Rules For Spanking: MMF Bisexual Romance

by A. Anders

  The guns were small and not very accurate. With the element of surprise and a little luck, it was worth taking a few shots from out of range. But with only four shots, his goal now would be to wait until I was within 75 feet.

  I considered what his potshots had told me about his position. They told me that he was at ground level and that he was due north. That meant that I could still make an assault on his flag without venturing too deep into his range.

  As my heart raced, I again felt alive. It wasn’t that I had missed being shot at. What I missed was making decisions that mattered. A part of me had died working as a corporate recruiter. Here, though, I was the Ford that I remembered. I liked having him back.

  I perched on my toes and sprinted off. The branches whipped across me. Shots fired. Two of them. Both missed. He had two left. No more. They would have to be good.

  I dove. Gray was too late. I was behind the mound. His flag few an arm’s length away. If only I could just reach up and take it… Or, maybe I could.

  I quickly reached up and clutched the flag. I yanked. It wouldn’t release. I tugged until I heard a gunshot.

  I was hit. Where? The face. How?

  I again crouched behind the mound. Touching my cheek, I didn’t find blood. I found bits of concrete. Gray had been aiming for my head. It was a kill shot and he missed.

  He now had one shot left. He wasn’t going to risk missing again.

  I moaned as if I had been hit. I needed to draw him in. It worked. I could hear him approaching.

  He knew where he had aimed. He knew that he had tried to kill me. So if I fell onto the ground, I knew what he would think.

  I waited behind the mound. I needed him close. I didn’t want him taking another long distance shot.

  I could hear him coming. He was close. Ten feet at the most. It was time. I had to fall. He had one shot left. He wouldn’t fire unless he needed to.

  I fell on my back with my hand on my head. My eyes were closed. I could hear him breathing. He was over me, his gun pointed at me. I knew it. Here was my last chance. It had to be now.

  I opened my eyes, staring into the barrel. He was going to shoot me again. I kicked hard, sweeping his legs. He fell.

  I had the element of surprise, so I lunged forward. My fist connected with his wrist. He let go of the gun. He was in trouble.

  We had been here before. It seemed like every battle ended with me against him, but this time, he had tried to kill me. That was a big mistake.

  Remembering the bruises he gave me, I swung my arm, connecting my elbow with his ear. Not giving him time to react, I planted the heel of my palm on his chin. He was stunned.

  I didn’t have to draw this out, though. I just needed to win.

  I rolled off him and retrieved his gun from the ground. There was only one way that I was going to end this game. I had to shoot him. I knew that if I didn’t get rid of Gray now, he was going to get rid of me later. So the one thing I could do was end him.

  I lifted the gun, took aim, and pulled the trigger. I could feel the hammer falling, but at the last moment, my hand jerked. It felt like someone hit it, even though I knew that no one had.

  Gray screamed. The bullet hit him in the shoulder. It was a clean shot. Nothing but flesh. Perhaps I would regret not finishing it then, but I decided that I wasn’t going to make it easier for the producers to kill us.

  Staring at him, I tossed the gun aside. I leaned down, retrieved the flags tucked into his waist and then turned my back on him. Yeah, I turned because I had to go collect the remaining flag, but I also wanted to deliver a message. I wanted him to know that he wasn’t a threat to me. And I really wanted to rub it in.

  But reaching for the flag, I had a thought. What if I had miscounted? What if Gray still had a bullet left? He would use it now. After defying the odds countless times, I would be killed by my own childish bravado. Who was the idiot now?

  I deserved to be shot. You can add idiots to the list of sorry people that God looks after because the shot never came. I had gotten away with this final act of arrogance like I had so many others over the past five years. It was like I was trying to die. But no more.

  I reached up, collected the flag and won the challenge. The pawns then entered the field and scattered through the trees. They were off to offer triage. I was glad to see that.

  When Rose found me sitting on Gray’s mound, her eyes said it all. She had seen everything. I guessed that watching men shoot each other at her request was a little unnerving. At least, I hoped it had been.

  Rose followed me as I checked on Gray and Bob. They were both fine, as I knew they would be. After them, we checked on Thorin and Gray.

  It seemed that Gray hadn’t shown Brad the same courtesy that I had shown him. Gray had shot Brad three times. The pawn rushed to extract one of the bullets, the one that was two inches from his heart.

  It was hard to determine Gray’s intent just from his shot placement. Certainly, if Gray had wanted to kill Brad, he would have shot him in the head. At close range, death would be guaranteed, but he hadn’t.

  Looking at Thorin, it was clear that Gray wasn’t on a killing spree. Thorin’s only wound was in his leg. From what I could see, Gray was close enough to touch him when he fired. The angle of entry was so high that the wound almost looked self-inflicted.

  No matter how and why everyone had been shot, the most important thing was that, like always, everyone would be alright. I could now relax. So, taking Rose’s hand, we followed our pawns into the woods headed for our private date.

  “Another swim with the sharks?” I asked trying to lighten the mood.

  She chuckled. “No. This time it’s a nature walk.”

  “How does that work exactly?”

  “What? Walking? You just put one foot in front of the other,” Rose said before flashing her first smile of the day.

  “Okay, smartass. No. I meant the group dates. Are you the one who chooses who goes on them?”

  “Yeah. That’s me.”

  “And the private activities afterward?”

  “After I’m told the challenge, my pawn shows me a list of activities to choose from. I was hoping that you were gonna win, so I thought that a nature walk would give us the best chance to talk.”

  “You were cheering for me, huh?”

  “Maybe,” she said with a blush.

  No matter what else was going on, it felt good to know that Rose wanted to spend time with me. I could guess what Rose wanted to talk about, though. And unfortunately, we couldn’t truly talk as long as our two chaperones were with us.

  With Rose’s hand still in mine, I leaned down and whispered into her ear. “Do you think you can keep up with me?”

  “Do you think you can keep up with me?” she retorted.

  With a firm grip on my hand, Rose started running. I had no choice but to run with her. She was fast, but the pawns were faster.

  As we ran, I realized why she had chosen to make our last date a swim. It was similar to the reason she kept her cabin messy. Rose craved privacy. It seemed like a strange trait for the heroine of a game show.

  I considered our options for escape. We could run two or three miles to the fence, then hop over, hoping that we didn’t run into any panthers. Or, we could head skyward.

  “Quick. Up there,” I said pointing at a giant tree whose branches circled it like stairs.

  Rose climbed as quickly as she ran. I was impressed. I wouldn’t have guessed that she was athletic. Maybe she used to be a tomboy. Who could tell? All I knew was that I was looking up at her ass as she climbed, and it was the best view on the island.

  We didn’t stop climbing until we were thirty feet in the air. I suspected that the pawns had cameras and microphones in them, but if we whispered, we had a chance that they wouldn’t hear us.

  “Do you see that view?” Rose asked.

  “I’ve seen better,” I said with a sly smile.

  “I know that you’re talking about my ass, you jerk,” she s
aid, hitting my arm playfully.

  “Hey, the heart wants what it wants.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it’s your heart that wants it.”

  I laughed. I had to admit, she had me. Finally alone, I wondered if I could have her… without falling out of the tree.

  “So, what were you holding back from everyone last night?” she asked me, getting serious.

  “What makes you think that I was holding something back?”

  “Because you’ve been holding stuff back since our first conversation.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You thought I was a plant from the show. You still think that?”

  Rose smiled as if she did.

  “Come on. Seriously?”

  “You have been one step ahead of everyone this whole time. There’s gotta be a reason for it.”

  “So when you made out with me at the beach, that was because…?”

  “Oh, that was because you’re hot,” she said with a smile.

  “Well, thank god for that.”

  “Hey. I never said you weren’t hot,” Rose clarified with a chuckle.

  I considered leaning across to Rose’s branch for a kiss. Rose’s lips felt like a little more than an arm’s length away, so I weighed the kiss against my chance of dying.

  “Well, you’re hot, too,” I resigned myself to saying instead of leaning over.

  “But come on. Tell me. What do you know?” she asked, again becoming serious.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “But you believe something, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Aren’t we partners in this?” she asked, telling me how she truly felt about me.

  She hadn’t wanted me to win because she had feelings for me or because she wanted to spend time with me. She wanted me here because she thought she needed me. She was like Brad. She was a survivor. It was no wonder she kept him around.

  Someone probably even told her about him and Freddy. They must have. Considering how they turned on me, they wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to get Brad eliminated. Yet, he wasn’t only still here, but she gave him the first rose every round.

  It was because Brad and Rose were the same person. Brad thought of everything in terms of game strategy and tactics, and that was how Rose saw me. I was just a means to her end.

  “Yeah. We’re partners,” I agreed, understanding what she meant.

  “Then what do you believe?”

  After seeing her for who she was, it was difficult to mask my disappointment, and I didn’t try hard.

  “I think that if we do nothing, we’re all gonna die here,” I explained.

  “Me, too?”

  With that question, she confirmed it. She was trying to figure out if this show would get her, too, or if it was just the guys’ problem.

  “I think that if enough people die, they’re gonna start to think that you’re behind it, whether or not you are.”

  “Do you think that I’m behind it?” she asked, clearly testing me.

  “No,” I said immediately, not even considering what I truly believed. If this was a game, I needed Rose to trust me, even if I didn’t trust her.

  “So, what do we do? I know you have a plan.”

  I looked at Rose, trying to slow things down. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to bare my soul to her quite yet. “How did you get here?”

  “What, in the tree? I climbed.”

  Looking at Rose’s smile, it suddenly hit me how many times she had used humor to avoid answering my personal questions. It was certainly a familiar trait.

  “On the show. What did you do before this?”

  “What does any girl do nowadays?” she said cagily.

  “I don’t know. Corporate recruiting?” I replied.

  If she could be evasive, then I could be dim.

  “No. Not everyone is a corporate drone like you,” she said teasingly.

  It was like we were dancing. Neither one of us wanted to give up our secrets. The only difference was that she held the upper hand and we both knew it. I needed a rose tonight. If the roses were antidotes, then for me, it was a matter of life or death.

  “I’ll tell you tonight,” I finally said.

  “After the rose ceremony?” she asked, understanding what I was implying.

  “Yeah.”

  I turned to look at the view and a silence fell between us. I didn’t feel like talking. I wasn’t expecting to hear what she said next.

  “Who do you think I should eliminate tonight?”

  It was the fact that I heard it without seeing her that broke my heart. Without the smile that she wore like a mask, I could hear the pain in her voice. I could hear how much she hurt and how much she was trying to hide it. It was like a punch in the gut that took my breath away.

  I whipped my head toward Rose. As soon as she saw my reaction, she knew that I had seen her. The real her. Not the strong woman she pretended to be, but the vulnerable person she hid inside. She was revealing herself in front of me, and the blood drained from her face as she realized it.

  “Never mind,” she said, suddenly retreating behind her wall.

  What had I done? I fumbled for words, but she cut me off before I began.

  “You think we could just sit here?” she asked. “It’s a beautiful view.”

  That was it. I had lost her. We had glimpsed each other for a moment. Not the charming facades, but the guarded, untrusting people who sat at our cores.

  I knew what had made me who I was. What had damaged her? It was probably whatever it was that she was hiding.

  I didn’t think that she had wanted me to see behind her mask. Now that I had, I wondered what the consequences would be. I wondered if I would be given a rose tonight.

  We sat in silence for another two hours after that. Once the initial awkwardness faded, it began to feel nice just sitting there with her. It was pleasant. Hell, it was even a little romantic with the quiet and the canopy of leaves that stretched out in every direction like lush green waves.

  I wasn’t able to see the compound from where I sat, but I could see the fence that separated us from the jungle. I could also see the tower with the light on top of it.

  It was weird, but each time I looked away from the tower and then looked back a few minutes later, the light looked pinker. It was like after our beach date. I wondered if it changed with the time of day. However, I was more relaxed than I had been in a long time, and I didn’t feel like giving it much thought.

  Our unusual date ended when Rose’s pawn summoned us down. Hearing its robot voice was jarring after listening to rustling leaves and chirping birds for two hours. But I guess we couldn’t escape reality forever.

  As our two bots led us in separate directions, I wondered if it would have been better if I had lost the group date. Sure, it was relaxing sitting in the tree. But what had I gained by winning?

  Rose and I hadn’t spoken, much less looked at each other, for two hours, so I wasn’t sure whether things were still okay between us. Plus, after winning my second challenge, the guys had to see me as a growing threat. Something told me that I would eventually regret my victory, and man was I right.

  Showered and dressed, I joined the one big table for dinner. When I sat, the conversation abruptly stopped. I looked around, and no one made eye contact with me except Brad.

  Needing to know what was going on, I furrowed my brow hoping for an explanation. Brad just smiled at me confidently. From anyone else, that would have felt reassuring, but coming from him, it didn’t mean much.

  The tension continued at the cocktail party that followed. It lingered in the air like thick fog, but as soon as a pawn arrived with the tray of roses, everything became clear.

  “We’re gonna go ahead and take those,” Gray said, retrieving the tray from the pawn. “We’ve already worked this out. You don’t have to worry,” he told Rose.

  She looked relieved. Deciding who to eliminate had weighed heavily on her, and being forced out of the decision by a form
able and assertive guy was the best that she could hope for. I would have done it myself if I had thought about it. Since I hadn’t, I was forced to watch as Gray distributed the roses.

  Without formality, he gave a rose to every guy except me. There it was, my prize for not killing Gray while I had the chance. I would be the one sentenced to death.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, assessing my chances in a fight.

  “Ensuring our survival.”

  I watched as Brad took his rose. He really was a snake in the grass. His smile had just been a ploy to keep me calm.

  I looked around the room for weapons. If I was going to get a rose, I was going to have to take it from someone. And maybe it was time for me to do what I should have done hours earlier.

  When every guy had his rose, they all turned and looked at me. Would I have to kill them all or just one of them? Once I had done that, how many more people would I have to kill?

  “Maybe I could just touch one of your roses. The antidote could be a chemical on the stem. I’ll give it back.”

  “You think we’re gonna fall for that,” Mustache Gray growled.

  I looked around at all of the guys. They stood firm in solidarity. This was it, then. Their plan was to stand around and watch me die.

  Wasn’t this going to be someone’s fate, though? Wasn’t this the only possible outcome after we chose to continue playing the game? If I had gotten one, then someone else wouldn’t have. It was just a matter of who made the decision. What right did I have to live while so many others died?

  I stood rubbing my stubble with my hands. I knew what I was feeling. The shrinks had warned me about it. It was survivor’s guilt. It happened when tragedy strikes, and you are the only survivor. The guilt robs you of your drive to keep fighting.

  I couldn’t let it get me. Not here. Not over a show.

  My movements were quick. I walked to the buffet line and grabbed a steak knife. I slipped something into my other hand and then charged towards Brad knowing that I was quickly running out of time.

  Brad backed up when he saw the knife. I knew what he was thinking, but after everything that had gone on, he was still the closest thing I had to a friend.