“Oh, baby,” he groaned, lifting his hips and sliding his pants down.
His rigid cock jutted upward from its thatch of curly brown hair. She lightly ran her tongue around the head, wrenching a moan of pleasure from him. A gleaming white pearl of pre-cum oozed out, and she lapped it up. It was sweet and salty at the same time.
She opened her mouth and guided him in, sucking hard, and he let out a gasp of pleasure, and began moving his hips as she bobbed her head. Relaxing her throat, she let him thrust deep into her mouth, and sucked hard, at the same time squeezing at the base of his shaft with her hand.
“You’re killing me. Oh, God, your mouth feels so good,” he moaned.
He thrust in again, and she sucked at him hungrily. At the same time she reached back with her free hand and scraped at his ball sack gently with her nails. He shuddered with pleasure, his fingers tangling in her hair and guiding her head.
His breathing grew harsher and harsher, until he exploded in her mouth. Hot, salty cum flooded her mouth, and she swallowed eagerly. His fingers tightened in her hair, holding her there as he came and came, and she kept sucking, tongue swirling, until he finally released her and fell back on the couch.
“Oh my God…ohhhh....” he groaned, as she eased his cock out of her mouth.
She stood up, as he stepped out of his jeans. “If that’s how you show that you’re mad at me, I hope I can make you furious,” he said, and suddenly he scooped her up and slung her over his shoulders.
“Hey!” she cried, her hair dangling down, jolting with each step as he strode up the stairs to his bedroom. “You big caveman! What are you doing?”
“Hopefully I’m making you good and mad again,” he said.
He set her down on the bed, and stripped off the rest of his clothes as she quickly did the same.
In one swift motion, he bent her over the bed, and kicked her legs apart. She clutched at the bed sheets, her face resting on the silky comforter. He caressed her buttocks with one hand, and with his other hand stroked the wet petals of her sex, gently, teasingly.
“Mmmmm,” she whimpered, squirming where she stood. A hot gush of liquid desire flowed through her, and she lay helpless, knees turning to jello, as he stroked her again and again.
He slid his hand further forward, the pad of his thumb rubbing her clitoris, and she let out a gasp that was almost a sob. The pleasure was exquisite. A burning bank of desire swelled inside her.
“Like that, baby?” he growled, his voice husky with desire.
“Yes,” she pleaded. “Just like that. Don’t stop.”
“I love your ass. It’s so soft and round and perfect.” He slapped it lightly. She yelped in pleasure, squirming in place, rubbing herself up against his hand shamelessly.
He smacked again, harder, and she couldn’t restrain her gasp.
“You like it rough, baby? I can give it to you rough.”
His hand began descending on her ass in a stinging barrage of slaps, and at the same time, he rubbed her clit harder. She’d never felt anything like it. The pain and pleasure swirling together into one intense sensation, and he kept spanking harder and harder, until a supernova exploded inside her belly.
“Ohhhhh,” she wailed helplessly, and he thrust three fingers inside her as she came.
“I can feel your muscles squeezing me, baby. Oh, that’s so good. Come for me, princess.”
And she did, her muscles spasming and squeezing him, her whole body shaking with the force of her orgasm. She heard ripping, and crinkling, and then he’d rolled a condom onto his cock and shoved himself inside her tight, wet tunnel, and she was still coming.
“Oh, God,” he said moving inside her. “Oh, yes. That’s good. Oh, my God-”
And then he exploded too, pressing deep inside of her and clutching her hips so hard she knew there would be fingerprint bruises in the morning.
“Oh, you bad girl,” he groaned, pulling out of her. “See what you made me do? You’re so fucking hot, I came in like sixty seconds.”
“I am a bad girl,” she panted, as he trailed his fingers across the stinging skin of her butt cheeks. “You could spank me again, if you wanted to.”
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, they finally made some progress. Coral came in early and made numerous phone calls and Bettina used her computer skills, and between the two of them they managed to track down what appeared to be the original purchaser of several of the parcels. It was a company named Metamorph. They were based out of an Eastern European country called Kazmekistan, but had a branch in the United States based in California. According to their corporate records, they manufactured pharmaceuticals.
Metamorph had set up numerous shell corporations to make purchases of at least three of the parcels, including the one adjacent to the parcel where the three ley lines were known to cross. Coral and Bettina still hadn’t been able to find the purchaser of that property, but she suspected that it was also Metamorph.
“A pharmaceuticals company? That is odd,” Coral said. “I wonder why they’d want property in that location. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. It’s hardly well-suited to construction if they wanted to build new facilities. And why did they work so hard to disguise the fact that they bought the property?”
“Call them and see what kind of comment you can get,” Mr. Brewster said. “And hurry up. It’s six hours later there.”
Metamorph didn’t have a website or any public listing of their telephone number, but Bettina managed to find their telephone number on their incorporation documents, which were public record and available online.
“You’re good,” Coral said. “Seriously. You should consider being a reporter.”
Bettina beamed at the compliment.
Frederick had wandered up. “She is really good, isn’t she?” he said eagerly. He turned to Bettina. “Can’t we at least be friends?” he asked. “I miss hanging out with you.”
Bettina glanced at Coral, who shook her head.
“Call me when you’ve made up your mind. I’m going to the Donut Hole on a cruller run,” she said, and grabbed her purse and walked out.
“I’m off to do some investigating. And Bettina’s too good for you.” Coral grabbed the phone and called the number Bettina had dug up for her.
The woman who answered the phone sounded less than delighted to hear from her.
When she told the woman who she was, the woman cut her off with a “We don’t speak to the press,” managing to make it sound as if the word “press” was synonymous with “pustulant syphilitic leper”. Then the woman hung up.
When Coral tried to call back, the call went straight to voicemail.
She waited ten minutes, and then called again, using her cell phone this time.
“We’re publishing a story on your property purchase, whether you comment or not, so you might want to give your side of the story,” she said, without giving the woman on the other end time to hang up on her.
There was a long, angry pause.
“I know you’re there,” Coral said. “I can hear you breathing.”
“You will be hearing from our legal department,” the woman said finally, and hung up again.
“Bitch.” Coral muttered.
Half an hour later, her cell phone rang.
The man on the other end sounded snooty and pompous.
“What is the nature of the story that you’re writing?”
“Who am I speaking with?” Coral asked. Geez, these people really didn’t care about the corporate image they were projecting, did they? A “hello” would have been nice.
“That’s not your concern.”
“I don’t talk to anonymous people,” she said coolly. “You can give me your name, or I can hang up and go back to writing my story.”
“Everything that I say is off the record, and I assure you, if you violate that, I will sue you.”
“I’m waiting.”
“My name is Easton Berger, attorney at law. I represe
nt Metamorph.”
“I figured as much, what the threats of lawsuits and all,” she said.
“Again, why are you writing about a property purchase? There’s no news value there.”
“Well, there have been a number of parcels of land in the county area of Blue Moon Junction that have been snapped up over the past year. We traced the purchase of one of the parcels back to your company,” she said.
“I fail to see why that’s newsworthy.”
“My boss determines what’s newsworthy,” she said.
There was a long moment of silence, and she could hear angry, indignant breathing on the phone. She formed a mental picture of him: he’d be skinny as a pipe cleaner and he’d have gold rimmed glasses and he’d glare at people down his long, straight nose.
“I will tell you, again, this is off the record, the reason that we purchased the property is that we are cultivating a rare flower which will only grow in the soil in that particular area. It has healing properties, and we are hoping to synthesize it for mass production, but at the current time we have only been able to grow it in small quantities. I will also tell you that ours is a very competitive business, and if word of this were to leak out, there would undoubtedly be trespassers on that property, putting our business at risk. I will also tell you that we have armed guards stationed on our property, and trespassers will be shot on sight, as is our legal right.”
“If that’s all off the record, that’s fine. We’re still running a story stating that the parcels of property have been purchased. If you want to maintain an official ‘no comment’, you’re certainly welcome to do so.”
“Yes, that is all that I can give you. And if you run that story, you jeopardize the development of a medicine which could save hundreds of thousands of lives,” he said angrily.
“I’ll tell my boss,” she said. I don’t believe a word you’re saying, she thought.
“When is the story running?”
“I don’t know yet. And if that’s all you’ve got to say, I need to get back to work.”
She reported her conversation to Mr. Brewster.
“Among the many reasons that I think that he’s lying, if there was some rare and precious flower on their property, there’s no way that he’d tell us about it, even off the record,” she said.
“I agree that he sounds like he’s lying, but we can’t force him to talk,” he said. “And he made it quite clear that we’re not welcome on the company property, so at this point it’s difficult to verify what they’re doing out there. We don’t have any proof that they’re violating the law in any way, or that they’re doing anything other than what they claim.”
“So we’re not going to run any story?”
Mr. Brewster frowned, stroking his grey-streaked beard. “I didn’t say that. I think we need to start rattling some cages. We can at least run a story in this afternoon’s paper mentioning the mysterious property purchases, and the fact that the company who bought most of the property refused to comment. And we can mention that Adrian was investigating the property purchases before he failed to show up at the newspaper, and that he’s been reported as a missing person.”
“What about the other disappearances?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have anything to tie them in with Adrian’s disappearance. Okay, get busy. You’ve got an hour.”
Coral rushed back to her desk. This was actually exciting. It was as close to real news as she’d ever gotten so far. It was also scary; she felt the heavy weight of responsibility resting on her shoulders. Three people were missing, and every word that she wrote had the power to shed light on their disappearance, to put pressure on the authorities to act…
Stomach churning, she sat down and turned on her computer.
* * *
Flint pulled up in front of his office to find Rory standing on the front porch, holding a newspaper in his hand. Uneasiness rippled through him; Rory’s face was like thunder.
He climbed out of his truck and walked up to the house.
“What’s up? Trouble in paradise?” he asked.
“You’ve got to see this,” Rory said angrily. Flint grabbed the newspaper from Rory’s hand, and a jolt of anger shot through him when he saw the headline.
“Are Swampland Purchases Tied In With Reporter’s Disappearance?” Underneath the headline was a map highlighting the location of the parcels of swampland, and a picture of Adrian Freidman.
His heart thudded painfully in his chest.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “This jeopardizes our entire operation.”
“Ya think?” Rory said angrily. “I can’t believe they did that. Didn’t you try to talk her out of it?”
“As much as I could, yes, but I can’t actually tell her anything about why we’re here or what we’re investigating. If I’d been able to tell her what we were doing, I could have convinced her to hold the story.”
“Too risky,” Rory growled. “There’s far too much riding on this for you to trust a woman that you’ve just met.”
“I know. God damn it, god damn it, I can’t believe this.”
Flint pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Coral.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he yelled.
“I beg your pardon? What are you talking about?”
“The story in today’s paper. I’ve been begging you to back off this entire investigation, damn it to hell. You’ve put a lot of people at risk, including my family.”
“How did I put your family at risk?” she sounded baffled. “We’ve got three missing people in this town, and a company buying up a lot of property near the town and refusing to reveal what they want to use it for, and that’s newsworthy. If anybody, including you or the police, had at least given me a hint of what’s going on here, we might have been able to hold the story, but with the radio silence I’ve been getting, we didn’t have any other options.”
“You had the option not to print the story!” he roared, and hurled the phone against a porch railing, where it shattered into pieces.
What Coral didn’t know was that his family was also descended from Original Shifters. She also didn’t know that there had been kidnappings of at least a dozen descendents of Original Shifters, from around the world.
Flint frequently used his business as a cover for the Enforcer’s activities, but it had never hit so close to home before.
When The Enforcers had learned of the kidnappings, and of Metamorph’s suspected plans on the ley line property, he’d immediately set up surveillance to ensure that his family was safe, and then arranged for the expansion project so that dozens of Enforcers could be covertly moved in to town, pretending to be the construction crew.
“Do you think they’ll still go forward with their plans?” Rory asked.
Flint was boiling over with frustration. “Metamorph put a fortune into this project. I know they’re going to wonder if their plans have been exposed, but I think that they’re still going to go forward with their operation. There’s too much at stake for them if they abandon ship. That comet won’t be passing by again in our lifetime; they’ll never have another opportunity like this one.”
“Well, it’s not like we have any choice,” Rory said. “It’s still our best chance to rescue the kidnap victims and shut these bastards down for good. We’ll carry on as planned.”
Chapter Fourteen
The sun blazed in a cloudless sky, and the lightest of breezes ruffled the trees. Coral and Frederick stopped for a moment; they were near the edge of Metamorph’s property. Overhead, eleven million miles from Earth, Archibald’s comet soared through the airless space between the planets, dragging a scattered trail of meteors behind it.
They’d hiked this far in human form, and now they were preparing to shift.
Coral stood perfectly still in the sunlight, squinting up at the sky. In the daytime, the comet wasn’t visible, but it would be approaching the Earth at its closest point within a couple of hours.
&nb
sp; “What are you doing?” Frederick asked.
“Nothing. Just trying to see if I feel anything different, a sudden surge of power or anything like that. I don’t feel a thing. Then again, from what Blanche told me, the historical record indicates that none of the people who turned into shifters felt anything different, right up until they were suddenly able to shift.”
Coral paused. “We’ve got company,” she said. “Good God, Blanche followed us here. I can smell her.”
Blanche came bustling out of the woods, jogging towards them at a surprisingly fast pace for someone her age. She was wearing camouflage print jogging pants and camouflage sneakers.“Are you crazy?” Coral demanded when she reached them. “What are you even doing here?”
“I told you to call me if you were going to do any more snooping! It could be dangerous!” Blanche looked hurt.
“Yes, it could be dangerous, which is exactly why I didn’t tell you! How did you know we’d be here?”
“Bettina overheard you two talking, and she told me about it. As if anyone in Blue Moon Junction can keep a secret from me.” She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a .22 calibre pistol. Coral yelped in alarm.
“Now, just in case we run into kidnappers, we’ll be armed. So anyway – oh, good heavens, can you believe that nosy bitch followed us here?”
“Yes, actually, I can,” Coral said wearily, watching Maybelle race towards them. “I’d be more surprised if she hadn’t.”
Maybelle was huffing and puffing by the time she reached them.
“Nice try,” she said snootily to Blanche. “If you think I’m going to let you get Coral killed, you’ve got another thing coming.” She was wearing a pink and blue flowered track suit and blue running shoes. She was toting a flowered purse; she reached into it and pulled out a Glock.
“Now this is a gun,” she said. “That wimpy little pea-shooter wouldn’t take out a hummingbird.” She dismissed Blanche’s gun with a scornful glance.
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