Chapter 7: Unafraid l

-- MONDAY, JULY 9, 2007 --

I may not have feared the consequences of our actions, but Dawn wasn't quite so brave. The same anxiety that had first led to her decision to leave camp early rose up in her again, and she wondered aloud if it wasn't better for us to hide our actions and pretend like they'd never happened, at least until we could figure out what to do.

"I can't hide something like this, not when communication and honesty are the pillars of my relationships with the girls," I explained to her.

"I'm pretty sure not having sex with the ONE woman they told you not to fuck would also be a pillar of your relationships. Maybe it would be better if I still left camp and went back home. The next five days will be awkward enough."

I arched an eyebrow. "Running away from the shitstorm to come?"

"No, no, it's not that I want to run away. I'd never leave you to fend for yourself."

I shrugged. "Then don't leave me to fend for myself."

"It's just that I'm a woman."

I snorted. "I noticed."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "I'm being serious. I'm a woman and I know how a woman is going to react to this. After what we did, I'm now the other woman, and as long as I'm within a hundred miles of this place, your girlfriends are going to be seeing red. It's going to color everything you try to say to them, if not completely blind them to reason."

"Perhaps. Or maybe they'll understand and be cool with it."

Dawn leveled a look at me.

"Okay, okay. Maybe not 'cool'. But I AM confident that things will work out. I know my girls."

"Know they're gonna be pissed."

"At first, certainly."

"Know that they're gonna want to tear my head off. Yours too."

"Well not literally."

"Hell hath no fury..."

"That might be a little extreme."

"But it might not. And removing myself from the picture might mean your girlfriends won't have to go through these serious discussions with their object of hatred so close by."

"They aren't going to hate you for this," I said reassuringly.

Dawn gave me a funny look. "Wanna bet?"

"Okay fine, they're gonna hate your guts the instant they find out, and Adrienne might want to cut my balls off. But even so, you're staying right here. No more running away. No more hiding from awkward situations just to avoid conflict. Stay with me and fight for this. Fight for us. Be unafraid."

Shaking her head, Dawn sighed. "I wish I had your confidence."

I gave her a warm smile. "Then have my confidence. Believe that this will work out. Unless you'd rather write this off as a mistake, crawl on your knees beseeching the girls for forgiveness, and promise to never see me again."

That brought Dawn up short. "I'm not losing you again."

"Agreed. So you're going back to camp with me. And we're gonna tell them that we just had sex. And we're gonna tell them we're not sorry about doing it."

Dawn exhaled slowly, looking nervous. But after a deep breath, she stood up straight and gave me a nod. "Okay ... But before we head back, there're a couple more things we have to get straight."

"Like what?"

"Well for starters, was this a one-time thing and we go back to being platonic friends? Or are we going to do this again?"

Quickly, I pulled Dawn against me and sealed her lips with a kiss. The volcanic explosion of passion and love coursed through our veins, and when we broke for air I stated confidently, "I assure you that we're going to do this again. Soon. Frequently."

Popping her eyebrows, Dawn nodded and gave me another anxious look. "Okay then ... If we're going to keep doing this, the other big question is: Are you gonna make me part of the harem or not?"

I took a deep breath. "That, unfortunately, is a 'no'."

Dawn frowned at me in surprise. "'No'?"

"No. For one thing, I've got three girlfriends already, and any decision to include you as one of them is a decision not entirely up to me. Look, I heard what you said about hoping for the future, about loving me as a lover, as a boyfriend, and maybe someday as a husband. But you know I've got other girlfriends that I love. I don't want to lead you on into thinking that we're just going to pick up where we left off at the end of Junior Year as if nothing ever happened."

Dawn shook her head. "I don't expect us to pick up where we left off. For one thing, we didn't leave off at a very good place."

"I know. But that's in the past and we're not revisiting it again. We're not resuming our old romance; we're starting again. And that means doing so as friends." I took a deep breath and gave her a serious look. "It's going to take time for us to build this new friendship, build a new relationship, and even though I'll always love you for being my best friend since we were babies, there's really no way you and I can jump straight back into being boyfriend/girlfriend, especially because I already have this complicated harem."

Dawn grimaced. "A harem of girlfriends who aren't going to be too happy about what you and I just did."

I sighed and nodded. "No, they're probably not. But don't worry: I know it'll all work out."

"Again, so confident. How can you know?"

I grinned. "Because I am unafraid."

Dayna was on the front porch of my cabin when Dawn and I rounded the bend and came into view. She must've been waiting for quite a while. Dawn and I had been gone for hours: having our first conversation, having sex three times, and having another long conversation as we discussed our feelings for each other now that we'd gotten the sex part out of the way. It was nearly time for lunch when we finally got back, and part of me had wondered whether or not the others would simply go to the Main Lodge to eat instead of waiting around. But as soon as Dayna saw us, she opened the front door and poked her head inside. Everyone else came out onto the porch shortly thereafter.

That Dawn and I were holding hands was conspicuous enough. Our mussed up hair and Dawn's caught-red-handed guilty expression confirmed their suspicions. And anyone familiar with the scent of our sex-sweaty bodies would be able to smell instantly that she and I had recently completed some thoroughly aerobic shagging.

Brandi was the first to gasp and mutter, "Oh my gawd," right as we came within earshot. Dayna was blushing bright pink and sneaking furtive glances at Adrienne and Sasha. Sasha's eyes were downcast, her eyebrows knitted as she processed her thoughts and emotions, perhaps even wondering if her worst fears had just been realized. And Kim had BJ perched on one hip, her expression a thousand-yard stare as she did her supercomputer thing.

And Adrienne? Adrienne was MAD. No, "mad" isn't a sufficient enough descriptor. Livid, furious, irate ... perhaps if you combined all three you might reasonably approach some inadequate facsimile of the rage my primary girlfriend appeared to have stretching the boundaries of her bright red face. Her jaw was clenched, hard enough to vibrate as if her teeth were chattering inside her mouth. Her nostrils flared, and her eyes goggled out, threatening to burst from their sockets almost as much as the big vein across her forehead that threatened to pop out first. She chewed her lips, clearly trying to say something and just as clearly so apoplexed that she couldn't manage enough control to actually do so. And she silently sputtered like an engine that wouldn't turn over for the remainder of our approach to the front porch.

It was only after Dawn and I ascended the steps that Adrienne finally blurted out, "BEN?!? WHAT THE FUCK?!?"

Taking a deep breath, I canted my eyebrows to the sides and gave her a look of infinitely calm confidence. Even though my stomach was in knots and I couldn't be 100% sure this would actually work out (maybe 95%), I forced myself to be unafraid. I made sure that my expression told everyone I knew exactly what I was doing, and in a cool, measured voice, I stated, "Let's go inside."

My calm demeanor appeared to enrage Adrienne even further, and she sputtered for a moment again before flailing her hands out in frustration and exclaiming, "The FUCK did you DO?!?"

"Think it's pretty obvious who the fuck Ben just did," Dayna drawled with a chortle, and her eyes popped open wide as she ducked away to avoid Adrienne's abrupt right cross.

"HEY!" I barked as I instantly closed the gap and reached out to grab Adrienne's right wrist. She tried to shake me off and flailed out with her left hand, trying to awkwardly punch me across her body. I easily dodged it by leaning back, and a moment later I caught her other wrist with my left hand. Adrienne's arms were now crossed in front of her body, trapped in my iron grip, and she roared and stomped and kicked at my shins as she tried unsuccessfully to pull herself free.

That 95% confidence dropped to about 84 – I'd never imagined she'd start punching people – but I knew I had to maintain control of the situation. Giving Adrienne a stern look, I barked in a command tone, "Adrienne, STOP!"

To even MY surprise, she immediately stopped flailing. I used her wrists to rotate her toward the cabin's front door, letting go of them and instead clamping my right hand onto her shoulder like a police officer escorting a cuffed prisoner. "Inside. NOW."

Though she was physically compliant, Adrienne still stared daggers of hatred at me, at least until she stared daggers of hatred at Dawn. But she walked ahead of me while I maintained my grip on her shoulder. And from beside us, Sasha followed as well.

Noticing that, Dayna took two steps forward. For a split-second, I thought about telling her to stay outside, that the real dogfight would be between me, Adrienne, and Sasha. But then I realized that what had happened between me and Dawn affected everyone, so I simply nodded and waved her along.

Meanwhile, Adrienne had shrugged free of my hand and gone inside of her own accord, with Sasha following after. Dayna was next, but when I glanced over at Kim, my baby mama hoisted her little boy higher up her hip and head-nodded out toward camp. "Things are about to get noisy. I'm going to take BJ for a walk."

"No, let me take him," Brandi offered, stepping forward and opening her arms. "You need to be here, and I'm the only one without a real stake in this."

I started to say something, but Brandi shot me a look and I closed my mouth. She accepted BJ from Kim, raised his arm by the wrist while telling him to 'Say bye-bye to Mommy and Daddy', and turned to step off the porch.

Kim then preceded us into the cabin, and finally Dawn and I entered together. I was the last one through the door, and I was still closing it when Adrienne barked angrily, "The ONE thing I told you not to do, with the ONE girl I told you not to do it with!"

"Yes," I replied evenly as I turned back to face her, and I steadied myself before admitting frankly, "Dawn and I had sex."

"How could you? How could you DO this to us?"

I took a deep breath, inhaling long enough for Adrienne to get fidgety. Sasha, on the other hand, simply remained quiet and observant. Kim and Dayna had taken a step back and might as well have been invisible. After I exhaled, I gave my two 'primaries' a helpless look and explained, "I had to."

"Had to what?" Adrienne scoffed. "Fuck her?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"She put a gun to your head?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Did she force you in any way?"

"No, of course not."

"THEN WOULD YOU KINDLY EXPLAIN WHY THE FUCK YOU, quote, 'HAD' TO FUCK HER?!?"

I took a deep breath and spread my arms out, palms up. "Because she's Dawn. And because I couldn't let her leave."

"So you FUCKED her rather than let her leave." The vile disgust in Adrienne's eyes made my 84% confidence drop to about 76.

I nodded, recognizing that at this moment, there wasn't any combination of letters, numbers, or hieroglyphics that wouldn't make that percentage sink even lower, so I stayed silent and kept my hands up, palms out, gesturing for calm.

Folding her arms and narrowing her eyes, Adrienne seethed while giving me a reptilian gaze. She took deep, measured breaths with her lower jaw jutting forward in obvious anger. And for a long time the two of us simply stared at each other.

No one said a word. No one dared get between me and the livid supermodel. Kim and Dayna weren't even within eyesight at the moment, and Dawn had instinctively taken a step behind me.

It was Sasha who started fidgeting first. Looking back and forth between me and Adrienne, she reached out with one hand and lightly brushed it across Adrienne's forearm. That seemed to snap the outraged blonde from her little trance, and after flashing a look at Sasha, she scowled at me with an expression of absolute disgust before shaking her head in disbelief.

"I warned you," Adrienne muttered, "that the day you had sex with her would be the day you lost me. I never thought that day would be today."

"And it won't be today, either. You're not leaving me over this."

Adrienne's eyebrows knitted. "Excuse me?"

"You're not leaving me," I repeated. "We can work this out."

"'Work this OUT'?" That particular combination of letters only pissed her off even more. "There's no working this out! You had SEX ... with DAWN."

"I'm aware of that. You're upset about that, and I don't blame you for being upset. I went and did the one thing you told me not to do, and you have every right to be angry. But I genuinely don't think you want to leave me over this."

"Oh yeah? WATCH me." With a haughty sniff, Adrienne stomped right past me, bumping my right shoulder on the way.

But as she bumped me, I reached out and caught her elbow, stopping her in her tracks. She whirled and tried to yank her arm away, but once again I held fast and commanded, "Adrienne, STOP."

Once again, she stopped.

Still holding her elbow, I glared at her right in the eyes, letting my own frustration with her come to the surface. "You're allowed to be upset and you're allowed to be hurt. But you are NOT leaving me, alright? I'm not LETTING you leave me. You and I are going to sit down and TALK about this."

"Like hell we are," Adrienne seethed as she jerked her elbow free of my grasp. "Grab my arm again and I'll roast your testicles over an open campfire. You so much as stare at my tits ever again and I'll poke your eyes out with my cuticle scissors. You no longer have the right and I'll--"

"Jeez, Adrienne, seriously?" I groaned, cutting her off. "Becoming all melodramatic isn't going to help the situation."

"I'm becoming melodramatic?" she scoffed. "You're the one who just waltzed up to the cabin with your once and future soulmate's dried pussy juices on your dick!"

I arched an eyebrow and replied, "I walked back to my cabin after having sex, yes – there's nothing melodramatic about that. The way you're reacting right now IS melodramatic, as is threatening to leave me."

"I'm not 'threatening'. I AM leaving you."

Sighing, I rubbed my forehead and gestured to the cabin door while taking a step back. "Okay maybe it IS too soon to talk about this. You're upset and still dealing with these raw feelings of betrayal ... Look, if you need some time and space to cool down first, then by all means go take a break. But I'm not letting you break up with me until after I've had a chance to explain myself."

"There's nothing you can say to me that'll change my mind. I AM leaving you, you rat-cheating bastard."

I sighed and shook my head, muttering, "No you're not."

"Oh yeah? Watch me." And with that, Adrienne stomped off for the door, this time without anyone to stop her.

"I'll be right here when you get back," I called after her as I plopped myself onto one of the couches, and I couldn't keep the mocking tone out of my voice as I added, "ready to talk about this like mature adults."

Instantly, Adrienne spun back around and stomped over to me. Leaning forward, she waggled a finger in my face and spat, "Fuck you, asshole!"

My 76% confidence was down into the sixties now, but my course was set, so I simply gestured for her to sit down on the opposite couch and gave her an expectant look.

She didn't sit. Still standing, Adrienne seethed, baring her teeth at me and staring at me with laser death eyes as she hugged herself with both arms, her hands clenching and re-clenching around her biceps. I stared right back, certain that I was right. She was still standing here, after all, which meant that as angry as she was with me, some part of her still wanted this relationship. And my confidence not only bounced back up to 76% but continued to climb higher and higher with each passing second she remained in the room.

Her death lasers weren't getting anywhere with me, so Adrienne shifted her stare and bored down on Dawn instead. Dawn was rather less confident about how things would play out than me, and when I glanced back I saw that my ex-soulmate was wilting beneath Adrienne's withering gaze. Only then did Dawn scurry back over and sit down on the couch beside me, staring at the floor and placing one hand on my knee as if touching me could shield herself from Adrienne's gaze.

Of course, the sight of Dawn's hand on my knee wouldn't make Adrienne any happier, nor did the sight of me putting my hand on top of Dawn's and giving it a reassuring squeeze. Clenching her jaw, Adrienne shook her head in disgust and muttered, "I can't believe you."

"Sit down," I stated evenly, willing her to go along. "Talk to me."

Arms still folded and her facial expression defiant, Adrienne nevertheless moved over and sat down on the opposite couch from me. Sasha immediately sat beside her and put her hand on Adrienne's knee, and Adrienne placed her hand on top of Sasha's in response.

With a relieved smile, I began, "Okay, I think we're finally getting somewhere."

Adrienne's eyes were mere slits. "Think whatever you want to think. I'm giving you the chance to explain yourself, but you're not going to convince me of anything except that you're a lying, rat-bastard cheater who broke my heart into a million pieces. And whenever you've run out of breath, I'm going to leave you."

"No you're not. You're my girlfriend, and you're gonna stay my girlfriend."

"Are you not LISTENING? I asked you to do ONE THING! To NOT have sex with Dawn! But you did it anyway! The ONE THING I feared the most!"

I shook my head. "The one thing you feared the most was NOT me having sex with Dawn. The one thing you actually feared the most, and still fear, is losing OUR relationship. That's the one and only reason why you told me to not fuck Dawn, because you were afraid that me doing so would lead to the end of our relationship. But the only way me fucking Dawn is going to kill our relationship is if YOU kill it yourself."

"Myself? -I- don't need to kill it. You ALREADY killed it! Our relationship is DEAD."

I shook my head. "Not dead yet. I'm sitting right here in front of you saying that you're still my girlfriend. I'm sitting here saying our relationship is still alive. Are YOU really going to be the one to say it's over? Stop, take a deep breath, and consider your options: Are YOU going to talk this over, work with me together, and keep our relationship alive? Or are YOU going to be the one to kill our relationship?"

"I'm not the bad guy here! I'm not the one who just cheated on his girlfriend!"

I shook my head. "It's not cheating if it's Dawn. Even you knew that."

"Like hell it isn't. Cheating is fucking someone you're not supposed to. And the ONLY girl in the entire WORLD you weren't supposed to fuck is HER!" Adrienne's pointed over my shoulder straight at Dawn, and she jabbed it for extra emphasis. "I told you NOT to, and you did anyway! That's the definition of cheating!"

"I had to, and I will again. Dawn and I are going to continue to have sex, but I honestly believe you're going to be okay with it."

"Like hell I am."

"Let me put it this way. You have a choice: (A) I keep fucking Dawn, and you and I keep our relationship. Or (B) I keep fucking Dawn, and you and I break up. That's not how you want this to play out."

"I don't want you fucking Dawn, period. I want you and I to keep our relationship, with you NOT fucking her!"

I popped my eyebrows and smiled. "So you DO want to keep our relationship, even after I had sex with her." Confidence was back up to 92%.

"What? No!" Adrienne screwed her face up and rehashed those last couple of phrases as if they didn't quite make sense. "You cheated on me!"

I shook my head. "Cheating isn't about sex; it's about emotion. You don't have a problem with my penis entering Dawn's vagina – you don't have a problem with my penis entering any vagina. What you're scared of is me falling in love with her and falling out of love with you. That didn't happen, and it's not going to happen. I'm not in love with Dawn. I'm still in love with you. Ergo ... I didn't cheat."

Adrienne jerked her head back and gave me a perplexed look. "Wait, what?"

Right beside me, Dawn sat up straight and gave me a funny look. "Wait, what?"

Gently, I moved Dawn's hand off my knee. Still holding it in my hand, I turned to look at her and gave her a frank, honest look. "Like I said, cheating is about emotion. And Dawn, I love you, I'll always love you, but I'm not 'in love' with you. I forgave you for everything in the past and I'm hopeful for our future. But we've already talked about how you and I are only now starting again, that it's going to take time for us to build a new relationship, and that there's no way you and I can jump straight back into any kind of romance. You and I are friends. From a cheating perspective, me having sex with you is really no different from me having sex with DJ or Brooke."

"Says you," Adrienne muttered.

"Whether we term what I did as cheating or not is ultimately not all that important." Letting go of Dawn's hand, I turned back to face Adrienne and Sasha on the other couch and explained, "What's important is that I'm still 'in' love with both of you. The relationships we've built over the last couple of years mean everything to me, and I want to see them continue."

Sasha looked thoughtful, but Adrienne was shaking her head as she spat, "But for how long? Even if we don't break up now, even if she and you don't jump straight back into a romance, how long will I get to keep you? The deed is done. The countdown has begun. You and Dawn fucked, and now it's only a matter of time before Game Over. She becomes your wife, becomes the mother of your children, your Number One. And where will that leave us?"

"It's not Game Over. Nothing about the future has been decided. Dawn and I are just friends – friends-with-benefits, yes – but still just friends. And you, Adrienne, you're still my Number One." I briefly glanced at Sasha, adding quickly, "No offense."

Sasha's free hand went up. "I already knew."

Adrienne was still shaking her head. "How do -I- know? How can I know for sure that I'm not going to lose you to her?"

I shrugged and gave her an honest look. "You'll just have to trust me."

Adrienne frowned at that.

I arched an eyebrow. "Don't you trust me? You're certainly telling ME all the time, 'Trust me, Tiger. Trust me.'"

"I DID trust you. I trusted that you wouldn't fuck her. Now we're here."

I sighed and shook my head. "Again, all I can say is: I HAD to."

"Had to why?"

I gave Adrienne a frank look and replied, "Because you tried to send her away."

I turned to look at Dawn, finding her staring back at me with the same expression as mine. I offered up my hand, and she clasped it between both of hers looking like she'd never want to let go.

"Because I couldn't lose you," I told Dawn sincerely. "Not again."

"Not again," Dawn agreed.

"I don't get it," Adrienne sighed. "I thought you didn't want her doing exactly what she's doing right now: throwing a monkey wrench into our perfect life together."

"I didn't. For an entire year, I didn't. I avoided getting into situations where we'd have prolonged contact and I pushed her away the few times we did start to talk. I valued what the rest of us had together, and I didn't want to mess with that."

"But you're willing to mess with it now?"

"Circumstances changed. I didn't want to lose her. For the past year, I knew she was at Berkeley, only twenty minutes away. Some part of me knew she wanted to talk to me, wanted to reconnect, wanted to rebuild our friendship. As long as she was hovering around, trying to get me back, I didn't fear losing her. I thought I had all the time in the world to get over my pain, to truly forgive her for the past. I thought she'd always wait for me. But today, this morning, because of whatever you two said to her, I nearly lost her. And the instant I realized I might actually lose her, I realized I couldn't let that happen. Not again."

Adrienne rubbed her forehead. "So this is all MY fault."

I shook my head. "It's nobody's fault."

"But if I hadn't convinced her to leave, you wouldn't have done this to get her to stay. You wouldn't have chosen to fuck her instead of preserving what we ALL had together: the perfect relationship."

"Our 'perfect relationship' was status quo."

Sasha sighed, "And nothing ever stays status quo."

I nodded to her. "But my friendship with Dawn won't change my relationships with you. She won't change 'us'."

"Puh-lease," Adrienne rolled her eyes. "Of course she'll change 'us'. Nothing ever stays status quo."

"But YOU won't lose ME. Our relationship won't DIE over this."

Still shaking her head, Adrienne muttered, "Raid all my bank accounts and spend it on drugs, murder a bunch of school kids in cold blood, butt-rape a geriatric old man in a nursing home ... Do ANYTHING else and I could readily forgive you. But did you really HAVE to go and fuck Dawn?"

I arched an eyebrow. "Didn't we talk about you being so melodramatic?"

Adrienne just folded her arms across her chest and shook her head, exhaling slowly. As she did so, it felt like the tension around us slowly dissipated with her breath. Eventually, the room went silent, everyone lost in thought.

But just when the silence started to become awkward, Sasha finally asked, "So how is this gonna work?"

I shrugged. "That part, I don't know. But we'll make it work."

Sasha looked at me expectantly, repeating, "How?"

I sat back and let my eyes drift from left to right, sweeping around to take in everyone around me, not just Adrienne. "By making it work. All of us. Together."

"You mean the six of us having one big orgy together, seven if you include Brandi," Sasha drawled, which drew chuckles from Dayna and Kim.

"You really want ALL the girls, don't you?" Dayna chirped.

"Greedy," Adrienne muttered through half-lidded eyes.

I shrugged. "I LOVE all of you."

"Equally?" Dayna asked with a smirk.

"Differently."

"Different but equal?"

"I'm not answering trap questions."

"Even her?" Adrienne asked with narrowed eyes. "Even Dawn? Like a girlfriend? Are you adding her to the harem?"

Turning to look at Dawn, I found that she still held my hand between both of hers. Giving her an apologetic look, I shook my head and answered Adrienne, "No, not in the harem. I do love her, but like a best friend since childhood. I love her like ... like Dawn. Because she's Dawn. That's friendship, but it's different from a regular friendship. It's sibling, like Dayna and Brandi. But it's not going to change the way we live our lives."

Patting the back of Dawn's hand, I removed mine from between hers and turned back to look at the other girls. "Dawn's going back to Berkeley for one more year of school. The rest of us are in the city. There won't be any significant, day-to-day changes. She's not gonna start visiting every weekend. I'm not going to make any trips to Berkeley to go on romantic dates with her. She and I still have a long ways to go in rebuilding our friendship. But sex will be a part of it. Always was. Always will be. That's just the way it is."

Adrienne still didn't look happy. "But why?"

"Because she's Dawn."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer."

"It's not logical."

"Maybe it's not logical. Maybe it's completely emotional. Maybe it just is."

"It's answering that no matter what she's done to you, or what she could end up doing to us, you're letting her back into your life just because she's HER."

"I'm saying that she gets a second chance because of who she is, because of what she's meant to me for the last twenty-three years. She's Family. Does that really sound so unfair?"

Adrienne thought about that for half a second before blurting, "YES! It's terribly unfair! She cheated on you! She shattered your heart and then ran away! She twisted your relationship to advance her own selfish desires to get triple-porked by beefy Adonis-types, and she rubbed it right in your face! She doesn't get to just waltz on in here and get a free pass! Dawn. Must. Suffer! You gotta make her squirm and grovel and beg for a second chance! IT'S. NOT. FAIR."

I spread my hands out. "I think she's suffered enough."

"Suffered how? Breezing through her new classes at Berkeley and pouting every time you ignored her for the past year? That's 'suffering'?!?"

"She's had her own demons to face. And I'm not going to make her suffer in penance any further just for the sake of suffering. I'm Ben. She's Dawn. I give her a second chance."

"Because she's Dawn," Adrienne scoffed.

"Because she's Dawn."

Shaking her head, Adrienne muttered, "How far will that go? How much does 'being Dawn' buy her? Your renewed friendship? Your sex? How about a second chance at taking my place as Number One? How about becoming your wife? How much is Dawn gonna get just for 'being Dawn'?"

I sighed and pointed both my hands at my own chest. "How important am -I- to you? How much do -I- get for being ME?"

Gritting her teeth as the first tears began rolling down her cheeks, Adrienne shook her head. "You're equating her importance to you with your importance to me?!?"

"I'm trying to make you understand that even though you're my girlfriend, I could never completely cut Dawn out of my life. I'm trying to make you understand why when push came to shove, I couldn't lose her. Because I'm me. And because she's Dawn. It's really not so different from the way I KNEW you'd never walk out that door and leave me. Because I'm me. And you can't lose me."

The tears were coming faster now, a near constant stream from Adrienne's rapidly reddening eyes as she stood up from her seat. "Well it turns out that you're wrong about me, and you're wrong about that door. I love you to pieces, Tiger, and I'll always be grateful for what you and your family have done for me. But what's done is done, and I CAN lose you. The countdown has already begun. You can pretend that you and Dawn will never be more than intimate friends, never more than siblings-with-benefits the way the other pairs in this fucked-up family are to each other. But I know better, and I can see the writing on the wall. I've already lost, and my Game Over is an inevitability. So I AM leaving you, Benjamin. I AM walking out that door."

"Adrienne, STOP," I commanded. But this time, she didn't stop.

This time, I wasn't within reach of her elbow or arm or any other body part I could grab onto and hold her back.

This time, Adrienne walked away from me, all the way out that door.

And after giving me an apologetic grimace, Sasha ran right after her.

While I may have been wrong about Adrienne's willingness to walk out the door, that didn't mean I was going to let her actually walk away from our relationship. After one brief sigh of frustration, followed by a quick rub of my forehead while I gathered my bearings, I got up and followed after the girls.

Adrienne was twenty feet down the trail heading into the woods, hugging herself with both arms and doing that biceps-clenching thing again with her hands. I came through the door just as Sasha caught up to her, though I couldn't hear what was being said. Sasha noticed my footsteps as I jogged over to them, and she glanced back at my approach.

"Adrienne, please," Sasha urged, grabbing hold of Adrienne's nearest hand and tugging back to get the blonde to stop walking.

"Don't you dare take their side against me," Adrienne spat, her eyes aflame as she glared at Sasha.

"I'm not taking their side. You know I'm on your side," Sasha stated emphatically. "But walking away isn't going to make this any better."

Only now did Adrienne notice that I'd joined them, and after giving me one more disgusted look she turned her back on me and started walking again.

"Adri-enne," Sasha groaned, following after and tugging back on her best friend's hand once more.

"Go away, Ben," Adrienne growled, coming to a stop but still with her back to me.

"I'm not letting you leave me. I won't quit on this relationship."

"You don't need me anymore. You've got her."

"I need both of you."

Adrienne suddenly whirled to face me. "Don't you get it? You can't HAVE both of us! You've got to choose! Her, or me? That's it! Binary decision! Mutually exclusive!"

I shook my head. "I don't accept that. I love you both in different ways, and there's room for both of you in my life. She's my lifelong best friend; you're my girlfriend. You both are my girlfriends," I added, glancing at Sasha as well.

"We can't ALL coexist together!" Adrienne cried.

"Sure we can. You and Dawn made it work once before, right here at this very camp. The roles were even the same: You were my girlfriend, and she was my best friend."

"That was a different time. We all knew she not-so-secretly wanted you back, and besides, I figured I'd eventually give you back so she could be 'Wife' and I could be 'Happy Sister'. The jealousy between us was different, and we only had to make it work for a couple of weeks. Then once we left camp and started school, she and you didn't have sex with each other. Are you proposing we do that again? Dawn becomes your best friend without fucking?"

I sighed and shook my head. "No, not this time."

"Then no deal." Adrienne shook her head and spun back around.

"Oh fer cryin' out loud," I muttered. This time -I- was the one to tug back on her arm and get her to face me again. And this time I grabbed onto the sides of both her arms, trapping her from turning away from me again. "STOP pouting. STOP being so melodramatic. STOP running away from this and FACE me!"

Adrienne started crying again. "How can I face you when you're breaking my heart?"

"How am I breaking your heart? I'm standing right here trying to fight to keep our relationship. I TOLD you you're my Number One."

"Told me after you went and fucked the one woman in the entire world I told you NOT to!"

"YES! Yes I did!" I shook Adrienne's shoulders in emphasis before lowering my head so that we were only inches apart and staring at each other eye-to-eye. "-I- just had amazing sex with Dawn! -I- just experienced the most intimate of naked, sweaty physical intimacies with my ex-soulmate!"

With really, really wide eyes, Adrienne stared right back at me as if I'd gone insane. And shaking her head, she hissed at me, "The words coming out of your mouth aren't doing anything to reassure me!"

"Don't you get it? Your greatest fear – the ONE thing that terrified you more than anything in the world – was me becoming intimate again with Dawn, my ex-soulmate, and falling in love with her again. But it didn't happen like that. The sex happened. It was amazing. And I realized that I can't ever lose her again. But I didn't come back to the cabin and tell you that Dawn and I are going to resume being a romantic couple. I didn't come back to the cabin and tell you that I want her to join the harem. I came back to the cabin and told you – told HER – that we're just starting again at being friends. I came back to the cabin and told you – told EVERYONE – that you're still my Number One. Yes, I slept with Dawn. But I'm still in love with YOU."

Now Adrienne looked confused, her eyebrows furrowed and her eyeballs clicking left-and-right as she stared back into mine.

"Don't you get it?" I broke out into a silly grin. "No more wondering. No more uncertainty about what might happen if Dawn and I ever hooked up again. No more fear. Now we KNOW. We both KNOW, and we can both stand here unafraid of the future. I LOVE you, Adrienne. I love you more than I love anybody in the world. I love you so much that ... that..." A sudden impulsive thought popped into my head, and I promptly dropped down onto one knee.

If I thought Adrienne's eyes had gotten big before, they went super-wide right now.

"My dearest Adrienne," I began, reaching up to take her right hand and hold it between both of mine. "My Tigress..."

"Holy shit," Sasha breathed beside us.

"Holy SHIT!" Dayna squealed excitedly from somewhere behind me.

"Holy shit!" Brandi exclaimed from somewhere off to my left.

Ignoring the others, I stared straight up into Adrienne's eyes and willed myself to focus solely on her. I saw the excitement on her face, but also the fear. Marrying me had always been something she'd considered but also rejected as something she could never do, knowing about my desire for children and family. The idea of me proposing marriage still terrified her, and that realization was just the speed bump I needed before letting my impulsive thought completely run away with me.

"This isn't a proposal," I explained, thumbing the delicate gold leaf flower that adorned her fourth finger, the piece of jewelry she never took off. "After the near-disaster of our relationship after I first gave you this, I swore I'd never push you any faster than you wanted to go. I know you're not ready yet for all that a marriage entails, not ready to commit to having a family with me and bearing my children."

She was breathing hard, her chest heaving above me as she visibly quivered with nervousness.

"But I do want you to know that you are my Number One," I continued, willing her to understand the depth of my feelings with my eyes. "Unequivocally. Unequaled. Unmatched by anyone else here, including Sasha, including Kim, including Dayna, and even including Dawn. I've said all along that Dawn and I are better as friends, better as siblings, and I still mean that. I'm happy that she and I are starting a new friendship, but that doesn't come at the expense of my relationship with you."

Adrienne's gaze drifted away from me, looking back somewhere beyond me, back toward the cabin. I was pretty sure Dawn and everyone else had come outside to see what was going on, and I was pretty sure Adrienne was staring straight at Dawn right now.

"I know she scared you with her feelings about wanting me back," I went on. "About loving me as a lover, as a boyfriend, and hopefully someday as a husband. To be honest, I thought it possible that you might have been relieved. It wasn't so long ago that you told me marrying DJ and having kids would get you off the hook. Last year, you told me that Sasha should be my priority. You've always said you hoped that I'd find someone else to fill the role of wife and mother so that you wouldn't have to. You wanted me to be happy and have everything I'd dreamed of without sacrificing your freedom. And you even said just now that the last time you had to share me with her, you knew you'd eventually give me back and let Dawn be my 'Wife' so that you could be my 'Happy Sister'."

I tugged Adrienne's hand to get her to look down at me again. She stared at Dawn for another second, but after a deep breath she indeed met my gaze once more.

"But not today. Today Dawn offered to get you off the hook, to someday take me for a husband, and you talked her into leaving camp. Today I told you I wouldn't lose her again, that I wanted to keep her in my life, and you got upset enough to threaten to leave me entirely, out of fear that she'd eventually marry me instead of you. Today I'm telling you that even with her back in my life, you're still my Number One. And I want you to understand that if you're ever ready for me to actually propose for real, I'll ask you to marry me in a heartbeat. Because you're My Adrienne, and I'm so proud of how far you've come. You're My Tigress, so brave to put your heart on the line and finally let yourself feel this way. You're my--"

"Yes," Adrienne gasped, squeezing her fingers around my hand. "The answer is 'yes'."

I blinked in surprise. "I didn't actually ask--"

"Oh, shut the fuck up," Adrienne groaned before reaching down to grab my wrist with her left hand, and she yanked me up to my feet. "Yes, I will marry you!"

"Holy shit," Sasha breathed beside us.

"Holy SHIT!" Dayna squealed excitedly from right behind me.

"Holy shit!" Brandi exclaimed from my left.

"I knew it all along," Kim drawled from my right.

Adrienne's lips were suddenly fastened around my lips, her arms snaked around my neck. Nuclear blasts exploded in my brain as all her love, all her anger, and all her anguish flew throughout my body as if balls of her life-force energy were flowing at light-speed through both hers and MY veins.

Abruptly, Adrienne broke for air, gasping, "I'm gonna marry you!" And then she was kissing me again. Five seconds later, she broke away and repeated, "I'm gonna marry you!" And then she was kissing me again.

And a few seconds after that, she broke away once more and screamed at the top of her lungs, "I'M GONNA MARRY YOU!"

Sasha was the first one to bear hug us. Adrienne's arms were still around my neck and my eyes were closed as she continued kissing me, but I cracked my eyes open and saw the shock of dark brown hair after that first impact. Brandi was the next one to wrap her arms around us, from behind me and to the left whereas Sasha was behind Adrienne on the opposite side. Next I felt Dayna join in as well, blubbering and crying but grinning and happy. And finally I saw a different blonde head rather more sedately lean in and wrap her arms around the pile as wide as she could.

Adrienne was crying by now as well, and she turned her face to share her cry with Sasha although she didn't let go of me. Still, I had enough room to raise my head and look toward that final blonde head, and I saw Dawn giving me a wistful but pleasant smile.

"Congratulations," Dawn said sincerely, though she had to swallow thickly immediately after. "I'm happy for the both of you."

"I'm still not going to lose you," I told her firmly before turning my face to look at Sasha. "And I'm not losing you. Or you. Or you." The last two were for Dayna and Brandi.

"Or us," Kim chirped, holding BJ out of the fray but no less happy than anyone else.

"Or you," I stated finally, facing straight ahead once more and looking deep into Adrienne's eyes. "I'm never losing you."

She grinned back at me. "Greedy."

"Guilty as charged."

Adrienne chuckled and sighed happily as the mass of women continued to hug and squeeze us. She quickly kissed me again, and when she pulled away, she gave me a look of amazement and exclaimed, "Did we really just get engaged? I mean, technically you didn't really ask me, but ... well?"

I grinned, looked down at her right hand, and gently tugged on the promise ring I'd given her so long ago. Perplexed, she let me pull it off her finger, and she used her now free right hand to cover her smile as it grew from ear-to-ear while I smoothly took hold of her left hand and slid the ring onto the fourth finger of that hand instead. "Absolutely. We just got engaged."

Adrienne gawked down at the ring that now adorned her wedding/engagement finger. The ring itself wasn't new; it was the exact same ring she'd worn on her other hand for the past several years. It wasn't very big, very gaudy, or very expensive – not that she cared one whit at the moment. All she cared about was what the ring meant: that Tiger and Tigress were gonna get married. And when she raised her gaze from the ring up into my eyes, her golden irises on FIRE, her voice rasped hungrily, "I wanna have sex RIGHT NOW."

Leading me by the hand, Adrienne practically dragged me all the way back to our cabin. Everyone else followed after, but once we were all inside and the door was closed, Brandi suggested, "Uhhh, maybe we should let Ben and Adrienne have the place all to themselves."

Frowning, Adrienne shot her a look and muttered, "Are you kidding me? It's like you don't know me at all!" And then she grabbed my big sister and planted a juicy nuclear kiss smack dab on her lips.

Everyone laughed, and nobody else suggested leaving, but Brandi had a point. No matter what date it said on the calendar, and no matter what else had happened this morning, this day was now for me and Adrienne. I waited patiently while she teased my big sister's tongue with her own, but once she broke away, I interlaced my fingers through my fiancée's and drew her back to me.

Adrienne eagerly met me for a sweet kiss, but she still held onto Brandi with her other hand. After pulling away from me, my fiancée tugged my big sister toward us and aimed her in my direction. With a happy grin big enough to make her cheeks pinch her eyes into crescent moons, Brandi squealed happily and kissed me firmly before backing away and saying, "Congratulations. To both of you."

Brandi turned and kissed Adrienne once more, and in the meantime Dayna came up to me with a sincere smile on her face as well. "Congratulations," she said warmly. "You two deserve each other." And then she kissed me too.

Moments later, Dayna moved over to congratulate Adrienne and share another kiss. But unlike her congratulatory kiss with Brandi, Adrienne maintained her liplock on Dayna's mouth, humming and moaning in obvious heat. As the passion of their kiss built higher and higher, Adrienne slid her hands beneath the waistband of Dayna's shorts and palmed the other blonde's asscheeks. And when she finally removed her tongue from Dayna's throat, it was to wrap an arm around Brandi's neck and stick her tongue down my sister's throat instead.

Meanwhile, Sasha finally came to me. I raised my eyebrows questioningly at her, my expression obviously asking if she was okay with this. Of all my girlfriends in the room, I'd technically started my relationship with her first. And though she hadn't remained my only girlfriend for very long, the truth was that we hadn't begun this relationship expecting me to get engaged to someone else.

But there was nothing but happiness on Sasha's face as she held my cheeks, said "Congratulations", and leaned in for her kiss. We'd had several discussions recently about her place in my life, about the status quo continuing to change, and about my promise to make sure our relationship continued. She was NOT a placeholder; she was my girlfriend. And not even my engagement to Adrienne would change that.

I tried to communicate all that through my eyes, and from the way Sasha's smile expanded, I think she understood what I meant. But just when I was about to kiss her again, she suddenly got pulled away from me and into the tangle of female flesh forming just over to the side.

Adrienne was already topless, with Brandi nursing at one breast while Dayna suckled at the other. Adrienne's shorts had also been tugged down to her knees as she sat on the armrest of a couch, with Dayna fingerbanging her naked pussy. And Sasha was laughing as Adrienne reeled her in with one extended arm before tugging her best friend in for a fresh kiss.

Only two women remained. Kim held BJ on one hip, my little boy gawking at the lesbian foursome a few feet away. Surely at this age he couldn't understand what was happening; it was simply human movement worth observing. Still, Kim came up to me, kissed me softly, and whispered, "Congratulations. She finally came around."

I grinned and glanced over. My Tigress practically roared as she yanked down both Dayna's and Brandi's shorts and began fingerbanging both of their naked pussies. Chuckling as I brought my attention back to Kim, I replied, "Yeah, I guess she finally did."

With one more Mona Lisa smile, Kim leaned in and kissed me again. Then she pivoted BJ over to the other hip and nodded with her head toward the front door. "We're gonna go get lunch. I'll bring back a bunch of sandwiches and stuff, too. See you guys later!"

I smiled and waved at my little boy. "Bye-bye."

"Da-da..." BJ muttered in response before laying his head down on his mommy's shoulder.

And now there was just one.

I couldn't imagine what was going through Dawn's mind. There had been a time when she'd considered herself my lifelong soulmate, my inevitable wife-to-be. It had once been a foregone conclusion that she and I would marry, raise our children, and unite the two families forever. Now she'd watched me get engaged to other women not once, but twice. This second one was on her birthday, not long after she and I had made love. And she hadn't handled that first proposal particularly well.

There would be no repeat outburst today. Dawn had been leaning with her arms crossed against the wall, her right foot up and against its vertical surface. She used that foot to push herself off and come to me, taking a deep breath as she gathered herself to say something.

But I didn't let her speak. Closing the gap unexpectedly, I held her cheeks and bent to kiss her while she gasped in surprise. Much in the same way I'd done my best to communicate to Sasha nonverbally through my heart and through my eyes that my engagement to Adrienne didn't change her place in my life, I willed Dawn to understand how much I did love her, did care about her, and did want her to be happy. I truly did believe that we were better off as sibling/friends, that romantic complications for us would only ever be just that: complications. But my lack of interest in developing our relationship into something romantic didn't mean I loved her any less.

My eyes were closed as I cradled Dawn's head in my hands. I focused on nothing but the touch of her lips against mine, focused on the gently yielding pressure and the tiny little nerves beneath the skin. Those nerves were microscopically-thin electrochemical conduits, carrying information throughout my body. And I imagined that as my tiny nerve bundles pressed up against hers, they formed a bridge that would allow my electrochemical conduits to touch hers.

I willed her to understand. I willed her to believe that this would work out. I NEEDED her to know that everything would be alright in the end, and that there was room in my life for both her and Adrienne to coexist: one as my wife, and one as my sister.

Be unafraid.

-I- was unafraid. I no longer feared the future. Why would I? Everything was working out for me. Adrienne joked about me being greedy, and Brandi whined about my whole life coming together perfectly, and the reality was that they were both right.

I WAS greedy. I didn't want to lose any of them: Adrienne, Sasha, Dayna, Brandi, Kim, BJ, or Dawn. I wanted ALL of them, and I wanted more. Was it really so bad of me to want it all?

And my whole life WAS coming together perfectly. Seriously, Adrienne had screamed at the top of her lungs, 'I'M GONNA MARRY YOU!' I mean come on. Adrienne Fucking Dennis was gonna marry ME. That alone would make me one of the happiest men on the planet. But on top of THAT, I was getting my Dawn back, too.

And I wanted my Dawn back. I needed to have her back. Maybe not exactly the way she was, not the perfectly imperfect Dawn who tried too hard to please and ultimately crumbled beneath her own self-imposed pressures. The old Dawn might be gone, but the new Dawn wasn't really so different. Bottom line, she was still MY Dawn, a little less 'perfect', a little more 'real', and I WANTED her in my life.

My eyes remained closed as Dawn and I continued to kiss, our arms around each other. But in my mind's eye, I pictured her somewhere else: happy ... smiling ... sitting beside me on the picnic blanket in our clearing.

I pictured her: my Dawn ... my old True Love...

I saw her beside me, unmoving, a still frame from memory, her hair aglow with sunshine and her crystal clear blue eyes sparkling with love as she looked back at me. Still in my mind's eye, the still frame began to move as I slid my hand across the picnic blanket, inching toward hers in invitation...

Her hand slid across to meet mine ... They touched...

And my world exploded in light.

Taking her sweet time and rocking her lips forward and back like an inchworm making slow, steady progress, the gorgeous, half-naked blonde worked more and more of my cock into her mouth. Her eyes flicked up and down: sometimes up to watch the expression on my face, and sometimes down to focus on the task at hand (and task at mouth). Speaking of her hands, although she'd initially started by twisting both of them around my long shaft in opposing directions to maximize the sensations she was giving me, as she swallowed inch after inch of cock meat she'd been forced to drop first one and then the other hand out of the way, to the point where she only had another half-inch of dick to shove between her lips before completing the deep throat, and her hands had nothing left to do but tease my balls and tickle my inner thighs.

Usually when Dawn deep-throated my dick, she did so with rapid face pumps, skull-fucking herself to seal her lips around the very base of my shaft and holding her breath for a second or two before backing away to gulp a fresh batch of oxygen. Not this time. The mushroom head of Big Ben had first penetrated Dawn's esophagus several minutes ago, and hadn't come back out since. Rather than swallow me whole in one gulp and massage my shaft with her throat muscles for a few seconds at a time, this inchworm technique meant that the throat-constricting tightness squeezing my rod felt like it would never end, and I could scarcely fathom the physical mechanics required for her to take shallow breaths through her nose and somehow still get enough oxygen into her lungs.

'THIS is how much I love you, ' she told to me without speaking. 'I do this solely to maximize your pleasure.'

Groaning in ecstasy and fighting the urge to fill Dawn's belly with cum, I stared down at her pretty face to look into those big blue eyes, smiling and telling her without speaking just how much I appreciated her gift.

She smiled back in response, which really just meant the corners of her mouth tugged upward a bit while my thick cock continued to stretch her lips. I recognized her smile more by the increased luminance of her sparkling blue eyes as she stared up at me, and with a few more nibbles, she finally imbedded every last inch of Big Ben in her mouth.

"Fuuuuuuck, Dawnnnn..." I groaned, rapturous with pleasure as I cradled the back of her head and rubbed my palm against it.

A few feet away, my fiancée groaned her own rapturous pleasure. Adrienne lay flat on her back across the bigger bed in the master bedroom, completely nude and with all four limbs spread open wide. Brandi reclined on her side to Adrienne's right, alternately kissing my fiancée, feeding her a bare breast, or nursing at Adrienne's right teat. Dayna reclined to Adrienne's left, doing the same to that side. And every now and again they met in a sloppy three-way kiss or mashed Adrienne's face with four naked boobies at the same time.

Meanwhile, Sasha was between Adrienne's legs, her feet on the floor and her face in my fiancée's crotch, licking and sucking and prepping the horny blonde for coital penetration with her tongue and fingers. She was Adrienne's best friend ... her 'constant' ... and it was her place to do the honors of preparing my Tigress for her first ever lovemaking as an engaged couple...

... just as it was Dawn's place to do the honors of preparing me. Yesterday, I would have thought it impossible to be in this exact situation right now. Even twenty minutes ago, I could not have dreamed that Dawn might ever kneel before me, slobbering all over my dick for the express purpose of ensuring my rigidity and lubrication so that I might enter the body of a different woman who would become my wife.

That would have been back before I kissed her, back before we – in the most unlikely of moments – truly found each other again. Back then, lots of things about our lives had seemed completely impossible. But AFTER that kiss, AFTER that moment, the impossible suddenly made perfect sense.

"The Link" was back, full-strength and even stronger than before. Perhaps it had never been completely severed. Perhaps little tendrils of a connection managed to stay alive and flare up from time to time, like that fateful May Sixth of last year. But today The Link was whole once again.

If you had told me Thanksgiving Day of 2005 – the day I severed the almost mystical connection between me and Dawn – that it would be re-forged at Morris Camp on Dawn's 23rd birthday ... well, I might've believed you. But if you had told me that it would come in the aftermath of my accepted marriage proposal to Adrienne? Well come on now; that just plain wouldn't make any sense!

Or so I would have believed back on that Thanksgiving Day. That was then; this was now. Now, seemingly everything made perfect sense: Adrienne would be my wife, my romantic equal, the perfect woman for me, especially since she'd initially come from outside 'The Family'. Dawn was my best friend, my Evans 'twin', the Yin to my Yang. We were friends, we were family, and we'd be partners forever. The past was forgiven; let bygones be bygones. She and I would face the future together, unafraid.

That lack of fear was important. Dawn had been full of fear when I'd first kissed her twenty minutes ago. She'd woken up this morning full of nervous excitement over the prospect of confessing to me her true feelings, of her desire to rekindle our old romance. She'd had her hopes dashed and her confidence shattered when Adrienne and Sasha convinced her it was in my best interests for her to go away. She'd been swept away by the passion and intimate pleasure of our sexual reunion in The Clearing. And in the end she'd been forced to watch me and Adrienne get engaged to be married right in front of her, and listen to me say out loud that someone else was still my Number One.

Before the kiss, Dawn had truly wanted what was best for me and sincerely wished me happiness for my future marriage, but she'd been terrified of what it would ultimately mean for her. She'd heard me say that we would continue our sexual relationship and she'd heard me say that we were starting again, but once I proposed to Adrienne she'd felt that all bets were off. Verbal promises of reconciliation were only as strong as her belief that I truly meant them, after all.

But then I'd kissed her. Our symbolic hands had touched on the symbolic picnic blanket in our symbolic clearing. Our minds had touched, "The Link" had flared back to life, and all of a sudden, Dawn didn't have to take my word for it anymore.

She could feel it.

She believed.

And she was unafraid.

There was a time and place for everything, and a time and place for everyone. This was OUR time. This was OUR place. Everything would work out in the end.

So Dawn had wordlessly led me into the master bedroom, a coy smile on her face and a happy twinkle in her eyes. She'd pushed me down into the armchair, knelt on the floor before me, and fished out my half-hard erection with her cool hands. She'd licked me like a lollipop and begun her two-fisted twisting while probing my mushroom head against the entrance to her throat. And she'd unbuttoned her blouse and unsnapped her bra to let her big beautiful breasts add to my prick's pleasure.

The other girls brought Adrienne into the master bedroom after us, stripping my fiancée naked and priming her body for my entrance. Just like Dawn was doing to me, they brought the bride-to-be right up to the very edge of climax without letting her go over, until finally Adrienne howled, "BEN! BEN! PLEASE, TIGER! I NEED YOU INSIDE ME!!!"

Keeping my cock lodged at full-depth in her throat, Dawn hummed one last time and flared her nostrils to breathe in one last time, before slowly backing her head away with a moist, audible slurp. She coughed a few times and rubbed my balls, feeling their heaviness with recently manufactured sperm locked and loaded to go. But just as she stood up and offered a hand down to help me out of the chair, Adrienne spoke up again.

"Put him inside you first," my fiancée's ragged voice gasped, her chest heaving up and down with her skin coated in a thick layer of aroused sweat. "I want his cock wet with your pussy juice before he fucks me."

Blinking in surprise, Dawn craned her head around to make sure she'd heard what she thought she'd heard. Likewise, Sasha, Brandi, and Dayna gawked at Adrienne with dumbfounded expressions as well.

"I'm serious. It would mean so much to me," Adrienne breathed, her eyes glittering as she stared at Dawn. "He was born to be yours. He's always been yours first."

Dawn didn't hesitate to turn back to me. Having already accepted that this moment was for me and Adrienne, she'd been resigned to the fact that she wasn't going to get my dick inside her this round. Being told otherwise spurred her straight into action. So she readily straddled my lap on the armchair, raised her skirt, pulled aside the strap of her panties, and dropped herself all the way down my dick.

"Ohmigaaaawwwwwwwwd, BENNNN!!!" Dawn shrieked, immediately coming to orgasm. The instant her butt landed on my thighs, I felt her entire core clench up around my shaft, her inner muscles spasming out of control and milking me even tighter than she'd done with her throat. She didn't stop there, flexing her legs and bouncing her body up and down my cock at a rapid pace, fucking herself on me all the way through her screaming orgasm. And the hot, wet, tight, stroking feelings of her clenching cunt pumping up and down my prick very nearly made me blow my load.

But I managed to hold on, just barely. And about a minute after Dawn first mounted me, she ran out of gas and fell limply against my chest.

"Holy shiiiit, Ben..." Dawn moaned into the crook of my neck while I stroked her spine and nibbled her shoulder.

"Been hearing that phrase a lot lately," I cracked, breathing hard and still clamping down with my kegel muscles to keep from spurting into the wrong box.

"I'll love you forever," she whispered right into my ear. "Married to me, married to her, married to anyone ... I'll always love you. You know that, right?"

"'Course I do," I replied right into her ear. "And I'll always love you."

Nodding with a smile, Dawn sat up enough to place her forehead against mine. She caught her breath, took one more deep inhalation to brace herself, and pushed her hands down on the armchair's backrest to help elevate her pussy up and off my prick.

"Come to me, my future husband," Adrienne crooned from her spot on the bed. Her knees were up and Sasha's head was in her crotch again, but Brandi and Dayna had moved off to the side.

Wobbling on shaky legs, Dawn stepped down onto the floor, and Dayna rushed over to help support her sister. My own sister came to me, extending a hand to help me up. But as she regained her balance, Dawn gently took my hand away from Brandi's, saying, "Please. Let me." And in the end it was Dawn metaphorically giving away the groom.

Sasha stood up and gave me a quick peck, smearing my lips with Adrienne's pussy juice straight from hers. She smirked as she stepped away, Dawn led me into place, and then there was no one left between me and my future bride.

Adrienne reached up to hold my cheek as I moved into a missionary position above her. "Hey Tiger," she welcomed me warmly. "I'm finally yours."

I chuckled and shook my head. "You were Always mine. Now we're just going to officially make it 'Forever'."

And I pushed myself inside.