by Summer Devon
“Toph,” she whispered. “Please, once more. Quick, for luck.” He wrapped his free arm around her as he leaned down to obey. She lay on her back, unable to move her hands. A fast, lush and devastating onslaught of his mouth on hers.
They broke apart guiltily as the door to the bathroom opened. Teenagers caught by the parents.
Zack wore a towel that didn’t quite wrap around him as he padded into the room and collapsed on the bed.
“Three hours,” he announced. “I’m gonna sleep three hours.”
Janey swallowed a shriek of terror when two large white things flew into her face. Zack had tossed a couple of pillows to them.
“Want covers, pull ’em off the bed next to you,” Zack mumbled.
He turned on the TV, flipped to ESPN, and promptly fell asleep.
Toph and Janey lay on the floor. He had climbed over her so that their joined hands could rest on her hip and her injured arm wasn’t pressed to the floor. With the pillows and the green and orange spread covering them, she felt surprisingly cozy.
They pushed their bodies together and whispered. Janey was fairly certain Toph discussed various plans to escape from Zack, but the only communication she could plainly understand just then was the one conducted by her skin and other wide-awake organs. Her body clamored that it liked the feel of the warm solid man she leaned against, but it wanted more. It wanted this man. To heck with Zack’s sleeping presence, the uncomfortable handcuffs rubbing at her wrists, the wound on her arm, her vow not to get screwed up by men. None of it mattered. She wanted Toph Dunham in the worst way. And the interesting, hard lump touching her belly told her he wanted her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, befuddled by her hollering hormones. “You want me to put my hand where?”
“Closer to the TV. I think there’s enough light. I’m going to work on this lock.”
“Do you know anything about locks?”
She could swear his smile looked abashed.
“When I was younger I had a set of lock picks.”
She gaped at him open mouthed. “Were you a punk back then?” she breathed. No wonder her chemicals woke up and noticed him.
“No. More of what you might call a punk wannabe.” He bent his head sideways to squint at the lock.
“Kind of like me,” she whispered.
His hair and warm breath tickled her wrist next to the handcuff. Kiss that spot, she wanted to demand. Lick my wrist, my arm. Work your mouth up to my face and mouth and then down to my…
He whispered as he messed with the file and the scissors and the handcuffs. “No. Unlike you, I never let loose with the bad kid stuff. Never had the nerve and I suppose I got along with my parents too well to be a real rebel pain in the ass.”
Not a punk, a nice guy. She waited for the desire to fade away. It always seemed to dissipate when she found out a man was not a basic son of a bitch. Not this time. She could squirm with wanting him, still.
She moaned with joy and need. At last, a good man and she wanted him.
“Hush,” he breathed. “And stop writhing against me like that. God, Janey. You’re making it hard to concentrate.”
“Sorry.” She tried to ride herd on her body, but unfortunately it was in full sexual stampede. “It’s just that. Well. It’s been so long, since. Well, you know.”
“Me too,” his whisper jerked. “Months.”
“Six years. No, closer to seven.” She sighed.
He sat up and gaped at her. In a regular voice that sounded like a shout, even over the noise of the sportscaster, he said, “Six years?”
“Shh.”
He seemed to have forgotten about Zack, the file and the handcuffs. By the glow of the television he stared into her face. With his large eyes and thick brows, Toph’s frowns seemed fiercer than other people’s. “How can a woman like you be unattached?”
“Plenty of good women are,” she whispered.
“Yeah, sure, but you…you ooze sensuality. What is the problem with the men around here?” He sounded almost angry. “Or rather, back home,” he amended.
“It’s not the men. It’s me,” she muttered. “See, the only kind of man I usually want to, um, be with are like our friend Zack. I decided that if that’s what it took to make me feel sexy, I’d rather be a nun.”
His teeth gleamed in the strange blue TV light as he grinned. “I hope I’m no Zack Blair. And you didn’t seem to mind kissing me.”
“Nope. No. Not even a little bit. But…” She was having trouble with her breath just thinking about those kisses and that body next to her.
She wondered if she should tell him the rest. Definitely. She owed it to him to be honest. “But I’m not sure. Maybe that’s cause I’m a sick cookie and it’s the circumstances that make me so hot for you. I think you should know, um, when it comes to relationships, I’m pretty consistently a mess. I’m like my sister, except that I solve the problem by avoiding men and sex altogether.”
“You didn’t feel any attraction to me before Zack started waving the gun around?”
She tried to think back. The morning seemed to have taken place several years earlier and involved other people.
“I can’t remember. I know I liked the look of you the first moment I met you. Definitely.”
“That’s enough to go on,” he whispered cheerily. “I won’t feel used if I let you have your way with me.”
She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her smile. “You know we’re both crazy if all we can think about is sex,” she said.
“Not me, darlin’, I was thinking about escape too,” he whispered and lightly jangled the handcuff.
True enough. Janey felt hot with embarrassment.
He added, “Of course I was motivated by the idea that then I could really touch you properly.”
Then she only felt hot. She wiggled toward him.
“Whoa, Janey. Come on, back off a bit. We need to get out of here. Think of Rachel and Cynthia.”
He might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water on her.
“Oh my good gosh,” she whispered.
She had been as selfish as Penny or Zack. Poor Rachel. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
He smiled. “That’s probably the tenth time you’ve apologized, you silly woman. Cut it out, please. And hold still. No, wait a sec.”
He leaned toward her and kissed her. She tasted the brief delicate caress of his tongue.
“Okay, good. Thanks. Now hold still,” he muttered.
A considerate man, a nice person. And she wanted him as badly as she’d ever wanted any man. No, she couldn’t remember being quite so boggled by any other case of lust. She sighed and tried to keep her hand as still as possible.
Zack groaned and moved on the bed.
“Damn,” Toph whispered. He reached over and dug his hand into her pants pocket, shoving the file and scissors into Janey’s front pocket. He breathed in her ear. “Glad your pockets are deeper.”
He settled next to her.
Rustling and more groans came from the bed. How long had Zack slept? Janey guessed an hour and a half.
“Janey? I’m horny.” Zack sounded like Rachel when she whined about being thirsty in the middle of the night.
Ugh.
“Sorry,” she said. “I am most definitely not interested.”
He slipped out of bed and walked over to them. Buck naked. Eww.
Janey quickly shut her eyes.
“Janey. I’ll let you go,” he coaxed in a whisper.
“No, Zack.” A frisson of disgust and fear skittered down her spine. Was she this much of animal? What was it with all of the sex, anyway? Had she and Toph charged the air somehow?
Then she remembered what Penny once said. If Zack went a few days without sex, he worried he’d lose his touch. And apparently, though Zack did not have a lot of God-given talents, he was pretty good in bed, or so Penny had assured her. Of course, at that time, Penny’s idea of fun was getting so blitzed on drugs she drooled, so Janey tended to
discount Penny’s opinions of what constituted a good time.
“A blow job?” Zack suggested hopefully.
Next to her ear, Toph muttered an impressive string of obscenities. She grabbed the hand attached to hers and gave it a squeeze.
“Zack. No.” She drew in a breath and attempted an imitation of Toph’s calm authoritative tone. “And I would appreciate it if you would put some clothes on.”
“I hate cold women,” he grumbled, and slouched into the bathroom. Janey wondered if he was going to discreetly take care of his own problem, when he came back out again almost immediately, dressed only in jeans.
“Hey, Dunham.” He nudged Toph with his bare foot. “My shirt stinks. Take yours off.”
Toph slowly sat up. “Unlock me,” he growled.
Zack squatted down. With one hand, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the cuff keys which he tossed to Toph. The other hand held the gun steady, aimed at Janey.
Toph’s plain white dress shirt was too long and too broad for Zack. Janey glanced over at Toph. He didn’t look like a Cro-Magnon but his shoulders were even broader than Zack’s. He had a body like the boys on the swim team. Long and lean, muscled across the chest and well-defined shoulders. A little less skinny than some of those whippet teenaged swimmers. The dark hair swirled on his chest and tapered to a line down to his stomach.
God help her, she was back to thinking about sex again. Even with the stellar example of horny Zack, she couldn’t stop herself. She had spent several reasonably happy years without sex, and the same day her life was turned upside-down, her sex drive turned itself back on at full volume. So loud, it thudded through her body and she couldn’t hear anything else.
Zack ordered Toph to lock himself to Janey again.
“I’m gonna check out the bar next door. I’ll be back soon,” he said.
He turned up the television. “Don’t bother making noise. There ain’t anyone who’ll hear you. Okay, kiddies? It’s late so don’t go out or anything.”
He guffawed and rubbed his fingers over several-days-old stubble. Then he picked up the gun and, whistling, strutted out of the room. He slammed the door hard.
They listened to his footsteps recede then spent a few useless moments shouting for help. The only answer was the clack and thud of the ice machine.
“Do you suppose he went to get a beer?” Toph said. He ran his free hand wearily over his face.
“No, probably a woman. Zack has this amazing ability to pick up women.”
“A prostitute?”
“No. He never pays, or so Penny told me. Scratch the end of my nose for me, will you?”
Toph gently rubbed her nose. “I wonder how long it’ll take him?”
“No idea.” She wiggled her hand and the handcuff rattled. “Do you want to keep working on the cuffs?”
“Yeah. I can’t see the one under the TV.” He patted his chest. “Let’s put our hands up here.”
He settled back down next to her. They lay in silence for a while, with only the rattle and scrap of Toph’s work on her handcuff. The cuff bit into the bottom of her palm and the rug was scratchy on her back where her shirt had hiked up. He cursed and said, “I can’t believe that damn sex shop sold real cop handcuffs. There ought to be a law.”
Janey shuffled closer to him and pushed her head onto his chest, near his armpit. He stopped messing with the handcuff and lay still as she burrowed around his warm skin, breathing him in, getting comfortable. He didn’t appear to mind.
The crisp hair grazed her cheek as she settled on his chest, and she sniffed the slight tang of his sweat and his scent of clean chlorine and lemon. She swallowed her longing to kiss the skin on which she lay. The best idea was to talk.
“I’m tired of being afraid of that jerk,” she said at last. “I want to be safe. Where do you feel safest?”
He gave a little laugh and the vibration rumbled through his chest and the side of her head. She didn’t think he’d answer, but after a long while he said, “Water. I like swimming.”
That explained the scent of chlorine. “Is that why Cynthia is a swimmer?”
“Probably, but she’ll be better than me. Diving—scuba diving—is my idea of fun. Where do you feel safest?”
She didn’t say “right here”, but gave in to the urge to plant a light kiss on his throat.
At her soft kiss, he swallowed hard and turned toward her to rub his face in her hair. As if in silent agreement, neither of them groped toward a real kiss, but she knew he wanted her as much as she did him. Or almost as much.
She sighed. “My old apartment, the one I gave up when Penny went to prison, had a flat roof, and sometimes I’d go up there and lie on my back looking up at the sky, usually at night. And I feel safe in a kitchen.”
She closed her eyes and drifted into her soothing image of cooking a meal for friends. “My favorite time when I’m cooking is when everything is coming together and I know it will all be perfect.”
“You’ve made me hungry, you wretch,” he murmured. And laughed again, a deep, dirty laugh.
She gave a wiggle of pleasure. “Ah. When we get out of here, I will make you dinner. Deal?”
“You’re on. And I’ll take you diving.”
Whoa. Now that prospect made her seriously squirm.
When Zack returned fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t alone.
Toph thrust the tools into Janey’s pocket as Zack called out to the woman who giggled in the hall. “Just a second, sweet thang. Give me three minutes. Gotta do some straightening. Just wait out there.”
Janey heard the woman’s giggle even as he locked the door behind him. He charged over to them, and with a trembling hand, unlocked Janey’s cuff on the television cabinet.
He pulled out the gun and pointed it to the bathroom. When Janey didn’t move to the bathroom quickly, he gave her an impatient shove.
“You.” He pointed the gun at Toph. “Get in the tub.”
“Sit,” he ordered Janey. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, her back to the wall. “Yeah, this’ll work.” He cuffed her to the handicap rail next to the tub.
“Good. This is more comfortable,” remarked Janey.
Zack snarled like a badly trained dog. “Listen to me. You will now shut the hell up. If you make a single peep while I’m entertaining company, I will make you very sorry.” He ran the gun up and down Janey’s body.
Toph growled again. His free hand balled into a fist.
Janey spoke up before the atmosphere—or the gun—exploded. “Good gosh, Zack, we’ll be quiet. You’re being very scary.” He was too.
“Don’t you forget it.” Zack nodded and his handsome face looked amiable. Apparently he appreciated being called scary. Half a second later, he returned with the pillows and covers. He searched his pockets and pulled out four packets of peanuts.
“Here’s dinner. Sleep well,” he said. He turned off the lights and slammed the bathroom door.
Chapter Eight
In the dark, towels dropped softly on her head. Toph was working his hands along the rack above the tub.
“Here,” he whispered. He thrust a small towel, no, a face cloth, into her fingers. “Tuck it into the handcuffs.”
Janey groaned with relief. “If I ever buy handcuffs, I’m going for the deluxe, padded model,” she whispered.
The soft rumble of his laughter flowed over her. “You plan on buying handcuffs after living through this? You are a sick cookie.”
The towels muffled the sound of their efforts to free themselves. After a futile few minutes, they gave up on yanking, pulling and tugging on her handcuff attached to the handicap pole.
“It’s starting to hurt my, um, wound,” Janey whispered.
“Okay, that’s out. We already managed to get your poor arm winged by a bullet. Don’t need to break it too,” Toph murmured.
“Maybe this’ll help?” He pushed a pillow under her arm, so the weight of it didn’t dangle from the pole.
“Much b
etter.”
“We might as well try to get some sleep. Figure out how to thwart the rocket scientist tomorrow.” Using the pillows and the comforter, he created something like a nest in the bathtub.
They settled, wedged together. He lay nearly on his back. She lay on her side facing him, her arm attached to the handicap bar slightly above their heads. The solid warm mass of Toph pressing her from head to knees took her mind off the slight discomfort of the cuff’s pressure.
“Hey, as long as you don’t breathe too hard, this is comfortable. For me, anyway,” Janey whispered into his shoulder. “Is this position okay for you?”
He mumbled something under his breath that even she, jammed against him, couldn’t make out.
In the bedroom, the rustling and giggling ended. The moaning began. Within a few minutes came thumping and thudding. And then the woman’s cries.
“Yeah, baby! Give it to me. Give it to me haard! Oh yes, oh yes! Give it to me!”
“I didn’t know people actually yelled stuff like that,” Janey whispered into the total darkness. “Other than in porn movies.”
Toph gave a soft, shaky laugh. “I’d offer you popcorn, but all I have are peanuts.” She heard the foil packet rustle as he tore it open with his teeth.
“There are some in my hand,” he whispered. “Can you find them?”
She nuzzled around the palm of his hand, eating by touch in the dark. She felt like some kind of animal as she licked the salt off his fingers and hard palm. When she heard his rasping inhalation, it set off an interesting ripple in her center. Very intriguing.
“Ooooo!” the mystery woman shrieked. “Yes, yes! You’re so BIG. Give it to me.”
“Noises, yeah, right.” Janey ignored her own body’s reaction and continued the color commentary. “But the dialog is so clichéd. Just plain insipid.” She did not add, and Zack isn’t so big. She didn’t want to sound as if she had given Zack’s genitalia much of an examination.
Toph didn’t say anything. His body had tensed and his breathing turned hard and shallow. Janey brushed her face against his hair and smelled the peanuts on his breath. She shifted a bit—her butt pressed up against the side of the tub was falling asleep. When she twisted to get more comfortable, Toph groaned and shuddered.