by Shaye Marlow
“As far as I can tell, that’s what you do. Things get too hot for you in town, you go running to your father’s.”
I tried to glare at him, but was afraid my glazed eyes were ruining it.
“Things get too intense here, you go running to your father’s. And here I thought you didn’t even like the man.”
“I don’t,” I growled, hanging from my bonds. I was trembling, each glance of his finger against my clit making me twitch.
He leaned closer, eyes intense. “I want you to stay here. With me.” He slid his fingers deeper, teasing my entrance. “Make me a deal,” he said, watching my face as I tried to chase his fingers with my hips.
I whimpered.
“You’ll quit trying to leave if…” He was relentless, circling and stroking and rubbing, but never entering.
I thrashed in my bonds, protesting.
He waited me out, and then continued his torture. “If,” he prompted.
“If,” I panted. I felt exposed, with nowhere to hide, nowhere to go.
He bent back to my breast, sucking and nibbling. Each scrape of his teeth made my inner muscles flutter, emphasizing the fact that I was so… goddamn… empty. I groaned.
His finger circled my clit, making my hips curl. I pressed helplessly against him, begging for more.
“C’mon, Frances, love,” he murmured. “You’ll stay if…”
“If… you quit hunting my bear,” I said in a rush.
He leaned back, surprise in his eyes. Even his clever, slippery fingers had gone still. “Your bear?”
“The one you saw today, the huge one. Agree to stop trying to kill him, and I’ll put effort into this… whatever this is.”
“Okay,” Zack said.
I blinked up at him. “Just like that?”
“You’re more important than a bear hide,” he said, flicking his unoccupied hand dismissively. “More important than some trebuchet gang rivalry. More important, even, than the catapults out front.”
I felt myself blushing, and I never fucking blushed.
He crowded in close, pressing me to the wall. “So,” he said, hand picking up where it’d left off. “Since you’re putting effort into this now, tell me how you feel about me.”
“I feel like you talk too much.”
He yanked open his fly and grasped my knees, lifting and spreading with my ankles still tied. He forced them wide, then he was between them, fisting his shaft, the blunt head coaxing my pussy lips apart. He leaned into me, and the angle was strange, rubbing my clit and prodding the back wall of my vagina, but what was important was he was inside me, and with a little hitch and a little thrust, his hips were pinning mine to the wall.
“Still think I talk too much?”
I nodded frantically, wishing I could grab him, dig my nails into him to spur him on.
“I suspect,” he whispered into my ear, “that you might do well with a rewards system.” He moved his hips in a slow, strong rotation that ground his pubic bone into mine.
Each of my breaths came in a gasp. I tried to clasp my legs around him, but it was useless—not in this position, not with my ankles tied.
“Tell me something,” he coaxed, “and I’ll do this.” This time he kissed me and did the thing with his hips. His tongue thrust deep, and I opened, desperate for more of him. His shirt-covered chest abraded my nipples, and the spot where we joined was a tight, wet ache.
“Zack,” I moaned when he lifted his head. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just—later. Please,” I said, shuddering as I rocked against him.
He leaned his weight into me so I couldn’t move at all—just felt the throb of his cock deep inside me. “Now,” he insisted. “Do you… look forward to seeing me in the morning?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Rewards system,” he reminded me. I’d never seen eyes so warm.
“Yes,” I said. “I look forward to seeing you. You’re the first thing I look for.”
He’d started to move with my admission, but now paused. “Even before coffee?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Well… maybe not before that.”
He laughed, his mirth spilling over me like warm honey. “Now, that’s truth. Good girl.”
I might’ve made a comment, but he quickly robbed me of speech. He worked himself into me with hard thrusts, sucking at my ear and lower, stinging my neck. We were both sweaty, breaths rasping, when he quit. And honestly, I’d been close.
“No,” I moaned. “More, damn you.”
He shuddered against me as I squeezed his cock. “Okay, Frances. We’re gonna wrap this up, because I can’t take any more. One question, a big one, and then I fuck your brains out against this wall. You ready?”
I nodded vigorously while deciding I wouldn’t be the one tied up in the future.
“Why do you steal?”
My lungs froze up. My heart thudded in my ears. “What?”
“Why,” he said, stroking my cheek, “do you take things that aren’t yours?”
I shook my head. “That’s too big a question. It’d take too long, and I can’t think right now. Just… I’ll talk to you about it later if you…”
“You swear?”
“Yes, yes,” I agreed.
Then, finally, he moved. He kissed the thoughts right out of my head while moving his hips in some sort of sexual symphony. The rocking, grinding, slipping, stretching pressure drove me right off the edge.
My arms jerked as I came, lifting me in my bonds. My head banged against the wall, eyelids fluttering as pleasure exploded through me, a chain reaction of icy heat that stole my breath and numbed my curled toes. He thrust into me even harder, practically lunging into me, that long, thick cock of his making me want to scream. I trembled wildly as I took it.
“Breathe,” Zack said. “Breathe.”
I sucked in a deep breath, and the strongest spasm yet grabbed ahold of me. “Fucking hell,” I croaked, making Zack laugh. I cried out again, and he slammed into me one last time, pinning me against the wall, covering my mouth with his, his fingers reddening the skin of my thighs. His cock jerked, and our teeth clashed, and for just a moment, it seemed like the nylon ropes suspending me from the ceiling might be holding us both up. He groaned my name, then kissed me again.
When even that became too much, my mouth slid from his, and my forehead landed on his shoulder. There, I gasped for breath, completely blown away by the man pressed against me. A minute or two or ten later, I chuckled.
“What?”
“You have everyone so fooled.” I rocked my head back and forth.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Zack said, and I could hear his smile.
“Uh-huh. Of course not. Mr. ‘Look at me, I know nothing’.” I leaned back to look at him. “You should know that you have a rare talent for making people talk.”
Zack beamed. “You really think so? I mean, I’ve certainly been interrogated enough. Maybe I picked up a few things…”
Chapter Twenty-Five
ZACK
“What are you doing up?” I asked, squinting in the kitchen light.
Frances shrieked, making me jump, and threw something at me. It hit me in the chest, then fell into my arms. I looked blankly down at the half-full bag of sugar I was cradling.
“Oh my god, you scared me,” Frances said, coming to retrieve the sugar. She kept her face angled downward so it was shadowed by her hair, and spun around before I could gauge her expression. She was wearing a T-shirt and pair of pink sleep pants, her slender feet were bare, and somehow, she looked more vulnerable than I’d ever seen her.
“Why are you up?” I asked again. We’d fallen asleep in her bed, me the big spoon, and I hadn’t woken until she’d climbed out. I’d assumed she needed the restroom, but then she hadn’t come back.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, returning to the counter where she’d collected a jumble of items.
“Do I snore?” I asked, watching Puck frolic around Frances’s leg
s. Apparently not having gotten the three a.m. memo, he hopped around, bucking and cavorting. A cabinet door rattled when he bounced off of it.
“No, no. Just… couldn’t stop thinking.”
Sidestepping the little goat as he charged at my shins, I wandered into the kitchen. I gazed over Frances’s shoulder for a few moments before it hit me. “Are you… cooking?”
“What’s it look like?”
“Hmm. Why are you cooking?”
“Because I had a craving for pumpkin pancakes,” she said briskly. “You made me pancakes this morning, which I didn’t really get to eat, and I found this can of pumpkin in the pantry…”
I watched her measure vanilla out into a flatware spoon. “Do you… cook often?”
“Nope. My dad has a cook—has always had a cook. He’s this grizzled old guy named Taffy, and he doesn’t let anyone into his kitchen. I once got beaten with a wooden spoon for trying to get a bowl of cereal.”
I curled my hands around her arms, rubbing gently. “Why’s he called Taffy?”
She glanced up at me. “I think it’s supposed to be ironic?”
“Huh.” What she was mixing up didn’t look like any pancake batter I’d ever seen. “Did the recipe not call for eggs? Or milk?” I didn’t see either of those on the counter, which made sense, because the ermines were still lurking in the fridge.
“It does, but I figured it can’t come out too very different without.”
I groaned, having the distinct feeling things weren’t going to turn out quite as well as Frances hoped. I also knew how truly perturbed she must be to enter the kitchen for anything more substantial than coffee. And I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. Not until Frances felt better.
“Maybe I can—” I swung the refrigerator door open, and Frances shrieked again. The mini-Ernies bared their little teeth, backs arching, and I slammed the door shut. “Or not.”
The sight had frozen even little Puck in his tracks. He stared at the refrigerator, nose and ears twitching wildly.
“What is all the screaming about?” Rory asked, thumping down the stairs. He entered the kitchen, looked at Frances. Squinted. “Are you… cooking?”
“Rory, I need your help with something,” I said.
Rory did a little dance, trying to avoid Puck, who seemed hell-bent on playing with him. “Now?” he asked, trying to shoo the little goat away.
“We need to get the eggs out of the fridge. Or the ermines out of the fridge. One or the other.”
“Whoa. Whoa, wait. I like my fingertips where they are, thank you very much.”
“C’mon, man, they’re just a few elongated rats. You said it yourself.”
“Do you even know what a rat can do?” Rory demanded. “They can chew their way into your ribcage. They can eat your eyes right out of your head.” While he was distracted, Puck jumped up and jabbed his little hooves near Rory’s groin, making him gasp.
“Well, we’re big and scary, and we’re not gonna hold still for that,” I said. “We’ll wear protective gear, and we’ll get this done.”
“What protective gear?” Rory fell into a martial-arts stance, and gently karate-chopped the goat. This sent Puck into a frenzy of spinning bounces that made Frances giggle.
“We’ve got winter coats and snow pants. Gloves. Snowmachine helmets, if you really wanna—“
“Wait.”
“—go—“
“Wait!” Rory said with more force.
“—overboard,” I finished.
“I have an idea. A condition, even,” Rory said, sounding excited.
Here we go. I leaned my hip against the counter. “And that is?”
“The suits,” he said, eyes gleaming.
It took me a moment to figure out what the hell he was referring to, in which he blocked another attack by the goat and launched a counter-strike. We’d managed to hide the suits before the neighborhood could confiscate them. We’d told Ed we’d burned them, which Ed hadn’t believed, but what was he supposed to do, when he couldn’t find them? But… “Yeah, we’re not supposed to put those on again, ever…”
“But think of it, Zack! We’ll look like bears, bigger and badder than an ermine could ever hope to be. And it’d just be here in the kitchen, no one would know.”
“…on pain of death.” I crossed my arms and stared at him.
He crossed his arms and mimicked my expression. “Oh, I’m sorry Zack, do I need to liquor you up before you’ll do something stupid with me?”
My stance loosened.
“Because, last I checked,” he continued, “you owe me.”
He had gone up to George’s with me that third time, when he could have chosen not to. “Seriously? This is what you want to cash in that favor on?”
“Yes.”
“Fucking hell. Go get the suits. I’ll find a broom.”
Rory began to argue some more, and then his expression cleared as he realized I’d agreed. Grinning like a maniac, he ran off with Puck close on his heels.
I heard the hiss of the secret passage opening, and made sure I was blocking Frances’s view as little hooves clattered on wood.
“Suits?” Frances asked, glancing over her shoulder. Her gray eyes were nearly green.
“You’ll see. Just give us a minute. We’ll get you some eggs, okay?”
She turned fully around, watching with curious eyes as Rory came running back in with an armful of furry blackness. I traded him a mop for one of the suits, and we sat at the table to quickly suit up.
Frances peered at us from the kitchen, watching our lower legs turn black, then the blackness engulf us up to our hips. Finally, we shrugged our shoulders into the suits, and each tugged on a mask.
Hefting the broom, I walked back into the kitchen.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Frances said.
“I’ll have to ask you to step back, ma’am. We’re professionals,” Rory said, his voice muffled inside his mask as he elbowed her aside.
Frances covered up a sniggering laugh, then retreated to the pantry. I didn’t like being laughed at as much as the next guy, but amused was a huge improvement on distraught.
“So,” I said, broom in hand, “what’s the plan?”
“Um, so, we open the door. And then… then, we grab the eggs,” Rory said.
“Jabbing the ermines with the broom or mop if they try anything?”
“Yeah.”
“Shouldn’t we try to scare the ermines out? What if we open the front door, and just chase them toward it?”
“But… Ernie,” Rory moaned.
“Ernie’ll be back, I’m sure. He knows where his bread is buttered.” I went and opened
the front door and propped open the screen.
Puck might as well’ve screamed “Freeeeedooom!” as he made a furious lunge for the open door. Frances intercepted, handily containing his flailing legs.
“Wait, wait,” she said as I reached for the refrigerator door handle. “I need documentation of this. Just wait.” She freed a hand to scoop her phone off the counter, then pointed it at us. Her shutter clicked.
“Ready?” I asked, glancing at my brother. I yanked the door open before he could have second thoughts. The ermines hissed, their little brown bodies crouched on the top shelf.
“Where’re the eggs, I can’t see them!” Rory hollered.
“Shh. Hold your ground,” I said. “Remember the plan: We chase ’em out.” I extended the broom, jabbing the end of it toward the little scavengers. They scattered, knocking over a jar of jalapeños. It toppled from the fridge to shatter on the floor, making glass and brine and jalapeño go everywhere.
Rory flinched, audibly hyperventilating.
“Hold,” I said, as if we were on a battlefield with a line of heavy horse approaching. Rory’s mop tip wavered. “Hold.”
Rory held his breath.
“Attack!” I lunged forward, spearing the broomstick into the fridge. There was a furious cacophony as little brown bodi
es burst in every direction. Tiny nails scrabbled against plastic as they looked for a way out. I swept my broom from left to right, chasing the little buggers from the top shelf. Two landed on the floor and shot under the door. One skittered behind the beer bottles on the door, while two more did impressive backflips onto the next shelf down.
And, the last launched himself at Rory. Rory screamed the highest-pitched, most blood-curdling scream I’d ever heard. He swung his mop handle wildly, glancing it off the refrigerator door before hitting me about the shoulder and head. Then the mop went flying, and he was clawing at his neck. “It’s on me! It’s on me!” he shrilled, spinning in a circle.
He unbalanced and slammed into the open refrigerator. The ermine on the door took one look at the hysterical Bigfoot and bailed.
“Zack!” Rory bawled.
I tossed aside my broom, yanked off my mask, and then pried off his. At first, I couldn’t see anything. It was all wild hair and wilder eyes. But then I turned him, and…
“Don’t move,” I said.
Rory froze, trembling.
The ermine had burrowed into his hair and curled around his ear, looking for all the world like an earmuff. Not just curled around, I realized. The ermine was… was gnawing on… his ear. Meeting my eyes, bloody little teeth embedded in my brother’s cartilage, the ermine growled.
Rory whimpered.
“I’m gonna grab it.” Before Rory could ask for a count of three or some other warning, my hands darted in and closed on the little bugger. I tried to pull him away from Rory’s head, but the ermine locked his jaw. Rory screamed, swatting at my hands and trying to duck away from the pain.
“Hold still. He can’t hold on forever,” I reasoned, glaring at the slender brown body that bridged the space between my hand and Rory’s head.
Frances stepped in next to my elbow and snapped a couple pictures, then ducked around me to get a couple more.
“Help me,” Rory rasped.
Frances sighed. Then she pocketed her phone and reached in, with her bare hand, and pinched the skin above the ermine’s shoulder blades. The ermine let go. So did I, and to my utter surprise, the little guy hung placidly from her fingers. She carried him through the front door, down the steps, and set him down in the yard. “Shoo,” she said, and he disappeared into the night.