Fortunes Fool

by Gale, Eva; D'Arc, Bianca; Kent, Cassidy; March, Selah

  "When it wears off, I'm fucked." All at once, what she was saying became all too clear. He remembered the condition of Julian's body when they pulled it from the Dumpster. The missing strips of skin, the burns. The deep bruising around the genitals. He shuddered, his gorge rising in his throat. And still his skin burned and ached for stimulation.

  He hung his head, letting his shoulders slump, and took a few deep, slow breaths. A moment later, he felt a soft touch on his hair. Even that—the bare brush of his fingertips against the dead follicles—made his cock quiver and strain.

  "What's your name?" she asked. Her voice was soft. She sounded sorry. Sympathetic. Like she cared. He wanted to believe it.

  "Marcus Colton. I'm..." He stopped and swallowed. Could he trust her? Was she playing a game? What if she was really one of them?

  Then again, what choice did he have? He sucked in a deep breath, blew it out and said, "I'm a detective with the Santa Rosa Police Department, working undercover to solve a homicide—"

  "Don't tell me any more. I don't want to know." She dropped her hand and backed away from him. "But—" "Really, it's better if I don't know. For both of us." Frustration coursed through him, followed by helplessness. Both of them were chased by the certain knowledge that'd screwed up royally and probably deserved what was about to happen to him. "Doesn't matter. I'm gonna die anyway, and you're probably not even real. Just some stupid hallucination brought on by the drug."

  "Oh, I'm real." She pressed a finger to her chin, and he was suddenly reminded of a teacher for some reason. "I haven't quite got it figured out yet, but I think I teleported—"

  "Teleported?" His laugh echoed like the bark of an angry dog against the bricks.

  She shrugged. "You didn't see me come through the door, did you? There are no other entrances, and I didn't slide down the chimney like Santa, I promise." "This is bullshit." "Whatever, Detective. I don't understand it either. I've never been

  corporeal in a vision before." He felt his face harden into a scowl. What the fuck was this dame babbling about? Visions? Teleportation? They were gonna torture him to death. That was real—as real as it got.

  She sighed and said, "Corporeal? It means to take up space or be able to affect your physical surroundings."

  "I know what corporeal means. I just can't believe I'm having this frigging conversation." He shifted his weight, keenly aware of every molecule of his own skin. The shackles on his wrists scraped, and it felt like a caress. The bricks gouged his back, and he wanted more. Even the cramps in his thighs and the sharp ache in his knees from his long-held position felt good, because it was something. Sensation. Stimulation of nerve endings. All of which was bad, because it meant that when the barmaid returned with her cat o' nine, he might be ready to beg her for it. Just the thought of it made him groan. In fear? In anticipation? Who the fuck knew?

  "Listen, Detective," Leah said. "In about five or ten more minutes, you're going to be in a seriously bad way."

  "It gets worse?" He lifted his head and looked at her. She'd bent down to talk to him, and her hair had fallen across her face. The nightshirt she wore gaped in the front, giving him a view of her goodies beneath. His dick jerked, and a sharp tug of want pulled at his balls. He groaned again.

  "Yes, and then it lasts a good six hours without intervention." She looked around the room and dragged a hand through her hair. "I'd like to help you, but I can't take the chance of being caught here. If they can see me like you can...if they could touch me or chain me up—"

  He nodded. "Don't sweat it. Just get the hell out and tell somebody where I am. Call the Santa Rosa P. D. and ask for Chief Gustavo Sanchez. He'll know what to do." And God help me if the Chief chooses to be a little slow on the uptake.

  She crouched there, in front of him, chewing in her lip again. "I feel bad leaving you this way." Her gaze was on his cock. Or, at least, on something much further south than his face, and he couldn't imagine his bellybutton held that much fascination for her. "I could just take the edge off, you know? That might help. Give you some defense against the drug. So when they come back, you could hold out longer."

  The way she talked about it...she made it sound so clinical. But his dick liked it, clinical or not. So much that it sat up and begged. Drooled a little, too. Marcus tried to keep his voice steady and even—the only part of himself still within his control. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

  Instead of blushing, her face seemed to grow paler and resigned behind the fall of her hair. Hard to believe she'd once worked for the Madre. She seemed so...no, "innocent" was the wrong word. "Reserved," maybe. Or "self-contained."

  "I think you know what I have in mind, and this is really no time for games, Detective. Believe me when I tell you that you don't want to be...like this," she gestured at his twitching, straining cock, "when the Madre gets back."

  Julian's face—bloody, bruised and contorted in agony—flashed in his mind. "Yeah. I've seen the final product."

  She nodded. "The Madre always said she found the male anatomy disgusting. I remember...I mean, someone told me, I never saw it myself or anything..." She took a breath and bit her lip. He looked up at her. "What? You might as well tell me." "The Madre likes to get men...aroused. Like this." She gestured

  toward his dick again. "And then punish them for it." "Christ. What's her deal, anyway? I mean, what drives her to this,

  besides bugfuck insanity?" Leah shrugged. "I don't know the whole story. Something to do with her father selling her to his friends when she was a girl. Which—if you think about—doing that to your own daughter? Enough to make anybody—"

  "Yeah, my heart's bleeding cherry KoolAid over here." The muscles in his lower body cramped and twisted, making him jerk in pain. Except it felt good. Really good. He cleared his throat. "So if I let you...uh...help me out, won't she just inject me again?"

  Leah stepped forward and pressed two fingers against the pulse point in his neck. He drew in a breath, then a deeper one, savoring the scent of her skin borne on the heat of her body.

  She pulled her fingers away and stepped back. "Your pulse is elevated. You feel it?"

  Jesus, yes, he could feel it. His heart felt like it was trying to break down a cement wall. He nodded.

  "The drug she gave you—which is essentially Viagra on steroids with a little extra kick—does bad things to your blood pressure and heart rhythm. It can't be administered more than once in a twenty-four hour period without risking a massive coronary event." She sounded more like a teacher than ever.

  His turn to shrug, rattling the chains and using the opportunity to scrape his shoulders against the bricks one more time. "She's gonna kill me anyway."

  "Yeah, but not yet. Believe me, if the Madre wanted you dead, you'd already be lying in a ditch somewhere." She looked at him appraisingly, which—for some reason—made his cock bob in the air like a Goddamn puppet on a string. "You're a good-looking guy. I'm betting she wants you for a toy, at least short-term." "She can't even see me!" "I guess after all these years she's developed a vivid imagination." He looked up at her and felt the burn of frustrated rage once again. "You really do sound like you sympathize with that bitch. Are you sure you know which side you're on here?"

  Her face changed then. Her lips compressed, and the line of her jaw hardened. She moved forward 'til she could splay her hand flat across his chest. The sweat from her palm stung on the welts from the whip. He sucked in a breath through his teeth—a noisy hiss. His cock pulsed, and his hips worked against nothing. Against the air, saturated with tension and the ghosts of agony and fear. He craned his neck back to look at her.

  She said, "I know which side I'm on, Detective. Now let's cut to the chase. We have two hours—maybe less. Will you let me help you?"

  His gut churned with helpless fury, but that didn't keep his dick from drooling silvery puddles onto the floor between his thighs.. Pain shot through him, catching him at odd angles and making him twitch. He craved more—like licking the serrated edge o
f a knife coated in honey. In another minute or two, he was going to lose it and start making noise. He couldn't let that happen.

  It felt wrong—so wrong—to even think about getting off under these circumstances...but what were his options? He looked down at himself. His cock curved up against his abdomen, all ruddy purple. He could see the blood vessels beneath the thin skin. It'd never looked so angry before.

  "Let me help you," she whispered again. "Let me give you some defense against these people. It's all I can do right for you now."

  It was the broken note of pleading in her voice that did him in. He nodded once, closed his eyes and let his head rest against the bricks.

  She let her hand slide down his chest. When her fingertips grazed his cock—like insect wings, maddening and barely there—his whole body jerked. Then she took him fully in her hand, and the sensation spiked high and vicious. Not pain, not pleasure—just feeling, intense and way past the edge of comfort. He bit the inside of his cheek and screwed his eyes so tightly shut he could see bursts of green light in the blackness.

  She moved her hand, collecting the slippery moisture from the head. Her touch was hesitant, as if she feared hurting him. Every stroke seemed to take an hour as it traveled from base to tip. Torment...bliss...agony…like traffic lights, they flashed in his brain. "Is this okay?" Even the cadence of her voice made it worse. More sensory input on an already overloaded system. "Yeah," he croaked. "Yeah, but...could you maybe..." He cleared his

  throat and tried again. "Faster?" Her grip tightened, and her strokes quickened. Became swift and relentless, yet her touch remained strangely delicate. The contrast made him shiver and yank at the chains. In another thirty seconds, he'd lost track of everything but the urgent, fast-rising need to come that roiled in his balls. Each time she pulled upward, his hips jerked and stuttered. He held back his groans by sheer force of will and the strength of a tightly clenched jaw. He could see his goal. Taste it, smell it. His entire body screamed at him to let go.

  But when he closed his eyes, the little redhead's face hung before him, accusing in its blank, dead stare. How could he let himself enjoy this? Not two hours after watching Clarice bleed out all over him?

  "Shh," Leah whispered, as if she knew what he was thinking. "Pretend you're somewhere else."

  He swallowed against the choking thickness in his throat. "I can't. It's too hard. I can't do this."

  "You can because you have to." Her grip tightened again. "Tell me your favorite fantasy. What do you think about when you're...you know?" "Jerking off?" "Yeah." She sounded almost shy, and how funny was that, given the

  situation? He sucked in a breath and tried to concentrate. "I like...uh..." He

  coughed. "Harem chicks." "Harem chicks? You mean, like, veils and incense and belly

  dancing?" Christ, he couldn't believe he'd just admitted that. To anyone, anywhere, much less to this woman under these circumstances. Did this drug have some kind of truth serum properties too? God, he was so fucked.

  Leah sounded amused when she said, "Okay, I'll save the cultural and gender sensitivity lectures for another time and we'll just go with it. So...close your eyes and imagine I'm a..." she coughed, "harem chick." He did as he was told. She continued to speak, making her voice rise and fall as she wove the fantasy. "I'm here to serve you and only you. Your pleasure is my only thought, my only concern."

  "Tell me how we meet." He sounded rough and desperate in his own ears, and he hated it, but he couldn't stop himself. "Tell me how you lure me back to your secret room."

  Leah didn't miss a beat. "We meet in the marketplace. I help you buy some fruit from a vendor because you don't know the language, and then I invite you back to a place I know where we can be alone. A hidden door in a blue-tiled wall leads to a room draped in veils."

  He saw the scene behind his closed eyes. The movement of her hand on his cock had slowed, but his pleasure at her touch was pure. No longer tainted by guilt and fear, if only for the moment. "Tell me what you're wearing."

  "A sheer silk gown that looks like a running watercolor. Veils hide my face and hair, but when we're alone, I remove them. I remove everything, and I dance for you to the drumbeats from the marketplace. I kneel at your feet and anoint you with oil, and touch you like this."

  Her strokes grew swift and sure once more. She added a twist of the wrist on each upward pull that yanked a grunt from him every time. He felt the slow build again, and he strained toward it.

  "I touch you like this," she repeated, "and the drums beat faster. You see nothing but the soft veils, you hear nothing but the drums, you feel nothing but my touch."

  All at once his ears were full of a low pounding. Was it bleeding from the dance floor above them? No...different...more exotic than even Hotel California's house music. The rhythm pulled at him, thrumming in his blood. The scent of sandalwood and patchouli drifted through his head. He opened his eyes. Before him, in place of the Madre's dungeon, was a blue veil rippling on a hot, dry breeze.

  Leah's voice came in a husky murmur. "I use both hands on you, to drive you to the breaking point. Past the barrier of control. Feel it. Feel this."

  His hips rocked forward, rutting and pumping in time with her working hands. His skin flushed hot and pebbled over with gooseflesh. The pressure at the base of his spine and behind his balls built, and still he fought it, because now he feared the whole idea of coming. What if he ruptured something?

  Then her fingertips found the head of his cock where it was wet and slippery, and pressed lightly into the slit. He wrenched his neck as he turned his face into his shoulder to muffle his shout. But even that flare of pain wasn't enough to dull the sharp bursts, one after another, that marked his release. He twisted in the chains, rising up on his knees, and spurted helplessly over Leah's hands, his own thighs, and the floor.

  His shoulders shrieked at him as he sagged and hung limply, letting the shackles take this weight. Leah let him go, and he pulsed out that last of his orgasm untouched. He tried to lift his head. To look at her, to say something. But after another few seconds the only words in his brain were four letters long and crafted of still more frustration and anger and fear.

  Because the drug-induced craving? The tingle and sting across his chest and belly that he'd been able to ignore while Leah had been stroking him? It had returned. And what was worse? His dick was rising from the dead right along with it.

  Chapter Five

  Leah wiped her hands on her nightshirt. They trembled, and her heart thudded erratically in her chest. She could taste adrenaline on the back of her tongue, as if she'd just snatched a child from the path of a speeding car. Or defused a bomb. Yeah, that last analogy was pretty accurate, wasn't it? But that wasn't all she was feeling, and she'd be a liar if she said it was, even if only to herself. Her nipples poked hard at the thin cotton of her shirt, and when she moved she could feel an achy swelling between her legs. His reaction to her touch—his tormented pleasure and painful satisfaction—had left her wet and wanting. Did that make her sick? Twisted? As bad as the Madre Donnatella and her acolytes?

  She mentally dragged herself away from that line of thought. No time for that now.

  She watched Colton carefully. After a few seconds, he lifted his head and coughed, not quite meeting her eyes. What did you say in a situation like this? She hoped he didn't try to thank her. Because seriously...awkward.

  But when he opened his mouth, it was only to groan. She watched the muscles in his arms bunch and stretch, pulling against the chains and then falling slack. She glanced down and saw that his cock had risen again, high and firm against his belly. Exactly what she'd been afraid of. "It didn't work," he said. His voice was a gritty rasp. "It's all right." She stepped forward and tried to catch his eye. Couldn't let him get too much into his head, or this wouldn't work. "I thought maybe it would take more than once."

  "More than once?" He sounded more weary than surprised. "Can't do that again. It'll kill me."

  "Don't be so dra
matic. I'll tell you what will kill you, though—the Madre, and she'll take joy in doing it slowly if she comes back and you're still...all worked up." He shook his head. "And you're so sure she won't kill me anyway. Why?"

  "I'm not sure. But which way would you rather die, Detective? A quick slash to the throat, or..." She glanced over her shoulder at the glassfronted cabinet in the corner. She knew what was likely inside. Bladed instruments crafted for flaying skin from muscle. Vises made to crush small extremities. She looked away and shuddered. "Point taken." She nodded. "And if we're lucky, she'll only beat you and leave you

  alive to play with tomorrow. That would buy us some time." His smile was wry. "Yeah, that sounds like my kinda luck." He cleared his throat and shifted his knees on the floor. His cock bobbed with the movement. "I probably should've asked you this before, but...even if you could find a paperclip or something, you probably can't jimmy the locks on these, right?" He shook his wrists in the shackles.

  "Sorry, Detective. I'm an English professor, not a cat burglar. I could quote you some Shakespeare, if you're bored." He grinned. "Thought so." "What?" "Never mind." He sighed and rolled his shoulders. "All right, let's

  get on with it." She saw the muscles in his abdomen quiver as she approached. She

  reached out her hand to touch him, and he said, "Wait." "What?" He inclined his head, looking every-so-slightly sheepish. "I feel like

  I should...I dunno...kiss you or something." She felt her face open up into a smile—her first since she'd landed

  in this awful place. "That's not necessary. This isn't a date." "No, but I'd feel better about it." She stepped back again and considered him. "I'm going to say no, Detective. But I'll tell you what—if and when we get out of this alive, I'll let you buy me dinner. And if that goes well, I'll let you kiss me good night." "Are you always this tough?" She thought of Ray Delacroix's poor, twisted ear and smiled wider.