by Kyle Kenze
I hugged her tight. “Hey. I promise not to get myself killed. I promise you so hard. I have a history of traumatic brain injury and I admit to being confused, but I've got my head on straight now.” Her blonde hair invited kisses.
She kept talking fast into my chest, the words muffled and yet somehow crystal clear. “You're not just the guy who happened to be on the plane. You're more than that now. Maybe you always were more than that. I've felt something between us from the first moment I saw you. Something more than just heat.”
I felt it too. A desire to protect. To wrap my arms around her to keep her safe.
And not just her. All three of them. Red too, although Red still felt a little like a stranger to me.
Casey and Madison felt closer. I'd been through things with them. Worked with them.
Worked with them?
Where did that come from? I couldn't even really say I'd worked with Saunderson.
A flutter of memory flashed before my eyes. Two women in Air Force uniforms beyond a half-open door...
But that couldn't be memory. Casey and Madison were Hollywood mistresses. That's all they were, all they ever had been.
Madison tilted her head up, and my lips claimed her kissable mouth. We embraced full-length where I stood against the tree. Then the kiss broke, and she tilted her head further back to study my face. “This is hard for me, Brock. Real hard. Because sometimes I wonder if you even know we're real.”
“Ah, honey.” I hugged her tight. Couldn't she feel the urgency in my embrace? “Of course, I know you're real. I swear to you. I do know that.”
“Do you? If all this is a virtual reality scenario running inside your head, Casey and I can't be real. And that's just, I'm sorry, that's fucking ridiculous. I am real. I am here. I have feelings.”
I hugged her even more tightly. “I know that, Madison. I know.”
“When you doubt the reality of this world, you doubt us. You doubt me, you doubt Casey, you doubt everything. We need you here. We don't need you to take yourself out because of some silly idea that you can reset this world to a better time.”
“I don't doubt you girls. I have never doubted you. I swear. I didn't. I think it was me I doubted. But not you. Never you.”
“See, the thing is, Brock, I think I might love you. I already know I love Casey. She's my rock. And now you. You're my rock too. And that confuses me. I never thought I could feel for a man the same way I feel for a woman. A man is just... for fun or for a job. But you... you're more than that. Does that make sense? Is it even possible to love two people?”
The l-word was something I'd always avoided as a professional love-em-and-leave-em military man. Hell, the word used to make me flinch. But I didn't flinch now. Love had its evolutionary purpose. It was the glue we needed to bond the four of us together.
Yes, even Red. We didn't know her as well, but she too would be included in our circle. Give it time.
I began to plant little kisses all up and down the side of Madison's face. “It must be possible to love two people. Because I love you and Casey too. I know where my reality is. It's here, with the three of you.”
“No more flirting with death. No more looking for reset buttons.”
“No more reset buttons. I swear.”
We sealed my promise with kisses, then with more than kisses.
Chapter Eight
Maddy and I returned home empty-handed from the hunt. A fire was already burning, its thread of smoke reaching for the sky. I smelled it even before I saw it.
Was that fire really such a good idea if there were other humans in the vicinity? Yet, those other humans must have spotted the fires we lit every night in our mountain meadow. They couldn't have missed them.
If there were only two or three of them, they might be afraid to attack as long as we had the uphill advantage.
An advantage we didn't enjoy tonight.
Still, a fire meant coffee and hot food, little luxuries that were important after a long hike at the end of the world as we know it. I decided we had plenty of time to bank the fire before it got too dark. It was still August. The days were long.
Casey and Red giggled together as Madison and I walked back into camp. Their flushed faces suggested they'd been doing more than making dinner.
“Have fun?” Red asked.
“Did you?” I asked back.
Everybody laughed. Without further discussion, Madison scrambled up a tree, her favorite place to be. She was watching us, but she was also watching the surrounding area.
“We'll have to take turns keeping watch,” I said. “We didn't see any evidence of people nearby, but we already know those guys are making an effort to fly under the radar.”
“Ah,” Red said. “So you two were having a policy meeting out there. I should have known.”
Madison must have been a tomboy in her day. It never failed to amaze me how high she could climb and how well she could fade into the branches.
Red, smiling, held up a flask. Whiskey. Not all the single malt had been left behind.
Casey, already the conscientious mom-to-be, waved it off, while I took only a capful in my coffee. The inner warmth was good, but I didn't want to get blurred, especially since I'd be taking the watch after Madison.
“Isn't Maddy hungry?” Casey asked.
“She said something about trail mix,” I said.
Casey and Red created a credible meal from ramen noodles and dehydrated vegetables― all the salt, calories, and oriental chicken flavor you could stand. Hell, there might even be a vitamin or two, thanks to the veggies. Dessert was trail mix, the expensive kind with lots of peanuts, cashews, and M&Ms in a variety of colors, including rarities like baby blue. I washed it down with a second cup of coffee.
Unless something went badly wrong, we'd find Saunderson's bunker tomorrow. How would we get in without his fingerprint?
I remembered the blast to the heart that never really happened. Something ached inside of me, a throbbing rawer than the gouge in my bandaged bicep.
What if it was my last night on earth? What if my false memory was a premonition of the future?
“Come here,” Red said.
I did. She took my face and pulled it close to her face, and we were kissing, just like that.
Who was she? Who was she really?
Our tongues certainly knew how to engage. So did our hands.
Incapable of jealousy and seldom touched by doubt, Casey snuggled in close to us. “You forgot to pack the coconut oil. But I didn't forget.” A smile twitched around the corner of her mouth, making a kissable dimple in her cheek.
I felt suddenly shy with her. Not because of Red but because of the baby. At what stage were you supposed to slow down, to be more gentle? It was too soon, I knew that much, but the protective impulse was already there.
We could relax and let our guard down for a time. Madison was watching out for us. She'd give us plenty of warning. And it was important to bond with my girls.
The three of us played our fingers along each other's buttons and zippers. Fabric was a nuisance we didn't need. Still, I must have handled Casey with a little more delicacy than I handled Red, because she suddenly grew impatient. Squirming away from the two of us, she yanked off what remained of her clothes― a pair of jeans, a pair of blue cotton panties― and then she backed against the trunk of a tree, not to get away, but to brace herself. To invite me.
“I'm not a china doll, Brock. I'm not going to break.”
Red, who didn't need to be scolded, scooted over to kiss Casey's dimple. The soft kiss did nothing to distract from the rough grabs and squeezes of Red's two exploring hands. All that movie star beauty was bare and open. All those swerves and curves. The folds of Casey's soft pussy parted a little of their own accord to show off the damp pink within.
Watching, I said, “I know you're not a china doll, but all this is as new to me as it is to you.”
“Let me show him how it's done.” Red dropped to the ground, her kn
ees digging assertively into the moss and her tongue sparking forward.
Happy to be shown, I stepped closer for a better view of the way those clutching hands grasped at Casey's hips to shape her sweet delta into a warm, waiting cup. Red's dedicated tongue fluttered a teasing path to Casey's pink entrance.
“Oh, that's so good.” She was so eager, so physical. There was so much beauty in the way her hips wriggled beneath Red's lips.
My blood thumped hot in my veins, and my dick shaped itself into a red-hot steel rod.
Casey's pelvis lifted to Red's tongue. Her clit pulsed visibly.
Fuck it. I could do the voyeurism thing for only so long. “Let me in on this.” My knees hit the moss next to Red's knees, and our tongues collided as the two of us play-battled for the right to lick the sweet oyster sauce from Casey's wriggling pink folds. Both our heads couldn't cram between those slender thighs, but it was fun trying to make it happen.
At last, Red yielded. Her hand fit more easily into the space abandoned by her head. As I continued to suck and slurp, she slithered a probing finger into Casey's inviting hole. I licked Red's finger and Casey's opening and pretty much drooled all over the area.
Red moaned, then added a second finger. And then a third.
Yes. Fuck, yes.
This would work. This was how we'd do it. The two of us were the perfect team to gratify Casey's sweetest nerve endings.
Red's fingers slid in deep to probe for the G-spot.
My lips puckered down to focus hot pressure on the twitching clitty.
We were hitting her sweet spots from both directions at once, inside and out, up and down. I could hear the smallest sucking sound when Red's fingers pulled out before they slipped back in again.
The girls had been right that day they used the blindfold. Sight was the least convincing sense. If you see it, you might or might not believe it.
But if you taste it, smell it, feel it, hear it?
All the evidence kept piling up. This was the reality that couldn't be denied. Even if we were in a virtual world, what passed between us was real. Nothing was more real than this.
Chapter Nine
Gasping against the tree, Casey came hard. Her salty cream gushed Red's hand and flooded my taste buds. There was nowhere else I needed to be. She tumbled in slow motion, her thighs and belly still rippling from the after-gasms. I caught her one-handed to keep the pressure off my left arm, and then she caught herself. All three of us were on our feet again, arms wrapped around each other's waists, feet moving inexorably toward the sleeping bags spread out beneath the stars.
“Let us spoil you,” Casey said. “You need to rest that arm.”
Laughing, I lifted the arm in question to flap it like a wing. There was a tug of not-quite-pain, but our shared pleasure was a powerful anesthetic. “I'll be fine.”
“Then let us spoil you because you're fine.” Red too was laughing. She wasn't as giddy by nature as Casey was, but she was giggling now.
How could I deny them?
So, I let them tumble me down to the sleeping bags, where I soon found myself sprawled flat on my back. My butt clenched and my spine arched, lifting my rock-hard dick in silent invitation. Red straddled me, a knee on each side of my hips, her hands flat against my chest.
“Mine,” she said. “I'm going to ride you now.”
She was an enigma in so many ways. A woman who held back secrets. But there was one secret she never held back― the flexible urgency of her sweet yielding warmth. As she rocked on top of me, her outer lips unfolded against me like petals in bloom. When she slithered down my shaft, her inner corridors grasped me hard to squeeze me insistently from head to root. There were no hidden doubts, no last-minute questions. She wanted me, and she was taking me, and I was delighted to be taken.
I pushed away any lingering doubts. Nothing mattered except the intoxicating perfume wafting from her hair. Amber and copal, vanilla and citrus. The scent of reckless desire.
My eyes rolled back in my head, and I was temporarily blind with lust.
Even if I'd been able to look beyond the ripe woman on top of me, I wouldn't have seen Madison above us in the dark. She'd be a shape in the branches, nothing more. And yet, without her watching over the three of us, without her standing guard from above, we wouldn't have been able to enjoy these stolen moments.
How much of the action below could Madison actually see? Her focus would be mostly outward as she scanned the wide wilderness for an approaching enemy― a task I could trust her to take seriously. And yet I never doubted she stole little glances at the party beneath her. Being watched was its own separate thrill.
My entire body throbbed from the delicious efforts of the double-pronged assault from the two girls moving on top of me. Red on my dick, Casey on my face. Life was delicious, and I was free to let the pleasure take me. We shuddered together in a three-way climax that didn't want to quit.
We must have dozed. Madison was down from the tree, a serious expression on her face as she checked the bandage on my arm.
“Problem?” I asked.
“No problem. And I intend to keep it that way.”
I kissed her on the corner of the mouth. “It's time for me to climb that tree.”
“You should probably take the night off.”
“Not gonna happen.”
She didn't think it would. Without further argument, she hung the night vision binoculars around my neck like an Olympic gold medal.
“See anything interesting?” I asked.
“Not so much as a puff of smoke. It's a little weird, isn't it?”
I said nothing, although I'd had the same thought. It was weird. Why were they being so sneaky? The more they lurked, the more they waited, the more uneasy I felt.
No wonder I had premonitions of getting shot through the heart.
Madison had found a sturdy convergence of branches some fifty feet up. I climbed slowly toward the same nest. Below me, the three girls began to snuggle into each other in a tangle of long legs.
I paused about twenty feet up. The night was dark, and the fire was out. At first, I was surprised at how little I could see, although my eyes were adjusted to the lack of light. Then I blinked, something snapped into focus, and I could see everything.
Three female bodies tangled far below. The moon hadn't yet risen, so they were the color of starlight. Sometimes, they licked each other. Sometimes, they scissored their legs around each other's thighs. They were trying not to make too much noise. Their soft moans and softer gasps shouldn't be audible from here, but I swear that sometimes I picked up their little cries of climax.
I climbed higher. My injury tugged slightly, but it wasn't an acute pain. I wasn't causing myself any further damage.
My eyes stayed in motion to sweep the dark horizon. There was a lot of uncut forest out here, a lot of places for entire armies to move undercover, but I wasn't unduly concerned. We'd already know if there were entire armies out here.
As I climbed into Madison's nest, the branches groaned under my greater weight. I gripped the trunk with both hands while I waited for the crack of something breaking, but I was fine. The branches held.
As I settled in, I saw it― far off, very far off, a flicker of red on the far horizon. Somebody else's campfire.
I wasn't entirely thrilled about using night-vision binoculars while clutching the branches of a tree. I was fifty feet in the air, and I preferred to hold on with both hands. Alas, the other campfire called for a closer look.
Focus.
I had to look near but not directly at the blare of campfire in the goggles.
Is that?
Who is that?
I blinked. It couldn't be. My mind was playing tricks again.
It was dark, and the man was miles away on a far mountainside. I'd seen a silhouette, nothing more.
A silhouette of a dead man.
Shaun Saunderson, Mr. Hollywood himself.
My thighs gripped more strongly around the tree t
runk. I needed both hands to adjust the focus on the binoculars.
The brain wants to find patterns. The brain wants to recognize things. It's easy for a man who once had a head injury to find patterns and images that didn't really exist.
I knew that already. We all knew that.
Look again. You'll see a stranger.
Did I even have to look? Yes, yes. I did. If I didn't take a longer, harder look, I'd forever doubt myself.
It isn't him. You need to prove it to yourself. It can't be him.
I leaned forward. Maybe a little too far.
The binoculars fell through my hands. I grabbed at them, then grabbed at the tree trunk.
Missed both.
And that's when something cracked. One branch and then another and another.
The ground came at me like a baseball bat to the back of the head.
There were a lot of ways to die. If you played the game long enough, you'd find all of them.
Chapter Ten
In dreams, I'd hiked this path a thousand times― so many times the actual hike felt distinctly unreal. As I walked, I thrust my right hand out in front of me to study the shape of my spread fingers, the pattern of hair down my arm, the knot of bone at my wrist.
Wasn't it my hand? Wasn't it familiar? Or did it belong to somebody else?
Who was I? Who were any of us?
We moved fast, at times too fast, once we made the decision to get a move on. Madison and Casey liked Red well enough, but they had some questions about her. How could a girl they both remembered from a Hollywood sex party be the same girl who turned up along the path to Saunderson's bunker?
Coincidence? Or something more?
Every time I told myself I had a firm grip on reality, I felt my grip start to slide. A feeling of false deja vu hit me in the pit of my stomach― an odd sensation that told me I'd been somewhere that was almost, but not quite, identical to this.
How could I feel both things at once― that I'd never done this before and that I'd done it a thousand times but never once in quite the same way?
