Juicy Secrets Forbidden Tales of Lesbian Love

Note from JetBoy: Here’s what you’ve been waiting for, happy readers: Part Two of the swashbuckling sapphic sea saga of Captain Bren, in which you will find our heroine and her crew embarking on new adventures, seeking unimaginable wealth, engaging in combat with cannon and sword… and in the case of Bren and her lover Marianna, fucking beautiful women and girls at every opportunity.

Infinite thanks to kinkychic and kinky’s_sis (our beloved Kinky Sisters), for once again sharing the contents of their wicked imaginations with us. Truly, we are blessed.

By kinkychic and kinky’s_sis

Chapter I: The Slave Ship

The wind was kind to us, providing a rapid departure from Tortola and towards the open sea – and safety. We saw no sign of any pursuing ships. It seemed we were clear away.

We needed to consider our options more thoroughly than we had so far. I hailed for Calico Jack to please come aboard and instructed Halcombe, our newly promoted deck officer, that he was to make sure no one, especially not any English officer, came anywhere near the skylight to my cabin. We must not be overheard.

The first mate, Jensen, the bosun and of course Davy were invited to join the meeting. It was a tight fit, what with those three, Jack and Anne Bonny—who followed him everywhere—Marianna and myself all crammed into my not-so-spacious cabin.

I pointed at the large map of the Caribbean spread out upon the table. “We are heading southeast towards Antigua,” I began, “a fact I’m sure our prisoners will be well aware of. I’ve been pondering the best place to put them ashore – preferably somewhere not garrisoned by the British, yet where they will be treated well until their Navy picks them up.”

I had thought of Montserrat, which, although it was English, had no garrison as far as I was aware. Rackham, however, had a better idea.

“May I suggest the Guadeloupe islands?” he said. “As you likely know, they are in French hands. For once, we are not at war with them. They won’t hurry themselves in deciding what to do with our guests, but they’ll look after them well enough while we make good our escape.”

I had not previously anchored anywhere in the Guadeloupe group, although I had sailed through it. It comprised a considerable number of islands, which would give us plenty of cover. I liked the idea. The only reservation came from Davy,

“Best hope that volcano don’t go blowin’ its ‘ed, it bein’ one of the nasty ones in these ’ere parts,” he warned.

He was not at all upset at the ripple of laughter his observation incited. It had been many years since the mountain had last erupted, although it smoked continually.

Jack raised the very question that had been nagging at me. “May I enquire, Captain, if you are still planning on sailing for Antigua?”

“It’s a good question, Jack,” I replied. “I haven’t put my thoughts to the men yet, but I am leaning towards taking a look south, down the American mainland. There’s a lot of gold coming out of there, bound for Spain or Portugal. No one will be expecting us to head in that direction, least of all the King’s Navy. I wondered whether you might want to sail with us?”

“Aye, I see your reasoning. It’s quite sound, but I will decline,” Jack said. “My crew have made it clear they want to head for New Spain, towards Vera Cruz. They hear of the large Spanish gold flotas sailing from there.”

I had myself considered exactly that possibility, but I knew the flotas were well protected by Spanish frigates. Tangling with them was a risk I neither wanted nor needed to take. “Take care, Jack. There could be big rewards, but it’s a perilous undertaking.”

Later, I put my thoughts and reasons to my own officers and crew, who agreed to my plans. Few had ever sailed far south, but most had heard stories of both wealth and beautiful women. There were tales of an immense river that disappeared into the interior of the country, and of hidden cities where gold was to be seen everywhere. For myself, I believed not a word of it, but it would be wise to disappear for a while, and this was as good a place as any for the purpose.

***

We dropped our captives on the main island of Guadeloupe, as planned. The volcano smouldered at us, but did not interfere – perhaps because Davy kept a constant eye on it.

The Naval lieutenant was none too happy at being put ashore on a French island, yet he maintained his courtly demeanour.

“I must admit to being puzzled,” he said. “Why are we hunting you, Captain? You have treated us well. My conversations with your officers have led me to believe that you have been unfairly branded a pirate when in truth you have a privateer’s warrant. I know you never kill or mistreat anyone unless you are forced into battle. Your action against us was in self-defence, although I’m sure you know it will not be seen that way in England. You are now regarded as an enemy of the state.” He offered me his hand. “I never expected to say this to a woman – indeed, a very young woman – but you are one of the most capable sailors I have ever met. My hope is we do not meet again. I believe you will understand.”

With that, he snapped off a smart salute. Bugger me! It was the first time I had ever been so honoured. I was far more used to seeing the knuckle on a cap.

“Go in peace, Lieutenant,” I said. “If you are able, then speak for me, but do not worry yourself on the matter.”

We cleared the harbour at Le Moule and headed north as if we were indeed sailing for Antigua, but as soon as we were out of sight of land, we tacked and headed northwest. We would round the head of Grand Terre and head for the mainland.

The next day, I waved farewell to Jack. He carried on the way we had been heading, whereas we tacked to the southwest. I was more than a little worried: Why would he even think of heading towards Jamaica? I would have taken a much wider route to avoid the small but dangerous British squadron stationed there. You don’t have many friends outside of a ship in this way of life. I had come to think of Calico Jack as the nearest person, besides my fellow shipmates, that I counted as a friend.

***

“Marianna, listen to this.” I was reading from the Spanish account of one Don Caltez and his explorations in the south. “This Don writes of a hidden bay, impossible to spot from out at sea. They came upon it by accident when a storm almost drove them onto the rocks. He speaks of immense wealth, great quantities of gold and jewels. He is then shipwrecked in another storm, and it seems that he did not properly chart his journey. A few have tried, but no one has found the place again.

“Oh, and he also describes a cult of virgins. Exquisite young women, in his estimation. I must say, that tempts me more than the riches.”

Marianna laughed, “Whoever heard of such a thing? Just more wishful nonsense from men who have been at sea too long, don’t you think, my love?”

I had to agree, though the account did seem quite vivid in its telling. True or not, it was intriguing.

“Land ho!” the topman shouted. “Two points on the starboard bow!”

I hastily dropped the journal and rushed up on deck. It was our first sight of the mainland after two weeks of heading south.

As we approached, we saw a much varied coast. Sandy stretches, backed by tall forest and towering cliffs broken only occasionally by sharp crevices. We scoured our charts, but they were out of date and told us little. Nothing much was known of this area. Once again, it was Davy who spoke up. He was becoming more forward in expressing his thoughts these days, although certainly no clearer.

“I seen this afore,” he said. “We needs to head more south, leastways, I think so, beggin’ your pardon, Cap’ain.”

It made little difference. South it would be.

The following day, the top lookout reported an opening in the coastline. “Could be a bay!” he shouted.

Cautiously, we edged closer. We had our topsails furled, only our bare top spars showing. It would be hard for anyone to see us as the sun dropped below the horizon ahead.

It appeared to be a huge bay with deep water leading a long way inland and no sign of shallowing or reefs.

“What do you see?” I called to the topman.

“Only one sail!” he replied. A short pause, then – “A brig of some sort, lot bigger’n us, almost frigate size. Gettin’ too dark to see prop’ly, Cap’ain. But I sees no activity aboard. Big fire on the beach. Can’t be seein’ if she’s a Frenchie, Spanish, or any other.”

We gathered together – Jensen, Marianna, Davy, and myself.

“What say you? Shall we take her out?” I asked. ”It strikes me her crew are most likely ashore. It should be an easy job.”

I liked Jensen. I always had. But now, I more often saw he had the kind of attitude I needed in my officers. He seldom questioned my judgement, but he was quite willing to express his thoughts.

“Give me the longboat and a few hand-picked men,” he proposed. “We’ll take her for you, Captain.”

“No, Jensen, I must disappoint you. I will lead the boarding party. I want to be on the spot to make quick decisions, and we may not have time to send messages back and forth. I want you to remain in charge of the Siren.”

It proved much easier than we imagined. The majority of the crew, who turned out to be Spanish, were indeed ashore. Those left on board were senseless with drink. It was but a matter of minutes before we had the ship. One lone sailor managed to grab hold of a pistol and fire off a shot. He came nowhere close to hitting anyone, and he was quickly overpowered.

I put what crew there were aboard a small boat and set them adrift. The anchor was soon hauled, and we raised sufficient sail to clear the bay. We kept our speed to a minimum, as we were passing through a narrow gap in what was now complete darkness. We sailed together, two reasonably powerful ships under my command.

Davy reported there were slaves below – dozens, he said. By God, I hated slavers, but the poor devils would have to wait until we had cleared the point before I could take a look at them. It wouldn’t do to be trapped inside the bay should a warship appear, especially as my men were now split between the two ships, and each was too undermanned to give fight.

The Spanish ship hadn’t been built as a slaver. It was, rather, a twenty-four-gun man-of-war hastily converted to that damnable trade. I expected conditions in the hold to be wretched, of course, but nothing could have prepared me for the awful sight, nor the dreadful stench that assailed me when at last I went below. So many souls, unwashed, half-naked and crammed into such a confined space! Oddly, they were not black, as I expected, but of a lighter brown. I guessed them to be South American natives. One young girl seemed to have been given her own small area apart from the rest, as far, at least, as her chains would allow. No one was sitting close to her.

There was something about her. She had fairer skin than the rest. Even through the grime on her face, I could see she was beautiful, her delicately boned face topped by lustrous, blue-black hair. Whereas most of the slaves cowered in fear, she remained proud and defiant, sitting perfectly upright with her feet tucked close to her body. Her eyes were on me, and a slightly puzzled look on her face.

There were only two others among the slaves that sat equally defiant. These two were of the African origin I had expected.

I shouted up the ladder, “Get the hatches open and get fresh water down here!” I could not see a key hanging anywhere. “And send someone down with tools to get these chains off.”

I heard Marianna gasp behind me. “These poor people, Bren – such cruelty!” She pushed past me and stopped in front of the girl, who appeared to be the only young one among the captives. She did not flinch when Marianna put a hand to her cheek.

Just as the hatch was lifting, allowing the fresh sea air to come flooding in, young Jason came rushing down the ladder. “I got a key, Cap’ain,” he said. “Might it be the one we be needin’?”

Marianna almost snatched it from the lad before bending over the girl. The key was indeed the right one, and in a moment Marianna was helping the young captive to her feet.

“Take her to the cabin, Marianna,” I told her. “She needs water and something to eat.”

The manacled slaves now seemed less afraid of us, as they had seen we were releasing them and passing buckets of fresh water around. I listened to their jabber, but did not recognize the language. One man, who seemed to be some sort of elder, came forward. He pointed to where the girl had been chained, then at the ladder, speaking an endless, agitated stream of meaningless words. It dawned on me that he, amongst other things, was likely asking where she had been taken.

He went quiet when I beckoned him to follow. He hesitated a moment or two, then apprehensively ascended the ladder behind me.

I entered the ship’s cabin to find Marianna washing the girl’s face. The opening of the door startled the child, but she visibly relaxed when she saw it was me. The elder, if that’s what he was, would not come through the doorway. Instead, with hands clasped in front of him, he bent at the waist before he spoke only a few words.

For the first time, the girl spoke. It was a soft lilting voice, almost chant-like. The concerned look on the elder’s face immediately dissipated. I shook my head at what was probably a question he asked me. I hadn’t a notion of what he might be saying. He pointed to the sores on his wrists then held them together as if still manacled.

I took hold of his hands and pulled them apart, and I attempted to mime removing his chains and throwing them away. It appeared to work. He smiled up at me before clasping his hands together once again and bowing, exactly as he had done when the girl had spoken. He then turned and went back the way we had come. I closed the door.

Marianna had finished washing the girl and was now brushing her hair. This young girl – whose beauty had become fully evident – would surely never pass for white, yet she was quite different from the other natives. It was also now obvious that she was younger than I had thought. She could not have been older than fourteen, possibly younger.

Marianna and I sat together as we watched the girl eat the fruit we had offered her. Her eyes never left us, and the slightly puzzled expression we noted earlier had returned. She glanced down. Marianna had placed her hand on mine, and she had seen. She leaned closer, her eyes searching our faces. The smile that suddenly appeared was dazzling, as she reached out, and her hand covered ours.

She spoke once more. I shrugged, not understanding. It brought her frown back for a moment, but then she entwined her two little fingers together before pointing at us.

Now, I understood what she was asking and so did Marianna, who, ever more expressive than myself, turned and gave me a quick kiss on the mouth.

The girl’s smile widened, and she stood. I was astonished as she unfastened the string that held her smock together. There was no shyness as she spread it wide, revealing her body.

We were stunned by the tattoos that adorned her. I gasped, amazed not only by the unquestionable skill of the unknown artist, but also by the subject matter – beautiful girls, cavorting in the most outrageous ways imaginable. Most would have thought it depraved. I, however, found it quite bewitching.

She had exposed only half of herself. I ached to see more, but she lowered the curtain once again, concealing her body and the small pouch that hung on a string around her neck. Her eyes sparkled. Clearly, she had enjoyed seeing our reactions.

I pulled myself together before turning to Marianna. “Why don’t you try some of your language skills while I go and organise things on deck?” I said.

***

Jensen, in the Siren, followed us along the coast in a southerly direction. After a day of cruising, we had yet to find a safe anchorage in which to spend the night. I was wary of drawing too close to shore, as we had spotted a number of reefs, some just breaking the surface. This was a dangerous area in which to sail without good charts, and this close in, all but impossible at night.

“Deck ho!” the topman shouted. “I sees what looks like a strong flow of dirty water.”

As we edged closer to the coast, lookouts posted to warn of any obstructions, the water changed colour from greenish-blue to yellowish-brown. We could no longer see what dangers might lie beneath the surface. The leadsmen, one to starboard and one to larboard, cast their lines ahead of the ship and continually shouted out the depths.

It was soon clear that we were following a deep, albeit narrow, channel. The helmsman looked concerned. “That be a strong current comin’ out of there, Cap’ain, but I reckons we’ll be fine if the wind don’t suddenly shift. Might be just a tad difficult when we needs to be leavin’.”

I signalled for Siren to drop anchor. We would go on alone for the moment. There was little point in risking both ships running aground.

Any concerns soon proved unfounded. The channel was deep enough all along the centre of our route, no doubt scoured out by the fast-running waters. As soon as the entrance widened into a large bay, I gave the order to proceed towards the northerly shore.

“I thinks one of these ’ere wants to speak, Cap’ain,” Davy said.

An agitated native hesitantly came forward, pointing at the shore towards which we were headed whilst pouring forth a stream of incomprehensible words. It was quite clear to me that he was not at all happy with the choice I had made.

I pointed to the opposite bank, which I estimated was two miles away. He shouted what may have been a ‘yes’, but he certainly looked happier. He then pointed at where we were still headed before miming a bow and arrow, a man throwing a spear and a strange blowing motion which I failed to understand.  What was clear, though, was that there was trouble on that side.

“Take us about. We’ll head for the southern shore,” I said.

The water was now a thick, dirty brown. “Keep those soundings going. We’ll drop anchor if it gets to three fathoms.” I called a powder boy over. “Signal for Siren to follow us in.” He looked at me, a quite blank expression on his face. “Hoist a green flag, younker.”

“Yes Sir, Cap’ain, Ma’am.” He grinned as he hastily searched the box of flags.

The cook had no inkling of what the natives ate, but they cautiously tried what he dished up during the day, and they seemed satisfied. It was not long after we had dropped anchor and the Siren was close alongside that everyone partook of the evening meal.

It had been a long day. I was tired, hungry and in need of a glass or two of something strong. “Mister Halcombe, you have the deck,” I said. “Any concerns, shout for me. You may eat and drink while you watch. Keep a lookout on the shore and upriver.”

It surprised some the way I ran my ship, for my methods were quite unlike those of most pirates. My way had more of a Naval leaning about it. My mentor, Captain LaFarge, had always been a gentleman. Being a privateer had suited him, but a pirate … no! He had been a cut above most men of that type. I found that an element of discipline made for a more efficient ship. It wasn’t overdone or harsh, not in the way of many Naval officers. The men had learned, a few grudgingly, that it worked. It gave us an edge over our opponents when needed. I prided myself in the fact that the Siren most likely carried the best gun crews of any pirate ship in the Caribbean.

***

I saw the steaming bath the moment I entered the cabin. Marianna passed me a glass, and a quick sniff told me it was brandy. She knew it had become my favourite.

“Drink up, my Captain,” she said. “As you see, we have a bath ready for you.”

It was the one luxury – though nothing more than a leaky tin contraption – we had found aboard this Spanish ship.

“We?” I asked, quite startled.

It transpired that one or two of the freed natives spoke a smattering of Spanish. Marianna told me it had been a slow process but she had managed to learn a little of where they and Yaima came from – for that was our tattooed beauty’s name. “But enough of that for now,” She pointed at Yaima, who stood by the door behind me. “Yes, we have everything ready for you. You have toiled long and hard this day, and we shall be your servants for the evening. You will remove your soiled clothing, if you please.”

I glanced from one to the other. Marianna wore her cheeky grin. Yaima, who was now dressed in a clean, flowery shift, looked expectant, perhaps quizzical. For myself, I was too tired to care, and the bath looked most inviting.

Sword and pistols dropped to the deck, and my clothes quickly followed. I stepped into the tub and sank into the warm water, almost unaware that Yaima’s hands were guiding me. My eyes closed at last, and I felt my body relax, the day’s tension slowly draining away.

I revelled in the attention as my hair was washed and rinsed with a jug of warm water. A sponge was drawn over my body. My breasts were gently raised as they were soaped. I drifted close to sleep, yet well aware of the pampering I was receiving.

Lips softly touched mine. There was a strange, slightly bitter taste, and then my senses reeled. My heartbeat quickened. Every touch on my body was a caress of fire – yet not of pain. My pussy throbbed even as my breasts were pressed and pulled. I was engulfed in sensations, with a heightened awareness of every caress.

My hips responded, jerking at the invasion of fingers deep within me. My clit felt a brushing, so soft, gentle, and loving. My body was coming alive. Never had I been so aware of the wonder of being made love to. I briefly thought of the taste on my lips. A potion? If it was, I would not fight it. Indeed, I could not. I was now at a different level of being, somewhere I had never gone before.

I opened my eyes in time to witness Yaima pour a drop of something from a vial onto a handkerchief, which she then held out to Marianna, who touched it to her lips. Her eyes closed for a few seconds, and when they opened again, the look on her face was one of unfathomable longing, of the purest, most unbridled desire I had ever witnessed

Together, they easily lifted me from the tub to the deck. Then they attacked me.

Yaima seemed to be everywhere. She probed my pussy, biting and sucking my clit, and yet… she was also kissing my breasts and sucking on my nipples. But – the oddest thing! – so was Marianna. They were both all over me at once.

I tasted a familiar pussy, then a different, but equally stimulating tang. I sucked an unfamiliar clit that offered itself to my face. My mind was swimming. This could not be real. Such feelings defied all the laws of Nature. Yet as my body reached its peak, I realised it did not matter. We three were now as one as our orgasms clawed at us.

We lay together, breathless from our exertions. Slowly recovering my senses, I remembered the vial, the contents of which Marianna had touched to her lips, and the bitterness in my own mouth. Yaima evidently possessed some native philtre that could cause three women to be wholly conjoined.

When I looked at her, she smiled and spoke softly as she touched both Marianna and myself, her voice a murmuring, rhythmic chant, her fingers the merest whisper across my lips.

Soon I would learn that she had just initiated us into her sect – a cult of love and worship open only to women.

On to Chapter Two!

by Biker Guy

CJ washed her clothes and hung them out to dry. She donned her only other set, which was just as worn as the first.

She drained the trough and refilled it with water for Alice, then removed her horse’s saddle and bridle so the animal could graze..

Allison had returned to rummaging through the rubble of the house, picking up anything that might be of value or use. She returned to where CJ was cleaning the tackle.

“I found some more fruit and vegetables Momma put up. We can have those for supper. I think there might be some salted meat in the cellar, if we can get to it.”

CJ asked, “Can you cook?”

Allison nodded. “Oh, yeah. Momma taught me how. She taught me how to sew, too. She said those were things all women needed to know.”

CJ was passable with a needle and thread – on the trail, you had to be – but she could barely make coffee or warm up beans. Most of the drives she’d been on had been accompanied by a chuckwagon. “Well, your momma musta been a pretty smart woman.”

Allison teared up. “I… I miss her so much.”

CJ embraced the girl, comforting her. She felt a little choked up herself. Relations with her own parents had never been good, and she regretted that now. “I know you do, sweetie. At least you’ll always have the memories of her and your pappy to cherish.”

“Momma… she’s on the other side of the house,” Allison told her. “Can we please bury her?”

“Sure we can.”

They found a shovel, and CJ dug down into the hard earth until there was a hole big enough for a body.

Allison tried to remove the dirt from her mother’s face as best she could, cleaning her with a washcloth, then arranging her hair. CJ picked up the body and laid it on a blanket Allison had placed in the grave. The two of them stood somberly for a while, until Allison found some words.

“God, please take care of my momma. Please love her as much as I do. Amen.” Bowing her head, she broke down and wept.

CJ felt tears stream down her own face. It was a short prayer, but sincere; colored by the childlike faith she remembered from her own girlhood. God had heard Allison, she was certain of that.

With a deep sigh, she placed another blanket over the woman, and together they covered her remains with the black soil of Kansas.

***

A while later Allison cooked up some stew from the vegetables she managed to scavenge, flavored by the last of the salted pork from the cellar. With the black kettle hanging over the fire CJ had kindled under the mostly intact chimney, the aroma was enough to make CJ’s stomach rumble loudly. Allison found enough flour to make biscuits, too. CJ found the girl to be resourceful and knowledgeable about things she herself had never learned easily. The twelve-year-old was making enough of an impression on her that she began to question the need to hand her over to an orphanage.

“Sorry, we don’t have anything to drink but water,” Allison said as she dished out the stew and biscuits. “We lost all the cows in the tornado.”

CJ spooned some of the stew into her mouth, then nodded. “This is boss! ‘Bout a hundred times better than anything I ever had on the trail. Bully for you, kid!”

Allison blushed. “It’s not much, but I’m glad you like it. Tell me what it’s like to be a cowboy.”

They ate slowly while CJ regaled Allison with tales of her years on the trails and the cattle drives she’d rode over the years. “It’s a hard life,” she finished, “but there ain’t nothin’ on this earth like the freedom a cowboy has, bein’ on the back of a good horse and sleepin’ under the stars.”

As she spoke, CJ studied the expressions on Allison’s face, the twinkle in the girl’s eyes as she listened. CJ knew at that moment there was no way she would abandon this child to life in an orphanage.

They finished eating as the sun began to set.

“S’pose we should get us some shuteye,” CJ said, and led Alice to the back of the barn while Allison cleaned up the supper things. She found some grain there, and placed it in a feed bag. “Fill your belly, girl. Might be there’s some lean days ahead. Not much in the way of work for us.”

It saddened CJ that the frontier life she knew was most likely going to disappear forever. The railroad had drastically changed the landscape of the Midwest in the last couple of decades, and she’d even been hearing tales of gasoline-powered carriages in the cities that had no need for horses.

Her reverie was interrupted by Allison, who came to the barn with an armload of blankets and some clothing she’d salvaged. “I found some of Daddy’s things. They’re probably too big, but Momma taught me how to sew and I can make them fit you.”

“That’s sweet of you, girl.” She glanced down at her own threadbare shirt. “I’ll admit, these old rags of mine are gettin’ worn out.”

CJ was deeply touched by Allison’s kindness. In fact, it surprised her to realize she was falling in love with the girl. She’d never felt this way about anyone before, except maybe her horse – of course, that was a different kind of love. Allison, though… CJ had quickly become helplessly attached to the orphaned twelve-year-old.

Gathering armfuls of straw, Allison built a makeshift bed, then spread a couple of blankets on top. She took off her dress and lay down, covering herself with another blanket.

CJ removed everything but her shirt, then took a place next to Allison. The sun slowly disappeared from the sky until the barn was lit by a half moon peeking through the missing roof.

“CJ? Can you hold me?” Allison asked softly.

“Of course, baby.” CJ lifted her blanket and Allison scooted over, snuggling into CJ and resting her head on the woman’s breasts.

CJ breathed out a shivery sigh. This sudden intimacy was causing a stir between her legs. No chance she could sleep until that was dealt with. She wrapped an arm around the girl and the two of them shared each other’s body heat.

“It feels so good to be next to you,” Allison murmured, “and to feel your skin on mine. I think I’m feeling all tingly again.”

CJ smiled in the half-light. “Well, ain’t that a coincidence. I’m gettin’ pretty tingly myself.” She craned her head to kiss Allison on the mouth, then their tongues were dancing and playing.

When they broke apart, Allison said, “I never knew kissing would feel so good. Is it wrong to feel that way?”

“Nope. Just because we’re both gals don’t mean we can’t enjoy and love one another. Fact is, I like you better than I ever liked anyone.” She kissed the girl’s lips again.

Allison leaned back, suddenly breathless. “Does… does that mean you love me?”

CJ knew this was a pivotal moment in her life. She’d always been by herself, responsible only for her own welfare. But she’d never experienced emotions like this. “Yes, baby girl. I love you.”

“Oh, CJ, I love you too!” Allison squealed. She covered CJ’s face with kisses, pressing her body hard against the woman.

CJ’s heart went into overdrive, waves of passion washing over her. She reached down to cup Allison’s ass, guiding the girl on top. Allison’s shift and CJ’s shirt rode up until their sexes were pressed together.

Allison twitched and trembled. “Lord, that feels so nice…”

CJ arched her hips, rubbing her groin against the girl’s pussy. They moaned together as CJ spread Allison’s buttocks and pressed her finger into the dark cleft.

Allison responded by grinding her bare pussy on the older woman’s hairy mound. She kissed CJ’s breasts, lightly biting the tender nipples.

CJ’s desire soared to new levels. She rolled Allison over onto her back, then ran her hands over the girl’s bare chest, massaging the small mounds and tweaking her nipples. She felt them stiffen; took one into her mouth and sucked hard.

“That’s wonderful,” Allison moaned. “Do the other one too.”

CJ claimed the other breast, swirling her tongue around the bud while she sucked on it. Sliding her hand down to the girl’s flat tummy, she teased the belly button with the tips of her fingers.

“That – that tickles!” Allison giggled.

CJ’s arousal spiraled higher and higher, leading her closer and closer to an orgasm. She let her hand move even lower, down to the fuzz between Allison’s legs, then trailed a finger through the sparse blonde curls.She teased the girl’s tight slit, tracing a path along the thin lips surrounding her pussy.

Allison writhed beneath her. “Wow… it feels so much better than when I do it.”

“It always feels better when someone else touches you, especially when it’s another girl. We know how to be gentle and make it feel real good.”

As if to prove her point, CJ found the girl’s clit and pressed her fingers against it. Allison trembled uncontrollably, ecstasy racing up to meet her. “I’m gonna… gonna…!” She arched her back, and CJ’s hand was suddenly dripping with the girl’s honey.

Allison twisted and trembled for a long moment before finally settling down. She took a long, deep breath, then spoke. “There’s no words I know to say how you make me feel, CJ. I love you so much.” She raised herself up and the two of them shared a deep kiss. When they drifted apart, Allison said, “I want to give you the good feeling, too.”

Lying back, CJ spread her legs. “Make me come, baby girl. Make me come hard.” She closed her eyes and waited for Allison’s touch.

Allison figured that whatever made her feel good would probably work for CJ, too. She straddled the older woman, her hair tumbling down over CJ’s body. Seeking out the same nub that had made her feel so good, Allison rubbed it with fingers moistened by juices from her own pussy.

It set CJ off in a big way. She gyrated her hips, pressing herself tightly against Allison’s hand. “I’m so close, baby,” she groaned.

Growing bolder, Allison plunged two fingers inside her lover’s hot wet slit, thrusting them back and forth until CJ lurched almost violently. A few pumps more and she was trembling from head to toe as her orgasm took control. Allison continued to pump furiously, doing her best to take CJ to that wonderful place.

When thick juices began to flow from CJ’s pussy, Allison surprised the woman by placing her mouth over the pink crease, gulping down the precious elixir. That made CJ come one last time, filling Allison’s mouth with more of her tart fluids.

When she’d recovered, CJ drew Allison into her arms, and the two of them shared the flavors of their love making.

“Oh, my word, Allison. You just about set me on fire.”

Allison licked her lips like a contented cat. “So you liked it?”

“No, sweet girl – I loved it.” They kissed again. “I love you to the deepest part of my soul. I never wanna let you go.”

They lay side by side, holding each other close, until CJ finally said, “Allison, I need to ask you an awful important question.” She ran her fingers through the girl’s thick hair. “I don’t wanna give you to a orphanage. I want you to stay with me. Now, I can’t offer much, and it’ll be a hard life. But a life where we get to be free to do whatever we want, and love each other always. Will you, Allison? Will you stay with me?”

Allison didn’t hesitate. “Yes! I want more than anything to stay with you. I want to be with you forever!”

CJ’s heart soared high as the stars. All the years she spent by herself now seemed pointless. From this day forward, she planned on savoring every single minute with her new lover. “You’ve made me the happiest person on this earth.”

Allison gripped CJ tightly. “I never want us to be apart, CJ! Not ever!”

“Call me Janice. Only my friends call me CJ, and you’re way more than a friend. You’re the love of my life.”

“I love you, Janice.”

Bein’ in love’s even better than bein’ a cowboy, CJ thought before sleep claimed her.

The two of them fell asleep, satisfied and happy.

***

“The horses are back!” Allison hollered. She ran to the water trough and stroked the two animals. “I’m so happy to see you.”

“They remembered where their food came from,” CJ said as she emerged from the barn and surveyed the steeds. Not the finest of stock and well past their prime, but they could make it to the next town, where CJ would find a suitable ride for Allison.

“What about the cows? Do you think they’ll come back?”

“Most likely found some wild cattle to run with,” CJ told her. “Cows ain’t as sociable as horses but they can survive better on their own.” She strolled over to Allison and put her arm around the girl. “These two ain’t fit for riding, but we can trade them for a young filly.”

Allison would be sad to see the horses go, but she knew CJ was right – life on the trail would be too tough for them. “When do we leave?”

“First light tomorrow.”

They spent the rest of the day loading what supplies they could salvage, packing them onto one of the steeds.

CJ found a saddle and adjusted it to fit Allison’s smaller frame, then put it on the better of the two horses. “You ever ridden before?”

“Not really. Just around the yard, but never very far. Daddy said these horses were only good for pulling the wagon.”

“Your daddy was right, but this one’ll do you for now.”

Allison was pleased to discover that her father’s clothes fit CJ fairly well. The pants were too long, but she found her mother’s sewing box, battered but still intact, and managed to hem them up. For herself, she dug out two pairs of pants and a couple of shirts Momma had made for her to wear on days when Daddy needed help with the farm work. Her dresses would be of no use on the trail, but CJ asked her to take one along. “I’d like to see you done up like a lady sometimes,” she said.

That night the stars shone down on them. They lay together on the blankets, completely naked.

“I’m so excited about you teaching me to become a cowboy,” Allison purred as she nuzzled her face between CJ’s breasts.

“Maybe you can teach me to cook,” CJ responded with a chuckle.

“Hey, I can’t work miracles.”

They laughed together beneath the moon. CJ loved Allison’s sense of humor, as well as her positive attitude. She hoped the weeks that lay ahead wouldn’t dampen her enthusiasm. The harsh realities of the trail could be a rude awakening.

They agreed that their special relationship wouldn’t be accepted by most, so Allison would pretend to be CJ’s niece, should anyone inquire.

“It’s not fair that we have to hide our love from people,” Allison complained. “People should be allowed to live how they want.”

“You won’t get no argument from me. Maybe someday folks like us might be accepted, but until then we gotta play it smart.”

“Hmm… well, I’ll love you no matter what anyone says,” Allison vowed.

“Oh, is that so? You know, I was just thinking about showin’ you some love too,” CJ teased.

“I’ll always want that from you, Janice.” It made Allison feel special, being the only one who could call CJ by her birth name.

They kissed softly and slowly, letting the anticipation of lovemaking prepare them for the act itself. CJ just couldn’t get enough of Allison’s tender young body, but it went deeper than sex. She had bonded to Allison in a way she’d never experienced before, and was willing to do anything for the twelve-year-old.

Allison was becoming bolder during their coupling, often taking the initiative and surprising her partner with a willingness to engage in just about any sexual activity. “Let’s lick each other,” she said. “I really enjoy having your face in my pussy while I’m licking yours.”

CJ flipped around and lowered her groin to Allison’s mouth. She felt the girl trace her tongue around the entrance to her already wet vagina.

Allison tickled CJ’s clit with her tongue, then sucked it into her mouth, thrilled by how the engorged bud stiffened and pulsed. Entwined with her lover, she almost felt like an extension of CJ’s body.

As for CJ, she found herself intoxicated by Allison’s fresh, young aroma. It never failed to make her horny as hell. She dipped her tongue into the sweet honey that oozed from Allison’s slit, as potent, in its way, as a double shot of whiskey. She burned with a desire that took her breath away and left her head floating among the clouds. She wanted this beautiful young girl so very much.

Pulling CJ’s hips down onto her face, Allison sank her tongue deep into the hot volcano of her lover’s pussy, eager to have it erupt and gush that liquid fire into her mouth.

CJ ran her tongue down through Allison’s slit, pressing hard on her small clit before teasing her way inside the girl’s vagina.

When Allison grabbed CJ’s butt cheeks and sank her fingernails into them, just deep enough to cause pain but not draw blood, she felt certain it would drive the woman wild.

CJ pushed a finger inside Allison’s pussy, enjoying the snug fit as she pistoned it back and forth. When Allison began to tense and tremble, CJ knew she was close to orgasm.

“I – I’m almost there…” Allison confirmed, so CJ sucked the girl’s clitty into her mouth, pressing her lips around the sensitive nub. Allison’s body seized up as a climax roared over her like a steam engine. Convulsing against CJ, her pussy gripped the woman’s fingers like a vice, a thin rivulet of liquid trickling down her hand.

Satisfied that her young lover was fully spent, CJ gave in to her own barely contained pleasure, the orgasm bursting free from the confines of her body. She let it come, her juices flowing freely into Allison’s eager mouth, the twelve-year-old capturing every drop of the sweet nectar and savoring its silky smooth texture as it flowed over her tongue.

Finally, they rested in each other’s arms.

“I love you so much,” Allison told CJ. “I swear, you make it better every time.”

“I think we were made for each other, sweet girl, I really do.”

CJ suspected that part of the thrill was having sex with a girl much younger than herself. At first that was what drove her passion, but in the few days they had known each other she’d come to love Allison on a completely different level. It was like a spiritual awakening, a resurrection of emotions she’d thought long perished. She’d been reborn.

She gently kissed each of Allison’s eyes. “Go to sleep, my love. We got a long journey ahead. Might be this is the last time we can get us a good rest for a while.”

Allison snuggled deeper into CJ, and soon they were both fast asleep.

***

CJ woke just as the pre-dawn light began burning away the shadows of the night. Allison snuggled closer, still deep in slumber, and CJ wondered how she’d ever slept without this angel next to her. Reluctantly, she slipped out from the blanket and strode outside to relieve herself.

“Is it time to go?” Allison asked when CJ came back to the barn, then stretched herself with a huge yawn.

CJ began to pull on her clothes. “Yeah, best to get going early and beat the afternoon heat.”

Allison threw the blanket back to reveal her naked body. “Don’t suppose I could tempt you to come back to bed for a while?”

CJ regarded the petite youngster – the sharp peaks of her small breasts, the flat prairie of her tummy, the valley between her legs. “Much as I’d like to feast on that luscious body of yours, we need to get going. Got a long journey ahead.”

“Well, fine.” Pretending to pout, Allison collected her clothes and began to dress.

They packed up Alice, saddled one of the other two horses, then mounted. They rode slowly towards the crest of a hill, a short distance from the remains of the homestead. Allison stopped and turned back for one last look, wiping away sudden tears. “Goodbye, Momma. Goodbye, Daddy. I’ll always love you.”

CJ took her hand and gestured out towards the plains. “Out there’s our future, our destiny. The adventure we was born for. Out on the trail is where cowboys live and die.” She smiled. “And love.”

As the horses moved forward, the woman and the girl clasped hands, then set out towards whatever fate life might hold for them.

The End

A quick recap of the Story Thus Far: Rural paramedic Nettie Hastings finds herself in the middle of a flurry of unexplained overdose calls and, with the help of her best friend and former lover, Terry Wilder, has begun putting clues together linking the source to her own hometown. Some suspect Terry’s involvement, as his ex-wife is a convicted drug trafficker. A DEA agent named Bridgette Ramscone is brought in to work the case, and she takes a special interest in Nettie who, in the meantime, has entered into a clandestine affair with Terry’s preteen daughter Halee. It turns out that Terry’s ex Kathryn is the linchpin of the criminal enterprise behind the overdoses. A showdown occurs in which Halee is shot, and Terry taken hostage. Nettie does a little snooping and, with the help of retired drug trafficker Adam Bixley, unearths a massive stash of heroin left there by Kathryn’s gang.

For a more detailed breakdown of this story’s chapters, please consult the Chapter Links.

by Rachael Yukey

“You can drop me off back at my four-wheeler,” Adam Bixley told Agent Bridgett Ranscone.

“Mr. Bixley,” she said with considerable starch, “I’m not letting you out of my sight just yet. Mostly for your own protection, now that you know what’s in that tunnel.”

We climbed into the Suburban – the swarthy man driving, Bridgett at his side, and the third agent, an intense-looking young black man, clambering awkwardly into the third-row seat. It was myself, Adam, and the tall blonde agent in the second row, with Adam adroitly inserting himself into the middle before either myself or Blondie could get in.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said. “It’s not every day a man my age gets to be the meat in this kind of sandwich.”

As the Suburban jounced over the rough terrain, Bridgett turned towards where I sat behind the driver.

“About twenty minutes ago,” she said, “half a dozen unmarked white vans parked along the highway near Smokey Bear State Park, then unloaded approximately eight men per van, wearing quasi-military uniforms and carrying assault rifles. Some heavier, crew-served weapons also seem to be involved. They surrounded the DEA agents and police officers staking out the cabin where Terry Wilder is being held, and demanded that they stand down. There really wasn’t any choice in the matter; our people were outnumbered and outgunned.”

My insides twisted. “Who are they?”

“Mercenaries. The commander has been identified as one Jameson Hayes, a longtime hatchet man for Gordon Musciari. Ever heard of him?”

“Jesus bleeding Christ,” Adam burst out. “Is that bastard still on the loose?”

Bridgett favored him with a thin smile. “You would know his name, wouldn’t you, Mr. Bixley? When it comes to the international narcotics trade, he’s the kingpin of kingpins, yet nobody has ever gotten enough on him to take him down. He’s the Holy Grail of drug busts.”

The Suburban eased out of the driveway to the locker, accelerating onto the comparatively smooth gravel.

“What does he want with Terry?” I demanded to know.

“I doubt if he’s interested in Terry at all,” countered Bridgett. “Think about it. All that heroin was supplied by someone with a lot more access to finance than Kathryn Wilder currently has. That someone is probably pretty pissed off that the facility is under our control, even if they don’t know whether or not we’ve found the heroin. I’m guessing they’re after Ms. Wilder.”

“But what would they want with her, if she can’t get at the drugs?”

The tall blonde agent was shaking her head before I’d finished speaking. “It’s a mistake to think in strictly rational, dollars and cents terms here,” she said. “A man like Musciari lives by his reputation for ruthlessness. He wants people scared of him. If Kathryn just lost him several million worth of heroin, he has to make an example of her.”

“I got threatened a time or three when I was in the business,” Adam put in.

“So… what does this mean for Terry?” We were on asphalt now, the lights of home on the horizon.

“They might still use him as a hostage to secure whatever exit strategy they have planned,” said Bridgett, “but they’ll almost certainly waste him once they’re done. This just turned into a full-on rescue operation. Our only saving grace is that they appear to be approaching very cautiously. Our people on the ground believe the mercenaries are operating under the impression that Kathryn is in possession of far more manpower and weaponry than she actually has.”

I was starting to feel sick. “Is there a plan?”

Bridgett grimaced. “Not yet. The governor has been asked to call up the National Guard. DEA agents are good, but we’re not trained or equipped to take on mercs with assault rifles. Meanwhile, I’ve been ordered north to take command of our agents there.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why you?”

Bridgett smiled sweetly. “Because I really am that good.”

The swarthy man signaled left onto second street, and pulled up to the curb next to the fire station.

“Am I not allowed to leave your sight, either?” I challenged Bridgett.

“Honestly, I have no grounds to forcibly hold either of you. Mr. Bixley, we really would prefer that you remain in the company of agents for the moment. Ms. Hastings, I’d like you to come with me to International Falls.”

“Wait… what?”

“A helicopter will be landing at the airstrip in about ten minutes to pick me up. I’d like you on it.”

“But why?”

“Because my first choice combat medic is on sick leave, and my second choice can’t be there for almost six hours. You’re right here, and between what I’ve seen of your work and my examination of your records, you have a history of solid decision-making and a cool head under pressure. I called up your boss at Thormleton, by the way. Greg Wahlberg says you’re the most gifted young medic he ever trained.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I said. “I’m not a combat medic. I’m the clinical director of a dinky mom-and-pop service in Johnstown, Minnesota. Thormelton Ambulance, old people shitting in diapers a specialty. Besides, I’m not an employee of your organization. How will that even work, for legal purposes?”

Bridgett smiled. “For legal purposes, I have the authority to mobilize civilians with appropriate specialties, so for the duration of the mobilization, you’re an employee. You’ll even get a paycheck. If you’re worried about direction, I can guarantee our medical director will rubber-stamp my choice. As far as your abilities, I trust both my research and my gut. You’ve got what it takes for this. What do you say? I need a decision; I have to get to the airstrip.”

I thought fast. A desire to be where Terry was, to be part of the team that was coming to his aid, warred with my sense of responsibility to his daughters. The thought of Terry’s desperate situation wracked not only my mind but my entire body. I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting back the tears. This is what friendship is, I realized. To love somebody so much that losing them would be devastating. It occurred to me that Terry and Halee might just be the first people I’ve ever truly felt that for, at least since… I pushed the thought away.

Another truth was pervasive: the younger girls would be fine. My mom was delighting in having young children to care for, and would be thrilled to continue for awhile longer. The fact that it was more ego satisfaction on her part than genuine empathy mattered not even a little.

I opened my eyes. A single tear fell from each, but for the first time since I was a little girl, I didn’t care if people saw me cry. Tears still on my cheeks, I looked Bridgett straight in the eye. “What are we waiting for?”

***

What Bridgett had referred to as ‘the airstrip’ is in fact the Bronning Municipal Airport, but that name is an exercise in self-aggrandizement. Roughly a mile south of town, it consists of two old steel-sided hangers, a small air control tower, and an unpaved runway. To even call it an airstrip seems to be stretching the definition.

The helicopter was landing as we arrived, its lights blinding us as it settled into the grass. I’ve put enough patients onto whirlybirds that I know how to approach one, and I automatically crouched low, putting myself in the pilot’s line of sight.

Difficult though this may be to believe, I’d never flown before. I got my critical care certification with a specific eye towards becoming a flight medic, but then never did, and what little traveling I’ve done in my life has been by car.

My stomach dropped as the ground fell away, the lights of the airport fading swiftly into the darkness. I’d expected to be terrified, but it was exhilarating. My god, I’ve been missing out. I only wished that it was daytime, so I could see more of what was below.

“Wind conditions are ideal,” the pilot’s voice announced through my headset. “We’re looking good to make International Falls in less than an hour.”

Bridgett was texting rapidly on her cellphone. Finally she put it down, unmuted her headset mic, and turned to me.

“The cabin in question is at the end of a row,” she said. “There are more cabins in a line going west from the building Kathryn Wilder and her people are holed up in. The access road is on the north side, and there’s forest on the opposite side of the road. There’s also forest behind the cabins… that’s the south side… although it only goes back about half a mile before it hits some fairly sheer drops down to a dried-up riverbed. There’s nothing but woods on the east side of the cabin. Essentially, the cabin is flanked by forest on the north, east, and south sides.

“It seems the mercenary units have dispersed into the woods on those three sides, with one unit using the cabin immediately west of 505 as cover. So they’ve got cabin 505 surrounded. We’re not sure exactly where all of the units in the woods are located, but they seem to be proceeding with extreme caution. We’re pretty sure they expect Kathryn to have a lot more firepower than she does. Which is good. It buys us time.”

“Time for what?” I asked.

“Well, the governor has agreed to call up the National Guard, and we’re in luck – there’s an Army Guard field exercise taking place right now, on some state land only about an hour from International Falls. I’m guessing the mercs don’t know that, or they wouldn’t have taken the risk. Still, it takes time to get military units loaded up and moving, and we won’t see any soldiers in position for a couple of hours. Hopefully the mercs’ inflated notion of Kathryn Wilder’s capabilities slows them down enough for the Guard to get their asses in gear, because I simply don’t have enough agents on the ground to do anything effective against the numbers and firepower we’re dealing with. Have you ever been to International Falls, Nettie?”

“Yeah,” I said, my face contorting in a grimace, “my grandparents on my dad’s side lived there. When I was little, we used to drive up a couple of times a year. I got sick every time. I’m probably allergic to something that paper factory is spewing out of its smokestacks.”

Bridgett smiled sympathetically. “Hopefully we won’t get close enough to town for that to be a problem.”

***

We landed in a large clearing on the edge of Smokey Bear. There was a thirty-foot trailer in the center, obviously a mobile command post, and a large number of vehicles. Police cars, black SUVs, and armored rigs that I assumed must belong to a local SWAT team.

A short young blonde woman approached at a fast jog. Obviously of Norwegian ancestry, she looked like an adult version of Naomi Wilder. I pegged her at roughly my age; mid-twenties or so. She was wearing a gray uniform that looked like combat garb, but there were trauma shears and a penlight poking from the thigh pockets of her tactical pants. Over her right breast pocket, the name SVENSON was emblazoned. The patch over the left breast read PARAMEDIC. There was a critical care patch on her left sleeve. Slowing to a walk as she approached, she eyed me dubiously. I realized I was the only person present wearing street clothes.

Bridgett faced her as she approached. “Are you the local SWAT medic?” she inquired, as the young woman came to a halt before us.

“That’s right. Clarice Svenson.”

“I’m Bridgett Ramscone, incident commander. This is Antoinette Hastings.” Bridgett gestured towards me. “She’s a paramedic on special assignment to the DEA, and will be taking command of on-scene EMS. I’d appreciate it if you’d get her up to speed, but do it quickly. Time may be short.” Bridgett set off in the direction of the command trailer.

Clarice Svenson stuck out her hand, a sour expression on her face. She obviously resented my presence, and I couldn’t honestly say that I blamed her. I shook her hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Antoinette,” she said, sounding anything but. “Come with me, please.”

She turned on her heel and set off towards where most of the armored vehicles were consolidated. With a couple of long strides to catch up, I fell in beside her. I understood why this pretty young SWAT paramedic, specifically trained to operate in crisis situations, was upset that I was taking over what should have been her job, but that didn’t change the reality that I had been placed in charge. I was damned if I would trail along behind.

“We have local EMS staged just outside of the park,” she informed me as we walked. “As many crews as we could get. There are three ALS ambulances, and two BLS. They’re regular, unprotected street ambulances, so we can’t bring them anywhere near the scene. If there are more patients than the two of us can handle, we’ll have to use whatever resources we’ve got to get them out of the hot zone.”

“How far away is that?” I wanted to know.

“Almost a mile.”

“Shit,” I said. “What do you mean, the two of us? Didn’t they send you out with a partner?”

She snorted. “This is International Falls, not St. Paul. The SWAT team has one medic, and one EMT. We get called up maybe once a year. My usual EMT is in fucking Fargo right now. You are my partner.”

I considered telling her the county I lived in didn’t sport a single city boasting a SWAT team of any description, but decided to let that one go. We’d entered the little enclave of armored vehicles, and she stopped in front of a six-wheeled machine, vaguely hexagonal in appearance. It looked excitingly chunky.

“Here’s our ambulance,” she said.

I felt my eyes bulge. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

She looked up at me with unconcealed scorn. “You really are new at this sort of thing, aren’t you? I’m not trying to be a bitch, but I don’t understand what you’re doing here.” She let out a heavy sigh, then beckoned with a sweep of her arm. “Come on.”

We entered through a thick steel side door. There was a standard Stryker ambulance cot, a Zoll monitor, and a bunch of wall cabinets. I couldn’t see what was in them, because the doors were steel instead of the usual transparent plastic. As per usual, there was a chair at the head of the cot, and a bench seat on the passenger’s side. The cot was set against the driver’s side wall, precluding the jump seat to which I was accustomed.

There were screens embedded into the upper walls on the driver’s side, with what appeared to be a map on the one in the center. I pointed at it.

“What’s that screen telling me?” I wanted to know.

“That’s the area,” she said. She indicated a big red dot. “There’s the cabin. The little green dots around it are the estimated positions of the mercenaries. Over here,” she pointed to a series of orange dots, “are the ambulances that are staged. The big blue dot is Rainy Lake Medical Center. That’s the International Falls hospital, and it’s our only option for transport. It’s a level four trauma center.”

I considered the map for a moment, then turned my attention back to Clarice. “So… we have one hospital, which can basically do nothing for severe trauma, and we already have as many trucks as we can get.”

“Right,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied. “Walk me through the equipment and supplies in this rig. Just an overview; I’ll be counting on your knowledge of the layout if shit gets real.”

Clarice might have been resentful of my presence, but she was nothing if not professional. She gave me a rapid-fire rundown of what we carried and where it was located, pausing to point out quirks and abnormalities.

We were working on the last cabinet when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my back pocket, and almost did a double take as my eyes fell upon the screen.

“Holy shit, it’s Terry,” I said.

Svensons’s eyebrows shot up. ”You mean the hostage?!”

I nodded as I swiped the accept button. “Terry! Where are you? What…”

“Nettie, stop talking.” His voice was low and urgent. I could hear a weird gurgling sound in the background. “How quick can you get hold of Ramscone?”

“She’s only fifty yards or so away. What’s going on?”

“A very tight, wet space is what’s going on,” he replied, still sotto voce. “Kathryn’s boys were freaking out about something and left me unsupervised in the back room of the cabin, upon which I did the logical thing and bolted the fuck out the door and into the woods. Only to run into some kind of weird-ass paramilitary organization. These people don’t look like agents or police of any description, but they’re everywhere and are sporting some very large, very ugly guns. I’m just lucky I saw them before they saw me. I’m wedged into a drainage culvert, and here I stay until I figure out who the righteous fuck these people are.”

“Terry…” I said. “Christ. Stay on the line.”

Covering the phone with my hand, I turned to Clarice. “I have to go talk to Ramscone. I’ll be back in a few.”

She shrugged. “I’ll wait.”

I ducked out of the side door, making for the command trailer at a dead run. Bridgett, after hearing my report, asked me to put my phone on speaker.

“Mr. Wilder, ” she said, “can you give me an estimate of how far you are from the cabin?”

“I’d say maybe a quarter mile at most.”

“Okay, very good. How many of these armed individuals do you think have passed your location since you went to ground?”

“I’ve heard three. One went right over the top of me.”

“Mr. Wilder, I’m sorry, but why are you calling instead of texting?”

“I tried, but my fingers are too numb to text. I was barely able to get into my contact list.”

“Fuck,” Bridgett muttered under her breath. “Okay, listen carefully. Those individuals are closing in on the cabin, and you’re probably outside of their circle by now. But that doesn’t mean it would be smart for you to extricate yourself. Here’s what I’d like you to do. Put your phone on vibrate, and keep it somewhere you’ll feel when it rings. Unless your situation changes, do not contact us, we will contact you. We’re going to triangulate on your phone, and send someone to get you out of there. Do you understand, Mr. Wilder?”

“Got it. No worries, I have nothing but time here.”

Bridgett made a slashing motion across her throat, and I terminated the connection. She was already turning to one of her subordinates.

“We should have Mr. Wilder’s cell number on file,” she said. “We can use that to ascertain exactly where he’s located, then send in a team to extract him. Get some people on it. The quicker we can get him out of there and negate his usefulness as a hostage, the better.”

***

“Team Beta is in position.” the radio feed informed me. Clarice Svenson and I were hunkered down in the back of our armored ambulance, positioned as close as we could get to Terry’s location without giving anything away.

“Team Beta, this is Incident Command,” Bridgett’s voice replied. “You’re a go to move in. Radio silence from this point; no further contact until mission objectives are accomplished or assistance is required. Command is clear.”

A thought occurred to me. I plucked the microphone from its clip. “EMS One to Incident Command.”

“This is command,” said Bridgett.

“The transporting ambulances are over a mile from our present location,” I said. “Can I have some units assigned for emergency transfer to the cold zone?” Clarice glanced sharply in my direction, surprised appreciation written on her face.

“I’ll send two armored trucks to your location,” Bridgett replied. “I’ll also ask for volunteers from the EMS units in the cold zone to staff them; maybe one EMT per truck with a go bag. They can move patients out of the hot zone if you deem them sufficiently stable. Will that suffice?”

It was more than I’d dared to hope for, and certainly the best I was going to get. “Copy,” I said. “That will do, and thank you.”

“Good call,” Clarice said, a hint of grudging admiration in her tone.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

We sat back and watched the center screen. Terry’s cellphone was lit up in violet, in the woods directly south of the cabin from which he’d escaped. It was the one piece of information we could be sure the mercenaries surrounding the cabin didn’t have. The transponders from Team Beta, moving in to extract him, showed up in yellow. There were four of them, moving in carefully from different points of the compass, converging on Terry’s location. Suddenly one of them stopped moving, and the light signifying that agent began to flash.

“The flashing means that unit has encountered an obstacle of some kind,” Clarice informed me. “They have a little button they press that changes our display like this. The other agents out there will have gotten it too. See how all four of them are holding in place?”

Indeed, all four yellow lights had ceased to move forward. My eyes were riveted to the screen.

“The hostage… he’s someone you’re close to?” Clarice said suddenly.

“My best friend,” I told her.

She regarded me thoughtfully, sympathy written on her face. Despite her initial misgivings, I felt that she was warming up to me.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That really sucks. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve worked with the feds before. They’re pretty good at this.”

Eventually the yellow to the northwest ceased to flash, and the four lights began moving in again. Twice more, one yellow light or the other flashed, and all four held in place. Each pause was pure agony, my guts clenching to the point of nausea for fear of what might happen to Terry. The third time they stopped moving, Clarice reached out and took my hand. I squeezed tightly, fighting back tears, grateful that I wasn’t alone.

Finally the four yellow lights converged upon the violet one. Agonizing minutes later, all five lights, four yellow and one violet, were moving rapidly away from the cabin, heading straight east.

“Beta One to Incident Command,” a tenor male voice squawked across the airwaves.

“Go for command,” Bridgett’s voice acknowledged.

“We have Subject Omega in hand, repeat, Subject Omega is in our custody. We are moving east away from the cabin, and will circle around to the location of EMS One. Acknowledge.”

“Command acknowledges,” Bridgett replied, “and well done. No further communication unless absolutely necessary. EMS One, did you copy?”

“EMS copies,” I said, fighting back the urge to ask for a patient update.

It took team Beta over ten minutes to reach us – circling around to the north, then back to where we were situated towards the end of the long row of cabins. There was a sharp rap on the side hatch. Clarice released a lever, and the door swung open, revealing four agents in camouflage and a shivering, disheveled Terry Wilder, still in the same clothes he’d been wearing on that mad dash to the farmstead on Shadow Lake Road.

One of the agents gave him a boost from below, with Clarice and I drawing him up into the rig by his elbows. He looked at Clarice with a weary smile, then fixed his gaze on me as we eased him onto the cot.

“Nettie?!” he exclaimed, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Long story,” I told him. “Just rest. How do you feel?”

“Like the fourth day of a three-day weekend.”

“Cute. Does anything hurt?”

“I can’t feel my fingers or toes.”

Clarice was already examining one of his hands. “I don’t think he’s got frostbite yet,” she said.

“You checking the feet, too?” I asked, as I wrapped a pressure cuff around Terry’s arm.

“Got it,” she said. I saw out of the corner of my eye that she already had a shoe and sock off.

Once we got to work, Clarice and I had an instant rapport. It seemed to take almost no time for the two of us to have the wet clothes off him, pack his pits and groin with heat packs, get a hot hat on, and cover him with warm blankets. I got an IV started while Clarice spiked a bag of fluids from the warmer.

“What’s your name, pretty lady?” Terry asked, eyes fixed on Clarice as she hung the bag. He was wearing that goddamn lopsided grin I knew so well.

“I’m Clarice,” she said cheerfully, “and I can see you’re very charming. So I’ll save you the trouble: I’m gay.”

“Well, hell,” said Terry. “I had this whole spiel I was about to lay on you. Now it’s all going to waste.”

“Let’s focus, loverboy,” I admonished him. “Any pain anywhere?”

“Just my fingers, where the circulation is coming back. And before you ask, I’m not suffering from dizziness, nausea, or shortness of breath.”

I chuckled, studying the monitor. Terry’s vitals were good, the ECG unremarkable.

“Okay,” I said. “I think we can send him for transport to the hospital in one of the BLS rigs.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Terry protested.

“The hell you don’t,” I said. “You’re dehydrated and a touch hypothermic. Don’t make me punch you in the balls, Terry.”

“I want to go home and see the girls. Speaking of which, any further news on Halee’s condition?”

“Not since I last texted you,” I said. “Besides, the girls are in bed asleep. Go to the hospital for an hour or two, get your core temperature up, and then maybe you won’t look like dogshit when you see them. Don’t fight me on this; I will punch you in the balls.”

Terry fixed his eyes on Clarice, looking for sympathy. “She really is kind of a bitch, isn’t she?”

“What are friends for?” I said.

***

We helped Terry out of the rig and into one of the armored trucks that had been assigned to our location.

“Make sure you send him in one of the BLS rigs,” I reminded the driver. “He’s stable, and we might need the ALS rigs here. As soon as you offload, come right back. You guys are our only link to the cold zone.”

As we clambered back on board, my cellphone was ringing. It was Bridgett.

“Put me on speaker so I can talk to both of you,” she said.

I took the phone away from my ear, hit the speaker button, and set the phone down on a cabinet. “You’re on,” I told her.

“Okay,” she said, “this isn’t going out over a radio channel yet, but the National Guard has arrived. Some units will probably be moving past your position in a few minutes. As near as we can tell, the mercenaries are now set up in a tight little circle around the cabin. The merc commander is calling for the surrender of the cabin’s occupants. There’s been a single shot fired that we think came from inside the cabin itself.”

“Does the Guard being here change our status?” I wanted to know. As I spoke, I saw lights passing our location through the armored ambulance’s narrow viewports. It didn’t look like the light patterns you’d see from normal highway vehicles, and I had to assume it was the National Guard.

“For the moment, you’re still the first line of emergency care,” she said. “The Guard was able to get infantry deployed very quickly, but medical units are lagging. The Guard units are planning to cordon off the entire area, then announce themselves. No reason to be subtle, now that Terry Wilder is out of play. The mercs can’t outfight the Guard, so how bad this gets will depend on how far they’re willing to go to avoid prison. Stay ready.”

Looking at the animated map, I watched new lights, silver this time, fan out around the area occupied by the mercenaries. “I take it that’s the Guard,” I said. Clarice merely nodded. I couldn’t help but notice that the Guard units were only covering three sides.

“What about the south end?” I said.

“That’s where the old riverbed is,” she reminded me. “It’s basically a big cliff back there. They probably figure nobody will be suicidal enough to try going that way.”

Long, agonizing minutes stretched out. Finally I had to break the silence.

“What you said to Terry…”

“Is true,” she broke in. “I’m a lesbian. My gaydar says you kind of swing in that direction, too.”

I chuckled. “Oh, yes.”

The radio screeched. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Tim Dunn, State of Minnesota Army National Guard,” a voice proclaimed. “Mercenary units surrounding Cabin 505, we’ve been monitoring your radio traffic. If you wish to communicate with our units, please switch over to channel one zero niner. Respond, please.”

Clarice and I glanced at each other, waiting with baited breath.

“Mercenary units, this is Lieutenant Colonel Dunn of the Army National Guard, and we have your location surrounded. We are observing with night vision, and can give you a precise numbering of your present personnel, and their locations. If you do not respond, we will begin closing on your position.”

“Army National Guard,” a harsh, slightly accented voice burst forth. “We have what you’re after. We’ve captured Kathryn Wilder. If you want her, you let us pass undisturbed.”

“I have no orders to capture a specific individual,” Colonel Dunn replied, “merely to cordon off this area and prevent personnel within from escaping. To be clear: nobody is getting through this line. Attempt any such, and you will be fired upon. Do I make myself clear?”

“National Guard,” said the accented voice in a mocking tone. “We will now exit the building we currently occupy, using the road to the north. We advise you to stand aside and let us pass, unless you actually want this to come down to a fight. Do I make myself clear?”

“Mercenary units,” Colonel Dunn’s voice replied once more, “You are certainly welcome to try. Be advised that we have night vision both on the ground and drone-mounted, as well as body armor and armored vehicles. Moreover, we have assumed defensive positions, whereas it will be necessary for your troops to expose themselves while exiting the facility. I repeat, attempt to break our line, and you will be fired upon.”

A minute or so later, from a distance, there were burp-burp noises, repeating and in short bursts.

“Goddamn it,” Clarice said bleakly. “That’s the assault rifles going off. Looks like we’re going to matter after all.”

It went on for a few more minutes, and then there was silence.

“Incident Command to EMS One,” Bridgett’s voice cut in.

“EMS,” I replied.

“The mercenaries have surrendered, but a number of them were injured in the brief fighting that took place. Casualties coming your way.”

The first to arrive was dead; a shot had gone right through his temple. A half dozen more came through, with varying degrees of injury, all bullet wounds. Clarice and I bandaged them up, stabilized them if need be, and shipped them off to the waiting ambulances outside the park. As EMS commander, I made the calls for ALS or BLS, and how many per ambulance. The last to arrive had been shot through the heart, and had been dead long enough to have cooled. Nor was he wearing the same quasi-military garb as the mercenaries. He also had a nasty tib-fib deformity. I was shocked to realize it was one of Kathryn’s hired guns; the one who had fallen and broken his leg back at the farm on Shadow Lake Road. That was the shot from inside the cabin, I realized, wondering if Kathryn had pulled the trigger herself.

Finally all the patients and dead bodies had been shipped off, and Clarice and I sat alone in the back of the armored ambulance, momentarily forgotten in the general hubbub. We were even isolated from the driver up front, separated by a heavy steel hatch.

“I’m sorry if I was a bitch at first,” she said. “You’re really good. I was proud to serve under you.”

“Forget it,” I said with a shrug. “I kind of got sucked into this, and I get why you didn’t like it. You’re one of the best I’ve worked with.”

We were seated side-by-side on the bench seat, and she placed her hand on my thigh. “I’ve never told anybody this before,” she said, “but the adrenaline letdown right after bad shit happens always messes up my hormones. I’m crazy horny right now.”

I realized that I was feeling the same way. “You and me both,” I said.

She slid her fingers up my thigh, unbuttoned my jeans, and slipped a hand inside. A moment later I followed suit, my fingers sliding beneath her tac pants and underwear. She was deliciously wet. We sat there that way, fingering one another, delighting in each other’s raspy breath and gasps of pleasure.

Clarice came first, pressing her sopping pussy hard against my fingers and throwing an arm across her mouth to stifle the moans. My climax hit a moment later, intense bursts of pleasure practically overloading my nerve centers. I clenched my teeth to minimize the noise.

On to Chapter Twenty-one!

by kinkychic and kinky’s_sis

My heart was in my throat as the passengers streamed from Susy’s plane. Why is the one you’re dying to see always the last to emerge? It was ages before I spotted her trundling her suitcase through the gate.

“Maddie!” she cried. Rushing to the barrier she leaned across to hug me. When we parted, I held a single rose up for her. Then we were both sobbing and kissing, totally oblivious to anyone and everything.

She gave me a quizzical look when we got to the car. “No, I didn’t win the lottery,” I said. “It’s a hire car.”

“You thought of everything,” she said, hoisting her suitcase. “Where should I put this?”

When her case was stowed away in the boot, I said, “Now concentrate, and help me get out of this place so I end up going the right way on the M25.”

Coincidences don’t come much bigger. Turns out that Chloe and Jenny were on her flight, too. After learning her name, Chloe had asked if she was “Maddie’s Susy.”

Susy knew right away what Chloe meant. It had stopped her dead, but she answered, “Yes, I guess I am,” feeling puzzled for a moment before she realised whom she was speaking to. “Ah, yes… you’re the one on the flight crew who Maddie got to know so well,” she told Chloe with a smile. “Right, she did tell me about that.” They shared a laugh.

“I’m sure Chloe would have loved to spirit me into the loo for a quick fuck,” Susy said as I maneuvred the car out of the airport parking lot. “But she behaved herself, and we chatted for a while. I liked her quite a lot. Oh, and the attendant named Jenny asked me to send Lucy her love, along with, and I quote, a ‘sexy French kiss’. She paused. “Is there, um, something I should know about that?”

I explained how Jenny and my sister had hooked up on both our flights, then again when Lucy went to her place for the weekend.

“That girl… she’s a genuine firework,” Susy said admiringly. “By the way… did you tell your mum about us?”

“Yes,” I said. “And it was so totally amazing in the end. Everything came out. You and me, the two of us with Lucy, Lucy with me, even Lucy and Jenny.”

“And she didn’t have a conniption, like you thought she would?”

“No, not at all. But you want to know the best bit? Mum’s got a date coming to dinner tonight. A woman! Julie’s her name, and she’s soooo fucking hot.”

“Oh my God! No way!”

“Hold on, there’s more. Lucy’s old girlfriend Katie is coming with her new girlfriend, Megan. We haven’t met her yet. Which of course leaves one problem: Lucy. She’ll be odd man out.”

“Oops, shit! What do we do?”

“Well, I’m sorta hoping that Katie might be able to convince Megan to invite Lucy in with them, make it a threesome. If not, then I guess it’s gonna have to be you and me taking care of her.”

“Er, Maddie… are you suggesting that this is going to be some kinda orgy? I thought it was just a dinner party.”

“Mum’s not planning on an orgy, I’m sure, but I just have a feeling things might go that way. Katie and Megan are staying over, so are you, and Mum’s date probably will be, too. That’s a lot of gay women and girls under one roof. Mum says she’s bisexual, but this party just might convert her to full-on lesbian.”

Susy shook her head, clearly awed. “Bloody hell, Maddie… you’re a bold one, I’ll say that!”

***

Dinner was wonderful. Julie was one of the funniest, most charming ladies I’ve ever met. Mum hung on her every word. God, she looked so happy.

Megan was delightful. Just as quiet as Katie to begin with, but a glass of wine had loosened her up.

After the meal was over, Julie stood and proposed a toast. “To you beautiful girls, my lovely Rosie…” She paused to blow a kiss to Mum, “and not a man in sight!”

The lights were turned down and Julie selected an Al Green CD to play. Two more bottles of wine were opened, and glasses refilled.

Mum and Julie got up to dance first. I expected Mum to be somewhat embarrassed, but whether it was the wine she’d drunk or just letting herself go, she settled herself into it, wrapped up comfortably in Julie’s arms. Susy and I joined them on the floor. I was used to dancing to faster, more recent music, but it didn’t matter. We were happy.

Julie called out to the younger girls, “Come on, you three… join us! You can dance together.”

So they did. It was almost comical at first. The girls didn’t know what to do, but they soon worked up some sort of rhythm, all holding on to each other.

Lucy nodded toward Mum. My God – she and Julie were kissing! Nothing too passionate, just a lovely soft kiss that hinted at much more. Julie’s hands were gliding over Mum’s back. Fuck, it looked so hot.

“You want to kiss me, then?” asked Susy. I gave a bashful nod, and then we were buried deep in our own embrace, snogging for all we were worth..

I had my eyes closed, enjoying the moment, when Susy broke away. “Look,” she whispered. The three girls were taking turns kissing each other, each kiss lasting longer than the one before. Lucy had slipped a hand up inside Katie’s top, and was caressing the girl’s budding breasts.

“Your mum’s watching them,” Susy whispered.

Shit – she was! Mum’s eyes were wide as she stared at the girls, but I saw a little smile on her face. She was definitely enjoying the show! Then Mum looked towards me as she took Julie’s hand and guided it to her breast. The look on her face seemed to ask, May I? I winked my answer. Then she and Julie were kissing again, but with far more ardour.

The three younger ones flopped down on the sofa in a tangled heap. Their hands were freely exploring, clothes awry as they groped each other.

“Are you okay with this?” I asked Susy, nodding toward Mum, then the girls. “Not… uncomfortable or anything, right?”

She slowly shook her head, eyes burning with excitement. “Maddie, I’ve never seen anything so fucking hot. I mean, look at the girls… they don’t even care that we can see them. Oh, my – look, they’re already at each other’s pussies!”

I realised then that we four adults were watching the kids – supposedly dancing, but really only swaying in place while we took in the show. Julie had a hand pressed to the front of Mum’s skirt. I was clutching Susy’s arse, pulling her against me. We each had a leg pressed between each other’s thighs as we began to grind our bodies together.

From the corner of my eye, I saw something fall to the floor. It was Megan’s dress, and her panties soon followed. Katie was kissing her barely-there breasts, and Lucy was down between the preteen’s legs, face nestled in Megan’s sparse pubes. I could see my sister’s tongue, languidly toying with her new lover’s slit.

Julie and Mum had gone still. My mother’s mouth was hanging open, a mixture of expressions crossing her face. For a moment I thought she was going to put a stop to all this, then Julie drew her back into a kiss, and Mum submitted with a whimper.

I noticed that as their kiss grew hotter, Julie was deftly unfastening the buttons on Mum’s top. All of a sudden, before my mum was fully aware of what her lover was up to, Julie tugged my mother’s bra down and took a nipple into her mouth.

Mum gasped in shock. She looked incredibly nervous – in fact, she seemed to be on the verge of pushing Julie away and fleeing the room. She needs encouragement, I told myself.

Reaching for the hem of my top, I quickly pulled it over my head. My bra followed it to the floor. “Let’s make love now, Susy,” I said. “Mum’s freaking out – we’ve got to, to stop her from running away!”

“From her own fear, eh?” Susy gave me a merry smile. “You’re right… the poor creature must learn to survive in the wild.” And with that, she ducked down to nuzzle my bare breasts as Mum looked on with mixed emotions – first at us, then at Lucy and the others, who were struggling out of what was left of their clothes. Susy raised her arms, and I pulled off her top. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and our breasts mashed together as we cuddled into another kiss.

More clothes went flying. By then, the youngsters were totally naked. Katie straddled Megan, scooting back until her pussy was inches from her friend’s face. Bending down, she and Lucy took turns licking Megan, sharing a messy kiss every now and then.

“Fuck!” Susy groaned, watching the hot sex action on the sofa while she wriggled the snug skirt I wore down over my hips, then unfastened her own with a flick, letting it drop. My panties were halfway down when her hand found my pussy.

The next time I opened my eyes I got a shock. Mum and Julie were naked, kissing and groping each other’s boobs while frantically engaging in mutual masturbation. I had just enough time to notice how beautiful they looked together before my thoughts were interrupted by a shriek.

It was Megan. Katie often squirts when she gets off, and now she was coming in Megan’s face, much to the girl’s surprise. Then Megan went quiet, and her own body began to shake. Lucy was bringing her off in a short but intense climax. Then the three of them collapsed in a heap together.

Julie was trying to coax Mum to the floor, but I could see her reluctance. So I sank down, pulling Susy with me, turning her around so we landed in a sixty-nine. I buried my face deep between her legs; her tongue danced over my clit. In our passion we rolled over, Susy ending up on top. I felt a leg at my side – Mum’s leg. I grabbed it with one hand, urging her down with us. Then I was lost to the world, buffeted by my own stormy climax.

I heard a scream, but it wasn’t me. Shit, it was Mum! We were coming at the same time. I was vaguely aware of three faces peering down at us, then I went over the edge. I couldn’t help it. I even forgot about licking Susy. It was Lucy who saved the day. She knew I was useless at the moment, so she thrust her face alongside mine – licking Susy’s clit, then driving two fingers into her pussy.

Just as my own climax began to subside, Susy’s began. She clawed at my legs, her lips buried in my pussy as she shook. Susy hardly ever shouts, but someone did. It was Julie. She was coming, too. She was coming on Mum’s fingers.

Gradually, we all returned to earth. Mum looked confused, Julie gleeful, the rest of us happy and spent. Only Lucy was dissatisfied. “We have a big sex party, and I don’t even get to come? Bollocks to that! Who’s gonna fuck me now?”

Mum’s hand shot to her mouth. “Lucy, whatever are you saying?”

She grinned back. “Do I have to spell it out?” She looked from one to the other of us. “I’ve already done it with Maddie, Susy and Katie, so that leaves Megan, Julie… or you, Mum. So who’s it gonna be?”

Julie glanced at Mum, who shook her head. “I – I couldn’t! You can’t ask me to do something like that, Lucy. It’s not right. I’m your mother, for God’s sake!”

Mum’s new lover, on the other hand, seemed utterly unfazed. Julie turned to Megan and said, “We can toss a coin for her, if you want. What d’you say?”

Perhaps frightened at being the centre of attention, Megan shook her head. Julie gave a huge grin. “Thank you, love.” Shifting her gaze to Lucy, she said, ”You’re all mine, then.”

Mum was stunned. “Julie?” she whispered, but her lover was already approaching Lucy, who looked as if she might swoon from sheer delight.

I beckoned Mum to join Susy and me. She meekly obeyed, and I sat her down between us. Katie and Megan went back to their seat and cuddled together. Julie was still on her knees. Lucy stood in front of her with both hands on her hips, swaying from side to side, a coy look on her face.

Mum gripped my hand. “I don’t want to look, b-but I can’t help it. For God’s sake, Maddie – she’s making love to my little girl! Should I… should I allow this to happen?”

I gave her arm a squeeze. “Mum, relax. Lucy knows what she’s doing.”

“More than I do,” Mum said, a touch of sadness in her voice.

Julie stared as Lucy fondled herself, making a show of it. Once again, I admired my little sister’s ability to tease a potential lover. She rubbed her little boobs, pausing to tug at the nipples, then reached down to stroke her tummy. She spun around and wiggled her arse, then reached back with both hands, clutching her buttocks, pulling them apart. Julie gasped at the sight of Lucy’s bumhole.

Lucy peered over her shoulder, transfixing Julie with a glance. “Lick,” she commanded.

Still kneeling, Julie shuffled forwards until her face met Lucy’s arse. We watched her tongue emerge, slipping into the crack, trailing up and down through the dark pink cleft before sliding down. Lucy bent over as Julie’s tongue found her bare pussy.

Mum clutched my hand tightly, pressing it into her lap. “Maddie, my God, my God,” she whispered. “I c-can’t believe this is happening!”

Lucy suddenly turned around, thrusting her pelvis into Julie’s face. Julie barely paused in her licking, delicately tracing my sister’s slit with the tip of her tongue.

Mum didn’t seem aware of it, but she was pushing my hand down between her legs. I didn’t know how to respond. Could this be turning her on? Meeting Susy’s eyes, I raised an eyebrow at her, Shit! She just shrugged, with an expression that seemed to say, What’s a girl to do?

I very slowly uncurled my fingers, feeling Mum’s pubes, which were somewhat matted with her wetness. She pressed harder, and so did I, allowing one finger to slide between her dewy lips.

Now Mum turned and stared at me, shaking her head no. But she still held my hand down there. And then another hand covered one of her breasts. It was Susy, cupping the creamy globe in her palm, a nipple bulging between her fingers.

Her eyes wide open, Mum turned to gape at Susy. She began to speak, but my lover put a finger to Mum’s lips. “Shush,” she said, then leaned in and kissed her.

Susy’s hand came down on top of Mum’s and mine, pressing them both against Mum’s very wet pussy. Mum was rigid, tight as a bow. As Susy persevered with the kiss, she began to move  our hands around, as if she was using them to masturbate my mother. I could feel Mum’s cunt beneath my fingers, felt her lips part to the touch, the erect nubbin of her clit against the tip of my finger.

I couldn’t restrain myself for one second longer. I began to pleasure my mother.

She shivered, a moan escaped her lips, then she was returning Susy’s kiss. She slowly fell backwards onto the carpet, pulling Susy with her, their mouths still together. Now they were kissing like passionate lovers.

I dropped to my knees, pushing Mum’s legs apart, taking a moment to marvel at the beauty of her cunt. My fingers trailed down from her clit, spreading the lips open. Then I slipped inside. Her hips slid towards me, and her pussy gobbled up my fingers. Bending down, I kissed her clit, my tongue flickering and teasing the swollen nub. Mum grasped my hair, pulling me into her.

I began to fuck her, quickly falling into a rapid tempo of thrusts and withdrawals. Her clitoris was a tiny erection between my lips, so lovely to suck on. Mum wrapped both legs round my back, almost squeezing the breath out of me.

I heard a wail. I couldn’t see, but I knew it was Lucy. Susy and Mum broke their kiss to look, then my mother’s body jerked violently as her own orgasm kicked in. Mum told me later that she was driven over the edge by the sight of her lover making Lucy come. Her hips bucked wildly as she stared at the ecstatic face of her younger daughter. “My baby,” she whispered. Then with a cry of “Oh my God, Maddie!” her climax reached its peak.

Suddenly Lucy was there, one arm around Susy, the other hugging Mum to herself.

Mum’s twined legs suddenly fell away, releasing me. I could breathe properly again. She pulled me to her, our lips met and she kissed me like a lover. Her tongue entered my mouth, and I tenderly sucked on it before she gently broke away, gazing into my eyes for the briefest moment before turning to kiss her other daughter. Lucy responded eagerly, kissing Mum hard and deep.

When they finally parted, Mum hugged us to her, openly crying, “You girls have made me do some very wicked things… and it was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had. I love you all so much.” Smiling through her tears, she buried her lips in Lucy’s hair.

I hadn’t noticed Julie leaving the room, but then she arrived with a tray of glasses filled with wine. “I think you ladies need a drink.” We didn’t speak. What more was left for us to say? We each took glasses, then clinked them in a silent toast.

Katie and Megan were watching this, having finished their own fun. Julie served them each a glass of wine, “Would you girls like to show me your room?”

Exchanging quick glances, the girls grinned and reached out to her. Taking their hands, Julie led them to the stairs. They didn’t bother with their clothes, which were scattered about the room along with ours.

Mum was gobsmacked. “Well, I didn’t see that coming. Now what?”

Lucy spoke up at once. “We go to bed, Mum – your bed.”

“What, all of us?”

In unison, we answered, “Yeah.”

So upstairs we went  – a mother, her two daughters and the eldest daughter’s girlfriend, intent on another hour or two of hot, sweaty lesbian sex. We left our clothes behind, too.

***

Later, we returned to our own rooms to settle in for the night… unless we chose to fuck again, that is. Julie was in with Mum; Lucy, Katie, and Megan took the spare room with the double bed; and Susy and I retired to my room.

We climbed into bed and nestled together. I looked searchingly at Susy. “So… are you shocked by all of this?”

“Yes… well, no. With you and Lucy, I suppose I should’ve expected anything.” She giggled. “Who knew I’d be having it off with your mum, though?”

“But… you’re okay with our lifestyle? It doesn’t put you off?”

She smiled. “It doesn’t, not a bit. I’m in love with you, Maddie. I adore your family, and think your friends are amazing… but I love you most of all.”

“So you and me… ?” I let the question hang.

Susy rolled onto her back, pulling my body on top of hers. I could feel my thigh resting against her warm sex. “Yes, you and me,” she whispered. “For always.”

We sealed our love and our lives with a kiss.

The End

Note from JetBoy: Many thanks to BlueJean for his editing work.

by Biker Guy

A mighty rushing wind almost drowned out the screams of Allison’s mother and father, yelling for her to take cover from the twister bearing down on their house. Allison didn’t know what to do, but something prompted her to open the lid of the old oak chest her clothes were kept in. Terrified, the twelve-year-old climbed inside. She could barely fit, but managed to close the top and curl up into a ball.

Within a few seconds the screams ceased. The violent sound of cracking wood seemed to fill the air all around her, making Allison’s blood turn to ice. The chest rattled and shook before suddenly catapulting into the air and tossing the girl around like a rag doll. In what seemed like a lifetime, but in reality, must have been just a few seconds, the chest struck the ground and the girl was knocked unconscious.

Sometime later Allison opened her eyes, completely disoriented, and began screaming, “Momma! Momma, help me! Please!”

There was only silence. She tried to raise the lid of the chest but it wouldn’t budge. Wondering where her parents were, Allison began to cry.

Her father had said something about a twister. She’d learned in school that it was also called a tornado, a powerful storm that could destroy anything in its path. If a tornado really had struck their home, it was possible everything was destroyed, and her parents might be hurt or even dead. Now she was really scared. “Momma! Daddy! Anyone!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, but only silence answered her.

Once again she tried moving the lid, but something was blocking it. She realized the chest was tilted slightly, and threw her weight against one side. The container rocked a little. She did it again and again until finally it tipped and the top was flung open.

She took a breath of fresh air, then gasped in horror when she saw the devastation around her. Only the stone foundation of their house remained. The barn had partially collapsed, the wagon was smashed into pieces, and the windmill was nowhere to be seen. “Momma! Daddy!” she yelled as loud as she could, afraid that the worst had happened.

Allison brushed the dirt from the thin muslin material of her house dress. It was high summer and already she was sweating from the heat. The air was eerily calm considering a vicious storm had just passed. She walked amongst the rubble looking for any sign of her parents.

Eventually, she found the twisted body of her mother, arms and legs bent at impossible angles. “Momma!” Her mother’s eyes were open, and Allison dared to hope she was still alive. “Momma?”

She touched a shoulder but got no response, then put an ear to her mom’s breast, listening for a heartbeat but hearing nothing. She watched the woman’s chest for any movement, but there was none.

“Oh, Momma…” Allison dropped her head and sobbed. Her mother was dead.

After a time she got up and continued the search for her father, to no avail. She decided the storm had carried him away and abandoned any hope that he was still alive.

She searched for any foodstuffs that were still in one piece, and found some bread – dirty but edible – and a couple jars of fruit that miraculously hadn’t broken. Everything else was either crushed or simply gone.

She went to the well and dropped the bucket down to draw some water. At least she wouldn’t die from thirst or starvation – for a while, anyway.

Allison found a tattered blanket and took it to the barn. Most of the roof was either gone or had fallen in, but one corner was still sheltered, so she gathered hay for a makeshift pallet. Finally lying down, she covered herself with the blanket and cried herself to sleep.

***

Janice Blankenship, known by most as Crazy Jane, and by her few friends as CJ, sang at the top of her voice as she slouched in the saddle on the blond filly she called Alice. Her voice could curl the toes of a dead man, but she was pretty sure there wasn’t another living soul in this godforsaken corner of Kansas for hundreds of miles.

Crazy Jane was an odd duck. She had rejected society’s traditional role of a woman. No frilly dresses, husband, or screaming kids for her. She was a free spirit – She was a cowboy.

Cowboys were becoming a dying breed by the 1890s. The railroad shipped cattle all over the country, replacing cattle drives, and the need for wranglers had dwindled. CJ was only in her mid-twenties (she wasn’t sure exactly), but she’d been a cowboy since her teen years.

When she turned eighteen, she left home and never returned. Her father had refused to have anything to do with a daughter who pushed aside all the values he expected her to aspire to – a husband, a gaggle of children; a boring life spent barefoot and pregnant, toiling over a hot stove.

She’d always felt at home on the back of a horse, and the hard earth served well enough as a bed. Naturally, she had to put up with dumbass men who cursed her, attempted to grope her, and ridiculed CJ’s desire to be a cowboy. She had to prove herself for every job she took on, but once folks got a glimpse of her excellent riding and roping skills, and her ability to wrangle cattle, most took to accepting her. Those that didn’t found out the hard way that, although she was only five foot two and weighed barely a hundred pounds, every ounce of her was muscle. After a fight or two, CJ usually earned the respect of the other cowhands.

It wasn’t that she hated men – CJ wasn’t a virgin – it was just that she had no desire to settle down with anyone. She accepted the fact she’d most likely never marry and end up a spinster, but she would rather die in a saddle than a rocking chair.

Spying dark clouds on the horizon, CJ knew a bad storm was coming. What made the flat prairies and abundant grasses of Kansas a fine place to graze cattle was also ideal for breeding twisters. She’d seen enough of them to know they were best avoided. “Time we made a detour, Alice.”

The horse sensed the danger and without any prodding made a sharp left turn away from the storm. Soon CJ saw a funnel cloud off in the distance, safely out of their range. The power and magnificence of nature was playing out in front of her. It was beautiful in its own way – the sight of the twister churning up the ground, swirling and skipping over the land as if it was alive, was nothing short of awe-inspiring. She could hear the power of its roar echoing across the grasslands. The idea that what had been a light breeze minutes earlier could now lift buildings, rip trees from the earth, and suck a lake dry fascinated her.

Debris was tossed for miles, but when a man’s body fell from the sky just a few feet away, her heart sank, knowing that a family had lost a loved one. “Reckon we should see if anyone survived.” She didn’t hold out much hope.

Just the slightest movement of the reins told Alice what to do, and the horse carried her along the path of damaged earth.

***

Allison woke up with a desperate need to pee. Emerging from the wreckage of the barn, she lifted her skirt, squatted, then let a stream of hot urine soak into the ground. When she was finished she stood, not sure what to do next. Her mother needed burying, and she should try to salvage whatever she could from the wreckage, then find other people. But she just couldn’t find the energy to do any of that.

She wanted to cry, but her tears had dried up. There was an emptiness in her heart that made her feel like dying. Looking toward heaven, she wondered why God had spared her. Was surviving punishment? She sat on a piece of wood that used to be a part of the family wagon, the hot sun beating down on her. This is what hell’s like, she decided.

Allison undid the braid holding her long blond hair – evidence of her Scandinavian heritage, her father had once explained to her. She shook out the straw and dirt, trying with no success to work out the tangles. She needed her hairbrush. She needed to wash away the grime and sweat. Maybe after a bath she would feel better and then be able to get down to the business of survival.

Suddenly, she wondered where the horses were. She hadn’t seen any of them, dead or alive. The two cows and the chickens were also gone. Maybe the animals had the sense to get out of the way of the storm, at least she hoped so.

The large metal trough was still next to the hand water pump. She pumped water until there was enough to adequately bathe in. She’d let the sun warm it up awhile before she got in.

Allison sifted through the rubbish and salvaged some items she thought might be useful. Amazingly, she found her hairbrush! She put everything she found in a large traveling bag. Her clothing was scattered all over, but she managed to rescue another house dress, an extra pair of bloomers, and a couple of Daddy’s shirts. She tested the water and decided it wasn’t as cold as before, then took off her dress and bloomers and stepped into the trough.

The water wasn’t nearly as warm as she thought it would be, and the shock of it raised goosebumps on her fair skin. She dunked her head under quickly, soaking her thick locks, then used a piece of soap she’d found to lather herself up. Lye wasn’t ideal for washing hair, so she just used a bit to get the dirt out. After washing she just lay motionless, letting the sunlight continue to warm the water.

A familiar throb between Allison’s legs grew and spread out to her belly, triggering bodily reactions that made her feel ashamed. She had masturbated for the last year and enjoyed the pleasant way it made her feel. Her adolescent body was transitioning into womanhood, creating needs she’d never anticipated. How could she be doing something like this so soon after discovering her mother dead? She felt disgusted with herself.

However, nature’s power, as demonstrated by the twister, could also make a young girl obey its command.

She ran her hands over the mounds on her chest. They were small enough that she could cover them with her palms. Her nipples stuck out, often in a hardened state and extremely sensitive to the touch. Her trailing fingers made her privates shiver. She’d developed the start of womanly curves over the course of time and the baby fat on her tummy had disappeared, leaving her stomach flat.

Allison felt sure playing with herself wasn’t allowed by the Bible, but out in the wilderness there was no one to preach against it as a sin. She told herself God wouldn’t give her these feelings if they were bad, and when she made herself tingle all over – well, that had to be a good thing. She rested a hand on the light colored hair covering her mound. It felt so nice to touch her sex. Just the pressure of her fingers made the girl tremble with excitement.

She gently rubbed that wonderful nub at the top of her vagina, producing quivers of joy that radiated out to her extremities and made her muscles tense. She pushed a finger between the labia, penetrating the tight opening there. Her insides felt so warm and wet, and when she began to move in and out, tiny tremors shook her body. Moving faster, rubbing her clitoris with her other hand, Allison came to the place where the cares of the world vanished, if only briefly. Adrenaline pumped into her system, causing her vagina to tighten around her finger, body seizing up. That wonderful feeling of joy and happiness overtook her and she ascended to her happy place.

She basked in the aftermath of what she would learn later was called an orgasm. Her finger, still buried deep inside, was coated with a sticky fluid. She stood up, water dripping from her body, forming rivulets between her breasts and buttocks. She stuck the finger in her mouth to savor the tangy flavor. Her hand returned to the source and brought more of the juice to her mouth. She liked how it tasted. Then, bowing her head in renewed sorrow, she began to cry. “Momma,” she whispered. “Oh, Momma.”

***

CJ saw the devastation as she trotted up to the remains of the farmhouse. She doubted the family had survived the twister, but maybe there were useful things she could salvage. Then she noticed a figure rise from a horse trough, water dripping from their body. She came closer and saw it was a woman. A girl, actually.

The girl shook her head, long yellow strands of hair swinging around her naked body, spraying water everywhere. Her firm, tight ass was dimpled, and didn’t show any signs of sagging.

CJ’s horse snickered, alerting the girl. She spun round and CJ was startled by her beauty. Small, pert tits drew her attention. A patch of lightly colored hair partially covered her privates. She was gorgeous.

Allison covered her breasts with an arm, her other hand obscuring her mound. “Stay away from me!” she yelled to the man on the horse, terrified he might try to rape her. “My daddy has a gun and he’ll shoot you!” She reached for her dress and struggled into it, concealing her nudity. She looked for something to defend herself with, but only the bar of lye soap came to mind, and the idea the strange man would be scared off by that seemed almost comical.

CJ held up both hands, hoping it would put the child’s mind at ease. “It’s okay, little girl. I don’t mean no harm.”

Allison was surprised and confused. The person had a woman’s voice… but the body of a male. “You’re not a man?”

CJ laughed. “Nope, don’t believe I am.” She could see the odd look on the child’s face. Her appearance tended to unsettle some folks. She gestured towards the wreckage of the farmhouse. “You okay?”

Remembering her manners, Allison replied, “Yes, ma’am, I’m fine, but my momma’s dead, and… and I can’t find my daddy.” She felt the need to cry again, but managed to stifle her tears.

The dead body that fell from the sky must’ve been the child’s pappy, CJ reasoned. Poor girl.

CJ dropped down from the saddle and left the reins wrapped around the horn. “Stay here, Alice,” she commanded. The blond palomino snorted, easily smart enough to know what her mistress was conveying. “Mind if I partake of your bath water?” she asked the young girl. “It’s been a while since my last one.”

Allison gave a tentative nod.

CJ tested the water with a hand, finding it suitably warm. “My name’s Janice,” she told the girl amicably. “Or Crazy Jane, if ya like. Most folks just call me CJ, though.” She removed her gun belt, hooked it across the saddle horn, then glanced in the girl’s direction. “Don’t you touch my shootin’ iron, ya hear?”

The girl bobbed her head up and down again. “Yes, ma’am. I’m – I’m Allison, ma’am.”

CJ leaned against the side of the trough and removed her boots. “Glad to meet you, Allison. Wish it wern’t under these circumstances, though. How long you been out here?” She removed her vest and chaps, idly hanging them over the water pump.

“We moved here from Ohio in March,” Allison replied, while CJ unbuttoned and removed her flannel shirt, hanging it with the rest of her things. “Daddy was planning on raising a wheat crop.”

“How many in your family?”

Allison was shocked to see this strange woman was disrobing in front of her, but decided not to remark on it. “Just the three of us. My brother died from fever back in Ohio.” She hung her head in dismay. “I guess Momma and Daddy are gone now too…”

CJ untied a strip of cloth she kept strapped around her chest. Corsets were uncomfortable and not practical in her line of work, and she needed something to keep her breasts from bouncing around while riding. Her breasts jutted out, dark brown areolas surrounding the nipples. “So what’re you gonna do now?”

Allison’s eyes widened with amazement. This woman was baring her breasts without any sense of shame. “Uh… I – I don’t know,” she replied, looking down at her feet, trying to ignore the familiar buzzing in her vagina.

CJ had no problem getting naked in front of people. She didn’t flaunt her body or anything like that, but when working as a cowboy, modesty between workmates wasn’t always possible. “Well, I can take you as far as Cheyenne,” she said. “It’s the biggest city close by that’d have an orphanage.” She unbuckled her belt and pants, slid them down, then stepped out of them.

Allison had never seen another woman’s bare breasts before, except when her mom had nursed her little brother. She marveled at the ample mounds, the dark skin that surrounded this woman’s large nipples. The buzzing in her loins had returned, and she couldn’t understand why.

“I don’t want to go to an orphanage, ma’am. I heard bad stories about them.”

CJ pulled her bloomers down and slung them over the pump. She stood naked in front of the water trough, scratching her crotch absentmindedly. “God, it feels so good to get out of those nasty clothes!”

Allison’s breath caught in her throat. She’d never seen another woman’s sex before and was intrigued. The dark hair there was abundant, spreading out to CJ’s waist and merging with the finer covering of hair on her legs.

Hands clasped in front of her, Allison found herself discreetly applying pressure to her vulva through the thin material of her dress.

CJ peered at the poor waif who was staring at her nudity. “Never seen a naked woman before?”

Allison shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

“Well, d’ya like what you see?”

Allison swallowed hard. “I… I don’t know. It’s kinda interesting.” After a brief pause, she boldly asked, “Why do you have so much hair?”

CJ patted her mound, unabashed. “Well, bein’ a cowboy don’t give a girl much opportunity to be all ladylike, see. Besides, it ain’t like I mosey round naked all day.”

She couldn’t help but notice the girl’s hand, still resting between her legs. She’d caught a brief glance at Allison’s young body before she’d slipped her dress back on, and had enjoyed the view. “Looked like you got a few stragglers down there yourself. It don’t show so much, though, what with you bein’ fair-haired and all.”

Feeling her face grow hot, Allison wasn’t sure how to respond, so she remained silent.

Turning toward the tub, CJ climbed in. “Be a doll and hand me the soap, would’ya?”

Allison scooped the soap from the ground and passed it to the woman. When their hands touched she felt a tingle cruise through her body. She blushed hotly, knowing she shouldn’t be feeling this way about a woman, but also knew it was beyond her control.

CJ saw the way color reached the girl’s cheeks and found herself becoming aroused. It’d been a long time since she’d been intimate with another person. She usually took care of those urges while lying on her blanket under the vast panorama of the night sky. Occasionally, after a drive, she would join the men when they headed to town to find women and drink themselves silly.

One time, a saloon girl mistook CJ for a man and started feeling her up. There were some red faces and a few heated words when the girl realized her mistake, but she quickly had a change of heart and continued to flirt. That night, Crazy Jane Blankenship discovered the considerable pleasures of sex with another woman.

However, her current source of interest was a young orphan girl who’d just lost her home and family. CJ tried to put any untoward thoughts out of her mind as she scrubbed her close-cropped hair. “How old are you?”

Allison could barely speak. “Twelve summers, ma’am. How about you?” She wondered if it was okay to ask a grown woman her age. CJ had lines on her face, and the skin on her hands was rough and calloused, but her body looked much younger.

CJ rinsed her hair. “Around twenty-five, more or less. Sorta lost track of the years.” The girl probably thought she was ancient. Hard work and the elements had forged a face that was not particularly attractive. Maybe if she took better care of herself, she could soften her looks somewhat, but what cowboy wants to look like a painted lady?

Allison went an even deeper shade of crimson. “Oh. I thought… uh, never mind.”

“It’s okay,” CJ said, suddenly wanting the adolescent to think she was pretty. “I know I don’t look all that fine no more.”

“I think you’re pretty, in a different kind of way.”

“How so?” CJ chuckled. Oh, the innocence of youth, always truthful to a fault. She raised herself from the water slightly and soaped her breasts. Her slick hands moved over her nipples, sending ripples of desire to her pussy. She was getting wet, and not just from the water.

Allison gave CJ a shy smile. “Well, you ride a horse, and carry a gun, and…” she hesitated and looked down at the ground, “it – it kinda makes me feel all tingly inside.”

CJ’s heart gave a lurch when Allison smiled. The girl was awful pretty. Her oval face was framed by long, silky, blonde hair. High rosy cheekbones, pert nose and bright blue eyes combined to make a perfect face. CJ’s pulse quickened. “What d’ya mean, ‘all tingly inside’?”

Allison didn’t know if she should tell this stranger about her secret feelings. “Uh, I probably shouldn’t tell you. Momma would say they were bad thoughts.”

Rising to her feet, CJ lathered her ass and crotch. Turning so Allison could see her pussy, she soaped her pubic hair and then parted her labia as she washed them, giving Allison a clear view of the pink interior. “Well, truth be told, I tingle inside too. Matter of fact, I’m gettin‘ those tingles right now.”

Allison turned every shade of red. “Oh, my Lord, you get that too?” She looked intently at the insides of CJ’s vagina – the woman didn’t seem to mind being looked at, after all. It was pink and glistening with moisture. She wondered if some of that moisture was the same stuff that came from her own private place, and suddenly had an urge to taste those sweet fluids.

CJ sat back down and raised her legs to wash them. “Well, there ain’t nothin’ wrong with feelin’ like that, I reckon. The good Lord gave us those urges to make us feel good.”

Allison snaked a hand down between her legs again. “Yeah, I think so too. It feels too good to be a bad thing.” Even though she’d touched herself before, it felt about a hundred times better when she did it while watching this woman bathe.

“Reckon you could come over here and scrub my back, Allison? I’d be real grateful.”

Moving closer, Allison took the soap from CJ, then began to lather her back. CJ groaned in delight. “Goldarn, that feels good!”

Allison marveled how smooth CJ’s skin was, compared to the roughness of her face. “You’re so soft,” she said in an almost reverent whisper.

CJ was becoming aroused by the gentle touch of the girls’ small hands. “That’s ’cause that part of me don’t get the wind and the sun. Guess if I wore a hood over my head, my face would be soft too.”

Allison soaped CJ’s neck and ran a hand over her cheek. “I think your face is just fine.” She returned to washing the woman’s back. “If you raise up, I can reach lower.”

By now CJ was just about ready to explode from the casual touching. The idea that this young girl found her pretty tickled her pink, and now those wicked thoughts were getting harder to dismiss. She stood and exposed her backside.

Allison continued to lather up CJ’s back, moving lower and then coming to a stop just above the cowboy’s firm butt. She debated whether she should wash there too, then decided to do just that. She slid her hands over the taut buttocks, then trailed her fingers down the space where the cheeks met.

CJ shivered, not from the chilly air but from the stimulation, and she almost came on the spot when Allison traced a line of fire down her ass crack. She reckoned Allison must be feeling the same way; could feel the little girl’s hands trembling as she spent an unwarrantable amount of time washing her butt.

“Allison… I’m feelin’ awful excited right now. I’m gonna touch my pussy, if it’s all the same to you. If you wanted to play with yourself too, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I call it my kitty.”

CJ chuckled. “Sure – kitty, pussy. There’s a whole bunch of other names, too. When I’m feelin’ specially wicked, I like to call it my cunt.” She rubbed her mound, then inserted two fingers into the moist cavern. Her fluids were now oozing freely. When she turned her head she saw that Allison had a hand under her dress. She continued to fuck herself, knowing that the moment she touched her clit she would come for sure.

As she watched CJ play with her kitty, Allison wondered what it would feel like to put a finger deep inside herself like that. The thought of it gave her a delicious shiver. She detected her own familiar scent, but there was another, stronger aroma wafting towards her as well. She wondered what it would be like to taste the musky juices from this woman’s kit— no… cunt. That was what CJ called it. The word sounded so wicked, so forbidden.

Those thoughts took Allison over the top, and suddenly she was spending again, crying, “Oh, my Lord, it’s happening!” She plunged a finger inside herself as she came, coating it with her juices.

CJ pinched her clit, and a violent shudder shook her body. Hot, thick juices oozed down her hand as she went off yet again. She let out a choked cry. “Shit!”

Woman and girl gasped for breath as they recovered from their orgasms, robbed of energy. CJ slumped over exhausted from what had to be one of the most intense climaxes she’d ever experienced.

She looked up at Allison. The pretty young thing was glistening with perspiration, a hand still beneath her dress. Withdrawing it, Allison put her fingers into her mouth like she always did, barely aware she was doing it.

CJ was fascinated. “Can I have a taste?”

Allison rubbed her fingers along her slit, then reached out to CJ, who took them into her mouth. Her taste buds were alive with the musky flavor, her nose tickled by the sweet aroma. “Tastes real nice,” she said. “Toothsome, even.”

“Can I try yours?” Allison meekly asked.

Shoving two fingers between her labia, CJ swirled then around inside, then brought her hand to Allison’s mouth.

“There’s so much of it…” Allison said, her eyes wide with wonder. She stuck out her tongue and licked the sticky fingers clean, reminding CJ of a puppy. “My goodness, it tastes sweet!” the girl declared, grinning from ear to ear.

Now it was CJ’s turn to blush. “I’m really wet ’cause you set my body on fire, little girl.” She regarded the child with unconcealed interest. “Any chance you might take that dress off for me? I’d surely love to see all of you again.”

Allison considered CJ’s request, finally deciding they’d done so many wicked things that one more probably wouldn’t matter. She raised the dress over her head, draping it over a bent fence post. The two of them took in the sight of each other’s nudity for a long moment. CJ stepped out of the trough and drew Allison into a gentle embrace. They pressed their bodies together, and the sudden intimacy caused CJ to have another, less intense orgasm.

Allison realized CJ had done that wonderful feeling again. She never knew they could happen so quickly, one after the other. Without asking permission, she slipped a hand between the woman’s legs and collected the warm fluids on her fingers. Bringing them to her mouth, she tasted the savory substance, loving it even more than before.

When Allison touched her pussy CJ came a third time. She thought this pretty young girl might give her a heart attack, she was doing such a good job. Once she’d got her breath back, CJ said, “You’re real beautiful, Allison. I never saw someone so lovely.”

Allison’s lips sparkled with juice. CJ leaned forward and kissed her, pushing her tongue inside the girl’s mouth. Allison wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She’d never kissed anyone before, besides her parents, and never with tongues. Still, she found her pussy quivering at the new sensation.

They kissed intensely until Allison broke away. “I – I think it’s gonna happen again…”

“Let it go, sweetie. Let it take you over.”

CJ cupped Allison’s pussy and rubbed it until her fingers were wet and sticky with the girl’s spend. Allison’s knees buckled, and CJ grabbed arm before she fell. She brought the liquid offering to her mouth and sampled it with pleasure, then extended her hand to the girl. Allison’s tongue flicked out and tasted her come from CJ’s fingers.

CJ felt herself reaching for another orgasm, but finally pushed it away. She was too exhausted. “That was… incredible.”

Allison flushed. “Thank you. I liked it too.”

CJ brushed a few strands of golden hair from Allison’s face. “Think we should wash off before we get dressed.”

They both climbed in the trough and helped each other get clean. This time they shared a simple bath, rather than explore their sexuality any further.

On to Part Two!

A quick recap of the Story Thus Far: Rural paramedic Nettie Hastings finds herself in the middle of a flurry of unexplained overdose calls and, with the help of her best friend and former lover, Terry Wilder, has begun putting clues together linking the source to her own hometown. Some suspect Terry’s involvement, as his ex-wife is a convicted drug trafficker. A DEA agent named Bridgette Ramscone is brought in to work the case, and she takes a special interest in Nettie who, in the meantime, has entered into a clandestine affair with Terry’s preteen daughter Halee. After a late night sex party at Nettie’s, Halee accidentally discovers that her long out-of-the-picture mother Kathryn is involved in the overdoses. She slips out on her own, intent on confronting her mom. Nettie and Terry follow, but the three of them are captured by Kathryn and her gang, and in the melee, Halee is shot. Kathryn is persuaded to let Halee go, along with Nettie to take care of her, but she holds onto Terry as a hostage. Halee survives surgery, and Nettie meets an anesthesiologist named Hannah, who recognizes Nettie’s passion for young girls. As it transpires, Hannah is a lesbian, one who has a very special relationship with her underage daughter — a fact she is quite pleased to share with Nettie.

For a more detailed breakdown of this story’s chapters, please consult the Chapter Links.

by Rachael Yukey

It was a little after nine when I crossed the Franklin County line, the knowledge that I was only fifteen minutes from home easing some of the tension in my gut. A heavy overcast obscured the moon, leaving my headlights as the only source of illumination. The overall effect was heightened by the leaden doom of Black Sabbath, issuing forth from the speakers at a much higher decibel level than could possibly have been good for me.

The world is full of kings and queens, who’ll blind your eyes and steal your dreams… it’s Heaven and Hell! Ronnie James Dio proclaimed in his full-throated roar.

You got that right, Ronnie, I thought.

And they’ll tell you black is really white, the moon is just the sun at night, and when you walk in golden halls, you get to keep the gold that falls… it’s Heaven and Hell!

It felt like the perfect metaphor for the kind of mother Kathryn Wilder had turned out to be.

My mom had Terry’s two youngest girls at her house for the night. Naomi was staying with Chelsey, who was still crashing at her grandma’s house. I’d already decided I would return to my apartment for the night, then collect the youngsters in the morning. But as I neared the point at which County Road Two intersected this stretch of state highway, I found myself slowing, signaling right, and turning onto the gravel in the direction of the meat locker. What was I looking for? No idea.

As I crested the rise leading up to the entrance, the same one I’d passed through with Terry in an ambulance a little over a week before, I let off the gas, allowing the vehicle to coast down. I came to a stop and got out, leaving the car to idle behind me on the road.

Using my phone’s flashlight, I picked my way forward. The foliage covering the old entrance was much more beaten back than it had been the previous week; clearly, the DEA people had traveled in and out of here more than a few times. About ten meters in, a swinging gate with a padlock had been placed, with yellow police cordon tape disappearing into the woods on either side. I wondered if Bridgett had made some poor bastard run that stuff all the way around the outside of that substantial piece of property.

Turning around, I made my way back to the car, got in, and drove on. The last song on the album I’d been listening to was just kicking off, the somber tone and lyrics an eerie companion on this dark, empty stretch of road.

It’s a long way to nowhere, and I’m leaving very soon. On the way we get so close to the back side of the moon.

“Lonely is the word, Ronnie,” I said out loud. My own voice startled me.

About a quarter mile from the driveway leading to the meat locker, I reached the junction to Merlin Creek Drive. Signaling right, I eased onto the badly maintained minimum maintenance road. I slowed almost to a stop as I passed the point at which Terry and I had plucked Darren Sanders from beneath his rolled ATV only days before. Then I accelerated again, easing along the crappy little trail at about twenty miles per hour.

The road wended downhill in the opposite direction from the valley where the ugly old meat locker squatted, skirting Merlin Creek at a distance of about one hundred yards. Between the road and the creek were small residences; cabin-sized houses and a handful of mobile homes. It was almost exclusively the territory of snowbirds, but not the rich kind. Most of the residents were elderly, and throughout the course of the upcoming summer, I knew the ambulance would be down here half a dozen times or so.

Leaving the line of dilapidated summer housing behind, the road twisted back again in the direction of the meat locker, trending gradually uphill until it terminated at a dead end on what appeared to be an abandoned farmstead. It occurred to me that I’d never before been this far down Merlin Creek Drive, and hadn’t even been aware this place existed. All the buildings were collapsed except for the house, which looked as if it was likely to drop at any second. The moon was finally poking its way through the cloud cover, and I could see better now.

As I pulled up into the yard, my headlights fell upon some modern tillage equipment. Clearly whatever cropland attached to this old homestead was still being cultivated, and a farmer was staging machinery here. But more than that, there were recent tracks heading back into the woods that looked about the right spacing to have been made by large ATVs, such as the Ranger that Darren Sanders had gotten himself pinned under. I came to a halt, killed the engine, and got out of the car.

Wandering around by the light of my phone, I discovered two ATV trails. One led off further in the direction I’d been heading which, if my orientation was right, would eventually come out on a stretch of county blacktop. The other headed straight down into the valley toward the meat locker.

All of this tallied with what Bridgett had told us. The trail heading vaguely northwest would be the path through private property Kathryn’s people had been using as an access point. The one going straight west led down to the meat locker and auction grounds. Both sported newly placed steel gates, with crime scene tape extending off in either direction.

I was standing in front of the gate that led down to the locker when the bright glare of a powerful flashlight blinded my eyes. I stumbled backward in a blind panic, landing on my ass. Then the light moved to my left, still illuminating but no longer dazzling me.

“Nettie Hastings?” someone said. It was a male voice, cracked with age, a voice I knew but couldn’t quite place at first.

The figure holding the light stepped forward. My fear was already subsiding; there was no menace in that ambling shuffle. The man stood over me, extending a hand. I took it, surprised at the strength of the grip, and got to my feet. Finally I was able to identify the stoop-shouldered old man standing before me.

“Adam Bixley,” I said.

A grin cracked the seamed, aged flesh, but there was no humor in it. “Big as life, and twice as ugly.”

My mind flipped rapidly through its catalog of small-town family interrelationships, and came up with an answer in seconds. This man was the great-grandfather of Jason Bixley, the boy who had died in the car crash that had set all of this into motion.

“I was so sorry about what happened to Jason,” I said automatically.

“Not as sorry as I was,” the old man replied, “but thanks. I heard you worked real hard to save him. Thanks for that, too.”

He looked me up and down, searchingly. “What’re you doin’ out here, Nettie?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I was just coming back from Minneapolis, and…”

“The Wilder girl’s in the hospital down there, ain’t she?”

“Yeah. That’s why I was there.”

“And those bastards who shot her have your man.”

I nodded. Terry wasn’t exactly “my man”, but it didn’t seem worth pressing the point.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked him. “And how’d you even get here? I didn’t see another car.”

Again, that humorless grin. It was the grin of a man forced at gunpoint to eat shit and smile about it.

“Oh, I parked my four-wheeler off in the edge of the woods. You wouldn’t have seen it if you weren’t lookin’ for it. Didn’t bring the love wagon, ‘cus I didn’t figure on meetin’ a pretty girl like you out in the middle of nowhere.”

He flashed me the first genuine-looking grin I’d seen from him thus far, one that, in other circumstances, might have pushed certain buttons in me, even in a face as aged as his. I’d heard that Adam Bixley had been a real ladies’ man in his day, and standing here in the woods with him, I glimpsed the force of personality that made it so.

He turned away from me to face the gate. “As for the other bit,” he said, “why, if we were to cross this police line, we’d be on property that I own.” He made an expansive gesture in the direction of the forest.

“Wait… what?” The implications flooded my mind. “You own the meat locker?”

Bixley looked back over his shoulder at me, that pained, humorless smirk on his face once more. “Ran the place for twenty years. And mostly lost money. By the time I bought it, most people were already just buyin’ meat at the grocery store.”

He turned back to face me. “I’ve been comin’ out here most every night for the last week. Every time I stop right here, think for a bit, then turn around and go home. Never quite have worked up the sack to wander on down there. You know, I haven’t been back to that valley since I shuttered the place, and that’s thirty years gone now.”

The shape of it was already crystalizing in my mind. “If you did cross this line,” I said carefully, “what is it you’d be looking for?”

The corners of his mouth turned upward. “You’re a bright one, aren’t you?” He pulled the collar of his lined flannel shirt up, covering his neck, then looked to the heavens and let out a slow breath. Finally he lowered his head, meeting my eyes once more with the air of a man having come to a decision.

“Tell you what,” he said. “It’s getting damn cold out here. Let’s go sit in that car of yours, and I’ll spin you a little story.”

***

Once we were comfortably ensconced in my Kia, the heated seats toasting our asses, Bixley withdrew a hip flask from beneath his heavy flannel shirt, took a long draught, and then passed it to me. I tossed back a sip of the straight vodka, reminding myself firmly to go easy; I still had to drive home. Bixley took the flask back, capped it, and hugged it to his chest.

“I bought the meat locker and the auction grounds in 1971,” he said. “At the time it was still doin’ all right, and the cattle auctions were a big to-do. People would bring their kids out with picnic lunches and stay all day. Deals got made, neighbors spent time together, people fell in love at those things. Now, I knew small farms were on their way out, even if nobody else seemed to. But I figured that by the time it all went to hell, I’d have a nice, classic prohibition-vintage brick building that I could convert into something else. Never got around to it.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield and into the darkness. “Turns out, the business went south even before the little farmers started goin’ bust. By ‘75, you were already gettin’ to a place where farmer’s wives had to get jobs in town to make ends meet, and not many were buyin’ beef by the quarter or half anymore. Say, is there any way to turn this backside burner off?”

I switched off the seat heater on his side, and he nodded his thanks.

“Anyhow,” he went on, “it was right around that time… ‘76 or so… this young guy up from St. Cloud waltzes into my office. Had a smile that never quite got to his eyes. I didn’t like him.”

He wiped his mouth as if eradicating a bad taste. “So this kid tells me his grandpa was the guy who built the locker. Prohibition was goin’ on at the time, and it was only a meat processing plant up front. See, the sewage treatment lagoon was bein’ put in at the same time, and after handin’ off a little cash to get some construction bosses to look the other way, they built a tunnel leadin’ from there to the locker.”

Bixley turned his head to look at me directly. “It didn’t take a genius to see what the kid was sayin’. If you think a bit, you realize a place like that is the perfect setup for rumrunners. The lagoon is out in the middle of the woods, on a road that nobody travels except the maintenance men, and they’re only doin’ it during the day. Even better if you can get some of the maintenance people in on the action, but if not you still have all night to go in and out. So you have an entrance in the underground maintenance accessways at the lagoon, then a half mile worth of tunnel to get to your distribution point, which has vehicles carryin’ stuff out on the regular. Meat plant packaging is the perfect wrapper to hide damn near anything.  And you can use the tunnel for storage. It’s perfect.”

He chuckled. “Now, if you were livin’ in Bronning back in the seventies, there were still lots of people around who were alive during Prohibition, so you knew from hearin’ their stories that this town was investigated by the feds. Seems they had an idea that most of the booze filterin’ into Franklin County and the surrounding parts was comin’ through Bronning, but they never could quite figure out where. So the kid’s story made sense. Well, almost.”

He uncapped the flask, took another swig, and handed it to me. I tossed back another small swallow.

“Only one little problem,” he went on. “At that point I’d owned and run the place for goin’ on five years; hadn’t seen nary a hint of any kind of tunnel entrance. I told the guy that, and he said ‘You just come back here with me tonight, after all your workmen have gone home, and I’ll show you’. Now, I almost told the kid to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, if you’ll pardon my French… like I said, I didn’t like the little bastard. But then my curiosity got the better of me.”

Bixley ran a hand across his face, momentarily easing some of the lines, and I caught a brief glimpse of the younger man he had been. “So we come on back around elevenish, after the cleanup crews had done their bit and gone home. He leads me straight down to the basement like a man who’d been in and out of that building since the day he was born; I figured he had to have seen some blueprints or somethin’. Come up against the foundation wall at the end of the corridor on the west side of the building.” He paused, pursed his lips. “Y‘know, I should’ve realized there was somethin’ funny about that wall bein’ red brick when the rest of the foundation was poured cement, but I’d never given it a single thought.”

He shook his head, as if marveling at his own ineptitude. “Turns out it was just doing a damn good imitation of a brick wall. Pieces of brick maybe half an inch thick, mounted to a steel panel. This guy asks for somethin’ to stand on, I get him a step-stool, and he hops up on it and works this latch up on top of the foundation between the first floor joists. You’d never find it if you didn’t know where to look. It took a little doing to get the mechanism to work; it probably hadn’t been opened since the thirties. But that damn phony brick wall slid right off to the side, behind the actual foundation cement. And there was the tunnel.”

I could see where this was going now. “So what did you use it for?”

Bixley couldn’t quite seem to meet my eyes. “Well, first we had to get the other end opened up. The entrance at the lagoon end had been concreted over; that place has been completely rebuilt three or four times. It took a little cash gettin’ tossed around to get the job done, probably not too different from how it happened in the twenties. The little weasel from St. Cloud saw to all that. Then we started doin’ the same sort of thing they’d done during prohibition, but with different product.”

He drank again, then went on. “You see what I’m gettin’ at, don’t you? It started out with just pot, mostly. A little bit of magic mushroom, stuff like that. Nothin’ heavy. I didn’t really see the harm. You know, missy, I think booze wrecks more lives than just about any other drug there is, and it’s legal. Besides, the deal solved my problem in a hurry. By 1980 the meat processing business was runnin’ pretty heavily in the red, but it was just a front at that point.

He gave a heavy sigh. “But by 1985, it wasn’t just pot anymore. When we started I promised myself I’d never move the hard stuff, but you build up a tolerance, if that makes sense. Commit one felony, the next one is just a little bit easier. I still wouldn’t allow heroin, but I started lettin’ ‘em move some coke through there. I mean, coke’s safe enough, as the hard stuff goes, right? At least that’s what I told myself. And this is right around the time that the shirtail operators farming four hundred acres and milking thirty head were going tits-up left and right, so lots of folks were lookin’ for a little something to get ’em through the night. Then in ‘91, one kid died, and another came pretty damn close.”

He took another sip, laid his head against the headrest, and closed his eyes. “The coke didn’t get ‘em, not by itself. It was laced with some other shit. But it was coke that I knew damn well had come through my meat locker.” He offered me the flask again.

With a mighty effort of will, I shook my head. “Is that when you quit?”

“I confronted that little shit. Rufus Hellman was his name. Told me he had no idea what I was talking about, and when I threatened to go to the cops, he said him and his buddies could just dig a hole and pull it in over the top of them, and I’d get hung out to dry. I figured he probably wasn’t wrong. So I told him I’d keep my mouth shut, but I was out. Closed the place down, laid everybody off, never reopened. And that was the end of that. Leastways, I thought it was.”

“Until now,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said bitterly, “until now.”

“You never did answer my question,” I reminded him.

“You mean about what I’d be lookin’ for down there?” he laughed a dry old man’s laugh. “Sweetheart, I don’t even know myself, not really. But I’ll tell you this. Those DEA folks grilled me like a goddamn cheese sandwich. Can’t really blame ‘em, seein’ as how I own the place. But they never once mentioned the hidden door or the tunnel. Only way to explain that is they never found it. I want to know just what might be in there.”

“You didn’t tell them about it.”

“Nope. That’s a dead dog I’d just as soon let lie. Oh, they can’t come after me for it; statute of limitations on drug trafficking is long since up. But a man comes to value his good name, and wants to keep it. If the story gets out now, it could just as well go on my tombstone. Adam Bixley, cocaine dealer. ‘Cause that’s how people will remember me.”

I threw up my hands. “You could have just told them you knew the tunnel was there, but never used it for anything. How were they to know? There’s a good chance that Kathryn Wilder’s organization never found it, anyway, and nothing’s back there. But it needs to be checked.”

Bixley took another drink. “Yep,” he said, “I coulda told ‘em that. Except here’s where it gets a bit complicated. The only people in or around town who had any idea what I was actually doin’ in there were people who were directly involved, and let me tell you, honey, they weren’t many. Most of the workers that went in and out of that place every day had no idea what was happenin’ in the basement. One of those few who did know was my son Josh, who was in on the deal. You remember Josh?”

I nodded. Joshua Bixley had been a lifelong alcoholic, dead two years from cirrhosis of the liver.

“So, when I closed the place up, I secured the front doors with a big iron bar, and a lock nobody was gonna get through with a boltcutter. That was one of the things the DEA folks were interested in, because nobody hacked their way into the building. Somebody oiled the hell out of that lock, and opened it with a key. The bar and the lock were found off to the side of the building, but not the key. They wanted to see my key, and know who else had one.”

“So you’re saying Josh had the other one?”

“Yup, and when he passed away I never got it back. Didn’t even think to ask about it, truth be told. Mine was still on my keyring after all those years, and you could tell right away it hadn’t been used. I didn’t tell ’em that Josh had the other, ‘cause the man who inherited everything of his, and would have gotten it, was my grandson David.”

It all came together in a flash. “Jason’s dad,” I said. “Did he know about the tunnel?”

Bixley laid a hand on my arm. “Probably,” he said. “Joshua had an almighty guilt about it all; I guess that’s part of what drove him to drinkin’ so hard. Him and David were awfully close, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t let it spill at some point.”

I sat back and closed my eyes, staggered by the implications. If Adam Bixley’s key hadn’t been used to open the meat locker, then it must have been the one in the possession of his grandson. And had his great-grandson been mixed up in this too? I ran a hasty mental map in my head; the route that Jason Bixley had been on when he died was the logical choice if he’d been returning home from this semi-hidden back entrance to the locker.

I opened my eyes and looked to my right. Bixley’s hand was still on my arm, a cynical smile playing on his lips. “You see it, don’t you. It would explain what Jason was doin’ heading for home at six AM on a school day, wouldn’t it?”

“Jesus, Adam,” I groaned. “Why didn’t you tell all this to the DEA?”

Bixley met my eyes, his gaze suddenly a little hard. “You wait’ll you’re having to contemplate turnin’ in your own flesh and blood,” he said. “It ain’t as easy as you think. That’s why I’ve been tryin’ to work up the guts to go down there and get a look. You up for a little stroll?”

I shook my head. “We’ll never get close,” I said. “The DEA is bound to have security cameras with motion alarms set up all around the building.”

He rolled his eyes. “Damn computerized crap. I never even thought about it.”

“What about the lagoon side?”

“I’ve already been out there. Couldn’t even find the old entrance. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if ole’ Rufus shit-for-brains paid some local contractor to concrete it over and keep his mouth shut. It’s the valley or nothin’.”

“Adam,” I said. “Listen to me. The people behind everything that’s happened here these past few weeks stuck around after the raid, and we still don’t know why. One of them was checking something out when he rolled his ATV on top of himself. Now they have Terry Wilder, and his daughter’s been shot. The answer to all of that might just be in that tunnel. We have to do the right thing here. You know that.”

He nodded slowly. “Fine,” he said. “Make the phone call.”

As I lifted my phone, I noticed there’d been a text over fifteen minutes ago. From Terry. I realized that the phone was synched to the car, and I’d turned the car stereo off so we could talk. Cursing my carelessness, I opened the message.

Only getting a few minutes of privacy tonight, it read. The Dickweed Brigade is increasingly paranoid, and something is going to play out soon. We’re running low on rations. Info that might be of interest to Special Agent Tightbuns: there’s something hidden either in the meat locker, or in the immediate surrounding area. Something valuable, something Kathryn is terrified of losing. Don’t know what, but guessing it’s the reason they stuck around instead of vanishing in the wake of the raid. 

Thanks for the updates on Halee’s condition, on being there when she woke, and for everything else. Tell her that I do NOT blame her for this situation, and she shouldn’t either.

I sat back, stunned. Then I got my brain in gear and typed: That goes with other info I just got. On it. Keep holding on. Fumbling a little in my excitement, I pulled up Bridgett’s number.

***

Half an hour later we were standing out front of the lone building; myself, Bridgett, three of her subordinates, and Adam Bixley. I hadn’t been this close to the building since the summer before my senior year, having never gotten closer than the auction yards during the previous week’s raid. Bixley, who hadn’t seen the place in over thirty years, was staring up at the big double doors as if eyeing a malignant tumor. The old iron bar was back, but with a shiny new heavy-duty lock that sported a small keypad.

Bridgett stepped forward. She punched in a combination code, and two of her men stepped forward, lifting away the heavy bar.

As we stepped through the outer doors, Bridgett flicked a switch, and the place lit up. Bixley’s eyes widened in surprise.

“We have it on battery power, with a gennie that automatically fires up when the batteries get low,” Bridgett explained. “Lead the way, Mr. Bixley.”

I knew it had to be my imagination, but I could swear to God the place still smelled of cow. We took a left turn just past the entry doors, then down a short corridor to the basement stairway. The stairs were a tight wrought-iron spiral. “I’m guessing nobody moved product up or down this staircase,” I observed.

Bixley chuckled. He seemed somehow at peace, a far cry from his troubled demeanor in my car earlier. “Lord, no. There was a big pull-rope dumbwaiter at the opposite end of the building. I ripped it out and put in a motorized lift.”

“That lift still works, too,” Bridgett remarked.

We walked in silence from there, turning two corners. The big floodlights the DEA people had brought in were almost blinding in these narrow hallways. Finally we came to a brick wall at the end of one of those corridors, with doors leading to rooms on the right and the left.

“Now that you’re really looking at it, this does seem like a strange place for a brick wall,” one of Bridgett’s men observed.

“Especially considering that all of the other outside foundation walls are concrete,” Bridgett murmured. “Damn, I feel stupid.”

“Don’t feel too bad,” said Bixley. “I was down here two or three times a week for five years and never noticed.”

Another of the agents, a round-faced blonde woman almost as tall as me, stepped forward and ran a finger along where some mortar was missing between the bricks. “Look at this,” she said. “The steel backing is showing where the mortar flaked off. If we’d just looked a little closer…”

“Never mind that now,” snapped Bridgett. “Mr. Bixley, if you’d be so kind.”

“I’ll need somethin’ to stand on,” he replied.

An agent ducked into a room, and came out with a folding chair. Bixley clambered up on the chair, an agent on either side supporting him by the elbows.

He shrugged them away impatiently. “I’m old, but I’m not that goddamn feeble,” he snapped. Reaching up between the joists, he did something I couldn’t see from the floor. The wall visibly seemed to come loose, rocking slightly.

“Lubed up like a whore’s sweet pussy,” Bixley observed. “Beggin’ your pardon, ladies. Now, just push that panel back and to the right.” The two agents who had attempted to support his elbows obliged, and the door slid back and sideways, disappearing behind the concrete foundation.

The tunnel was very old, made of poured concrete that was starting to crumble. It was perhaps eight feet high, and ten feet wide. Large flashlights illuminated pallets stacked high with plastic bundles, set two-by-two and going back until the light faded.

Bridget nodded to the tall blonde woman, who produced a penknife and stepped forward. Donning medical gloves, she cut a slit in the top of a bag, and dipped a finger in. She turned back towards us, holding up a finger to the light. The blue glove was covered with a brown, powdery substance.

Bridgett and the other agents stepped forward for a closer look.

“Godalmighty damn,” said one of the agents, a compact man with black hair and a swarthy complexion. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Mexican Brown,” said Bridgett in reverent tones. “Holy shit. Holy shit! This is the biggest goddamned cache of heroin I’ve ever seen in my life.” She sounded slightly elated. Then her phone rang. Looking annoyed, she swiped the accept button and held it to her ear.

“Ramscone,” she said. A pause. “Yes… at what time? Uh… no sir, I don’t have any information from that quarter, but I have just made a major discovery at the meat locker, one that I can’t discuss over an unsecure connection, but is going to need a large security contingent.” There was another long pause. “Yes sir, I understand… of course. Please keep me informed.”

She hung up and turned to us. “Okay, let’s lock all this up, and get every available agent to guard both the building and the valley. We’ve been authorized to draw from county and state police forces as well. Meanwhile, we have a bigger problem.”

She turned her eyes to me. “There’s a situation in International Falls. I’ll explain on the drive back to town.”

An icy hand clutched my heart. Terry. Oh, my God.

On to Chapter Twenty!

by kinkychic and kinky’s_sis

As we were waiting to board the plane, Lucy said, “I wonder if Jen–” but stopped herself before she said the name.

I knew that she was about to mention Jenny and Chloe. God, I hoped they weren’t on our flight. I was still heartbroken over Susy and had no real desire for another sexual encounter with Chloe. It would be awkward, having to make excuses.

But they were on our flight. We saw Jenny in the aircraft doorway as we walked through the boarding tunnel. I began to panic. Lucy squeezed my hand, astonishing me when she said, “Don’t worry, sis. I’ll handle this.”

Chloe was further along inside the aircraft. She waved, beckoning us with a radiant smile. Lucy pushed ahead and spoke to her, while I held back.

Chloe’s smile vanished while she talked to my sister, but once I approached her it had returned. “Don’t look so worried, it’s fine. I’m happy for you,” she said. “A bit sad, but hey, I’ll get over it. I’ll come and have a chat later and you can tell me all about her.”

Somehow they had arranged that Lucy and I had the very last two seats at the back. That meant the cubbyhole was immediately behind us.

I took my seat with a huge feeling of relief. Then I felt like an idiot. I’d only been one of Chloe’s many conquests, I suspected. I’d been worried over nothing.

The passengers had finished boarding and the doors were closed. The stewards began their headcount, pointing at each seat as they went. I saw Jenny tap Lucy on the head as she counted her, giving her a cheeky wink, for which she was rewarded with a beaming smile.

As the plane carried us homeward, I was jolted from my sleep, a hand gently shaking my arm. “Oh good, you’re awake,” Chloe said. She sat beside me in Lucy’s seat. “So, you want to tell me all about your new girlfriend?”

I’d instinctively liked Chloe when we had first met, so I had no difficulty in telling her all about Susy, how we had met and how I fell in love. I didn’t go into the sexy details, though. Well, not too much.

Chloe seemed genuinely delighted. “What a lovely story and honestly, I’m happy for you,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t keep in touch with me if you’d like to; as friends, I mean. I’d like that. Besides, I’ll be there to pick up the pieces if it doesn’t work out.” She laughed, then, “Sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

I smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I know what you mean and yes, I will keep in touch. I promise.”

We chatted for a while until Lucy and Jenny came back. Chloe gave my hand a squeeze and a quick kiss on the cheek before she got up to make room for my sister.

I could see the satisfied look on Lucy’s face. “You obviously enjoyed yourself,” I said. “Was she nice?”

“Oh my God, Maddie. She was amazing. But are you all right?”

“I’m fine, honest. So come on, you can tell me all about it.”

“What, really? You want details?” she asked, grinning at me.

“Of course. I’ve got to have some fun.”

Here’s what she told me.

***

I was half asleep when Jenny took my hand. “You want to come with me, Lucy?”

I came wide awake. I mean, did I want to? Oh God, yes, I did. I was out of my seat right away, following her up the aisle.

“Chloe will look out for us. We’ll be safe back here,” she said. “I’ve done nothing but dream about you, Lucy. Sometimes I feel awful, guilty for wanting such a young girl, but then I tell myself you’re the forward one and you know exactly what you want. I can’t fight it, I don’t want to. I need you, Lucy.”

I eased her hands away and began to undress, giving Jenny my sexiest look and slowly taking my clothes off to tease her. She reached for me, but I pushed her hand away. “Uh-uh, not yet.”

When I was naked, I climbed up onto the work surface. I sat with my back to the wall and raised my knees with both feet next to my bum.

I watched Jenny’s face as I spread my pussy open, showing her my little clit. She looked up at me with a quizzical expression. Now I nodded, and she came to me.

She stroked my clitty with one finger. And even though I knew the touch was coming, it still made me jump. A small sigh escaped my lips.

Now she caressed it between her finger and thumb. A tingle shot through me and I felt a dribble leaking from my pussy, running down to my arsehole.

Slowly, she lowered her head and kissed my clit. “Fuck!” I exclaimed as her lips drew me in. I heard her giggle like a schoolgirl before she began to suck like mad.

I reached for her hand, bunched two fingers, and pushed them into my pussy. It wasn’t difficult, because I was drenched.

But she was fucking me too gently, so I told her, “Jenny, it’s okay. Do it harder.”

Soon the build-up began, and my body tightened. I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. She looked shocked and worried when I said, “Stop.” I pulled her fingers out and then climbed up onto my knees with my bum facing her. “There you are, lover. Now you can fuck both my pussy and my arse. Two fingers back there is fine.”

My bumhole was already wet from where my cunt had leaked, so Jenny’s fingers slid straight in without me having to give much of a push. I reached underneath and found my clit, rubbing it furiously as Jenny fucked me back and front.

I was getting close when she pulled her fingers from my arse. “No!” I wailed, but her tongue immediately took their place. My arse was still open wide from her fingers, and her tongue easily thrust into me.

That was it, I was fucked! I began to tremble. The tremble became a shake, and I was coming. It was gloriously intense. My head hit the work surface as I flopped down. My hips jerked into her hand and tongue. I had to clamp a hand to my mouth or I would’ve wailed out loud.

Finally I had to cry out, “Jenny, stop! Or I’ll have to pee!” Thankfully, she did, or I would have pissed for sure, and that wouldn’t have been good, not in there.

Jenny helped me to turn around and sit. I pulled her to me. “You do realise that you just fucked me, but you haven’t even kissed me yet.” I seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

She stared at me. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t anything like that,” she said. “You’re a sexy little bugger, aren’t you?” Then her lips found mine.

It’s marvellous: no matter how many people you’ve kissed, they’re all different. Jenny’s kiss was beautiful and soft, deep and loving.

I gently squeezed her breasts, then caressed them. I felt, rather than heard, the groan in her throat. Her nipples came to life, responding and hardening to my touch. I broke our kiss and lowered my lips to her breast, taking a nipple between my teeth.

I sensed her struggling with her skirt, and tried to help, but she told me. “No, it has to come up, not down.”

She was already rubbing at the front of her knickers. I took her hand and slipped it inside, pressing it into her, urging Jenny to masturbate. She hunched forward, her pussy thrusting and grinding into our joined hands.

Climbing down from my perch, I got her to lean over the worktop. I took my hand out of her panties, but she didn’t stop rubbing herself. Now I was behind her. I eased her cheeks apart so my tongue could give a long lick upwards from her pussy to her arsehole. I lingered there a bit, probing and tickling.

I eased my fingers into her pussy, leaving her to concentrate on her clit, then pushed two more fingers into her bum, just as she’d done with me.

Right away, I could feel her climax getting close. I turned my body to kneel between her legs, my mouth pushing her fingers away. Her swollen clit came between my lips. I nearly lost my balance when I pushed my hand into her vagina. It went all the way in with barely an effort.

Her pelvis thrust at me hard. My mouth was flooded to overflowing, her juices running down my arm and chest. She had the longest orgasm I’ve ever seen – shaking, then relaxing, shaking again, and on and on.

Finally, she gasped, “No more! I’ll die!” I withdrew my hands and she collapsed, kneeling down next to me, kissing my face.

She reached for a towel, and dried me off before pulling me to her. “Lucy, for God’s sake… shit, that was incredible.” I smiled at her, and she said, “You are going to call me, yes? Promise you will? I want you to visit so we can fuck in an actual bed. D’you think we can arrange that? Oh God, say yes.”

I knew that’s what I wanted, so I didn’t hesitate. “I’ll find a way, Jenny. That’s a promise.”

One last wonderful kiss, then we tidied up and dressed, and here I am.

***

I was feeling down. The last five weeks had been something of a nightmare. The only way I had of communicating with Susy was by satellite phone, and there were a number of problems with that. For one thing, Susy didn’t have her own phone. They were expensive, and she couldn’t keep asking to borrow one. Almost as bad, though, was the signal dropout caused by the mountains. We soon found it was a waste of time.

Lucy got to spend a weekend at Jenny’s place. I was amazed at how easily Mum agreed to that. I told her that Jenny was a lovely girl we met in South Africa and how they’d become such good friends. I said she was trustworthy and would look after Lucy just as I would. Oops, I thought. But Mum said that Lucy was stuck indoors on the computer quite enough and needed to get out more. I hadn’t realised just how gullible Mum really was. Of course, it helped when Jenny phoned Mum and they had a long, friendly talk.

When I asked Lucy how her weekend went, her first answer was, “Well, she’s got a strappy, which is more than we have, so I really did get fucked. And of course, so did she.” She considered a moment, weighing her words carefully. “She’s lovely and very good in bed, but she’s a bit weird. I can’t really explain. Wouldn’t mind a visit now and then, but nothing too serious.”

How wise little sis was becoming.

Then Susy called and asked if I could meet her at Heathrow. She was coming to England!

“Yes!” I said, punching the air. When my heart stopped racing, I told her she had to split her journey up north and stay with us overnight. I said I was set on having a heart-to-heart with Mum.

“Oh God, Maddie, are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, you little fool,” I said. “Really, darling, it’s not just because of you. It’s time I was out of the closet. I’m fed up pretending. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t already guessed.”

***

For ages, I’d been agonising over talking with Mum about my sexual leanings. I thought of her as a total conformist who wanted to live her life without ever rocking the boat. Now there I was, about to tell her I was gay. But Susy was coming to stay the night, so it was time for me to be open with my mother and sod the consequences.

“Mum,” I began, “I need to talk to you about Susy.”

Putting the last of the dishes away, Mum briskly dried her hands. “”What’s wrong, sweetheart? Did something happen to her?”

“No, no… I guess I’d better just come out with it. Susy and I are girlfriends.”

“Girlfriends… oh, my.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “So, does that mean…?”

I nodded. “It does, Mum. I’m gay… and I’m in love with Susy.”

“Goodness.” She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then nodded. “Well, if that’s the case, I’m glad you told me. You’re still my daughter, and I still love you to bits. That won’t ever change.”

I was almost giddy with relief. Taking her in my arms, “I whispered, “Thank you, Mum… thank you. I didn’t know for sure how you were going to respond.”

She shrugged. “I think it’s completely normal for girls to be attracted to one another. Sometimes it turns out to be more than just attraction.”

Okay, that intrigued me… but there was something else I needed to ask. “Um, when Susy stays, you don’t mind if she sleeps with me instead of in the spare room, do you?”

“In your bed?” She studied me for a bit. “No, I don’t mind, but what about Lucy? She’ll be right across the room in her bed. What will she think?”

That was the one question I felt a little weird about answering. I didn’t exactly feel comfortable outing my little sister. Then again, if Mum asked Lucy if she was gay, my sister would probably roll her eyes and reply, “Well, of course!”

“Mum, Lucy is the same as me. We’re neither of us interested in boys. We never have been.” I watched for her reaction. There wasn’t much of one. “Can I ask you, Mum… were you ever attracted to girls?” I took her hand. “I understand if you don’t want to answer.”

I didn’t think she was going to, but suddenly she seemed resigned. “Yes, I was. I had two serious girlfriends before I met your father. I loved him, but I missed being with women. I don’t think I’m lesbian, mind you – just somewhere in between.”

She paused for a second. “That’s why I haven’t dated since your father died, even though I wanted to. There’s a woman who asked me out, and I was tempted to say yes, but I was worried about upsetting you and Lucy, so I said no.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I must admit, I’ve wondered about you and Lucy… if you liked girls, I mean.”

I pulled her into another hug. “Oh Mum, I’d have told you ages ago if I’d known you felt this way. Listen, if this woman still wants to go out with you, please say yes. It’s time for you to live for yourself.”

She was softly crying, but then asked me, “What about Lucy, has she, you know… had sex yet?”

Now I knew it was crunch time. Could I lie to Mum when it was a direct question? “Yes, she has. With, um, Katie.” That was Lucy’s best friend, and the first girl she fucked after me.

I trailed off, scared of the next bit.

She looked into my eyes. “I won’t be cross, I can’t be. But… did you ever sleep with Lucy? You two have become very close in the last few months.”

I sighed. “Yes, Mum… we’ve done some things together. She was curious, and wanted me to show her things. We sort of got carried away.”

“Are you two still having sex?”

“Yes, Mum… we really enjoy being together. I’m sorry.”

Mum seemed somewhat dazed. Guess I couldn’t blame her for that. “And that Jenny she met, I suppose that they’ve been intimate, too.”

“They are, yeah… but Lucy seduced Jenny, not the other way around.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me? And Lucy’s only twelve. My God!”

“Mum, think about it. Is Lucy like any other twelve-year-old you know?”

She had to laugh at that. “No, I suppose not.”

We hugged again. “I’ve wanted to tell you I liked girls for a long time… but it didn’t seem too important until Susy came along. I didn’t want to hide her from you.”

“There’s no need, sweetie. If you girls really love each other, you’ve got my full support. So… does Susy know you’ve been with your sister?”

Okay, we were getting into dangerous waters here. Still, Mum had taken my other revelations so well that I decided to be completely honest with her. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed by this point. I could only imagine how freaky all this sexual activity must’ve seemed to Mum.

“Actually, Susy’s already had sex with Lucy. In fact, the three of us did it together a couple of times.”

Her mouth dropped… then she said, “Should’ve guessed that, I suppose.”

It seemed that Mum had very quickly accepted things. Apparently, I’d been worrying for nothing all this time. I guess there’s a lesson in that.

“So, Mum, are you going to tell me about the woman who asked you out? Do I know her?”

“No, I doubt if you do, Julie Davidson’s her name.”

I thought for a moment. Where did I know that name from? “Does she play tennis at the sports club?”

“Yes, I think she does, why?”

“My God, Mum, she’s so hot. I get wet knickers watching her play. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

Mum laughed. “Bugger, so do I!”

“Wow. My mum with wet panties, that’s cool. So when are you gonna ring her?”

“You really don’t mind? What about Lucy?”

“Mum, we’d both love it if you found someone. Especially if it’s another woman!”

“I can ask her around for dinner. Would you be okay with that?”

“Mum, all you need to worry about is Lucy flirting with her. You’d best warn Julie beforehand.”

She put a hand to her mouth. “Really? She wouldn’t, would she? No, don’t answer that!”

On to Chapter Six!

A quick recap of the Story Thus Far: Rural paramedic Nettie Hastings finds herself in the middle of a flurry of unexplained overdose calls and, with the help of her best friend and former lover, Terry Wilder, has begun putting clues together linking the source to her own hometown. Some suspect Terry’s involvement, as his ex-wife is a convicted drug trafficker. A DEA agent named Bridgette Ramscone is brought in to work the case, and she takes a special interest in Nettie who, in the meantime, has entered into a clandestine affair with Terry’s preteen daughter Halee. After a late night sex party at Nettie’s, Halee accidentally discovers that her long out-of-the-picture mother Kathryn is involved in the overdoses. She slips out on her own, intent on confronting her mom. Nettie and Terry follow, but too late – Halee arrives first. The three of them are captured by Kathryn and her gang, and in the melee, Halee is shot. Kathryn is persuaded to let Halee go, along with Nettie to take care of her, but she holds onto Terry as a hostage.

For a more detailed breakdown of this story’s chapters, please consult the Chapter Links.

by Rachael Yukey

Late that evening, I sat alone in Terry’s living room. I’d liberated a small pile of records from my apartment while I was picking up a few changes of clothes, and was indulging a long-held desire to test out my own music on quite possibly the only audio system in town that was superior to mine. Sure enough, it sounded fucking great. King Diamond’s horror-story classic Abigail, of which I had recently obtained an original 1987 pressing in mint condition, was full of body, depth, and rich dynamics. Poor stereo, I mused. The bad man is wasting you on crap like Chopin.

I felt a sharp pang at the thought of Terry, wondering what he was going through at that moment. I knew where he was; the media had picked up on the hostage situation, and helicopters carrying camera crews had followed the two Ford Explorers on their trek north. At one point Terry had even briefly appeared on TV, when he exited an SUV, entered a service station in the company of two of Kathryn’s men, then came back out again. Now the two vehicles were hunkered down in Smokey Bear State Park just outside of International Falls, a few miles south of the Canadian border. Nobody knew what they were waiting for, or what the plan was.

Thanks to the media circus there’d been no keeping the situation from Naomi, who knew that her dad was a captive and her sister had been shot before I even made it back to Bronning. Of course, anything Naomi knew, Chelsey knew, but thankfully my mother, who was still looking after Terry’s girls, had prevailed upon them not to discuss it with Dawn or Maya, who were still mercifully in the dark. Mom had also quite militantly shooed away the ladies and gentlemen of the press who came calling in hopes of interviewing the children. She’s not really a bad sort, my mom, despite her controlling tendencies.

Now Chelsey was at her grandma’s house. That frail old lady was going to have a job taking care of an injured child, but she’d insisted, and there was no real basis for anyone to object. Thankfully, Chelsey had an appointment to be divested of her arm brace in two more days. Naomi, Dawn, and Maya were home now, and in their respective beds, although I doubted very much that Naomi was sleeping well. I figured I’d check on her when I turned in, and invite her to crash with me if she was still awake.

Halee was in Minneapolis, having come through surgery well, and transferring without incident. Shannon Hudtsted at Thormleton handled patient care during the transfer, and graciously kept me informed throughout the three hour ambulance ride. The plan was for Halee to undergo a second operation the next morning, then be extubated and brought out of sedation in the afternoon. I’d already arranged care for the three younger girls, intending to be at her bedside when she woke.

My right hand rested lightly on a glass of bourbon from a bottle I’d liberated from Terry’s liquor cabinet. I was on my third LP since I’d poured it, and had yet to take a sip. Something felt wrong about drinking while I was responsible for those little girls. I’d seen Terry do it often enough, but I’m not him. He has what seems to me an extraordinary ability to enjoy a drink or two without craving more, but if I have one, I’m going to end up having another three or four at least. I don’t drink to mellow out or catch a light buzz; I drink to get drunk. I contemplated the fact, wondering why it had taken me so long to realize this about myself.

My phone chimed, and I glanced towards where it lay on the end table, right next to the untouched bourbon.

Then I blinked, and looked again. The message was from Terry.

I snatched up the phone, almost knocking over the glass of booze in the process, and opened the message with trembling hands.

It read, Is Halee still alive?

Not “how is Halee”, but “is Halee still alive”. I was stricken at the thought of what the past twelve hours must have been like for Terry, watching his beloved daughter shoved into the boo boo buggy on the ragged edge of death, then not knowing what happened next. I couldn’t even imagine his state of mind.

I got my brain in gear and typed rapidly.Yes. At Children’s. Had surgery in Johnstown, then transferred. More surgery scheduled in AM, then hopefully extubation. Prognosis positive.

Thanks, Nettie, the reply came a moment later. Thought she was a goner.

Where u at? I typed. Can’t believe they’re letting u use phone.

It was over a minute before I got a reply. An agonizingly long minute, but I needn’t have worried. It was simply Terry’s inability to abbreviate.  

They’re not. I managed to squirrel it away between the seats when they first stuffed me into the vehicle. Told them afterwards I dropped it back at the farm. Vigilance has become increasingly lax in the intervening hours, and I was able to retrieve the phone. Am now in a room by myself, so I have a few minutes to communicate.

Any way we can help? I typed.  Do u know what plans are?

Terry spent so long on the next reply that I’d almost given up waiting and was about to call Bridgett. But then it came.

They’re in a bind. They had an escape plan invlving a Canadian border official amenable to bribery, but with present media coverge, the plan’s been scrapped. They have passage off the continent arranged, I think by air, but they’re trying to decide how best to get across the boder. They have little faith in the Canadian authorities’ willingness to let them pass on the basis of my hostage status. 

But they’re feeling rushed. They’re afraid of someone or something, and I don’t think it’s the DEA. Sooner rather than later they’re going to make a move. Hopefuly Special Agent Twinkle Titties and her merry band will be able to take advantage of any errors. Kathryn seems flustered and uncertain. 

Despite the tension in my gut, I felt a grin spread across my face as I read the typos. Terry’s usually so meticulous about such things. The grin faded as I tried desperately to think like an agent; to anticipate any questions Bridgett would want answered. Who knew when Terry would be able to text again?

Are u all in the same cabin? I replied after a few moments’ thought. Also… is ur spellcheck broken, or did u fail 2nd grade?

Once again, the reply seemed to take forever. Woe is me, I have misspelled. When news of my suicide reaches you, you’ll know the reason why. As for the other… the entire entourage is in Cabin 505, designed to accommodate a large number of campers. I’m alone in a single-bed room at the northwest end, with armed dickweeds occupying adjacent rooms. They have a watch schedule arranged for the night; can’t exit without tripping over dickweed on duty. Windows in this building are all secured shut. 

Kathryn has taken the room most southward. The dickweed who broke his leg has not yet received medical attention; they’re using Ibuprofen and cheap booze to keep him quiet. That’s all the info I have; please pass it along to Special Agent Lipgloss. I have notifications silenced, so don’t hesitate to text me back; just be advised that there may be gaps in my ability to respond. Also, I have no means to charge this phone, so once the battery runs out that’s the end of my ability to communicate. Fortunately it was fully charged this morning. Who’s watching my unhospitalized kids?

Me, I replied. Am leaving them with mom 2morrow so I can be there when halee wakes. If ur worried about battery, try texting like a normal person. The reply, when it came, made me smile.

U R so rite LULZ!!! 

Then a few moments later: Going to try to get some sleep now, have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Will check the phone when possible to do so; keep me apprised. Thanks for everything. Remind me to ask you sometime what lulz means.

I sent him back a thumbs-up emoji, then decided it wasn’t enough. Hang in there, my friend, I typed, then called Bridgett.

***

“Hi, I’m Doctor Fletcher, but you can call me Hannah. I’m an anesthesiology resident.”

I shook the proffered hand, captivated by depthless green eyes that bored into mine. The woman was an absolute knockout, her perfectly proportioned face framed by a shock of red hair pulled back into a sensible hospital bun. A head shorter than me, her body was tight yet curvy in all the right places, with ample breasts and a luscious ass. I longed to see that ass in something more provocative than hospital scrubs.

Her gaze traveled downward, inclining her head sufficiently to peek at my toes, then back up. It was nothing one would ordinarily take offense at, or even notice, but I’ve been in the periphery of Franklin County’s gay community long enough to read the signs. This hot little number was checking me out! I was glad to have chosen nice jeans and a sweater that hugged my figure.

I had to force myself not to stammer. “Nettie Hastings. Pleased to meet you.” Hannah fixed me with a radiant smile, then turned to the bed upon which Halee lay, wires and tubes crisscrossing her body, the ET tube I’d placed en route to the hospital still protruding from her mouth.

As she examined the readings on the infusion pumps, Hannah spoke over her shoulder. “Nettie. Is that short for something?”

“Antoinette.” Hannah bent over to inspect some tubing, and I didn’t even try not to stare. Oh my God, that ass! Suddenly she glanced back at me, immediately noticed where my gaze was fixated, and hit me again with that big, sunny smile.

“Antoinette,” she said. “That’s lovely. It’s almost a pity to abbreviate it.”

I caught myself beaming at her; I’ve always privately agreed. But it’s been ‘Nettie’ for as long as I can remember, and sometimes it’s pointless to fight the wind.

“I’d love it if you called me Antoinette,” I heard myself say. Good God, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d experienced this kind of immediate, panties-on-the-floor attraction to someone I’d just met, and I was pretty damn sure the feeling was mutual.

She straightened and faced me again, her eyes this time roaming my body a bit more overtly. Yup, it’s mutual, all right.

“When we have family or friends present for an extubation,” she said, “I like to just go over the process, so they know what to expect,” she said. “Right now Halee’s receiving an infusion of sedatives. The main one is this white stuff hanging from the pole here.”

“Propofol,” I said, “and right next to it you’re running a Ketamine drip. With timed bumps of Fentanyl for pain management.”

She looked up at me, a delighted smile cracking her face.

“I’m a paramedic,” I explained.

Suddenly her expression changed to that of a woman coming to a realization. “Antoinette Hastings. Now I know why your name sounded familiar. You actually sank this tube, didn’t you? We get all the EMS reports for patients in ICU. All right, then.”

She turned back to the pumps, pressing the stop buttons for both of the sedatives. “There we go,” she said. “She’s off the sedation. Halee’s nurse should be back soon. I’ll be back in twenty minutes to take her off the vent, assuming she’s breathing spontaneously.” Those gorgeous green eyes positively sparkled. “It was nice to meet you, Antoinette. I’ll see you soon.”

***

Twenty minutes later I stood anxiously at Halee’s bedside in the ICU, my nervousness balanced somewhat by clinical curiosity. I intubate a dozen or so people a year, mostly in cases of cardiac arrest, but the last time I was present for an extubation was my clinicals during medic school. It’s just not a thing we do in the field.

Hannah the Smoking Hot Anesthesiologist tapped a brow experimentally; Halee’s eyelids flickered. Hannah looked back at the ventilator, set to a mode that allowed a patient to take their own breaths. She pointed to a reading that told us Halee was now breathing spontaneously at a rate of eighteen per minute, with the machine only assisting those ventilations. She nodded at me, and I grinned back.

Turning back to Halee, Hannah disconnected the ventilator hose from the endotracheal tube, using her other hand to hit the standby button on the vent before it started throwing alarms. Halee continued to breathe, the air rushing through the open end of the tube making for a strange, hollow sound. Hannah, the middle aged, matronly RN and I watched the monitor expectantly.

“End tidal is holding, and she’s satting nicely on room air,” the nurse observed after about a minute.

“Better than I’d expect with that pulmonary trauma,” Hannah agreed. She indicated the tube, turning her eyes to me. “Let’s get rid of this thing. You put it in there; would you like to be the one to pull it?”

I crossed to the rack of gloves on the wall, selected a set of mediums, and returned to Halee’s side as I pulled them on. Hannah handed me a syringe, which I connected to the air line on the ET tube.

“This is a first for me,” I said. “I put these things in every once and again, but I’ve never pulled one before.”

“Hell of a lot easier than putting ‘em in,” Hannah observed with a chuckle.

I used the syringe to suck the air out of the cuff, then eased the tube from my lover’s throat. Halee started, squirmed a little, then settled back, breathing comfortably under her own power.

“Excellent,” Hannah exulted. I crossed to the garbage can, flinging the tube and syringe into it with satisfaction. Stripping off the gloves, I tossed them in as well.

“Sats at 97 percent, and a rate of 16,” the nurse observed in a cheerful voice. “Can’t ask for better than that.”

“She’ll probably wake up before too much longer,” Hannah said. “I don’t suppose you bring a lot of people out of sedation on the box.”

“God, no,” I said. “Mostly putting them under, or keeping them that way.”

“She’ll be groggy,” said Hannah. “Partly the lingering effects of sedation; partly the pain meds she’s still getting. She might remember everything that happened right away, it might take her a while to retrieve those memories, or she might never remember. It’s okay to ask her what she remembers, but not so good to pressure her. Let it come, or not come, in its own time.”

There was a ding from the little collar radio the RN was wearing. “Excuse me,” she said. “That’s my other patient. If I can’t come right back, I’ll send someone else so there’ll be a nurse in here when she wakes up.” She left, sliding the glass door closed behind her.

Hannah turned back to me, an entirely new expression on her face now that the nurse was gone. “Are you staying in the metro tonight, Antoinette?”

“I… I’m not sure yet,” I stammered, knowing exactly where she was going with this. “It depends on how Halee does when she wakes up. I’m kind of responsible for her sisters at the moment, too.”

“Yeah,” said Hannah, “I heard that this is the girl whose dad is a hostage up by International Falls. God, that sucks. But listen: if you stay tonight, or any other time you’re down this way and need a place to crash, I’ve got a pretty nice house over in Bloomington. It’s just me and my daughter there, plenty of room.”

With a smile that made her intentions abundantly clear, she stuck out her hand. I shook it… and let her slide the scrap of paper it contained into my palm.

“It was a pleasure to spend time with you, Antoinette,” she said. “I hope we can meet again under happier circumstances.” Tipping me a wink, she left the room.

I slipped the paper into the pocket of my jeans just as Halee’s nurse was returning to the room. She smiled at me, commencing the hourly checks ICU nurses have to perform on their equipment. She took notes on the numbers displayed on the infusion pumps, visually verifying those against the amount of liquid remaining in the bags.

I returned to Halee’s side. She was starting to stir. Then she lifted her hands, stopping suddenly as if something didn’t feel right. Her left hand crossed her body, fingers playing across the IV catheter and attached line in her right forearm. The nurse instantly dropped what she was doing and unpackaged a moist wipe.

I reached out and took the hand that was toying with the IV. She started a little, then relaxed. I squeezed her hand gently. “Halee,” I said, “it’s me, Nettie.” Her mouth moved, soundlessly forming my name.

“Halee,” said the nurse, “my name is Bobbi, and I’m your nurse. You had surgery, and you’re coming out of sedation. Don’t open your eyes yet, and don’t try to talk. Okay, honey?”

Bobbi swabbed gently at Halee’s eyelids with the wipe. “There we go. Now you can open your eyes whenever you’re ready, Halee,” she said. “I’m going to sit you up, and we’ll get you some water. Your throat probably hurts a lot right now. That’s because there was a tube down it.”

Bobbi pushed a button on the side of the bed, and the head began to incline upwards. “If it hurts as we move, just hold your hand up to let us know,” she said. “You got hurt, and your tummy and chest are probably going to be sore.”

Leaving Halee in a semi-reclined position, Bobbi took a large cup of water with a straw through the top from the side of the bed. “Can you open your mouth just a bit, Halee?” Halee’s lips parted, and Bobbi slipped the straw between them. Instinctively she closed her lips around the straw.

“Try to drink a little,” Bobbi advised. Halee sucked some water up through the straw, wincing as she swallowed. But then the cold liquid’s soothing effects took hold, and she drank a little more. Suddenly her eyes flew open. Instantly she closed them again, her left hand flying up to block out the light.

“Nettie,” she croaked in a soft voice. “Are you there?”

“I’m here, Halee,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Just rest and try to drink a little more.”

Halee groped around, found the straw that Bobbi still had positioned near her lips, and stuck it into her mouth. This time she took a longer drink, and it seemed to go down easier. Then her eyes opened again, just slits this time. She blinked a few times, adjusting to the light. Finally the eyes were fully open, if a bit droopy, and they flicked back and forth, taking in me, the nurse, and the room she was in.

Extracting her hand from mine, she felt around on her torso with both hands, coming to rest on the large dressings that covered most of the right side. She looked back up at me, extending her trembling hand. I took it, held it firmly against my chest. Tears were burning my eyelids.

“Nettie, wh-what happened to me?”

The nurse held up a hand before I could speak. “What’s the last thing you remember, Halee?” she asked.

Halee’s eyes seemed to unfocus a little. “Mom. Chelsey had a picture of her. I went to the house…”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “Don’t try to force it.”

Suddenly those eyes were boring holes in me. “I had a gun. That guy fell, and I picked up his gun. Then I just hurt. All through here.” The hand that wasn’t clutched in mine swept across her torso in a broad gesture. “Nettie… did I get shot?”

“Yes,” I said. Tears were on my cheeks now. “You got shot, but you’re going to be okay. You’re going to heal, Halee. Try not to worry.”

The eyes cast downwards. “I didn’t shoot anybody,” she said in a small voice, “did I?”

“No,” I assured her, “no, you didn’t. You didn’t hurt anyone, Halee.”

Her mouth tightened. “My mom’s a bitch. I hate her.”

“Don’t think about that right now.”

“Nettie…” Her head moved slowly, rising once more to meet my gaze with dawning awareness that all was not as it should be. “Why isn’t my dad here?”

***

The ICU staff kicked me out at five. CT showed some remaining abnormalities in Halee’s gut, meaning another, much less invasive surgery would have to be performed the following day, and unless I was next of kin I wouldn’t be getting anywhere near her until late afternoon at the earliest. I knew some bureaucratic machinations had already taken place to get me the access I’d been granted, and elected not to push my luck.

I’d ended up telling Halee everything that had transpired, knowing she’d learn the truth anyway the moment she saw any news on the big flatscreen mounted to the wall opposite her bed. She blamed herself for her father’s captivity, despite my best efforts to dispel that line of thinking.

Kathryn Wilder’s little party was still holed up in Cabin 505 at Smokey Bear State Park, and completely incommunicado. The authorities had attempted to open a dialog, with no response. I’d texted Terry three times throughout the course of the day, filling him in on Halee’s status, but he had yet to reply.

As I rode the elevator to the highest level of the parking ramp, I dug out the little scrap of paper Hannah had given me. It contained her name and a phone number. I punched the digits into my phone.

She picked up on the second ring. “This is Hannah.”

“Hi,” I said. “This is Antoinette Hastings, we met this morning in ICU.” I took a certain delight in letting my unabbreviated name roll off my tongue.

Her voice went from neutral to sensuous in an instant. “Oh, hi, Antoinette!”

“I just got kicked out of ICU for the night,” I said as I exited the elevator and tried to orient myself, “and I’ve decided to make a run for home.  But I wanted to thank you for the offer. I might take you up on it another time.”

“I understand,” said Hannah. “But I’m wondering: were you planning on getting something to eat on the way out?”

***

I ended up meeting Hannah and her daughter Bethany at a little Italian restaurant in Roseville, conveniently situated on my way out of the metro.

“It’s a three hour drive for you,” Hannah had insisted on the phone, “and I know what an emotional roller coaster you must be on. Let’s get some decent food in you before you head out. My treat.” It simply sounded too good to say no.

Bethany, aged thirteen, was a younger carbon copy of her mother. Red hair, green eyes, and a delightful developing figure. I caught myself staring, and when I looked away, I could see that Hannah had caught me in the act. But she didn’t appear to be upset. In fact, she sported a knowing little grin.

“You don’t look old enough to have a thirteen-year-old,” I told Hannah as we examined our menus.

“Oh, I’m not,” she said with a wry smile. “I had Bethany when I was fifteen.”

“Ah,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

Hannah’s brows disappeared into her hairline. “That’s not a response you get very often when you tell someone you were a teen mom.”

“Well,” I said, “usually the tale of a fifteen-year-old mother is pretty tragic. There are several women with stories like that in my hometown’s trailer park. They’re underemployed, on drugs, and their kids are on track to end up the same way.”

I leaned forward, arms on the table, and lightly placed my fingertips on the back of her hand. “But look at you. You became an anesthesiologist while taking care of a little girl, and now you have a successful career, a beautiful daughter, and a house in Bloomington. I’m impressed.”

Hannah captured the hand that was touching hers and squeezed. “Thank you,” she said.

The sexual tension between Hannah and I was palpable, and it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if it might be making Bethany uncomfortable. A glance to my right dispelled that concern. The girl was staring at me with the corners of her mouth turned up, something akin to hunger in her eyes. I was instantly aroused, yet caught off balance at the same time. What exactly was happening here?

“You sure know how to pick ‘em, Mom,” she said, her voice low and husky. “She’s really cool, and smoking hot.” The girl placed a single finger on my shoulder, then slowly drew it around the outside of my shoulder blade and down my side. I shivered deliciously. The fingertip reached my waist and trailed away, the hand smoothly returning to the table and lifting a water glass to those thin, delicate lips.

Heart pounding, I looked back at Hannah, who was just sitting there placidly, still holding my hand, wearing a sly smile.

“Was I wrong?” she asked.

I was casting about for the best way, some way to answer when the waitress arrived. As we placed our orders, I realized how isolated we were – a back-corner table in this dimly-lit establishment, no other diners nearby. I wondered if Hannah, who seemed friendly with the staff, had arranged it that way on purpose.

“I knew right away you liked women,” Hannah said as soon as the waitress disappeared. “You were looking at me the same way I was looking at you. But I also thought I saw something in the way you were looking at the girl we extubated. Like she’s more to you than just your friend’s daughter. Was I wrong?”

Discomfiture warred with arousal, mixed with a certain sense of relief. Bridgett Ramscone had told me that it would be easy to find kindred spirits in the metro. It appeared I’d already found one when I wasn’t even looking. Nevertheless, I was uncertain how much I ought to reveal.

Perhaps sensing my nervousness, Hannah came to the rescue. “I’m sure I wasn’t wrong,” she said, “but I guess I’ll break the ice. I already knew I was gay by the time I got pregnant with Bethany, but I was still trying to run from it, which included sleeping with half a dozen guys in my high school and not being careful. That’s how I got knocked up.”

She took a sip of iced tea. “Anyway, while I was pregnant my eleven-year-old cousin had a lot of questions about pregnancy, and how you got that way, and all the anatomical stuff that goes along with it. I ended up showing her my lady place, and what all the parts were. It got me so excited that I came.”

Oh, the images that were churning through my head. It was an effort to regulate my breathing.

“It ended with me helping my cousin have her first orgasm,” said Hannah. “We became lovers after that, and I haven’t had sex with a man since. It was the start of me accepting myself for who I am. I’m a lesbian who loves both girls and women. Bethany found out when she caught me with her fourteen-year-old babysitter about four years back. Then two years ago, she told me she’d been trying to have an orgasm, but hadn’t managed it on her own. That was the big turning point in our relationship.”

I was staring at her, mouth agape. I looked from Hannah to Bethany and back again. “So, you two…”

“Uh-huh,” said Bethany, grinning.

I sat back in my chair, chewing the inside of my cheek as I assimilated all of this. I met Hannah’s eyes. “So what exactly did you have in mind when you invited me to your house?”

“Well,” she replied, “I didn’t have any solid expectations. I mean, it was pretty obvious you were devastated over Halee getting shot, plus that whole situation with her dad being a hostage. But at the same time we were obviously attracted to each other, and I thought at the very least I could save you a hotel bill and we could get to know each other a little.”

She smiled a wicked smile. “Or, if you were into it, maybe we could have a little fun to take your mind off things. And if I’d read the situation right with you and Halee, then maybe you’d be interested in getting to know Bethany, too.”

She took another sip of her tea. “I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

I was feeling relaxed now. Actually, a little elated. “No,” I said, “you weren’t wrong. Halee and I are lovers. But we’re not exclusive, and if I didn’t feel like I have to get back to Terry’s other kids, a little fun to take my mind off of things would have been perfect.”

Bethany lightly touched my shoulder. “Would you maybe want to have some fun with me, too?”

I looked at her with a smile. “Definitely. But I have to ask: do you two do this a lot? I mean, Hannah brings someone home, and you both…”

“We do it very seldom,” Hannah broke in. “for obvious reasons. I don’t even hint at it unless I’m pretty sure I’m with someone who’ll be okay with it. Too much risk.”

I realized that Bethany’s fingertips had moved from my shoulder to the back of my neck, and were lightly massaging. I caught her eye, and she smiled at me.

Hannah chuckled. “You’re in trouble, if we ever get you to our house,” she warned me in teasing tones. “Bethany goes nuts for tall women with dark hair.”

Bethany pulled her hand away as the waitress arrived with our food, and talk turned to other things as we enjoyed our wonderful meal. They told me about Bethany’s father, who sounded like the absolute model of the non-custodial parent.

“I was sleeping around so much that we had to do a paternity test to be sure who the dad was,” Hannah admitted. “Ralph took the responsibility seriously from day one, never missed a child support payment even when he was in college and hard-up for cash, and he absolutely dotes on Bethany. He works in another state, but he keeps an apartment up here just for his visitation weekends.”

In my turn, I told them about Terry and his girls, and my strange sort of semi-domestic situation there. My tales of small-town living fascinated and horrified them by turns.

“You seriously can’t buy a cup of coffee before eight AM?!” Hannah sounded flabbergasted.

“Yup,” I replied. “That’s when the cafe and the grocery store open. Our only convenience store closed down last year.”

“So… you don’t even have a gas station?” Bethany sounded confused.

“Oh, we do,” I said. “But it’s really old-fashioned. They do full service, which means an attendant comes out and pumps your gas for you. It’s the only one I know of that’s left. And they’re also a really good auto repair shop; I get all of my work done there. But it’s not a convenience store. They sell candy bars at the counter and have a cooler full of off-brand pop, but that’s it. No groceries, no medicine, no coffee.”

Finally we were standing in the parking lot next to my car. “I like you a lot,” said Hannah. “I know we live a few hours apart, but I’d love to see you again.”

“That goes for me, too,” said Bethany.

“I think you can count on it,” I said with a grin. Hannah approached me boldly, body flowing against mine like a cat. Then our arms were around each other, and then we were kissing. Hannah, as it turns out, is a phenomenal kisser. We were both a bit breathless as we pulled apart.

“God, I wish I could get in on that action.” Bethany sounded more than a little disappointed.

“Not in a public parking lot,” said Hannah with a smile.

“Will you take a hug?” I said, holding my arms wide. The girl settled in, body melding itself against mine in a way that was almost as sexy as her mom’s kiss. It was with great reluctance that I let her go.

“Thanks so much for dinner, and for the company,” I said, taking Hannah’s hand briefly in mine. Then I popped the car door, folded my six-foot frame behind the wheel, and keyed the ignition.

On to Chapter Nineteen!

by kinkychic and kinky’s_sis

The next day we were all seated on the verandah enjoying the cool of the early morning when a messenger arrived, asking for Tiny. He passed over a letter.

Tiny called out for Agetha. “The dog basket and some blankets. We’re going to have visitors.” He asked us to come with him and Vusumuzi in the truck, since Susy’s help might be needed. “You have tranquilizer if we need?”

We drove to Susy’s base camp to fetch two baby dik-dik. Tiny explained that someone had brought them to the camp. They’d recently been orphaned when baboons killed their mother.

“A dik-dik… that’s a small deer of some kind, isn’t it?” Susy asked.

“Actually it’s a tiny pygmy antelope,” I told her. “There are quite a few around here but we hardly ever see them, they’re so shy. They won’t last long without a mother. Once we did try to save one, but it didn’t survive. We’ve got to try, though. I’m sure you’ll agree.”

The two tiny animals appeared surprisingly calm. but didn’t look to be very strong. They wouldn’t have been more than ten or twelve inches tall had they been standing.

Susy stepped straight into her vet role. “They can’t be more than a few days old, which in some ways is good,” she said. “They don’t look frightened of us, so I don’t think we’re going to need the Diazepam after all. However, they urgently need to be fed.”

Vusumuzi explained to her that dik-dik didn’t drink water. He didn’t know why, but at that age, all they would take was mother’s milk.

Susy was thinking hard. “There are a number of animals that don’t need water. They get it from the plants they eat. I doubt that cow’s milk is the same as their mother’s, but we don’t have a choice. That’s what we’ll have to give them.”

Tiny rummaged in the bag he carried. “Here, I have these.” He produced two baby milk bottles, sealed in a plastic bag. “I guessed we might need them.”

Grinning hugely, Susy gave his arm a squeeze. “Good job, Tiny!” 

Susy had some milk warmed to blood temperature and filled the two bottles. She passed one to me before kneeling beside one of the two orphans. It immediately took the rubber teat in its mouth and began to suck. I did the same to the other dik-dik and was rewarded with the same result. “Not too much at first,” Susy murmured. “Just enough to give them a little strength. Then we need to get them moved.”

Tiny told us the dog basket was the nearest thing we had to the way their mother would have kept them hidden, safe from predators. Neither animal seemed unsettled when we moved them into the basket, and they snuggled together as we carried them to the truck.

Back at the farm, a short distance from the house, there was a sturdy fenced-off area that my father had set up years ago. At one end was a small building. It only had one door, but there were several hatches for ventilation. Each opening had burglar-proof mesh over it – to keep baboons out when the place was occupied, Tiny explained. To the side was a small porch-like structure with a couple of rickety old chairs, a deal table, and a wooden bed.

Although the place hadn’t been used for some time, it was clean and tidy. Both members of our newly acquired family seemed to be asleep when we placed them in a corner.

“We have to feed them four or five times a day, I’d guess,” said Susy. “Oh, and tomorrow I want to weigh them, so that we can check their progress.”

The three of us fed them twice more that day. By the third feeding, they were used to our presence, and began to expect the bottles.

I was awakened in the middle of the night by Susy. She was getting dressed. “Wait for me,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”

We fed the dik-dik again, then fetched the chairs and sat, watching them snuggle back down. Quite soon, they were fast asleep. Susy took my hand in hers. “It’s too early to be sure, but I think they’re going to be okay. A couple of more days should tell the story.”

***

A week later, Susy had gone back to her unit. She did have a job to do, after all. Spotty and Stripey – our names for the baby dik-dik – were by then walking about when they weren’t sleeping.

“We should leave the door open today, see if they will come outside,” Tiny said to me. Lucy and I sat under the porch and waited. It was ages before a tiny snout poked out, then disappeared. Ten minutes later, two snouts were in the doorway. Then the babies emerged, glancing nervously about. Spotty saw us and came straight over, clearly looking for his bottle. Stripey soon followed.

After they fed, the dik-dik explored the compound. One section had a number of bushes growing there. Together they found a spot inside the largest one and settled down side by side, almost hidden from view. It was exactly what they would have done in the wild.

We knew they couldn’t be left unguarded in the open. There was too much danger from baboons, possibly even cheetahs. We decided to wait until they wanted to feed again, so we could entice them back inside.

Then a young native boy turned up. Tiny had sent him. “My job is to guard dik-dik,” he said, puffing out his chest. “I have my game,” he continued, showing me the pile of polished stones in his hand. The natives play a kind of solitaire with a series of holes dug in the ground.

I told him that we’d be back in a couple of hours. He looked puzzled. “When the sun is about there,” I said pointing to a tree. Then he nodded and grinned.

That evening, Susy returned. “Let’s weigh them again, and see how they’re doing,” she said. The first time we’d tried weighing them, they hadn’t even registered on the scales, which weren’t sensitive enough. It was two days before they did register. Now, a week on, their weight had almost doubled. 

Susy pointed to a small pile of droppings. “Have you noticed? They’re almost house-trained. They only go in two places.”

I had forgotten, but then I remembered Dad telling me about the little piles of scat. “It’s how they mark their territory,” I said. “All of the family go in the same places, sometimes making quite large piles.”

We’d already discussed how long we thought Spotty and Stripey would need milk, and when they would begin to eat from the bushes. “They don’t eat grass,” Vusumuzi had told us. “Only leaves.”

In fact, the very next day, we saw Spotty nibbling at a bush, though he still came for his milk. I knew then that we had succeeded. They were going to be fine. The next question was going to be whether we could let them go back into the wild, or would they always be domestic pets.

***

I checked with Mum first, then asked Agetha if we could stay on a little longer. I told her I wanted to see Spotty and Stripey progress a bit more before we left. A couple of phone calls and our return airline tickets were put on hold.

It was Saturday, and we were expecting Susy sometime after breakfast. Tiny and Lucy were off to the vineyards.

As soon as she arrived, we exchanged kisses, then went to check on our two youngsters. They came straight to us when we were inside the gate. The guard boy, Ngozi, was sitting in the shade, happily playing his game. He was delighted with the fresh supplies we had brought him.

Spotty and Stripey took very little milk. They clearly didn’t really need it anymore. Satisfied that all was fine, Susy and I walked hand in hand back to the house.

“Maddie, I’d like to go to the river today. Would you mind?”

“Brilliant, I’d love to!” 

Under our now familiar tree, we sat and watched the surroundings. I thought Susy was unusually quiet. Finally, I spoke up. “There’s something on your mind, Susy. You want to tell me?”

“Give me a kiss, Maddie, please.” It was a lovely kiss, but felt a little strained.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

She was struggling to find the right words. I could see the worry on her face. “You’ve decided, is that it?”

She took both my hands in hers. “Maddie, I love what we have and what we share together. You’re my best friend, and my lover. Well, you and Lucy. But especially you. It’s just… I can’t commit to a permanent relationship. My work is too demanding. It wouldn’t be fair to you.” She paused, struggling with what to say next.

But I spoke first. “Susy, I understand, you don’t have to say anymore. I don’t know what I expected. But I’ll still be there for you if you just want a friend… or more, sometimes.”

She pulled me to her, squeezing and then kissing me. I fought back my tears, not wanting her to see me cry, or make her feel guilty.

But I came even closer to crying when she said, “I knew you’d understand. No, I don’t want our friendship or anything else to end. It’s just that I can’t put my life aside for anyone right now… not even you. It would make me very happy if you could accept our relationship on those terms.” She sighed heavily. “Oh God, it sounds awful when I put it like that.”

“No, Susy, it’s not awful. Now, how about you stop talking and kiss me.” She didn’t see my clenched knuckles as I fought my tears.

We shared a passionate kiss, then slowly undressed one another. Laying me down in the shade of our tree, Susy began to caress my bare body. 

I gradually felt better as she made the sweetest, most beautiful love to me. It took far longer than usual before I reached a climax. But finally, I was able to forget my sadness and succumb to the rising heat.

Sometime later, when I had returned the favour, we cuddled together. I resisted the temptation to say how much I loved her. For the moment, being in her arms would have to do.

We had showered and were ready for dinner when Tiny and Lucy got home. Lucy has an uncanny way of sensing things. She didn’t push herself on Susy at all. She was surprisingly sweet and friendly. Susy had relaxed. The two glasses of wine she’d drunk no doubt helped.

I was okay, coming to terms with how things were to be. I resolved to be patient, yet clever and cunning. I’d work my way into her heart. She would be mine, or whichever way around it worked.

The weight lifted from my mind, and I smiled as I took her hand. She looked searchingly into my eyes, then nodded. She could see I was content.

***

After dinner we went to visit our little friends, arm in arm, the three of us. “You okay, Maddie?” Susy asked me.

“Never happier, honestly. I’m fine.” And I realised that I was. Everything was going to work out in the end.

Spotty and Stripey skipped about, seemingly content with their lot. We watched them play a while. “Tiny thinks we should open the gates tomorrow and see what they do,” I told Susy.

“Oh God, no. Surely it’s too early?”

“No, the time is right. They’ll decide whether to go or stay. If they go, we can do nothing more. If they stay, they won’t ever have a natural life.”

“Maddie, I know you’re right, but my heart doesn’t want to see them go, to never know what happens to them. I should know better, of course.”

We took the chairs outside of the enclosure and, leaving the gate open, sat and watched. As always, it was Spotty who led the way, his sister trotting behind. At first, they came to us, and I could see that they were skittish at being out in the open. They explored their new freedom for a while, then of their own accord went back inside the enclosure.

When we went to check, they were both inside the hut, snuggled together as always.

For the next two days we repeated the exercise in the early evening, but each time they still returned to the hut. On the third day, they were gone quite a while. I was about to say that I thought they’d left us when they calmly walked up and came back inside.

It was the fourth day when they failed to return. We sat for an hour but there was no sign. Finally, leaving the gate open, Susy and I went home. We both cried along the way.

It was several days later, and the three of us were on the way to the rock. I sensed something was following us but as hard as I looked, I saw nothing. To be honest, I was growing increasingly worried.

We were having a nude swim when I glanced up to the top of the rock. Spotty and Stripey were there, watching us. “Look,” I squealed, “it’s them!” Quickly, we rushed to them, and when we sat down, they sat beside us. 

After a short while, Spotty came and sniffed at each of us before he turned and nudged Stripey with his snout. Then they turned and leaped away. We never saw them again. But I knew they were fine.

That evening, Agetha said. “Is first time we ever know dik-dik survive after try and rescue. Is good, yes? You very clever girls.”

***

We were flying back to England the next day. I would be sad to go. In fact, I’d rather have stayed, but by then, Mum was insisting that Lucy and I come straight home.

Susy was coming to dinner that evening. I felt incredibly nervous, scared of making a fool of myself. I was sitting on the verandah, alone with my thoughts. Then Tiny came and sat down. He passed me a glass of wine. I realised that I was going to miss this wine. I’d actually grown to love it.

Tiny took my hand in his huge paws. “I’m not as stupid as Agetha thinks. I see your suffering and your love. I don’t pretend to understand, but I respect. Let me tell you, little one. Susy does love you, it is clear. Everything will be as you wish, just wait and see.”

I looked at him, astonished. “Tiny, how…”

He stopped me talking. “I see very much but say very little, and I am a good judge of people. You two have love, real love. She will see in time. Be patient. You have all become like the children we never had and we love you as such. The way you love is your choice. I say I don’t really understand but I am old-fashioned and set in my ways. Things are very different today, very strange to me. But respect is also important.”

I squeezed his hand. “Tiny, I don’t know what to say, but thank you for such kind words.”

On the surface, dinner was the usual happy affair. I tried my best to not show my sadness. Tiny stood up, glass in hand. Agetha looked at him. “Tiny, you drink too much. Now sit down, fool.”

He looked at her but didn’t sit. Instead, he raised his glass. “I invite you to drink to family. My lovely wife, Agetha.” She scowled at him but he continued. “Our new daughters, Lucy, Maddie, and Susan. You have made us happy with your presence in our home. A joy. Yes, a joy to watch. Next year you will come again,  we pay. It would make us very happy.” He raised his glass, “To family… our family.”

Agetha was staring at him as if he were a stranger. “Mijn God, first time he speak sense for years.” She looked at each of us. “He right, maybe not so stupid. You will come, you must promise. Is your other home.”

After the table had been cleared, we went to sit on the verandah. Lucy came with us, but Agetha reached to take her hand. “Come, child. Maddie and Susy, they walk now.”

As we exited the house, I turned to Susy. “I want to say goodbye to my dad.”

We stood quiet and still for a while, Susy holding my hand. Then we walked to the now-empty animal enclosure. 

“We leave very early in the morning,” I said. “Are you staying with us tonight, or would you prefer Tiny to run you back?” 

“Of course I want to stay, I have to be here when you leave. Would you stop talking and kiss me, please?”

At bedtime, Lucy climbed into her own bed. Susy and I cuddled and kissed but by some instinctive mutual agreement, neither of us tried to go any further.

Agetha called us at the crack of dawn. Breakfast was ready. It was a sombre affair, except for Lucy being her usual cheery self.

Then it was time to say goodbye. Susy gave Lucy a long hug, then took my hand and led me back to the bedroom. We fell into each other’s arms and I held her tightly as my lips sought hers.

She was kissing my tears away. “Maddie, I’ll see you soon, I promise.”

I made a huge effort to control myself. “I know, I’m just being silly. Come, we have to go.”

They were waiting for me when we emerged. I gave Susy one last hug and then ran to the truck. Tiny barely waited for me to settle myself before he was in gear and moving off.

We all heard Susy yell. “Wait!” Then she was charging towards the truck. Tiny braked as if he’d been expecting it.

She reached up and grabbed my hand. “I love you,” she whispered to me.

I leaned out until our lips met for a fleeting kiss. “I know you do, and I love you too.” We pulled apart and I gave Tiny a nod. “Thank you.”

I turned and stared at her dwindling figure, giving her a last wave as we rounded the corner. Then she was gone. Lucy held my hand – not speaking, just giving me something to cling onto.

On to Chapter Five!