What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG Book 9)

by Kristine Cayne

  “No, but you can have some, considering you won’t be able to put it back into the canister once it’s on your face,” Connie replied, but she discovered Darla could not hear her for all the rattling in the adjoining guest bathroom that Connie used exclusively.

  Darla re-emerged, fully blushed. “What was that you said?”

  “Nothing, forget it. Where are you off to?”

  “I have a date!” Darla’s voice was jubilant. “Roy called to ask a question about the graduation trip that we’re both chaperoning…”

  Connie nodded grimly. Babysitting three hundred rabid teenagers running wild through Busch Gardens Williamsburg was not her idea of fun, hence she had not volunteered.

  “Next thing you know,” Darla continued as she fished in her purse and extracted a tube of lipstick, “we’re talking about other things, joking around, and get this: he said, ‘why don’t we continue this conversation over a drink?’ Can you believe that?”

  “Unbelievable,” Connie said, deadpan, though her stomach fluttered. Certainly nothing she had done on Darla’s computer instigated these happenings. Mere coincidence, it had to be. Mere, spooky coincidence.

  The theme from The Twilight Zone played in Connie’s head. She shook it away and blinked.

  Darla’s voice raised an octave. “He doesn’t live but five minutes from here, we’re gonna meet at the Duck-In.” She looked at her bare wrist, then at the clock on wall opposite her. “Damn, I’m late. I gotta go.”

  “Late?” Connie cried. “The Duck-In is across the street. You’re fine.”

  But Darla was already hurrying to the front door. “I know, but if he’s early I don’t want him to see me sprinting across the boulevard like a madwoman. Wouldn’t be ladylike. Oh, can you go ahead and put those papers in my room so they don’t get mixed up? Good night, don’t stay up on my account.” The door slammed in goodbye.

  “I won’t,” Connie called to the dead air before her, and hung her head. I would be staying up on my account.

  She looked at the monitor. Her Min friends had cleared the screen, off to have a good time without her. In the time it took Connie to clear away Darla’s paperwork, she noticed the onscreen date continued. She, on the other hand, had nowhere to go but bed.

  Sleep, however, did not appeal to her as much as wallowing in her own misery, gorging on the pint of Cherry Garcia Darla was hoarding behind a bag of frozen peas. Darla certainly wasn’t going to need it, Connie decided as she raided the freezer, grabbed a spoon, and returned to the computer.

  Chapter Two

  Frosted pint container in one hand, Connie maneuvered the mouse with the other to erase the screensaver. Min Darla and Min Roy were still absent from cozy Min Acres, out painting Min City red. Connie had the option of following and controlling their adventures or remaining in the suburbs to create havoc with some new Mins.

  As she reached to switch to city view, however, she paused. What if what she had done earlier really did precipitate Darla’s date with Roy? In some small, cosmic way, had she manipulated Roy into asking her out for a drink? Should she play voyeur, and maybe nudge Min Roy into making a move or two, with the hopes that the real Darla might have a really pleasant evening? What if she did, and what if it worked? What if, in the course of this game, she found the sleep with me button and Darla didn’t come home?

  What if she brought him back here? She would have to listen to them making love all night! The walls in the condo were paper thin, and Darla had admittedly been without for quite some time. Certainly she would be too busy having fun to be discreet.

  She shook her head. Doo doo doo-doo, doo doo doo-doo … get over it. This was just a game, just a game…

  Slowly Connie lifted her hand. No, the real Darla was on her own with Roy Hudspeth, and given her good looks and sense of humor she did not need any further magical intervention to snare their handsome colleague. That left her at Min Acres to play real estate agent.

  It took fifteen minutes to figure out how to build a two-story house from scratch rather than use one of the house files provided in the game. One hour after that, Darla had not yet returned from her date, but Connie was too occupied to notice. She was moving Min Aaron and Min Suzy—voluptuous, sugar-coated secretary Suzy—into a scaled-down version of the town home in which she used to live. The town home that for ten summer school sessions, plus a few years at a second part-time job, she had worked to pay down the mortgage on while Aaron finished his doctorate.

  Right now, Secretary Suzy was probably studying the property with wineglass in hand, tapping nails that never touched a computer keyboard against its stem, while making plans to redecorate. Connie fumed. Secretly she prayed for a contractor to find mold in the walls, or asbestos. Or the Mafia.

  “Okay,” Connie announced, flexing her fingers, “showtime.”

  The attention to detail on her mortal Min enemies was nothing short of amazing; Connie had the couple proportioned perfectly, right down to Aaron’s prominent nose and wavy brown hair, and Suzy’s shapely bottom and billowing curls. They could have been Ken and Barbie in their pretty pink Dream Town Home; little did they know they were but sinners in the hands of a vengeful goddess high on Chardonnay and a pint of cherry-chocolate ice cream.

  Min Aaron and Min Suzy seemed to stare at each other curiously, like animals at the zoo, while adjusting to their existence. They needed a nudge, so Connie hit the argue button. Tiny hands cut the air with sharp gestures, and tiny brows furrowed. Another hit and Min Suzy had her arms folded and face turned to the wall. Creating the lover’s spat soon became second nature, and within seconds Min Aaron was selecting a pillow and blanket from the closet for his night on the couch.

  “Sweet dreams, puss,” Connie sang. She thought of her furniture at the house, in particular the most uncomfortable sofa in Virginia, a lumpy sectional carried over from Aaron’s bachelor days, something he insisted never be replaced. Aaron, being six feet tall, had to have his feet hang over the edge when reclining. Imagine having to sleep like that all night! Connie pictured an awkward, restless Aaron, and enjoyed the fantasy with a wicked smile. In all the years of their marriage, neither one of them had ever retreated to the couch following an argument. They always made up with scorching sex. How sweet it would be if this was really going on right now.

  Ah, well, a girl can dream.

  Two doors down, she created a cozy ranch-style house and moved in Min Connie—a near-exact replica of herself with cropped brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a floral babydoll dress.

  Thanks to an aerial view option, Connie could watch the whole neighborhood. While Min Connie raided her Min refrigerator from some Min and Jerry’s and relaxed in front of the television, the real Connie watched Min Aaron toss and turn and wrestle with the blanket so that his bare feet did not stay exposed.

  She shook her head. All wishful thinking; no way was this happening for real, she decided. DoMINion was just a stupid video game that took up time she could have been using toward more intellectual pursuits.

  Still…

  When midnight struck, Darla had yet to make an appearance, and, like her Min counterpart, Connie was yawning. She tucked in Min Connie and pointed the mouse toward the save option.

  Before she did, though, she entered Darla’s cheat code and boosted Min Connie’s income by a thousand dollars. So she was cheating, she shrugged. A thousand dollars seemed such a minimal amount compared to what Connie knew she could have given her. Besides, Min Connie’s husband dumped her, too, so she deserved something. Tomorrow, if she had time to play, Connie would take her to the Min Mall and help her find consolation in a nice shoe sale.

  Maybe at the mall, too, she would meet a handsome Min bachelor and end up engaging in some Min loving of her own.

  Right. Just a game…

  Connie moved the mouse to save and quit for the night, but the options menu at the left-hand corner had changed on her. Where it had previously offered the option Save/Quit, there was now the command Go!

&n
bsp; Interesting. It seemed the game didn’t want to end. Connie knew shutting down the computer was not an option, as it would erase everything she had done, and she definitely didn’t want to start over again. She sighed, and decided to leave the computer on and let the screen saver swallow the game into temporary oblivion. Darla could figure it out later.

  Yet, the pull of the Go! command was strong. A quick consult of the instruction booklet informed Connie of no such option in the game. Perhaps it was a residual of the cheat code? Pass Go and collect two hundred dollars?

  Wrong game, you ditz.

  “Well, there’s one way to find out where I’ll go,” Connie murmured, and clicked the mouse.

  She felt the pull first at her feet as the screen suddenly flickered a spectrum of bold colors. It was a tingling sensation, not unlike parts of the body falling asleep. She tried wiggling her toes, but they felt numb.

  The sensation crawled up her shins and thighs, burning a path straight to her pussy. She felt suddenly wet and her core twitched in response, but when Connie tried to move the rest of her body she was shocked to find she couldn’t.

  “Wha…?” Her voice sounded muffled and her tongue felt thick, as if she had been shot full of Novocain. The screen continued to flicker rapidly, hurting her eyes. When the tingling finally reached her pussy it remained there, rippling up and down her lips, swelling them with desire before moving on to play havoc on her clit. No longer in control of her body, Connie had no choice but to ride the inevitable orgasm home.

  And she did, just as the glow of the screen grew brighter and larger, bathing Darla’s tiny apartment in a seductive array of pastel neon hues that seemed to embrace Connie and pull her forward, into the screen … into her fantasy.

  Chapter Three

  The brightness eventually faded, contained to a pair of torchieres situated on either side of the front door. Only Darla’s apartment had different lighting … and curtains and furniture and even stucco pockmarks on the ceiling.

  Connie lay on a couch, nestled atop comfortable suede cushions with a fleece blanket tucked under her chin. Darla’s couch was standard teacher’s salary fare, rough upholstery with that one bad spring that always sought out the lower vertebrae of a napping person. This sofa was a cloud by comparison.

  This was the sofa Connie bought for Min Connie. This was Min Connie’s house.

  She felt a chill, and rose slowly, gasping as the blanket fell to her lap to reveal the peach, silk bodice of her gown. She owned no such sleepwear, this was cool and exquisite…

  …the outfit she put on Min Connie earlier.

  And she was…

  No. Connie swallowed back her bile. No way in hell could the Go! command have meant Go inside the game. This was a dream, it had to be a dream. She was lying on Darla’s couch in her ratty sweatpants and T-shirt, with a thin trail of cherry ice cream drying down one side of her mouth. This, she saw now, was merely a hallucination brought on by too many hours of playing DoMINion and gorging on sweets.

  She blinked and shook her head, then stood and walked about the room. She took in every corner of the space, every knickknack, the odd painting on the largest wall signed by Claude Minet. Everything looked, felt, smelled real. Her dreams had never before been so vivid.

  Because it’s real, an inner voice nagged at her. She should have woken by now, either by Darla’s return or her own skittishness.

  “Shit,” she seethed, then screamed as the cuckoo on the mantel cawed the new hour. Min-min, came the shrill, girlish squawk. Connie pushed her heart back into her chest and looked about the area for a computer. Seeing as how she came to this place via Darla’s PC, perhaps one here could transport her home.

  Then she remembered—she didn’t buy Min Connie a computer, because she had spent her starter’s account on the house and trappings. The cheat money was yet to be spent.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  How could she get out of here? Surely something else within the house could act as a conduit to the real world, but what? A quick survey yielded nothing plausible. Even the cuckoo wouldn’t budge from its wooden roost to provide wisdom.

  Plausible. This entire situation was implausible. How could it get any worse?

  Connie got her answer when the doorbell chimed.

  With a start, she instinctively crossed her arms over her chest. The lace trimmed bodice and low cut fabric did little to hide her breasts. Her now erect nipples appeared all the more prominent.

  The chiming persisted. Finding no robe within reach, Connie wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and checked the peephole. She couldn’t imagine any Mins stopping by, assuming Min Roy and Min Darla were still on their date. They wouldn’t know to come here anyway, and Connie hadn’t programmed her video counterpart to have friends.

  Did Min Acres have burglars? If they did, why ring the bell?

  The face looming in the fisheye lens was familiar, and shocking. Aaron’s prominent nose filled her view, wavering from side to side to reveal curious brown eyes staring into the glass. What was he doing here? Had he been sucked into this computer game void as well? It seemed unlikely, as Aaron’s computer experience was limited mainly to lesson plans and accounting spreadsheets. He wouldn’t know DoMINion from Donkey Kong.

  She opened the door, and remembered that the figure standing before her wasn’t really her husband, but his Min counterpart. By all outward appearances, he could be Aaron’s twin, with the only difference being that Min Aaron’s face had a sharper, more angular appearance. Upon closer inspection, as Connie squinted into the shadows cast by the lamplight, this person looked like somebody wearing an Aaron Raymond mask.

  “Skrack?”

  There the difference between the two Aarons grew. Min Aaron’s voice had a higher pitch, and he was speaking that damned jibberish language. Apparently, Connie’s trip into this wonderland hadn’t equipped her with the gift of translation.

  From what she could make out, though, Min Aaron looked worried. He must have heard her screaming as she arrived, and came over to investigate. Nice of him, but she didn’t want him around if he couldn’t help her get home. Connie swallowed and maintained her death grip on the front door, trying to push it between them.

  “I’m fine,” she said with a forced smile. “Er, I amo fine-o. Go back to your breasts … er, bed.” Ugh. Why did he have to look so much like Aaron, so cute in his ill-fitting pajamas. “G’night.”

  The door came just short of closing, as Min Aaron pinned himself against threshold. “Skrack,” he said with more conviction. “Flant cro, ah fackon nin.”

  “I can assure you my flant crow is fine. Good night.” She drew out the last two words into several, loud syllables, then gasped when the door pushed past her. Min Aaron now hovered over her, and brushed the back of his hand against her cheek.

  “Fackon nin,” he whispered lovingly. There didn’t seem to be a need to interpret the meaning.

  Connie’s heart palpitated. Min Aaron’s simple touch set off a million nerve endings that prickled her skin and caused her nipples to tighten even more. The heat pooled in her belly spilled into her pussy and threatened to soak her panties.

  Panties? What panties? Connie glanced at the floor and found them loose at her ankles. Min Aaron’s hand now palmed her bare ass; one finger scraped lightly at the small of her back, lightly tracing the cleft. The tickling sensation aroused her all the more.

  Odd, too, she realized. Aaron used to do this to her to get her in the mood.

  And it still worked.

  “Fackon nin.” She tested the words on her tongue. It felt weird to say, but the smile splitting Min Aaron’s face told her she guessed correctly. She let him envelop her and sweep her, literally, to the couch, where he eased her into a semi-reclined position. With one leg stretched on the sofa, she planted the other foot on the carpet and let her knee drop back to reveal her waiting pussy. Min Aaron knelt before her to better access it.

  “Pahsha ree. Jahme clah.” He moved upward to her f
ace for a gentle kiss, and swiped his tongue against the seam of her lips. He kissed like Aaron. Slowly, willingly, she parted her mouth to let him explore her further, moaning into him as his tongue glided across her palate and his lips moved over hers.

  His fingers stroked her folds and breached her core, dipping deep to spread her juices over her pussy lips and clit. Just like Aaron, but slightly different as the Min applied his skill with more intensity. Connie had to wonder if jahme clah was a rough Minese translation of her estranged husband’s former endearments.

  Min Aaron granted her little time to ponder. He broke free of their kiss and bent low to devour her pussy. Connie gasped at initial contact, then relaxed as his tongue massaged her clit in circular motion and turned her insides to liquid. Aaron had loved the taste of her juice, Connie remembered, claiming once to want only to subsist on her sweet honey. It had been so long since she had her pussy eaten, and she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten how wonderful it felt.

  Gazing down the landscape of peach silk and skin, she recalled how hot it also looked. Seeing Aaron’s—

  No. She had to remind herself that this was not her husband, this was a copy. She should be so lucky to be home and having her husband back to eat her like this, rather than Suzy.

  “Suzy!” Connie abruptly sat up, only to be forced slowly back against the cushion. Min Aaron lifted his head slightly only to say something assuring in Minese before resuming his feast.

  Somewhere in Min Acres, there was a Min Suzy roaming free. Connie remembered now: the couple argued and took separate beds. Did they break up entirely? Had Min Aaron come here on the rebound? Would Min Suzy be lurking outside with a marble rolling-pin, ready to crown them both?

  One broad swipe up her pussy, however, allayed any worries, and Connie settled back to enjoy the orgasmic buildup rumbling over her clit. Who knew when she’d experience another one not by her own hand?

  Her hips bucked as she came, the orgasm stung her entire body; Min Aaron kept his mouth clamped to her pussy and rode the wave home with her, sucking the nectar from her slick core and roughly massaging her buttocks. Connie watched his eyelids droop, dream-like … just like Aaron when they made love.