by Layla Wolfe
We both nodded. What else could we do?
When Town left, Unity gave me a warm, knowing glance. “He’s in love with you.”
“What? Oh, pshaw! We barely know each other. How much of that food did Mickey eat?” I gestured at a plate of wet dog food.
“Oh, maybe three tablespoons. Here. Try again. You’re her mom, so you should feed her. Listen, Heaven. I was abused by my stepfather too. He performed ‘breath play’ on me. You probably don’t know that’s a polite way of saying ‘strangulation.’”
Mickey had raised her head and gingerly touched her lips to the spoon of wet food I held. “Shut the front door! Then you know the feeling of hopelessness.”
“You’re not alone, Heaven. I escaped just like you did.”
Mickey took an actual bite and swallowed, and my heart nearly burst with pride. “You just walked out into the night?”
Unity chuckled. “Sort of. I moved my things out bit by bit so no one would notice. My mother never took my side. One day I just dumped a bowl of spaghetti over the asshole’s head and that was my final day of abuse.”
I couldn’t tamp down the laughter that bubbled up, though I knew it was serious business. I wished I could’ve made a final stand against Orson, but it was far too dangerous. I couldn’t just walk out a door. I had to walk many miles to get away from him. “These dogs are a new beginning. I want to get to this puppy mill and sabotage them, but I know the leaders here wouldn’t approve.”
Unity nodded. “Especially if you’re going to become an old lady. You have to learn the ropes, the rules and regs. Like do nothing without asking permission first. And the answer is usually no anyway.”
I giggled. “Well. I’m used to that.”
And Mickey took another bite.
Chapter Fourteen
Town
When I got back to the cabin after my sorrowful job in the creek, the women weren’t in Crybaby’s ground floor bedroom. The rescued dog was missing too. While the men clamored for a shower, I found them abandoning Crybaby’s bathroom, and I soon found out why. Unity had placed the abused dog into a warm tub and was giving her a sudsy bath!
I squatted on the toilet lid, fingers laced between my knees. It seemed to me that Mickey Finn, dirty water streaming down her face and back, had gratitude in her eyes. It now became evident how really, really thin she was.
Unity said, “See these sores on her ribs? Her back legs are very underdeveloped. I think she might’ve only had room to sleep and not stand in her cage. An adult female Leonberger should be at least a hundred twenty, hundred thirty—this one’s eighty at most. A big step for you guys will be to lure her onto your bed. I mean, onto Heaven’s bed.”
“Yes, Heaven’s bed,” I stupidly repeated. “Ah, where is Heaven, anyway?”
Unity flashed me a look I couldn’t discern. “She’s tired. She went up to take a nap.”
“Maybe she saw a mirror image of herself in this dog, being abused and all.”
To my surprise, Unity agreed. “It’s going to bring out memories and flashbacks for her. But I guess you’d know about that, too.”
“Yes, I would. Hey, I need to shower. Is it all right if I go upstairs? Then I’ll check on Heaven, make sure she’s OK. Maybe Tanner’s done showering in my room.”
“Sure. Did you bury those poor dogs deep enough? I wouldn’t want to think of critters eating them. Finding a dog leg by your hot tub.”
“Oh yeah, we made sure of that. I’ve got experience in gravedigging.”
Which was, unfortunately, true.
Linus waited for me outside. He didn’t understand what we’d been doing where he and Beetle weren’t allowed. I made sure to scritch his ears extra enthusiastically, but he sure did pick up on my dead dog scent, snuffling away at my arm. “Cumon, Linus. Let’s get clean.”
Tanner was still showering, so I went to Heaven’s room and quietly opened her door. She was sleeping on her back, arms splayed above her head as she had been earlier when passed out in the forest. Her little fists made her look even younger than her twenty-eight years. This youthfulness was accentuated by her lovely tawny hair spread out on the sheet like the wiggling snakes of a sea goddess. The blanket, pulled up to her underarms, revealed the tantalizing slope of her “rack,” as she called it, probably a holdover term from that odious Orson. I have nuzzled those boobs. I almost couldn’t believe it. And she didn’t push me away!
“Sleep well,” I whispered, and went to clean up.
Tanner went downstairs to help Unity. I told them they could sleep in Crybaby’s room. The shower washed the filth off me to a satisfactory degree as I fought the urge to jack my cock. With very little shame, I thought how I’d been doing that more and more lately. In the shower, in bed, wherever, always fantasizing about my angel with the heavenly face. Now the urge was even more profound, and even without brushing it, my dick was up at forty-five degrees, out on a search and destroy, a little crooked like my grin and spine. But long and fat. Yeah, I’m hung like a pirate. She’s gonna like this.
But if I acted like a dickwad, she wouldn’t. I got out of the shower, willing myself to think of those dead dogs as I toweled off. Downstairs, the men clamored in the kitchen and living room, clinking glass and sizzling food. I had to smile. Typical men. Couldn’t let a few canine corpses get them down. I had to shove my cock at half-mast into my boxer briefs, then wriggle a lot to button my jeans. I slapped my own pec, admiring myself in the mirror. Then it struck me. It was the first time I’d felt good about myself, about my own physical image, in years. I looked down at the button eyes that always regarded me with mirth, hunger, or longing.
“Doin’ OK, Linus,” I affirmed. Nevertheless, like an anusbrain, I left my bathroom shirtless.
I held out my palm to my best friend, my dog. “Stay, Linus.” I was going to check on Heaven again, and my goals were unknown, at least to myself.
They seemed evident to her.
I sat gently on the edge of her mattress, bowling her a little toward me. As if she’d been sleeping lightly, her eyes blinked open wide. She seemed to stare straight through me, and my heart thudded. Fucknuts. Is she going to scream? But her reaction went far beyond stunning me.
She gasped, “Town!”, sat bolt upright, and flung her forearms around my neck. She planted one right on me, openmouthed with juicy lips.
My cock instantly plumped again as I met her kiss. It was a blowout for all the senses when I swept my fingers through her silken hair. Her delicate jaw in one palm, I kissed her with tenderness—some might say even love.
But she amped it up. She slammed her butt right alongside mine on the mattress, letting the blanket slide, her breasts swinging freely under the threadbare football jersey. I couldn’t resist. No man could. I skimmed a hand down her creamy arm and cupped a stupendous tit. This only seemed to deepen her kiss, as she licked the back sides of my incisors. I flicked the tip of her tongue with mine. When I brushed my thumb against her rigid nipple, she gasped inside my mouth and pulled back several inches. Her eyes were unfocused, swimming, as she sighed,
“Town. Thank you for saving Mickey Finn for me.”
“No problem, Heaven. She’s worth it. You’re worth it.”
“But I’m not! I couldn’t bear to watch Unity lift her and put her into the bath. She’s so thin, has so many sores. I had to come up here and cry!”
I soothed her forehead with my hand. “It’s OK, Heaven. Unity and Tanner’ve got her. She’ll be fine. I just saw her.”
“You’ve done so much for me. You’re the most incredibly strong, brawny, tough man I’ve ever known. I owe you so much.”
I was afraid of where she was headed—that she needed to put out sex to repay me. Despite decades of womens’ empowerment, some women were still conditioned to believe that, so I whispered, “No, Heaven. You don’t owe me a damned thing. I do everything out of love.”
Shit! How had that word slipped out? Before I could retract or correct it, Heaven was on me again. All over m
e, to be honest, almost in my lap as she dotted my face with her ardent kisses, just murmuring my name. “Town. Town. Town.”
I had no idea what it meant—had I just declared my love for her, and she had not reciprocated?—but it was too late now, and I reached for her boob again, her nipple like a trigger into her inner cunt. This time she cried, a gurgling, strangled sound that almost scared me. She surprised me even more when she flung herself onto her back, taking me down on top of her.
I was swept into the long, adoring kiss, this time brave enough to hump my hard-on against her thigh. She snorted hot breaths onto my cheek as she spread her legs, enwrapping them around me. Heaven was a receptive, encouraging cyclone around me, and I needed to be the inner stable core.
Without forming this idea in mind, I detached from her. I raised myself on my elbows and panted down on her. I lightly thumbed her nipple and she squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth slack and heavy with sensation.
I had learned “body work” for abused dogs. I’d been thinking of teaching it to Heaven, to try it on Mickey Finn. You massaged their ears with acupressure touches. Because they’ve been handled roughly by breeders, it might take several sessions to work up to other parts of the body. Now this translated into my regard for Heaven. I squeezed her shoulders, her biceps. Bending down, I sucked on her throat. I didn’t linger but licked and tasted my way down the center of her chest, only briefly pausing to flick the tip of my tongue over her infernal nipple. She seemed to be humping herself to orgasm against my denim-clad thigh, but being Type A, I wanted to master the situation. I mouthed my way down her belly between her ribs, massaging her hips and letting my moans resonate through her torso. It was like tasting an ice cream cone, groaning and savoring your way around every lick.
When my mouth reached her pubic mound, she was keening a high-pitched wail. On the fringes of my awareness, it seemed as though Linus was whining at the bedroom door.
I didn’t care. The door was closed.
Raising my torso up, I had one last look at Heaven’s quiet, saintly eyes. She paused her wailing to stare at me.
Then she urged me. Grinding her slippery pussy against my bare shoulder, she snarled, “Do it, Town! Eat me like no man ever has!”
What more command did I need? Giving her a little crooked grin, I dove in between her thighs, and her bawling became one long train horn. I lapped at her extended clit, barbarian memories of lapping at Jessica instructing me in the proper needs of women.
It all came rushing back to me like a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. The rhythmic licking, how to stiffen your tongue like a forefinger, using one hand to splay her open like a fig to allow her swollen bud to feel the air, my boiling breath, my quickening finger.
Was it just yesterday I could only have fantasized at having my head between her creamy thighs? Her hips shuddered as she rode me like a very tiny carousel horse, trying to rein herself in to maintain her focal point on my tongue. I excited her clit with my tongue, bearing down on the exact point on her distended hood, the exact target that would cause her piercing wail to rise another octave, almost into the realm of the unheard, where Linus might start responding with wails of his own.
There. I’d found her happy spot where her twat started trembling, and I snuck a middle finger up her juicy channel, because I wanted to feel it. I wanted to feel when her inner passage began to clench, and I’d know her orgasm was about to roll—
Ah. There it is.
She caught her breath and dug her fingernails into my shoulders, her hips wriggling wildly. She made no sound as her inner pussy began its long, dramatic clutching at my finger, the ecstatic waves rolling in and receding like a frantic tide. I did not pause for one second, because I knew this was the important part, and to even stop to breathe would ruin the experience. She smashed her muff against my face and I, obediently, lapped away at her slit. My face was slimed and my shoulders bleeding, and it would all be worth it when my angel gave me that look, the look that told me I’d accomplished my job properly.
With her naked thighs slung over my shoulders, I could see her tits jiggling, heaving. But she held her breath tightly and squeezed her eyes shut as I brought her down from her plateau with carefully calculated steps. My thumbs slid along her glistening labia as my jaw muscles tired from disuse. But I didn’t fall down on the job. When she finally took a giant gulp of fresh air and loosened her grip on my shoulders, I lapped more slowly.
“Ah! Town! Stop! Stop it, you bastard.”
Giving her one last lick, I raised myself on my forearms. A randy glow in her sluggish eyes told me all I needed to know. I’d done it. Now she was mine forever, as Jessica had told me. “You’re too skilled at licking me,” she had said something like. “I can never get rid of you.”
I wiped my face off on my arm and dragged myself up her torso. I plastered my naked chest to hers lightly. My dick pulsated inside my jeans, but I paid no attention to it. Today was about Heaven. I had to ask the corny question, “Was that good for you?” Now there were two dogs whining and scratching at the bedroom door, but neither of us glanced at them.
“What do you think?” she panted.
I almost felt like a shy little kid when I said, “I think it was good for you.” To regain the upper hand, I said, “I’d like to blindfold you. We could play some sensory games. Unless . . . “ How fucked would it be if I’d inadvertently brought up something that Orson fuckwad used to do to her.
But she was cool, smooth about it. “I’d like that.” She was wide open to me in every way. Her delicately pointed nose, her full lips, and her languid eyes all conspired to make me love her more. “It would show how much I trust you.”
Now my breath caught. “Do you? Trust me?”
She delicately fingered the open wounds she’d created on my shoulder. “Of course I do, Town. You saved me from a bunch of colossal asswads.” She used Bare Bones terminology, and I could see her becoming an old lady. “I’d like to go with you to that puppy mill. Let’s go see what we can learn, and tell the club what we saw, what to do next.”
The club didn’t approve of outsiders leaning on their turf. They’d probably do an op themselves, taking down those odious “Friends” of Distinction. But I didn’t want to squash her dreams. Unsure if she’d object to where my mouth had been, I leaned in to kiss her. But the bedroom door burst open and some bloviating baboon named Wolf Glaser busted in.
“What in the name of Minnie Pearl is going on around here?” he bawled.
He brought with him the two dogs, Linus immediately racing to leap on the bed, shoving a cold, wet nose up my butt. Beetle stuck by Wolf’s side as he bawled.
I had no fucking idea who Minnie Pearl was, but I turned to cover Heaven’s breasts with my torso and yelled, “Get the fuck out of here, you Krelboyne.” I’d heard Tobiah call him that, and I liked it. “Don’t you have any respect for privacy?”
He didn’t. He strode to the foot of the bed, and I could tell he was trying to sneak a peek at Heaven’s boobs. “Your poor dog was knocking at your door while you ignored him. Now I’ve gotten the call from on high, from Ford Illuminati himself, that I’m to fly to Bogotá and straighten out that whole blow mess.”
“That’s fine,” I shouted, even though Wolf was practically in my face. “I’ll get someone else up at the Citadel to take care of your compost.”
Wolf raised both fists in the air. “Wahoo! Colombia here I come!” After trying to take one last glimpse of Heaven’s tits, he finally turned and sauntered off with Beetle, yelling some nonsensical Spanish stuff. “You cabróns are going to regret the day you screwed the Bare Bones! You’re just a bunch of persona mentals. Mucha mierda! Otro gallo cantaría! Let the rooster sing!”
I had to get up to shut the door behind him, but Heaven got up too. It was my prerogative to take a nice long glimpse of her entirely naked body before she stepped into panties and jeans. She had been too thin, but she’d been filling out with her fresh diet at the cabin. “Let’s go see Mickey
Finn,” she said warmly. “Maybe we could try and introduce her to Linus, if it’s not too soon.”
I agreed. “We can try.”
We had so many wounded, scared entities around that Stoneman Lake property. Something must have been drawing them all there. I was beginning to believe in vortices.
Chapter Fifteen
Heaven
We fell into a blissful pattern of work and play.
Town took me to a Pure and Easy doctor that Maddy recommended, and I was swiftly diagnosed with diabetes. Good God in an evil world! If only I’d known about this years before! This diagnosis, coupled with alcohol and chloral hydrate, explained all my fainting into the nether regions of unconsciousness. Alcohol had been spiking my blood sugar, and I’d been lying about in diabetic comas for years. What a revelation!
Now I had medication for it, and I realized the courage I’d derived from alcohol was artificial. I needed to find out how to nurture a feeling of safety without it. How to stay connected to everyone without it? I had love, vast stores of love, love for Town—though I hadn’t told him as much—love for Linus, now love for Mickey Finn, my brother, even love for Slappy and Crybaby, as annoying as they were. The alcohol courage to laugh, to set myself free, to admit cringeful details of my life, that was all fake. I could find that courage without alcohol, and so I tried. I went without several times and told myself Look! I can connect with people, chat and smile, allow myself to be taken by surprise . . . and that is all right.
Mickey Finn even unintentionally taught me. She’d hobble around the backyard under our supervision, encouraged by Beetle and Linus as they yapped and leaped. We’d ponder on how Mickey was adjusting to her freedom. Was she happy, terrified, bored? She’d been scarred for life, and quietly I wondered if she could tell what a moron I was. I’d grown up knowing the world was a horrifying place, filled with people with creepy, lowlife plans for me. I wondered why anyone would be with me, given a choice. But Mickey must’ve been wondering the same thing, with her shaky, spindly legs, her patchy fur, her darting, suspicious eyes. My fear that no one would like me was as relentless as my desire for booze. I was afraid that my fear might become Mickey’s reality, and stick with her for life.
