Chapter 2
Presently, comfortably weary from her orgasm, Susan did fall into genuine sleep and didn't awaken until they'd pulled up before the Claymores' home. It was a big, rambling farmhouse set in spacious landscaping with a barn off to one side, rustic but hardly to the point of inconvenience. It was deliberately stylized in an old fashion without sacrificing modern conveniences. That was typical of the Claymores. They had excellent taste but liked their comforts. Thus, although there was a woodpile complete with axe and grinding wheel, the house was equipped with central heating.
Although there was a well which functioned, there was also running water. Although kerosene lanterns hung from the porch rafters, electric lights from within cast cones of illumination across the lawn.
Jack reached over the back of the seat and touched Susan on the shoulder. She stirred sleepily and, as he shook' her gently, his hand slipped down onto her pert young breast. For a moment his eyes gleamed. His hand cupped her firm tit, squeezing and rubbing, and a strange expression crossed his face. Then he shot a guilty glance at his wife and drew his hand away. Claire hadn't noticed, to his relief.
Susan sat up, rubbing her eyes.
The front door opened; the Claymores came onto the porch, smiling and waving. Sam was a big man, tanned and fit. He wore a wool shirt, open at the neck, revealing a wedge of hairy, muscular chest, but he still managed to look very sophisticated despite the rustic garb.
Jessica was a redhead, very sexy, with big round tits and wide, supple hips, fine, long legs and a narrow waist. She looked slightly depraved, in an elegant fashion. It was a quality that her daughter, Brenda, had inherited. Although the girl was only fifteen, her body was well-developed and her face was sensual, with high cheekbones and a heavy lower lip.
Brenda stayed on the porch, but her parents walked down to meet the new arrivals. Jessica kissed Jack and Sam patted Claire on the rump and winked. Susan took note of these greetings, in the light of the conversation she'd overheard, and found herself tingling with her strange new awareness.
They went into the house.
Sam made drinks for the adults and Brenda brought Susan a Coke.
"Is it fun, living in the country?" Susan asked.
Brenda wrinkled her nose. "It's sort of boring," she said. "I'm glad you've come to visit, Suzy. All the girls around here do stupid things like square dancing. Ugh."
"How do you like it, away from the pressures of the big city, Sam?" Jack asked, sipping his Scotch.
"Oh, we're getting used to it. But Brenda's right. It is nice to have guests." He smiled meaningfully at Claire Marlowe, and Claire responded by lowering her eyes and crossing her legs.
"Can't get away from all the pressures, eh?" Jack said, grinning.
"No way."
"Have you found any local... friends?"
"Hardly. The people around here don't understand our... way of life."
"They think anyone from the city is perverted," Jessica added, and giggled.
They chatted inconsequentially for a little while, discussing mutual friends and bringing each other up to date on recent events. Although they were relaxed, as old friends are, they all seemed slightly impatient. After a while, Sam said, "I guess you must be tired from the long drive, eh?"
"Ummm. A little," Claire said.
"Shall we turn in early?"
"Oh, we aren't too tired."
Shades of hidden meaning rippled in their voices, and Susan began to tingle again as she looked back and forth between her parents and the Claymores. She still found it hard to believe that they actually did those wicked things together.
"But Suzy is probably exhausted," Claire said, turning to the girl. "I think she should get to bed soon."
"Want to sleep in my room?" Brenda asked. "Sure."
"Don't stay up talking half the night," Jessica said, as the two young girls rose to go upstairs.
"And don't come downstairs again," Sam added. "I mean... go right to bed."
Brenda looked at her father and her lips curled in a most irreverent smile.
"We won't bother you," she said.
She took Susan's hand and led her upstairs.
"They'll leave us alone," Sam remarked, when the girls had left.
"Does Brenda know about us?" Claire asked.
"She's very precocious," Jessica said. "I guess she takes after me."
"She won't tell Suzy, will she?"
"No, I don't think so."
"I'd be terribly embarrassed to have my daughter know about what we do... "
"Oh? I didn't think anything embarrassed you, Claire," Jessica said, smiling.
Claire blushed slightly. "Well, some things she mumbled.
"I find it... stimulating... to think that Brenda knows about these things," Sam said.
"Oh, you are wicked," Claire told him. "Sam! Your own daughter!"
Sam shrugged. "She's a sexy little girl," he said.
Claire was shocked, but Jack looked specula?tively at Sam, wondering if there might be a hidden invitation in his friend's statement. Brenda was sexy all right, no doubt about that, and there was something tremendously exciting in the idea of making love to a fifteen-year-old girl, all the more so because it was his friend's daughter. But he couldn't be sure what Sam would think about such an idea. After all, it was his child. And yet... well, Sam had never been known to balk at any depravity. Jack wouldn't put it past him to give his daughter away, or even to take her himself. The thought was slightly shocking, but it was also intriguing, and Jack remembered how his hand had accidentally fallen on Susan's tit and how, accident or not, he had given that juicy mound a squeeze. I wonder, he thought... if the time and place were right-it would have to be just exactly right, of course-I wonder if I would... ? No, I mustn't think such things. - I'm no prude, but incest is another matter. Anyhow, Suzy is an innocent little thing, not at all like Brenda.
And that was true.
For the moment...
"You can't believe how much we've been looking forward to having you here," Jessica was saying.
"Oh, I think we can," said Claire.
"In fact," Jack added, grinning lecherously, "I got so worked up while we were driving here that... "
"Jack!" Claire cried, flushing bright red. "... that Claire had to give me a blow job," Jack finished, looking smug.
"With Susan in the car?"Sam asked. "She was asleep."
"Sam's been randy as a rabbit, too," Jessica said, to help Claire through her embarrassment, knowing that Claire was willing to do anything when she was hot, but sometimes got reluctant to talk about it afterward. "But I wouldn't give him anything all day. I thought we ought to be celibate until you arrived. God knows, it wasn't easy, though."
"Well, we're here now," Jack said.
"You're not too exhausted from the trip?"
Jack shook his head.
"Or the blow job?" Sam asked, leering.
Jack looked at him. "My wife gives a damn fine blow job, doesn't she?" he said, arching his eyebrows.
"This conversation is getting disgusting," Claire said, feigning annoyance. Then she smiled. "It seems such a waste of time to talk about it, when we could just as well be doing it instead... " She looked at the others with lowered lashes, her expression strangely shifting as desire surged through her. "That's the trouble with giving a man a blow job," she added, as if to explain her lust. "It's lots of fun while you're doing it, but if you do it all the way, then the guy is finished and a girl is left all worked up... "
"The best way to really enjoy sucking dick is to have two guys at once," Jessica said. "Then you can have the pleasure of a mouthful of hot cock and still get your pussy reamed."
"Oooh! I'd like to try that, sometime," Claire said, her eyes flashing. "Have you, Jessica?"
"Ummm. Sure. I guess Sam and I have tried everything, at one time or another. But we've had more experience than you two. You'll get around to it all."
Sam stood up, grinning. The front of his trousers bulged outwards. "This talk is getting me hot as hell," he said. "Why don't we all go to bed?"
"I've got a better idea, honey," his wife said. "Instead of swapping in separate rooms, why don't we do it right here, together? Sort of an orgy, I mean. It's more fun when you can see what the other couple is doing, don't you think? Shall we, Claire?"
"I don't mind."
"Hell, yes!" Jack agreed, imagining how hot it would make him to watch his wife getting fucked by another man. Just thinking about it, using his imagination, always made him horny as hell; actually witnessing the act was certain to be tremendously exciting and arousing. The Marlowes were recent converts to wife-swapping, and they had never tried it with anyone but the Claymores, but they had no reservations about it; they both enjoyed it greatly from the very first time, and wanted to experience all the variations.
Standing up beside Sam, Jack began to undress. After a moment, Sam followed suit. Both men fumbled rather awkwardly with the buttons and zippers of their clothing, slightly self-conscious in front of each other as well as the two wives, who watched with interest. They finished disrobing and stood naked, side by side, before the women.
Giggling, the women inspected and compared their husbands. Both were handsome and well-conditioned, the chief difference between their physiques being one of hirsuteness; Sam was matted with dark hair while Jack was relatively smooth-skinned. Both were muscular and lean; both were attractive to the women, whose eyes naturally gravitated down to their loins. Here, too, there was little to choose between the two as far as size was concerned, although their cocks were shaped differently. That was pleasing to the oversexed women, who knew full well that variety was the spice of life.
Neither man had a full erection at the moment, for although both were horny they were a bit inhibited by being judged this way, each hoping he looked as good as his friend, their attention divided between lust and self-centered conceit. Their pricks had fattened and hung before them in downward arching bows. But, even at half mast, they were both evidently well-equipped, as the women knew full well, and the two contrasting cocks gave promise of great size and potency.
Sam's cock was broad and flat, tapering down from a thick, hairy base to an elongated, pointed head; the kind of cock that entered a tight cunt easily, but increased the fucking friction with every passing inch until, at full penetration, the broadest part of his prick was distending the woman's cuntlips to the fullest. It was a prick designed to give clitoral pleasure.
Jack's tool, on the other hand, was suited to vaginal stimulation. The shaft was cylindrical, a fleshy tube which had the same dimensions up its length until, at the tip, the knob spread out in a great purple wedge of throbbing meat. Dark veins twisted and writhed down the ventral surface as if tracing a path to the bloated sac of his balls.
"Which cock do you like best?" Jessica asked Claire with a wicked smile, knowing how embarrassing the question was for Claire and for the husbands.
"Oh... I love them both," answered Claire, diplomatically, shifting her gaze back and forth between the objects in question.
Sam and Jack exchanged wry glances.
Jessica rested her chin on thumb and knuckle, studying the men with mock seriousness.
"I think Jack is a little longer," she said.
"Bitch!" said her husband.
"But Sam is thicker," she added.
"What sort of evil sluts are we married to?" Sam asked Jack, shaking his head.
"Oh, you know their game," Jack said. "They think that by getting us in a competitive mood, we'll give a better performance."
"It would serve them right if we made them suck us off and refused to fuck them."
"Damn right. They both got big, sloppy cunts, anyhow. A man can't get friction in those swamps."
"Oh, you swine!" Jessica cried.
Sam and Jack grinned and gloated, happy to have put the shoe on the other foot. The last shreds of inhibition wafted away, and their cocks began to rise upward in a series of jolts, hardening and extending and growing fatter, throbbing in unison. In moments both men were fully erect, their pricks thrusting up before their bellies. The wives watched, wide-eyed, all desire to tease and embarrass gone now, as lust engulfed them.
"Get your clothes off," Sam commanded.
Jessica hastened to comply. Claire hesitated for a second, then did the same. Their garments joined their husband's discarded clothing on the floor, and they stood side by side, naked.
Their charms, although of a different sort, complemented each other. Claire was lean and tanned. Her belly was flat, her breasts pear-shaped, her legs long and lithe and her pubic mound a neat wedge of wispy golden curls. Jessica was larger and softer, white-fleshed and marvelously curved. Her tits were huge, matched globes capped by taut nipples as large as half-dollars. Her narrow waist emphasized the wide spread of her womanly hips and the gentle outward thrust of her belly. Her legs were meaty, but firm, and her pubic mound was a wide triangle of flaming red hair, a burning bush which stretched outward to her hipbones and upward nearly to her navel.
Jessica switched her hips and smiled.
Jack moved toward her. He took her hand and led her to the couch. They sat down side by side. Claire looked at Sam, waiting obediently for his directions. When he motioned, she moved toward him slowly, as if hypnotized by his command; like a bird that has looked into the eye of the snake and waits helplessly for the serpent's strike. And his serpent was ready to strike, the great tip of his cock swaying like a hooded cobra.
Sam put his arm around her slender waist and drew her to the nearest chair. He pushed her gently down into it and stood before her, his feet widespread on the floor and his hips thrust forward, his cock at eye level.
Claire stared, enraptured, at his cock. Her tongue flicked across her lower lip and her eyes glazed with desire.
"Touch it," he rasped.
Her hand rose and wrapped around the fat shaft. "Pump it."
She moved her fist up and down. "Use both hands."
Claire cupped his swollen balls in one hand and stroked his cock with the other. The cleft parted in his cockhead and a drop of semen squeezed out, running sluggishly down the glans and welling up against her forefinger.
"Ooooh," she sighed.
"Lick it, baby. Lick my knob."
Claire's head bobbed forward and she ran her tongue up his flaring dick, pushing the pink tip of her tongue into the gaping cleft and lapping the rubbery meat.
Another thick, creamy drop emerged.
The overheated woman licked it up, savoring the saline flavor on her taste buds for a moment, then letting it slide down her throat.
Sam groaned with lust. He glanced toward the couch and raised his eyebrows, wanting to make sure that everything was all right before he went any further. He wasn't sure how Jack would react to this scene.
Jack's eyes were gleaming and his face was coated with perspiration. His face had become a mask of blazing passion.
He nodded once, smiling crookedly, and Sam winked at him before turning back to Jack's lust-crazed wife.
"Put your mouth on it, baby," he urged.
Claire eagerly slipped her lips over his cock and began sucking. Her cheeks hollowed and her lips compressed around the shaft. Her head slid down, slowly, taking Sam's burning tool deeply into her mouth.
Jack was so fascinated by this that he was neglecting Jessica. She reached across his thigh and wrapped her hand around his iron-hard dick. He grunted and squirmed at the sensation, but continued to gaze at his wife as she sucked away on Sam's cock.
Jessica frowned in momentary irritation, then shrugged. She understood the way a man's mind works, and she realized how greatly it must be affecting Jack to watch his wife perform fellatio on another man, especially since this was the first time he'd been a witness; knowing she did it and watching her do it were vastly different things.
Jessica could feel his reaction in his cock, as the broad prick rippled and throbbed in her grasp and it grew to tremendous proportions. Her irritation vanished. She smiled, knowing that she would have to wait for a few minutes but that, by waiting, she would be more satisfied when he fucked her.
Adding fuel to the carnal fire, she leaned over and whispered into Jack's ear.
"Your wife loves to suck cock, doesn't she?"
Jack grunted an affirmative.
"She's sucked Sam before, you know."
"She... told... me... "
"Ummm. It makes you so hot... "
"God yes!"
"Shall we just watch them for a while?"
Jack nodded, his eyes glued on Claire's lips as they slipped up and down Sam's prick.
Jessica grinned. Taking his hand, she drew it to her steaming, soaking crotch and held it there. Jack began to stroke her love-bud with an automatic reaction, stoking the furnace of her loins. Jessica sighed happily then, no longer desperate but willing to let his hand build her slowly and then keep her pussy simmering until the time was ripe. She moved her thumb tenderly up and down the sensitive area just beneath his glans, where the thick veins joined the bloated head. She, too, looked at the chair in which Claire was hungrily eating cock and, gently masturbating one another, they watched their respective spouses perform.
Sam had begun to hump. Corkscrewing his ass, he was pushing his prick into Claire's mouth just as if he were fucking her there. She stopped bobbing her head up and down and let him set the tempo with his thrusts, although she continued to suck steadily, wrapping her moist tongue around his cockhead.
He was flowing freely now, coating her tongue with a layer of oily cream, while his knob flared menacingly, bulging her pulling cheeks.
Suddenly, with a groan, he drew his hot cock from her lips.
Claire whimpered as she was deprived of that succulent morsel. But Sam had been ready to shoot, and he didn't want to end this scene prematurely.
He delayed for a moment, swaying before her, letting his throbbing prick cool down. The great purple tip steamed in the air and a drop of cream fell from the tip and splattered on her lean belly.
When he felt the danger point had passed, Sam knelt in the chair, his knees straddling her thighs, and began rubbing his cock up and down between her tits. Cupping the smooth mounds in his hands, he pressed them together, forming chasm through which his smoking cock could glide, fucking her cleavage with slow, rippling strokes. His knob disappeared on the downstroke, then came pushing upward until it nestled in the hollow of her fluttering throat. Claire moaned, completely abandoned to lust.
Lowering her chin, she began lapping at his knob as it surged up from her cleavage.
Sam stroked faster, his swollen balls jamming against her stomach and his knob rising higher, into her parted, greedy lips.
Then he paused again.
His shaft was vibrating and humming like a taut bowstring. The tip was lathered with froth. Claire lapped that thick foam up hungrily.
"Don't stop," she pleaded. "Fuck my tits and shoot in my mouth, Sam. Let me drink your sweet cream... "
He grinned, delighted at having worked her into such a state of pure lust.
But he didn't want her mouth. Not this time. There was a whole weekend ahead of them and he knew they would run the gamut of depravity, but this first time he wanted to fuck her properly.
He slid from the seat and knelt on the floor. Seizing her lithe hips, he hauled Claire down so that, her ass rested on the edge of the chair and her thighs were spread wide around his hips. His cock thrust up like a monument above her loins, a pillar erected in dedication to the marvels of her sex.
Taking that great stalk firmly in hand, he angled his cock down and pressed the tip against her sodden cunt.
Claire whimpered and shifted her hips, working her hole up and down on his knob. Her cuntlips spread wide, revealing the cum-streaked inner flesh, while her clitoris ballooned and throbbed. She was gasping and sobbing with need. Rich cream poured from her pussy in a veritable torrent, running in thick ribbons down into the crack of her ass.
"Don't... tease... me... " she sobbed.
Sam bared his teeth, feeling the surge of pride that such dominance brought.
"Soon," he said. "Soon."
"Now!"
Chuckling-but the chuckle was strained, for Sam was every bit as hot as Claire- he rubbed his dick up and down her flooded slit, then pushed it in an inch. The sharp tip penetrated easily into the soaking cleft. He pushed the knob in and then paused, while Claire jolted and writhed around the meaty plunger. Only the tip was buried. The bulk of his formidable weapon sprouted from her cunt, steaming, as if it had taken root in her cunt, as if they were linked like Siamese twins in eternal copulation.
"More!" she cried. "Put it all the way in!"
"Greedy girl!"
"Yes, greedy! I want it all! I want my belly filled with that hot meat!"
Sam moved his cockhead in a circular sweep, stirring the knob in her gaping pussy. Her cuntlips sucked on him, trying to draw him deeper, but he resisted that delicious suction.
Sam cupped his hands beneath her tight ass and lifted her hips from the chair. His ass bobbed back, then pushed forward again, jamming his cock against the crack of her ass. The knob nestled against her asshole.
"Shall we try it there?" he croaked.
"Oh! No! I never... it wouldn't fit... I've never had it up the ass... " He pushed gently.
Sam's prick was beautifully designed for worming into tight spaces, the tip tapered sharply to a point. And the knob was well-lubricated from delving shallowly in Claire's pussy. He pushed with steady pressure and her asshole fluttered, resisting for a moment and then relaxing. The tip forged up her rectum.
Claire gasped, her body going stiff for an instant, and then she relaxed. It didn't hurt as much as she'd anticipated. It didn't hurt very much at all, in fact. It felt very, very good, in a strange and unknown way, to have a prick up her taut asshole.
"Yes!" she cried. "Oh, yes! Shove it up my ass, Sam! Ream my asshole with that fat cock!"
Depraved imagination combined with erotic sensations turned Claire into a creature of blind passion.
Sam spread her buttocks apart and she bowed her back, raising her rounded ass upward for his attention. He kept up a steady pressure. Gradually her sphincter muscles accustomed themselves to his penetration and then, suddenly, her asshole opened and his cock glided into her. Her asshole clamped shut behind his glans and she whimpered with the fiery sensation of having a flaring cockhead buried up her ass.
"More! Deeper!" she pleaded, rolling her eyes and jerking her head from side to side, biting her lower lip and jolting her thighs.
Sam pushed deeper into the hot hole. Claire whimpered as the breadth of his cock churned into her and the tip, like a glowing nugget, set her ass ablaze. It hurt more now that the broader area of his shaft was spreading her virginal asshole, but the pain was nothing compared to the pleasure; the pain was submerged in the thrill, adding to her ecstasy rather than detracting from it, giving her a two-fold sensation of rapture.
He managed to get nearly three-quarters of his prick up her asshole before it lodged securely and he could progress no further.
Claire, crazed by passion, wanted even more.
"Deeper, deeper!" she wailed. "I don't care if you split me apart! Give me the whole thing!"
But Sam had self-control.
Satisfied with the three-quarters of depth, he began stroking in and out. Her ass clung to his plunging rod, pulling and resisting, sucking and hauling, and with every stroke the opening grew looser, until finally he was fucking her asshole as easily as he could have fucked her pussy with jolting strokes.
"All the way!" she cried. "Shove that fat prick right up to my throat! Fuck me, Sam! Harder! I want the head to come right out my mouth so I can suck it while you bugger me!"
He lashed her asshole furiously. His hands clamped under her ass and he hauled her down to meet his strokes, pulling her asshole over his cock like a glove.
His hips swung through a low arc as he jammed home, increasing the pendulum swing, until suddenly, getting carried away, he drew back too far and his prick popped out of her ass.
Claire rammed her hips down desperately, seeking to refill the void.
Sam thrust in at the same moment with the same desire. But his steel-hard cock missed her asshole and plunged into her flooded cunt, burying it to the hilt at the first powerful thrust.
Claire stiffened again as the new sensation gripped her. She felt her pussy being stuffed full of cock.
Then they began fucking furiously.
Their loins flew together like pneumatic pumps. They fucked together, sending a spray of cuntjuice from her hole with every pressured piston-stroke.
Groaning, Sam drew out of her twat and slipped his greasy dick up her asshole once more.
He began alternating strokes, shoving up her asshole on one thrust and up her pussy on the next, never faltering for an instant at either lubricated passage.
Claire lifted and lowered her hips, matching her movements to his. She felt as if her loins were melting; as if the partition between her cunt and her asshole had begun to turn to flowing wax. She didn't know which penetration felt better. He continued to exchange holes for a long time, and then, as his ejaculation loomed, he fell upon her and concentrated on her cunt.
Claire threw her legs up and wrapped her lean thighs around his flanks and fucked with him, frantically matching his tempo. Her heels drummed on his ass and she clawed savagely at his shoulders. She felt his cock swell up, threatening to explode within her cunt, spreading her sodden cunt.
Sam howled like a wolf.
His jets of sperm burst and the thick sap poured up his shaft and sprayed from the knob under tremendous pressure, hosing the depths of her womb with spurt after spurt of boiling cream.
Claire's climax tore through her loins in rippling waves, an electric current that jolted her cunt and filled that seething, sperm-washed hole with the juice of ecstasy.
Sam collapsed over her, his head on her breasts. His body twitched and jerked as if his bones were falling apart. Claire continued to fuck beneath him, working out the spasms of her bliss, until she, too, was hollow with release.
Claire, staring at the ceiling past his twitching shoulder, smiled contentedly.
Her asshole burned with the memory of that delightful stuffing, and her pussy closed around his cock as, still within her, it began to diminish. She was so deliriously happy that she couldn't even remember who she was, let alone who Sam was or where they both were, or that her husband had been watching the whole scene. She'd forgotten about Jack completely, with her mind seared by the skyrockets of climax.
But Jack was still watching...
Jack had never been so excited in his life.
At first, when Sam had started to push his cock up Claire's asshole, Jack hadn't believed it possible. It was a thing which he had never tried. And then, when he realized that his wife was actually getting cock up the ass, he'd burst into an inferno of lust. The very fact that another man was taking her in a way that he never had ignited an inferno in his mind.
He'd begun clawing furiously at Jessica's flooded cunt, and she'd responded by pumping his cock firmly up and down until it loomed so vast that her hand couldn't close around it.
Realizing he was close to the point of no return, Jessica twisted around and mounted him, kneeling on the couch and pushing her wet pussy down onto the towering pillar of his prick.
Jack groaned with the pleasure of having his burning cock soothed by her flooded sheath, and he responded by pushing up to meet her descending pussy. Her meaty ass flew up and down and twisted from side to side, combining torque and vertical friction into one wild sensation which was too great to endure.
Jack continued to watch his wife as he met Jessica's demanding strokes, until he saw Sam fill her with his burning lava and saw them collapse into a twitching heap, and then he concentrated totally on his own inspired lust and lifted Jessica completely into the air as he fucked his cock up her wet hole.
Jack came like a geyser.
His sperm load surged up so powerfully that, for an instant, Jessica hung suspended on the deluge, half-expecting to be lifted bodily on the torrent and sent crashing against the ceiling. Jack was so unbearably hot that every bit of his fluid lust came boiling out in the first tremendous spurt and his balls seemed to deflate under the pressure. Jessica felt her womb swimming with his cream, and the dam burst within her to let her own arousal flood forth and mingle with his in a flood of ecstasy.
She sank onto him, speared on his drained but still-hard prick and, trembling, they echoed the twitching after-effects of Sam and Claire.
Only then did Jack finally close his eyes.
The image of Sam and his wife continued to register in his brain, carved indelibly in his mind's eye by the terrible-wonderful thrill of what he had seen.
God, he thought, what thrills we've been missing by going to separate rooms.
Watching is the most fun of all.
And he smiled happily, not knowing that he wasn't the only one who'd been observing that scene...