Deep Inside (19 page)

Mischievous fingers move along the crack in my ass, then tickle my pubic hair. I feel myself settling, opening, melting, dissolving. Tyler's gently unfolding my quivering, swelling lips and breathing deeply as her tongue finds its way into my very soul.

Fuck. I'm really, really hot and wet. My mind is a molten swirl: breasts, pussies, muscles, navels, tongues….

Tyler's helped me find my confidence again. What a team we are.

As I sink further into the moment and feel my orgasm start to build, I'm thinking about our next project. I give myself over to wave after wave of inevitable-seeming pleasure.

As they crash over me, a realization comes to me, and I'm able to let go. I can relax, be carried for the ride. And for just a moment I know the future doesn't have to look so scary.

Because the fact is, whichever woman serial killer we choose, it'll be certain to take our career to the next level.

“Blake, honey,
it's okay. Really,” Colin soothed.

I let out a gasp. Is there anything more exasperating than having your husband be so damn understanding?

I opened my eyes, let the beautiful, ever-morphing colors flood my retinae, and relaxed back onto the round Thermoplexic bed.

Our Sex Entertainment Center reflects the healthy attitude Colin and I both have about our sex life. It also reflects the fact that I work in the pleasure-toy industry—between you and me, I get to write carnal-related expenses off on taxes.

While I bring home the paychecks, Colin is in charge of our 145th floor Atlanta metro-region condo. Unlike a lot of wives, I don't take his homemaking talents for granted.

He's especially creative with décor. After years of hesitating and experimenting, he'd recently settled on just the right alloy shade for the exposed walls. “Diamond-enhanced enamel,” he'd called the wall shade.

Colin says his male friends are all jealous of the S.E.C. he's pulled together. He says he knows that because the other husbands make little digs. Colin notices these sorts of psychological things in conversations. Frankly, I never have any idea what he and the other husbands are talking about.

But I do know that my female colleagues are envious of the way Colin keeps himself in shape.

“He's still ripped,” Zorna Garishi said to me just last week. She and her husband, Tim, were over for dinner.

Colin had whisked Tim off on a tour of our apartment. I could see Zorna appraising Colin as the two men walked off.

“You're a lucky woman,” she sighed.

“Tim is a sweetheart,” I said in return.

Zorna shook her head and leaned in towards me. “I can't score with Tim on the Arousometer unless I'm watching him in the Enhancement Mirror. Thank god for digital perfection! Takes away his stomach. Gives him back the full head of hair he had when I proposed.”

It's not like Zorna didn't need an E.M., herself. But she was a VP in a waste management company that had just gone inter-galactic. I used to laugh at Zorna for going into the space station landfill biz. Now, after the interplanetary deregulation, she was working in the hottest field. She'd gotten herself a fancy convertible—she flew around Atlanta in it. She'd also started throwing money around in the float-bars where the younger set hangs out.

She'd started having affairs with other men. I wondered if Tim knew. She certainly boasted about her conquests to me. It was only when one of the guys she'd fucked would cause trouble—want her to leave Tim—that Zorna would regret her numerous infidelities. Not that she felt guilty. She'd just blame them on Tim. Once they'd gotten married, he'd let himself go. Zorna felt entitled to let her eyes wander towards younger meat.

Me, I never cheated on Colin. Sometimes I wondered if he knew how lucky he was. Okay, yeah, I'd had a one-night stand last month, but that was at one of my company's space station retreats. If you're outside the earth's orbit, it doesn't count.

“Nice shimmer,” I said pointing to the enameled wall.

“It's called ‘coruscation,'” Colin corrected.

“Sure,” I said. “Nice coruscation.”

Christ, husbands! They always want you to be as involved with décor as they are!

Colin put the bed pillows I'd kicked around back in place. I ran my hand over the new red sheets I was lying on.

“Poly-sateen,” Colin said. Like I cared, but I smiled at my husband. “Handwoven on Ilion 7 by well-treated labor,” he proudly added.

Okay, so Colin could be sentimental about the business world, but isn't that true of all heterosexual men these days?

I didn't have anything like his flair for fabrics, colors, and arrangement. Yet I could certainly register what a good job he'd done with the S.E.C.: the hidden surround-sound speakers, the discreet cabinet of injection-molded molybdenum that supported our controllers and devices, and the invisible creases in the walls that concealed our storage cabinets. It all went together.

I proudly thought about the memory chips and software in the next room, purring away and making the Enhancement Mirror and wraparound Interactive HaloScreen perform so smoothly. The S.E.C. was like a dreamy virtual sex bath.

I signaled to Colin that I needed to come.

“I'll turn up the clit-stimulator,” he said.

I swatted at the probes springing from my clit plugs. “No connection problems as far as I can tell,” I said.

“How about a different HaloMovie?” he asked.

“Shit, no,” I said. “You know how much I love this adventure.” The wraparounds showed
Dante 80,
the gay interactive porn title. It seldom failed to send me over the brink.

“So what is it, honey?” Colin
tsk
ed. He was staring at the glowing meter on the master panel. “I haven't seen cortex activity this ragged in months. You can't kid me. There's something we need to talk about.”

I winced. Nothing I dislike more than a personal conversation. Colin's intuition could drive me nuts. But he was right. I yanked the electrodes out of the clit plugs and felt relief when the pulsing stopped.

“Business worries?” Colin asked. He turned up the relaxing wave motion on the Thermoplexic control panel and sat down by my side.

“Yeah,” I said.

Colin made a sympathetic face. But I knew I couldn't really discuss it with him. How, lately, I was wondering why I ever went into the sex-toy field. How when I started out, it was the hottest business sector around. Not since computers in the 1990s had there been ferment like there was in sex toys in the 2020s.

Who wasn't excited by the possibility of gigantic fortunes made overnight? What a high it was! I could still remember the excitement. The companies that were valued at six billion one day and three hundred billion the next? Man, we knew the odds were long, yet the possible score was so great. We all had visions of scoring big V.C. money and retiring by thirty.

The best talent went into sex toys. People like Gita, my boss. Or Matt, my partner. He was the brilliant inventor and concept guy, and I was the manager with a vision.

But it was now 2065. I'd done a great job of surviving the recession, of going with the flow, of moving into the present. I'd faced the fact that sex toys have turned into a commodity business.

These days, everyone has a Sex Entertainment Center. For a while we could get by selling upgrades. But no longer. People seem happy enough with what they've got.

And I might as well have gone into a less thrilling field.

Face it, Blake, I told myself. You've been in the sex-toy field for ten years. You haven't made the big score yet. You're thirty-three. It's not going to happen now. All you are is a middle manager. You should have gone into waste management, like Zorna.

The controller gave a soft beep. Colin and I exchanged wicked looks. As he returned to the control panel, I plugged the clit electrodes back in and settled into the red sheets.
Dante 80
began moving on the wraparound HaloScreen again, his deliciously obscene actions responding to my pulse, cortex, and perspiration activities. Thanks to me, Dante's famous asshole was getting rimmed by two gorgeous exotic men. One had light blue hair that matched his G-string. The other man had LCDs tattooed all over his body. His enormous thigh muscles glowed.

“Tell me if it's too much,” Colin said.

“Fuck no,” I said. “Give me the juice!”

The pulsing in my crotch crescendoed and dove deep into my erotic centers.

I pushed the “water-bed” option on the Thermoplexic bed, spread my legs lewdly, and let the environment go to work on my insides and outsides.

To the left, the Enhancement Mirror showed perfected images of Colin and me, turning my limp hair into a stunning ash-blond flip and touching up my dark roots at the same time. More importantly, it altered my nipples. I was always mortified by their real-life size: a quarter-inch too long.

In the Enhancement Mirror, Colin looked like a gay porn star himself. Buff, toned, and handsome. I'd given him an LCD-implant tattoo for our fifth wedding anniversary. In the E.M., the implants glowed, accentuating his rippling arm muscles.

Meanwhile, the HaloScreen went berserk with
Dante 80
action. The software was magic: it knew I craved a leather-man orgy scene. I gasped as my thighs quivered uncontrollably.

“Ready for the max?” Colin said.

“Bring it on!”

My sensorium was a kaleidoscope of titillating and goading bliss. I spasmed out an orgasm.

“Level six-point-five,” Colin enthused. “That's so good!”

Not as high as I usually scored, though. I knew damn well why. I had an agenda that was far more important than my sexual satisfaction, one I simply couldn't tell Colin about. I'd needed my orgasm not because I was hungry for pleasure, but because I needed Colin to be unsuspecting.

Which he now was. He puttered about, fussing with the shelves and equipment.

“Now, baby, how about you?” I said in my most innocent voice.

“No need,” Colin chirped. “You know I get more pleasure out of serving you than I do out of making my own demands.”

“Sweetie, you've lost track of what day of the week it is,” I said.

He paused. Househusbands: one day's just like the next to them. “You mean—?”

“That's right. It's Thursday.”

“Aw, honey,” he whimpered. “Can't we skip it this week?”

I shot him a look of rebuke. “You read the same Harvard health findings as I did.”

“I know, I know. The optimum orgasm rhythm for straight males my age is two times a week. No need to hammer it home.”

“And on a regular schedule,” I said sternly. “Which means the same days every week.”

“I had a really good one on Sunday night.”

“Yes, and now it's Thursday.”

He stopped whimpering, shrugged, and headed to the cupboard to fetch his equipment. With his back to me, I made a mental note. He needed to get to the laser specialist for a depilatory touch-up.

But the time for the evening's experiment had arrived. Time to try out my partner Matt's latest inspiration.

I didn't know what to think about its prospects. Matt and I had spatted this morning, when he'd announced his creation to me. I asked him how work was going on the project our boss, Gita, had asked us to develop. He'd grinned in that mischievous way I'd come to both dread and love.

“Oh, no,” I said into the computer screen.

“Oh, yes,” he said gleefully. Onscreen behind him was an idyllic scene: jungle, straw hut, hammock. A couple of slim-hipped Thai boys were doing chores. Matt was tanned and fulfilled-looking. It made me angry all over again that Gita insisted I be on-site while Matt got to work from his home in Thailand.

“Don't tell me you haven't been focusing on our assignment.”

“The Muse leads where she will,” Matt said with immense self-pleasure. “Got to follow inspiration when she calls.” He held up a HaloCrystal. “Say hello to my latest baby.”

“What's this?”

“You'll have to see it to find out,” Matt had said.

“You never do things the rational way.” My voice showed my annoyance.

“That's your chore, love—management. Mine is inspiration and creativity.”

“As though we don't have enough worries.”

“Look at it this way, love,” he placated. “We've still got a week before our deadline. If my stroke of genius doesn't perform as I think it will I'll whip up the damn WiFi-enabled nipple clamps Gita hopes the world is dying for. Child's play, guaranteed. But you have to promise me something first.”

“What's that?”

“That you'll try my creation out tonight. Put it on the player for just you and your lovely Colin.”

“Matt, what are you thinking?” I fumed. “The world doesn't need more HaloCrystal interaction.”

I couldn't believe how blockheaded he was being! Just last week we'd had a teleconference with seven marketing experts. They'd thoroughly assessed the slump in HaloCrystal sales. Matt heard the report as well as I did. Everyone's got the two or three crystals that work for them, and they've stopped buying more.

“The market's flatlining,” I said. “You know that as well as I do.”

“And that's the point,” he calmly retorted.

“What point?”

“People have gotten so far into exploring their own responses that they've forgotten something. Sex can also have to do with exploring other people, too.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“I'm talking about mess. I'm talking about getting out of yourself. I'm talking about real interactivity, between you and another person.”

“Sounds retro.” I gave my fingers an impatient drum.

“It
is
retro, and that's what makes it so tomorrow, too,” he said excitedly. “Heterosexual male arousal is the last unexplored territory. We've lost all track of it in our race to target our inner responses.”

“And your HaloCrystal is meant to do what, exactly?”

“To stir the hetero male beast,” he confidently replied.

“Are you insane?” I blurted. “No one's interested in going there. We've moved way beyond that.”

Matt laughed. “Think of it as real-time interactivity,” he said.

“I don't know,” I muttered.

“Love, this could be a category-buster. WiFi nipple clamps will slot right in the catalogue and make a little money. Boring. This could open up something entirely new. Or have you lost the daring you once had?” He turned to gaze at his elegant young Asian companions, moving so gracefully on the sand.

Fuck. He really knew how to get my goat. “Okay,” I said resignedly. “Beam it to me.”

“Gotta go, love. Burn a copy and try it out on Colin tonight. Report back with the deliciously gruesome details tomorrow.”