by Jess Bentley
Timothy’s expression darkens. I wait nervously as he seems to weigh the options.
“We really can’t risk anybody coming here,” he says again softly.
“That’s what I’m saying!” I insist. “You should let me contact Nance before they find this place, don’t you think? I mean, it’s within walking distance of the cabin, right?”
“If they head in the right direction, yeah, I guess it is.”
“All I need is a Skype session, Timothy. I can get this all sorted out, buy us some time at least. Isn’t it worth a shot?”
After a few more minutes thinking about it, he finally presses his lips together and nods. Pushing himself out of the chair, he leaves the room, returning shortly with a laptop tucked under his arm. He closes the door behind him, latching it quietly.
“I mean, we’re not doing anything wrong,” he mutters defensively. “It’s probably just best if Carty doesn’t walk in right at this particular moment.”
“Understood,” I breathe.
He sets the laptop up in front of me and I open the Skype app, trying to remember my login credentials. I’m so accustomed to having everything on my own devices, it’s really weird to be on somebody else’s laptop. Somehow, I manage to get the right username and password in there and scroll to my contacts, double-clicking instantly on Nance’s name.
“You know what, I’ll just give you some privacy,” Timothy mutters as he leaves the room. But I’m not even paying attention. Instead, I’m listening to the artificial ring tone, my heart beating wildly in my chest.
“Lola!” comes a voice as her face, distorted and strange, appears on the screen.
I wave reflexively, suddenly giddy at the sight of her face. Man, I guess I missed her. Didn’t expect that.
“Oh my God, where have you been? We’ve been worried sick about you!” She cries out, squinting at the screen. “Where are you? Is that the hotel? Is that a bed? Are you back in Sacramento?”
“Okay, okay, okay,” I laugh, holding my hands up defensively. “One question at a time! First of all, I’m fine. Totally fine.”
Her brow furrows suspiciously. “Is someone forcing you to say that, Lola? Blink three times and I will understand!”
“No, of course not!” I laugh. “You watch too many thrillers. Oh my God, Nance, it is so good to see you! I am totally okay, I promise!”
“Well, what the fuck happened to you, Lola?” she demands, suddenly angry. “Because if you are okay, then I am pissed! I have been worried sick about you! Do you realize that there are six separate search parties crawling all over that mountain, looking for your mangled or decapitated or half-eaten ass? Do you realize that?”
I wince, certain that is at least partially true. “Well, I did take a bit of a tumble. I mean, look…” Leaning over wildly, I raise my left leg so that she can see the bandage around my swollen ankle. That should make her at least a little bit happy.
“What did you do, sprain it? All this over a sprained ankle?”
“Well, no…” I explain uncomfortably, feeling the conversation getting away from me. “I fell. I guess I just lost control of my skis, and I fell. Maybe I hit my head or something, because when I woke up it was snowing. Really snowing.”
“Well, yeah,” she scowls. “That’s why we couldn’t find you right away. That storm came out of nowhere! Roger said he had never seen anything like it!”
“Yeah, something like that…” I agree, remembering that Jake said any idiot should have known the storm was coming. That’s what I get for letting some strange jerk get me on top of the mountain. Last time I ever do that, I promise myself silently.
“But as soon as the weather was okay, we started looking for you right away. I promise. We’ve been so worried about you! Chad too!”
I start to talk, and then bite my lip. Did she know? Curiosity boils inside me. I wouldn’t totally rule out the possibility that Nance would have tried to make me commit infidelity without even telling me, if it suited her purposes somehow. I mean, she can be kind of mercenary when the situation calls for it. That’s why she’s the boss and I’m the underling.
“So, anyway, the next thing I knew I woke up in some kind of cabin or shack or something,” I explain, embellishing here and there, leaving out anything that I think is important. “These old guys, hunters or something… They didn’t even speak English. But they wrapped up my ankle for me and then dropped me off in, um, Virginia City.”
“Virginia City? What the hell are you talking about? Is that where you are? All your stuff is in Tahoe! Your luggage!”
“Oh… right. Well, you can just take that back to Sacramento for me, can’t you?” I suggest hopefully.
She rolls her eyes. “I guess so?” she sneers. “I mean you didn’t pack a whole lot. Or I can get it to Virginia City? Is that where you are?”
“Well, I was,” I begin to babble. “But now I’m in, um, Reno. In a hotel. But I can’t tell you more than that!”
“You can’t tell me more than that?” she repeats suspiciously. “Lola, exactly what is going on?”
I lean forward, blocking out everything on the screen except my face, as though whispering in her ear. “Listen, Nance, I think I found something. I think I may have found a story. It’s too early to say, okay? I just need you to trust me on this for a little while.”
“What kind of story?” she asks slowly. Her eyes are narrowed and I can tell she’s not entirely buying this.
“Just a story… I’m not even really sure yet,” I dodge. “I mean, you know, there are all kinds of stories around here. All these rich people have something to hide. They’re always up to some kind of shenanigans or something. I mean—”
“—that reminds me!” she interrupts excitedly. “I just found this out. Do you know where we were?”
I bite my tongue, trying to cut off what I was saying and listen to her. “What do you mean? Do I know what?”
Suddenly she gets excited, bouncing up and down in the tiny screen. “The trail! Where we were skiing! Roger said that Tony said that the Carrutherses supposedly lived there!”
“Carrutherses? Who?” I reply, trying to see normal.
“Those guys! Those billionaires! The ones who faked their deaths like three years ago… you know… Whitney Carruthers, the widow? That Scott was supposedly dating?”
My lungs turn to concrete. I try to take a breath, but it just stalls in my mouth.
“What did you say?"
“Whitney Carruthers!” she repeats, laughing helplessly, waving her fingers in the air. “I mean, of course they only banged a couple of times or something. Good old Scott doesn’t have enough money to keep Whitney interested, but you have to remember her, right? I told you all about it!”
“No… No you didn’t tell me about that,” I choke.
I rack my brain. Of all the things that happened when Scott and I were breaking up, Whitney Carruthers was never even mentioned. I would have remembered that, I’m sure of it. But there really was so much going on. Scott did mention being in love with somebody… and Nance was constantly swooping in and distracting me with something or other. I thought she was doing me a favor, but maybe it was more than that?
“Okay, well, anyway,” she continues, apparently unaware that I am having a stroke right now, “like I said, they broke up. But we might’ve been skiing within feet of those guys. I mean, they supposedly faked their deaths, but everybody knows they are still alive. Now that’s a story! You should write about that!”
“Yeah, I will keep that in mind,” I mumble, looking away.
The connection goes silent for a second.
“Because if you did write about something like that,” she continues, more slowly, “that could be huge, Lola. That could be seriously huge. Like HuffPo or even New York Times huge.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it would.”
I can practically hear her mind churning. Nothing gets past Nance when she is determined to find something out. She is like a bloodhound.
<
br /> “Lola? Do you have something else you want to tell me?”
I shake my head, forcing myself to smile at her through the app. I hope my face looks normal or at least believable. I’m very glad she is not in the room with me right now. I would crack, that’s for sure.
“No, there’s nothing else to tell you!” I exclaim brightly. “I just wanted to let you know, so you weren’t worried. You could call off the searches now, because I’m fine!”
“Seriously, Lola? Are you sure you are telling me everything?”
“I gotta go!” I continue maniacally. “Give my best to Chad!”
And I slam the laptop cover closed, my hands trembling. I’m not entirely sure what just happened there, but I don’t think that is the last thing I’m going to hear from Nance. Did I make us more or less safe, is the real question here?
Chapter 14
Jake
“Oh my God, are you walking?” I ask, stopping dead in my tracks with a breakfast tray in my hands.
Lola glances up at me, surprised and delighted with her mouth frozen half open in a wide smile.
“Well, sort of,” she grins.
“Are you sure you should be doing that?” I ask as I set the tray down on the table.
My hands go out from my sides automatically as she hobbles around, almost but not quite placing all her weight on her left foot with each step.
“You can’t just carry me around forever, you know,” she winks. “Eventually I have to walk on my own two feet, Jake!”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I grumble, deeply disappointed to hear this news. “Why don’t you come over here and have some breakfast, then? Liam made you an omelet.”
“Oh, yum!” she exclaims. Limping adorably, she hobbles to the chair and falls into it without any assistance at all.
I watch her eat for a few moments, somehow taking a lot of pleasure out of seeing her cheeks move. It’s like when I had a kitten when I was young, just an orange and white striped thing that I found in the estate. I didn’t tell anybody about him, just took him up to my room and kept him in a box. He had been abandoned, and I fed him sweetened milk from a spoon until he got better. Every time he took a small tongue full of milk, I felt such a sense of pride and accomplishment. For some reason, this sort of reminds me of that.
“So listen,” I finally say, clearing my throat, “Timothy said you had a discussion with your friend Nance.”
Her eyes go wide for just a moment. She swallows carefully.
“He told you about that, did he?”
“Of course he did. We’re not going to keep secrets from each other up here.”
She nods slowly. “Of course. That makes sense,” she agrees quietly.
“So all I really need to know is, have you changed your mind?”
She startles, staring at me. “Have I changed my mind about what?”
“Have you changed your mind about staying here?”
Her lips open, pink and pale. All at once, I almost wish I hadn’t asked her. She looks distraught.
“Of course I haven’t changed my mind,” she whispers hoarsely. “How can you ask me that? I’m doing this for us… for you. For all of you. To keep us safe.”
Slowly I nod, feeling relief fill me.
“I just had to ask,” I explain. “I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. You have to know that you can leave whenever you want. You’re not a prisoner to this, not like we are.”
“You don’t have to be prisoners either,” she whispers quickly. “You know, you could use this. I really could write about you. If everyone knew you were here…”
“That’s impossible, Lola,” I tell her firmly. “You know that it is.”
“Well, what if I just wrote about it fictionally, for instance? Or what if I just wrote about it so that you guys have it. I mean, Carty had that whole story about the silver mine and the gallows in Boston. This would just be another part of your story, don’t you think?”
I search her face, noting the excitement, the keen intellectual curiosity. She says that she wants to stay, but for how long? To do what, simply be a bedmate for five ravenous mountain men? Part of me knows that if I don’t agree to this, we will lose some essential part of her. It will either wither away, which would be a shame, or it will take her away from us anyway. In any case, it would be wrong to stop her from being what she is.
“I don’t know,” I confess. “Is that really what you want to do?”
Her face brightens. She can see that I’m giving in, yet again. It seems that there is nothing this woman could ask me that I wouldn’t gladly give her, just to see her happy.
“Yes, to both.”
“Both?” I repeat.
“Yes, I want to write,” she smiles, “and yes, I want to stay!”
“What are we talking about?” comes a voice at the door. Liam and Kill sashay in, trying to look nonchalant. The fact is, they never look nonchalant anymore. They always look like ravenous dogs, ready to take a bite out of our sweet Lola.
“Lola was just telling me that she really does want to stay.”
Liam quirks an eyebrow. “For real? Are we past the trial period?"
Kill pumps his fist in the air triumphantly. “Seriously? Should I get Carty and Tim?”
“Yes, I think that is a good idea,” I announce, standing up and unbuckling my trousers.
Lola’s eyes go wide. “What’s going on here?” she asks in a small voice. She takes a napkin and wipes the corners of her mouth, looking at each of us, noting our urgent erections.
“Well, we had to be sure,” I explain. “We didn’t want to rush you into anything. We wanted you to be absolutely sure. And now that you are…”
Timothy walks in, his smile bright. “Is it time?” he asks hopefully.
“Way past time!” Liam observes, rolling his eyes.
“It takes as long as it takes,” Carty adds as he walks into the room. He gestures to Timothy to help him move the heavy padded bench to the foot of the bed.
Lola nervously pushes her hair behind her ears. “Does somebody want to explain this to me?”
“We’ve given this a lot of thought,” Carty begins, sounding like he’s giving a corporate speech. “We all want you… the rest of you. The parts of you we haven’t had yet. But we can’t decide who should have you first. The only solution is for us all to have you at once.”
“All at once? But how…”
Her eyelashes flutter, casting a shadow down to her cheeks. But she’s not running away.
Not yet, anyway.
“Well, one at a time is probably a better way of describing it,” Liam explains as he steps out of his trousers, releasing his cock into his waiting palm. Already he’s jerking himself hard, even though she is still fully dressed and seated in front of her omelet.
“One at a time,” she sighs, then smirks. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I’ve been waiting for this!”
Liam and Kill glance at each other, shrugging delightedly. Timothy offers her his hand and guides her toward the bench.
“It’s probably best if we take you from behind,” Carty explains. “We are all different sizes, and I don’t want to hurt your ankle again…”
“Oh, I totally get it,” she chirps, waving her hand in the air dismissively.
She pulls her nightgown over her head and smiles as her whole body is revealed to us, glowing in the midmorning light. Her breasts jiggle and then settle, nipples in points, her little belly heaving with every breath. With a happy shrug, she kneels on the bench, leaning over and placing her forearms on the bed with her knees spread.
Waving her hips back and forth slowly, her thighs slowly spread to reveal the bubblegum-pink slash of her perfect pussy. The dark eye of her ass winks at me as her pussy lips slide together wetly, inviting us into their velvety pleasures.
“Jake?” Carty asks, his eyebrows raised. He jerks his chin toward her round, ample ass, indicating that I should go forward.
“Age before beauty, I guess,”
Kill sneers.
Suddenly, all the blood rushes away from my head. My cock is throbbing like never before, practically on the verge of coming already. I can’t take my eyes off that sweet pink slit. I have dreamt of it so many times, yet told myself I couldn’t have her. I even had myself convinced that maybe I would never have her. She had to say yes. She had to want all of us.
And now it is finally happening.
Nature takes over, guiding me toward her as though in a tractor beam. I don’t even feel my feet moving, I only know that the head of my cock is closer to that magenta hole.
Reaching back, she uses her fingers to spread her thighs even wider. I can see a sticky, glistening trail of liquid looping around the hole, flowing over the tiny pearl of her clit. Just to enjoy the suffering a bit longer, I dip the head of my cock in that trail, swirling my slit over that tiny stream, daring myself to come before I even get inside her.
"Ohhhhh, yeah, Jake,” she moans as her eyes close in bliss. “That feels so good!”
My cock throbs in my hand as I drag it back and forth, dousing myself in her juices. Finally when I can’t stand it anymore, I press at her opening, watching the skin pucker as it shapes itself around my dick head, dragged in with the friction.
She wiggles and works against me, opening up to suck me in like a mouth. Even if I wanted to stop now, I couldn’t. I have to get into that hole, have to plunge into her. I have to feel this hot, wet, perfect slit splitting open to take my throbbing tool.
It’s over too fast, after a few thrusts my balls clench and explode, dropping their load deep into the middle of her perfect creamy haunches. Fireworks explode in front of my eyes as I empty myself, finally, over the sounds of her jubilant encouragement.
“Yes! Yes! That is so good!”
I barely have time to catch my breath before I remember that my brothers are waiting patiently for me to disengage and let them have a turn. Her pussy makes a slurping noise as I pull out, catching the overflow in my palm.
She smiles at me over her shoulder, her expression transported and happy as Carty takes his position behind her. His cock is thicker, shorter. He splits her all over again and as I gradually regain control of my senses, I note how welcoming she is. She rides against him, bucking and slapping and encouraging him until he drops his load into her.
