by Charles Anders

Cocoa infiltrated my defenses before he did. He held out a mug to me, and the sweet mist summoned feelings of well-being. By the time I had taken the mug and a sip, I was relaxed and sitting next to him on the shabby red couch. He asked me about my day, then slid his tongue into my mouth. I tasted the bitter chocolate.

I reached up to stroke behind his ear and he growled. His stubble chafed my smooth chin. Anticipation made my skin so sensitive I could feel my clothes touch my body, let alone his hands.

I only noticed his bare wrist when his hand had reached my inner thigh.

I wanted his hand there, veins flexing as it prepared the annexation of my sex. But -- "You're not wearing a bracelet." I had to pull out of the kiss to speak.

"So?" The left side of his lean, dark face smiled, a wry look I had seen so many times after sex. A face I knew. And yet--

"So I can't tell what number you are. We have rules, remember?" My hands stopped moving on the small of his back.

"Rules, Sam?" He laughed. "Rules are too constraining." Now the hand was in motion along my thigh, coming closer to my crotch, then further away. "You don't need to know who I am as long as this feels good."

"That's not true. If you're really my lover, you would know that it matters who you are." The hand retreated to my knee, but stayed there, stimulating a groove on my kneecap. I pulled my hand away and looked into the dark eyes.

"Rules," he snorted. "You only sleep with numbers 47, 53 and 62. Even though we're all the same guy. Jacob." I knew that mocking tone well. "Isn't this what you most want? Not to know?"

"You're number 53, aren't you?"

He stopped stroking and laughed. "What makes you so sure?"

"This is just the way number 53 acted when he was courting me. I could never tell what crazy-ass stunt he...you would get up to." I thought of levitating bouquets, dancing cyber-pigeons, and Jacob number 53's intense gaze as he drank champagne from my loafer. When did limitless possibilities become scary?

"Are you sure?" Something about the twist in the left side of his mouth told me I was wrong.

Was he number 81, whom I had rejected after he embarrassed me in front of my friends? The shy number 23, whom I had pursued with no result? Was he that anonymous Jacob who'd tried to grope me on the hoverwalk the month before? The truth was they weren't all the same person at all, but I relied on those bracelets for easy reference. Without them, I had a hundred twins to differentiate among.

Suddenly Jacob was unzipping my jeans with one hand and unveiling my stomach with the other. I leaned forward and bit his upper lip in spite of my misgivings. The hands grazed my inner thighs, my balls, my nipples. I grew hard and something soft blossomed just over my stomach.

"Admit it," Jacob number whatever said. "You love the uncertainty. I could be one of your husbands. I could be your coworker. I could be a total stranger. You could be in danger--" He found the slit in my boxers expertly and then he had my cock in his hands "--of committing adultery. You slut."

"That's not true. I--"

"What are you afraid of?" He ran his fingertips over my armpits and chest so lightly it felt like static electricity.

What was I afraid of? Images came unbidden. Me on my elbows and knees, a cock in both hands, one in my mouth, one plunging into my ass. Not knowing or caring who was fucking me. A line of Jacobs waiting to do me, stretching out the door and onto the hoverwalk.

Jacob's mouth was all over me, sucking on my nose, my chin, my Adam's apple. His hands made stirring motions along my skin as if beating an egg into froth. We didn't have to talk about our relationship before sex because we didn't have one, as long as I didn't know who he was. What was I afraid of?

"I don't --"

"Don't talk." Then his mouth embraced my cock, so he couldn't talk either. I moaned despite myself as his tongue stimulated the nanospot on my glans' underside that sent sensation to the back of my neck and the balls of my feet.

"If --" I tried hard to be coherent. "If you know where that spot is, then you must be my husband. Which one are you?"

"Not necessarily." Jacob released me and grinned up at me. Inwardly, I pleaded for him to continue. "I could have heard it from one of your husbands. You'd be surprised how much clones tell each other. Or I could be guessing."

"Why --" I wanted to beg him to take me back in his mouth, even as I tried to focus on learning his identity.

He slurped my cock for a second, then stopped again, grinning at how easily he made me weak. "When I'm through, I'll go away. Maybe I'll come back later with a bracelet on, maybe I won't. You'll never know if I was a husband or a stranger. Doesn't that turn you on?"

He slurped again, then stopped, looking at me expectantly. "Say it, Sam," he whispered. "Say it turns you on."

I realized he wasn't going to start again unless I said it. "It turns me on," I said quietly.

He made one more pass along my shaft with his tongue, then stopped. "Say it louder."

I hesitated, alarm bells going off in my head. "It turns me on," I said too loudly, as if trying to drown out my own warnings.

"Good boy." I earned another slurp. "Once you tear down the walls, you'll be amazed how far you can go." The sensations kept coming for a moment. The heels of his hands circled the sides of my pelvis in a way none of my husbands had ever tried. I bucked.

Just as I lost myself in the feeling, he stopped. "Stand up." I blinked.

He grabbed the front of my jersey and pulled on it. "Stand up." His voice got louder, more insistent. I wobbled to my feet, pants around my ankles. "Get naked, boy. I want you bare-ass before I finish this sentence." I managed it.

"Well done," he purred, standing behind me so he could jostle his hard-on against my ass. His lips palpated the nape of my neck. I reached behind to pull him closer. He smacked my hand. "Hands above your head, boy." I complied.

He left me standing there. "Don't move or I'll know it." He took my passkey.

Seemingly an hour after the apartment door sealed behind him, I started to wonder if he was coming back. Was the whole point of this exercise to leave me in this ridiculous position, naked with my hands up like a bank robber's? Until one, or all three, of my husbands got home? I would have to blurt an explanation while they all chuckled. One of them might have some hidden knowledge behind his smile, but I would never be able to tell which.

But I still didn't move.

I doubt an hour passed in real time before he returned with a big black bag. I cursed myself for being unable to remember what clothes he had been wearing before. Now he wore jeans and a tight black t-shirt that accentuated his shoulders. For a moment I wasn't sure he was the same guy.

"Relax, it's me," he said. I started to relax my body, but he added quickly: "You look good like that. Keep it there." He pulled a levitray from his black bag, the kind that drinks float on in bars. He amped its antigrav until it was humming just above my hands. Then he tied my wrists to the holes in the tray that were supposed to hold glasses, using my jersey for rope.

"We are going to have so much fun." He attached a clamp to one nipple, and I gasped. It bit into the skin of my areola. I couldn't shut the searing out.

"None of your husbands ever treats you like this," Jacob sneered. "They all act respectful and take turns spending the night in a strict rotation. And when they spend the night, it's usually all cuddling, huh?" He clamped the other nipple and I writhed.

"No way. I get great sex from my men," I protested.

"Don't talk. I know what you really want. This is a little more dangerous, isn't it? If I do something you don't like, what are you going to tell the cops? What are you going to tell your friends?" He had a point.

It was too late to worry about the danger anyway. I was helpless and he was slipping a ring onto my cock and balls. He activated it and it started kneading and vibrating around the base of my cock and my epididymis. The pressure kept me hard but did little else. It stopped as soon as I got used to it.

"I know exactly what you want." He smacked my butt for emphasis.

I jumped forward. The ring scrunched the soft skin at the base of my penis and the clamps tightened. The combination of sensations caught me by surprise, overloaded my brain. I cried out. He told me the ring and the clamps were motion-sensitive. "So you better hold still."

He peeled off his clothes and threw them away. His cock flattened against my butt crack as his body pressed mine. "I knew I was right about you. I could have bet a week's pay, I was so sure you'd drop the cute domesticity in a second for a good anonymous screw."

He held a grey six-inch-by-one-inch rectangle in front of my eyes. "Know what this is?" I shook my head. "An industrial brush with moving filaments ranging from microscopic to millimeter-thick. Guaranteed to remove every particle of dirt without scratching a spaceship's paint job."

He ran the brush along the underside of my penis. It beat a light tattoo on every nerve ending. I was already crazed with sensation when the ring and clamps started up again. The ecstatic wail I heard didn't sound like my voice.

Then he pulled the brush away. The sensations stopped except for his cock nuzzling behind me. "Beg," he said.

"Don't stop," I moaned. "Oh God. Please don't stop."

The words did what they were supposed to do. He brought the brush back and I squirmed. He held me steady so his cock could press closer.

The fantasy enveloped me like an acrid but sweet vapor, whispering of depths I could barely glimpse. But it was starting to make me sick, like too much cocoa on an empty stomach. I reacted without consciously deciding to.

"Stop!" I jumped forward, bruising my knees against the red couch. I wriggled my hands, loosening the knots in my jersey that held them to the levitray. He approached, and I kicked behind me.

I untied the jersey and immediately pulled it on over my head. When I could see again, he was pulling on his jeans and staring at me. "You could have asked nicely. What's with you, anyway?"

"I don't feel safe. Not knowing is too much, after all. I need to know who's my husband and who isn't, or everything starts to fall apart and I get scared." I heard a babbling vulnerability in my own voice that shamed me.

I avoided the stranger's eyes. Instead, I concentrated on removing the clamps and ring, then found my boxers under the couch.

"OK, OK." He stood, hands on the bottom of his ribcage in judgment. "I'm your husband. I'm number --"

"No!" I screamed so loudly I couldn't hear what number he was. Once he shut up, I said quietly, "I don't want to know."

"But you just said you wanted to know who --"

"Go away. Don't come back for a while. Don't ever mention this again. If you're really my husband, I don't want to know which one you are, or else I may not be able to trust you any more. If you're not, I never want to know if I'm seeing you again."

"But then I could be any one of a hundred clones. You could be looking at me and not know it at any time. Isn't that what bothers you?"

"No more games. Please go."

He shrugged, got dressed and left, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling in what I knew to be exasperation. After he was gone, I wanted to lock myself in my private study, where none of my husbands would venture, for a day or two to clear my head.

But I knew that would be hiding from my problems. So instead I went out into the city. There, I surrounded myself with clones of Jacob and others.

I stared at dozens of men who looked exactly like my husbands, except for the numbers on their bracelets. Until at last I stopped seeing the anonymous Jacob of that afternoon in every one of them. Then I went home to face my husbands.