by Hondo Jinx
So yes, Callie was in a state of overwhelming panic.
And perhaps Remi’s description of Heaven and Hell’s nightly fuck-fest had awakened something in the inexperienced girl’s imagination as well.
Especially since they now planned on attending the next evening’s party.
According to Vance, Brawley had hit it off with none other than Bella Travain, the daughter of Jasmine Travain, who owned Heaven and Hell and half of Miami as well. Vance said Brawley and Bella met outside as she was leaving the club and arranged a date. So Callie was determined to get costumes, hit the party, and warn Brawley.
Which sucked.
Remi hated these South Beach assholes with a passion.
But she would do what she had to do.
No Winnie, no Brawley.
Whatever sparked her fire to begin with, Callie was going for it now.
Remi watched, grinning in the darkness. It was a strange and amusing scene. And oddly pitiful, too, triggering something like sympathy, though it was hard to feel too bad for someone who chained you to a bed.
It was above all else a private moment, this girl muffling her moans and obviously trying to contain her squirming so as not to make more noise.
Why not hide under the covers? Remi wondered, but instantly answered her own question. Because even though this cut-rate motel advertised AC, it was a fucking oven in here, that’s why.
But even if forgoing covers made sense, the fact that this skinny, little cat girl was secretly jilling off suggested Callie was a few scoops short of a full little box.
Not exactly what you wanted in your pistol-toting captor.
And yet, as Remi watched her scrawny roommate squirm and strain, she was surprised to feel warm pressure building in the sweet spot between her own legs. There was something so raw in the scene, so unscripted, that it smacked Remi’s inner pervert right on the ass.
Like any other red-blooded Carnal, Remi enjoyed watching people get off, but she’d never really been a voyeur. She was more of a hands-on kind of girl.
And yet now, trapped in this weird-ass moment in this shitty-ass hotel, watching her crazy-ass captor squirm and strain within strips of light and shadow, Remi felt molten lust rising inside her.
She would’ve slid a hand down between her legs, but unfortunately, they were chained to the bedpost overhead. She pressed her thighs together, squeezed her ass cheeks, and felt the oily slickness of her rapidly inflaming sex.
Shit.
Here she was, chained to a bed, watching this skinny nut job across the room ya-ya her sisterhood, and she couldn’t even join the fun. And that, paradoxically, seemed to be fanning the flames of Remi’s arousal.
“Mnff,” Callie grunted. Her skinny legs flopped open, and within the shadows covering her lap, the pale shape of her hand started plunging furiously in and out of her happy hollow, accompanied by an urgent schlicking sound.
“You want some help with that, little sister?” Remi asked.
Callie jerked, badly startled, and sat up against the wall, covering herself and sputtering, “What? I’m not doing anything.”
Remi laughed. “I’m not judging, Kitty Cat. I rub one out three, four times a day.” Or ten or twelve, she thought, but who’s counting? “There’s nothing to be ashamed—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Callie said, drawing up her skinny legs and hugging them to her chest. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Yeah right,” Remi said. “I heard you and saw you and—”
“I wasn’t doing anything!”
“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, huh?” Remi said, shaking her head back and forth on the pillow. “Fine. But now you’ve got me wetter than an otter’s pocket. You want to unlock me and get friendly or what?”
Callie was silent for a long second. “You mean do stuff together?”
“Do stuff together?” Remi laughed. “What are you, twelve?”
“I just—”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Remi said. “Do stuff. You set me free, I’ll do stuff with you. In fact, I’ll do stuff to you. Stuff that will blow your mind. I know there’s a pussy joke in here somewhere, but I’m too horny to sort it out. Now, come on and unlock these cuffs, and I’ll—”
“No,” Callie snapped, and Remi saw a flash of her tiny breasts as the flustered girl reached down, unpeeled the covers, and dragged them across her dawn-lit nakedness. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I told you I wasn’t doing anything. You must have had a weird dream or something. A crazy dream. And that’s final.”
“Fine,” Remi grumbled and turned away, rolling onto her side. “You’re the one with the pistol, so fine. Go ahead and keep doing nothing, and I’ll just lay over here pretending I don’t hear you taming the shrew.”
Callie said nothing but made a big production out of getting under the covers and fluffing her pillows.
Meanwhile, Remi’s hands were still chained uselessly over her head. She couldn’t even take care of business, so she just laid there, throbbing desperately, and visualized the day ahead.
Or rather, the night ahead.
She imagined heading to the club dressed in some ridiculous costume, scanning the crowd, and finding Brawley. Imagined slipping cleverly from her hobble and grabbing Brawley before he could get it on with Bella and open another strand, making him that much harder to drag back to Jamaal.
But then, damn it, her arousal struck, twisting the visualization against her will. And her cruel imagination morphed the scene.
She didn’t watch herself take Brawley down; she watched herself go down on him. In the theatre of her inflamed mind, no matter how much she struggled against the imagery, she and Brawley didn’t fight. They fucked.
And it was awesome.
“Oh hell,” Remi seethed, throbbing.
17
“Pie at last!” Nina exclaimed, rubbing her hands together and smiling down at not one but three slices: key lime, strawberry, and coconut cream.
“Now there’s a breakfast that’d make your mama wince,” Brawley said.
“Sure you don’t want any food, sir?” the waitress asked.
“No thank you, ma’am. This coffee’ll do just fine.”
“You feel okay, babe?” Nina asked through a mouthful of coconut cream.
Brawley nodded.
“I detect dishonesty, husband,” Sage said, perched behind her own breakfast, a soft-boiled egg in an elevated little cup, a piece of dry wheat toast, and tea.
“Yeah,” Brawley said with a shrug.
Truth be told, he felt like forty miles of rough road after getting thrown a couple dozen times by that double strand. Each time it tossed him, the thing uncoupled, and he had to start all over from square one. He held on for all he was worth, but the spliced strand was too strong. And every time he wrecked, he felt just a little bit shittier.
Right now, he felt about like Sage’s egg. She’d cracked it open with a spoon, and its yoke was running down the sides of the broken shell.
What he said, though, was, “I ain’t exactly spry, but I’ve noticed complaining’s never made me feel any better.”
Nina nodded enthusiastically while scooping up a forkful of strawberry pie slathered in whipped cream. “Now there’s a man who knows how to let his women enjoy their breakfasts.”
Brawley chuckled and sipped his coffee, and as they discussed the coming day, he began to feel better. But rather than picking up a menu, he started itching to drop back into his mind and have another go at that damn double strand.
“Maybe it’s the pie talking,” Nina said, leaning back and laying a hand on her stomach, which remained remarkably flat and toned for a girl who appeared to live almost exclusively on pie and pizza, “but I’m feeling a little better about this Bella chick.”
That caught Brawley’s attention. Nina had been dead set against heading back to the club.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Nina said, scraping coconut cream from h
er plate. “I still hate flesh mages, but at least Bella seems kind of nice. Most of them are like that blond-haired asshole.”
“Tammy was wise to fear Colton Finn,” Sage said. “His prowess is exceeded only by his boundless cruelty. But I do sense that Bella is a potential mate.”
Brawley laughed at Sage’s phrasing, but he was relieved by her optimism. Personally, he hadn’t gotten any Seeker impressions of Bella, probably because he’d been so distracted by the girl’s startling beauty.
Sage admitted that she, too, had only managed a surface scan of the beautiful girl’s character.
“I miss the Latticework,” Sage confessed. “It is frustrating, trying to seek without it.”
“What the hell is the Latticework, anyway?” Nina asked. “I mean, I know what you do with it, sort of, but you never explained how it works.”
Brawley shrugged. He might be a Seeker now, but he’d never accessed the Latticework and only knew what Nina knew.
“The Latticework is basically a psychic internet,” Sage said. “We connect to it with our minds, and it gives us a boost. The Latticework makes divining information much easier and faster, because it connects so many Seekers. It isn’t exactly a collective consciousness, but it provides an expanded consciousness to each node on the strength of the perceptions of other nodes.”
“So you see what other people see?” Nina asked.
“No,” Sage said, “not exactly. But perception, truth, and knowledge are closely related. The more you know about someone or something, the more easily you can learn additional information. It is much easier to delve the truth of an object you can observe directly than one you only understand abstractly. Even fuggles tend to absorb more from hands-on training than straight book learning.
“With the Latticework, we benefit from the direct observations of Seekers around the world. We aren’t telepaths. We can’t read the thoughts of Seekers accessing the Latticework, but their experiences and insights inform and empower our own quests for knowledge by making the things they have observed more accessible.”
Sage sipped her tea. She’d barely touched her egg or toast. “If I plugged into the Latticework and focused on Bella, I would quickly learn volumes about her past, character, and motivations.”
“But if you plug in, somebody’ll notice,” Brawley guessed.
Sage nodded. “Probably, given the number of Seekers scouring the Latticework for any clues concerning the new power mage.”
“Power mage,” Nina groaned, and gave Brawley a playful grin. “His head gets bigger every time you say that.”
“You jest about our husband’s ego,” Sage said, “but I do not need the Latticework to discern that you are excited by his power and confidence.”
“Thank you again, Dr. Freud,” Nina said with a roll of the eyes.
“I reckon it must be weird,” Brawley said, “not being able to plug into the Latticework after years of using it.”
Sage nodded emphatically. “It is very frustrating, husband. Again, a comparison to the internet is useful. Or perhaps I should narrow the analogy to smartphones. Fuggles become so dependent upon their cellular devices that when separated from them for even a brief period, they experience a wide range of irrational emotions. Anxiety, fear, even rage.”
Brawley and Nina nodded. As psi mages, they avoided most technology, but they had lived among fuggles and witnessed their stunning addictions to gadgetry.
“So are you about to have a temper tantrum or something?” Nina asked.
Sage laughed. “No, but I do feel restless and vulnerable and vaguely irritated. Without even thinking about it, I start reaching out to connect to the Latticework. Just out of habit, you understand, a behavior nearly as ingrained and unconscious as blinking. I catch myself and pull back, of course, but the compulsion is even more annoying than the semi-blindness that accompanies disconnection.”
“It’ll pass,” Brawley said. “Just get back to basics.”
Sage nodded. “For millennia, Seekers got along just fine without the Latticework. As someone who has always enjoyed its benefits, I am also aware that I never developed some of the traditional Seeker strengths and tactics. With time and discipline, I should compensate to some degree. Perhaps, I will eventually be stronger in some areas than I would have been if this disruption had never occurred.”
“Wait a second,” Nina said. “You said you’re worried someone might notice if you plug in, but we’re still cloaked.”
“True,” Sage said, “but Seekers are nothing if not intuitive. If I touch the Latticework, someone will notice. People are searching for me without understanding that they are searching for me, because my truth is now so closely related to Brawley’s truth.
“If any information concerning either of you became available to the Latticework, all of those Seekers would sense its significance and start digging. To access the Latticework and receive information, I would need to open my cloak slightly, and I would leave a subtle psychic imprint. Sooner or later, someone would notice. Likely sooner.”
“You don’t have to lift your cloak to do Seeker crap without the Latticework?” Nina asked.
“No,” Sage said. “The Latticework is only twenty years old. The formal Latticework, I mean. Before that, the Order of Truth queried a nebulous collective consciousness, but it lacked the strength of the Latticework, providing Seekers less power but also asking less of them.
“When I Seek independent of the Latticework, I do leave a psychic footprint, but it is a fleeting thing tethered to nothing. Unless someone powerful is nearby, searching specifically for my actions, my psionic signature rapidly dissipates into the insignificance of the unobserved past. At least until someone finally manages to observe the Great Truth, that is. Then—”
“Please don’t start babbling about that mind-boggling bullshit,” Nina said. “Knowing all things that ever happened or will happen all at once, all in perfect relation to one another until you become just a piece of it all. You sound like a Buddhist on ‘shrooms, ranting about the perfection of oblivion.”
They had a laugh, wrapped up breakfast, and headed for the bank.
This part of Miami was beautiful. Lots of skyscrapers and new construction. Color everywhere, a pleasant bustle, upbeat music jangling from all directions.
“Here we go,” Brawley said as the bank came into view.
They cut across the street. Brawley held the door for his women, and they entered the old bank, taking in its polished marble floors, high ceiling, and epic murals, which were vibrantly colorful in comparison to the institution’s otherwise austere appearance.
Like pieces of fruit hung upon the walls of a mausoleum, Brawley thought, and was immediately struck by the oddness of the comparison.
They stood in line.
When Brawley reached the window, he explained that he wanted to withdraw fifty thousand dollars and pick up a money order for an additional six grand, made out to one Tamara Schultz of Marathon, Florida.
“I will need a manager to authorize a transaction that large, especially because you’re coming from out of state,” the teller, whose nameplate read Ms. Carbajal, said. She seemed annoyed. No I’m sorry for the inconvenience or anything like that.
“Do what you gotta do,” Brawley told her.
The teller sniffed, looking at the three of them standing arm in arm. For a second, she lingered on Nina, not trying very hard to hide her distaste.
The teller pointed to a set of chairs and told them she would contact the manager.
They sat down and waited. And waited. And waited.
Brawley grew more irritated with every second. He was man enough to wait for something. But only a fool waited for nothing.
The waste of time irked him.
He needed to get to Nightshade Lane and wanted to spend the rest of his day training and screwing, not sitting around in a bank, waiting to collect money that was already his.
He strode straight across the shiny floor to the glass-walled offi
ce the teller had visited after telling them to wait.
Behind the desk sat a man with a five-hundred-dollar haircut and a thousand-dollar suit. The man stared intently at his computer screen and clicked his mouse.
But Brawley knew without even consciously triggering his Seeker juice that this guy was just surfing the web for new golf clubs.
The manager glanced up with a tight smile, conveying both mild annoyance and professional courtesy, and raised a slim, freshly manicured finger, signaling for Brawley to wait.
With his cleft chin, dimples, and runner’s build, the man looked like a bush league Carnal. But he didn’t give off a single kilowatt of psi energy. The bank manager wasn’t a flesh mage. He was just a garden variety asshole with smooth skin, soft hands, and a bunch of framed certificates hanging on the wall beside pictures of him golfing and fishing and posing with people Brawley half reckoned were famous.
“Shop for clubs on your own damn time,” Brawley said. “I want my money.”
The manager looked like he’d been slapped.
Brawley had to give it to him, though. The manager recovered quickly, leaning back in his chair and giving Brawley a disapproving yet controlled glare. “I believe Miss Carbajal asked you to wait in—”
“I’m done waiting,” Brawley said.
“I apologize for the delay, sir, but if I understand correctly, you are visiting us from out of state and wish to make a sizable withdrawal. Certainly, you can understand that under these circumstances, we must exercise certain precautions and—”
“Cut the shit,” Brawley said, and squeezed the trigger on his Seeker juice. “Get my money. Now. Fifty k. And a money order for six thousand. Wait. On second thought, bump that money order to sixty-one hundred. Give me a stamped envelope and a sheet of paper, too.”
“Yes, sir,” the manager said and retrieved an envelope from his desk drawer. “Would you like bank stationery or printer paper?”
“I don’t give a damn. I just need something to write on. And let me see your pen, hoss.”