Clara insisted she hadn’t slept with my double a second time. A rule was a rule—no sex without alpha Harry. No beta, no omega. This double was obviously different in small ways—some large ways, she admitted when pressed, so maybe he only needed a single orgasm to achieve lucidity. Or maybe orgams hadn’t been a trigger at all. Maybe they only needed time. We were on the cutting edge of biochemical automation, she said; nothing was known with certainty.
My well-endowed double, for his part, claimed that he did, in fact, have sex with my wife. But this was of course true. We’d all been there. The question was whether he was lucid enough to be confirming a second sexual encounter, or merely reaffirming the first.
Whatever the case, I didn’t care for him. He only wanted to talk about numbers and science. Occasionally some idiotic TV show. He played video games too loudly and bounced his basketball—over and over and over and over and over—as if it’s necessary to dribble in a friendly game. Plus he was always hitting on my wife. He wrapped his arms around her waist as she washed dishes. He lifted her dress when she bent to pick up a sock. He even massaged her foot and kissed her leg as she protested their affair.
On Saturday I went for a long jog to clear my head and reconsider the interface. The three of them were passed out in bed when I returned.
“I thought rules were rules,” I shouted from the doorway.
Clara sat upright, holding the bed sheet against her body. She looked at me, then at both doubles.
“I thought you were one of them,” she said.
“I went for a jog!”
“I thought one of them went for a jog!”
I decided to dye their hair. I gave my first double a subtle brown, only a mild change from our natural chestnut, but enough to set him apart. I gave my second double a loud, nearly white shade of blonde, very unbecoming with our skin tone.
“What if they wear hats?” Clara asked.
“Baseball caps in bed?”
She shrugged. “Firemen hats. Sailor hats. Police hats.”
I instituted a new no-hats rule, but this only made Clara more interested in hats. I bought her a cowgirl hat and a pair of boots. She wore them and nothing else and took turns straddling each of us in the kitchen chairs.
***
I was beginning to feel left out. I told Clara that I needed her. Just her and me for a moment.
“Harry, of course!” She pulled on a tight pink sweater, a favorite from the days before we were even engaged. We went for a drive through the valley. We listened to music. We stopped for burgers. After a couple of hours, we parked on a hilltop overlooking the town.
“If you need to take a break from the Harrys, we absolutely can,” she said.
“You couldn’t do that,” I said.
“I could! Especially now that his hair looks like it’s been in the freezer.”
“I don’t want to stop,” I said. “I don’t even know what it feels like yet.”
Clara sat up in her seat and straightened her sweater.
“What is it you’d like to feel?” she asked.
“Your perfect body with my six hands, for starters.”
“Two’s just not enough?”
I shook my head. “Not enough.”
“What else?”
“Six lips on your skin,” I said. “Three mouths. One here…” I touched the side of her neck. “One here…” I touched the side of her breast. “One here…” I touched the inside of her thigh. “All at once.”
She took my hand, keeping it in the last spot. “Three cocks? I still have my rule.”
I turned to face her more fully. I was a little tired, a little needy, but she looked so lovely. She squeezed my hand around her thigh, offering me one comfort even though she’d already provided another.
“I’m sure you know what I’d like to do to you. The benefits of three bodies,” I said. “But don’t forget that I felt the same way you did. That I wanted to give you more of myself than I was physically able to give. To reach you in a way I never could never do with a single body. So honestly the thing I most want to feel is you. You accepting every part of me. Not the pieces I parse out for you at different moments. You accepting the whole me.”
Clara looked at me for a moment. She unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them awkwardly from her legs. She took off her sweater. She slid backwards over the armrests and settled in the backseat in her white cotton panties and white cotton bra. She bent one leg in the cramped space and swayed her knee side to side.
“Do you want to just lie here a minute?” she asked.
I took off my clothes and settled in beside her. I held her hand and we stayed that way until we both fell asleep.
***
This night led to a week of celibacy in our home, much to the chagrin of the doubles. When one pinned Clara against the bookcase in the study, she politely declined. When one reached a hand beneath her tennis skirt, she said she was on her way out the door. Clara and I slept in our bed alone. Eventually they got the message and seemed not to mind. We began playing board games and card games at night. The doubles and I were quite good at poker, while Clara preferred gin rummy.
But the old ways began to return. One of the doubles—likely that snow-capped idiot—snuck into our bed late one night. He gently spooned Clara and she, remembering her own appetites, squirmed against him. Not to be outdone, I slid closer and kissed her deeply just as she moaned from the stir of him pushing inside of her. She stroked my cock as we kissed, I touched between her legs as she bounced, and soon she had to bury her face in a pillow to keep quiet. We told that alabaster dingus to get back to his bath before he was missed, then we went to bed.
The next night we received a visit from the other double. He slipped into bed next to Clara, slowly moved his hand beneath her nightie, and slid two fingers inside of her. She squeezed his wrist, but didn’t remove his hand. Again, feeling them squirm beneath the sheets, I slid closer and kissed her deeply. She moaned and took my cock in her hand. I massaged her clit as he moved his fingers inside and soon she needed another pillow. We asked my double to go back to his bath and to please be quiet about it.
At some point over the next few days the doubles got wind of each other’s trysts and it seemed our old habits were back. I came home one day to find Clara in the kitchen wearing only an apron and panties. She sucked frosting from a double’s finger as the other knelt behind her, tugging at her panties with his teeth.