by JJ Jones
Abel adjusted her legs around his middle and shuffled closer. He curled a hand around one of her hips, and she lifted them off the ground again, as Abel’s other hand curled around his cock, so he could line it up with her entrance. He pushed forwards, and Clarissa’s mouth dropped open in a moan as the head of his cock breached her, and she threw her head to the side. Abel paused for only a moment, letting go of the base of his cock and grabbing her other hip to hold up her full weight. Then, he pressed forward, his cock sinking deeper and deeper, drawing a series of tiny, whimpering moans from Clarissa with each inch, until he at last he was fully sheathed within her, his pelvis pressed to the backs of her thighs.
He paused again, taking a slow, deep breath, and Clarissa wasn’t sure if he was pausing for her or for himself, but she took the moment to catch her breath regardless.
His first thrust was slow, almost experimental, as if they were trying it for the first time. Granted, they hadn’t really known each other the first time, so maybe it did all seem new. Either way, Clarissa wasn’t going to complain as Abel began moving. His grip on her hips was firm and steady, and with each thrust inward he used his hold on her to tug her closer, so she met each thrust with a delicious little jolt.
It didn’t take long at all before her fingers were curling in the grass, raking tiny furrows in the dirt. It was lucky that the section of the park they were in was as empty as it was, as neither of them seemed to remember that they were in public, and Clarissa’s moans were not quiet, just as Abel’s groans were not subtle.
Heat built steadily in Clarissa’s belly as Abel kept thrusting, pushing her closer and closer to the precipice of orgasm with each thrust. When he pulled a hand away from her hip to stroke her clit, she gasped out a stuttering moan that seemed closer to a sob and tumbled over that precipice, her orgasm rolling over her in a way that it never had before. Each muscle tensed for a drawn-out moment, followed by smaller, shivering aftershocks as Abel carried on thrusting and stroking her clit throughout her orgasm, drawing it out for as long as he could. He only pulled his hand away from her clit when she gradually went limp, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath, though she scarcely had a chance to as he kept on thrusting, pounding into her with renewed vigor after her orgasm. His hand returned to her hip and his grip on her tightened, so with each thrust he could slam into her, his rhythm steady and relentless.
It almost seemed impossible when she felt that same heat beginning to build a second time, slower and softer, as if it was trying to creep up on her, and Abel only seemed to be just
approaching his climax, though it was still apparent he had a ways to go by the way his rhythm hardly faltered.
Clarissa moaned quietly, her head rocking from one side to the other and her fingers tightening in the grass, pulling it out as her hands tensed. She trembled as she got closer and closer to another orgasm, shivering with overstimulation, and though it was a completely new feeling to her, she already knew she wouldn’t be able to get enough of it.
Finally, Abel’s pace was beginning to falter, and one of his hands returned to her clit, stroking it quickly with three fingers, motions hurried and clumsy, determined to draw her second orgasm out of her before he hit his own.
For as slowly as it tried to creep up on her, it seemed to hit her all at once, and her back arched as she moaned, long and loud. Her legs tightened around Abel’s middle and she ripped up fistfuls of grass as her hands tightened until her knuckles hurt. Every muscle tensed, and then shuddered and shivered and twitched, and Abel kept stroking her clit the entire way through, as if he could prolong her orgasm until the end of time if he was dedicated enough.
When Clarissa went limp again and Abel stopped stroking, only then did she realize that his own thrusting had lost all sense of rhythm, his thrusts erratic and sharp, each quick motion jerking her forward each time his hips met the backs of her legs.
When he finally came, it was with a drawn-out groan, not nearly as loud as Clarissa had been but shameless all the same. Truly, it was a very good thing that there was no one around to hear them, or else they likely would have been arrested for public indecency. He managed only a few more shuddering thrusts after that before he came to a halt, his pelvis pressed tight to her legs until his hold on her hips gradually loosened and he began to lower her down to the grass once again, his cock slipping out of her as he did.
He sat back on his feet afterwards, and for a few moments the only sound was the two of them breathing, trying to catch their breath. It was Clarissa who eventually broke their relative silence, giggling hysterically behind her hands for almost a full minute as Abel watched her in bemusement, until at last she managed to get out an incredulous, “We just fucked in public.”
That was all she managed for a moment as she lapsed back into laughter, until she eventually managed an equally incredulous, “Not even a subtle kind of public. We’re about three twigs and a leaf away from being a main attraction somewhere.”
Abel sighed out a breath of laughter, his chin tipping towards his chest as he did. “You’re not wrong,” he agreed eventually, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “We should probably get out of here before someone spots us,” he added as an afterthought, though he didn’t sound particularly concerned.
“I guess,” Clarissa sighed, slowly sitting up so she could pull her bra back into place and pull the straps of her dress back up. Her dress was too rumpled for her to possibly make it look natural without an ironing board and a steam machine, but she could at least make it look like she hadn’t tried (successfully) to strip half naked in a public park.
Once Abel got to his feet, he offered her a hand up, and as he closed the fly of his pants and buckled his belt once again, Clarissa pulled her panties back up and tried to make her skirt look presentable, but with rather limited success.
Once Abel had his shirt buttoned up once again, he transformed and lowered himself to the grass once more, letting Clarissa climb back on without a hassle. The flight from there to Abel’s townhouse was no less beautiful than the first flight, but by that point Clarissa was a little too tired to properly appreciate it, and instead she devoted most of her time to not falling off of Abel’s back. She was fairly sure that would be an awful way to end what had been a fantastic night.
It wasn’t a particularly long flight, and once he landed she suspected he was going to offer to take her back to the hotel if that was what she wanted, but she didn’t give him the chance. Instead, she turned towards the house and made her way up the few steps and to the door, and she could hear Abel’s footsteps behind her. Once they were inside, they made their way up to the bedroom, where they stripped naked once again and climbed into bed.
Clarissa was asleep before Abel could even finish pulling the covers up. It had been a very
eventful night, after all.
She dreamed of dancing lights and the wind in her face, as if that was the only place she was
ever meant to be. At some point during the night, she rolled over until she was practically trying to burrow against Abel’s shoulder. Neither of them even seemed to notice, and they slept
peacefully through the night after that.
CHAPTER SIX
The next time Abel texted Clarissa about a lead, the address he gave her was for a cafe. Clarissa left with plenty of time to get there and still wound up getting there right on time because she kept getting distracted, taking pictures of the architecture with her phone. More pictures to send to Lacy, and she supposed she could give some of them to the photography department of the magazine to see if they could do anything with any of them.
The cafe was small and tucked between two larger buildings like it was trying to hide, and Clarissa nearly walked right past it until she spotted Marjorie sitting at a table right by the
window, just as impossible to miss as she had been when Clarissa first met her.
Despite that magnetic quality, Clarissa couldn’t actually imagine anyone being truly jealou
s of Marjorie. It would be like getting jealous over a rose for smelling sweet. It wasn’t something the rose was consciously doing. The rose couldn’t even appreciate it. It was simply a fact of the rose’s existence that it smelled sweet.
She stepped inside and glanced around as she headed to the counter to make her order, but Abel was nowhere to be found, and he was still nowhere in sight as she headed to the table with her coffee. It smelled incredible, smelling less like coffee and more like the square of dark chocolate still melting in the bottom of the mug.
She sat down at the table, and Marjorie smiled pleasantly. Clarissa found herself returning it without any effort, as if the expression was being drawn out automatically.
She took a sip of her coffee and sighed contently before she actually said anything, and she
wondered mildly, “No Abel today?”
Considering the brief amount of time that she had known him, it was a little strange how quickly his presence had come to seem like an ordinary, expected part of the day. It wasn’t even unpleasant; it was just an odd little detail she made note of.
Marjorie shrugged one shoulder carelessly. “He wanted to be here,” she replied, “but he had a meeting. Something about a policy change going into effect across all of his hotels.” She waved it off with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “Not that it matters that much; I can fill you in just fine on my own.” As if to prove that point, she deftly reached into a pocket and pulled out another slip of paper.
“You need to do a bit less of the legwork this time,” she supplied as she passed the slip of paper across the table, and Clarissa picked it up and looked at it. She wasn’t quite familiar with the
various places in the city, but she was pretty sure the address was somewhere towards the outside of the city, a bit farther away from the hustle and bustle than the very central building where she had talked to Mr. Bergeron.
“And things are going to go a little bit differently this time,” Marjorie added, carrying on seamlessly. “We’re pretty sure they’re going to be meeting tonight, and we’ll be going with you. We just need you to go in to get confirmation that they’re involved and then let us know, and we’ll follow you in after that.”
“What are they going to be this time?” Clarissa wondered, folding the slip of paper and dropping it into a small side pocket of her purse. “And what is this place, anyway?” she added, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the pocket the slip had just disappeared into.
“Gryphons,” Marjorie supplied, and she gave a slightly impish smile as Clarissa’s eyes grew wide and round. “And it’s a distribution center for a hardware chain. To our knowledge, they help Corvin move basically anything around the city without being noticed, since he hides it all in their trucks.”
“I need to sneak up on a group of gryphons,” Clarissa stated, and if she even heard anything about what the building was, it was a little unclear, as she didn’t acknowledge that detail. “I’m harmless,” she pointed out. “I may as well be sandwich filling.”
“They won’t even notice you’re there,” Marjorie reminded her, her tone gentling slightly. “You’re a human. You smell like a human. They won’t even notice you; that warehouse is
crawling with humans all day, every day. Even if they realize there’s a new human in the area, they’ll probably just assume that there was a new driver.”
She paused for a moment to take a few sips from her own coffee, before she added thoughtfully, “And that’s assuming any of them are even there long enough to recognize any of the scents of specific people. I don’t think any of them do any of the ‘back room’ work, so to speak.”
Clarissa nodded slowly, her expression distant, as she was already pondering what she should do that night. Soft-soled shoes were a must. And she supposed she should wear grey, just to make her a bit harder to spot if any of them looked in her direction. If everything Marjorie was saying was true, then it didn’t sound like she would be in much danger, but she didn’t want to be reckless about it. If nothing else, it would be a trespassing charge, and she didn’t need to deal with that in a country she was only visiting on her job’s dime.
“Alright,” she agreed finally, before she lifted her coffee to take a long sip of it. “Tonight, then.” She nodded once, more to steel her own nerves than for any other reason. “Am I meeting you guys there, or are you picking me up?”
“We’ll meet you there,” Marjorie answered. “We need to stay far enough away that they won’t immediately pick up our scent once we’re there, and it probably wouldn’t go particularly well if you showed up at the exact same time as something reeking of dragon, unicorn, or both.”
Clarissa nodded in understanding, and she tipped her head back as she finished the last of her coffee. She stared down into the mug for a moment before she set it down with a sigh. “So, I guess this is happening.” She set the mug down on the table. “At least I can say I had an exciting vacation.”
And in a strange sort of way, she was excited for whatever was to come, and the rest of the afternoon seemed to pass in a flash.
*
Clarissa checked herself in the hotel room mirror, tightened her ponytail, and nodded once in
satisfaction, content that nothing about her was going to stand out much at all that evening. She shot off a text message to Abel and Marjorie to let them know that she was leaving, before she called a cab and left the hotel to wait for it.
The driver seemed only a little curious about why she wanted to go to a warehouse that was
likely closed for the night, all by herself and with no special equipment, but he didn’t ask her about it and Clarissa felt no inclination to try and make up an excuse to a question that hadn’t been asked.
Halfway there, she got a text from Abel letting her know that he and Marjorie were in position and would be waiting for her to give them the go ahead, and she took a deep, steadying breath. She would be fine. If anything went wrong, Abel and Marjorie wouldn’t be that far away, and she was sure she could keep the gryphons busy long enough for the cavalry to arrive if they did happen to find her.
She would be fine. She had nothing to worry about.
She was a little bit excited, which she wouldn’t have been able to predict. She had always been fairly tame in her activities and interests, and she had always tried to avoid getting into trouble. But maybe that was why she was excited; it had been so long since she had last stepped out of her comfort zone, and suddenly she was bursting out of it with the force of a stampede of wildebeests.
But she could contemplate all of that later. For the moment, she needed to focus on the matter at hand as the cab pulled to a halt at the rear of the warehouse. Clarissa paid and climbed out and began cautiously approaching the building. For the most part, it was dark, but she could make out dim light from somewhere inside, only just managing to spill out of the one open bay door.
Clarissa approached that open bay door cautiously, poking her head in once she reached it and peering around carefully, just to make sure there was no one watching the door. Only when she was sure that there wasn’t anyone waiting to catch her did she step the rest of the way inside, heading towards the light coming from deeper within the warehouse.
It was all eerily silent at first, though as she got deeper into the building she could hear voices, gradually getting louder and louder as she walked further and further.
Something screeched quietly in the near distance, like a table being shoved across the floor, and Clarissa ground to a halt, one foot still raised off the floor as if throwing herself off balance was going to help her at all. For a very long moment, she simply listened, waiting for the sounds of footsteps rushing towards her. Waiting to be caught, and for Abel and Marjorie to have to rush in and save her.
After almost a full minute, when that failed to happen, she carefully resumed walking, each step placed carefully, landing heel to toe to stay as quiet as she could.
At last, she rounded a towering set of shelves and pr
essed herself against it when she saw a trio of men just a few feet away, sitting around a card table that had been set up in the middle of the floor.
None of them were particularly large, but she supposed she shouldn’t have expected anything else. They were businessmen—business gryphons?—not bouncers. Of course, they didn’t look like hulking body-builders. They didn’t even look particularly intimidating, partially dressed down and frazzled as they gathered around the table, one of them eventually getting up to pace
as their conversation gradually shifted to an argument.
(Not that she planned on testing that idea. The fact that they were apparently gryphons rather outweighed the fact that they didn’t necessarily look all that intimidating just then, as far as Clarissa was concerned.)
They spoke in hushed voices, and Clarissa crouched closer to the floor and began to carefully creep over to the next set of shelves, and she pressed herself close to it until she could feel the metal against her shoulder. She shuffled along the shelves, closer to the table, until she was close enough to actually hear them. She climbed onto an empty gap in the shelves, just to make it even less likely that they would spot her. She pulled her recorder from her bag at last and turned it on and did her best to stay as still and as silent as a statue.