by Shaye Marlow
I grabbed her, and yanked her into the little hut with me. I’d intended to plaster a hand over her mouth to stifle her screams, but she wasn’t screaming.
She was laughing. “Joss, is that you?”
A pair of soft breasts flattened beneath my arm were making it difficult to think, but I still got the implication. “No,” I said, dragging her closer.
She paused a moment. “Ted?”
“No,” I growled, stepping down from my perch. Standing just behind her, I lowered my nose to her hair, and inhaled her fragrance. She smelled spicy for a woman. Not soft and flowery, but almost musky, with a bite of pepper. Perfect.
“Henry?” she tried.
“Goddammit, how many men are you sleeping with?” I demanded, whirling her around. There wasn’t a lot of light, but what did angle through the open door sliced across my face.
She gasped. “You.”
“No, you’re not sleeping with me. I think I’d know.”
“But, I dumped you in the river.”
“You did. That was mean,” I said, squeezing her upper arm. I was thankful she hadn’t screamed yet, but I was prepared to move quickly if and when she tried.
She stared up at me for several seconds, wide-eyed. And then, she grinned. “I’m Frances.”
“Zack.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Zack,” she said, leaning in. Her apparent interest was nice, but at the same time, it was completely unexpected, and frankly, it scared me a little.
“I have a proposal for you,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?” Frances purred, running a finger down my chest.
“Yes,” I said, removing her hand. Maybe Rory’d been right. Maybe she was crazy.
God, I was hard.
“I want you…”
“Yes?” She leaned in, focused on my lips.
“…to teach me to fly.”
She stared, uncomprehending.
“To give me flying lessons,” I said.
She leaned back slightly, small frown lines forming.
“To show me how to fly a plane,” I tried again. “So that I may… fly it.”
“You’re here at midnight, in the dark, in the shitter, asking me for flying lessons?”
“Is that so very strange?”
Her brows climbed so high, I worried they might fly right off her head. “What about that first time you showed up, when you peppered the dogs? Or the second, when you kamikazeed yourself all over the porch? Were you looking for flying lessons then?”
“Well, no. The first time I was hunting a bear, and the second…” Looking at her, my hand curled into a fist.
A slow smile curved her lips.
“Never mind what I wanted the second time. I’m here now, the third, and I’m asking you for flying lessons.”
Frances nodded, then said, “No.”
“But…” I didn’t have a plan for this. My plan was that she’d say yes, I’d sweep her back to my place in the Jeep, and I’d make sweet, gentle, and worshipful love to her, as befitted the angel I’d seen on that balcony. The next day, she’d teach me how to fly, and the day after that, we might go harvest ourselves a bear. Then we’d make love again, while a smaller and chubbier Rory fluttered his little wings and shot us with pink Nerf darts. Not…
“What?” I asked, shaking the echoes of denial out of my head.
“No. And if you don’t get the hell off my property, I’ll hurt you. And then my father’s men will come, and they’ll hurt you. And they’ll probably get excited, and you might even wind up dead.”
“You’ll hurt me?” I asked, gazing down at her. I was charmed.
She bared her teeth, and then I knew. I had to have her. She was coming back with me.
“You’re coming back with me,” I said.
“Like hell I am,” she said, trying to knee me.
My leg got in the way. Then I wrapped an arm around her, lifting her off her feet. My hand, I plastered across her mouth.
She bit me. Ignoring it, I carried her, struggling, from the outhouse.
She tried to scream. I muffled it.
She elbowed me. I let her.
I carried her over to where Rory hid.
“This was not part of the deal,” Rory hissed. His eyes were wide with alarm as he watched her struggle. There was absolutely no mistaking the fact that she hadn’t come willingly.
“Rory,” I said, “this is Frances.” Then I carried her past him, deeper into the woods.
“Zack!” he cried, following after. “We can’t do this. This is kidnapping. Goddammit, man,” he said, dogging my steps. “Our usual pranks are all well and good, but this… this could land us in hot water. Really hot water.”
“She’s gonna teach me to fly,” I said, picking my way down the final slope to the Jeep. It didn’t help any that she continued to flail. Her heels drummed against my shins and her legs tangled with mine, while her buttocks slammed against me with alternately arousing and ball-bursting force. Oh, and she’d managed to slip one hand up, and was trying to tear off my ear.
“Listen, you idiot. There’s an easier way. Just go to town, stay for a month, and go to one of the schools on Merrill Field like a normal human being.”
I paused next to the Jeep and glanced over at him. “Did you hear yourself just now?”
He held my stare, but his cheeks turned a little pink, meaning he agreed we were not, by any stretch of the imagination, normal. “But,” he said, “that does not excuse kidnapping.”
I grunted. “Open the door.”
He didn’t move.
“Rory.”
“No. I refuse to help you with this insanity.”
“Rory…”
Frances had quit struggling, and seemed to be listening to the exchange. Scoping out potential allies in the hours and days to come, no doubt. At least, I hoped that was what she was doing, and I hadn’t somehow managed to kill her.
“Stop it! Quit giving me those eyes. No, I said.”
“Rory… you yourself agreed that the manly thing to do is drag a woman back to your cave by her hair.”
He threw his hands up, then put them on his hips, staring at the ground while he muttered to himself. He seemed agitated.
“Rory…”
“Damn you, I’m telling you I don’t want to.”
“Rory…”
“You’re going straight to hell. You realize that, don’t you?” He glanced at Frances, then sighed. “We both are.” Then he opened the back door of the Jeep.
“Good. Now go get the ratchet straps.”
His hands balled into fists, but he pivoted and headed toward the back of the Jeep.
I set Frances on her feet, turning her so I could meet her eyes while still keeping a hand over her mouth. “If you agree to come along quietly,” I said, “we don’t have to do this the hard way.”
I took her silence for assent. Slowly, carefully, I released her mouth.
She screamed.
I slapped my hand back over, heart thumping as I listened. In the distance, one of those Rottweilers barked. Then, another. “Dammit. Damnit.”
“No time for that,” I told Rory as he came toward me trailing two bright-orange nylon straps. “We gotta go. You drive.” I jumped in the back seat with Frances, hauling her up so that her feet cleared the doorway before I leaned over and yanked the door shut.
Probably hearing the dogs barking, and that barking getting louder, Rory threw the straps across the console and leaped into the driver’s seat. Chunks of loam sprayed as he pulled us into a hard 180 and accelerated into a dangerously fast downhill run.
Frances and I weren’t buckled in, and were both bouncing and sliding all over the place. I had to let go of her mouth so I could hold onto something.
Those frantic sounds she’d been making turned out to be shrieks of glee. She whooped when we hit a particularly big bump and she and I floated for several seconds before slamming back down on the seat.
I grunted with the impact, still hold
ing her tight. If worse came to worst, and we rolled or crashed, I fully intended to stay wrapped around her, cushioning her until the very end. Just because I was kidnapping her, just because she’d whacked me over the head and flew the plane I’d been thrown out of, didn’t mean I meant her any harm.
It was a good twenty-minute, winding downhill ride. In that time, Frances squirmed all over my lap, and never once acknowledged the hard bulge she was grinding against. She had me sweating by the end of it. A hair away from creaming in my jeans, and about ready to scream, myself. She was an armful. More than an armful. She smelled amazing, and had the most perfect little ass…
And had a vindictive streak a mile wide, I was reminded as she drove her elbow up into my chin. In the same motion, she shifted, pinching my nuts beneath her hip. So, I bit my tongue, and would’ve doubled over if she hadn’t been taking up the lion’s share of my lap.
She used the opportunity to slip out of my grasp, and yanked the door latch before I managed to drag her back. I banded my arms around her, quelling her struggles as Rory pulled us to a halt next to our cabin.
She screamed, and bit the meat of my forearm.
“Ow, dammit.” Not letting up my hold, I slid out of the Jeep with her.
Rory was already out, and watched as she gnawed on my arm. “So, now what, genius?”
“Now…” I had no idea. She was supposed to’ve come willingly.
“Let me go,” she said, and let out an ear-piercing scream.
“No,” I growled, and in the next few seconds we played footsie as she tried to stomp my instep. Oh, and she screamed the whole time.
“Would you please stop that?” Rory said. “Nobody’s gonna respond. Screams come from this place all the time. It’s the norm, goddammit.”
She stilled. “It is? Why?”
“Why do you think?” Rory asked, clearly exasperated.
“Because… you kidnap women and torture them in your basement regularly?”
“No.”
“Because you like to watch old horror films at full volume?”
“No.”
“Because… you have a spider infestation?”
“No, goddammit.
“Then enlighten me.”
“Sex,” Rory hissed. “Because sex happens.”
“Is it you screaming, then, or him?”
Rory and I looked at one another. “We do not have sex,” I growled.
“Not with each other,” he added, taking a big step away.
“Bullshit. You two have ‘bromance’ written all over you. Now lemme go.”
“That’s because we’re brothers. Dammit, Zack. I’m tired. What are we gonna do with her overnight? We could chain her to your weight set. Barricade her in the bunker?”
“I was thinking let her have the couch?”
“Oh, yeah. Great idea. We’ll just give her my pillow and blanket,” he said as he retrieved them from the back seat, “and she can cuddle up, completely unattended, on the couch.”
“Yes, the couch would be great,” Frances said. She nodded so hard, her head smacked my chin.
“Well, we can’t put her in with Lucy,” I pointed out.
Rory gave me a quelling glance. “You know what? I have an idea.” He reached into the Jeep again, and came out with a Hershey’s bar, which he wiggled in front of Frances’s face. “Franny want some chocolate?”
She glared at him. “Unbelievable. And my name is not Franny.”
“Frumpy?”
“No.”
“Fanny?”
“No.”
“Oooo, I think I hit a chord,” he said. “Listen, Fanny, if you agree to keep quiet and stay where we put you till morning, I’ll give you this full eight inches of thick… dark… chocolate.” His Vanna White impression was made even better by the suggestive wiggling of his brows.
“I think your ‘eight inches’ is an overestimation in the extreme,” she said.
“It is not.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I can show you,” Rory said, reaching for his fly.
“Rory, stop it,” I said, even as Frances said, “You pull that underwhelming thing out near me, and—”
Rory swung his fistful of chocolate, and whacked Frances upside the head.
She went limp in my arms.
He sneered. “Payback’s a bitch, innit?”
“Rory, what the hell?!” I hitched her higher, wincing when her head flopped, then bent and swept her legs up in my other arm.
“Hey, something had to be done.” Rory strode toward the front door. “And you obviously weren’t gonna do it.”
“You hurt her,” I said, chasing him up the steps. Her head slammed into the doorframe, making me wince. Turning, I threaded her carefully through the opening. “Dammit, now what am I supposed to do?”
“Set her down. Find some rope,” Rory said. He was already at the foot of the steps. “I’m going to bed.”
“You… fuck.” He was gone.
I crossed to the couch, and set her down gently.
She looked so peaceful when she was unconscious. So innocent and young. Gently, I brushed one of her dark locks back from her forehead. She had one of those faces—big eyes narrowing down to a delicate nose, a cute little mouth, and an adorable pointy chin. She looked like an elf.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean for it to go this way.” I trailed my fingers down her soft cheek, then finally managed to step away. With a heavy heart, I went out to the shop to get some rope.
When I came back, she was gone. I stared dumbly at the couch for a moment. “Rory, did you…” My visual scan of the room stopped at the open window.
“Shit!” Dropping the yellow rope, I propelled myself across the room and dove out the window head-first.
Or at least, I would have, if something hard hadn’t slammed into the back of my head. I pitched forward, and dove into the wall instead. The sheetrock gave, and I wound up with my head in the wall.
Getting my head out was a bitch, even with the small hands that grabbed at my shoulders and pried. The broken wall nearly took my nose off, and then I was out, and those same small hands helped me roll to the side.
Blinking away sheetrock dust, I looked up into her face. Frances straddled me, demanding my attention. “How?” I wheezed.
She grinned. “I was faking.”
I was suddenly looking to the side with the sound of her hand meeting my cheek ringing in my ears.
She rolled my head back. “That was for kidnapping me,” she said, and slapped me again. “And that was for kidnapping me.” And again, with quite a bit of force for a girl. “And that… was for messing up my playdate.”
With a growl, I threw her off.
We were both climbing to our feet when Rory came clattering down the stairs. “What is going on down here?”
“She,” I started, turning to look at my slap-happy angel. Except… she’d disappeared.
She jumped on my back, her elbow locking around my throat.
I tugged at her arm—ineffectually, because the plan Don’t Hurt Frances was still in effect. I reached behind me, trying to grab her, trying to pry or shake her off. She locked her thighs around me and clung to my back as I bucked and spun.
My vision was darkening. “Not again,” I wheezed. I stumbled, met the couch, and the weight of the woman on my back folded me over the arm.
Dimly, I could hear Rory yelling. Frances’s hold on me let up just enough for me to gasp a breath, and then it locked back down. I could feel his weight on top of her—on top of both of us—as he tried to tug her off.
“I knew it!” a voice shrilled. The sound cut through the commotion, and everybody froze. Lucy stood in her doorway, hands on her hips, glaring at us. “I can’t belief you two.” Her voice was low and anger-roughened, her lips curled with disgust. “Ve. Are. Done!”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Rory said, straightening.
“Boolshit, it’s not. I caught you in ze act. Dere�
��s no denying it; you haf been cheating on me!”
“No, honey. See,” he said, “there’s no penile involvement…”
She whirled and stomped back into her room. An angry shriek preceded a boot, which Rory ducked.
Frances was not so lucky. “Ow! Damn it,” she cried, rolling away.
I was drooping with well-oxygenated relief when the second flying boot hit me in the kidney. “Argh!” I cried, rolling to the floor to take cover behind the coffee table. Opening my eyes, I found my face just inches from Frances’s.
“Lucy, you need to calm down,” Rory called.
“Not a good thing to say to an irate woman,” Frances muttered.
Lucy stuck her head out the door and shrilled in heavily accented English, “I told you, it is Lee-oo-chee-a, you ofergrown ape. Two months, and you can’t efen get my name right!”
“Honey—”
“Do not ‘honey’ me. I am done vith you. Done vith you both!”
The stream of invectives, made exotic by her Russian accent, continued. Rory must’ve said something particularly offensive, because she shrieked at him. Frances and I watched her fur-trimmed boots—the ones attached to her feet—flash by, and then Lucy was stomping up the steps to the second floor.
Rory looked down at us, hands on his hips. “Cowards.”
I dragged my hand out from underneath myself so I could flip him off with both. Next to me, Frances giggled—a sound that warmed my soul.
Upstairs, we heard the pitter-patter of angry boots, and the distinctive squeal of a window being opened.
“She can’t be up to anything good,” Rory said, glancing upward.
“Maybe you should go talk to her.”
Rory glared. “What do you think I’ve been d—” He stopped, and all three of us cocked our heads, listening to soft, discordant squeaks.
“That’s… my dresser drawers,” I said.
“Maybe you should go see what she’s up to,” Rory suggested.
“Hell no,” I said. “Whatever she finds, she can have. I’ve had enough for one night. I’m staying right here.”
Muttering to himself, Rory crossed to the stairs. “Sweetie,” he called, his tone coaxing, “why don’t you come on down so we can talk?”
More drawers squeaked. Hangers jangled.
Frances and I watched Rory creep gingerly upward. “It wasn’t what it looked like,” he insisted, and disappeared from sight.
