by Logan Jacobs
“We haven’t slept outside like this since we were children,” Katrina said. There was some sadness and some wistfulness in her voice as she stared into the flames and clutched a woolen blanket around herself. The dancing orange-red light reflected in the twins’ eyes like fire upon the surface of water and played such tricks with the color that I couldn’t have possibly told them apart at the moment, if I hadn’t already known which color dress each one was wearing. Their silvery-blonde hair was also aglow, which gave them an ethereal look against the darkness that surrounded us.
“With your father’s gang, you mean?” I asked.
“Yes,” Katrina said.
“Did you ever like sleeping outside?” I asked. “The adventure of it, I mean. Being under the stars, bound for lands unknown.”
“I don’t think I ever thought of it as an adventure,” Katrina replied. “It was just hardship and insecurity and all we’d ever known.”
“It would’ve been more special to have had a house,” Janina agreed. “That’s what we always thought. We daydreamed about owning a house of our own and decorating it however we pleased. Planting a garden and being there to watch the flowers and vegetables grow. Living in the same town for years and becoming friends with our neighbors. Going to all the same shops every week.”
“We also daydreamed about being princesses and marrying princes,” Katrina giggled. “And living in palaces full of servants, and ordering around the members of our father’s gang who were cruel to us, or humiliating and torturing them.”
“And having seven children and ten cats each,” Janina added.
“And a new dress for every day of the year.”
“And more jewels than a queen.”
I didn’t respond to their repeated references to royalty. I had gotten away with my strategy of deceit through perfect honesty before, and they hadn’t thought anything of it except that I was a great wit, but if I mentioned my pedigree again in order to try to reassure them that royal life wasn’t as wonderful as they seemed to imagine, then they might start taking my story more seriously than I wanted them to.
Instead I just remarked, “Well, it seems the two of you are well on your way to achieving a good many of your goals.”
“We’ve really only just started, in the last two years, since Marianne passed away,” Janina said.
“What, she wouldn’t have approved of your pickpocketing, or your gambling, or your cheating at cards, or the many other methods of larceny that I am sure you practice?” I asked dryly.
“There were a lot of things she didn’t approve of,” Katrina said. “She always tried to teach us to be less vain, but that didn’t really work very well. And she didn’t believe that ladies should drink, but I think we have certainly as much reason to drink as men do.”
“Speaking of which-- we did pack the sherry, didn’t we, Kat?” Janina asked.
“Oh, I’d forgotten all about it,” Katrina replied. She walked over to the heap of luggage that they had unloaded from the mares, all four of which were now hobbled and grazing nearby. Theo stood close behind me, within the warmth exuded by the fire, and appeared to be dozing off slightly. “Was it the pink or the blue box?”
“Pink,” Janina said.
While knocking down a few other cases, Katrina managed to extract one particular round pink hat box. She opened it up, pawed through some lacy garments that might have been stockings or something of the sort, and triumphantly pulled out a green glass bottle of sherry. Holding it high above her head, she walked back over and rejoined our circle around the campfire.
“But we don’t have any glasses, Janie,” she pointed out with concern.
“Never mind that-- did Father’s friends ever use glasses?” Janina laughed.
“But we aren’t like them!” Katrina exclaimed in horror. “We are ladies. Aren’t we?”
“Sometimes,” Janina replied indifferently. She glanced at me with mischief in her stormy ocean-colored eyes. “You won’t mind if we don’t have any glasses to use, will you, Mr. Hale?”
“My only disappointment is that all you brought is sherry,” I replied. “That’s a drink for grandmothers.”
“Well, we don’t drink like grandmothers!” Katrina declared indignantly.
“Then show me.” I shrugged.
“You think you’re awfully cunning, don’t you?” Katrina said as she planted a hand on her hip. “You aren’t planning on getting us drunk so you can take advan—”
“Look here, I’m not the one who brought the sherry out in the first place, am I?” I replied. “You’re the ones who wanted to drink it, and if that’s the case, I’m happy to partake. I just hope you don’t sip like grandmothers.”
Katrina scowled at me, set the neck of the bottle between her lips, tipped her head back, and chugged several long swallows. Then she stopped with a little gasp and handed the bottle off to her sister, who followed suit.
Janina handed the bottle to me, and I drank, too. I nearly spit out the first mouthful when I tasted it because it was so sickeningly sweet, but I forced myself to down a respectable amount, after which the bottle was half empty by the time I handed it back around the circle to Katrina.
“I don’t understand why you humans like to drink substances that turn you into fools,” Theo remarked, a tall black disapproving shadow looming over my shoulder.
“Because it amuses us,” Janina said.
“It distracts us,” Katrina added.
“It’s freeing,” I added. “It puts us in a slightly more primitive state.”
“A more primitive state? That doesn’t sound like a good thing in the least,” Theo said disdainfully. “You couldn’t force me at swordpoint to drink something that would reduce me to the level of those mares.”
“Slightly, Theo, slightly,” I chuckled. “After downing a whiskey, have I ever run off and left you to go swinging through the trees and subsisting on bananas?”
“No, but you do get a bit more aggressive with people you haven’t been paid to fight, and a bit more eager to hump mares,” Theo sniffed.
“Did he just say…” Katrina inquired.
“He means women,” I explained hastily. “He just calls them that.”
“I figured that,” Katrina giggled as she took several small sips from the bottle before passing it on to Janina. “But that’s the consequence of your getting drunk? So you mean Janie and I are taking a substantial risk at the moment?”
“I’ve never done it forcibly, and I never will,” I said. “So you’re not taking any risk at all, if it’s me you distrust. If it’s yourselves, on the other hand… ”
“You have a lot of nerve, insinuating such a thing,” Katrina said. Then she hiccupped.
“We don’t have to drink anymore if you don’t want to,” I said. “We could all just go to sleep right now. Then we can get up early and reach Sunderly as soon as possible in the morning.”
“Can you get the other bottle, Janie?” Katrina asked her twin as she ignored my suggestion altogether.
Janina handed off the first bottle of sherry to me, which was nearly empty, and then she got up to go fetch another.
I expanded the bottle to as large as I could comfortably hold in both hands, which caused the dregs of sherry inside to swell proportionately, and then I drained it.
“I’ve never met anyone with that power before,” Katrina said drowsily as she stared at me as if mesmerized.
“I’ve never met anyone with your power before, either,” I replied. “Not that I understand it fully--”
Katrina reached out and grabbed my hand. I looked at her in surprise. Then I heard her voice in my head.
Do you understand it now?
I instinctively yanked my hand out of her grasp. My heart was racing. I liked Katrina, but the sensation of having my mind invaded like that was unnerving. Did it work both ways, I wondered? Could she hear anything that I thought while she was touching me?
“You should see your face right now,” Katrina gig
gled.
“You did it to him, didn’t you?” Janina demanded as she returned with the second bottle of sherry that had been hoarded away somewhere in their mountain of luggage.
“Did what?” Katrina asked innocently.
“Talked into his mind.”
“That’s what you call it?” I asked.
“What else would I call it?” Janina asked.
“Well, I guess that makes it sound… pretty straightforward,” I said.
“Pretty normal, you mean?” Janina asked. “It is normal. For us, anyway.”
“And that’s all there is to it,” Katrina added, as she seemed to read the discomfort in my expression. “I can only send messages that way… I can’t read your thoughts. I’m not in your mind, not really. It’s like your mind is a mailbox that doesn’t belong to me, and I can only drop letters into it. But I can’t open it up and reach inside for myself. That would be a whole other power that I don’t have.” Then she hiccupped and yawned.
Janina took a swig and passed me the second bottle of sherry. It really was horribly sweet stuff, and I didn’t care for it at all, but I didn’t want to ruin the twins’ enjoyment of the evening by refusing to participate.
“We were always able to talk that way when we were children without Father being able to hear us, and then later on, without Marianne being able to hear us,” Janina said. “Well, Katrina could talk to me, anyway. I couldn’t respond in the same way. But most of the time, she knew me well enough to know what my response would be, anyway. Have you ever had that kind of a bond with someone?”
“Yup,” I said as I glanced upward at Theo’s large black muzzle overhead.
“Oh, of course,” Janina said. “How’d you ever find a talking horse, anyway? They’re so rare. I thought only presidents or kings could afford them.”
“Theo was a gift,” I said.
“I am a gift, a blessing, your pride and joy, and a constant delight from sunup till sundown,” Theo agreed. With that, he wandered off to the spot of grass that I guess he thought looked the softest, and folded his legs to lie down for the night. He didn’t always lie down at all when he slept, and he usually didn’t sleep the whole night through, only a few hours here and there, but I guess he must’ve been pretty tuckered out.
“That’s another dream to add to our list,” Katrina said drowsily to her twin. “A talking horse. Or a talking animal of any kind, really. I should love to have one.”
“That’s what you think now,” I said. “Talking animals are the most judgmental kind, you know.”
“How do you know that?” Janina asked. “Maybe the mute ones are thinking all kinds of rude thoughts about us all the time, only they can’t say so.”
“They don’t understand enough to have such particular opinions about human misbehavior of all kinds as Theo does,” I said.
“What do you consider misbehavior, exactly?” Janina inquired.
“Er… stealing. Enslaving. Raping. Maiming. Torture.”
Janina looked dissatisfied by that response. But before she could say anything about it, we both heard the faintest wisp of a snore, and looked over to see Katrina passed out, her silvery blonde hair in disarray, her body curled up in a sort of vulnerable, childish way.
I reached over and carefully adjusted the blanket to cover her more fully without waking her.
“Now, there’s something I just don’t understand,” I said quietly to Janina.
“And what’s that?” she asked.
“You and Katrina are twins, aren’t you?” I asked. “As close to biologically identical as two people can be.”
“Sure are,” she said brightly.
“Then, shouldn’t you have the same level of alcohol tolerance?” I inquired.
“I suppose that would be logical,” Janina agreed.
“Then how come a few sips had Katrina flushed and hiccupping, and the third part of a bottle sent her to sleep, whereas you seem almost entirely sensible still?” I demanded. “Well-- what I mean by sensible is, as sensible as you ever are usually.”
“Hmmm… ” Janina giggled. “Well, I guess I’d have to speculate that’s because I, unlike dear Kat, have not consumed nearly so much as a third part of a bottle. I guess I’d have to speculate that’s because I have intentionally been keeping my lips pressed tight and allowing only the barest of sips to pass, so that it looks like I’m drinking plentifully whereas I am in fact keeping my wits about me.”
“And why would you do a thing like that?” I asked. “You don’t like sherry? Or drunkenness?”
“I am quite fond of both,” Janina replied. “But I am even fonder of winning bets. And my dear sleeping sister and I happen to have placed a rather large one against each other, three days ago.”
“What bet?” I asked suspiciously.
“A bet on which of us could bed you first,” she answered sweetly.
It was hard to surprise me, but I had to admit that that one threw me for a minute. Janina’s eyes glimmered wickedly in the firelight as she met my gaze steadily.
“I see,” I said. “Well, I understand how Katrina can’t exactly interfere with your progress on that count at the moment, but that particular bet, ah, requires a bit of cooperation on my part, you know, so you haven’t won yet. Making that claim is a lot of damned arrogance.”
“I see. Are you going to deny me then?” she asked solemnly. Her greenish-blue eyes widened with concern. Her pillowy lips parted slightly. She leaned toward me, which exposed her already precarious cleavage further and sent a whiff of her soft, delicious scent toward me-- lilies, maybe, and peaches.
“Hell no,” I replied.
I stood up, leaned over, and scooped her up in my arms for the first time. She didn’t weigh much, and half of that was probably the dress. She flung her arms around my neck and giggled in response, at a pitch that suggested the minimal quantity of sherry had at least had some effect on her. Or maybe it was just the nervous excitement.
“Keep an eye on Katrina,” I instructed Theo. He snorted in response, which I took as assent. I knew I’d catch an earful from him for this incident later. But right then I just didn’t give a damn.
Once I judged that we were a safe enough distance away that Katrina wouldn’t hear us and get woken up, I gently deposited Janina in the grass. She looked up at me trustingly, and I proceeded to start ripping her clothes off as fast as I could. Western women’s clothes were, in my opinion, quite unnecessarily elaborate, the more so the wealthier the woman in question was, but luckily I’d had enough practice to know where the weakest seams usually lay.
“My dress!” Janina gasped as she heard the first tear of fabric.
“You have twenty others with you,” I growled. She didn’t protest any further about it, so I guess she accepted that reasoning.
As I got down to her undergarments, her corset and bloomers and stockings, Janina started grabbing for my clothes too with rather clumsy and violent hands, with the evident intention of returning the favor. I pushed her hands away.
“I only have one set of clothes,” I reminded her.
“I don’t see why,” she huffed. “You could afford a fine wardrobe, with the money from us alone.”
“I don’t see why,” I replied.
I flipped her over facedown and started to unlace the corset. Corsets were serious pieces of workmanship. You couldn’t rip those with your bare hands. But then I encountered a knot that I couldn’t pick apart. So I enlarged the corset until I could simply pull it off over Janina’s head.
She yelped with surprise and managed to raise her arms above her head, and I threw the corset aside.
Her pale breasts were as full and round and pert as a man could dream of, even without the corset squashing them flat to her ribcage. And her waist was still impossibly slender, creating a natural hourglass shape only slightly less severe than the corseted version. I reached out and pulled down the bloomers and stockings from her hips past her feet, which exposed her sex and her long, slim leg
s.
I stood up to strip my own clothes off, and Janina started to cross her legs and move her arm up across her chest to cover herself shyly.
“No,” I said. “Spread-eagled. I want to look at every bit of you.”
Janina’s eyes widened, and she hesitated for a moment, but then she complied. Her curves were perfectly outlined against the grass, ripe for the taking, her cleft visible. I could see her body trembling slightly with anticipation.
Once I had my clothes off, which only took a few seconds, Janina’s eyes roved up and down my body and fixed hungrily on my throbbing erection.
I would have liked to tease her further for a while, since she deserved it for making me the subject of a bet like the one she had, but in that moment my physical need for her was so overpowering that all I wanted was to get inside of her immediately, and I couldn’t bring myself to delay the moment.
I laid down on top of her and kissed her. At the same moment as our lips and tongues touched for the first time, my shaft pushed up between her thighs and prodded her entrance. She gasped into my mouth and arched against me, so I reached down and parted her entrance with my fingers to allow the tip of my cock to slip inside her wetness. But she was so tight that it wouldn’t penetrate farther.
“It won’t fit,” she whispered between kisses.
“It will,” I assured her. I reached down to bend each of her legs, with her knees up and her feet planted on the ground. Then I used my hand to hold my tip in place against her cleft, bent my hips back, and rammed them forward. That wedged me in by a few inches. I grabbed Janina’s ass in both my hands and pulled her toward me as I thrusted to force myself in the rest of the way, as she whimpered with both pain and ecstasy. Then she locked her heels behind my back, and I started driving into her rhythmically. After a few minutes of that, she let out a cry, and I could feel her walls clench my shaft as she climaxed.
