Cabin In The Woods

by Kristine Robinson

  Back at the table, Rebeccah praised Sarah for her speech and gave her a hug, never making eye-contact with me. Sarah could sense something was up and asked me to get some air with her outside on the terrace. “I’m sorry about her”, “This is your night babe, don’t let her ruin it. Though, I met Ms. Van Houten, the woman who organized everything-in the bathroom, and she let me in on a little fact. She apologized for me having to sit with Rebeccah and so I told her I thought that the committee or that she arranged all that and she said no, that you called and requested it.” Sarah looked shocked, a genuine reaction. “I didn’t think that was true because why would you do that.” “Did she say what I had said exactly?” “She said something about this award being for both of you, not just you, that Rebeccah had always been there, etc.” Sarah’s face turned angry, her lips in a thin line. “I cannot believe she did that.” She turned and walked out, making her way back to the ballroom. “Sarah, wait, not tonight.” But her mind was made up. Our table was empty and people were filing out. Sarah picked up her award and bag and we made our way to the lobby where we spotted Rebeccah. “May I have a word?” Sarah said quietly. “Be right back”. They disappeared around the corner but not before Rebeccah took an opportunity to glance back at me. “The nerve” I muttered. I was greeted by a sea of faces as they made their way to the valet. It seemed like ages that they were gone and most people had left already, leaving just a handful at the bar. I decided to go find her and make sure everything was ok. I went down the hall, peeking into any unlocked door I could find. Finally, I heard voices so I made my way towards an open corridor and there they were, arguing, when I saw Rebeccah kiss her. I stepped back, my breathing stopped and my heart beating rapidly. “How dare you!” Sarah said and I let out an audible sigh of relief, too loud as they both turned. “Sarah, you’ve been gone awhile..almost everyone is gone.” “Meredith, I’m sorry” We all looked at each other, unsure of what to do next. “Let’s go?” I asked her, “It’s probably the best idea.” Without looking at Rebeccah, we walked out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Upon arriving at her home, we were back in good spirits, not wanting another second to be wasted on the past. Her home was beautiful and her bedroom warm and inviting. We both walked into her closet, it was expansive and immaculate. A chaise lounge was in the middle, under a small chandelier. I draped myself on it, and she slipped off my shoes. She unbuttoned the clasp at the nape of her neck and her dress fell off of her, revealing that she wore nothing underneath. My eyes widened as she tugged at my dress so I would unzip it. Her gorgeous breasts before me, it was all I could do to not touch them. I wore a black bra and a lace thong and moments later, all that was left on were my chandelier earrings. As she laid beside me and my fingers entered her, we kissed and nothing escaped our lips but “I love you.” Her touch drove me wild and all I wanted to do was consume her. She slid down and her face was between my legs, the dim light of her chandelier casting a warm glow above us. I cried out as she penetrated me. I reached out and touched her soft hair, her hands gripped my thighs even harder and her tongue moved faster. My toes curled and my body was building with tension. Her hands moved up my body and grabbed my breasts, her thumbs making circles around my nipples, it was driving me wild. Within moments, I released hard into her, my body shaking with tiny convulsions. She came up to me and kissed me and I took her hand and led her to her bed. “It’s your turn” I said playfully as I made my way under her sheets. She did taste of wine; very sweet. Her smooth skin was inviting and I couldn’t get enough. I laid my legs on either side of hers so I could grind on her as I licked and sucked. “I can feel how wet you are” she whispered, her eyes closed and head back. I moved faster, my pace quickening, she moaned louder and I picked up the pace. My tongue moving back and forth, up and down swirling inside her, my finger at the top of her, adding to the stimulation. She came quickly and as she did she told me once again how much she loved me. I snuggled up to her and embraced her and we fell into a very deep sleep.

  The next morning, we awoke in a daze. “Did that really happen last night?” she asked, “Which part?” I laughed. “The award, the beautiful gala, Rebeccah’s antics or our very wonderful session?” She gave me a look, “All of it!” she laughed, “What an evening!” “I can’t believe she kissed you.” I said, though hesitant to bring it up. “I know, and I’m so sorry you had to see that. I really lit into her. It’s hard, we have so much history and we were such a huge part of each others lives, I think she still feels like I’m a part of her and that gives her free reign to do what she likes.” I just sat there, taking it all in. “Do you think we need to worry about her?” I said timidly. “Oh no, sweetheart, no. I won’t let her bother you anymore, she shouldn’t after last night.” Sarah kissed me on the forehead and went downstairs, wrapped up in a silk white robe and fuzzy slippers, to get us breakfast. I laid back in bed, but feeling restless, I wrapped a sheet around me and wandered around her expansive bedroom. I walked into her closet, our clothes still in piles from the night before. I picked up her dress and hung it up, then her shoes and my dress. Our handbags were on the floor as well, tossed aside, contents spilling everywhere. I picked up her bag and noticed mine had a note inside it. I immediately got suspicious. Opening it up, it read: You may think you have her all to yourself, but just wait princess, it won’t last. One guess who that was from. Question is, do I show it to Sarah? I hesitated for too long as I heard her walk in, calling to me. Turning around, she was holding a breakfast tray with croissants, orange juice, coffee, fruit, and a small bottle of champagne. “That looks really great, Sarah” I said with a smile. “I don’t want to dampen our breakfast but I just found this note.” I held it out to her. She set the tray on the bed and came towards me, taking it and reading it aloud. “It was in my bag, no clue when she put it in there. Sarah was silent and closed her eyes. “I have had enough of her.” She said quietly. “Hey, she could have put that in there before your argument, let’s ignore it and not worry, I’m not worried.” Sarah looked at me and placed her hands on my shoulders. “You know you don’t have to worry, right? I’m not going anywhere. I adore you and want us to work out.” The sincerity in her eyes was striking and I knew right then that I trusted her completely. “Of course, sweetie, I know that. I want us to work out, too. Now come on, let’s snuggle back up, turn on the tv and indulge in this very lovely breakfast together.” I took her hand and we both crawled into bed, deliriously happy and not a care in the world.

  The Chase

  ~ Bonus Story ~

  An Outlaw Western Lesbian Romance

  Samantha

  I've been hunting a certain outlaw for some time now, but mostly from afar. The bounty is too high for me not to chase her, though. It's a female outlaw, one of the few. She is as cunning as she is dangerous. Recently I saw an advertisement in a paper that caught my eye. It seemed like the run of the mill “have gun, will travel” ads, but I reached out anyway. The person on the other end said that they had information about Emma the outlaw, and I set out to find out what information exactly, and how.

  Emma

  It's hard being a woman and an outlaw, but I make it work. Recently my bounty has risen to heights that make it hard for people to say no to. I've taken to hiding out in small towns, just little spots of humanity in the middle of nowhere. I know that people are coming for me, though and before I know it I'll have to move again. I briefly joined the Rooster Gang, but that turned out to be a bad idea. They're all a bunch of misogynists who think that men are so much better than women. I just couldn't take it anymore, and when I left the break was far from amicable. Now I'm hunted by the law and by outlaws. Life has never been harder, or more interesting.

  * * *

  Texas, 1969

  I'd been looking for Emma for over three months now in the Texas flatlands. It was grueling, going from small town to small town, chasing a man who seemed to be a ghost. Now I was headed to a little spit of humanity in the middle of nowhere to talk to a man
named Emmanuel about bringing him on the journey as a guide, of sorts. I'd seen an advertisement in one of the papers—gun for hire. This perked my curiosity, and I'd sent out a telegram. At first, I hadn't really expected a response, but I received on in short order. This Emmanuel fellow seemed to know quite a bit about Emma. I wasn't sure how, maybe because the bounty on Emma's head was pretty high at this point, but I knew that it was a lead I needed to track down. I was running low on funds, and Emma would be the paycheck I needed to get back on my feet financially.

  The sun hung high in the desert's sky, beating down on my hat with the steady energy of a campfire that never flickered or faltered. The plane that stretched out ahead of me was spotted with cacti and small shrubs. The only real feature of the landscape was the dirt road I followed. I didn't think there was much chance that I'd run into Indians out here on the plane, but I couldn't afford not to keep a wary eye out for them. I'd heard of other bounty hunters who had been lulled into a false sense of security by the desert's plains, and they didn't end well for the bounty hunter. The local Indian tribes, as sparse as they were, took great joy in showing the newcomers to their land who actually ruled the wastes. I had no doubt, and didn't need them to prove a point to me.

  Up ahead a mesa rose from the desert floor. The dirt road ran right by it; the mesa's sizable shadow crossed it, offering some relief from the sun. At first, I was happy that there would be a respite from the heat that kept bearing down on me, but then I remembered one of the stories I'd heard around the campfire just last week. I'd been at a ranch trying to gather information about Emma, and ended up staying the night. I traded stories with the rest of the Cowboys, and eventually the circle around the campfire grew quite.

  “You know,” one of the old-timers said. “There are ways that the Indians can sneak up on you out on the plane. They hide in dips in the terrain, and keep their horses quiet until the last moment, when they descend on you with war whoops that make blood run cold.”

  Everyone had nodded. It seemed like this was something the old-timer brought up a lot, but I'd never heard it before and was glad to listen.

  “Another thing they do,” he continued, “Is hide behind mesas and wait for the unsuspecting to ride by.”

  His words echoed through my head. My red hair would be something the Indians valued greatly, and even more so because of my trade. There was no way I wanted to run into any of the tribes that frequented the planes, so I pulled my horse's reins so that it pulled to the right. I'd take the long way around the place where the mesa's shadow crossed the road, venturing out into the desert a little ways where it would be much harder for any interlopers to ride out from behind the mesa and surprise me. I had my rifle with me, along with my pistols. The pistols were more for city work—close in stuff. But my rifle, hell, there wasn't any chance that a few bandits were going to get me if I had enough time to get off my horse and use it as a brace for my rifle. I could shoot the pit out of a plum at near three hundred yards, and wasn't much worse further out. I hoped it wouldn't come to that, though.

  As my horse trotted off the path and carefully made its way across the desert, picking places without rock or other debris which would trip it up, I thought about Emma. She was proving to be one hell of an outlaw. Wanted for everything from cattle rustling to kidnapping, there wasn't much that Emma hadn't done. The law, of course, was furious. Even more, so that Emma seemed to have no problem evading them. Part of the problem, I knew, was that the Marshals just didn't have the manpower to go after petty criminals, even criminals who had quite the history of flaunting society and its rules. Now that Emma had headed out onto the planes, there was no way that lawmen were going to come looking for her—it was a needle in a haystack. If the authorities really wanted to catch Emma they'd need to send out troops, Calvary most likely. But even then, Emma hadn't had a problem evading them in the past. Some said she'd done so by using her womanly charms against the sergeant who had captured her, while others said that she could slip out of handcuffs like some kind of magician.

  I wasn't really sure what to believe, but I knew that Emma was my next lunch ticket. The bounty on her head was high; so high, in fact, that if I were here, I would get the hell out of Texas and head to Mexico. But that would be dangerous for her there, just as it was for everyone who ran from the states and went down south. There was a whole separate group of outlaw gangs down there, and different Indian tribes. None of them looked kindly on gringos, not even a little bit. For most of the people down south, white people were the people who showed up and expected everyone to embrace them with open arms, even though white people tended to take more than they ever gave back.

  I looked to my left and saw the place where the mesa's shadow crossed the road. I couldn't see if there was anyone on the other side of the plateau yet, but my horse was acting funny, as if it wanted to shy away and run. That meant it was smelling Indian horses, or maybe bandits. It didn't matter who or what they were if they meant me harm. As I kept my eye on the mesa nothing came charging out to get me, but just when I was about to look away I saw something glint—a rifle barrel catching the sun. Blood thundered in my ears and temples as I spurred my horse forward. I didn't want to have to dismount and try picking people off because I had no idea how many there were, or if they had any crack-shots with them. If they did, they last thing I wanted to do was stop moving.

  “Faster! Move, move, move!”

  I urged my horse on with my voice as well as my spurs, feeling sorry for having to make it work so hard in the desert, but also knowing that we were both in mortal danger. After about a minute of hard riding I slowed to a trot and looked behind me. What I saw made my blood run cold. It wasn't Indians, but bandits. The bright red handkerchief masks identified them as the Rooster Gang, a band of hoodlums on horseback notorious for their wanton destruction of ranches, towns, and hanging people in the desert. If they caught up with me, that would be it. They'd rob me, then hang me with a red cloth in my mouth as a warning to the rest of the people who traveled the planes.

  “Faster! Go faster!”

  The wind seemed to wrench the words from my mouth so that I wondered if my horse even heard me. I was scared, something that I didn't like to admit to anyone, much less myself. Being scared made me feel weak, and I knew I wasn't weak. I was a strong woman, both physically and mentally. I had my own mind, and my own will and way to do things. To make myself feel better, I held both reins with my left-hand and fired behind me wildly with my right, using a smaller caliber pistol I kept tucked in the back of my gun belt. I wasn't really trying to hit any of the bandits, just make them slow down a bit. They might be the craziest, meanest people around, but they would slow down a little when they heard the shots.

  Just when I put my pistol back in its place the small town I was headed to appeared before me. Chancing a glance over my shoulder I saw that the bandits had indeed slowed down. But it wasn't time to celebrate just yet, as rounds from a rifle snapped past me. One of them must have a long-gun, and from how close he was getting to me, knew how to use it. Luckily, the sun was setting right behind the town, so the sharpshooter was having a hard time getting a bead on me. Before I knew it, I was in the town, just as dusk took hold of the sky.

  ~*~

  “You mean to tell me that was you coming down from the mesa like a bat out of hell, firing over your shoulder like some kind of hired gun?”

  The old man who had come to meet me when I tethered my horse at the rail by the saloon was what passed for the local lawman. I wasn't too impressed. He was old, really old, and his guns didn't seem like they'd been shot, shined, or cleaned in quite some time. There were spots of rust on the rifle he had slung over his back, and the bandolier of ammunition clanked against the pistols in his gun-belt.

  “Yup, that was me,” I said. “I was shooting over my shoulder to try to make them slow down. I had no idea that those folks are prevalent out here.”