The Penetration Tester

Not much actual sex in this story. Mostly, the narrative talks about sex with others as part of a long-standing, time part, love relationship.

The gate rattled and came open. Not supposed to happen. Crap, the padlock was missing. My nerves started to rattle too.

Hoping for the best, I went through the gate and wrapped the chain around the gate as best I could. I didn’t intend to be there long, fifteen-twenty minutes at the most. Just long enough to check the doors, windows, and other places people could easily break in. That’s all the specs called for and I always try to give the customer what they want.

My name is Raymond Bannister, more commonly known as RayBan, both for my name and for the sunglasses I wear whenever I can. I’m former army special forces and I belonged to an elite group that specialized in getting into places where we shouldn’t go. For many reasons, I left after sixteen years, and the military gave me an honorable discharge and a full twenty-year retirement package. I guess the work I’d done was appreciated that much.

It was easy to set up a physical penetration testing company. I tried to name it RayBan Security, but the sunglasses company wouldn’t allow that. I didn’t need the money, but I wanted to be self-sufficient, so I established a company called Bannister Consulting. I worked by myself and often served as a sub-contractor for bigger companies. It’s not that I didn’t have excellent computer and other skills; I choose to concentrate on physical testing because I was good at it and I hated being on a desk.

By now, I’d checked a side door that I knew led down a hall to the president’s office which was large and luxurious. That door was unlocked and standing slightly open too.

Something about this job bothered me from the beginning. A lot of some things. First, the client wouldn’t accept any other sub-contractor for this part of the overall test and that’s uncommon for a client to be that specific. Or to even know who the subs are. Second, everything was handled by email. When I tried to pass the job off to other similar companies, they all said they were too busy. Third, this building was in a terrible part of town. Leaving a gate unlocked was an open invitation to vandalism, theft and more. And leaving a door in the condition I found it, was much, much worse.

Inside — after making a mental note of this exception to be included in my report, and boy, it was going to be a doozy – I found the computer control area that controls the extensive security camera system. Only the system wasn’t working. Someone had to manually override the twenty-four-hour recording system. Not hard to fix. Three quick commands and the system was up.

Waiting for the system to fire up, I made a few written notes, and just as I looked up, the night camera in the president’s office disappeared. His was the only one on automatic; off when he was there; on while he wasn’t.

Son of a bitch, it looked like four people having sex on the couch. Even though it wasn’t on my work plan, I couldn’t let this breach go by. Twenty seconds later, that camera comes back on the screen, and I hit pause to study the image more closely. I can’t tell who it is, infrared is notorious for that, but, by the hair length, it looks like two women performing cunnilingus on two other women.

And this recalled my biggest reason for disliking this job. The owner and president, Alistair Beckett, and the man who allegedly booked the job by email was seventy-eight and confined to a wheelchair. Plus, he was married to a much younger woman, age thirty-seven, who was my next-door neighbor until I was twelve. She was my first love, my first kiss, and in those waning days before our family moved, I gave her a tinfoil ring and we promised to marry each other someday.

My attention was diverted by a loud banging on an outside door. Fuck. I had told my younger brother, Davie, to stay in the car, but, as often was the case, he wanted to be with me. I was already behind and faced more delay, but he wouldn’t stop the banging until I got him, and I didn’t want to alert the four women in the president’s office.

“For fuck’s sake, Davie, I told you to stay in the car.”

“You know I miss the action, RayBan. I just want to help.” And he did, wandering up and down the office hallway, rattling doors, banging on some, shouting and stomping his feet. Why I don’t know. Sometimes he did things even he couldn’t explain.

A few words about David Allen Bannister, my younger brother by two years. I’m his hero, always have been. At least that’s what he says. We were always close, so when I joined the Army at age 19, he followed a year later. He tried for special forces like me, but instead, they assigned him to the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) group as a specialist in finding and disarming bombs.

My throat closed as I remembered the one time we worked together. We all worked at a high-risk level and we knew the odds of survival weren’t good. The army seldom put brothers together on missions like this, but both Dave and I were highly skilled at this kind of work and the situation demanded it. The mission was so top secret I shouldn’t even say this much after six years.

Anyway, Dave was checking out this building for explosive devices using a bomb sniffer dog he strongly bonded with. Just as he exited the building, the bomb disposal truck arrived. The enemy had recently started using bombs that were vibration sensitive and the driver either disregarded the orders or hadn’t gotten them yet, because he drove right up to the house.

Boom. Shit. Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaabooooooooooooom.

The house disintegrated and so did the truck. Somehow, Davie got blown to where he landed near me, but the two people in the truck and Davie’s dog evaporated. My buddy, Mike, and I saw it all and we got carried 10 feet back, ears ringing so loudly we thought we were in a church bell tower at noon. We tried to stop the truck, but the driver ignored us and paid with his life and two others.

Davie often said, and I sometimes agreed with him, that he’d have been better off dying. Both he and I became accomplished cocksmen while in the military and he came out of the hospital with something off-kilter. He got the urge to fuck even stronger than before, but he never got more than half-hard. Poor bastard couldn’t even masturbate to orgasm. Plus, he could never be trusted alone for very long and certainly not around most women.

That’s why he was with me that night. My girlfriend of four weeks had reached the breaking point and left earlier that day, despite my pleading to stay for a few hours more. I’d gone through five girlfriends in the past six months, and she stayed the longest. She was good with Davie, and I had high hopes, but it didn’t work out.

Sometimes I don’t know why I bothered, but I’d been looking for a good woman since I moved at age twelve and I lost the closeness I had with my then-girlfriend.

Mike, my buddy who also witnessed the explosion, later committed suicide and I would have too if it wasn’t for Davie. My parents died while I was on a top-secret job and we had no other relatives, so that left me.

My attention was drawn by motion in the doorway. It was one of the women, I thought, from the office and she was headed toward Davie. No way he wasn’t going to see her. On leave before his injuries, they were a hot item. That’s just the kind of woman that made him misbehave.

I got ready to holler at her when another voice yells, “Stop.” It wasn’t mine, it was a female voice and as the woman entered, I saw she was Samantha “Sammi” Beckett, my old girlfriend of twelve. She’s still buttoning and adjusting her dress; her hair is a mess and she’s still flushed. There’s no doubt about what happened in the president’s office

It’s common for younger women married to older, impotent men to take a lover but to have sex in your husband’s office with three other women stretched the boundaries. It’s a fact, older men live longer if they sleep with younger women.

She still had her youthful figure and a perfect body accentuated by great boobs and a stunning ass coupled with a beautiful face. The perfect package that any man would be happy to fuck.

Then all hell broke loose. I saw the red and blue flashing lights down the hallway. The cops must have come in silently, which was good. But they were here way too soon. Someone must have called them before we entered the building, or I screwed up and suspected it as the former because I seldom made mistakes. My red-light warnings saying I’d been set up were flashing brightly.

And that brings up the most important reason I left the military. I’ve always had a mild case of dyslexia, so mild I could conceal it with a little work. After the blast, it got much worse. During ordinary times, I was fine. At moments of stress post-explosion, I especially mixed up numbers. The disparity between 34519 and 35419 made all the difference in the world. We could kill innocent people that way and no one wanted that.

This certainly qualified as one of those stressful times. That is why I preferred working alone. People added to the stress of a penetration exercise.

I checked the numbers I needed to call in case of emergency and put that paper plus my authorizations from the police department and Mr. Beckett in a shirt pocket. The police force in my city was notorious for shooting and asking questions later when someone reached for any other pocket. I didn’t blame them either after several cops got killed by people openly wearing guns which are legal in my state.

But this time I’m in luck. The sergeant who entered is a guy I’ve worked with and understands what I do. But his partner reminded me of one of those cops in the cartoons who is always asking if he can “tune the guy up.” He is bouncing on the balls of his feet; his hand won’t leave his gun which is in a holster that’s already unclipped, the safety is off, and he is sneering at me. He heads right for Davie because my brother can’t stand at ease. But the sergeant pulls him back, whispers a few words in the guy’s ear, and he moves away.

It is important to note here that 10 of us who were about the same age, joined various military branches within a month of each other. Many of them returned to my city and took jobs in the police department. Sometimes made my job easier, sometimes made it harder. Just depended.

I couldn’t track everything going on, but I did see Sammi headed right for Davie too. There was nothing to do but hold my breath, but my luck held. He remembered her well enough — he had a crush on her too — that she was able to calm him down and she got him to stand still beside me while she stood on the other side and gave me a wry smile. I exhaled for the first time in minutes.

Soon the sergeant made a phone call and “bouncy” brought the other two women in. I breathed even easier. All of them were wives of rich, older, probably impotent men with a great deal of political influence. Several minutes later a police captain and a lieutenant arrived. Now I was torn. The lieutenant was an enemy, a brother of the truck driver whose actions almost killed me, but who blamed me for the mishap because I was in charge. But my salvation was the captain, maybe. He was a tough stern taskmaster who had reamed me out more than once. But he was also fair. Turns out, he saved the night.

The women were all allowed to drive home. Davie and I were authorized to leave, which I did after making sure everything was locked up. Somehow, the padlock was back on the gate.

Now I was sure this was a setup and I’m the fall guy, but I couldn’t figure out why.

I got a partial answer the next day when I was summoned by a caller who identified himself as Alistair Beckett and who commanded me to appear at his house at 7:30 that night. I was told to bring Davie too. Neither of the choices was desirable. Ignore his command and risk getting a bad reputation which would probably put my company out of business. As I said, I didn’t need the money. Or I could go and see Sammi.

I had tried to date Sammi as we got older, but she always refused, and I didn’t blame her. Shortly before my 12^th birthday, oil and natural gas were found on a large tract of land my father inherited from some distantly related uncle. Additionally, my mother had inherited another large tract next to my father’s land and both were energy bonanzas. I didn’t know how much money I inherited. The financial firm always kept me up to date, but I cared so little I didn’t pay much attention. All I knew was that I had enough I’d never spend it all.

We moved into a huge mansion, and I found out that my parents hated each other, and the way they displayed that hate was fucking as many other people in their bedrooms at home as they could. My father loved taking a young girl’s virginity and so did my mother, only she concentrated on young men, mostly.

Fierce competition sometimes ensued. There was a constant parade of people about my age going in and out of our house. Our parents loved walking around nude too, taunting each other over body deficiencies. All this gave our whole family an extremely bad reputation and made Dave and I radioactive for dating.

The only salvation was my parents treated these people well; otherwise, Dave and I would have been headed to prison rather than the military.

Made our lives hell too and the only reason I didn’t enlist at 18 was because of Dave. But by 19, I could take it anymore and left home, and only by moving out could Dave make it to 18. The family that took him in was Sammi’s.

That was the deciding point. I owed Sammi and her family. The least I could do was visit her.

Short and to the point was the meeting. Mr. Beckett wanted me to fuck Sammi while he watched. Of course, I refused. That’s always been my hard and fast rule. I don’t have sex with married people, especially in front of their spouses.

With my looks and reputation, I could go into just about any bar in the city and find a woman to fuck, especially if they were married and their husband or lover wasn’t satisfying them. I had to make that rule otherwise I’d never be able to go out drinking and I’d never spend the night alone.

The public part of making love didn’t bother me. I’d seen worse in my years in the military and often snatched a quickie in public places. The danger of getting caught made having sex much better and I thrived on danger.

She was off to the side with Davie, and they were having a good time talking. I didn’t think she heard, but as her husband finished talking, she turned to me and winked, and her face fell when she heard my rejection. That night she was dressed in a short skirt that barely covered her ass with a top that showed enough cleavage that I saw a trace of her areola. She often sat with her legs apart wide enough I could see to heaven.

Come on, Sammi. We guys are visually stimulated and in those kinds of situations our little head overrides our big head, and I had a hardon that hurt.

All I could do was gather Davie and leave. She followed me out and when we were in the hallway I stopped to talk. Common courtesy, you know.

“It was me, who set all this up.”

When she touched me, I nearly threw her on the floor and fucked her, holding onto my desire only by intense will.

I had told Davie to take a seat and to be quiet, but he couldn’t stay still for long, as usual, and he was coming back toward me. I cut her short, saying only, “Call me tomorrow.”

“It was me who set all that up,” she told me in a phone call the next day. “Left the gate unlocked and took the padlock, left the door open, set up our session with the group in my husband’s office, turned off the security camera system, called the police, put the padlock back on, smoothed things over with the cops, everything just so we could be together.”

I overreacted because I was embarrassed about being led like a sacrificial lamb. Someone who made the wrong move might have died. Plus, I still didn’t understand why she married that old codger. Was she a gold-digger? That didn’t fit the girl I knew at age twelve, but people change.

“Here are my conditions. One year after your husband dies, you can come and see me. No promises. During that year, you must be celibate, and by that, I mean, no sex with any man or group of men; no sex with a woman or group of women, and no masturbation.”

Here’s where I thought I threw in the biggest obstacle.

“You must divest yourself of all your wealth, come live with me, and help me take care of Davie. You can keep enough to live a moderate life if something happens to me.

“No communication in the meantime.”

The pause was so long I hung up.

I thought about her every day, sometimes sure she’d do it, sometimes sure she wouldn’t. Nine months later, Alistair Beckett died. When I attended the funeral, she drew me aside and asked me if I remembered what I said that night. I recited it back verbatim. I might be dyslexic, but my memory is strong.

One year later I was pissed. One of the ten people who enlisted around the time I did wrote for a leading local news outlet and had told me that an announcement concerning the disposal of her wealth would appear on the first anniversary. It hadn’t. I no longer paid much attention to the media; too much death and devastation. After serving in the special forces, I disliked reading about death. Most of the coverage concerned another one of those abominable mass shootings we hear about so much lately.

I called to double-check that I hadn’t missed the story. I hadn’t. It was being held until the next day because the outlet devoted most of its coverage to the shooting. That was fair. The shooting was in a town about one hundred miles away and five people died with many more injured.

Often, I go into my office early to review my previous night’s work and plan for the next test. That next morning, I found a short article without many details around eight AM and heard a polite knock on my office door fifteen minutes later. It was locked, which meant I had to open it myself, and when I did, there was Sammi, dressed modestly in a mid-calf simple dress with a loose blouse that concealed her breasts and made up very simply. It was impossible to completely conceal her figure or her beauty, but she had tried.

“I’m here,” she said, pulled her one suitcase inside after her, and sat in the chair facing my desk. She sat demurely, legs together, the exact opposite of that night.

“I’m sure you saw the article this morning. It was far shorter than I wanted. Here’s what I did. The entire estate, except for the one-hundred thousand I set aside as you suggested, is going into a trust for people like Davie. That means all the property, the money, everything. It amounts to something like seventy-five million.

“I’m willing to give you that one-hundred thousand too if you want to invest it. I’ve heard your money manager does an exceptionally good job.”

She told me she’d gotten a job as an office manager at a local legal firm and was living off her income now and didn’t want or expect to use the money. I checked later. They thought she was the best office manager they’d ever had.

She then went through all the other conditions I’d set down, plus, she told me she had purposely married Alistair knowing he was impotent so she wouldn’t get fucked by anyone else till we got back together. But her sexual needs had been strong enough she had to find a way for release. Many wives like her were in the same boat and they decided to form a lesbian consort on a whim.

“I can’t prove I didn’t have sex with anyone else; you’ll have to take my word for that. But I can prove I didn’t have sex with a man because I’m still a virgin.”

That shocked me so much I stood up and screamed, “You’re shitting me.”