Title: High Society

Chapter 12: Make-Up Sex

Authors: Rabid Raccoons

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1

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The Curriculum Committee, upon which Dr. Mildred Finch had convinced Amita to serve, met every Monday morning. A continental breakfast was presented in a conference room in the computer sciences building at 6 a.m.; Amita's first class was in that same building at eight.

Charlie generally didn't arrive on campus until eight on Mondays. He held an open office hour, and was presiding over Mathematical Logic and Axiomatic Set Theory by the time Amita returned to her office for her own morning office hours. During Charlie's lunch hour, Amita was in a rooftop observatory perched on top of the astronomy building, trying to convey her love of Basic Astronomy to a group of hungry freshmen. By the time Amita was ready to grab her own midday meal, Charlie was in a small lecture hall conducting an upper-class-level Seminar in Number Theory.

Most Mondays, the two didn't see each other at all. They had each taken to dropping by the other's office, and leaving discreet messages, scribbled expressions crammed into the corner of a white board. So far, not even Millie had figured out their code – or even that one existed. There were no surprises waiting for Amita today, though, no matter how often she returned to her office. Neither did she allow herself the option of trekking to Charlie's office, and leaving one for him. She fluctuated between despair and anger all day, and was tired, and cranky. When her last class of the afternoon – this one in a physics lab – dismissed at four, she hung around for several minutes talking to students and checking experiments, loathe to return to the mathematics building…or go home to her quiet apartment…or kill some time grocery shopping…or anything else she could think of.

After the last student left, Amita sat for a while at the desk, putting her book bag into order and trying to think of a viable alternative. She was shocked when she heard the familiar clearing of a throat, glanced up quickly and saw Charlie standing in the doorway of the classroom, directly below a clock that read '4:30'. She stood quickly, knocking her neatly arranged books onto the floor, twisting her engagement ring around her finger. "Charlie! I…didn't expect to see you…"

He attempted a smile, failing miserably, and stood rooted to the spot. "I believe we had dinner plans?"

Amita knelt and started picking up books, not looking at him. "I wasn't sure you still wanted to go."

Charlie's hand was suddenly on top of hers as he knelt beside her and helped gather supplies. "I think we should," he said quietly. He touched her ring lightly and then raised his face to hers. "You're my fiancé. There will probably be many more…misunderstandings…in our future. But I still want us to have that future." He suddenly looked terrified, and swallowed thickly. "Don't you?"

Amita blinked back tears and nodded her head vigorously. 'Oh, yes," she breathed, feeling hope for the first time since the evening before. She leaned a little closer to Charlie and spoke earnestly. "I wish you could believe me. Nothing happened – a peck on the cheek. After you left last night, Dane and I agreed to keep more stringent physical boundaries, from now on."

Charlie snorted, and leaned back on his haunches. "Don't put yourselves out on my account," he responded bitterly.

Amita pulled back as well, and flinched as if slapped. "It is on your account, Charlie," she said hotly. "You're the one behaving like a jealous fool over nothing. Can you honestly tell me you would have been upset by this if the man involved had been Larry?"

"Wrong set of data," he answered immediately. "Larry has been my best friend for years – I hardly know Rastenbaum. Larry is involved in a relationship of his own, with a very beautiful woman – I don't even know Rastenbaum well enough to know if he has a partner." He looked away and used one hand to push himself off the floor, bringing a book with him and dropping it loudly on the corner of the desk. "Furthermore, if you were going to a baseball game with Larry, I don't think you would lie to me about it."

Amita waited for him to offer her a hand. When he didn't, she rose easily to her feet on her own. Her dark eyes flashed as she began shoving her retrieved objects haphazardly into the book bag. "I was angry," she announced in a clipped voice. "Somebody from the Dodgers stopped and offered us free tickets when we were walking to the faculty parking lot on Saturday afternoon. I was still hurt that you'd stood me up, I'll admit that."

"You seemed to get over it when we talked yesterday morning," he pointed out.

She deflated a little. "I did. Then, I didn't know how to fix it – it wasn't fair to call Dane: 'Hey, you know that free ticket you got yesterday? How about giving that up? You see, I just made up with my boyfriend, and I'd rather go with him.'"

Despite the situation, Charlie had to fight off a smile. "You could have told me the truth," he insisted. "I mean, come on, Amita – 'observing human behavior'?"

She had the decency to blush. "We did," she countered weakly. "I didn't think you'd understand, and it wasn't worth getting you all upset. It was one afternoon!"

Charlie blinked his big brown eyes and looked at her with such vulnerability and pain that she felt heat between her legs and found herself blushing again. "I told you the truth," he said quietly. "Do you think it was easy, to admit I got so drunk I had to stay overnight at J.T.'s, and was too sick to function for almost two days?"

And that was the sentence that settled it. Amita knew that he was right – about almost everything. They would be married for 40 years or longer; they would raise a family together – there would be other disagreements. What mattered was how they handled those bumps in the road. Lying to each other, whether by omission or commission, was guaranteed strife; or worse, a recipe for divorce. All residual anger and resentment drained from her system and she dropped the book bag on the floor, oblivious to its spilling its contents yet again, and quickly closed the distance between them. "I'm so sorry," she murmured, placing her hands on his face and leaning in to kiss him squarely on the mouth. She withdrew, breathing heavily. "You're right, I handled it very badly. Please forgive me, Charlie."

Charlie was breathing a little heavily himself. The taste of her, denied him for three long days, lingered on his lips and they sought hers again. "It's all rrr...," he mumbled, losing the sentence in her open mouth.

She snaked one hand behind his neck and pulled him closer to her, pushing as much of her body as she could against him. Soon she felt him hardening against her. She broke off the kiss again, and leaned her head on his chest, letting both hands fall until they wrapped around his hips. "Dinner?" She couldn't seem to manage a full sentence.

Charlie fairly growled as one hand rested on her ass, and the other kneaded at a breast through her sheer top. "Make-up sex," he suggested instead. "I hear it's remarkable."

She giggled and forced herself to pull away a few centimeters. "Time to gather some data," she agreed.

……………………………

They were rarely sober.

Each morning they were injected, unwilling participants in a macabre experiment. Months of practice had brought their captors certain information: How much heroin was just enough? How pure should the drug be, to insure the best possible outcome? There were many demands made of the product. It should keep them pliable, easily manageable, for most of the day – until an additional injection of Rohypnol in the early evening turned them into glassy-eyed robots, their senses deadened, their minds only on what they had to do to earn their next hit of heroin. The constant state of inebriation also decreased their appetite for previously important things: food; family; plumbing; privacy. The slaves needed to be content with whatever they were fed, whenever it came. They needed to stop asking about mothers, fathers, siblings – even children – immediately. They needed to begin to find a 5-gallon bucket of piss and feces completely acceptable. It was imperative that they parade compliantly, en masse, into the communal shower each Saturday evening, and allow the rough, strange hands to scrub away the filth of a week.

They would be led, like trusting children, into the abyss. When their usefulness began to wane, they would be discarded. There were many available to take their places. Men and women who begged to be brought into America, the Land of the Free. Other men and women who had discovered that America was really the Land of the Rich, and were begging on its streets. Abused and wounded children, who ran from their pasts into a future that could not bear contemplation.

As long as he was careful, there would always be enough to meet the law of supply and demand. His supply would perform, and the bored, moral-less rich would demand. They would come to him, as they always had, offering money for the sin he could give them – the drugs, the sexual fantasies. They gave up their darkest desires every Saturday evening at his latest Fantasy, and not one of them knew his name - he was known to them only as Mr. X. Only a mere handful of mortals were allowed to call him anything else; they knew him as Markus – no surname, simply Markus. He would have it no other way.

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J.T. loved his weekends; no question about it. Perhaps because of the weekends, which were filled with an overload of people, sex, alcohol, and drugs – sometimes all at once – he also treasured his solitary Mondays. He even gave most of the staff the day off, fending for himself in the kitchen. He would don a pair of shades and a wide-brimmed hat to disguise himself from the world and drive one of the cars himself, if the need arose. Only Ramon stayed at the house, acting as J.T.'s pool boy, his bodyguard, his butler, his medic…whatever Morrison desired of him. Sometimes, what J.T. desired was not to see Ramon at all, but it wasn't difficult for the two men to avoid each other at the palatial estate.

Today, J.T. had allowed Ramon to make his presence known. Morrison was feeling flush with success, and generous. Therefore, it was Ramon who led the visitor out to J.T.'s poolside retreat in the late afternoon. "Mr. Morrison, sir," his dark paramour-turned-employee informed him, "A guest."

J.T. lifted his head slightly and smiled in recognition. "Ah. Please, join me. Would you like Ramon to fix you a drink?"

His guest shook his head as he pulled out a chair to sit opposite J.T. at the small, glass-topped table. "Thank-you, no. I'm not staying long."

J.T. dismissed Ramon without a glance. "Leave us." He waited until he heard a sliding glass door leading to the main house open and close before he spoke again. "A pleasure to see you, Markus – as always."

Markus pushed something across the surface of the table. "I've just had my people print up the passes for the pick-up point this weekend. The pick-up location is moving Saturday night."

J.T. regarded the card stock tickets with interest, but did not reach out to accept the passes, surprising his guest a little. "I have a new friend," he began. "I would like to bring him to the main event; but I am not sure he is ready for the Fantasy rooms. He needs to be brought along slowly."

His companion frowned. "One must be on the guest list for admission even to the legit segment of the evening – you know that. I'm not sure my staff will have time to investigate someone new before Saturday."

J.T. frowned in return. "He has been attending my Friday evening soirees for several weeks." He smiled, slowly and suggestively. "Last weekend he enjoyed himself so much, he spent the night in one of my guest rooms."

His visitor laughed. "Not the master suite, J.T.?"

Morrison tilted his head. "Not yet. I told you. This one is special. Slow and steady. I was rather hoping our first time would be in a private room at Fantasy."

A brief smile. "Flattery, you old fool? J.T., you're besotted! I'm not sure I appreciate that. You generally find the stud du jour at a Fantasy affair; I don't believe you've ever wanted to bring in someone from the outside, before. Wherever did you find this one?" Sudden suspicion darkened his features. "Do I have competition?"

Morrison laughed heartily. "Of course not, my friend! If things go as I intend, I will buy some of your product to enhance our journey together, don't fret!" He leaned forward and lowered his voice, speaking conspiratorially. "He's completely legit. I met him at Bastide – turns out he's a best-selling author, and some kind of teacher, somewhere." He leaned back in his chair and mused thoughtfully. "I should pay more attention to things like that. It might make a good movie someday."

Markus sighed and shook his head. "For you, my friend, I will expedite the investigation. I'll need his name."

"I can do better than that," J.T. promised smugly. "His book is on my bedside table – a simply delicious photo on the dust cover!"

His visitor arched an eyebrow. "Did you read it? Are you going to option it?"

J.T. shook his head. "Not that sort of book," he answered, "so that would be a 'no' – on both counts. I do enjoy waking up to that face every morning, though!" He began to pout. "Perhaps I shouldn't allow you to borrow the book after all."

A row of even white teeth showed as Markus threw back his head and laughed again. "I'll take a picture with my cell phone," he suggested, gathering himself to stand tall beside the table, "and jot down his name on a slip of paper." J.T. didn't move, and the visitor chuckled again. "Don't bother yourself, Morrison – Ramon still knows the way, I'm sure."

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End, Chapter 12