Jenny's Couch, Book 5 Chapter 19 (Flash-forward 3)

It was mostly dumb luck that we were all in California when the secession crisis blew up. I was there with Cindy for her bottom surgery. The federal ban on trans healthcare was one of many things where California was defying the national government. We could also have gone to New York or (of all places) Kentucky but most of the best doctors in the field had come to the Left Coast, so here we were. Besides this way we got to visit both Karen and Renee who were in their senior and sophomore years, respectively. Karen was doing a Biology major and was applying to the veterinary science school. Renee wasn't yet sure what she wanted to do, but she had been sent to join her sister after being denied college admission in our home state. The denial had nothing to do with academics; she had been declared an undesirable due to "moral turpitude". The admissions board had cited her fifth-grade transcript that included a detention for kissing another girl, as well as numerous "fights" where she defended herself too successfully against a boy. In MAGA America your Permanent Record was now really something to worry about. It was enough to not only prevent her admission to any in-state college or university but also opened her to harassment from the new Moms for Morality militia. They weren't at all official, purportedly just a group of concerned homemakers and their godly (and heavily-armed) husbands, yet they had suspiciously good access to supposedly confidential government records.

Jenny and Rob had been preparing to take a second mortgage on their house to pay for Renee's out-of-state tuition when they had been surprised by a large financial aid grant from "some foundation we never heard of". Fortunately they were too relieved to want to investigate much, because the hastily-created nonprofit I had set up, funded with a portion of the the cut I had taken of Karen's prostitution earnings until she turned eighteen and could do her own taxes, wouldn't have stood up to scrutiny.

Lilah and I were holding hands, waiting to hear that Cindy was out of surgery. Lilah was trying to get used to being in public again after spending more than half her life lurking in shadows. Part of that was learning to ignore the covert or blatant stares at her bizarre body modifications: dozens of facial piercings, the chrome tusks that protruded from her mouth, the dark blue dyed eyes and of course the snarling Chinese-style dog that covered her face. Between that and learning to wear clothing again she was having a tough time of it, and I admired her courage. She was wearing a simple loose linen shirtdress and nothing else underneath it. She still wasn't used to the feel of the fabric touching her all over and underwear physically hurt her. It was a huge change for someone who had been entirely naked since age 8. The dress was a tight enough weave to conceal the rest of her ink, except for the thorny vines, rats, and pustule tattoos visible on her calves and ankles. Though probably no one looked beyond her terrifying facial tattoo anyway. She was barefoot; shoes were something else she wasn't yet comfortable with.

It had taken another chunk of my savings to get Lilah ID so she could travel, adding a year to her age and overcoming her long absence from school. Appearing seemingly out of nowhere with no school records would have raised too many questions. Though if not for her bizarre appearance, we could've claimed she had been raised with a proper Christian home schooling and probably gotten away with it. Fortunately the second most reliable characteristic of the Republican-controlled bureaucracy after its performative cruelty was its corruption. Her documents would stand up to all but a hand-search of paper records in the state capital; I had paid enough to guarantee that.

"Is it thuppothed to take thith long?" Lilah asked me now. Before answering I handed her a handkerchief to wipe her chin. Over time she had learned how to mostly control her drooling but when stressed it still tended to get away from her.

"The doctors said five to seven hours. It's been," I glanced at the time, "just over five. No reason to worry," I reassured her. "Once the operation is done it'll be a while longer while they move her to a recovery room and she starts to wake up, and then we can go see her." It was right about then that the muted tv mounted high up on the wall caught my eye. The BBC was showing a "Breaking" logo or what I called their "oh fuck what now". I grabbed the remote and unmuted. In the calm, measured tones of an educated British accent, the newsreader was announcing the end of our world.

"The New Christian Confederation, an informal alliance of states mostly in the Southern and Mountain West regions of the United States of America, have announced its formal secession from the USA. The announcement is puzzling in that the Confederation claims to control the national capital of Washington, DC as well and the claim is deemed credible as the Presidency and both houses of Congress are held by the Christian Nationalist Republican party. Soldiers have taken up positions blocking highways crossing into Confederation states and their major airports have been closed, causing chaos as hundreds of flights are diverted or cancelled. We are also receiving reports that non-governmental use of the internet has been blocked."

"Shit," I said, not realizing at first that I'd spoken aloud. I pulled out my phone and tried to call Jenny. There was no ring or busy tone, just silence and then the Call Failed screen. I tried her again, then Rob several times with the same result. I opened a browser and tried to reach the web page of Jenny's firm. It failed with "no route to host".

"What is it?" Lilah worked her mouth and her tusks clashed together musically, drawing some more odd looks from the others in the room. She had never gotten back the knack of following the spoken word on tv. It was one of the lingering deficits from the drug overdoses and abuse during her childhood. She was also still subject to bizarre hallucinations, though she had gotten much better at recognizing them for what they were.

"There might be trouble at home," I said briefly. "Let me work on this for a minute." I opened an app and in a couple of minutes I was able to establish a tunnel to a computer at my current worksite. From there I opened an SMS gateway and sent to both Rob and Jenny a simple "U OK?" After a tense three minutes, a reply came from Rob. "don't come home. soldiers came. they have lists, renee and cindy were on it. saw them shoot a guy on his porch and arrest his kids. can't reach jenny."

Fuck.

I tapped out, "I'll tell the girls. U have burner phones?"

"yes"

"give me new number. will try to contact you again tonite"

After a couple minutes, Rob replied with a string of numbers, munged using the code we had worked out some time ago, from which I could extract a new phone number. I replied with a thumbs up and closed the connection.

I turned to Lilah explained the situation in a low voice. Her hand tightened on mine. There was extra strain in her raspy voice as she asked, "What do we do?"

"For now, nothing different. We go sit with Cindy when she's out of surgery. But I have to call the girls."

Renee's phone went to voicemail, but Karen picked up immediately. "Holy shit, are you watching tv? There's tanks in our neighborhood! I can't get through to Mom or Dad!" Her voice was high with barely-controlled panic.

"I texted with your dad, he's okay. Where's Renee?"

"What day is it?" Karen asked herself. "She's leading a class at the MMA club."

"Go get her, and come meet us at the hospital. We'll figure out what to do."

"I have an appointments this afternoon," she said with the subtle emphasis on "appointments" that meant "tricks".

"Then come afterwards. Cindy should be waking up by then. I know she'll be happy to see you both."

And then there was nothing for me to do but watch the tv and worry, narrate what they were saying to Lilah, and wait for the surgeon to come talk to us. In due course she came out to tell us that everything had gone as expected and we were taken back to a recovery room to watch Cindy sleep and listen to all the technology of modern medicine beep and hiss around her.

By the time Renee and Karen arrived, Cindy was waking up. I hadn't mentioned the situation yet. I wanted to give her a chance to shake off the anesthesia before going into it, plus this way I wouldn't have to repeat myself. Both girls immediately went to Cindy and hugged her, exchanging greetings while I rustled up a couple of folding chairs from the nurses' station. When I got back, Karen greeted me with a long, hard hug and a kiss on the lips. She had grown into a willowy young woman of near six feet, half a head taller than me, her hair now permed into loose curls and cut into an expensive shoulder-length style and streaked with turquoise. Her skin was tan from the California sun. She was dressed apparently casually in a cream-colored spaghetti-strap top and denim cutoffs. Sandals with a moderate heel matched her top. She wore a toe ring, a gold anklet, a tennis bracelet and a small gold cross nestled against the hollow of her throat. Apparently casual, but I could read labels and I knew 24-carat gold and real diamonds when I saw them and her ensemble had probably cost multiples of our plane tickets, and the tennis bracelet on her wrist another multiplier of that sum. Her makeup was subtle and expert.

Renee, on the other hand, was not all that much taller than she had been at age eleven but completely mature with broad hips and round, full breasts. She was a woman grown but built to three-quarter scale. She was wearing a V-neck knit shirt with a beige and brown pattern that showed a little cleavage. Her well-worn jeans were not skin-tight, but snug enough that they revealed a subtle but definite bulge down the inside of her left thigh. Her one splash of color: psychedelic running shoes. Her brown hair was up in a sloppy bun held together with a pair of chopsticks. Her face was well-scrubbed but free of cosmetics. From her I got a carefully blank stare for a welcome, that same poker face she'd been deploying since age nine. Lilah got a little more, a polite "hello".

We pulled our chairs up to Cindy's bed. I took her hand and started with, "I've got some news," and filled in her and the sisters on events back home. Martial law was now in effect throughout the New Christian Confederation, though it was unclear exactly who had declared it. The President had issued a proclamation that the national government was still in charge but the governors had formed something they called the Council Under God and claimed they were calling the shots. Either way there was a curfew. Communications were down and journalists were being beaten and arrested if they tried to do their jobs. There were unconfirmed reports of mass arrests and National Guardsmen opening fire on protesters. "I have a text-only channel that goes through a server at my office, until somebody thinks to shut it down. I've heard from both of your parents and they're ok." Jenny had arrived home before nightfall after running a gauntlet of checkpoints, some staffed by soldiers and some by young men who seemed to have no authority other than automatic weapons and the light of religious fanatacism in their eyes. "But we can't go home. Even if the airports or highways were open, Cindy and Renee are on a list to be arrested."

"On what charges?" Karen demanded. She sounded outraged. Despite having been a sex worker for literally half her life, she remained kind of naive about politics and she had left for college before the rising curve of MAGA batshittery had reached its inflection point and really taken off back home.

"Who the fuck knows?" I snapped. "Aggravated pansexuality? Criminal gender-bending in the first degree?"

"Failure to suck enough Moms for Morality dick?" Renee contributed with one corner of her mouth turned up in a wry, sardonic smile. She reached into the messenger bag she had set on the floor next to her chair and dug out a small silver flask. She took a short pull at it and then offered it around but had no takers. She shrugged and took another drink before capping the flask and putting it back in her bag.

"Cindy, honey, I'm sorry," I said, reaching out to stroke her forehead with my free hand. "I've been planning on getting us out of that shithole but I didn't think things would blow up this soon. We're fine for money but we're going to have to write off anything we didn't bring with us. Rob will try to keep the house secure but I told him not to risk himself. If they have your name the place might be watched. At worst those fucking red-hat gomer motherfuckers will loot it and burn it down." I realized my voice was rising and drew in a long breath. "Tomorrow I'll start looking for a place for us to rent, you, me, and Lilah." I glanced over at Lilah. As always it was difficult to tell her expression, between the tusks and all the other hardware stuck on her face, and the tattoo of the snarling Chinese dog that covered her own features. Right now she was looking over our heads at one corner of the hospital room, her head moving slightly from side to side and her breathing rapid in a way that told me she was absorbed in another hallucination. It seemed they would be with her for the rest of her life - the massive overdose of psychoactive drugs that Moira had forced into her when she was barely eight years old had caused some permanent alterations of her consciousness. But at least as she had matured she had come to understand that they weren't real and couldn't hurt her. Though she often couldn't ignore them, she could regard them as just entertainment and not something to inspire rage, despair, or panic as they had at one time. "Maybe you two can help with that," I added, "since you know the area. You can tell me where to look and what to avoid."

Cindy squeezed my hand. "It's ok," she said softly. Her voice was still hoarse from the aftereffects of the anesthesia. She sipped at a cup of water on the tray in front of her. "I kinda knew this was coming, too. I know you still think I'm still a little girl," she smiled, "But I read the news and everything." She looked at me and for a moment I was lost in the clear crystal blue of her eyes. "As long as we're together, Mister, we'll be fine." Warmth spread through me at her old name for me, and I leaned over to kiss the flawless light brown skin of her cheek. She turned her head to instead press her mouth to mine and her tongue flicked against my lips. I opened to her and there we were, making out in her hospital bed with her not two hours out of surgery.

"Ahem," Karen cleared her throat ostentatiously and I straightened up, my face heating. Was I blushing a little? I believe I was. Just then a nurse bustled in and we got out of the way while he did nurse things around Cindy. He nodded approvingly at the readings he was copying down on the chart. "We'll be moving you down to your own room in just a little while," he said to Cindy and then turned to me. "This might be a good time for you all to go get something to eat. By the time you're finished she'll be moved and her room will be bigger and more convenient for you all to sit with her." He made it clear, in his nurse way, that this was not a suggestion.

We all stood and started gathering our stuff. Karen crossed the room and took Lilah's hand. "Come to the bathroom with me," she said and without waiting for a response pulled her towards the door. Lilah followed though her eyes were still tracking something invisible near the ceiling.

Renee and I waited at the elevator bank, mostly avoiding each others' eyes. Lilah and Karen rejoined us after a few minutes. Karen's face was flushed as she pushed the button. I took Lilah's hand and with my other, wiped a smear of semen off one of her tusks. She grinned at me as best she could through the hardware distorting her mouth.

Karen suggested a Mexican place she knew where Lilah's appearance wouldn't cause too much of a stir. We took my rental and I expected Karen to ride shotgun but when Lilah got in the back seat, Renee grabbed the front passenger seat, so Karen got in the back and slid to the center of the seat. She had her arm around Lilah, hugging her close, as she directed me through the city streets. Renee sat unspeaking next to me, looking straight ahead out the windshield, occasionally taking another nip from her flask.

We ended up in a little roadhouse in a rundown neighborhood on the edge of the city. Lilah was not the only person there with facial ink, though of course she was the most extreme by a country mile. Still, no one was impolite to her. The food was excellent and the margaritas were lethally strong. Mindful of driving I had only one. Lilah likewise had one only but it was enough to make her slump back in her chair with a goofy smile around her tusks and her eyelids drooping over the deep blue marbles of her eyes. Karen stuck to sparkling water. Renee, on the other hand, put away two margaritas and then three beers with her food, but they had no visible effect on her. She hardly said a word through the whole meal, and none to me.

By the time we were done eating I was about fed up with her silent treatment. As we walked back to the car I let Karen and Lilah walk ahead and grabbed Renee's hand. She did not quite suppress her flinch. "OK," I said, "How much longer are you going to do this? How many times do I need to apologize?"

"Apologize?" she burst out. "Your apologies are dogshit! You're sorry I'm angry at you. You're sorry I called out your awful, shitty behavior. Mostly you're sorry you can't get at my pussy anymore! Maybe stop worrying if I'll forgive you and start worrying how much longer I'll keep my mouth shut."

I ignored the implied threat. Renee knew full well if she set off that bomb there was no way for her or her sister to get clear of the blast radius. "You know what? I don't think it's me you need to forgive. I think you can't forgive yourself, but blaming me is easier."

"Of course I can't forgive myself!" Renee yelled, then lowered her voice to a furious whisper and got right up in my face. "I was a CHILD. I loved you and looked up to you and you made me - "

"I didn't MAKE you do a goddamned thing," I interrupted. "You got your rocks off more than I did!"

"You taught me to torture a little girl! Do you know I still have nightmares about it? I'm sticking that needle through her cunt again, and she's screaming, and the blood is running over her skin, and then the needle gets bigger and I'm stabbing her with it over and over and then she turns into Karen and I'm fucking her and stabbing her and fucking her and she's still screaming." Renee's voice was harsh and choked. There were two spots of red high on her cheeks. Unregarded, tears had filled her hazel eyes and were streaming down her face. "And then I cum," she finished, and all the anger drained out of her. Her shoulders slumped, and she used the heel of her hand to rub the tears away. "I cum," she said bitterly, "And then I wake up and I remember the sound that belt made when I whipped Lilah's little cunt and I cum harder. Oh god," she said, and covered her face with her hands.

I took a tentative step toward the young woman I had called my lover starting when she was in the third grade and put a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened but didn't resist as I gathered her into my arms. I let her sob quietly into my shoulder. Karen was standing by the car looking back at us worriedly. Lilah was next to her, gazing up in open-mouthed wonder at something she saw in the sky. "You're not wrong," I admitted, "But I didn't do it to be cruel. I was trying to make you happy. I saw what got you off, and I wanted you to have more of it. All I ever wanted was for you to have everything you wanted. Yeah, we went too far with Lilah, but you're not responsible. It was me, and then it was Moira after that, and that was really fucked up. But look at her now," and Renee raised her head to see. "She came through it, and she's done a lot of good in the world, stuff she couldn't have done if not for all the shit she went through first. We wouldn't have Cindy if not for her."

"Is that supposed to make it ok, what we did? What I did?"

"Okay? Probably not. But don't you think it balances the scales a little?"

"And Karen..."

"Your sister is who she is," I said, "And she's happy. Let's say you could make her see things the way you see them, about when she was younger. Do you think she would be happy then?"

"No," Renee said in a small voice. "But it's still the truth."

"It's your truth. You have to let her have her truth."

"I...I don't know."

"Just think about it," I finished, and I walked her back to the car with my arm around her. She shook me off after a few steps, but there was no more anger in her.

We went back to the hospital and sat with Cindy until the end of visiting hours but she was woozy. They had installed a drip with some military-grade painkiller and given her a button to control it and she was hurting so she gave herself the biggest dose she could. She barely roused as we said our goodbyes and I told her I'd be back at breakfast time.

As we made our way out to the parking lot I asked the girls, "Why don't you come over to the hotel for awhile? I know Lilah would love to see more of you, and I'd like to catch up with you too."

Karen gave me a skeptical look. "'Catch up' with us 'for awhile'? Uh huh."

So I cut right to the chase. "Alright, then, whore, how much for the whole night?"

Karen's face froze for the briefest moment but then she broke into her professional smile. "That's more like it." She named a figure.

I whistled. "That's a lot, and you completely legal these days?"

"I deal with a specialized and exclusive clientele," she said haughtily, but then giggled which rather spoiled the effect.

"You don't need to sell me, I know that cunt's worth it. I'll stop at an ATM on the way. What about you, Renee?"

Renee had been walking two steps ahead of us as we negotiated, her shoulders stiff as if poised to take a blow. She spun on her heel and glared at me, her face flushed. "I don't..." she started but that's when Lilah grabbed her and pulled her into a full-body hug, even lifting one pale, thin leg and wrapping it around Renee's ass. "Oh, pwease come, Renee," she lisped. "I've mithed you tho much!" And she bent to put her lips to Renee's. Her tusks pressed into the shorter girl's face.

Renee's face went slack with shock. Her arms stayed at her side but when she broke the kiss she searched Lilah's mutilated face and dyed eyeballs. Whatever she saw in those blue marbles convinced her. "Alright," she said in a small voice. "Alright!" Lilah said excitedly, and "Alright," I concluded.

"You go on ahead," Karen said to Renee. "I have to make a stop first." So Renee rode with Lilah and me - silently - in the rental back to the hotel. When we got there the lobby was deserted, which was a good thing because Lilah unbuttoned her shirtdress and pulled it off before we got to the elevator bank. She still wasn't quite clear on when clothes were mandatory and when they were optional - another thing we had to keep working on. Aside from being a little taller, her body didn't look that different from when she was nine. Her time of near-starvation with the bikers had permanently stunted her growth. Her body was still rail-thin, though her limbs were shapely. Her hips were narrow and her breasts were little more than puffy nipples, still as pink as when she was a little girl. Her pubes were sparse and soft and so light-colored and fine as to be almost invisible, especially since they overlay the tattoo of the viper's mouth stretching wide around her crotch. Today she was wearing a jaunty gold-and-blue ribbon threaded through the six grommets that pierced her vulva, printed with a pattern of a stylized horse's head. The fine silver chain connecting her one pierced nipple with her outie bellybutton glinted in the lobby's muted night-hours lighting and jingled as she walked.

The elevator was empty but when the doors opened on my floor a young couple was waiting. Their eyes bugged out at Lilah's naked and outrageously-tattooed body. Astonishment turned to fear when she clashed her tusks at them and they fled past us onto the elevator car where the young man hammered on the "door close" button which, as usual, did nothing.

I waved my keycard at the door and ushered the girls in. It was what they called a minisuite, meaning only a room large enough for a seating area with a sofa, a coffee table, and a couple of armchairs. It was nice, though. The carpet was thick, the furniture was plush, and the city lights twinkled through floor-to-ceiling windows. Lilah dropped her dress on the floor, threw herself down on the king size bed, folded herself bonelessly double with her legs behind her shoulders, unlaced her ribbon and began vigorously and noisily masturbating. "Ahhhh!" she exclaimed over the sound of her fingers dancing over the slickness of her inner labia.

Renee sat down on the sofa. From her messenger bag she removed, not the silver flask, but a pint bottle of Four Roses bourbon. She cracked the seal and took a long drink, her throat working as she swallowed, then put her head back and closed her eyes.

"Renee," Lilah called, her voice high and lilting. "Come fuck me, Renee. Renee, I want your cock. I need your cock bad, Renee. Renee, I want you to fuck me with your big cock." Renee's head jerked up and she stared at the familiar yet bizarre sight of Lilah with the ugly tattoos on her legs and her heavily scarred inner thighs, juice slicking the viper's mouth that surrounded her punctured labia. Renee's eyes opened wide and her mouth dropped open and she started to shake. She looked...terrified. But she was somehow unable to resist Lilah's siren call. She stood jerkily, raised the bottle of bourbon to her lips and took another hefty gulp, capped it and let it drop from her hand. She took a wobbly step, all the alcohol she had consumed over the evening finally seeming to hit her. It appeared to take all of her concentration to walk towards the bed, and she began disrobing as she moved. She pulled off her shirt, revealing a plain black cotton bra. She toed out of her running shoes, leaving her barefoot. She popped the front clasp on her bra and shrugged it off, letting her magnificent breasts bounce free, their large brown areolae nearly the size of my palm and her nipples erect and pointing. She yanked the chopsticks out of her bun and shook her brown hair free to tumble halfway down her back, thick and wavy. As she reached the bed she unsnapped her jeans and shoved them down her thighs, taking her panties with them. Her strap-on popped up. It was long and thick and crowned with a rim of tiny studs. It wobbled from side to side as she high-stepped out of her trousers, first one leg then the other. Her arms trembled as started to climb into the bed, and all the time Lilah was masturbating furiously and crooning, "I need your cock, Renee, come fuck me with your big cock!"

Renee crawled unsteadily up the king-sized mattress, her breasts swaying until she reached Lilah. Lilah stopped masturbating and reached shiny fingers out to grab the strap-on, pulling it towards her weeping slit and socketing it in her opening. She moaned as Renee shifted her weight forward and the strap-on slowly penetrated with an audible "slish". But before half its length had disappeared into Lilah's nearly-bald snatch, Renee jerked upright. With a shouted "No!" she rocked backwards, the strap-on pulling free of Lilah's cunt with an audible pop. Renee overbalanced and fell off the bed. She rolled awkwardly to her feet, clapped her hand over her mouth and stumbled unsteadily to the bathroom. I heard her knees hit the tile followed by the sounds of her heaving and vomit splashing into the toilet.

I'm one of those people for whom puking can be contagious but I steeled myself and left Lilah looking puzzled and disappointed. Renee was crouched over the commode, her whole body straining as she emptied her stomach. I knelt next to her and gathered her hair away from her face. I flushed the toilet as she continued to heave, the spasms increasing in intensity while bringing up just strings of bile. Her face was red with strain and tears were dripping from her eyes. I rubbed her bare back. Her skin was clammy beneath my hand.

At last Renee's body had nothing left to expel. She raised red-rimmed eyes to look at me and her face contracted with anger. She knocked my hand away, put a hand on the toilet rim and levered herself to her feet. She used the hotel's courtesty toothbrush and paste to wash out her mouth, splashed cold water on her face, and straightened to look in the mirror. She was still crying, and still visibly drunk. I followed her out of the bathroom.

Renee walked naked to the bedside where Lilah was still masturbating, now with her head thrown back and her eyes closed. Renee dropped to her knees beside her. She rested her forehead on the edge of the mattress briefly, then lifted a tear-streaked face to look at Lilah. "I'm sorry," she slurred quietly, then louder, "I'm so sorry!" and she began sobbing full-out, her bare shoulders shaking.

Lilah opened her eyes. The solid blue was impenetrable in the muted light but her face showed puzzlement. She stopped masturbating and lay a sticky hand on Renee's cheek. "What are you thorry for?" she lisped. Saliva dripped off her lower lip with each sibilant.

"I'm sorry for everything that happened...everything I did to you. When you were a little girl. You were j...just a child. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that I ruh, ruh, raped you." Renee could hardly get the word out between her sobs. "I raped you, and I beat you, and I whipped you until you bled. And I didn't care about you at all. I was chasing my cum and I didn't give a shit about you! And I did, I did..." she couldn't go on but pointed at Lilah's multiply-punctured labia."

Lilah tilted her head as if she didn't understand. "Oh, that's ok. I didn't mind."

"How can you say that!" Renee cried. "I know it hurt you. I tortured you, my god!" And she dropped her head and cried harder.

Lilah reached out and stroked Renee's hair with extraordinary gentleness. "No, it didn't hurt. I mean, yes, it hurt, it hurt a lot, but hurting didn't hurt me." Renee raised her head, confusion written on her round face. "When you did those things? That's when I first learned that pain only hurts if you let it. The pain was in my body, but in my head...it felt amazing. I was so full, so full of...life...and sensation, I was thparkles, and rivers, and the wind and the sun, and, and..." Lilah trailed off and seemed to be distracted by something happening over her head. Her eyes tracked back and forth and she murmured "thparkles..." before coming back to herself. "If I hadn't known about pain when the bad monthterth took me away, when they were hurting me all the time, day after day...I would've died. I wanted to die sometimes, but then I would fly away into the sky and the pain was just something to feel and I would hold it inside and know that I was alive, with a heart and a brain and a cunt and I was going to live." Lilah rolled on her side and leaned over to press her lips against Renee's forehead, ever so lightly so as not to prick her with her tusks. "You gave me that, Renee. You gave me that, and I love you." Renee lifted her head, still crying, but now there was something new in her hazel eyes. There was hope there. "Now," Lilah grinned her distorted, betusked grin, "Get up here and FUCK ME!"

Renee got to her feet slowly, moving as if in a dream, got one knee on the mattress and lifted herself. She held herself up with one arm and fisted her penis with the other, bringing it down to again press the studded head against Lilah's leaking, slippery opening. Lilah lifted her legs and put them over Renee's shoulders. Renee's buttocks clenched and she surged forward, penetrating Lilah completely in a single thrust. "YES!" Lilah cried. "Now fuck me, Renee! Fuck me with your big hard cock, ohhhhh!"

And Renee did. She began thrusting into Lilah, first slowly, and then with increasing speed. "Yes, yes, fuck me fuck me fuck me," Lilah chanted, spraying spittle onto Renee's bouncing breasts. Renee was still crying but her face was open now, her hazel eyes shining with something approaching joy, and then her eyelids drifted half-closed as pleasure began to rise in her body.

"I'm fucking you," Renee whispered. "Your cunt is so strong and tight and I feel it," she said. She let her arms collapse and Lilah's legs fell off her shoulders to splay around her. Renee put her hands on Lilah's temples and leaned down to kiss her, planting kisses on each piece of hardware piercing Lilah's brows, on the bar through the bridge of her nose, on the metal studding her cheeks. Her ass clenched and released, clenched and released, and her hips rotated as she rode Lilah. Her breasts rubbed against Lilah's puffy nipples, her smooth olive skin contrasting with the wildly tattooed designs covering Lilah's much paler coloring. Renee began to hum her pleasure until, thrusting faster and faster until the bed was shaking with the force of her pistoning, she lost her breath. Her mouth dropped open and she began to pant. Her face was flushed and shining with perspiration. Her eyes were shining too as she looked deep into Lilah's, shining with something I could only call...grace. "Oooh," she moaned as Lilah began to writhe and buck beneath her. "Oooh, oooh, oooh, oooOOOoooOOOoooOOO!" And at the same moment that Lilah cried "YES! and clamped her scarred thighs around Renee's hips, the smaller woman froze, then smashed her lips against Lilah's in a fierce kiss as waves of trembling swept down her body. Wetness darkened the bedspread where they were joined as their mingled juices flowed. "Thank you," Renee whispered like a prayer as her orgasm receded, leaving her feeling washed clean.

I had fallen into a sexual trance watching the coupling. I became aware that I was panting too, and an erection strained against my zipper. I drew a deep breath. The room reeked of girlsex. I was brought out of my daze by a firm knock at the door. I crossed to the entry and looked through the peephole. It was Karen, and she was not alone.