Party of Five

Author's Note

: The way I see it, I'm either going to make a few people happy, or disappoint a lot. I thought I'd mention that I have the whole plot sketched out already, so I know what I want to happen and roughly when it will happen.

For those asking about Alice, I can say that next chapter she's in it quite a bit. She also has some time in this chapter. But she'll play a big part soon.

And there will be more depth to Dawn. I know she's been a bit of a superficial slut lately, but that's what she enjoys.

Finally, a

huge

thanks to everyone who has sent feedback, via either the comment system or e-mail. Your encouragement is what keeps me writing, so if there are people out there who are tempted to leave a comment or send an e-mail but haven't done so yet, please do. Leave your e-mail address as well and I'll reply. Thanks again to

MaginMan

for the read-through. Enjoy.

* * *

Chapter 16

"Oh, shit!" Josh exclaimed, scrambling back on his bed. He lifted the sheets and looked down at the stains he'd made on them. "Oh,

shit

!" He looked around in panic, wondering if maybe Dawn was somewhere nearby or if he simply couldn't remember her coming to his room last night. But no, she hadn't. He had been alone and unable to sleep and thinking about...

"Oh, God!"

Josh leapt up quickly and stripped the sheets off his bed. He bundled them up ran to the door, opening it awkwardly before ducking out into the hallway. He hurried forward but was forced to stop when a voice spoke from in front of him.

"Hey, slow down," it said, and Josh knew it was Dawn. He moved the sheets aside to look at her. She looked as though she had just woken up. She wore a sports bra and a pair of long satin trousers – black, like Josh's. "What are you doing?" she asked with her brow furrowed curiously.

"I'm...uh...I'm...just putting my sheets in for washing," Josh replied lamely.

"Why?" Dawn inquired, looking confused. "I thought Jacquie takes them off your bed?"

"She does," said Josh, glancing nervously around the hall. "But, I...I thought I'd take them myself today – you know, give her a break."

Dawn narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Can I smell them?" she asked.

"What?" said Josh, certain he had heard wrong.

"Let me smell them," said Dawn. Without waiting for an answer, she took a step forward and inhaled a decent whiff of the bundle. She looked up with a wicked grin. "Wet dream, huh?"

"No," Josh replied crossly.

"Then why do they smell like cum?"

"I don't know," said Josh. "Probably from the last time you and I were..." He trailed off.

"It smells

fresh

though," said Dawn. Josh wondered how she could possibly know how fresh his semen was simply by smelling it. She couldn't, could she? "And besides," Dawn added, "you cum in my mouth or my pussy, not on your sheets."

Josh glanced even more nervously around the hallway. He turned back to Dawn with his teeth clenched. "Okay!" he conceded. "It was a wet dream. Now can you

please

move out of the way before someone wakes up?"

Dawn held her ground, still grinning wickedly. "So who's the lucky girl?"

"You, Dawn," Josh replied. "You're the lucky girl. Now

move

!"

Dawn looked at him suspiciously. "I don't believe you."

Josh grunted in frustration, wondering why he was bothering taking the rational route with her. "I don't have time for this," he hissed, brushing rudely past her.

"I can clean them for you if you like," Dawn called after him. Josh ignored her.

"Damn slutty Dawn," he muttered under his breath as he descended the stairs. "Always sticking her nose in other people's business. One of these days I swear I'll..."

"Morning, Josh."

"Aagh!" Josh jumped backwards and moved his sheets aside again. He was outside the downstairs toilet now and only a dozen or so feet from the laundry, but it looked as though Alice had just come out of the bathroom. "Alice!" he cried. "Hi!"

Alice smiled at him curiously. "Hi. What's wrong?"

"Nothing," said Josh. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just...uh...taking these sheets to the laundry."

"I thought Jacquie does that."

Josh clenched his teeth tightly together. Was he running a gauntlet or something?

"She does," he replied. "But I thought I'd do it today, to help her out."

"Well, that's nice," said Alice. "I thought you might have been getting rid of some evidence." She continued to smile at him innocently.

"Evidence?" Josh inquired, as though he couldn't imagine what she was talking about.

"Evidence," said Alice. "The kind that teenage boys usually..."

"Okay, okay!" Josh cried.

Alice giggled madly. "Sorry," she said. "I couldn't resist."

Josh aimed his bright red face down at the floor and waited until Alice had walked away, then hurtled like a cannonball into the laundry and stuffed his sheets as far down into the hamper as they would go. With that done, he straightened up and took a deep breath to compose himself. His heart rate was beginning to return to normal when Jacquie walked in.

"Hey," she said, opening the washing machine. "You're up early."

"Yeah," Josh replied, laughing nervously.

"Anything planned for today?" Jacquie inquired, reaching into the washing machine to transfer the wet clothes to a basket.

"Not really," Josh replied absently. He was glancing at the door, eager to get away and into the shower. He inched towards it.

"Are you going driving with Dawn again?"

"Huh?" said Josh, momentarily deterred from his escape. "Oh, driving. Um...I don't know. Probably not."

"How did you go last time?" Jacquie asked, straightening up with a smile. "I imagine Dawn wasn't the most patient teacher in the world."

"Oh," said Josh, laughing nervously again. "No, she wasn't."

"I think it's nice though," said Jacquie. "That she's making an effort."

Josh felt as though gravity had forgotten to exert its influence over his stomach and let it fall through the floor. The guilt lanced through him like an Arctic wind.

"Yeah," he said, "nice."

He found that he couldn't look Jacquie in the eyes any longer. He looked instead towards the door and then mumbled something about a shower before walking out glumly. He collected his clothes from his room and entered the bathroom, shutting the door behind him and sinking down to the floor with his back against it.

It was getting harder now, lying to Jacquie. Of course, he wasn't technically lying to her, but Josh was quick to dismiss that voice inside his head. He wasn't telling her the truth, and that was as good as lying. He knew as well that he wouldn't be able to do it much longer. And if he didn't tell her, then she would likely find out the hard way, and Josh didn't want that to happen.

* * *

To clear his mind on Saturday afternoon, Josh did something he very rarely ever did: homework. He sat himself down in the study, with the door shut and the curtains open, and encouraged his brain to turn to maths for the next few hours. It was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as the work itself.

Within five minutes, he was staring blankly at his notes, puzzling over the lines of figures and symbols that seem to have dissolved into an incoherent mass. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus again, but it was no use. He put his pen down and leaned back in his chair to stare at the ceiling.

A moment later the door opened and Alice came in, knocking first of course, as Alice always did. "Hi," she said sweetly.

Josh straightened up at once. "Hi."

"Am I interrupting?" Alice asked.

"No," said Josh. "I'm just...trying not to fall asleep."

Alice smiled and came further into the room. "Maths?" she said, looking over Josh's books and papers. He nodded in reply. "Need some help?"

Josh felt his heart flood with gratitude. Alice was the only one that would have thought to offer to help him. Jacquie may have, but she had as little patience for maths as Josh did. He knew how smart Alice was though, and although she would never consent to doing the work for him, her assistance was more than welcome. "Thanks," Josh said, moving aside to make room for her. She pulled a spare chair up beside him and sat down, flipping through his notes.

"Calculus," she said, making a face.

"Do you remember any of it?"

Alice nodded. She pushed some of Josh's notes aside and pulled his textbook forward. She scanned the page quickly, said "Okay..." and began to explain. At first, Josh listened with rapt attention as she explained something that had previously seemed as incomprehensible as Japanese to him in fairly simple terms. Josh found himself muttering "Oh" and "I get it" quite often. His attention began to waver though, mainly because of Alice's proximity.

He was still thinking about what had happened before he went to sleep last night and after he woke up this morning. Alice was wearing a simple white summer dress that hugged her figure closely without appearing slutty. The difference, Josh supposed, was the cleavage; Alice displayed none whereas Dawn would have flaunted her chest quite readily. Nevertheless, the curve of Alice's breast resting on the edge of the desk was enough to make Josh light-headed. Soon, he was hard and pressed his legs together to hide it.

It was a wonder Alice didn't catch him staring at her chest or her bare arms or the curve of her neck. Several times, she asked Josh a question, and he would snap out of his trance long enough to mutter "Hmm? What?" before letting his eyes roam her body again. He scolded himself liberally, but there was no way to avoid looking at her when she was less than a foot away from him. He should be thankful for that space, Josh supposed; if her leg or arm had brushed up against him, he wasn't sure pressing his legs together would be enough to hide his desire. Only it wasn't desire, was it? Because Josh didn't

desire

Alice – he simply noticed things about her that any red-blooded male would notice. Almost immediately Josh felt himself swell with anger towards a faceless group of men. He wouldn't let anyone look at Alice the way he was looking at her right now.

"So do you understand?" she asked him when she had finished explaining.

"I think so," Josh replied. He had failed to catch half of it, but that left him with half more than he had understood originally.

"You think so?" Alice inquired uncertainly.

"Ah...I get most of it," said Josh.

"Well, which parts don't you get?"

She always did have more patience than the rest of us

, Josh mused. If Dawn had somehow gotten this far, she would have told him to figure the rest out on his own and then thrown a pencil at him. But not Alice.

Josh indicated the sections that he didn't understand, this time prying his eyes and mind away from Alice's body to listen to her explanations. Even once he had managed to do that (and it had taken considerable effort), he found himself mesmerised by the way she wrote in his book. Each time she sketched a graph she would draw the curve of the line perfectly, sliding the end of the pencil across the paper as though it was made of silk. Even the way she was holding the pencil between the ends of three of her delicate fingers was absorbing Josh's attention and giving him the urge to sigh blissfully. When at last she lifted the pencil from the paper, Josh woke from his reverie and blinked several times to clear his mind.

"Is that okay?" Alice asked him.

"Fine," Josh replied. "Thanks."

Alice smiled at him and handed him back his pencil. She patted him on the shoulder and left the room, closing the door gently behind her. Josh took a deep breath (it felt like the first since Alice had entered the room) and bent his head over the desk once more. He began another question and, even though every graph he drew reminded him of the curve of Alice's breasts, eventually managed to complete the chapter.

* * *

Being the weekend, Dawn had left around dinnertime to go out with her friends, joyriding or clubbing or whatever it was she did with them. Josh didn't even want to

think

about some of the possibilities. He was thankful that she was gone though; after Alice's kind assistance this afternoon, he didn't feel in the mood to indulge Dawn's fantasies, or his own for that matter.

Jacquie spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen, outdoing herself on a delectable roast, which Josh helped with a little, but not much. Alice occupied herself on the couch with a book, deeply engrossed in its pages and failing even to notice when Josh stopped in the doorway to watch her for several moments. Luckily, Jacquie didn't notice either.

When dinner was served and Josh's mother was home, they ate at the kitchen table in a comfortable silence. Jacquie, as always, asked Laura about work, who in turn asked how things were at home today. It had been a dull afternoon though, and there was nothing much to tell.

After the meal had concluded, Josh, Jacquie, and Alice carried the empty plates to the sink, though they decided to forgo the washing up for tonight. Alice and Jacquie returned to the living room to watch TV, and Josh was about to follow them, after washing his hands, when the phone rang. He dried his hands off quickly and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hi...uh...who's this?"

"Josh," he said, frowning. "Who's this?"

"Marty," came the reply; a male voice. Josh's frown deepened. One of Dawn's paramours no doubt. "Is Alice there?" Marty asked.

Josh's frown became so deep his cheeks were in danger of falling off. "Why do you want her?" he asked suspiciously.

"I need to talk to her," Marty replied quizzically.

"About what?"

"Look, is she there or not?" Marty said, a little irritably.

Josh scowled at the phone. "Hold on," he said coldly. He covered the mouth of the receiver and called out. "Alice. Phone."

A moment later Alice walked into the kitchen. "Thanks," she said, taking the phone from Josh. It was extremely rare for her to receive phone calls, and Josh didn't think she'd ever received one from a boy before. Whoever this

Marty

fellow was, Josh didn't like him.

"Hello?" Alice said in her sweet voice.

There were several seconds of silence, and then Alice smiled. "Oh, hi," she said. "How are you?"

That's what she does

, Josh reminded himself.

She's polite. She always asks people how they are no matter how much of a tosser they may be.

He stood nearby, observing Alice's conversation through narrowed eyes.

"Yeah, I did," she was saying. "Oh, that was my brother...yeah...yeah...no, that should be fine...yeah...Thursday's fine...okay...I'll see you then." And she hung up the phone.

Josh folded his arms across his chest. "Who was that?" he asked in what he hoped was a nonchalant voice.

"Hmm?" said Alice. "Oh, that was Marty. He's in my Literature class at college."

"What did he want?" Josh inquired stiffly.

"We have a project we have to do together," Alice replied. "He wanted to arrange a time to work on it."

"At his house?" Josh asked distrustfully.

"No, at the library." Alice's mouth curved into a smile. "Why are you so curious?" she asked gently.

"No reason," Josh replied dismissively. "I just thought...you know...he might be asking you out."

"Oh," said Alice, chuckling. "No. We're just working together."

Josh's entire ribcage seemed to expand with relief. He breathed easier and smiled back at Alice.

"Look at you, Mr. Protective Brother," she said, smiling broadly at him as Josh flushed. "I think Marty was scared of you."

Josh turned even redder, but Alice had already turned and walked back to the living room. Instead of following her and enduring her pleasant smiles (which could, on occasion, be worse than Dawn's smirks), he sprinted up the stairs and walked into his room.

The days were continuing to lengthen; the sun was casting its last golden rays over the horizon and through Josh's window before it set for the day. Josh paced among them, sneering with contempt at the floor.

"Hi," he said a loud in a mocking tone, "I'm Marty. I'm some desperate wanker who wants to pretend I'm doing work with your sister just so I can cop a perve and make it look like I'm smarter than I really am because she's going to do all the work and I'm just a dumb pillock whose brains would fill a thimble. And I smell like rotten cheese," Josh added. "Bastard"

* * *

It was dark by the time Josh returned downstairs for a glass of water. As he entered the kitchen, the phone rang again, and he was ready to tell Alice's study partner where he could put his homework. It wasn't Marty, however; it was Lara.

"Hi, is that Josh?" she said.

"Uh, yeah," Josh replied.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Uh, not much."

"Are you at home?"

Josh felt like pointing out that she had called his

home

number, but refrained. "Yeah."

"Is Dawn there?" Lara asked.

"No," said Josh, frowning, "I thought she was out with you."

"Well, she was, but we've lost her. We thought she might have gone home."

"Someone else's home probably," Josh replied with a stab of jealousy.

Lara laughed on the other end of the line. "You're so funny, Josh," she said, making Josh's brain send off warning signals. Despite her obviously coy tone, he couldn't help feeling gratified at her attention. She

was

outrageously gorgeous after all. "Are you staying home all night?" Lara asked him.

"Pretty much," Josh replied.

"Why don't you come out with us? You're eighteen, yeah? I can introduce you to some other friends of Dawn's."

Josh, who knew the kinds of friends Dawn was likely to have, declined. "Um, thanks, but, I think I'll stay in tonight."

"Are you sure? It'll be lots of fun, I promise." Her tone almost made Josh's resolve crumble. He could tell that 'I promise' meant something else entirely, something that only his dreams were likely to conjure. But he thought of Jacquie and of Alice and of Valerie.

"I'm sure," he said.

Lara sounded disappointed. "Oh, well, if you change your mind..." She proceeded to give Josh her phone number, which he pretended to write down. It took a fair amount of willpower not to pick up a pen. If this had happened six months ago, before he had become involved with Jacquie and Dawn, he likely would have jumped at the chance. Parties and nightclubs and strange twenty-year-olds still wouldn't have been his cup of tea, but how could he possibly have said no to a perpetually horny, bi-sexual blonde goddess? Perhaps it was best that Jacquie and Dawn had intervened when they had.

After Josh hung up the phone he was left no choice but to beat himself off furiously in his room, with images of Lara and Dawn inside his head. When he was finished, he felt tired and drained and fell asleep straight away.

* * *

It was a soft creaking that woke him several hours later. He turned his head to the side and noted the darkness outside his window, then to the other side and noted his door slowly opening. He sat up quickly and watched it cautiously. There was no light inside the room, but even so, Josh could see, once the door was open enough, that his night-time visitor was Dawn.

"Josh?" she whispered.

"What?"

Satisfied that he was awake, Dawn closed the door behind her and padded quickly but quietly into the room. She climbed up on the bed and straddled Josh's waist, her arms hanging over his shoulders. "Hey, Joshy," she said, grinning at him. "How come you're not asleep?"

"You woke me up."

"I'm sorry," said Dawn. She slid her hand down Josh's chest and onto his crotch. Josh flinched at her touch. "Want me to help you relax?"

"Dawn!" Josh chided her, glancing reflexively at the door. "It's the middle of the night."

"So?" said Dawn, with a pout. "We've done it in the middle of the night before." She was grinning at him provocatively.

"You're drunk," Josh observed.

"Only a little."

"Well," said Josh, taking her arms away from his neck, "that's a little too much. Maybe you should just go to sleep."