Natural Endurance

Week nine and Patricia texts Thursday morning while I'm lacing up for intervals.

"2pm. Wear the nice shirt. T x"

Not Patricia. T? Tamara's texting me from Patricia's phone. That tells me everything about how today's going to go.

Steve clocks my times that morning and says I'm still dropping tenths on the back straight, which is fair, I am, because I'm thinking about last Thursday, Tamara in that armchair with her hand between her legs watching Patricia ride me with a vibrator in her arse. Hard to focus on 400 metre repeats with that living rent-free in your head.

Get changed. Steve's decent shirt again. He's talking about sodium intake for the afternoon session and doesn't notice me leave.

---

Two cars this time. Patricia's and the Mercedes.

Tamara answers the door, dress, dark hair loose, barefoot on the hall tiles. She looks me up and down the same way she did last week except last week she was sitting in an armchair with her knickers on and now she's answered the door like she lives here.

"Oh Dan, you wore the shirt," she smiles. Steps back. "Come on in."

Patricia's in the kitchen opening wine. She turns when I come in, gives me that look she does, not quite a smile but close. "Dan darling, good to see you again."

"Patricia."

"Please sit down. We're not rushing."

So we sit at the kitchen island and drink wine and talk, Patricia asking me something about the training and me answering while Tamara sits across from me watching me the way she watched last week except she's not in the armchair now, she's right there, elbows on the counter, chin in her hand.

"You thought about last week," she says. Not a question.

"Bit, yeah."

"Good." She looks at Patricia. "I thought about it too."

Patricia picks up the bottle. "Shall we go upstairs."

---

Patricia starts undressing like it's straightforward, which for her it is now, unhooking her bra, stepping out of her linen trousers. Tamara unzips her dress and lets it drop and she's in expensive underwear, bigger tits than Patricia, dark nipples showing through the lace, and she's watching me watching her.

"Take your shirt off Dan," she says.

Get it off. My jeans. Boxers. My cock's already hard.

"Mmm." She reaches out and wraps her hand round it and strokes once, slowly. My hips move on their own. "Why hello big boy."

Then she lets go and turns to Patricia, takes Patricia's face in both hands and kisses her on the mouth. Properly. Patricia's hands go to Tamara's waist and pull her in and they're kissing like I'm not there, or like they don't mind that I am, and I'm stood there with my cock pointing at the ceiling watching my coach's sixty-three year old mother kiss her oldest friend and my brain has just completely given up trying to process anything.

(Vizinczey writes about watching two women who actually want each other, actually have history with each other, and how that's nothing like the performed version men usually get. He's right. This is nothing like that. This has thirty years in it. You can feel it.)

Tamara pulls back. Looks at Patricia. "Still the best," she says quietly.

Patricia makes a sound that's not quite a laugh. "You're ridiculous."

"I know." Tamara turns back to me. "Come here."

She kisses me next and it's nothing like Patricia, no patience to it, her hands going straight to my hair, my shoulders, taking what she wants. Walks me backwards to the bed and pushes me down onto it, straddles me, reaches back and unclips her bra.

Her tits fall out and I get my hands on them, playing with her nipples. Patricia sits on the edge of the bed beside us watching, and Tamara reaches out without looking and takes Patricia's hand.

"Tell him what you want," Tamara says to her.

Patricia looks at me. "I want to watch you with her first."

"Yeah?"

"Yes." She squeezes Tamara's hand and lets it go. "Go on then."

---

Tamara on her back, knickers off, legs spread. Get my mouth on her because it's what I do first. She's loud, louder than Patricia, doesn't try to keep it down. Patricia sits beside us on the bed with her wine glass, watching Tamara's face.

Two fingers inside her. She grips me hard. Keep my tongue on her clit and work my fingers in and out and Tamara's lifting her hips off the bed, thighs either side of my head, both hands in my hair pulling.

"Right there, don't you dare stop young man," she says. "Right there, yeah, just like that."

She comes hard and fast, hips grinding into my face, this long sound that starts low and gets louder, and when she's done she lies there breathing hard staring at the ceiling.

Patricia puts her wine glass down. "Told you," she says.

"Yeah you did." Tamara's still catching her breath. "Okay. How about you inside me. Now."

Push inside her and she's tight and wet and grips me immediately. Start moving and she wraps her legs round me pulling me deeper, nails going straight to my back.

When I got round to actually shagging her I couldn't stop giggling at first. Nerves probably. Plus the whole situation was objectively mental. I got a cramp in my calf about two minutes in and had to stop, hopping around the room while she laughed her arse off. Not my finest hour. But that's the thing about proper shagging - it's never like in the films.

"Fuck me harder than that Dan, I won't break..."

The headboard hits the wall. At some point her legs come up higher and her feet end up near my face and I just go for it, get her ankle, turn my head and take her toes in my mouth and she makes this sound like she wasn't expecting it.

(Look, feet. I know. But there's something about a woman's feet that I genuinely cannot explain and have never tried to. The arch of them. The painted nails. Megan's red toenails on that first night nearly finished me before we'd even started. Tamara's are dark burgundy and I'm a lost cause, always have been, ask anyone.)

Keep fucking her while I've got her toes in my mouth and Tamara's laughing now, half laughing half something else, hand gripping the sheet.

"Oh my God," she says. "Patricia, he's got my--"

"I know," Patricia says from beside us. Completely calm. Like this is something she's already filed away.

Patricia's voice. That's the other thing.

(American accents. I know they're not all the same, I do know that, but there's something about a certain kind of American woman's voice, low and certain, that does things to me I cannot be held responsible for. Patricia says my name and my cock does something involuntary. She said "good boy" to me last week on the stairs and I nearly had to sit down. I'm not well.)

Tamara pulls her foot away, still laughing. "You're something else, you know that?"

"Sorry."

"Don't apologise." She pulls me back down to her. "Just keep going."

Patricia's hand on my lower back, just resting there, warm. Tamara comes again before I do, tightens round me and goes rigid, and I pull out before I follow her because I'm not done yet.

She makes a noise of complaint.

"Patricia," I say.

---

Patricia lies back. Get between her legs, push inside her, and she says "there you are" the way she always does now, like I've just come back from somewhere.

Tamara moves beside her, props herself up. Her hand goes to Patricia's tit, rolls her nipple between her fingers, and Patricia's back arches up off the bed.

Find that rhythm with Patricia, the one we've worked out over the last few weeks. Her hips meeting mine, her hands on my back. Tamara's mouth goes to Patricia's neck, her ear, saying something quiet I can't hear, and Patricia's breathing changes immediately.

"What are you telling her?" I ask.

Tamara looks up at me. "That she's beautiful. That she deserves this." A beat. "That you're doing a good job."

Patricia makes a sound that's half laugh half something else entirely.

Keep going. Tamara's hand sliding down between us, fingers finding Patricia's clit, and I can feel her fingers against my cock as I move and it's too good, way too good. Patricia's getting tighter round me, that sign I know now.

"There," Tamara says to me quietly. "Don't change anything."

Hold that angle, that pace. Patricia's nails dig in.

"I'm going to," she starts, then just stops talking and comes, rigid and silent first then the moan she can't help, her cunt pulsing round me. Tamara keeps her fingers working and that's it, I'm spunking inside Patricia, balls deep, can't hold it.

We went again. Tamara on all fours, vibrator going, Patricia lying back in front of her. At some point Patricia's feet ended up near Tamara's face and Tamara just -- yeah. Didn't hesitate. I watched it happen and thought, right, okay, so that's where we are. Fine. Good, actually.

---

After we lie there in the quiet, all three of us. Lawnmower outside. Normal afternoon sounds from the street.

Tamara speaks first. "Okay," she says, to no one in particular. "Okay."

Patricia laughs. Short, genuine.

Patricia ran her fingers through my hair. Didn't say anything. Outside someone was mowing their lawn.

"Same time next week?" Tamara asks.

"That's my line," Patricia says.

"I'm borrowing it."

Look at the ceiling. Ten weeks in. Started with Megan on Steve's desk and somehow ended up here.

Dad always said I lacked impulse control. He wasn't wrong, but I'm starting to think he meant it as a criticism.

---

Get dressed downstairs. Patricia calls down from the landing.

"Dan."

"Yeah."

"Steve wants you back by seven."

"I know."

"Good boy."

(There it is again. Told you. Not well.)

Walk back in the late afternoon heat. Steve's in the garden with his clipboard, doesn't look up.

"Better this morning," he says. "You're finding it again."

"Yeah," I say. "Think I am."