The Ark

Author's note: These chapters are NOT stand-alones...The story starts here.

What was and what will be...17

There are four of them here. It explains why Eva and Bim went missing when Cincer and I were looking for them earlier. Clearly, Cincer found Bim and, for some reason, has stayed.

OK, I’m here. Now, tell me. … Why am I here?

And I hear… nothing.

I look at my watch. It’s not that I’ve anything important to attend to. I just want to move this along. Clearly, something is brewing that I may not like. Otherwise, none of this would be happening.

I look at each of them, but each of them is looking at someone else.

CiCi, what the fuck is this about?

The cuss, as it escapes from my lips, causes her to recoil a bit.

Debbie needs you to accept a new girl. Not her. She know she not welcome here.

Did she tell you that I specifically told her no one underage ever again?

Yes, she say that your rule. She ask we break the rule, it important.

I see. Do you and Bim remember what I said last night?

See!?, explodes from Bim.

I remember. … Debbie not tell you why she so bad to Niana and Bim. She tell Eva. She afraid to tell us. Eva tell Bim and me. It OK if I tell you?

I want to tell her that it isn’t OK. I really don’t care. No matter why she did it, it was unacceptable. For some reason, Cincer thinks it matters. I don’t want to say it, but I utter, … Why?

She sure you still have young ones. She want you to take another young girl, but Bim and Niana tell her there not any here. She sure you just have to have some. She need you to be evil. She think OK, evil, but best for the girl. She still not understand you not like that. I sure this is true.

OK, so, CiCi, why am I here? You know I don’t want any more young ones. What is the point?

Eva thinks we must do this.

So? Of course she does, CiCi! I’m sure she sees herself in the shoes of this new candidate. Other than Eva and Debbie, who else thinks I should do what I already have said many times I’ll not do?

I not sure. Bim agree with you. No more. But we love Eva and Eva cries.

This house is not an orphanage. Why do any of you think that this would be the last time Debbie pulls this shit? … In fact, I want each of you to answer that exact question right now. And the first one to answer must be Eva.

Eva is a mess. That much is clear. She is sobbing, but she’s also angry as she screams, It just this once!

No, Eva, you were the ‘just this once.’ This will be twice. Why won’t there be a third and a fourth?

She just glares at me.

Well, Eva? Do you have an answer?

Sullenly, she voices, No.

Bim?

I agree with you. There always another.

CiCi?

Yeh, you correct.

OK, are we done here?

Evidently not, as Eva, with some anger in her voice asks, You make me leave?

No. Of course not.

If you not allow Dessa to stay, why you allow me?

Who is Dessa?

Eva screams, The new girl! The one Miss Debbie say need us.

I understand your question. You should never have been allowed to come, but once you were here, I could not throw you out. You are here because all my other gals worked against my wishes. And you got to stay because of that. You did nothing wrong, but they did. This time they know to not act against me. Do you?

Not a word.

Do you, Eva?

Cincer spits out, Don’t be stupid. Ira is the father of your son. Do not act against Loy2x’s father!

That seems to bring Eva up short. She wipes tears from her face with the back of her wrist and nods before looking at me and saying, Sorry, Ira. CiCi right. I not be against you.

And now Debbie is crying. I don’t care. Let her cry.

Debbie is gone. If there’s one thing I think I’m sure of, it’s that Debbie has been convinced that I’m not itching for underage girls. If there’s a second thing, it’s that I don’t want her.

Now, if she will just leave us alone, Niana will be a happier girl and Bim a happier mother.

I spend the night with Reyna. There’s no hidden meaning in that, but Eva thinks there is. The next morning, Eva asks Nelia if I’m going to freeze her out… at least, that is the meaning of her query. Nelia tells her that her fear is baseless, and then just about runs to me to say that I have a problem. I need to bed Eva.

I don’t want you to leave. Do you understand that?

Why? You didn’t want me.

I didn’t want anyone new. But that has nothing to do with you as a person. You are here, and I do not want you to leave. There are no exceptions to that. I love you and want you to stay. I would have been willing to see you go in the beginning, but as we have a child, that is no longer OK. I want you to stay.

Maybe you will love Dessa.

Maybe I would. We will never know. I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of women and girls I might find love for, but we will never find out about those gals either. Eva, this house is not an ark, I’m not Noah, and all of you gals are not animals who have come aboard, breeding pair by breeding pair. I love Nelia, but she is wrong.

And with that, I slide my cock deep into Eva’s cunt. My reward is a grunt. Eva is not awash with her juices when I plunge in, but she isn’t dry either, as I had been fingering her as we were talking before.

Eva and I have been together for almost six years. She is twenty-one now. We know each other’s bodies. On any other day, I would say we know each other really well. This dust-up with the Dessa kid has caused a fracture in the normal, stable relationship we have. But that is because we do have a relationship, in and out of bed.

This… this lovemaking… is not a distraction from our relationship. It’s fundamental to it. It’s lovemaking, and not simple fucking. I’m not in a hurry to ‘get myself off.’ I am, if a bit crudely, reminding Eva that we are mated in the most basic way. I want this to last, and it seems Eva does too.

She rolls me over and gets on top, as she grinds her pelvis against mine. This is not the high school girl looking for a safe place to land. Eva is a young woman and, until today, I would have said she was secure in her world. She seems secure right now, as she rides me with confidence.

We have been like this many times before. I enjoy looking up at her beauty, as she pumps up and down. Her still-tight cunt slides, with some regret, over my cock, as her skin does not want to give way and does so only grudgingly, as the fucking continues.

As the lubrication pours forth from her cunt, the sensation of permitting, begrudgingly, gives way to a slicker and smoother motion, and I roll Eva over again. The gentle fucking needs to give way to a more powerful version.

It’s not like she or I am trying to prove anything. Our child Loy2x is almost four. We are bonded, regardless of her comments earlier suggesting that we aren’t. That there’s an ‘our child’ makes our connection more than a choice for a moment. In the end, Eva knows it.

My being in Eva is simply what couples do. They make love. And, as cum leaves me and enters Eva, she knows that getting pregnant, if it happens, is what happens to a married woman, even one who is one of eight wives to one man.

The main event completed, I roll off Eva and she sidles next to me, her head resting just above the hollow between the side of my chest and my arm. Small kisses are a staccato on my neck as her hand strokes my chest.

Ira, sweetheart?

Mummm?

Meet her, please?

Who?

Dessa…. please?

Oh, sweetheart — I’m sure she’s nice… and deserving… and possibly even pretty… and willing. But what’s the point? We can’t keep on adding.

Why not? The others say ‘no more’ because you say it. They not feel it. If you say OK, they not unhappy.

My love, on top of every other reason to say no is the simple fact that Debbie is convinced I have a thing for underage girls. That will get me into trouble.

Why? No trouble for Ann, Reyna and me. Right?

Yes, in a way that was simple luck. But that luck will not last.

It be OK. I am sure. Please?

My love, there are eight of you here already! It’s crazy to add another.

Why? We share you. Why it matter?

She’s not being over-wrought. As crazy as it might seem, it’s a sane question. Yes, it can be traumatic to add a mistress to what is a monogamous marriage. It can destroy that marriage. And it can be a challenge to go from two lovers who are close with each other to add a third, who does not have that close a connection.

Eva does not belong with me in that type of world. Her question is based on how she knows me since joining us. It’s the only way she has ever known me.

In a way, my mind is partially stuck back in Manila with Bim and Cincer. Eva has no such early history to purge from her thinking. In that, her question is valid. There’s a reason, but it isn’t one she can see, at least maybe until things have changed so much that she wonders, why has everything changed?

It has to do with how I can have anything close to quality time with so many loves. In so many ways, every day, I feel that I’m already struggling to stay connected to each of them. I feel torn at times, knowing that too many of them need my attention at the very same time. Maybe Eva can’t see the angst I feel, even now, on occasion.

I suspect each of us stays wrapped up in our own world, looking at things from one vantage point, our own. I’m just as guilty of that as the next person. So, there’s no shame in it. Still, it generates the kind of question that Eva has asked.

From my vantage point, it’s hard enough to let each of these gals know I love them just as much today as I did yesterday, each and every day. It’s too easy for someone to feel overlooked. You can say, they ought to know better. Maybe. But our feelings, sense of worth, and our ever real need for love, can trip us up and result in feelings of loss and depression.

Simply normal hormonal changes can exacerbate these feelings of loss. I’m all for females having normal and regular menstruations. And I do not think periods make my gals unstable. But there are moments each month when they are more susceptible to feelings of isolation, loss, and failure.

There’s no simple way for me to know when those moments occur, and so I try my best to communicate my love for my gals — all of them — frequently. Adding more gals makes this ever harder for me.

It matters because I love you and I love the others in our home. It matters because there’s just so much of me and just so many hours in each day. It matters because it’s hard enough to find the time in each day to be with all of you.

You think we not know you love us?

Eva, I hope you all know it, now. But adding more risks there being times when you might not know it.

It’s OK now, so it is OK to add Dessa!

What if it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Huh?

How do you know that adding Dessa won’t cause exactly what I’m worried about? Once she is added, we can’t un-add. I really feel we have reached our limit.

But, you thought the same thing before Jessa and I joined. Right?

Yes, we got lucky that time. I don’t want to risk it again.

Ira, love me enough, please.

If I didn’t love you, we would not even have had this conversation. … It’s late, sweetheart. Let’s get some rest.

Why?

Ira, we all need to be here. What you tell Eva, it make it needed.

CiCi, what are you talking about?

You afraid we not know you love us. We know! We all here so you know we all do. So maybe you should meet this girl, this Dessa, who Debbie asks for.

Eva, is that what you told them?

It what you say!

No, it isn’t.

Cincer takes a breath, before, OK, so maybe it even more important we all here now. What you tell Eva?

I tell her I hope you all know I love you, but there’s just so much of me and just so many hours in each day. As it is, it’s hard enough to find the time in each day to be with all of you often enough… hard enough to make sure each of you is with me enough to hold it all together. Adding another risks making a mess of what we have now.

I don’t think Eva is particularly happy right now, as she says, a little louder than needed, But, that what you say before you add last time! … See CiCi, it what I say!

I feel stuck, and I think the gals feel stuck too. They want to back me up, and also know that they went against me last time. They know I was very unhappy with them, and that Eva is right, nothing bad happened last time other than that. It was just that I didn’t want any more loves in my life. So this time, while my rationale might be good, history isn’t in my favor.

On top of everything else, the dynamics of what we are, has changed. This is no longer the original question I had in the beginning, when Bim suggested I take more than one gal; a question of how many lovers am I able to add before one says, no.

Now we function more as a cooperative, a commune. The senior member is CiCi, who in many ways functions as the chief operations officer. She looks at me and asks, If we all know the risk, and all us girls agree to try, maybe we can try adding another. Then, if there a problem, Ira, it our fault not yours.

I don’t care whose fault it is. The damage would be to all of us.

We can do it. I am sure!, comes from Jessa.

I think it’s fair to say that Jessa is no one’s fool. In all the time I’ve known her, Jessa has been a rock, something that Reyna greatly benefited from, long before I came into the picture. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, and is the least likely to tell me I’m like Noah. Though not the brightest, nor the most enterprising, Jessa makes everything work. And so, Jessa saying she is sure we can do it, is not something I can shrug off as an uninformed comment.

I’m pretty sure she won’t be able to explain why she is sure. I’ve been down that road with her before. It seems that her ability to articulate her perceptions has its limits. With Jessa, you just have to take her at her word. Since her word has always been good, there’s every reason to believe that her word is good now.

I’m not the only one who is coming to that conclusion. I can see it in Bim’s eyes, and in Cincer’s expression. Eva is delighted. Lorie and Ann seem to be simply glad that this will all be over soon enough. Reyna loves her older sister in a way that is all it should be. If her Ate says, no problem, that’s all Reyna needs to know.

The only one who seems uncomfortable is Nelia. I wonder why for only a second, before the reason becomes clear to me. If we take just one, and not two, either Nelia’s theory springs a leak, or Jessa is wrong.

Am I being a bastard when I think that I would like to put an end to Nelia’s religious theories?

But there is something else. I have another reason for saying no that Eva hasn’t mentioned. This is about Debbie’s belief that I am a pedophile. I have had enough of that, and for that reason alone, the answer must be no.

My comment has changed, what seemed a moment ago to have been, to some in the room, a successful conclusion, to a full stop. The sense of relief is gone and frustration returns.

No one is saying anything for a few moments, before Jessa offers, Maybe she just stay until we find somewhere else for her to go. That what we tell Debbie and that what we do. She not join us.

While it might be a good solution in reality, I don’t think it will disabuse Debbie of her beliefs. Am I the only one who thinks that Debbie will not believe that?

Jessa seems to think we can make it work. I will tell her, you say no until I make this suggestion. You agree only if this the way it happen. She can stay here only until that happen and she goes.

I can read the faces of my gals pretty well these days. They all want this to be the solution. Even Nelia is happy now.

OK, Jessa, contact Debbie and arrange for me to meet this Dessa.

Jessa is giving me her eyebrows when Eva says, I will to it.

No, Eva, I want Jessa to do this. … and, addressing my entire family, I ask, Now, are we done?

Evidently we are, as they start going in different directions. Eva, stay with me and tell me about this girl.

I not know her.

Then why do you want me to add her?

Miss Debbie say it is needed. She say Dessa like me. She need to have a future. Ira, you do more than be good to me. You send me to college. You do what no one else here can do. She say Dessa need a future too. That why.

But I have just made it clear that I am not going to do that for Dessa. Are you clear on that?

She doesn’t give me eyebrows, but nods her head before she walks off.

§ § §

What was and what will be...18