Tab Bennett and the Inbetween

by Jes Young

  “Don’t stop,” I begged when he took a small step back. My voice sounded strange to me, strangled and airless. He growled and reached for the waistband of my pajamas pants, pulling them off me in one effortless motion.

  “Unbutton your top,” he whispered.

  So I did. My fingers trembled over the buttons and he couldn’t look away.

  “Take off your panties,” he said breathlessly.

  I added them to the pile.

  Then I pulled him out of his t-shirt and helped him take off his jeans. He was naked and perfect in the moonlight, his eyes a shifting kaleidoscope of color and light.

  “You have no idea how badly I want to be inside you,” he said as he pulled me to him.

  “Then show me.” I said.

  And he did.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I had a dream that I was walking on the stone wall between the Manor and the deep forest. I was holding a bright red parasol. Round and round it went in my hand, spinning like the wheel of fate. Robbin was standing on the ground a little ways away from me, looking at me with disapproval and disappointment in his eye.

  “So you’ve decided?” he asked.

  “Everything was decided for me,” I insisted. “All I had to do was show up.”

  I leaned over, tilting into the deep shadow and high dark of the forest, pretending I’d lost my footing, making him think I was going to fall.

  “Don’t do that,” he cried, reaching to steady me although the wall was high above his head. Ten feet high, fifteen. Higher and higher. I looked down and saw Robbin, so small and far away as the wall continued to grow. I could hear him calling my name, yelling. “Get down from there. Come down before you fall.”

  The wall was twenty feet high now and still climbing. “I’m coming down,” I called. “Try to catch me.” I blew him a kiss, positioned my feet on the wall’s tipping edge, and stepped off into the sky.

  I fell slowly, like a starling feather, like Alice through the looking glass. Just before the crash that would have broken my parasol, a thousand starlings caught me and held me and carried me away.

  When I woke I was in Alex’s bed with the word Homecoming, his thought, in my head. He was lying next to me, naked, his perfect body curled against mine. There was no clock on the nightstand – he insisted Elves didn’t need clocks to know the time – but I guessed by the quality of the light that it was late in the afternoon.

  I stretched and felt him stir against me. He made a sound like a soft purr and wrapped his arm around my waist. I settled against him and closed my eyes again. I snuggled in and let myself enjoy being close to him. I knew once we started talking everything would become complicated. There would be consequences and ramifications and the endless chorus of ‘I told you so’ to deal with. There would be Robbin to deal with. I was content to let the peaceful silence go on a little longer.

  I turned around to face Alex, pressing my lips to his shoulder.

  “We left our clothes,” I whispered. “Someone has probably found them by now.”

  He chuckled. “At least our clothes are the only thing they found lying on the kitchen floor.”

  Although it had seemed like I would, I didn’t lose my virginity up against the island countertop in Bennett’s kitchen. Alex carried me upstairs to bed before things went any further. I was so caught up in kissing him I didn’t even notice the venue change until he laid me on his bed.

  He looked so peaceful laying there, all relaxed and stretched out across the bed. I reached out impulsively, caressing him with the back of my hand. The smile on his face reawakened the butterflies in my stomach.

  “It feels strange to touch you.”

  “Still?” He propped himself up on his elbow and looked at me with a slightly amused expression on his face.

  I’d touched every bit of him, kissed and licked every inch. I blushed, remembering. “I meant not to resist touching you when I want to,” I explained. “I’ve had to do it so often it’s become a habit now.”

  His eyes sparkled as he moved closer to me. I could feel him getting hard against my thigh. “Do you want to touch me now?”

  I was too breathless for speech; the best I could do was nod. He kissed me and guided my hand down. I wrapped my fingers around him, moving my hand slowly up and down the hot, hard length of him.

  “Is this ok?” I whispered. It was his turn to be too breathless to talk; he nodded. His reaction made me bold.

  I pushed him back against the bed and climbed on top of him. I trailed my hair across his body, rubbed my breasts across his chest and stomach, and settled myself between his legs. I wrapped my fingers around him, teasing with my fingertips.

  “Can I kiss you?” I asked.

  “God yes.”

  I kissed the tip of him, licked. His breath caught in his throat, his body arching off the bed to meet my mouth. “I’ve never done this before,” I said. He moaned when I bent to take him into my mouth. I sucked and licked, so gently, loving the taste of him, the feeling of that solid silken flesh. He said my name, again and again. Begging me.

  I pulled my mouth away. Kneeling above him, I positioned myself so he could slip inside me. I moved my hips, rubbing him against the soft, wet warmth of my body, teasing us both.

  “Now,” he demanded. He reached up, wrapping his hands around my waist, pulling me down on him, burying himself deep inside me. I arched my back, driving him deeper still.

  I moved slowly at first, until I found the rhythm. Then faster and faster, sliding against him, slamming, until the crackle of power and magic was so thick and bright in the air around us I could hardly breathe. He arched his hips one last time. I yelled his name as the release shook through my body. The room lit up, a flash of lightening, and then was dark again.

  “You are amazing,” he said after I collapsed on top of him. For a long moment I laid there, feeling too weak and sated to move. When I propped myself up on my elbow he was nearly asleep. I disentangled myself and curled against his side. I waited until I thought he was asleep and then I slipped quietly from the bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Downstairs. I’m not really tired but you look exhausted. I’ll just toss and turn if I stay in bed and keep you awake.”

  “Do you want some company?” he asked through a yawn.

  I thought it was very sweet of him to offer but he was clearly too tired to make it to the bedroom door let alone all the way to the kitchen. “That’s OK.”

  I borrowed his robe from his closet. I had to roll up the cuffs, but it was soft and warm and the plaid flannel felt good next to my skin.

  “Looks better on you,” he mumbled as I went out into the hall, quietly closing the door behind me.

  ********

  The sight of our clothes still in a heap on the kitchen floor where we’d abandoned them made me blush. The small matter of my virginity was at last behind me – and what a way to lose it. I smiled and folded our things into small pile to bring upstairs with me when I went back up.

  That’s when I saw the package. It was sitting on the bottom step of the back porch. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with a big aqua blue bow, it looked innocent enough.

  I went to the door but didn’t open it.

  Francis would be so proud of me. I scanned the yard to see if who ever had delivered it was still outside.

  I could see clear to the wood line; there was no one there. I wondered who’d left it, how long it had been sitting out there. I debated with myself about going out to get it for a full fifteen seconds before I decided I was curious enough to risk it. I unlocked the door and waited; no one came. I opened the door and stepped outside, fully prepared to jump back into the house if someone Appeared but I was alone.

  While I went cautiously down the stairs, pausing to listen and watch on each step, a starling came and landed on the box.

  “Go away,” I said. But he didn’t. He opened his wings, flapping them in an attempt to either scare me off or fly away with the box.
“Let go, bird,” and then I added, “I ask this as your future Queen.”

  The bird looked at me and hopped off.

  I reached out and grabbed the box without going down any further. My heart was racing as I sprinted back up the stairs and locked the door again; turning my back to the woods was the scariest thing I’d done in a long time. When I looked back, safe inside the house again, the bird was gone.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” I said, turning to look at him. “There was a starling outside.”

  “Where did that come from?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged and set the box on the counter, pulling the card from underneath the satin bow. “It was on the porch when I came downstairs.”

  I opened the card. The note inside was written on a thick piece of creamy white paper. The handwriting was elegant and looping and formal. I read the note aloud:

  Tabitha,

  This is the first of many gifts I could give you. How many you receive depends entirely on you. Renounce the crown to which you have no legitimate right and Bennett will be returned to you – more or less in one piece. Refuse and he dies.

  Together, he and I are waiting for you to do the right thing.

  George grabbed the card from my hand and studied it, looking for some clue I might have missed.

  “Hey, I wasn’t done,” I said.

  “Yes you are.”

  “What else does it say?” George ignored me. I watched him read the card to himself, watched the threat sink in and take hold. His eyes were a hypnotizing swirl of lime green and black.

  Suddenly the box was different, terrifying. Even the bow looked sinister. I tried to pick it up but I couldn’t seem to make my hand reach for it.

  “Back up,” he said, grabbing the box before I could. He took a deep breath, yanked the ribbon off, and looked inside. His face went white. I took a step toward him but he shook his head and stepped away from me. The hand he held up to stop me was shaking.

  I heard him think, ‘don’t scream’ when he looked inside again.

  “Where is Alex?” His eyes were wild, panicked; they’d turned a disturbing shade gray, the color of sickness and rot.

  “He’s sleeping.”

  “Go get him. Both of you get dressed and then come back here. I’ll get Francis and the others.”

  “What is in that box George?” He shook his head but didn’t answer. “You’re freaking me out.” He held the box tight against his chest even though I could tell it repulsed him to do so. “George…?”

  I didn’t need him to say anything. I got my answer another way.

  He turned paler still as a thought flashed through his head, Does the finger inside this box mean that Bennett’s dead already or should we take it as a dare?

  ******

  You may have noticed that in times of crisis, I have an unattractive tendency to say inappropriate things. I don’t mean to and I wish I could stop. I always thought I would outgrow it but I haven’t yet.

  “I keep wondering what Pop would want me to do if he was here. He taught me a lot of things over the years but none of them seem to fit this exact finger in a box situation, you know?”

  Alex was holding my hand, leading me back to the kitchen where everyone was gathering. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I thought of the box sitting on the counter downstairs and the grisly surprise it held. “Are you sure? Because I’ve just recently seen overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

  “Don’t be glib.”

  “I can’t help it,” I answered honestly. “It’s kind of my defense mechanism,”

  “Your mother used to do the same thing.”

  Mother was just a word to me; it didn’t evoke images of her or memories. I grew up with a misty idea of her that was based on stories that turned out to be lies. I still found it odd that other people knew her and adventures with her. She just wasn’t real to me. Instead of a mother I had Pop. His finger was in a box.

  Where’s the rest of him?

  “Do you think he’s dead? Tell me honestly if you do.” We Bennetts had never had a disappearance with a happy ending; it seemed naïve to think that this would be the first.

  Alex only looked worried for a split second before he smiled reassuringly. “Did you have a vision about Bennett’s death?”

  “No, I haven’t seen anything.”

  “Then he’s alive.”

  “Or he might have died too quickly to send a vision – one second alive, the next gone, with no time to plan.”

  “I’m telling you honestly that I think he’s alive.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him. The general policy had been to shield me from everything for so long that I doubted any of them could tell me an unpleasant truth on the first try.

  Francis looked me over when we walked into the kitchen. He didn’t look pleased. “Are you okay? You look pale. Are you going to faint? Matt, get her a chair.” Then he hurried over to get a chair for me himself.

  “I’m fine, Frannie.” I wasn’t fine at all but I tried to smile anyway. “Just a little shaken.”

  Robbin hovered on the edge of the scene with a disapproving look on his face. He wouldn’t meet my eyes but I knew he was studying Alex and me, the way we stood together, the way I leaned toward him. He was thinking that he wanted to come to me and pull me away but that he wasn’t going to come. He’d severed the tie between us when he disappeared and left me at the edge of the forest and it had to stay that way. I knew he wanted to kill Alex, literally kill him, just for holding my hand but that loyalty would stop him from acting on the desire, no matter how strong it was. I knew that he thought Bennett was dead and that the finger in the box was nothing more than the spring on some kind of trap.

  “Robbin…” I began. He cut me off with a quick, cold look that made it clear he didn’t want to hear from me. The sting of it surprised me.

  “Let me see the note.” Alex looked at me from the corner of his eye as Francis handed it to him. He read it quickly, holding it out so I could read it too.

  “All right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I kept my voice even. Remaining calm in times of crisis is such a queenish thing to do, isn’t it? I could tell that Alex was a little proud of me.

  “Your Lightness,” he said, addressing me formally. “I will take command of this situation on your behalf, if you wish.”

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  He gave me a tender look then turned to the men. “Summon all the Generals to the Center.”

  Matt stood, waiting for further instructions. His face was solemn but there was an undeniable edge of excitement in the way his eyes darted around the room. The muscles of his legs practically vibrated with anticipation, with the desire to run. His mind, which I could read as clear as a page in a book, was bent on revenge. Rivers was dead and someone was finally going to pay.

  “It is essential that each of them is there. Make it clear that their future Queen commands them to gather and that dissention will not be tolerated.”

  Matt bowed his head slightly, accepting his task.

  Alex turned to Francis. “I think it best that you go to Estella yourself. Bring her and the Five Hundred to the Center however you can. She must be there. Once the army is assembled, begin preparations for an attack on the Underneath.”

  “You think that’s where he is? Underneath?” There was a hint of something I couldn’t place in Francis’s voice and he looked vaguely nauseous.

  Alex examined him with a raised eyebrow, “Can you think of somewhere else he might be?”

  Francis looked shocked for a moment then he shook his head. “No. You’re right. Underneath, he’s probably Underneath.”

  The two men stood looking at each other until Matt moved.

  “Come on lover boy, let’s go get your girl,” Matt clapped Francis on the back as he walked passed me on his way to the door. Considering the circumstances, he seemed to be in remarkably high spirit
s. “Take care of yourself, little Queen.”

  Without a word, Francis hugged me and followed Matt outside. I watched the two of them disappear in a ball of light as soon as they’d cleared the circle.

  Alex had turned his attention to George who’d been sitting in a nearly catatonic state since we came downstairs. I guess the shock of finding Bennett’s finger in a gift box was a little too much for him to take. I couldn’t blame him; it was the worst surprise I’d ever gotten too.