Jo, T-Girl Goddess!

The Last Reunion

 

 

Jo, T-Girl Goddess, Book 1

 

(Years ago I watched an adult movie which featured the late Camilla De Castro. I found the way she and her partner made love to each other very erotic. She was simply gorgeous and is the inspiration for my character, Jo, T-Girl Goddess!)

Jo plumped the cushion and carefully positioned it until it was precisely at the right angle. Nothing less than perfection would do. Ricki, her friend of ten years was coming to stay overnight and she would notice if the tiniest thing was out of place.

An impatient knock on the door a moment later signalled her friend’s arrival. Jo cast one last look around the flat on the way to let her in.

Everything was perfectly in place.

“What took you so long,” the dyed-blonde diva demanded as she dropped her overnight bag and rushed by Jo into the flat. “I’m bursting!”

“Nice to see you, too!” Jo laughed as she picked up the bag and locked the front door.

Ricki hadn’t bothered to close the bathroom door and Jo shook her head sadly as she watched her. Norman, Ricki’s macho shithead of a lover insisted that Ricki sat down to pee and sometimes, without thought, she did it even when the man wasn’t around.

“You need to leave that creep,” Jo said angrily as Ricki looked up and found her in the doorway.

“I am leaving him.”

“What?” Jo was sure she hadn’t heard right.

Ricki’s biggest fear was that Norman would pay someone to kill her if she ever tried to escape his clutches. And though Jo was pleased to hear that her friend was finally mustering the balls to leave the prick, she had always been as secretly scared for Ricki’s life as Ricki herself.

“You heard me.” Ricki stood up and shook her girldick before slipping it into her French knickers and pulling her short skirt down. Pressing the pump for a dollop of Jo’s Molton Brown creamy rosé hand wash, she then washed her hands and dried them on the nearby towel. “And I’m going to Barbados to get my groove back.”

“Ricki, you don’t know anyone in Barbados!”

“I’m here for one final fuck.” Ricki blithely ignored Jo’s attempt to make her see sense.

“Are you drunk?”

“You know I haven’t touched alcohol in years.”

Ricki’s face was suddenly serious and Jo inwardly cursed herself for bringing the subject up.

Her friend had developed an alcohol dependency within months of moving in with Norman and being literally turned into a nervous wreck of her former self.

Jo had met men who felt the need to belittle her or even try to physically harm her once they had satisfied their lust. Her karate training usually prevented the latter, but she had been subjected to her share of verbal abuse. She usually gave back as good as she got. Norman wasn’t physically abusive, though it might have been better if he was because most wounds inflicted to the body heal even if they leave scars. Instead, he had a knack of sensing people’s insecurities and taunting them beyond breaking point.

Jo had never met anyone who said nastier things, and without provocation. It had taken all her willpower to keep going over regularly to the penthouse where Norman kept Ricki a virtual prisoner to keep her friend’s spirits up–Ricki had confessed to being close to committing suicide on more than one occasion.

Norman had kept Ricki housebound for the first six months of their relationship. She had had free access to Norman’s credit cards to shop online as much as she liked. She could have had champagne and caviar for breakfast every morning if she’d wanted, but she hadn’t been allowed to leave the house.

Norman had assigned one of his minders to her and the man had been almost like her shadow, only much more persistent and annoying.

Once he had broken Ricki to his will, Norman had given her the freedom to leave the house to go shopping if she wanted to, knowing that even a badly treated dog returns to its master.

By then Ricki had been drinking heavily, starting the day with a ‘hair of the dog’ to get over the previous night’s hangover. And as soon as the hangover was gone and she had enough time to think about her life, she had needed another drink or three to take the edge off reality. It had taken almost two years of Jo’s support and bullying before Ricki had finally dried out.

“You know I was only joking about you being drunk,” Jo apologized. “But you leaving Norman?”

“The bastard’s been fucking around with another bitch!”

“And why are you so surprised?” Jo almost rolled her eyes. “He’s never been faithful.”

“I mean a bitch with a cock!” Ricki elaborated.

“What?”

It wasn’t that Norman was so straight it was impossible for Jo to imagine him with another transgender woman, other than Ricki. It was more the fact that the man had spent years and more money than Jo would earn in her entire lifetime cultivating his Hugh Hefneresque public persona.

He always swore that Ricki was the only transgender woman he had ever fucked.

He insisted that he wasn’t attracted to men, that Ricki was an anomaly.

“The women I don’t give a shit about,” Ricki said with a toss of her shoulder-length straightened hair. “They’re only a front–window dressing–so he can show how macho he is. The annoying thing is that he brought her to the penthouse and introduced the bitch to me and I didn’t realize she was a man.”

“You let her slip under your radar?” Jo’s eyes almost popped out of her head.

That was simply unheard of!

Ricki could spot a woman with a cock at a hundred paces.

“Jo, you have to see this bitch!” Ricki put a hand to her chest as though her heart needed the support. “At first when I viewed the footage I thought she was a hermaphrodite, but–”

“Back up, girlfriend,” Jo interrupted, holding her hand up to halt her friend’s conversation. “Footage?”

“I’ve been taping Norman for years, honey. I knew one day he would fuck with me and I would have my revenge.” Ricki smiled widely and knowingly. “Anyway, back to the bitch. I wouldn’t have minded if he had fucked her ass like the rest of the bitches and sent her on her way. But, my man Norman, her bitch, gets down on his knees and sucked her cock!”

“Ricki, are you sure that you haven’t been drinking?”

Macho shithead Norman going down on another man?

Impossible!

“Jo, believe me, I watched that footage over and over again. I zoomed in to see if the bitch was packing a dildo, but her girldick’s fucking real. And even then I was willing to forgive him, but then…” Ricki stumbled to a halt, seeming too overcome to continue.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” Jo asked concerned.

Ricki had switched her drinking addiction from alcohol to the finest teas.

“No, I’m good,” Ricki replied and started prowling around Jo’s living room like a caged tigress.

“What could be worse than Norman sucking on a man’s…?” Jo let her words trail off.

She couldn’t finish her question.

Not Norman.

“Yes,” Ricki confirmed, her jaw clenched in fury. “The bitch fucked him! Jo, you have to see the way she attacked his ass. He was begging like a little bitch and she showed him no mercy. And it wasn’t the first time. She taunted him, telling him that she should go around telling everyone that she had taken his ‘ass cherry’ and has been fucking him regularly ever since. He was a pathetic sight, pleading with her not to tell anyone and at the same time rolling his hips like a woman as she fucked him hard. I have completely gone off him. I haven’t let him fuck me since I saw it.”

Jo sat in stunned silence. She honestly didn’t know what to say. She had met men who talked a good ‘manly’ talk about being straight, but she and sometimes several of her friends knew otherwise.

But Norman had managed to completely surprise her.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asked Ricki.

“Because I was too fucking pissed off…and embarrassed,” Ricki admitted.

“I should have known that he was up to something when he arranged an entire spa day for me at The Lanesborough. The bastard just wanted me out of the way.”

“I would have loved to see Mr Macho Norman Giles-Landon–”

“I have a copy of it here on a pen drive.” Ricki laughed suddenly and grabbed her haversack.

She didn’t seem to be taking the betrayal as hard as expected and Jo got up with a sigh of relief.

They hurried over to the small desk in a corner of the living room and Jo booted up her PC.

“Yes, girlfriend, boot that baby up and let’s watch some action.” Ricki laughed and then teased, “Maybe you can pick up some tips for sucking my girldick later.”

“Yeah, right!” Jo replied scornfully as she pressed the button to wake her computer from sleep mode. “Norman giving me tips on giving head? I’d shoot myself first!”

“Girlfriend, the man is good. I think he must have picked up some tips from the thousands of times I gave him fabulous head.”

“Let me make us some Earl Grey before we start.” Jo suggested.

Her nerve endings felt slightly frayed from the shock of Ricki’s revelation.

It wasn’t that Norman being fucked by a man bothered her; it was more the fact that she and Ricki had both been wrong about his predilections.

Transgender women couldn’t afford to make those kind of errors in judgement when it came to men.

It could cost them their lives.

A double shot of Hennessy would have been just the thing to settle Jo’s nerves, but she couldn’t indulge.

Not with Ricki around.

 

***

 

Five minutes later they sat sipping the hot fragrant brew as they watched a blonde wearing a little black dress and black stilettos–who looked so much like a woman with big natural-looking breasts that Jo began to doubt Ricki’s story–push Norman to his knees and demand that he suck her off and swallow everything.

Norman obediently pushed the hem of her dress up to her waist, exposing the tops of her stockings, her suspenders and her tiny black thong.

Jo was just about to comment that she didn’t see any sign of a girldick when Norman reached into the thong.

The woman opened her legs and let him pull out the limp, but surprisingly long girldick she had packed away between her legs.

Definitely not a dildo, Jo acknowledged, unless inflatable ones were now on the market.

Within minutes Norman had it as hard as a rock.

And against her will Jo found herself stroking her own rock.

Norman might be a bastard, but he gave good head.

It seemed, however, that he needed to work on his deep-throat technique.

The woman pulled his head off her girldick and slapped him hard when he wouldn’t take her deep enough.

“Open up and take this entire goddamned dick into your mouth!” she instructed.

Jo realized then that Norman had only been playacting up to this point.

After the slap he managed to open his throat wide enough for the woman to slip her girldick right into it. Then he held himself immobile as she took him by the ears and pumped smoothly in and out of his mouth.

“You’re rubbish at sucking dick.” The woman told him after several minutes of obvious enjoyment. “Make it wet and then drop those trousers and bend over! Maybe your tight ass will make me come instead.”

Norman was once again the picture of obedience as he dropped the garment and pulled down the dark blue silk boxers beneath just enough to uncover his butt, then bent over and held on to a nearby coffee table.

“Still sore from the last time I fucked you?” the woman reaching in her tiny purse for a condom and some lube.

She rolled the condom on and pumped her girldick several times–as it wasn’t already hard enough–and positioned herself.

Norman shook his head and braced himself as the woman buried the head with a quick thrust.

“Aw! Aw!” he groaned, but instead of trying to escape the pain he was backing himself up and rotating his hips.

“Oh shut up! I didn’t tear your ass up enough the last time. You should have been sore for at least a week.” She circled her waist, her butt cheeks flexing with the movement, as she drove several, slender inches inside him. “When I’m done tonight you won’t be able to sit down!”

“Have mercy on me, honey.”

“Take it like a man, bitch! You know you like the pain!”

Jo started.

Bitch?

Hearing the woman call Norman the word was even more shocking than everything she had witnessed so far.

It was the name he always called Ricki and in such a derogatory way it made Jo’s blood boil.

She looked across at Ricki and immediately reached over and paused the recording.

While she had been getting into the action and had a boulder to testify her enjoyment, Ricki had sat there silently crying.

“Jo, I honestly don’t give a fuck about that other bitch! I don’t! But in nine years he has never kissed me, never sucked my fucking girldick, never let me put as much as a finger in his ass! And that bitch had him strung out like a junkie!”

“He didn’t kiss her though,” Jo consoled.

The statement was so ridiculously banal that Ricki stared at her for several moments in stunned surprise.

And then they both started laughing.

They laughed so hard they both fell onto the carpet and rolled around clutching their stomachs.

“I knew that coming to see you would make me feel better,” Ricki told her when they finally composed themselves. “You’re the best friend a girl can have.”

“Ditto,” Jo replied and pulled her friend closer for a slow, thorough kiss.

 

***

 

They had met in The Pink Panther, a gay bar, during the college half-term holiday.

Joseph had just turned eighteen and Richard had been a year older.

The bar owner had turned a blind eye when Joseph had arrived, but when Richard had walked in twenty minutes later he had seemed to realize that he had to take some crowd control measures.

The regulars had already been salivating over one gorgeous barely-legal young man, when a second had walked in the level of testosterone had risen significantly.

There had been a distinct sound of fabric stretching to accommodate sudden, rampant erections. The owner, Emmanuel Foxton, or ‘Big Willy’ to those who knew him intimately, had immediately dispatched his head bouncer to show the two young men to the door.

The bouncer had spoken to them in turn and then taken them each by the upper arm and marched them out, a big hulking brute of a man between their boyish slenderness.

The regulars had protested vehemently. Some of the bolder ones had tried to rush to the rescue, but anticipating the move another two burly bouncers had deflected their advances.

But rather than throw the young men out into the cold dark night, the bouncer had simply taken them out the door, around the building and up through a secret door to Emmanuel’s private viewing parlour.

Richard had then explained to Joseph that he had been to the bar before and knew Emmanuel well.

The two young men had feasted on juicy steak with crispy baked potatoes and perfectly steamed vegetables as they’d watched the clubbers get down and dirty.

Emmanuel had excused himself as soon as decently possible and had appeared holding two bottles of vintage wine.

He had himself been the head bouncer for a West End bar before opening his own. At six foot eight inches he was a mountain of a man and had worked out regularly at that time, reminding Joseph of the men he’d salivated over when he watched the yearly World’s Strongest Men competition.

Everything on Emmanuel was big, including his size fifteen feet.

An hour later, Joseph had discovered that largeness wasn’t limited to the man’s body and feet. He’d almost screamed when Emmanuel revealed his ten-inch monster cock.

The wine had been smooth but lethal and it wasn’t long before Joseph and Richard were engaged in some boy-on-boy action with Big Willy urging them on as he stood stroking his oversized cock by the side of the large custom-made bed.

He had eventually joined them on it and they had wrestled for possession of his jumbo cock.

Joseph had lost the battle, his energy sapped by drinking more wine than he was accustomed to.

He had watched jealously for a moment as Richard had sucked on it like a lollipop.

Then Emmanuel had pulled Joseph closer and stuck two fat, long fingers inside him and an even fatter tongue into his mouth.

Those fingers had been the fullest his ass had ever been filled and Joseph had come within minutes.

Emmanuel had continued to finger-fuck him relentlessly and he’d been on the verge of coming again, when the man had withdrawn his fingers and urged Joseph to kneel facedown on the bed.

The next minute he’d felt Richard behind him filling the hole Emmanuel’s fingers had vacated.

And as soon as Richard had worked himself into Joseph, Emmanuel had pushed Richard forward and spent several minutes trying to complete a daisy chain.

Squashed under Richard as he squirmed and groaned and wriggled his hips to accommodate Emmanuel’s cock, Joseph had felt even more jealous.

He had wished fervently that he was the one in the middle under the muscular, square-jawed owner of the bar and not Richard.

But Emmanuel had only been saving Joseph for later, he explained once he’d recovered from a frenzied orgasm which Richard had very vocally enjoyed.

“You weren’t ready for me yet,” Emmanuel had explained. “I was so horny I would have torn your tight ass wide open.”

He’d been right.

Joseph had needed careful preparation, but soon he was lying on his side on the bed, one leg raised high and held in place by Emmanuel as he used Richard’s cum, an abundance of lubricant and great patience to ease his truncheon slowly inside Joseph.

Richard had aided in the effort by kissing Joseph, sucking on his sensitive nipples and fondling his erection and balls.

It had seemed an impossible task, but Joseph had been eager and had sobered up just enough to thoroughly enjoy Emmanuel’s slow, smooth, deliberate thrusts and Richard’s nimble caresses.

Big Willy had promptly renamed them ‘Josephine’ and ‘Ricki’, and told them that he would take great delight in teaching them how to take the best care of themselves and their ‘honey holes’ as he’d called their tight young buttholes.

‘Josephine’ had eventually been shortened to ‘Jo’.

She remembered that first night in stark detail, especially the toe-curling twenty minutes or so that Emmanuel had spent breaching her near-virgin asshole and cramming it full of his long, thick, hard cock.

That night had been the start of a triangular relationship that had lasted almost a year.

Then Ricki had fallen for Norman, an older, wealthy married man who had come into Harrods, where Ricki had worked at the time, to buy a new winter wardrobe.

Ricki had suggested several outfits that had made the best of Norman’s oddly-shaped, squat body and the man had been so pleased he had tipped Ricki ridiculously well.

He had returned the next week on the pretext of needing a dozen ties.

That night he had fucked Ricki with a Viagra-aided vigour that belied his years and a cock almost as big as Emmanuel’s Ricki had claimed.

She’d laughed and told Jo that Norman looked like a freak of nature when it was limp and dangling almost to his knees, but a few weeks later, he’d somehow managed to persuade her to quit her job and move in to his obscenely opulent penthouse.

Then, less than ten days later Emmanuel had met Nathan, who at eighteen looked twelve, when he had delivered a box of organic produce to the bar on his bicycle after his employer’s van had broken down.

Emmanuel had called the supplier, furious that the man had sent the boy on the bicycle without proper protective garments or a helmet. He had accused the man of exploitation, employing a boy that young.

He had been shocked to be told Nathan’s real age and had immediately invited the young man into the kitchen and personally rustled up a mouth-watering ham and cheese omelette for him.

When he’d learned that Nathan had run away from Ireland because his father had physically abused him for acting like ‘a sissy’, and that he had slept rough for months until he was able to find a few odd jobs and rent a tiny room in a dingy shared flat, Emmanuel, a big softie at heart, had offered the young man a room, rent free.

In less than a month Nathan, ‘Natalie’ as Big Willy then re-named him, had vacated that room for Big Willy’s.

Jo hadn’t been at all interested in Natalie herself, but had assumed that the threesome games would continue.

It had soon become apparent to her that Emmanuel was totally besotted by his new boy-toy.

Jo had known that Emmanuel’s attraction to both herself and Ricki had bordered on the paedophilic–they’d both looked younger than their age–but she had been shocked that he would be attracted to someone whose slender body showed little sign that it had hit maturity.

When she’d confronted Emmanuel, he’d admitted to her that he had finally found what he’d been looking for–someone who looked like a boy but was old enough to be pampered and legally fucked.

Jo had moved on, embarking on several short-lived affairs with bar regulars who had apparently been impatiently waiting in line for Big Willy to tire of her.

She still went to the bar occasionally, for a drink or to pull whenever she was in the mood.

Emmanuel and Natalie had pledged their commitment to each other in a lavish civil ceremony a year ago. Natalie, at twenty-six, was still a slender five-foot-five and still had to show ID to buy cigarettes or alcohol if she was on a night out with friends. She had given up driving Emmanuel’s Land Rover after being constantly stopped by the police and asked to prove that she was old enough to have a licence.

Jo sometimes wondered if the woman had an undetected medical problem. She had barely aged in the eight years Jo had known her.

Whatever the reason, it had worked in Natalie’s favour.

Emmanuel, who had had a reputation of getting bored of his sweet young things once they hit their twenties, still drooled over Natalie.

The softness in his eyes when they alighted on the woman always made Jo secretly wish to be in Natalie’s place.

But, she’d acknowledged often, her and Emmanuel’s relationship wouldn’t have lasted; she didn’t have Natalie’s seeming gift of eternal youth.

 

***

 

Pressing Ricki back against the bed, Jo lowered her head and kissed her full lips softly.

“Norman never deserved you, you know.”

“I know.” Ricki reached up and pulled Jo’s head closer again. “Let’s forget the bastard.”

“Gladly,” Jo smiled and pressed her naked body against Ricki’s. “Us chicks with dicks can more than satisfy each other.”

Ricki often joked that they made love like two femme lesbians, neither taking a dominant role…except on the occasions when Ricki decided to strap on and play ‘Big Willy’.

Reaching between them, Jo rubbed their hard girldicks together as she kissed Ricki, plunging her tongue deeply.

When she let Ricki come up for air, her friend immediately bent her head and sucked on Jo’s right nipple.

“Ah!” Grasping Ricki’s head, Jo pressed her friend’s mouth harder against her breast.

Five years ago when Ricki had had her breast augmentation, Jo had been tempted to get implants too. The plastic surgeon had wisely advised Ricki against going too big and her breasts looked natural and totally appropriate for her shape and body.

But, during Jo’s consultation, the same surgeon had mentioned a potential loss of nipple sensitivity.

Jo had thanked him for his time and immediately walked out.

Her nipples were probably the most sensitive part of her body.

She often wore padded bras, to hide her pert nipples and enhance her silhouette in certain outfits.

Some men acted disappointed when she got undressed, but others found her small breasts delightfully pubescent.

Most didn’t give them the attention they deserved.

However, the ones who took the time to lavish their attention on her breast and nipples, in particular, experienced a completely different woman to the ones who didn’t.

Expressed politely, sucking on Jo’s nipples made her a raging nymphomaniac.

Without breaking the seal of Ricki’s lips on her nipple, Jo manoeuvred herself until she was leaning over the other woman, her knees planted on the bed behind Ricki’s head.

Carefully she lowered her head and tongued Ricki’s nipple as she reached over to stroke Ricki’s girldick.

Ricki immediately switched to her friend’s left nipple and reached backwards to stroke Jo’s girldick, too.

When she pulled Jo closer to wrap her lips around her erection, Jo moved further forwards and took Ricki’s between her lips.

She sighed as Ricki placed her hands on her hips to support her weight and relaxed completely as Jo started to thrust.

She was always in awe of Ricki’s ability to deep-throat a cock from any angle.

It was a skill Ricki had had to learn quickly after meeting Norman who liked nothing better than to fuck a mouth, hard.

Once he’d taken his Viagra, of course.

Jo could deep-throat but she had to be in complete control of the movements. She could never relax totally and let some guy ram his cock down her throat.

But few men ever complained–left to her own devices, Jo soon had the biggest of cocks swallowed and the owner’s toes curling.

She had Emmanuel to thank for patiently allowing her to practise on his truncheon.

Just as Jo’s hips started to jerk, Ricki pressed her hips upwards with a strength few would imagine the woman possessed in her slim arms.

Jo groaned as her girldick slipped out of her friend’s mouth, but she was grateful that Ricki had stopped her coming so quickly.

Over the years they had learned to prolong the moments to orgasm. In an entire night they sometimes came only once or twice, and when they finally did it was so explosive that it was surprising that the cum didn’t rip the heads clean off their girldicks as it jutted out.

“I need to get off.” Ricki sat up and reached into Jo’s top drawer for a tube of lube. “I’m too tense.”

“Okay,” Jo agreed and held up the fingers of her left hand to let Ricki dampened them with the lubricant.

If Norman and the woman had sneakily used the penthouse the last time Ricki had visited Jo, and Ricki hadn’t let him fuck her since, she would be horny indeed.

She needed to come, and come now, so that she would be totally relaxed when they moved into the more serious phase of love making later.

Jo concentrated more fully on giving her friend head as she slipped the moistened fingers into Ricki’s anus.

When her friend started to buck, Jo took her deeper into her mouth and buried a third finger inside her, and started to rhythmically thrust them to the hilt.

“Oh God, yes! Fuck my ass, Jo. Fuck it!” Ricki was backing herself hard onto Jo’s fingers as if seeking even deeper penetration. “I think I need my Big Willy, Jo. Get him!”

Jo smiled as she pushed Ricki’s legs up and apart, and rimmed her, sticking her tongue deep into her friend’s receptive anus.

“Hurry, Jo!” Ricki trashed about on the bed, pulling at the sheets, undoing all the hard work that had gone into precisely making up the bed earlier. “Hurry!”

“Be patient!” Jo laughed as she moved up the bed and kissed Ricki as she positioned herself and slid effortlessly inside her.

It wasn’t exactly what Ricki wanted.

The ‘Big Willy’ she was begging for was an outsized dildo Jo had found in a sex shop that had reminded her so much of Emmanuel that she had bought two–one for each of them: a ‘flesh-toned’ one for Ricki because she liked white men, and a dark chocolate one for herself as she was rather partial to a black cock.

They had named them Big Willy II and III, both convinced that the dildos were modelled on Emmanuel’s cock, though the man himself had laughed and denied any knowledge of it when they had asked him.

Jo would not be at all surprised, though, if she discovered that the designer of the dildo had once been one of Emmanuel’s previous young lovers.

She also wouldn’t be surprised if it had been modelled from memory.

Once his cock had been inside you, it was hard to forget it.

“You’re not ready for your Big Willy yet,” she told Ricki, who had clamped her legs high up and tightly around Jo’s waist so that Jo could barely withdraw. “Relax and let me open you up.”

It wasn’t the dildo’s length that was the trouble, or its wicked right hook–neither of these gave as much trouble as the bulbous head.

But by the end of the night they would both have the Big Willy replicas inside them.

It was the culmination of their nights of pleasure, the goal they aimed for each time they made love, a poignant reminder of the man with whom they had shared many a good time, but who was now beyond their reach. A man who had probably fucked every willing young man who’d ever come to his bar and had looked set to continue in the same vein, until he’d been tamed by Natalie. He had settled down quite contentedly with her and as far as anyone knew, he was as faithful as the day was long.

Though, they were ever so slightly jealous, Jo and Ricki often gushed over Emmanuel’s and Natalie’s romance.

It was what they both wanted: to meet men who would treat them like princesses, showering them with love and attention, and money. Men who would be so enraptured by them, they wouldn’t want to fuck anyone else.

And, they always wished with a laugh, it would be the icing on the cake, if those men came with willies to match Emmanuel’s.

“Jo, I can’t wait!”

Ricki’s face was contorted with sexual frustration.

“You’re going to regret it tomorrow,” Jo advised as she pulled herself free and opened the top drawer of her bedside table.

She smiled at the sight of the two dildos, lying side by side, on the clean square of silk on which she’d placed them earlier after sterilizing them.

The pale one looked larger than the darker one, but it was only a trick of the light.

Ricki hadn’t been able to take Jo’s gift home–Norman hadn’t allowed her any toys–but Ricki never left after a visit to Jo’s without taking every last inch of it inside her.

“I don’t care,” Ricki cried recklessly. “I need my Big Willy now!”

“Okay! Okay!” Jo laughed and reached for the lighter colour dildo and picked up the lube. “Assume the position.”

Ricki turned over and stuck her ass high into the air.

Her anus was quivering with anticipation.

“God, you’re impatient today,” Jo remarked, as she squeezed a big dollop onto the pulsating knot of tissue. “Perhaps you are ready for your Big Willy.”

“I am.” Ricki groaned as Jo circled her anus with the oversized head. “It’s been so long.”

It had been a little while since she and Jo had seen each other.

Norman, the bastard, had decided at the very last minute two weeks ago, that he wanted to take his yacht out for a sail and wanted Ricki to accompany him rather than spend the weekend with Jo, as planned.

Ricki hadn’t made a fuss because Norman might have stopped the visits altogether, if she’d objected too strongly.

As Jo pressed the dildo deeper, Ricki grasped her own left nipple with one hand and twisted it and pumped her girldick with the other.

From her awkward positioning, the weight of her body supported by her head and her slim thighs, and the sounds coming from her mouth, an onlooker might have thought that Ricki was in pain.

Jo knew differently.

This was Ricki aroused beyond madness.

If it was anyone else, Jo might have stopped and asked permission to proceed, but Ricki would likely shout abuse at her, if she dared stop at this point.

Picking up the lube again, she clamped the end between her teeth, popped the top off and added another generous squirt to facilitate Big Willy’s entry.

“Take a breath,” she warned before forcing a good third of it past her friend’s clutching sphincter muscles

“Yessss!” Ricki gasped, but held firm as Jo slowly slid the rest of the shaft inside her.

Jo gave her friend a moment to soften around it.

“Fuck, Jo, that feels so good!”

Often they joked that Emmanuel had spoilt them for other men.

It wasn’t simply that no cock felt as good as his, the bar owner had amassed a vast sexual repertoire over the years and put it to good use. And though it was unlikely that he’d ever allowed anything up his asshole, he wasn’t so macho that he wouldn’t suck a girldick.

Though the dildos they’d named after him were excellent substitutes, they lacked a certain je ne sais quoi.

Jo used hers on occasion without Ricki being there, attaching it to her fuck machine and trying to replicate Emmanuel’s firm thrusts, but it was much better being wielded by Ricki, especially when she strapped it on.

“Yessss! Fuck, yessss!”

Ricki was already on the brink.

Withdrawing the dildo up to the crown, Jo plunged it smoothly back, ramming it to the hilt.

Ricki’s body tightened as she pulled herself free and flopped down to the bed, her whole body writhing sinuously.

Jo knew exactly what she was experiencing–the dildo woke every anal nerve ending and was almost as hard to forget as Emmanuel’s sledgehammer.

Her asshole was already throbbing at the thought of Ricki attacking it with the dildo’s darker twin.

But it would take a minute or two for her friend to recover her wits.

Lying down next to her friend, Jo smiled as she wrapped her arms around her slender body.

Life would have been so much simpler, she thought wryly, if we’d just fallen in love with each other.

Sadly, they both liked macho men.

Despite the trouble they caused.

 

***

 

She and Ricki had remained firm friends over the years. They only made love at Jo’s house, despite the fact that Norman never stuck around the penthouse when Jo had paid alternate monthly visits.

Ricki had remained faithful to Norman otherwise, and though Jo was often in a committed relationship with someone else, neither thought their making love to each other was cheating.

They’d had serious power struggles at first with Ricki trying to play the ‘man’, although as they had matured further, Jo had gained a three inch advantage over the five-foot-seven Ricki. Jo’s shoulders were also wider and she had the bigger girldick, but Ricki had insisted that she was older and therefore had to be dominant.

Jo had let her have her way because she knew that Norman ruled her friend with an iron hand.

Norman’s take on his own sexuality was bizarre. According to Ricki, only two of his closest friends had known that he kept her in the Regent’s Park penthouse. He’d always insisted that he wasn’t gay, that Ricki was in every sense the woman she looked.

It would have been admirable if his insistence was based on his acceptance that Ricki identified as a woman, but Jo knew it was more about him not wanting to admit that he was attracted to another man.

As she lay next to a quietly snoring Ricki, she seriously wondered if Norman had been on some kind of mind-altering drug when he had been filmed.

He’d told Ricki from the beginning that he would fuck her, but never let her fuck him.

He’d never kissed her or touched her girldick. He’d told her that he couldn’t bring himself to.

It had pissed Jo off when Ricki had admitted it and she’d retorted angrily that Ricki was letting him treat her like she was a leper.

Ricki had replied that Jo didn’t understand–Norman really struggled with the fact that he was attracted to her.

He’d kept Ricki in a style Jo had envied sometimes, but she felt that Ricki was paying too high a price for the privilege.

When she and Ricki made love, it was more because Ricki needed to be held close and cherished rather than because she wanted to get her rocks off.

Norman was so macho that he’d never considered Jo as possible competition.

He was so stupid that he had no idea that ‘two chicks with dicks’, as he called Jo and Ricki, would fuck each other.

Jo detested the man. She’d thought he was an absolute bastard from the time she’d first met him and honestly couldn’t see what Ricki saw in him, except for the money.

He had inherited his father’s two luxury London hotels and his mother’s short stature.

After nine years of a childless marriage, he had discovered that his sperm count was so low there was only a slim possibility of him passing on the business to a child of his. Months later, he had kicked his wife out of their six-bedroom house in Chiswick, telling their shocked friends that she was a ‘barren cow’ and a ‘slag’.

His ex-wife had moved in with one of his best friends and they’d had a bouncing baby boy within eighteen months.

Norman had confided to Ricki that he would have had them both eliminated, if he wouldn’t have ended up the prime suspect. He had built an unsavoury reputation of being a bully. His door would have been the first door the police knocked on if the couple had been murdered.

By pumping serious iron regularly, his breadth almost equalled his height. Most people found his square, muscle-bound body ridiculous, but none of them dared to laugh at him, except behind his back.

He paraded a bevy of blonde beauties on his arm that could rival his idol, Hugh Hefner and bragged of having a marked preference for anal sex.

He had even publicly boasted that he had taken several ‘ass cherries’.

He was a vulgar, unpleasant man, tolerated by many of his friends because he was a multimillionaire and often ridiculously generous.

 

***

 

The next morning, a bleary-eyed Jo grilled lean, rindless bacon and premium sausages.

Her butthole throbbed pleasantly–Ricki had strapped on Big Willy III and played ‘Emmanuel’ with enthusiasm.

They both missed the fun they’d had with their mentor.

Jo had assumed that they would have a long chat after their marathon fucking session, but Ricki had immediately dropped.

An equally tired Jo had shortly followed her into slumber land, only to be awakened at half past six by the alarm on Ricki’s mobile.

Ricki had jumped out of bed with surprising energy and dragged Jo out it too, telling her that they needed to discuss something important.

Left alone, Jo would have slept well into the afternoon, but she’d let herself be shepherded into the kitchen to make them both a fry up.

“What was it you were going to tell me?” Jo asked as she added a fat nub of butter to the pan of organic eggs she was scrambling on the stove.

As casually as if she were telling Jo about a new dress she’d bought, Ricki dropped her bombshell, “Last Friday I called a reporter from Got Ya! and told him I had something on Norman that he would be very interested in seeing. He met with me that very afternoon and as soon as I gave him a sneak preview, he offered me a hundred thousand. That was more than I expected, but you know me, girlfriend. I told him I was thinking more in the region of half a million. He said that his boss would never agree to that kind of money. So I told him, ‘No problem, I’ll take it to Snoop or Busted.’ He excused himself to call his boss and when he came back, he told me they were offering me quarter of a million, take it or leave it.”

“Quarter of a million fucking pounds?” Jo gasped, spilling several drops of the orange juice she was transferring from her juicer to a tall glass jug.

Got Ya! had exposed the shady shenanigans of dozens of celebrities, footballers and politicians. It was a fairly new magazine but it already had one of the largest circulations in the world. It thrived in an age of readers with insatiable appetites for dirty gossip.

“It’s in my bank account already,” Ricki informed her coolly…and then screamed, “A quarter of a fucking million, Jo!”

Ricki hopped off the kitchen worktop where she had perched, doing absolutely nothing while Jo had busied herself with breakfast, and they hugged each other, jumping up and down like two giddy schoolgirls.

“They’re going to break the story in a special edition on Wednesday. He promised that he would keep my name out it, but I don’t trust his ass! You’re the only one I’ve told I’m going to Barbados. I’m going to hide there, just in case something goes wrong and Norman comes gunning for me!”

When Ricki had talked about going to Barbados the day before, Jo had assumed that her friend planned to sneak there for a few days and be back before Norman returned from his week-long business trip to the US. Or, if she was really serious about leaving the creep, spend a month or so in the sun and then return to the UK.

It wouldn’t have been the craziest trip Ricki had ever taken. She and Jo had flown to Paris one Saturday evening just to party at Le Pulp, a famous gay club there and to New York for a crazy weekend of shopping without Norman ever knowing.

And the only reason Ricki had been able to leave the house at all this time was the fact that Norman had been forced to take the muscle-bound fool who usually guarded her along with him since his usual bodyguard was laid low with some injury sustained at the gym.

She had assumed that Ricki hadn’t asked her along this time because she wasn’t free to go running off to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. She was now the singer Ebonée Clark’s stylist and loved her job too much to risk losing it by playing truant.

“You’re not coming back?” Jo asked, her eyes filling in shock.

She’d been looking forward to devouring a big breakfast after the energy she’d expended the night before, but suddenly the food looked greasy and unappetizing.

“Not for a long while anyway,” Ricki replied. “They might decide to blackmail him for four times the amount instead of publishing the article and throw my ass under a bus.”

Because of Norman’s larger-than-life, very-macho persona, the article would generate massive interest, but Jo doubted that the exposé would generate as much as a million pounds.

Ricki was right to be cautious, from the complaints Jo had read about them, the owners of the magazine played dirtier than the stories they printed.

She would miss her friend like she would miss her ‘blankie’, the tattered baby blanket she’d kept under her pillow since childhood, but her friend was right to get out of Dodge.

Norman wouldn’t take lightly to being crossed.

And, she realized with a sudden lifting of her spirits, with the internet and video calling apps, Ricki would be only a screen away.

“But why the hell didn’t you tell me this last night?” she demanded, annoyed that Ricki hadn’t shared such vital news sooner.

“Because I didn’t want both of us crying instead of fucking.”

Jo couldn’t help but laugh at the comment.

It would have indeed been a cry-fest, instead of the great fuck-fest they’d had.

“Why Barbados?” she asked, her brow creasing into a delicate frown as she arranged the food neatly on two plates, her appetite returning with renewed vigour.

Ricki didn’t answer right away.

She took a loaded plate from Jo, cut into one of the sausages and chewed on it slowly, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

When she’d thoroughly masticated the morsel and swallowed it, she paused for effect, a broad smile on her face and then uttered two words, “Ian McIntosh.”

Jo screamed in excitement. “Ian!”

“Ian,” Ricki confirmed. “I was going through my address book about three weeks ago, deleting old contacts and came across his hotmail address. I don’t know why I’ve kept it all these years. I was going to delete it, but I decided to say a quick hello and see if he would respond. Girl, he sent me an instant reply! I almost licked the damn screen when I saw him! His chest was bare and he looked tanned and more gorgeous than at college! I asked him if he’d just come back from somewhere hot. He said that he’d thought someone would have told me that he now lived in Barbados. Girlfriend, I nearly cried. There I was thinking that he was somewhere in London and one day we’d meet and he would declare his undying love. Instead he was thousands of miles away, living his best life! His grandfather died four years ago and left him a house and several acres. He’d initially planned to sell it and return to the UK, but he said that the beauty of the place had captured him the moment he set eyes on it. And within three months of living there, he finally came out to his parents.”

“Finally!” Jo said with a roll of her eyes.

“He told me his father still hasn’t forgiven him, but his mother calls him often, although she steers clear of the subject of his sexuality. He’s spent the last years converting the farm to 100% organic and his efforts are rapidly paying off. More and more restaurants are making him their sole supplier of meat and vegetables and the money is rolling in.”

“I’m glad for him,” Jo replied when Ricki took a moment to wet her lips with a sip of orange juice. She was pleased that he was doing well. Ricki had told her so much about Ian when they had first met, Jo felt as if she knew him personally. “Does he know that you’re coming?”

“Yes!” Ricki confirmed. “I told him it’s only for five days while Norman’s out of the country and that I had to sneak there and back before he returns.”

“So what will you do afterwards?”

“He told me that he missed me and that there has never been anyone to replace me in his heart. He’s currently single and said that since my email he hadn’t been satisfied with local male ass. He was gutted when I told him about Norman. So, when I get there, I’ll see if he was just blowing smoke up my ass. If he’s on the up and up, your girl is staying there.”

“Fingers crossed,” Jo replied and dug into her eggs.

“And toes, too.” Ricki laughed as she picked up a rasher of crispy bacon and bit off the end. “He showed me around the house when we were Facetiming. Girlfriend, it’s a mansion!”

Jo was pleased for Ricki. She deserved to be happy after her relationship with Norman.

The years had taken their toll on Ricki, but Jo had no doubt that her friend would be her old, defiant self again within days of basking in the sunshine and being fucked by a young, vigorous now-proudly gay man.

“I’ll call to let you know that I’ve arrived safely,” Ricki promised an hour later as Jo hugged her and kissed her fiercely one last time and then released her.

“Take good care of Big Willy II,” Jo ordered.

Ricki had finally taken possession of her gift, though she’d laughed and said that she would have little use for it, if Ian was as good as he used to be.

“I will.” Ricki laughed. “If they don’t confiscate him when I get to Barbados!”

Then she suddenly sobered, turned and hurried towards the waiting mini cab.

At the gate she waved to Jo one last time and then walked briskly to the vehicle.

She kept her head resolutely forward as it sped off, but Jo knew that Ricki was crying too.

She sent up a prayer for her friend’s safety.

Ricki had taken a monumental risk, but if it worked out she would be set for life.

And perhaps one day, when she’d settled in with her hunky partner, Jo would pay her a visit to see if Big Willy II had acclimatized to the warmer weather and developed a tan, or if Ricki had neglected him, leaving him unused and still pale in a drawer.

Jo had seen pictures of Ian that Ricki kept as a memento of their time together. With a golden tan that would make his blue eyes pop and blond hair bleached by the sun, he would be even more fabulous.

Jo was sure if she asked nicely, Ricki would be willing to share him during her visit on the island.

For him, there would be the pleasure of witnessing every man’s fantasy: two women making love to each other–even it they were ‘chicks with dicks’ as the bastard Norman always put it.

 

***

 

Jo sighed as she washed the breakfast dishes and tried to recall everything Ricki had told her about Ian, the star athlete who at eighteen had been the one all the girls at their college wanted to date.

He and Ricki had moved in different circles, but late one night after a classmate’s party they had found themselves travelling home on a night bus together.

While they’d been chatting on the back seat, Ian had discretely slipped his hand around Ricki’s waist, and up under her jacket and into her jeans.

Ricki had told Jo that she’d almost shit herself in shock.

She’d said that her girldick was erect even before Ian wrapped his hand around it.

Ian had stroked her to full orgasm and then asked casually if she wanted to come to his house and clean up. Ricki had said with a laugh that she’d nodded her head, too dazed to speak.

Ian’s parents had been away on a golfing weekend and as soon as he had closed the front door behind them, Ian had begun the cleanup with his tongue, unbuttoning Ricki’s fly and tonguing off every last drop of cum.

When he’d dropped his own jeans, his thick cock had been literally bursting at its seams. Ricki said that she’d made to go down onto her knees, but Ian had thanked her for the offer and said that he had other plans for her.

He’d then instructed her to call her parents to tell them that she was sleeping over at a friend’s.

Late the following evening, she’d left Ian’s house, her buns well and truly buttered.

But the next day at college, Ian had passed her with a redhead on his arm and had acted like she didn’t exist.

Yet, that very night he’d called Ricki and told her he’d missed her and begged her to meet him in the cinema the next evening.

Ian had bought tickets to the least popular of the movies on show, and had shamelessly gone down on Ricki and made her come before he had opened his fly and let her do the same for him.

Then, he’d walked out of the almost-deserted cinema several minutes before the end of the movie and left Ricki.

The next day, he’d again ignored Ricki at college.

To punish him, Ricki had ignored his phone calls…until he’d sent a text early one Saturday morning telling her that his parents had just left for another weekend of golf.

Ricki had admitted, a blush of shame staining her high cheekbones, that she’d found herself outside Ian’s front door within half an hour, only taking the time to brush her teeth and shower before rushing out of her parent’s house.

Ian had begged Ricki to understand the position he was in. He was the biggest track and field star at the college. He couldn’t come out as gay or be seen with anyone who wasn’t a jock.

Ricki hadn’t been out herself yet–her staunchly religious parents would have kicked her out of their house, as they did when they’d eventually found out–but she had still been annoyed with Ian for being ashamed of who he was.

But that hadn’t stopped her from enjoying their weekend of frenzied sex.

They had sneaked around for a few weeks, Ricki had explained, fucking in strange places and at every opportunity.

Then Ricki had shown her support for an openly-gay student at the college who was being harassed by a couple of knuckleheaded bullies.

Ian had been furious, telling her that she was making herself a target too.

Ricki had told Jo that she’d realized then that his precious reputation meant more to Ian than anything else.

She’d ignored his calls and messages for the next few weeks and they had stopped abruptly.

For the remainder of the term, she’d watched Ian sporting different girls on his arm, seeming to change them as often as he changed his boxers.

Finally Ian had called her out of the blue one Saturday morning. Ricki had answered the call and he’d informed her that his parents were once again away for the weekend and had invited her over.

She’d politely declined, telling him that she’d found someone who didn’t ignore her when other people were around or fuck her in dark corners. To add venom to the words, she’d told Jo, she’d also let him know that the man had a bigger cock and knew how to use it well.

They’d never spoken to each other again, but Ricki had confessed that she’d kept tabs on Ian from afar for years, through casual questioning of their former classmates. She’d known that he’d moved in with a woman called Jessica and that they’d lived together for several years.

When Ricki had finally embraced her female persona, getting the breast implants and dressing as a woman, not just in private for Norman’s benefit, but in her everyday life, she’d decided that it was best to cut ties with her old college friends.

In doing so, she’d lost her last link to Ian.

Fate had brought them back together, and just at the perfect time.

Jo sent up a silent prayer that this would be her friend’s happy-ever-after as she pulled off the rubber gloves and started to dry the breakfast dishes.

 

***

 

It was only when she picked up her mobile phone on returning to the living room that she realized that Ricki had sent a message.

Laughing, Jo flopped down onto the sofa to read it.

She smiled knowing that it was going to be something outrageous. Something probably about having a sore ass and a long flight to endure.

Instead, it was a short message: I’ve left you a little something under the bed. Deep kisses, Ricki.

Jo laughed and ran to the bedroom.

Reaching under the bed, she pulled out an elaborately-wrapped shoe-box sized parcel.

My sandals, she guessed, smiling.

The last time they had gone to Selfridges, Ricki had persuaded Jo that she really didn’t need the to-die-for £545 Alexander McQueen Dredge Skull Sandals, especially since she already owned two very similar pairs by the same designer.

Eagerly Jo ripped off the gold foil wrapping, impatient to smell the new soft leather and slip the shoes onto her recently-pedicured feet.

It was only as she opened the box that her subconscious alerted her to the fact that the weight was all wrong.

Shock replaced disappointment even before it surfaced.

Something about the rectangular shape of the contents under the tissue paper started Jo’s heart thumping.

A little gold embossed card on top of the tissue paper read: Buy your own damn shoes! I’m not your shopper!

When Jo pulled back the paper, she found neatly stacked bundles of £50 notes.

With trembling hands and tears again streaming down her face, she counted them in a daze.

Twenty in total.

Fifty thousand pounds!

Another card at the bottom of the now empty box read simply: I couldn’t forget my girlfriend now, could I?

Jo sat back on her heels for several moments, too stunned to move.

She’d been a little surprised, hurt, if she was honest, that Ricki hadn’t given her even £100 from the money to go for a little pampering.

But, she’d reasoned, as she’d been doing the dishes and wondering when her own ship would come in, Ricki would need every penny of the money to stay under the radar.

For a moment, Jo let the delight of all the things she could purchase with such a large sum of money fill her mind.

Then she brought herself ruthlessly back down to earth.

She couldn’t spend this money frivolously.

Not on clothes, shoes and handbags she didn’t need.

She would get those sandals, though.

They had called her name that day in the store and walking away from them had been like being parted from a loved one.

But right now it was time to get dressed and take the money to Emmanuel. He was a financial whizz and had a knack for making money.

She could trust him totally.

After all, he’d been the one to pay the 10% deposit on the flat he’d urged her to purchase.

And with no strings attached.

For the previous enjoyment of her tight young ass, he’d told her with a wink.

 

*****

 

 

The End

 

Join Jo, the Goddess, on her next adventure titled The Virgin as she initiates a willing male into the ass-fucking community.

Jo chuckled as the man in the sharp business suit looked hastily away when she looked up and caught him staring at her legs, again. Her ‘Rupaul’ legs as men with a history of watching men dressed as women called them, or her ‘Naomi’ legs as the ‘straighter’ ones told her.

Both divas had fabulous legs; Jo didn’t at all mind being compared to some of the best pins in the celebrity world.

She had never seen the man in the bar before. She would have remembered someone who had stuck out like a sore thumb as he did.

If he had accidentally wandered into The Pink Panther Bar thinking, as some people did, that it was a reference to the movie, he wouldn’t have stayed unless he was curious or looking for some action.

Picking up her glass of Shiraz she sauntered over and introduced herself, “Hey, big boy. I’m Jo.”

“Hi Jo. I’m Alan.” The man flushed as he stood up and pulled out the empty chair at his table to seat her. “You’re probably wondering why I was staring at you earlier. You’re so beautiful I couldn’t help myself. Are you a model?”

“No, I’m a stylist. I work for Ebonée at the moment.”

“You know Ebonée! Wow! She’s a great singer, but so underrated because she’s not good looking. She needs a makeov–,” Alan stopped abruptly as he realized his faux pas. “I mean…”

Jo decided to take pity on the floundering man. “I know what you mean. If she looked like Rihanna or Beyoncé, she would sell ten times as many albums.”

“It shouldn’t matter what she looks like,” Alan replied with passion. “It should be about her voice. Things have changed so much in the last ten years. Actresses model, models act, singers act and model…the world has gone crazy.”

“I admire Ebonée for not changing her look,” Jo defended staunchly, even though she’d had dreams of making the singer into a black Lady Gaga when she had first gotten the job as her stylist. She had soon realized that the singer was not comfortable in anything too fussy or stylish.

Jo had reluctantly accepted the singer’s simple, no-nonsense way of dressing, her dreams of her artistry catching the eyes of even bigger celebrities dying an ignoble death.

“In interviews she comes across as such a lovely person.” Alan still seemed to feel the need to make up for nearly putting his foot in his mouth. “She must be a great employer to work for.”

“She’s a sweetheart!” Jo readily confirmed.

Ebonée was polite and considerate of her staff. Wherever she went she introduced Jo as her stylist–which was sweet but not much of a recommendation.

Often, Jo planned a new outfit for the singer, imagining that she’d finally found something that will accentuate Ebonée’s finer points, only to be disappointed when Ebonée put on the outfit and it lost any semblance of style.

Shorter than average, the singer was neither slim nor overweight. She was straight and flat: her waist almost the same measurement as her narrow hips, her breasts and behind both small.

Jo sometimes wondered in amusement if Ebonée realized that her stylist had a cock. The woman undressed in front of her without embarrassment and Jo sometimes found herself getting hard as she watched the singer’s boyish little body. She often wondered what the young woman would do if she bent her over, whipped her girldick out and gave her the ass fucking of her life.

But Jo would never do anything that stupid; she was well paid and the job was essentially a breeze.

And thank God that Ebonée was not a diva. Jo was known to have her diva moments and two divas in the same room would have been asking for trouble.

“You must meet a lot of celebrities.” Alan’s words were more a statement than a question, but they brought Jo’s thoughts back to the present.