth transcribed the gist onto the memo sheet's allotted few lines, underscored the word 'urgent' and then pressed '7' on the telephone keypad to hear the message time-stamp. A mechanical male voice intoned, "Message received Thursday, November fifth, at four fifty-two p.m."

Angrily, Ruth thought, "What in the hell? Thursday? REALLY?" Dropping her pen, she stared in disbelief at nothing in particular. "There's no way I missed that message last Friday morning," she muttered to herself. Deliberately fudging the date on her message pad to show '11/6', she rationalized, "Impossible. Must be a system glitch..."

An hour later, when the Department Head walked into the office, Ruth looked up from her computer keyboard and greeted, "Good Morning, Dr. Carter. Coffee's made in the conference room."

Carter smiled and replied, "Thanks, Ruth. Could you please pour me a cup and bring it in with my schedule for today while I get the mail from my box?"

"Certainly, Dr. Carter," Ruth answered. She was proud that in three-plus years she had never allowed herself to breach workplace etiquette with her boss. She could not stop him from leering at her, or at the young co-eds for that matter, but she could, at least, maintain her own professional standards. She sensed he respected and appreciated her for that.

As Ms. Cohen stood from her desk and turned around to go to the conference room, what Carter appreciated was her zaftig form. When he hired her, she was quite overweight and had self-esteem issues, but she had agreed to allow him to use hypnosis to help her. The treatment, together with improved diet and regular yoga, had done wonders. She had very quickly trimmed down to her goal-weight and kept her one-hundred-fifty pounds, plus or minus a couple, perfectly packed on her five-foot-seven frame.

The additional post-hypnotic suggestions Carter had programmed had not done him any harm, either. At least twice a week, he personally verified Ruth was fuckably fit and readily submissive to his every order. Of course, in her unspellbound state, she had no idea that she was an on-demand cum dumpster. Nor did she know how much she enjoyed ministering to her master.

When his secretary disappeared from view through the anteroom door, Carter moved to the staff cubbyholes on the opposite wall. After retrieving his incoming mail and messages, he continued into the corridor and on to his office. A few feet along the passage, a skinny Asian girl with long black ironed-straight hair and cherubic lips, sat cross-legged against the hall wall. He wondered if she was his first appointment.

As Carter reached his office, the student bounced up and bounded away as if she had just remembered her class was in another building. Mildly disappointed, he fished his keys from his pocket, opened the door and stepped into his den. The spacious high-ceilinged room was cool and dark, but he did not flip on the overhead lights or adjust the wall thermostat. Instead he paused, deeply breathed the crisp disused air and considered whether he wanted to begin his week with Mozart or Rossini.

Deciding on 'The Magic Flute', Carter moved to the stereo system embedded in the tall bookcase on the office's far right wall. After clicking on a Tiffany-shaded swag light hanging nearby, he put James Levine's 1980 Vienna recording into the CD changer, advanced it to the fourth track and set the volume at a soft level. As the music began, his coffee arrived.

Carter studied his entering secretary in greater detail. The low light from the lamp, and the ambient flat morning sunrays from his half-open window blinds, played interestingly upon her. Her tightly stretched dusky rose lightweight long sleeved ribbed wool sweater clearly outlined her breasts, belly and arm muscles . As she bent slightly to place his mug on his desk, a simple solitaire carnelian charm swung away from her scooped neckline and dangled deliciously above her deep décolletage.

Ignoring, for the moment, his strong urge to reach out and honk her horns, Carter said, mildly, "Praline."

Immediately on hearing her personal post-hypnotic trigger word, Ruth blinked her eyes, straightened up and greeted her subjugator, "Good morning, Bill. Here's your black coffee; steaming hot just like you like it. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Carter smiled broadly, stepped over to his thrall and answered, "As a matter of fact, I was thinking about cream and sugar, too."

Ruth laughed wickedly. Brushing her hands over Carter's crotch, she began unbuckling his belt as she said, "Well, you know I have plenty of sugar. The question, really, is how much cream did your little housemates leave for me to find?" She thrilled to feel his prick swell behind his suit pants.

Chuckling, Carter doubted there was any jealousy in his first slave's response, but he defused it anyway. "Don't fret about them, Baby," he gently commanded. "Those greedy guts got plenty, but that was hours ago. I'm sure you'll have no problem."

While he spoke, he felt strong warm slim fingers wrap around his fattening cock. Flashing back three hours, he briefly re-experienced eighteen-year-old Periwinkle Halstead rousing him. The Shondells' rock-and-roll tune, 'Mony, Mony' blasted into his head. Tommy James screamed:

Wake me, shake me, Mony, Mony!

Shot gun! Get it done! Come on, Mony!

Don't stop cookin', it feels so good, yeah!

Don't stop now, hey, come on, Mony!

Meanwhile, the next Mozart track began on the office stereo.

With The Queen of the Night's first aria driving the rude pop lyrics from Carter's mind, he looked past his necktie. Ruth hauled his hog and baby boulders from his boxers with both hands. She cradled the heavy nuts in her cupped left palm and stroked her loose right fist up from his erection's root. Her tawny eyes twinkled as she dropped to her knees and closed her Revlon Black Cherry glossed lips behind his dick's flared flange.

Carter groaned. Ruth squeezed. She artfully teased her tongue under his plumped head's chin up to its slit. He paid her back with small viscous pre-cum beads.

Palping his balls, Ruth billowed her cheeks around Carter's cock's top two inches while she rhythmically pulsed her hand over the other five-and-a-half inches between her puckered mouth and his boner's base. He reached down, laced his fingers in her brunette coif and unnecessarily held her in place. Rolling her head, she increased her suction and sped up her sliding pressure. His tension quickly verged on unbearable.

Ruth paused strategically. Carter shuddered while his urgency ebbed, only to rebuild with alacrity as she consumed his hot stiff shaft's mid-section. Grading her front teeth on its taut flat topside, she thrilled to feel its sliding weight on her tongue. When its great marshmallow top bumped her uvula, she suppressed her gag reflex, breathed noisily through her nose and opened her throat.

Carter's lust surged toward its no-return point. He gulped air into his tightening chest and involuntarily shifted his weight. Again, Ruth broke her rhythm and quietly held his cock in her warm wet cavern while, once more, the rush receded with agonizing abruptness. His ears rang and a hot chill flashed down his spine as his muscles spasmodically rippled over his scapulae.

Ruth repeatedly induced and denied her master's desperate need. Each deliciously dangerous edging increased her pleasure, as well. Her aroused nipples chafed within her underwired lace bra's D-cups and her cunt irrigated her nylon panties' cotton gusset. She wanted to fan her itching clit, but she had no spare hand.

While ants crawled maddeningly in her gut, Ruth moaned around her mouthful. Carter's groans were a soft baritone descant. He gyrated autonomically as she expertly played his Magic Flute. Together, their live-action chants overcame the background recorded Mozart.

Then, with exquisite timing, Ruth pulled down Carter's shrinking nutsack and pressed her thumb firmly against his prick's bulging under-vein. Clamping her mouth hermetically around the thick excited staff, she powerfully packed it against her hard palate. He reflexively jutted his chin and stared wildly at the ceiling acoustical tiles. The extreme three-point pressure exceeded any control.

Convulsively seizing Ruth's head, Carter lunged his hips. As her nose collided with his steel-wool pubes, he creamed her tonsils. She swallowed defensively while the salty semen spurted from his throbbing tool. Finished in five seconds, he rigidly held her face fixed to his crotch for another full minute until his depleted desire required his dick to deflate.

Carter relaxed his grip and pulled Ruth to her feet by her armpits. "Thank you, Baby," he said quietly. Blading an escaped jism drool from her bottom lip with a forefinger, he pushed it back into her mouth and added, "You've smeared your lipstick quite a bit. Aren't we glad I keep a tube of our favorite color handy in my desk?"

Ruth smiled broadly and replied, "Yes, Bill. And aren't we glad we found cream and sugar for your coffee?" Stepping around him, she pulled the spare lipstick from his center drawer and re-applied it expertly with no mirror while he shoved his stained soft penis back where it belonged. On the CD, Pamina and Papageno concluded their duet.

Joining Ruth, Carter twisted the window blinds fully open, then sat behind his desk. He reached for the opaque green milk glass coffee mug and took a long considered sip. As the still-hot liquid washed down his throat, he said, again, "Praline."

Instantly, and without conscious knowledge, Ruth reverted to her ordinary, efficient and circumspect Ms. Cohen persona. She pointed to the calendar printout she had earlier dropped beside her boss's mail and said, "You have students at nine-thirty, ten and eleven; and again, at one-thirty and three. The brown-bag staff meeting, of course, is at noon. Standard agenda, I assume?"

"Thanks, Ruth," Carter replied. "Yes... it'll just be the routine touch-base stuff. We ought to be done in fifteen or twenty minutes." He snorted, then added derisively, "Unless Dr. Llewellyn brings up another one of his brilliant brainstorms under 'New business', that is."

Ruth smiled, but diplomatically added no comment to Carter's snark. Instead, she waggled her finger at his mail pile and said, "Don't overlook that message from Mariana Guerrero, whoever she is." Editorially, she went on, "She sounded to me like a concerned mother. Probably wants to check up on her kid. Or finagle a credits transfer from the College of the Desert. Anyway, she said 'urgent' like she meant it."

Carter's withered nuts twinged as he heard Mari's name. He vividly recalled fucking, and probably impregnating, both her and her daughter. His poker face gave away nothing to his secretary as he answered, simply, "Thanks, Ruth, I'll be sure to take care of it."

With nothing left to go over, Ruth exited the office. As she walked in the hall, she scraped her fuzzy-feeling tongue against her palate and frowned as Carter's cum's smoky aftertaste filled her mouth. Shaking her head and clucking softly, she thought, "Wish I could figure out why some mornings my coffee-breath is so strong! Maybe I should cut back, or quit using, that hazelnut Coffee-Mate." Back at her workstation, she found her peppermint Tic Tacs in her purse and popped three to sweeten her offended taste buds.

After the staff meeting, Carter stood alone in his closed office behind his desk and stared through his open window blinds at the University quadrangle spread out in the late autumn noontime sun. It teemed with people moving through it to their next classes. Here and there, students frolicked with Frisbees, or sat studying wherever they were comfortable. He thought about his newfound daughter and granddaughter as he idly fingered Ruth's pink message slip.

One-hundred-and-ten miles east, thirty-eight-year-old Mariana Flores de Guerrero lounged poolside near the patio door to her bungalow suite at the Casa Cody Hotel in Palm Springs. The high overhead sun's uninterrupted heat radiated from the concrete apron. The air around her was warmer than the seventy-two degrees she had heard reported by the announcer on her little radio at twelve o'clock. She lazily considered whether she should swim a quick lap.

As she reclined in her chaise, two fine perspiration beads popped high on Mariana's sloping chest. Quickly combining into a more sizable droplet, they tickled their way in a straight line through the cafe-au-lait valley between her mounded relaxed breasts. Tipping her head, she squinted through her Ray-Ban Barcelona Olympics Sport Sunglasses at the rivulet's itching track. The rolling sweat disappeared under her halter-top's stitched center seam.

Mari, using her left forefinger as a squeegee, bladed the shiny streak to its destination and massaged the dampness into her sternum. The itch evaporated with the wet, but set a warm glow behind her ribs as far down as her navel. Below the bold purple-pink-green-and-blue floral print bra cups, her formerly undefined mature nipples proudly rose to the occasion. Raising her finger to her lips, she gently sucked her salt from its tip and thought about the new life she was sure had begun in her womb.

Over her shoulder, a ringing telephone interrupted Mariana's reverie. Her heart leaped as she scrambled from the long chair and raced barefoot toward her suite. In her wake, the iced-tea on the teetering side table above her abandoned go-aheads, came perilously close to spilling onto her transistor radio. Bolting through the door, she picked up the phone on its fourth ring and breathlessly answered, "¡Bueno!"

Carter's mellifluous voice replied, "Mari, how are you doing? How's my Little Girl?" Sensing correctly his newly discovered adult daughter's anxiety, he got right to the point. "I'm happy to call you just to talk, but your message said something was 'urgent'. How can I help you? You know I'd do anything for you... and for Luz, for that matter."

Holding the receiver to her left ear while her splayed right hand desperately compressed her heaving breast to her pounding heart, Mariana said, "Oh, Papá, thank you for calling." Buying time to calm herself, she added, "But just hold a moment, please. I was outside and left the door open. I need to tell you what has happened since you left here on Wednesday."

Mari put down the phone and stepped back to her poolside chaise. Kicking into her rubber sandals while she picked up and pulled on her nearby flimsy navy polyester cover-up, she turned off her radio. Then she carried her tea into the bungalow, closed the door and settled herself on the sofa beside the telephone. Still excited to speak with her discovered father, but otherwise cool and collected, she smiled as she again picked up the receiver and said, "Okay, Papá, I am back."

After recounting events in full, Mariana exhaled a long relieved sigh, drained her iced tea and said into the phone, "So, you see, Papá, I am through with Eduardo. And, except for my dear Luz, there is nothing to keep me here in the desert." She heard Carter draw a breath, as if beginning to speak, but she ignored it and went on, "I remember how you told me your wife, Ann, had passed away."

With a sudden burst, while she still had the nerve and momentum, Mari excitedly proposed, "I could move in with you. Keep your house. Take care of you. Oh, Papá, I love you so much! And I remember, too, how you loved me in your hotel room and said you could never deny a child of yours..." Her voice trailed off as her final words pierced his heart.

Carter's throat constricted when he heard Mariana's wish. His neck prickled with heat as he recalled their first fuck, one week ago. They had laid, sweaty and weak, clasped in an unrushed post-coital hug. Once again he felt her fingers distractedly running through his graying hair as she said softly, "Today I am más fértil. Mi ciclo, you know?... I am right in the middle. Do you want a son?... Or another daughter?"

Carter coughed, shook his head and answered, "Of course, I love you, Mari, but there are... uhm, certain complications."

Mariana replied promptly, "Oh, you mean, you live by yourself, but you have a girlfriend? That is alright. I understand this completely and would never get in the way of that. We have a different kind of love. What is her name?"

Carter felt the psychological snare tighten. He cleared his throat again and confessed, "Mari, when I only knew you as the hostess at La Familia - before I found out you were my own true daughter - I was not honest with you about my personal life." He took a deep breath and explained, "It was convenient for me to tell you my wife had died, but it wasn't true. I have never been married."

Mariana cocked her head and knitted her brows in a quizzical frown as she said, "Well, I am not sure why it was 'convenient', but now you can be honest with me, yes?"

"Absolutely," Carter answered. "Which is why I was quick to let you know there are things we must consider. As for 'convenient'... um, I could have picked a better word. You know how we agreed that our lovemaking must be a secret: From Eduardo; from Luz; from everyone. It wouldn't do to have the world know that we are more than just father and daughter." He paused.

Mari nodded into the phone and agreed, "Yes, that is true..."

Carter quickly continued, "It was like that when you were asking about the woman and girl you saw with me at the restaurant over Labor Day. For discretion's sake, I told you the woman, Ruth, was my sister and the girl, Peri, was her daughter, my niece. It just naturally followed I should explain why I was alone with them, so I made up the story that I was a widower."

"Ah, I see," replied Mariana. "This Ruth is your girlfriend, then. Well, she seemed very nice to me, as did her daughter... Peri, did you say her name was?"

"In for a penny..." Carter thought, as he realized the extent to which diplomacy and self-preservation must sometimes work against full disclosure. Deliberately spinning the facts, he clarified, "Actually, Ruth is my secretary at the Counseling Center. She was along on the trip as sort of, umm, a shepherd, you might say. Peri is a University student who had just agreed to be my Personal Assistant. I hoped she might learn about my needs and expectations faster if Ruth showed her the ropes."

For a few seconds, there was dead air between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. Carter held his breath waiting to hear how his story would be received. Mari lolled her head against the sofa back, and stared thoughtfully at the sculpted plaster ceiling. Keeping the phone to her left ear, she pushed her right hand under her cover-up and lightly massaged her bare tummy along her bathing suit's waistband. At last, she sighed and broke the silence.