by Simon Archer
“I don’t suppose you’d portal us to the master bedroom?” I asked her. “Seeing as you grabbed a shirt from there earlier.”
“I did not do that earlier.” She made a portal completely elsewhere with one hand and shut the office door with the other. “Get to it. Unless you really want the servants and Wolves to see a half-naked bunny trying to tear off your clothes as you pop in and out of random places of the house.”
“But there’s only a desk,” I tried to argue. “She deserves an actual--”
“I don’t see her caring.” She gave me more direction with her eyes to look at Tinker again, who had somehow done more as I was distracted.
I couldn’t even imagine how the little thing could have added to the look of desperation for my physical attention and failing an attempt to hide it. She did, though, as she had grabbed my hand with her soft little hands without my noticing, pulling it up so that my middle finger was just touching the neck of her shirt.
The look in her eyes as they hungrily pawed for me said ‘I’m doing my best to be respectful and let you finish here, but we really should have started at least five minutes ago, if not in the generator when we first met, and now I don’t know if I’ll be satisfied with what little we can do today.’ It was a look that said I might have had to pay for stalling so unnecessarily on some later date.
“Good luck!” Hopper said as my focus was locked with the little alchemist bunny and her energy, hopping through another portal to leave us be. “And don’t worry! I can clean up afterward. Just have fun.” And the portal was gone.
As soon as, if not before, I willingly pulled down my hand on her clothes to unleash Tinker’s lustful savagery upon me, she had leapt up onto my chest, simultaneously climbing and stripping me of clothes as she clawed her way to my lips. Our lips locked, and our bodies meshed as we dove into the most primal and visceral parts of each other like I was not prepared for, but welcomed generously.
I slapped the silence charm on the wall of the room as a necessary precaution for Tinker’s enthusiasm, as I was learning thoroughly. We hit the floor in a tumble of clothes and limbs, and I was impressed at how quickly she had stripped me of my shirt and loosened my pants. It wasn’t hard for me to return the favor, as she had already done some of the work for me, and once the dark fabric was freed from her shoulders and her bare skin was exposed before me, I immediately pulled her close and inhaled her scent, kissing across her chest and down to her breasts. She ran her fingers through my hair and grasped it tightly as she moaned over my head. I found her nipple and took it into my mouth as I let my hands roam over her entire body. Her soft fur, gentle curves, and smooth skin trailed below my fingers as I explored her entire body with my hands, and her hips pressed up against mine as our bodies moved together. She pulled back from me, releasing her grip on my hair as she slid her hands down across my shoulders and my chest, pushing herself up into a seated position as she went. I propped myself up as well to keep myself close to her, wrapping one arm around her waist to steady myself as I looked up at her.
Tinker reached behind her, her hand yanking the fabric of my pants to the side to wrap her fingers around me. Her hands were soft, but her grip was firm, and she slid her hands up and down as I continued to explore her body, first with my hands and then with my tongue. Tinker’s back arched as she pressed her body up against mine, and I slid my hand up her back, grabbing hold before flipping her over so that I was looking down at her. Her eyes lit up with hunger as she reached up and pulled me close, and I kissed her deeply, pausing to nibble at her lower lip here and there, eliciting giggles from her as she clawed at me to bring me closer.
I slid my hand down her side, luxuriating in her curves as I went, and then slipped in between her thighs. She writhed beneath me in anticipation, gripping my shoulders firmly as she fixed her gaze onto mine. When I slipped my fingers inside of her, her eyes widened as she gasped, and then I felt her relax into a puddle of ecstasy as I traced delicate patterns against her. The moans and gasps escaping her lips became louder and more intense, and I was grateful for my foresight with the silence charm.
Tinker’s eyes bored into mine, and they pleaded with me for more, and I didn’t want to keep her waiting any longer. I slid my hand back, grabbing hold of myself and running my length along her damp skin, teasing her as I went. She giggled and moaned as she squirmed beneath me, but I held off, refusing to give her what she wanted. It wasn’t until she pulled herself up and clutched my arms, her eyes pleading with me, did I concede, sliding myself into her as slowly as I possibly could. Her breath caught as she felt me swell inside of her, and she didn’t loosen her grip. Instead, she pulled me even closer, kissing me deeply as I moved inside of her. I eased her back down onto the ground, pressing my body up against hers. I soaked in the warmth and the softness of her skin as I braced myself against the cool, hard ground, kissing my way down her neck and across her chest as I moved slowly at first.
My movements grew quicker and more aggressive as Tinker’s moans grew in intensity until she began clawing at my back in earnest. Her eyes widened again, and her breath became rough and uneven, and the squeals coming from her grew louder yet. I knew she was close, and so was I, but I wanted to hold off as long as I could, to draw out this bliss for as long as possible. I slowed my pace and saw a flicker of disappointment as she was eased off of her edge, but she whimpered as she continued to squirm with pleasure. Her hand slammed down onto the floor, and she reached for something to grab onto, and as I leaned back down to kiss her again, she must have found something, because I heard a large clatter behind me as something toppled over.
I pulled back and looked into her eyes, and she grimaced apologetically, but one firm thrust of my hips had her head thrown back with pleasure again, and I resumed my rhythm, once again picking up speed. Tinker tried to sit up, but I pushed her back to the ground, the palm of my hand flat against her chest, and she relented, a small smirk twitching at the corners of her lips as she laid back down.
I felt the pressure building back up slowly, and this time, I knew we were both ready. I listened as she writhed and moaned with no consideration for the amount of noise she was making until finally, her entire body tensed up and her back arched. Her fingernails dug into my skin as she let out a high-pitched scream of ecstasy, and I quickly joined her as the pressure released, the sensations coursing through me as I gave myself over to her.
Tinker’s body twitched below mine, the aftershocks of her climax still taking hold, and I felt her muscles twitch around me, which sent white-hot sparks shooting through my gut. I struggled to keep myself propped up but eventually gave up, collapsing on top of her. Her arms wrapped around me, pulling me close as the sensations subsided, and we laid there, tangled together for a while, catching our breath.
After a few minutes, I rolled off of her, the cold floor a shock to my senses. I looked around to see what Tinker had knocked over earlier, but it hadn’t been much. I glanced over at her to find her lying there peacefully, her eyes closed, and a small smile on her lips. It hadn’t been the atmosphere I had intended, but I found, at that moment, that it hardly mattered.
28
Less than a month ago, I was in Tennessee. Humans were the only species that could hold a conversation. I was a handyman with only a log cabin and a truck to my name. Magic was a bedtime story. Other worlds were light years away. And not that I really minded that much, but I was fairly alone. Now, I’ve met two other species that I talk to regularly. I was a noble lord with land holdings and a mansion. I used magic as regularly as most people use a cell phone. I was in another world. And I had company to spare. Dozens of Wolves, a hundred or more Rabbits, and two particular bunnies that I wouldn’t trade for all of the Great Burrows.
Speaking of which, I had many more bunnies to save from a world that wanted to eat them. Now that I was relaxed, yet energized, thinking clearly and rationally, we were ready to begin.
The plan was simple enough. I had assigned a few select le
aders to hide the Wolf assault parties nearby, waiting until night. When the front gate opened, hopefully without any fuss or alarm, then the Wolves were to storm the place while I dealt with the Baron. Simple and straightforward. While killing the Baron was the easiest way to win this fight, I wasn’t going to trust the Baron to fight fairly and let a one-on-one duel just be that, and the girls needed to be safe. Splitting up and whittling down their numbers kept them too busy to pull any tricks. Also, an invasion was more likely to help the Baron’s subordinates to believe that I challenged the Baron and claimed his stuff. Thus, the Wolf assault party distracting the guards. How were we going to get the front gate open? Simple and straightforward, if not just a bit more technical, also letting us get right up to the Baron’s face before he could get out of bed. But first, we had to set the stage for the strike team to infiltrate the place. And that meant getting rid of the guards who’d spot us without tipping the alarm.
From the rooftop of my estate, I could see the whole castle, especially from the elevated point the mansion was built on. With my best scope, I could see all of the guards patrolling the top of it. A regular bullet, even from a rifle like mine, would have had a bit of trouble getting all of the guards quickly enough for none of the guards to notice the missing ones. And, under normal circumstances, the first shot would probably give our position away from the noise.
Hurray for charms.
Jokes aside, Tinker was instrumental in making this plan viable. As was Hopper, but her bit wouldn’t be until later.
With the lightning charm, full-cup, and silent charms on the rifle, I took a perch on the rooftop while my Wolves found places in the city near the keep to wait for the signal. Taking a good look at their patrol patterns, mapping out when they wouldn’t have been looking at each other before I started. Counting all of the guards that went in and out of the tower connected at the back of it, that was twenty-seven to take down without any mistakes. I took my time, memorizing a pattern, making a sequence, calming myself down to an intense focus as the world outside of my scope faded away. If I slowed down for even a second, if one of them suspected a thing, or if any of them found a body, the whole assault would have been that much harder to do. I couldn’t afford that with so little to work with. Even with a flawless plan, the actual assault was going to be tough.
It was eerie, spine-chilling even, watching the guards just drop every time I pulled the trigger. No impact delay, no sound, and no waiting between shots to reload. It was like I had a killswitch for Wolves that punched me in the shoulder every time I used it. There were almost thirty of them patrolling, and I had them cleared out in less than forty seconds. For those of us doing the math, that was a second and a half for each shot. And no one was the wiser.
Magic was slowly earning its way into my good graces again. Tinker’s special charm-switching mojo let us clear the rifle and kit out the other two for the situation: silence and lightning on the pistol, fire and ice on the shotgun, with two full cups that’d taken a load off my mind. Honestly, I didn’t know how I’d lived so long without magic. Now it had to get us into the place. That was the trickier part of the plan and also required skill and precision of inhuman proportions.
Thankfully, Hopper had just that.
Having cleared the top of the keep and gotten what I wanted on, my girls and I were ready, as the infiltration team, to get up in the Baron’s face as soon as he could. The three of us stood out in the courtyard, a host of hares surrounding us as well as a few Wolves I left at the mansion to protect it. I stood behind Hopper, and Tinker stood behind me. Apparently, Hopper had a great idea for getting into the keep as stealthily as possible. I was less than convinced it was the most efficient, but she insisted, and Tinker was willing. We would be in her hands.
“You guys ready?” Hopper whispered over to Tinker and me. Along with her leather ass-kicking outfit and her kevlar leg guards, she had put on a pair of metal-topped ballerina slipper-like boots Tinker made for her. Keeping in mind both mobility and pain, it was covered in spikes for hurting and shifting plates for bending.
“Why are we whispering?” Tinker also whispered. She had my special gift for her strapped to her back: the biggest, heaviest, and gnarliest metal maul I could find in the mansion. The nasty and spiked crusher of spines looked like a ceremonial or decorative piece, which worried me at first when I found it since I thought we’d have to settle for just a regular old maul. But when four of my Wolves struggled to get it off of the armor display it was sitting on, I figured it’d be perfect. Slapping the broken feather charm on, I had easily carried it back to Tinker, who had been very delighted to grab the big stick, now knowing what I meant. Light when we needed, heavy when it counted.
“Yeah, we’re nowhere near the keep,” I said normally. “No one’s going to hear us yet.”
“I’m getting into the sneaky mindset!” Hopper voicelessly shouted to us. “Tinker’s already there, obviously. Good job being so on top of things. Unlike some lords I know.”
“Okay, okay.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Sneaky mindsets, then. I’m ready.”
“What exactly is the plan, here, your grace?” Bugs spoke up from the crowd of hares.
“Shush!” Hopper put a finger to her lips to quiet the butler.
Bugs nervously moved in place, attempting to start speaking seven or eight times. Giving up, he rolled his eyes and head as he hopped out of the crowd and over to us.
“What exactly is the plan, your grace?” Bugs whispered to us. “Would it not be better to be nearer to the keep to use Hopper’s portals to get inside. From what you told us, they can’t possibly reach the keep from here.”
“Conventionally, you’re right,” I told him. “But unconventionally, we’ll be right on top of them before you know it.”
“I’m not--?” Bugs squinted to his eyes as he tried to speak his concerns.
“Shush!” Hopper spooked Bugs with a glare and a finger to her lips into remembering the mindset we were all trying to achieve. Tinker helped with an equally intense glare.
“I do not quite understand what you mean?” Bugs voicelessly spoke his concerns in the correct mindset. “Is the plan to chain the use of portals to shorten the distance? I suppose that would be faster, but then you should get a move on instead of dawdling here if you want to get past the gate before they notice the rooftop is missing all of its guards.”
“That’ll tip them off to us, even with how fast Hopper is,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around Hopper’s stomach. “Plus, I already cleared a path for us on the roof.”
“How in--?” Bugs tried again to state his concern but was met with Hopper’s and Tinker’s glares, having not maintained the mindset of stealth. He corrected himself accordingly. “How in the Great Burrows’ breadth are you going to scale the wall? Has Hopper’s portal range increased while I wasn’t looking?”
“Portal shenanigans ignore all distance limitations.” Tinker hopped up onto my back, latching onto me with her arms and legs. The tightness of her grip told me she wasn’t as confident in Hopper’s skills as I was. “I’m just going to close my eyes until we’re there. This should be over quickly, right?”
“Really, really fast, don’t worry.” Hopper shook her hands out in preparation for portal shenanigans. “We’re gonna fall up to it.”
Bugs reflexively began to question Tinker’s statement with a simple, loud ‘what?’, but remembered the proper mindset at the last moment. The word left his mouth as an exhausted breath, our vague answers not helping him in the slightest.
Hopper opened a portal on the ground and another far above us. Without another word, our group jumped through it, falling down from the portal above. As we fell down, Hopper moved the upper portal, then the bottom as our column of falling rose higher and higher into the air, all the while increasing speed. Keeping both portals in range as to not dissolve either one before we fell through them, the strike time flew stories above the estate, far above the town. Eventually, our speed of f
alling came to a point that Hopper couldn’t safely move both portals at the same time. With our maximum speed having been reached, Hopper turned the upper portal to face upward at an angle, and we fell upwards. The ol’ organs didn’t like that, no, sir.
Hopper wasn’t quite finished yet, though, as she made portals to raise us even higher, and fly even farther, creating and collapsing portals with her hands over and over again while we held on for dear life. In a zigzag of a curve, we flew over the whole city and would have been an amazing view without the inner ear’s internal measure of ‘down’ flipping my brain over and over again. That didn’t matter since the pilot of our unconventional vehicle was doing just fine. She was in total control.
In the name of honesty, I would have had to admit that coming so close to the castle at such high velocities was pucker-inducing. And it didn’t help that Hopper thought it was funny to put the final portal right next to the main tower’s stone balcony. I didn’t think I had panic attacks until then. But, Hopper was still completely on top of it, so we fell through it, falling upwards once again to break our momentum before gracefully stepping onto the balcony as if it was right next door, touching down without so much as a scooting stop.
Portal shenanigans.
“Good luck, my lord.” Hopper spoke in the sneaky mindset before portalling away to open the gate. I gave Tinker’s hand two taps to let her know she was safe, and she unclenched her hold on my back to step down. We had made it alive.
The balcony led directly to a larger bedroom, pompously elegant and repulsive at the same time. Two massive chandeliers covered in gemstones hung from the high ceiling, shaped like bronze onions and seemingly incapable of giving off light. Dangling from them were giant poles, hanging down from the bottoms like tassels. The ceiling’s artwork was scratched and faded, but a few Wolf-like cherubins and angels were still visible, pointing and dancing in classic Renaissance fashion. Everything, from the blue paint on the walls to the blue finish on all of the furniture, had a distinct transparent brown glaze to it that I didn’t even want to guess what it was. From the vanity to the dresser to the nightstand, flies had found a haven for their kind, flying in every direction, finding homes all over the place.