Jenny sat patiently on the floor, hidden just behind the yoga mat Beth had rolled up after rinsing it off. Jenny faced the mirror, her head slightly tilted.
“What the fuck?” Beth rescued Jenny. How had the doll gotten down there? Staring at the spot on the shelves, her mind turned over the idea that Jenny had fallen under the bed, rolled forward, then had been pushed upright when Beth had stowed away the yoga mat. While not impossible, it was highly implausible.
But it sure beat the hell out of the idea that the doll had moved itself.
Beth put Jenny back on the shelf, casting a wary eye at the shelves while she stacked the pillows on the bed. She tapped her way through several chapters before letting out a huge yawn. Sliding beneath her sheets, she let out a sigh. Beth rubbed her lower belly gently with one hand until she dozed off.
“YOU CAN HAVE AN ATTORNEY read these over first. I prefer that you would, actually. There isn’t any hurry-now that we have an heir, the clock sort of resets for a bit.” She set the pen on the table for Mike to use. “However, I am just on delivery duty today. I need to get into the office to begin processing some additional documents. Today is Tuesday. I would be happy to drop by on Friday to pick these up, if you have them done. Otherwise, I can just drop by to make certain you are getting settled. That is part of the provisions as well.”
“Um, yeah. Sure. Thank you.”
Beth walked toward the front of the house, Mike following behind. She had dropped by with additional paperwork, and was stunned at just how different Mike seemed. He was still very awkward to be around, and he was pretty much rushing her out of the house today. Something had happened in the last eighteen hours, she was sure of it. Not only was Mike all gung-ho to keep the place, but there was a strange aura about him, almost like he now had super powers or something. She did find him cute, but not cute enough to account for the fact that his scent alone was making her horny again. Last night had been about defraying that particular issue, but today she had caught herself staring at the bulge in his jeans multiple times during their conversation, when she knew he wasn’t looking. This behavior was totally unlike her.
After pulling away from the house in her car, she kept checking the rear-view mirror to see if Mike was watching her leave. She drove to the other side of town and pulled in to the parking garage under her office building. She walked into the office, greeting Ed the receptionist at his desk. She spent the rest of the day in her private office filing papers, getting everything in the estate ready for transfer. However, her mind kept drifting back to Mike, wondering just what had changed.
It wouldn’t be the first time something weird had happened in the house. Over the last couple of years, she had had to hire many different maids to keep the place clean, several of them getting spooked by random noises and movement in the house. When she was little, she had heard that the place was haunted, but she had walked those rooms herself many times and never heard a sound or experienced the feeling of being watched. What happened inside the walls of the old house that could change a man overnight, make him seem taller, stronger, more chiseled?
Beth was embarrassed to realize that her left hand was pushing against the top of her crotch, just under her desk. Taking a deep breath, she jerked her hand away and tried to get on with her work. She sent an email to the Society rejecting their offer, then dug through a couple of extra papers she had received regarding the estate. She frowned on discovering that one of the letters she had received was a Past Due notice addressed to Emily from New castle Storage.
“Weird.” She couldn’t remember dealing with New castle before and guessed the original bill had gotten lost. She opened it up with the Excalibur letter opener on her desk.
“Fuck!” The original bill had apparently come quite some time ago, but she had never seen it. Apparently Emily had rented a storage property outside of town, paying for several years in advance. Six months ago, the rent had come due, and they were threatening to sell the contents. She checked the address on the letter and was stunned to see that it was dated three weeks ago.
Beth punched in their phone number, only to get a message from the answering machine. Business hours had ended over thirty minutes ago. After hanging up the phone, she made a note to herself and then emailed her boss. She wasn’t sure who had fucked this one up, but she wasn’t going to go down for it if it turned out that the storage unit had been full of valuable items. Why was this letter just reaching her now? Frustrated, she scoured the storage unit’s website, but they didn’t have an email address either.
Distracted, she looked at the clock. She still had almost an hour of work left, but she just couldn’t deal anymore. Between thinking of Mike and this new fuck-up at work, she felt like going home and drinking some wine in the bath. Her mind touched briefly on an image of the Dragon, but she shoved it out of her head. She knew better than to fuck that monster more than once a week.
She put the paperwork in her desk drawer and locked up, then tried her best to look nonchalant as she walked out of the office. For all anybody knew, she was headed out to deal with a client. Not that she had many currently-she had been the object of jealousy in the office when she had taken on Emily’s estate. Due to the sheer enormity of money involved, her boss had wanted it to be made a priority. Beth had always been a top performer, and other than the news of this random storage unit, she had kept everything well taken care of.
Across the parking garage to her car, she maintained her composure, but once the door was closed and the engine started, she let out a scream of frustration. She threw the car into reverse and accidentally screeched her tires pulling out of the lot. She rolled down the windows, the air in the car suddenly stifling.
“Fuck!” she screamed once she pulled onto the highway, the wind blowing through her hair. If she hadn’t been busy all day, she would have seen the letter sooner, called the owners and figured out how to get them their money. She said a little prayer that everything was still in the storage unit, that there would be no need to track everything down, no need to report that she had messed up. It was a quick trip from her office to her apartment, and she slammed her palms against the steering wheel in frustration when traffic slowed. Eventually, Beth turned into the parking garage of The Highrise. Once parked, she took several breaths to calm herself before leaving her car.
Beth rode the elevator to the top floor in silence, then stormed into her apartment, tossing her bag on the floor and her keys on the counter. She stripped her clothes off and walked through the apartment naked before turning on the faucet of the tub. As it filled up with hot water, she threw in a bath bomb and went to pour herself a glass of wine. Stepping into the bedroom, she stopped when she saw the blank space on the shelf above her bed.
A chill ran up her spine. She walked to her bed and pulled back the covers to reveal that Jenny was somehow buried halfway down in bed.
“I’m not dealing with this today,” she muttered, grabbing the doll and sticking it back on the shelf. Jenny must have fallen while Beth was making her bed that morning. She twisted the doll sideways, figuring that if she was tipping forward, she would just tip over on the shelf instead of falling off.
She plugged her phone into the speaker and started a playlist with soft, relaxing music. Grabbing the bottle of wine from the fridge, she took it and the glass with her to the bath. The tub was full now, a pretty pink color due to the bath bomb. She rolled up a towel and placed it by the faucet before climbing in. Pouring herself a glass of wine, she let out a sigh as the warmth of the water seeped into her skin.
“Fuck,” she muttered, then took a sip of the wine. The merlot warmed her from the inside, and she slid farther into the water, using the towel for her pillow. That familiar light-headedness took over, creeping across her hips and into her groin, her labia swelling more than normal as a result of the bath. Still upset with herself, she crossed her legs involuntarily, the swollen flesh pressing together. She shifted in the tub, her legs squeezing the skin of her pussy a
nd sending even more blood to the region.
The wine was taking over. The unknown storage unit faded from the front of her mind, but Mike stayed. Sipping some more wine, she pictured Mike below her, running his hands up her legs, then squeezing her just above the knees, forcing her legs to rub together even harder.
Beth let her hand run across her belly before finding the soft folds between her legs. There was no preamble, no desire for prolonged pleasure. She wanted to get off, to feel her body tense up and then release, let her emotions flow away from her like water. She used two fingers to tug at the skin just above her clit. The sensation of her labia being pulled tight sent sparks to her spinal cord. Letting out tiny grunts, she closed her eyes and circled her fingers at an increasing pace, her cheeks and chest flushed with heat. She carefully set down the wine on the edge of the tub and used her now-free hand to squeeze her breasts, imagining Mike’s hand in place of hers.
What about him had changed? He was somehow affixed to her consciousness, an entity she couldn’t rid her mind of. In her fantasy, he knelt between her legs, his tongue tickling her inner folds, teasing out another gasp.
Her fingers pressed harder, occasionally pinching the skin and letting her clit pop in and out of its hood.
Fantasy Mike traced her vaginal opening with his fingers, always pushing inward just enough that she could feel it, but never penetrating her.
“Ah...ah...ah...” Beth pushed her breast up, opening her eyes and extending her tongue to lick at her nipple.
In her mind it was Mike teasing her areola with his tongue. He was shirtless now, his tight jeans highlighting the beast trapped within.
Beth pressed her breast higher, upset that she couldn’t use her own teeth on her nipple. Her pace increased, her frantic rubbing sending more sparks to her spine, a fire starting to ignite in between her hips.
Mike stood, unbuttoning his jeans. It required both hands, but he pulled his cock free, an exact replica of the Delightful Dragon. “I want to fuck you until you beg me to stop,” he told her.
She slid three fingers into herself as her orgasm hit, trying to spread them wide despite her pussy’s protest. Her ass tensed, raising her hips even farther, and she hooked her fingers, their tips pressing into her g-spot. Gritting her teeth, she let out a loud hiss, splashing tub water over the sides with her legs. She pulled her fingers free, then rubbed her clit again to prolong her orgasm, twitching with the waves of pleasure that permeated her body.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered, lying back against the towel. Her whole body tingled, and the wine was making her float across time and space. It wasn’t long before she drifted away on clouds of sleep, her music playing softly in the background.
IT WAS DARK WHEN SHE awoke. The bathroom was dark, the only light being the reflected blue glow of the alarm clock by her bed. She could make out the edges of the doorway, the rest of the apartment dark beyond it. She rubbed her eyes, realizing that she had fallen asleep. What time was it, she wondered, moving her legs back and forth. The water had gone cold, and she was tempted to run more water to warm herself up before she departed.
Footsteps, clear as a bell, echoed through her apartment. She froze, afraid to look at the door, her heart suddenly loud in her chest. Surely she was dreaming, or hearing something else?
The steps approached the door to the bathroom and stopped just outside. There was no mistaking the sound-the board just outside the bathroom creaked slightly. Suddenly, the cold water of the tub no longer mattered, Beth’s entire world caving in as her mind turned over what was going to happen next. If someone was really just outside her bathroom, how could she get out of the tub without them knowing?
Oh God. Had her intruder been watching her, waiting for her to wake? What then was the plan for when Beth finally emerged? Was she going to die? Was she going to be raped?
Her gaze flitted around the room, her heart a frightened bird, ready to escape its cage. She needed a weapon. She was too vulnerable here, an easy target. She spotted the handle of her loofah, just over a foot long with the scrub-brush on the end. It was better than nothing.
If she could get to the kitchen, she could grab one of the knives. She slid out of the water carefully, moving slowly to avoid splashing. She picked up the loofah, her eyes on the doorway in case her intruder rushed in. After drying her feet on the bathmat, she stepped across the bathroom, looking in the mirror to see if she could spot movement in her bedroom.
The pitter patter of tiny feet sent a chill up her back. She let out a laugh and held her head in her hands. The soft footsteps ran across her apartment, and she tried to picture the animal that had gotten trapped in her home. She had never had a rat problem, but she imagined it would sound just like this. She wrapped a towel around herself and stepped into the darkness.
Moving cautiously through her apartment toward the kitchen counter, she found her phone still plugged in to the speaker. She pulled the cord free and activated the light, immediately dropping the loofah.
Her apartment had been ransacked. The blankets from her bed were all over the floor, her clothes had been tossed out of the closet. Every cabinet and drawer was open, and somebody had pulled all of the food from her pantry, stacking it all the way to the ceiling.
The entire world tilted beneath her feet, and tremors started in her hands. She picked up the loofah, holding it before her like a talisman.
She wasn’t alone. Spinning, she held the loofah high, searching for the intruder. The only place he could be hiding was under the bed or in the closet-there wasn’t room anywhere else. She backed into the kitchen, dropped the loofah, then pulled a butcher knife from her block.
Scanning the room, she moved to the front door of her apartment. She needed to get out, now. Her hand fumbling at the locks, she finally pushed the door open, stepping backward into the dark hallway and closing the door. She waited, knife pointed at the door, expecting her attacker to chase after her.
When nothing happened, she turned around to run for the elevator and froze in place.
She was still in her apartment, facing her darkened bedroom. Stunned, she looked at the door, confirming that she was, in fact, still inside.
Heart pounding, she made a dash for the door, opening it and running through and to the other side.
She nearly slipped on the cold tile of her kitchen as she ended up in her apartment again.
“What the fuck?!?” The words left her mouth in a fog, the air suddenly much colder than it had been. This was a dream, it had to be. There was no way this could be happening.
As if the room read her thoughts, all of the books on her shelves threw themselves onto the floor, one at a time. Eyes wide, she fell against the front door, watching as the books formed a pile around her bed. A small shadow crossed the floor and vanished beneath the bed.
“Hello?” She felt ridiculous, but if she was dreaming, she had to confront it. It would either scare the shit out of her, or she would wake up in the tub. Crawling toward the bed, she held the knife ready.
The tiny shadow launched from beneath the bed and shot between Beth’s legs. Yelping in terror, she fell backwards and crashed into the chairs at the counter, dropping the knife. Scrambling to her feet, she stared in horror as the cabinets all opened and slammed shut, spilling their contents everywhere.
She couldn’t leave through the front door, that much she knew. Running for the safety of the bathroom, she slammed the door shut behind her once inside, gasping for breath.
The temperature had dropped here too, her breath scattering in fog. She was freezing, with nowhere else to go. She messed with her phone, trying to call the cops, but there was no signal. She turned the faucet on, hoping the hot water would warm the air. As she sat on her toilet, the knife pointed at the door, she heard a squeaking sound over her shoulder.
The mirror had fogged over, and the letters appeared as if being written by an unseen hand.
TAKE ME HOME
Beth screamed, jumped up and yanked open the door.
Standing just outside it was Jenny, hands on her hips. Backpedaling, Beth slipped on the moist floor of her bathroom, and her head smacked into the edge of the tub as she went over. Everything from her shoulders up cried out in agony as she tried to rise, and the last thing she saw was Jenny’s tiny figure standing on her stomach.
MIKE RAN DOWN THE STAIRS, pulling his shirt over his head.
“Tink!” he hollered. The goblin poked her head out of the kitchen, a screwdriver in her hand. She wore a cute yellow shirt that she had modified into a tiny dress that came down to mid-thigh.
“No yell. Tink listen.” She stepped into the hallway.
“You didn’t order pizza again, did you?” The bell rang again, somehow sounding impatient.
“No magic screen without permission,” she said, rolling her eyes dramatically.
“Then who could it be?” Mike looked out the living room window. “Oh. It’s Beth.” He moved to open the front door, pausing when he realized that Tink was still watching him. “Scram.”
Tink wandered back into the kitchen. Shaking his head, Mike opened the door.
Beth stood on the front porch, wearing a white shirt with a dark, black skirt. She cocked her head and smiled, her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. “Hi, Mike.”
When Mike stepped back to allow her entry, he was struck by a sudden cold sensation in his gut. He peered out into the yard, but didn’t see either of the Society bitches lurking around. What was this strange sensation? “Hey, Beth, what brings you by?”
“I’m just checking on the place. Taking a peek. Just a looky-loo.” Beth walked past him and into the living room. She moved to the mantle, pulling something out of her purse. “I did some soul searching since last we spoke. I believe that a mistake was made.”
Mike gulped when he saw the creepy doll in Beth’s hand. She pushed it onto the mantle and positioned its legs so that it sat up correctly.
“Um, well, okay.” What the fuck could he even say? “Is everything all right?”
Radley's Home for Horny Monsters Page 15
