When Kyle and I pulled up outside Liam and Ashley’s place, McKenzi had already been there for hours. We had selected the unspoken day that she normally visited her other family’s place for the day of our outing and agreed that she should go over first. It seemed to me a tacit understanding of the differences in our relationship—there was Kyle and I and there was us and Mack. That Kyle had drifted closer to me in the equation was gratifying, but not necessarily healthy.

He’d held my hand for the whole of the fifteen-minute drive across town. I could feel his hardness through his pants as my hand lay in his lap.

“You nervous?” I said.

He shot a grin at me.

“Of course.”

“Me too.”

He turned onto the parkway, morning sun at our backs. Mack had gone on ahead the night before to “get everything ready.” Neither Kyle nor I were sure what she had meant, but we’d allowed it just fine. It meant that we had the quiet of a long night’s sleep without her, a normal dinner, TV—all the things they we could do together without her.

“You still mean what you said, right?” I said. “About you and me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “What we’re doing with her now is just sex.”

I nodded.

“Does that hurt?”

“I mean,” Kyle said. “Feels like a breakup in a certain way, yeah, but not really. Because of you, you know.”

“I think she’s been lying to us,” I said. To me, I didn’t say.

“Well, yeah.”

“Just, last night,” I stopped.

Last night had been nice and neither of us much cared that McKenzi hadn’t been a part of it. In fact, I was beginning to realize, it had been so nice because she wasn’t a part of it. Kyle was my best friend and, sitting around our shared house, eating our shared food, watching our shared favorite shows had been like old times—now with the new benefits of enjoying the same bed.

“It’s how it’s supposed to be,” I finished the thought aloud.

Kyle’s look was thoughtful, if worried.

We got off the parkway and wound down the quiet neighborhoods, following the GPS, until—

“Here we are.”

Kyle parked in the street. It was a small house, not unlike ours. It was what little people like the five of us could afford—but clean, well kept. The other houses were the same. Normal. Who would expect what was going down in any little place around here?

I felt almost like I had walking up to Kyle and Mack’s that first night with them—eager, afraid, horny, guilty. But I had Kyle this time.

We went in without ringing the bell.

They were playing strip poker on the coffee table. McKenzi was down to her bare breasts, tight black jeans, and high-laced boots. Liam had his shirt off, too, but Ashley was dressed as though she’d added layers, if anything. She was beautiful. Blonde hair that framed a pointed face and blue eyes with gentle curls. Her small frame was only accentuated by the bulky sweatpants and hoodie she wore, just as she always had. Liam was as he always was, lighter coloration than Kyle or I, but neither brown nor blonde—dusty, maybe—and pudgy from an office job.

When we came in, Mack got up.

“Hello, my loves,” she said, smiling as though she had not seen us in months. “Come in!”

I could tell from her kiss that they had already been drinking and felt, as though I hadn’t arrived to fuck this man’s girlfriend, as though I should have brought a bottle of wine.

“This is Liam, you remember from college,” she said. “And his girlfriend, Ashley.”

We nodded uncomfortably to Liam. Ashley was shy, but warm. The introductions were performative, as Mack knew. We’d all known each other in college, even if it had been some years. Kyle and I knew it was a reminder: don’t talk about fucking Liam.

It had the unintentional effect of making Kyle and I feel more like the outsiders, like we had arrived as a couple and would leave as a couple—never mind that McKenzi was our girlfriend. I felt unsettled, like Mack was little more than our shared host instead.

Our hosts settled us with a beer apiece and we sat around the living room for a while, poker game ignored, drinking and, if everyone was like me, wondering how to begin. Small talk was awkward until Kyle and I finished our beers and started on new ones. We began to loosen up and I thought about just taking out my boyfriend’s dick and getting things going.

But Mack, still bare-breasted from the forgotten game, had a better idea. She reached wordlessly into Liam’s pants, smirked, and stood up, pulling him with her by the cock over to the chair where Kyle and I were curled.

“Missed you, baby,” she said to me, kissing first me then Kyle.

Then, she peeled off her pants and dropped to her knees, fingers picking at my jeans. Liam quickly dropped his pants beside us and revealed the hardness between his legs. I glanced at Ashley. She was quiet at her place on the couch, but watching closely.

Beside me, Kyle had his cock out too and Mack had a hand or mouth on all three.

Within moments, I was subsumed by her desire. The awkwardness had passed and I happily stripped off the rest of my clothes.

“Who’s going to fuck me first?” McKenzi said.

Liam took her roughly and bent her over the arm of the chair. She fell into my lap with a giggle, landing with both hands on my cock.

Liam entered her from behind with Kyle standing before Mack like an approving father. She closed her lips around me. The pair of us watched the look of concentration on Liam’s face as he plunged his cock into her, looking as though he was trying not to look at Ashley, still clothed, still watching from the couch. McKenzi, by contrast, was bereft of inhibition and self-consciousness. She was voracious with our cocks, commanding them with only a touch of her hand or a kiss of her lips. I knew that this was all she wanted. Ash had been our consolation prize.

From the corner of my eye, I watched the little blonde girl on the couch. She was as I remembered her from college: quiet, reserved, and watchful. Her oversized sweatshirt and pants concealed an athletic and shapely body beneath, but begged for someone to unwrap her. It was as though she dressed at once conservatively and provocatively.

She watched us rapturously and seemingly without feeling through half-lidded eyes, cocking her head from time to time as though considering what to do or fading into sleep. While I watched, she slipped a delicate hand through the waistband of her loose pants.

Surrounding Mack, I felt the focus of the room shifting away from me. More and more, she was throating Kyle and slowing her strokes against my cock. Liam was focused on the rise and fall of her hips against his. I felt the slow pull of Ashley’s eyes on my body. Without protest, I slipped away from Mack’s grasp and sat beside Ashley, slowly stroking my cock myself.

Her eyes followed me.

“Hi,” she said, as though we were watching nothing more than a mildly interesting TV show.

I didn’t know what to say. Her blue eyes drowned the words from my lungs.

“I want to fuck you,” I said.

“I’m ready.”

It was as though she only needed to be started up.

She swung a leg over my lap like a gymnast mounting the pommelhorse and kissed me. Her lips were light and small, not at all like Mack’s. She ground her hard pelvis against my cock as I slid my hands up inside the back of her sweatshirt to find no bra-strap. I made an involuntary moan as shift lifted her arms for me to pull off the sweater and reveal her small, shapely breasts. Her nipples were wide and pink and stood straight up. I cupped her tiny body in my hands and pressed my lips around one, then the other, feeling her react on top of me, light as a quivering leaf but powerful as a thrumming engine.

Her small hands were pressing into the back of my neck, latching my mouth to her breast, while mine sought downwards along her back, passed her waistband, and held fast to the tiny orbs of her buttocks. The touch revved her up again and she grinded harder against me. Her eyes were closed, lips fluttering. I knew before my hands wrapped around her backside to her crotch what I would find there.

She was wet.

I let her roll off me to wriggle free of her pants which vanished into the dimness of my inattention. Her legs were thrown into the air, long and muscled, feet and toes splayed in welcome. I kissed her calves and let her straddle me from beneath, pulling me into her.

She was tight. She drew me inside her with one hand and pursed lips, whimpering slightly at even my moderate size until, with one push, I had filled her to the hilt. Then, she pulled my body into hers.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

I began driving into her, ecstasy with every push and pull, but she only said, “Harder.”

Soon, I was thunder and her muted cries were lightning.

“God damn,” Kyle’s voice brought me back.

I watched them, then. Liam looked pointedly away, but Kyle only smiled. McKenzi was enthralled by her cocks. Ash’s gentle hand pulled me back into her kiss.

“Do you want to see your boyfriend get fucked?” I whispered.

Her blue eyes went as big as saucers and her mouth fell open. Unable to resist, I filled her surprise with a deep kiss.

“I don’t know if he…” she said.

I was still grinding into her as she spoke and her voice trailed off into a pleasurable sigh.

“Go tell him,” I told her. “Bring him to me.”

Liam took the demand with the stone-face of the guilty and I knew that he had not told Ashley anything of what had transpired between us, but he looked at me with apprehensive desire. I thought that I knew how he felt as I had, in the early days of my relationship with Kyle, often been wracked by a distaste but a need for what we had been doing. I opened my arms to him as he and Ashley returned to the couch.

He let me kiss his neck and shoulder, while he stood there, stiffly. Behind him, Kyle turned Mack around to enter her. Ash was watching us both with rapt shock.

“Come on, anal slut,” I said, pulling his head up close to mine to whisper. “Or should we tell her this isn’t your first time?”

This time, he initiated the kiss, I knew, to shut me up. I received him eagerly, letting my hands slip along his backside. His lips were still stiff, his tongue locked firmly behind the gate of his teeth, but his chest vibrated with anticipation.

Still, I felt the secret pull on him, and I knew that there was more to it. McKenzi The glint in McKenzi’s eye confirmed everything. As Liam compliantly sloped his head into the couch, I shot Mack a quizzical glance. She closed her eyes.

I spat on Liam’s backside and worked it in with my tongue, feeling his body quiver with anticipation. First, I let him feel a finger, then two. I didn’t know if his muscles were taut with fear or desire until I pressed into him and felt his body leap into me. I went slowly until his hips began to work with me, pushing and pulling in a contrasting rhythm.

We shifted together on the couch so that Liam’s and Ashley’s face came together. I watched them kiss for a long moment, then, pulled him into me.

I let her wriggle in underneath us and reached around to guide Liam’s hard penis inside of her.

“You’re so hot, baby,” she said as he thrust into her.

I felt his hips oscillate between my cock and her pussy and knew how he felt, but Liam could not speak.

McKenzi and Kyle finally broke from their reverie on at the armchair and joined us on the couch, Kyle slipping in beside me and Mack beside Ash. I kissed him and felt around for his cock.

“Later, baby,” Kyle said. “I want to try her pussy.”

I eased out of Liam’s ass and pulled him gently away from his girlfriend, sitting him down on the couch and dropping to my knees. He sat back, chest heaving, as I wrapped my lips around his cock and began to force him down my throat. Beside us, Kyle fucked Ashley with a vigor that shook through to the floor.

I made eye contact with Liam, but he glanced away, looking jealously at Ash. Her eyes were closed, head thrown back in unrestrained joy.

“Your girlfriend is a freak,” I told him, smug.

Now, he focused on me. He took my head in his hands and made me swallow his cock whole. Briefly, I submitted to him, feeling my eyes burn. Then, I scooped up his legs and rolled him back on the couch to insert two fingers into his anus and go voraciously at his cock with my throat. He was helpless under my attention just as Ashley could not withstand Kyle beside him.

I thought I recognized the muffled sounds of a woman cumming almost in the same instant that I felt Liam’s hot seed burned down my throat. I coughed and wiped my mouth, pulling myself up to the couch with a careful hand on Kyle’s shoulder.

“I can’t believe you made me cum,” Liam said. His face was aghast, embarrassed. I smiled at him.

“Nothing to be ashamed about.”

Kyle twisted around to kiss me, still fucking Ashley, though slowing with the rhythm of the room.

Mack too slid off Ashley’s face and curled herself into my arms. I lifted a leg and slid into her. She was wet from her own efforts and from Ash’s tongue. Kyle and I fucked, he into Ashley and me into Mack, until our own orgasms boiled up inside of us. I splashed across McKenzi’s belly and he came in Ashley’s mouth. Then, the five of us, spent for the moment, lapsed into rest against the sofa and chair.

In our quiet interim, the couples floated together. Liam lay with Ashley, talking quietly about something I could not here. Kyle draped an arm around me and whispered about good revenge sex. It left McKenzi drifting somewhere between us and I realized again that our relationship had changed. She had become the go-between for the four of us, leaving her somehow apart. I saw in her face a look of jealousy then, one I had never seen from her, and I knew that she felt it, too.

Kyle, if he felt it, made no move to include her.

We laid around for a long time, drinking and coupling occasionally first with one then the other. Liam got up around midday to shower and Kyle fucked Ashley some more in his absence. I made out with Mack and sucked Kyle’s cock.

We all watched rapturously for a while when Ash and Mack got into it, lying in a pool on the rug with Mack’s head buried between Ashley’s legs and both of them looking and sounding as though they had forgotten about the rest of us until Ash let out the longest squeal and the pair collapsed in heaving harmony together. They’d looked around the room, almost sheepish for a moment, and then Ash started kissing down towards McKenzi’s groin.

It went on in this haze of drinking and sex until, all at once, the five of us were together again—Kyle, Liam, and I were on the couch, pressing the girls between us. I found myself inside of Ashley again, though Mack’s hands were on me. Kyle was eyeing Liam, even with his cock in Mack. We were a wriggling creature with no head or tail, no sense of where each body began.

I hardly remember who I felt then and what I did. I had Ashley again, then Mack, then Ashley, then they had each other. Liam snuck away from Kyle on the couch. Kyle found me instead. I gave in to his strong hands, let them follow my body and pull me away from the others into the chair from which we had begun.

He kissed me. He kissed my body and my cock. His tongue explored my ass. I watched the other tree turning inwards on themselves, closing ranks as Kyle and I departed from them like two steel doors eager to slide shut.

When Kyle finally entered me from behind, I felt as though I had come home at last. All day, I’d had more sex than I’d ever had before. I’d had Ashley for the first time. I’d tried out a new cock and learned that I had the appetite. But all I wanted was Kyle.

“Yes, baby,” I said, feeling his hand around my throat. “Kiss me.”

His mouth hungered around my cheek until he found my lips. I greeted them and, as his cock ventured to the deepest part of me, felt the explosive kick of joy.

On the couch, Liam seemed to be experiencing his own sort of paradise. Mack had him in her mouth and Ashley pressed herself into him, lips, breasts, and body touching him, begging for his attentions. Something about the arrangement—the three of them, there; the two of us, here—seemed right. The life Kyle and I had was simple. The life McKenzi wanted, swinging and fucking and finding new people, was complicated. I realized that Kyle had been right. He was all I wanted, all I needed.

With Mack, it was merely sexual. With Kyle—it had started that way and I’d resisted at nearly every opportunity to keep it that way—it was more.

I submitted, gave myself to Kyle, and let his rhythm slowly build, felt my own cock gently slapping my lower belly, felt his excitement growing behind me.

“Fuck me,” I said. “God, I love it when you fuck me.”

I watched with only dim awareness as Mack climbed into Liam’s lap and mounted him. Ashley was a vine to their twin trees, clutching first one than another.

I closed my eyes and felt Kyle fill me. Even with the fantasy of months happening around me, I knew that this was my happiness.

Then, I was on my back on the floor and my legs were on Kyle’s shoulders. His face was red, pressing into mine with bright eyes. His hand was working my cock.

“I want you to cum, Just,” he said. “Cum for me.”

There was the sharp pain of teeth at my neck, a hard thrust to my insides, a burst of pleasure and heat. Kyle’s hips slowed as he kissed me. His weight eased onto me.

“More, Kyle,” I said. “Fuck me.”

Obediently, Kyle started again, mouth nipping at my neck, hips grinding, hand stroking. I was gasping. Somewhere above us, Ash was gasping.

I came. It spilled hot across our combined chests as Kyle lashed out his tongue. He was in my arms, then, our breath spent. He pulled slowly out of me.

“I love you, Justin,” he said. “That was amazing.”

We rolled over together, spent on the rug while Mack went on fucking above us. It had all gone out of me—the fantasy, the lust, the desire. Gone. Only one thing remained.

I held him in my arms as even the hard rocking of the couch slowed to a whimper and we succumbed again to sleep.

“What time is it?” I heard a quiet woman’s voice say through my delirium.

In the darkness, I heard the sound of three dry kisses marching across a woman’s backside.

“I’m not done with you yet,” said another, more familiar woman, voice thick with sleep.

“Maybe we should let the queers have the couch,” said a male voice, “so we don’t wake them.”

More, wetter kisses.

“Don’t call them that.”

I fluttered my eyes awake. It was dark. My body was sore and sticking uncomfortably to the rug. I could feel Kyle next to me, still asleep and breathing slowly. My head was clear of alcohol, but pounding with the beginning of a hangover. Slowly, I sat up.

Three shadows sat on the couch, lurching into one another. I could not make out who was who.

“Justin’s awake,” Mack said.

She swooped down on me. I felt her soft skin, a hard nipple. Her hair fell about my face like a damp cloud.

“Did you have fun?” she whispered. “Wasn’t it just what we wanted?”

Her lips were the wings of a butterfly against mine.

“Yeah,” I said.

She rumbled with delight and kissed me. I lost my breath.

When she let up, I held her by the shoulders.

“I have to ask,” I said. I looked down at Kyle, still fast asleep. “You’re fucking Liam more than she knows, right?”

Mack’s silhouetted head snapped around and back. Then, nodded.

“Anyone else?”

She tried to kiss me again. I held her back. She stopped.

“We’re going to the bedroom,” Mack said. Her face was hidden in the early morning shadow. “You can come.”

I let a beat of silence pass.

“I think we’re done,” I said. For the night caught in my throat. Mack pulled away from me by a hair.

“I’ve had enough,” I said instead.

“Okay,” she said. “If you change your mind.”

I let her lips come against mine for a long moment. I thought for a moment she might cry or beg. Then she pulled away from me and was gone.

I watched the shadows dance down the hall into Liam’s bed and shut out McKenzi’s final giggle before the door snapped shut.

I laid back down on the carpet next to Kyle and breathed a heavy sigh. The sounds from the bedroom were muffled, unrousing. I looked at my boyfriend’s sleeping for and gently nudged him awake.

“Hey,” Kyle said.

“Hey.”

“Where’d they go?”

“To bed. Do you want the couch?”

I felt him nod and, together, we sat up.

“Do you want a glass of water?” I said.

He nodded again and slouched onto the sofa. He didn’t lie down. There was a bump down the hall.

I waded through the discarded cans and pizza boxes to the kitchen and flicked on the light. It spread out from the doorway like water into the living room. Kyle sat like a marooned sailor on his raft, looking at me. I poured and brought the water, sitting beside him. We drank in two gulps. Then, I looked at him.

His eyes were soft and knowing. I kissed his cheek. He nodded.

Without speaking, we found our wrinkled and dispossessed clothes and left.

In the car, Kyle let his head fall on my shoulder. The sun rose as we turned onto the parkway and I flicked on the radio. We were almost home and Mack wouldn’t be there. I knew as well as Kyle did that she would never be there again.