Otter Under Fire

by Dakota Rose Royce

  OTTER UNDER FIRE

  By Dakota Rose Royce

  Text copyright 2015 Dakota Rose Royce

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental

  Cover photo courtesy of Peter Hushek

  A hint for when you visit Phoenix Arizona:

  If it’s July and the car rental company is offering you a discount on a vehicle with black vinyl seats, don’t take it. They will charge you extra when you bring it back and it has bits of your fried skin still stuck to the upholstery.

  Table of Contents

  OTTER UNDER FIRE

  By Dakota Rose Royce

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  Prologue

  She had practiced secretly with a gun for days. She sat on her twin size bed with the empty pistol and pointed it to her head and figured out the trajectories and placement. She let her arm drop naturally from its position and studied where the weapon would fall on the floor.

  She thought about a note, but decided that was too staged. Most suicides didn’t leave notes, and her wording might contradict something she didn’t know about. It was best to play it safe.

  Now that the time was here, she would set it up like the scene at a play. She had been good at that once. That was a long time ago. That talent had gotten her into trouble—there were too many records. She would take care of that too.

  She had wanted to torture him and make him scream and apologize, but that would have made too many marks on the body, and she wanted the scene to be perfect.

  Fortunately, he was stupid and he thought she was harmless. He thought she was a victim. He let her walk right up to him and shoot him in his fucking head. Stupid bastard. She had no problem putting the gun in his dead hand and positioning it correctly, letting it drop and everything (ha ha) fell into place.

  Since she was so good at setting up illusions, she would make this look like something it wasn’t. She tried to find his appointment book, but after a few minutes gave up. She doubted anything in there would point to her as he hadn’t known her real name. She looked at the blood and brain matter splattered all over the bed and wall with total detachment. She might have felt bad if she hadn’t hated him so much.

  Chapter 1

  The room was as red as pain. Tempest Blackthorn had used and traded her credits in the barter club to get this room in a high end luxury hotel in Scottsdale. The curtains were drawn against the evening lights and every sturdy surface was covered in lit candles. She sighed in anticipation as her incredibly handsome lover traced kisses down the back of her neck.

  “This is going to be so good baby,” Joseph whispered in her ear as he nibbled around her earlobe. Tempest sighed, and it was an impressive sight. Her extraordinary chest size was not even the most amazing thing about her. At 5’ 10” she was only a few inches shorter than her lover, and she had black hair and deep green eyes. She had been named Tempest because—so her mother claimed--that from birth she had been a passionate force of nature.

  At last, she was ready for the ultimate sexual experience.

  She moved into him as he slowly undressed her. They kissed deeply as each item of her clothing slid to the floor and pooled at her feet. They swayed together in a slow sensual dance, his leather chaps rubbing against her bare legs. He was so damned sexy, she thought. She just couldn’t believe he was hers for the whole weekend. The chaps he was wearing on his naked body, the cowboy hat and the gun belt. He even had the western twang and called her darlin’. It was so amazingly erotic.

  He attached clamps with light pressure onto her nipples. A tingle ran through her body and she ran her hands down his muscled chest then reached down to cup him in her hand.

  “Now Darlin’, you know that’s not allowed.” He spoke sternly and slapped her hand away. Then he produced handcuffs. After fastening her wrists together, he led her into the acre of marble that was the bathroom and hooked her to a spring on a contraption that he had built himself. With a little adjustment and extra bindings her hands were hanging on either side of her head and she was bent over the sink.

  He was so wonderful, he could invent and build almost anything, she thought in her all-encompassing sexual haze.

  He gagged her with the ball gag and rubbed his hardness against her bare backside, rasping his chest hair against the rough bindings that held her in. She moaned and he reached over to the sink for a bottle of warm oil. Slowly he poured the scented liquid over her shoulders and it ran over her breasts and dripped off of her clamped nipples while she moaned in ecstasy.

  “Just a minute Honey,” he said looking into her eyes in the mirror. “I have this little thing that will make you go wild.”

  There was a buzzing sound behind her and he began to touch all her sensitive, oil covered areas making her tingle. He touched her nipple clamps and then pushed it in and out of her. She squirmed against her restraints and gasped against the ball gag.

  The toy was put on the sink next to her and then she heard the whip rush through the air before she felt its sting. Then she struggled in earnest as the strokes fell fast and accurately on her sensitive and oil covered backside. They were right. When you were aroused the whip made you hornier. Never had she wanted someone so much as this man in leather with a whip in his hand. If she hadn’t been tied, up she would throw him on the marble floor and take him right there.

  He picked up the vibrator again and began to ply all her areas with the pulsing sensations. She became more aroused if that was possible. She wiggled and she squirmed and became passionately, crazy ready. He tweaked her nipples and rubbed against her sore backside. She was needy, she was hot and if they didn’t fuck soon she was going to lose it.

  And then the buzzing stopped.

  She could see him frown at the vibrator in the mirror and play with it a little bit. He opened it up and took it apart.

  “Wasn’t a very good battery, honey,” he drawled. “Good thing I brought one with me.” He disappeared into the bedroom and she could hear him digging through his luggage.

  A minute dragged into five and then into ten. Her arms were getting tired and her mouth was beginning to ache. Finally he came back and put the toy on the bathroom counter along with a watch battery. He dropped the end piece of the vibrator’s battery case on the floor and bent to retrieve it—knocking the battery into the sink and the bottle of oil onto the rug.

  She watched the battery circle slowly around the bowl like a quarter in a novelty gumball machine. Then it stopped on the edge of the drain. She tried to tell him, but through the gag the sound was muffled.

  “I know Darlin’, I’m excited too,” he said absently as he searched through his things on the counter top.

  “I swear I brought that battery in here,” he murmured and he went out into the bedroom again.

  She yelled, she tried to spit out the gag, but it wouldn’t budge.

  He wandered back into the bathroom.

  “Now where could that little thing have gone?” He shook his head and looked through everything on the counter again.

  She made threatening noises through her gag and he jumped a little, knocking the vibrator into the sink and pushing the battery into the drain.

  “My goodne
ss, you’re turning purple,” he said as he loosened the gag. “I’m sorry; I didn’t think I would cut off your air.” He patted her on her bare and sticky shoulder. “Just give me a little more time and we can get back to it.”

  He wandered back out into the bedroom again and was gone for an endless few minutes. He finally came back with another, shorter whip.

  “Let’s try something else baby, I think that toy is dead.”

  She shook her head violently and made more noise against the gag. Stupid men she thought. Did he have to ruin everything? She gave him the information, texted him the web sites so he could do research on his own. So what does he do? He comes unprepared and screws this up. Once she was free, she would teach him what real punishment was.

  “What’s the matter baby?” Stupid cowboy accent she thought bitterly, it was seriously getting on her nerves. “I’m sorry darlin’, I forgot the blindfold. I’ll go get it.”

  She shook her head again and gave him their safe signal. He took the gag out of her mouth.

  “I’m done,” she said. “Un-cuff me and let me go.” And the longer it took him to release her, she thought, the longer she had to plan that punishment.

  “What? Why? You don’t want to play anymore?”

  “Let me go so I can sit in a hot Jacuzzi and get this sticky oil off of me.”

  “But what about our plans?” She hadn’t realized how idiotic he looked standing there in nothing but a cowboy hat and leather chaps.

  “You will let me out of this now,” she said calmly. “And once I am in my bath, you will attend to my every need.”

  “Ok Honey, whatever you want.”

  “And you will only address me as ‘my lady’,” or he could address her as her demoness the bitch goddess, she thought grimly.

  “Yes, milady,”

  She massaged life back into her wrists and pushed past him to get out of his way, stepped on some of the pooled oil and fell flat on her sore ass.

  With the mood she was in, he didn’t know if he should help her or get out of her way. He knew enough to not start laughing. He was certain of that. He chose to help her and slid across the room. To break his fall, he grabbed at the tub, pulled a towel off a rack and knocked over the burning candles, sending them onto the oil soaked bathroom rug.

  The fire was breathtaking.

  The fire was breathtaking. Fire brought life to our planet, Otter thought to herself as she sweated in her silver, fire proof suit. The bright, molten liquid flowed past her into large, heavy crucibles that moved the fluid on to where it would be cooled and stretched and rolled into sheets of steel for manufacturing.

  She watched the hypnotic motion of the rivulets swirling in the bright river. Her mind wandered through thoughts about how elements, born in the hearts of dying stars and blown across light years of space could solidify together and be made into living creatures, rocks or even—like today--steel.

  Her name was Mackenzie Ottenberger—Otter to her friends. She was tall, with a medium build and brown hair and eyes. Widowed at an early age, she had gone on to earn degrees in engineering, metallurgy and—oddly enough— general arts. Her outfit of choice was jeans, t-shirt and work boots. Comfortable in the industrial world of metals, machining and manufacturing, she was well able to handle the challenge as division supervisor in a large plant in an older part of Phoenix Arizona. On this particular day, she had accepted a customer’s invitation to watch them formulate and pour one of the first heat lots of a new type of steel that the shop’s owner had created.

  Bypassing the offering of pastries after the pour, Otter took a few minutes to chat with the production manager and the chief metallurgist. They were excited about their new steel recipe[1] and wanted to talk about ductility and tensile strength and all the other technical aspects and potential applications for the metal cooling in the back. The speculation on the possibilities took them to late in the afternoon and promised to drag on until after dinner time. With as much diplomatic charm as she could muster, she extricated herself from the enthusiastic men and got in her truck to go home.

  She was feeling sticky and dirty from sweating in the hot suit. She desperately wanted a dip in her pool and something refreshing for dinner. Since it was Monday, maybe Tempest would be home and they could eat on the patio and catch up on things. She hadn’t seen her roommate since the previous Friday afternoon and couldn’t wait to hear about her latest exploits.

  They lived in both halves of a duplex. Since they had been friends from adolescence, they decided to be roommates again after Tempest’s divorce the year before. Together they negotiated the purchase of a bank owned, neglected property--with the idea that they would re-form it to meet their needs. Each woman essentially had her own wing of the house, including a separate address, but they had completely remodeled both units so they shared a large living room, dining room and kitchen. Through double doors in the kitchen, there was a patio. Beyond the patio was the pool and hot tub. The water fountain into the pool was due to be finished in a couple of weeks.

  She drove up to the freshly painted house. The landscaping was in process, so palms and lush tropical plants sat waiting to be planted according to the plan they had approved. Phoenix was the best place to be, Otter thought as she drove into her two car garage; casual living, very little cold weather and a sense of creativity throughout the city. Not to mention a place where they could have a year round pool and tropical greenery in the yard.

  Her hair still wet from her shower, Otter made herself a salad of spicy salmon and fresh greens with a piquant touch of mango salsa. She fed the starving cats and put a last few dishes in the dish washer before turning the timer for a night run. While she was making herself a margarita slushy, Tempest came into the kitchen.

  “Ooh, make me one of those,” she said.

  “Sure,” Otter said pulling another glass out of the cupboard, she stopped and sniffed the air. “Why do you smell like smoke?”

  “We got the fire out, it wasn’t that bad,” Tempest said shrugging her shoulders, “Fortunately the floor was black marble tile. You couldn’t even see the scorch marks.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  “The mat was just one of those thin terry cloth things that look like a towel, so it wasn’t much of a loss.”

  “So how was your rendezvous other than that you got the fire out?”

  “I re-connected with my inner bitch goddess.”

  “I hope you didn’t do any damage to anyone with her. “

  “Not enough, but I can fix that later.”

  “In modern terminology, being a bitch goddess means you’re rich, or so I hear.”

  “Oh yeah, bring that on,” Tempest laughed.

  “I hear you.” Otter handed Tempest her drink.

  “But I have a sore ass.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Let’s say it didn’t go quite the way I planned.”

  “I’m sorry to hear things didn’t go well.”

  “Problem was that I was the only one who planned.” She sighed deeply, “But a little frustration is supposed to make the climax more exciting.”

  Otter wasn’t sure that she agreed with that approach, but who was she to say? She had no interest in being tied up, but if someone else wanted to give it a whirl it was none of her business.

  “I was able to teach someone a lesson, you know how I like to educate.”

  “I do.” Otter said.

  “And it’s giving me good research for my newest client. I’ll have a better perspective into their business and clientele as we go through this process.”

  “Which client would this be?”

  “The S&M club over on Thunderbird. I’m sure I told you about them.”

  “You could have, I just don’t remember.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tempest waved it away, “they need some work before they can go mainstream.” She picked some invisible lint off of her turquoise tank that went beautifully with her khaki, hand tailored s
horts and her darkly tanned skin. Her jewelry complemented her outfit as did her designer sandals.

  Unlike Otter, Tempest wouldn’t be caught dead in work boots. Her clothes were of the best material and custom made for her. Her shoes were legion and went with her equally overwhelming collection of purses and bags. She wore only Braxton Alexander cosmetics, an exclusive line where her mother was once an executive. She was the leading consumer of her favorite brand of diet cola which she drank out of wine glasses, and she shared custody of two golden retrievers with her ex.

  Tempest had one passion and that was her belief in the American Dream. She was not only interested in it for herself, but for every American who had any merchandise or a service to be sold. Tempest’s company, Blackthorn Marketing was an immense well of creativity and innovative, yet irritating jingles which made her clients some of the most successful people in the country.

  “So what did you do with your weekend?” Tempest asked.

  “I set up a booth at the arts and crafts mall,” Otter said as she rummaged through a drawer for a fork, “to sell some of the jewelry I made the past few months. Ran that most of the weekend, had a date that was ok, put some notes together for a meeting I have with Clark on Friday, nothing really exciting.”

  “How did you do at the fair?”

  “Sold most of what I had.”

  “Good job,” Tempest sipped her margarita and savored the first taste. “Ah, this is great. Can you make me some of that?” she pointed to Otter’s plate.

  “Got you covered,” Otter was already pulling a cold plate out of the refrigerator and arranging salad greens on it.

  Deftly weaving around the cats, they went out on the patio to enjoy their dinner.

  “You know what you need?” Tempest said, propping her chin in her hand.

  “What would that be?”

  “You need some excitement in your life.” Tempest had a certain missionary zeal in her eyes that Otter knew well.

  “I’m not going with you to that bar again,” Otter said firmly, “they shot at us.”