Note from JetBoy: It’s been about eight months since the last chapter of this story has appeared, for which I am partially to blame for — well, for taking on too many story projects for Juicy Secrets. Thanks to Sunnybunny for her patience.
As usual, we ask that if you have yet to read this story, please go to Chapter One and start there, otherwise, you’ll be completely at sea. If you have been following the story, visit the Chapter Links for a handy summing-up of the plot to get yourself up to speed.
***
By Sunnybunny
Before heading for the library, Heather and Angie made a pit stop back at the motel room — to drop off the gun, and for Heather to slip on her best pair of sneakers. Angie lingered in the doorway while Heather puttered around, turning things over and kicking them around in her hunt for footwear and a suitable place to stash the weapon. One of her greatest fears was that Walter might let himself in while she was away to turn the room over and, in the process, discover something that might incriminate her. A pair of girl’s panties was one thing. A paper bag with a gun inside was something else entirely.
At first, she stowed it under the bed, far back as she could push it without crawling underneath, but quickly decided against that location. Suppose he wants to vacuum? she asked herself, and that was all it took to set her paranoia off again. Heather sprawled out on her belly and fished the bag out again.
Where then? Where would it be safe? What place was secure?
A stroke of inspiration found Heather stuffing the thing into her top drawer, the one with her panties packed away inside. She would wager that gentlemanly old Walter would sooner have a heart attack than peruse a woman’s ‘unmentionables’.
That settled, Heather stooped down to lace up her Nikes, glancing up Angie framed in the doorway, the handlebars of her bike still firmly in hand. She looked guarded — wary, even. As if the entrance to her room had transformed into a hungry, gaping maw that threatened to swallow the girl whole.
Heather recalled a time when Angie would have invited herself in, skipping across the hideous carpet with hands locked behind her back and humming a tune, just as home here as she was anywhere else. This was where Angie had first propositioned her. She remembered how spirited the girl had been in those earlier days — bold, flirtatious and so damn sexy.
Heather was still amazed that her heart had been stolen so easily… and by a ten-year-old girl! Angie had driven her mad with lust and uncertainty, leaving Heather afraid of what would happen if she gave in to her desires… terrified of what would become of her if she didn’t.
That was then. Now, Angie seemed like a different person. So cold and withdrawn standing next to her bicycle in the waning sunlight. More than anything, though, she looked tired — so very tired. Heather ached to reach out to her, envelope the child in a warm, maternal embrace. It wasn’t even about sex anymore. She wanted to offer comfort, to let the most important person in her life see that everything wasn’t falling apart around her — and even if it was, Heather would be her shelter against that storm.
I’d gladly take her burden on if she’d let me, Heather told herself. She’d endure the heartache, the feelings of loss and abandonment. She would stroll through that particular hell barefoot if it meant Angie Lawrence would smile again.
Instead, the child turned and walked away without a word, locking the door behind her. After a moment’s hesitation, Heather followed. Angie’s got the right idea… it’s best to do this on foot.
Destroyed decades earlier in a fire, the library stood in the middle of the deserted town square as a blackened ruin, foreshadowing the fate that was to eventually befall the rest of the businesses in Oasis. A car pulling into the weed-choked parking lot might rouse suspicion, perhaps even draw the sheriff out to ask complicated questions that Heather had no easy answers for. On foot, the cover of the settling darkness would conceal their entrance and exit.
Angie and Heather traversed the dusty road side by side, the only sound between them the rhythmic tic-tic-tic of the beads fixed into the spokes of the girl’s bicycle tires. Heather found the silence oppressive. Every few feet, words would brim up in her throat and she would turn to speak to Angie, but they went unvoiced every time. Angie even looked up occasionally, sensing the woman’s need to fill the void between them. Perhaps ‘sensing’ was the wrong term for it. ‘Fearing’ was more apt, as the ten-year-old seemed genuinely relieved each time Heather looked away without uttering a sound.
The library loomed ahead, rising over the hill before them in its gloomiest of colors against the inky backdrop of the night sky. The base was wreathed in a grey skirt of sand. The few windows that hadn’t been broken were caked over with grit and grime. Entire sections of the structure had collapsed away, creating gothic spires out of the support struts within, making it look for all the world like a medieval fortress rising from the ground.
Heather had driven past the landmark a few times, but never spared more than a passing glance since the first time she encountered it. Now it brought back memories of her adolescence and Saturday morning cartoons featuring She-Ra and the monstrous Castle Grayskull. The front steps leading up to the smashed-in front doors even resembled a yawning skeletal mouth, full of splintered teeth and oblivion.
She paused to stare up at the place, gooseflesh prickling up along her arms so savagely that she was compelled to massage it away. Angie, unaffected by the spooky surroundings, dumped her bike in the shadows of a dune and marched up the stairs as if on her way to a boring class, her flip flops smacking against the undersides of her feet with each step.
Shaking her head to clear it, Heather followed quickly, having to practically crawl in after the child. They ducked through the front window, then pushed aside tumbleweeds that had knotted up in the entrance, their shoes crunching sharply against shattered glass.
The inside was black as pitch, and Angie disappeared at once into the shadows, forcing Heather to navigate by sound and touch. She felt her way forward along a path narrowed by what must have been collapsed bookshelves or sections of ceiling and collapsed wall. Her fingers found the remains of old books all around. Heather tried to picture it: thousands of volumes, their charred covers torn apart then bloated up with water after the sprinklers made their valiant yet futile effort against the raging inferno.
Heather barked her shin on something solid, gritting her teeth in annoyance. “Angie!” She hissed. “Where the hell are–?”
She felt icy fingers close around her wrist.
Abandoning all pretense of stealth, Heather shrieked in terror. The cry was loud and sharp, and she half-expected a cloud of bats to come roaring out of the woodwork, like something out of an old horror movie.
“It’s just me!” Angie cried back. “You nearly gave–!” As if suddenly remembering where they were and what they were up to, she abruptly lowered her volume, whispering through the darkness. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
Heather was indignant. “Gave YOU the heart attack?!”
Rolling her eyes, Angie turned away without a word, vanishing once more into the inky blackness. Heather had no choice but to keep up with the girl as best she could.
“We have to crawl through this part,” she heard Angie whisper.
Getting down on all fours, Heather continued to follow, moving as cautiously as possible without falling too far behind. They seemed to be in some kind of tunnel made of debris, probably taken from the building itself. Had Angie cobbled all this together in her spare time?
Just then, she felt the tunnel widening around her, and soon emerged, rising to her feet just in time to see a flame flare to life in the middle of a small room. A pair of child’s hands were illuminated, cupping a match. They seemed to be disembodied, hovering across the room to a corner, where they took hold of an old lantern. The lit match was thrust inside, then the room was suffused in a warm radiance. Grasping the lamp by its handle, Angie carefully suspended it from a hook in the middle of the room, allowing Heather to take a proper look around.
They were now in what appeared to be an office, perhaps the one that had belonged to the head librarian. The desk was pushed to one end of the room, its space now occupied by a narrow cot. An overturned milk crate served as a makeshift nightstand where a small stack of singed paperbacks teetered. Empty drink and food containers littered the floor beside the bed, hinting that this was not a new hideout for Angie, but an often-used place of refuge.
“This is where I go to be by myself,” Angie said as if reading Heather’s thoughts. She dropped heavily onto the cot, sending up a cloud of settled dust. Its canvas was army green and stretched taut between two rickety bars, rising scarcely two feet up from the filthy floor. She took up the pillow and blanket, wadding them up together to hug into her middle as she continued. “I tell my dad I’m sleeping over at whoever’s house and I’ll just… come here.” She stepped out of her flip-flops, raising up on the tips of her toes. Even in the low light, Heather could see that the bottoms of the girl’s feet were dirty. “I like to read. Or draw. Sometimes I paint, too.” She nodded toward the adjacent wall.
Heather followed Angie’s gaze to discover a row of drawings, tacked into the wood. She stepped closer, studying them, noting right away that the art steadily improved as one looked left to right. One side was dominated by stick figures and shaky lettering explaining that this particular blob of red was a ‘Lion’ and that scribble was a ‘Sheep’.
Moving down the row, Heather allowed her fingertips to lightly graze the dried and dusty paint, marveling at what she saw in each new page. Angie was still learning, finding her own voice and coaxing it out and onto paper. The ones at the end were figure studies, nude men, and women in various stretches.
“Angie,” Heather breathed. “These are so good. I didn’t know you were an artist.”
The child sniffed at that, turning away. She seemed to be feigning disdain, but Heather could sense a hint of color rising to her cheeks. “They… aren’t that good. That’s not why I brought you here, anyhow.” She fell silent for a moment, then unfurled her arm from the mess of bedding to point into a dark corner of the room. “Your money… it’s in the trunk.”
Heather peered in the direction Angie had indicated. Reaching up to take the lantern down from its hook, she inched closer. There it sat — a steamer trunk, big as a small sofa. Thick iron bands were wrapped around its lid, coming together where a padlock could be fixed into place. It was the sort of luggage one expected to see accompanying a globetrotting adventurer, covered with travel labels of exotic locations, from Brazil to Baghdad.
She laid her hands flat against the top, pausing to notice the age of the wood and flecks of rust along the metal before heaving the heavy lid up, the ancient hinges shrieking in protest. Inside were blankets, piles of books, packages of snacks, and more. She began to rifle through the trunk, excavating its contents. First, the blankets, then whatever came to hand — a huge volume on international travel, a large plastic bag filled with candy bars, a stack of old Mad and Cracked magazines, sketching pads, art books. She laid each item to one side, stirring up clouds of dust from the filthy floor.
Heather finally spied it, nestled in the bottom of the crate.
She’d been anticipating this for what seemed like ages — the moment when she finally got her hands back on the money she’d stolen. She tore at the clasp, opened the mouth of the satchel and stared down at the pile of still-banded bills. Multiple Benjamin Franklins looked past her, looking a hell of a lot calmer than she felt. Heather paused, waiting for the wash of elation that was sure to come. She had the money. It was hers once more.
Seconds ticked by. Heather knelt before the trunk with both hands buried in the stacks of bills and felt… nothing.
She’d spent so much time speculating and investigating, keeping her ear to the ground while toiling away at the café, hoping against hope that someone might slip some key piece of information or a lead to the whereabouts of her money. Perhaps it would be a trivial bit of gossip, shared in passing without a second thought, that would lead to a bigger break in the case. She’d imagined carrying out a daring rescue of the stolen bag, a harrowing saga worthy of a Lara Croft or Indiana Jones.
Instead, the satchel had simply been secreted away in the closet of a mobile home — and from there to the bottom of an old steamer trunk that looked like it had been salvaged from an abandoned farmhouse. The whole thing stank of anticlimax — was that why could hardly muster up a smile?
Heather carefully closed the clasp of the satchel, then lifted it out of the trunk. She cradled it in both arms, thinking that perhaps the weight of the thing would make it seem more real, giving her that euphoria she’d spent so long yearning for. It didn’t happen, though. Nothing but an empty, hollow feeling.
With a long sigh of despair, Heather slowly sank down until she was seated on the floor. She rested the bag between her knees, fingers toying with the shiny metallic clasps that locked the whole thing up at the front. “Thank you, Angie,” she said at last. Tears stung at her eyes. “I appreciate everything that you have d-done for me. It means more than — than I could ever say.” The words grew thicker, spilling clumsily from the lips until Heather was struggling to speak through her sobs.
Angie had drawn her skinny legs up into the cot, head pressed firmly into the pillow poised on her raised knees. Her shoulders trembled with the effort to contain her own weeping. She shrank back into the dark recesses of the bedding, a curtain of shadows there to absorb her.
Heather needed to explain, fought hard to get the words out — but it was no use. The pain demanded to make itself known, and would run its course before the night was done.
She’d been a fool; Heather knew that now. A hard truth was brimming up from within, desperate to be free, and there she was, unable to find the words to express what she’d felt all along.
Since the day she first met Angie Lawrence, it felt as if some inexplicable force was thrusting them together, intertwining their fates. Maven must have known it, could sense some residual power between the woman and the child. She saw its strength, spoke to Heather without fully comprehending the breadth of it. She didn’t have to and still, Maven understood it better than the youth was ready to admit at the time. Well, Heather understood it now.
Collecting herself, she crawled over to the edge of the cot. Angie was just a flicker of color now, an outline of clothing and wild hair against the gloom. Heather reached across the bed, searching out Angie’s hand. She found it; gave it a squeeze.
“Come with me.”
Hesitation. “Come where?” She seemed suspicious, perhaps fearing that Heather was just trying to lure her back to the motel for a quick fuck.
“Angie, come with me.” She added emphasis, an urgency to each word. “Let’s leave this town. Together.”
The girl shook her head, almost violently. “Don’t fuck with me,” she pleaded. The words were stern, but the voice was that of a child, one who had endured far too many empty promises. “Heather, please. Don’t. Don’t ask me that unless you really–”
Heather cut her off in mid-sentence. “Language, Angie.”
The child balked, stunned into silence… then she broke into a fit of laughter.
To Heather, the merry, half-hysterical sound of Angie’s mirth seemed like a living thing. It flooded the room, climbed the walls, and swirled around the light of the lantern, feeding the flame, somehow making the very room brighter. A whirlwind of emotion that the space couldn’t fully contain, it spilled out into the rest of the library, echoing into a chorus of Angies.
Heather was caught completely off guard as Angie suddenly lunged out of the darkness to seize her around the waist, shoving her back onto the cot. The satchel was knocked from her lap, tumbling to the floor, and its latch gave way with a snap, the wads of bills spilling out on the dirty floor.
Heather barely noticed. In place of the bag was Angie, cradled in Heather’s open arms, the most precious thing in the world. She marveled at how right, how perfect the ten-year-old felt against her, their arms and legs fiercely, yet lovingly entwined.
Their lips came together an instant later in a bruising kiss, tongues meeting in a heated dance. Heather’s fingers found Angie’s hair, snaking up to take in great handfuls of the sun-bleached tresses. The only sound was that of their mouths, still working passionately.
The cot was scarcely large enough to sleep on, much less have sex. Fuck it, Heather told herself. We’ll manage. They laid on their sides, face to face, still embroiled in kisses while their hands roamed. Angie tugged Heather’s shirt up, bunching it beneath the woman’s armpits and exposing her bare breasts. She cupped them with both hands, fondling the creamy globes until Heather’s nipples were taut and rosy from the attention.
All but blinded by lust, Heather was frustrated when she reached under Angie’s skirt to find that the girl was wearing shorts underneath. She craved Angie’s naked flesh, ached to feel it burning against her own skin. With a grunt of effort, she tugged the shorts down her hips, heaving and shifting about on the narrow cot as she coaxed them down to Angie’s feet, finally pulling them off completely.
At last, here was the nakedness she so desperately craved. The softness of the preteen’s bottom was electrifying, spurring Heather to trail a finger through the cleft in between. The girl’s buttocks parted easily for her, and Heather found herself pressing the flat of her finger against the small pucker of Angie’s anus.
The touch was light, just a tease… yet it made the child shiver against her. “T-that feels weird,” Angie stammered, but with an edge of excitement tinging each word. Heather had always enjoyed giving and receiving anal pleasure, and the notion that this preteen sexpot could be a little butt slut thrilled her no end.
“You mean nobody has ever played with you back here?” Heather asked, breath hot against Angie’s quivering lips as she lightly caressed the girl’s rosebud.
Angie answered with a shake of her head. “N-not like this. Don’t stop. I th-think I like it.”
As exciting as the prospect was, Heather knew that it was best to exercise restraint. They were without lubricant, after all, and anal play was something one is eased into. Still, she continued to stroke Angie’s rectum, increasing the pressure of her fingertip against that little button with every pass. Each time the girl shivered, an occasional soft cry escaping her lips.
“Oh, Heather…” Angie whimpered, “Oh, Heather, please yes…”
Seeking entry, Heather pushed inward, thrilled to feel the muscle of Angie’s anus relax, then part slightly, allowing her to slip inside her lover’s rectum. She felt her young lover’s body tense, gripping her finger like a hot, slippery vice.
“Shit,” Angie said, the word coming out as a hiss through gritted teeth. “Shit… oh, fuck!” Heather was startled, yet thrilled, to realize that her young lover had enjoyed a small orgasm from the anal stimulation. “I had no idea that you could… I had no idea it could b-be like…” Angie stammered. She was breathless and at a loss for words, looking flustered and overheated in her bunched-up clothing. Then, with a shaky grin, she reached for Heather.
Her affection was more urgent now. Angie’s orgasm had only served as a preview, a teaser before the main feature, and the girl was already ravenous for more. She thrust a hand into Heather’s shorts, down far enough to cover and caress the front of her older lover’s panties. Longing for greater access, Angie struggled to slip her fingers beneath the soft, damp cotton to reach Heather’s treasure, but she was still recovering from her own orgasm, and that made her clumsy.
Heather, just as eager to be touched as Angie was to touch her, placed a hand on the girl’s arm. “Hold on, babe,” she said. Briefly turning aside, she shimmied her shorts and panties down, carelessly kicking them away before seizing Angie’s hand, eagerly guiding the ten-year-old’s fingers home. “There…”
They converged in a lustful frenzy, each stimulating the sex of the other in the close confines of the narrow cot. After hacking their way through such intense, warring emotions, the woman and her child lover craved sweet release, each at the hands of the other. They whispered words of devotion, of love as they played, pausing only at the height of their shared pleasure.
Heather’s mouth ached from kissing, yet she was loath to stop. She craved more, wanting to drink every drop of sweet ambrosia this luscious child had to offer. There was time now, Heather knew. Now they had all the time in the world. For the first time in what seemed like ages, she was thinking about her future. A future with Angie.
Once they left Oasis, the money would be more than enough to clean the slate for them both. Once they found a proper, discreet place to settle down, they could live, really live. Of course, they would need to keep up appearances as mother and daughter for a time, or perhaps aunt and niece. She’d get Angie enrolled into a new school, then find herself a job. They would embrace their identities as average citizens, participating in bake sales, cheerleading, and the PTA, Girl Scouts, and block parties.
Behind closed doors, though, it would be a very different tale. Their love would continue to grow and flourish.
Heather and Angie left the library soon after, mutually satisfied. The silence between them on the way back was different than before. Their minds were on possibilities instead of fear. They went hand in hand the whole way, bold in the cover of darkness.
The plan was to leave right away. As soon as they returned, Heather would pack her bags. She would leave Walter a brief note of farewell stuffed through the ring of the room key, along with a generous tip. It pained her to leave without a proper goodbye, but given the circumstances, it wasn’t feasible. No, to delay their departure any further would be tempting fate. Heather glanced sidelong at Angie — a head shorter with her wild mane of hair lifting gently in the breeze, still a bit flushed from their lovemaking — she couldn’t bear to wait a moment longer than necessary before stealing her away, escaping to a new life as lovers.
Pausing at the trunk of her car, Heather dumped the bag of money inside before heading inside with Angie to collect her things. She was so lost in the moment, so totally absorbed in her own happiness, that she failed to realize that the door was slightly ajar… the door she’d locked just before leaving.
She only released Angie’s hand after stepping into the room, smiling at the child before tearing open the dresser drawers, taking out huge handfuls of her clothes, and stuffing them helter-skelter into her suitcase. She fleetingly recalled Angie saying that she had to pee before they left. Heather felt her lover cross the room, turn the knob on the bathroom door… and then time came screeching to an abrupt halt.
Heather stared down into the top right-hand drawer of the dresser, her heart pounding frantically. Before she left for the library with Angie, Heather had buried the bag with the gun at the bottom of the drawer, beneath a pile of her underwear. Now she saw the paper bag on top — open, and completely empty.
Had she misplaced it? Did it fall out of the bag somehow? She carefully felt around the bottom of the drawer, but without success. Anxiety followed a beat later, and when fear arrived to consume her, it came in the form of Travis Lawrence.
He was standing in the frame of the bathroom door, still dressed in greasy mechanics coveralls, his name sewn in cursive over the breast pocket. The front was unfastened down the middle, nearly to his groin, a pink expanse of belly spilling out over the zipper.
He might have been handsome at some point, back when he and Angie’s mom were an item, but time, drink, and bitterness had taken their toll. His dark hair, once thick and wavy, had receded dramatically, like a dark tide retreating from a white shore. His cheeks were ruddy, unshaven, and tanned to a hard leather. He had one beefy arm looped around Angie’s shoulder, hugging her tightly to his side. It was a lazy, almost friendly gesture — at least until one noted the fierceness with which his fingers dug into his daughter’s neck.
“Well, well,” Travis Lawrence drawled. “So, this is where she’s been sneakin’ off to at all hours of the night.” His other hand leveled the handgun at Heather until the barrel was even with her forehead.
Right between the eyes…
His mouth twisted into a cruel sneer, a warp of chapped lips and crooked teeth. He released Angie, but only long enough to fish around in the pocket of his coveralls. Finding the prize he sought, Travis tossed a wad of fabric at Heather’s feet.
She took an involuntary step back, looking from the item to the gun. Like a midnight orchid, the panties Angie had given her slowly bloomed onto the carpet.
Dryly, Travis said, “Reckon we got a few things to discuss.”
On to Chapter Sixteen!