by Lux Miller
I swallow hard as she shimmies her jeans down to her ankles, revealing the flimsiest piece of lace covering her sweet pussy that I know tastes phenomenal on my tongue. God, how I want to shove my tongue in there and lap up the nectar, but no, I have to be strong. I have to ignore her advances, even if she just tossed her shirt to the forest floor and is whispering something in my ear that’s incoherent. I have to resist her. I have to deny myself this. I cannot fuck up again…
My entire body jumps as I feel her weight suddenly slumped against me. By instinct, I reach out and wrap my arms around her tiny body as she loses the ability to hold herself upright. Great. She’s passed out again. How much of that candy did she eat? Last time, it was hours before she passed out! I know it took us a good thirty minutes to get out here into this clearing, but even if she ate it as soon as we left, it’s only been an hour. That’s damn fast for her to be passing out already.
Holding her up with one hand, I scan the forest floor for her shirt, but it’s nowhere to be found. Great. I bring one hand up to my mouth and put two fingers between my lips, whistling sharply. I do it a total of three times, and it doesn’t take long for Fiona and Dallas to come trotting up to me. I carefully shift Raven around so that I can get my own shirt off. Then I gently put it on her and button it up, Thankfully, I usually wear a thin, cotton t shirt underneath my flannels.
I flex my muscles and carefully situate Raven in Dallas’s saddle, then pull myself up behind her. Fiona nudges me with her head, and I grab hold of her reins, looping them over the horn on Dallas’s saddle so that she’ll trot along beside us. I wrap one arm gently around Raven’s waist and hold her against me. She’s breathing slowly, but steadily, and it’s a relief to know that she only lost consciousness and isn’t in distress.
But one thing’s for certain. When she wakes up from this, we’re going to have to have a serious conversation. I cannot be held responsible for both of our actions any longer. She’s going to have to make a choice between me or the medication, and deep down, I already know which one she’s going to choose. There’s really no choice at all when the candy gives her a escape from the debilitating pain, and I can only offer her my heart. I don’t think she necessarily wants to continue living her life as a prisoner to her mind, but I just get the feeling that she’s not interested in a humble cowboy when her inner self is clearly a Queen…
THIRTEEN
Raven
I don’t know what’s worse. Waking up with a rebound migraine that seems to squeeze my very consciousness, or waking up with no idea what’s happened and in someone else’s clothes. They’re probably tied in to the uncomfortable factor, but waking up in what I instantly recognize as Hunter’s shirt wins by a long shot in the mortification category. Everything else seems to be on me, including my shoes, but the bright red flannel shirt is woefully out of place in my laid-back, urban style. And the shirt I wore this morning is decidedly missing.
Groaning, I shimmy the shirt off my shoulders as I sit up, leaving the damning piece of evidence laying on the bed in a crumpled heap. I bring both of my hands to my face and rub it vigorously, groaning deep in my throat. I snatch the flannel up off the bed and bring it to my face, sniffing it. Yeah, it’s his. It smells just like him still - a mix of exotic spices that reminds me of expensive potpourri. It works for him, but it’s not what I want to smell on clothing that I’m wearing.
The last thing I remember is coming to a clearing of trees after gripping Dallas’s neck so tightly, I thought I was gonna choke the mare. I don’t ever want to ride like that again. It was borderline terrifying! And I instantly regretted popping the two candies I did as soon as the horses began flying across the pasture, kicking up grass behind us in chunks. Between desperately trying to hold on for dear life and my anxious mind coming up with a hundred and one scenarios on how I wouldn’t survive the ride, my heart was thundering in my chest, pushing the hallucinogen of the nutmeg in the candy through my bloodstream faster than my mind could keep up with. It was like the adrenaline mixed into the already potent combination of herbs, creating an instant high that sent my consciousness into hiding faster than the horses were flying.
“It’s mine. You, uh, took yours off…”
It’s Hunter’s voice, and it sends a rush of blood to my cheeks that turns them the color of barely ripe apples - a mixture of red and green. I drop his shirt to the bed beside me and look up to see him sitting in a chair across the room. There’s a book laid across his lap, but I can’t see what the title is from here. Whatever it is, it’s huge and hard-backed.
My voice is almost shrill as I ask, “I did what?”
He sighs and closes the book, setting it on the floor beside the chair in which he’s sitting. Standing up, he dusts off his jeans and bends over to pick up the book, setting it in the indentation in the chair where his ass was just glued to it. He clears his throat and responds calmly, “You took it off and flung it somewhere. You didn’t manage to get everything else off to the point where I couldn’t locate it and put it back on, but I didn’t think you’d want to go ride back in nothing but, uh, well… you know…that...”
I groan inwardly as I glance down at my chest. My average, B-cup breasts are thankfully covered, but barely. The bralette is nearly sheer black lace, but at least it has coverage. The matching thong I put on this morning is another story entirely. I’m not normally a frilly girl who wears sexy underwear, but everything else was dirty. I have to do laundry, and it’s even more apparent now that I can’t be trusted with sexy underwear.
Grabbing his shirt back up off the bed, I throw it back on over my bralette. “Hunter, did we…?”
He shakes his head, walking over to the bed and sitting down on the edge of it. He looks tense, like he’s worried how I’m going to react to what he’s about to say. I hold my hand up, “Hunter, you promised we wouldn’t have sex again!”
He sighs and scrubs both hands over his face. “Look, we didn’t have sex, exactly…”
I close my eyes and inhale deeply, then exhale slowly. “What do you mean, we didn’t… exactly have sex?”
He groans and opens his eyes, looking at me like a kid that’s been caught stealing a candy bar. “I didn’t actually do anything to you, but, uh… you… well…”
Groaning, I slap my hand over my mouth, “Oh God… did I… finish it?”
Hunter nods, his gaze going to my mouth. It’s probably something he can’t help, but damn it makes me feel dirty.
I study his expression for a moment. It’s somewhere between horrified and satisfied, and I don’t know which one worries me more. “Did you… enjoy it?”
He nods, his own cheeks flushing. “Raven… you sucked my dick and I, uh… came down your throat. You tell me if you think I enjoyed it…”
I swallow hard. I had deduced as much, but hearing it come out of his mouth makes me feel like a whore. Twice now, I’ve had this man’s cock in my mouth, and I don’t remember either time. It makes me feel like a cheap slut that’s had so many partners, I can’t distinguish one from the next. While that’s probably true, since I highly doubt Aspen’s told me about all of them, it doesn’t help matters to know that I’ve had intimate relations… twice… with a man I actually find attractive.
Crap, did I just admit that to myself? Am I really having feelings for Hunter? For a man that’s obviously conflicted enough to have sex with me while I’ve no control of my executive functions? I mean, the first time, he didn’t know I guess… but this time… this time, he knew! He knew it wasn’t me! Sure, it was my body on its knees, and my mouth he shoved his dick into, but it wasn’t me, it wasn’t Raven. It was her...
It was the one person in this world who isn’t rooting for me to succeed. She doesn’t want me to overcome this horrible weakness. She wants the debilitating migraines to keep plaguing me forever, because as long as they’re a permanent fixture in my life, so will the candy. Because it’s the only thing that gives me any semblance of a normal life. And it’s the only time when
she gets to come out and play - when I’m high as a kite, and unable to suppress her. Unable to control the raving lunatic side of me that wants nothing more than my complete and utter destruction.
“Was it... ?”
A devilish grin spreads across Hunter’s face before he can cover it with his hands. His cheeks are neon red around his hands and his eyes are the strangest shade of brown I’ve ever seen. It’s almost like they’re gold with the way the light is shining off them. He nods sharply when he realizes I saw the evidence anyway, despite his attempt to hide it.
“At least there’s that, but the love of Pete, Hunter… do us both a favor next time she wants to play and stop it. At all costs. I don’t care if you have to knock out my lights. Please do not let anything like that happen again unless you’re certain it’s me.”
Hunter drops his hand off his mouth. He looks like he wants to say something, but he shakes his head like he’s thought better of it. I narrow my eyes at him and tilt my head slightly, then smile. “Hunter… you’ve seen her twice. Is there really nothing different about us?”
He opens his mouth, then slams it shut again. “I… well, no. How am I supposed to tell you apart? You’re the same person physically. It’s not like you’re twins with subtle differences…” He trails off, the tips of his ears going red as he continues, “Er, um… let me just pop my foot in my mouth now, okay?”
For the first time since waking up in Hunter’s shirt, I crack a smile. “Twins, huh? It seems, sir, that you’ve lived quite an eventful life.”
Hunter shakes his head quickly, pointing his finger at me, “You know, your sister has a big mouth, right? I’m well aware of some the wilder things you’ve done too, young lady.”
I cross my arms over my chest and pout, “That wasn’t me, though, so it’s not the same thing!”
Hunter leans forward, and I scoot back away from him to avoid letting him inside my personal bubble. “One word… Jake…”
Crap. Aspen really does have a big mouth! Jake was totally me with my guard down and one of my biggest regrets. It was pure stupidity, but it was my mistake to believe the boy’s lies. It may be something that’ll haunt me forever, but it was mine. All the things Queenie has done weren’t me. It was me locked inside a Raven-shaped cage while my greatest enemy destroys what little reputation I have left.
Thank heavens I’m on birth control that she can’t interfere with - it’s a copper IUD implanted inside me that can’t be removed without a week’s notice. Not that Queenie wants me to get pregnant anyway. It would ruin her fun, because I wouldn’t be able to eat any of the candy, and she wouldn’t be able to come out and play. Yeah, I’d say that’s about the last thing on Earth Queenie wants me to do - find a way to suppress her.
It’s not that her existence is exactly new to my life. She’s always been there, trolling the dark recesses of my mind. From my earliest memory, Queenie hung out in the shadows and played with my thoughts. She’d tell me to run across the street without looking, or to jump off the second story balcony (that one ended with a broken tibia from the impact of landing on my feet), or even the little things like cheating on math tests. Queenie has always been there, influencing me to do things I shouldn’t do. Whenever I’d let her have control of my faculties, I used to always say I was giving in to my dark side a little bit.
My mom thought it was a cute, little-kid way of escaping responsibility for my decisions. I wish it was that simple to explain, but it isn’t. That little voice inside my head isn’t so little anymore, either. It’s become harder and harder to ignore her over the years, and after the accident, Queenie found her way into the world. And until I can learn to control her, I’m always going to find myself waking up in strange places and in the arms of strange men, without memories of what happened.
I look up at Hunter and find him watching me curiously. He offers the smallest of smiles and whispers, “Penny for your thoughts?”
I sigh softly, blowing out my breath at the end so that my hair flutters around my face. “Do you like me, Hunter?”
He coughs a couple of times, obviously caught off-guard by the question. He sits there, looking like a deer caught in headlights as he fumbles for an answer. I shake my head quickly, leaning forward and grabbing his hands tightly in mine. “I’m serious… I know I’ve been a bit stand-offish, but I’m hoping you understand why. It’s not in my nature to push everybody away so callously. That’s new within the last year and is a direct result of losing my mom and the injuries that I sustained in the crash. But she isn’t new, Hunter.”
He narrows his eyes at me, and the very look I was dreading flashes across his face. He either thinks I’m too far gone to be helped, or that I’m making stuff up. I’ve seen this look before. Jake gave me that look the day he announced to our entire junior class that I was stark raving mad. He told everyone who would listen (and even those who tried to block him out) everything I had entrusted him with. He broadcast my darkest secrets to everyone, then told everyone that I was so desperate for attention, that I’d made an alter-ego named Queenie up so that I could have sex with him without feeling guilty. I quit school within days of his announcement. I couldn’t take the looks anymore. Half were disdain and the other half were pity. School was just another thing I lost to the darkness because of her.
“The truth is, though, she’s always been there, torturing me from the inside-out for as long as I can remember. Way before the car wreck screwed up my brain and took away my ability to hold her at bay, she’d force her way out sometimes. And I have a couple of ideas about how you could help me lock her up again. Put her back in the cage where she spent so many years, so that she can’t destroy my life any further…”
Hunter swallows nervously, then locks his eyes on mine. My heart falters for a moment as my breath catches in my throat. He clears his, then asks softly, “And why me, Raven? I’ve betrayed your trust twice already. Why do you think you can trust me with something as enormous as your sanity?”
I inhale sharply at his words. God, it feels enlightening to have someone believe me. He may think I’m asking the impossible, but he doesn’t think what I’m telling him is impossible. I look at him and reply in the most sincere voice I can muster when my entire body is shaking enough to fall apart right here, right now, “Because you believe me…”
FOURTEEN
Hunter
After agreeing to help Raven with her ‘Queen B’ issue, the following weeks have set a new record for awkwardness. Things have been mostly fine between Raven and I when we’re working. The miniatures are settling in nicely, and she seems to have a connection with them. Maybe she’s just a natural. The horses are as infatuated with her as I am, but it’s hard work and taking its toll on her.
Raven tries to push through the debilitating headaches, but she’s only been able to head off their devastation a handful of times. On a rare occasion, she’s been able to retain her faculties and push through the pain until the massive pressure and blinding pain subsides on its own. Most of the time, functioning is simply impossible. Many times, after watching her thrash in pain, I’ve had to play the role of merciful angel and force-feed the candy to her. It works to suppress her pain, but it brings Queenie to the forefront of Raven’s mind every time. And Queenie jumps at the opportunity to wreak havoc.
Thankfully, with careful monitoring and a trusty pair of handcuffs, Raven and I have managed to mostly stop Queenie before she can cause too much damage. One of the times she caught us unawares, I managed to shut her down before she could do something that Raven would regret. I hated drugging Raven that way. She’s explicitly stated that she hates the idea of becoming addicted to narcotics, but really, she’s already become a prisoner in her own mind. And shutting down Queenie before she could get her hands into my pants was absolutely necessary. I have a strong will, but a man can only resist temptation for so long. That’s why I had to walk away from her attempts at seduction and drug her heavily with over the counter sleeping medication.
But Queenie isn’t taking my rejection lying down. It has little to do with me and everything to do with the fact that Queenie doesn’t handle being told no. And I just happen to be the only available man on the ranch. After Ashley’s epic falling out with her gardener’s son, Ms Bianchi’s brother got involved and coerced the boy to come out to the ranch to replace Poppy. I’m not sure what Giovanni’s angle on the matter is, but I’m not going to go questioning a mafia Capo, either. Giovanni Bianchi can do whatever Giovanni Bianchi wants to do. After Raven swooned over the guy, though, I knew I’d have a hell of a time making Queenie keep her paws to herself.
As a unified team, Raven and I have done a commendable job of holding Queenie off, but she did beat me to the punch one time and took off, running stark naked across the pasture until I was able to catch up to her and tackle her to the ground. That damn-near ended in me breaking my promise to keep my hands off of her when she kissed me. I will admit, I let her do it. But when she tried to shove her hand into my jeans, I pushed her away. Boy, that didn’t go over well.
