The Grass Is Greener

STORY EXCERPT

“Ah, the skeleton?” Perry shouted.

His loud donkey’s voice startled Sasha, who jumped. Rowan put his arms protectively around her, and they both looked out the window at the road’s shoulder. “It’s probably not even our target,” grumped Rowan. “El Zeub doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to wear an entire mountain lion on his head.”

“A fake cartoon mountain lion, maybe,” Perry reminded him. Perry had the theory that perhaps El Zeub was taking a couple vacation days off from his terrorism schedule to actually attend the Great Utah FurFest—that he wasn’t following Sasha at all.

Rowan said, “El Zeub isn’t a survivalist that I can tell. He stayed in a five-star hotel in Detroit.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to look like another whacky hunter,” suggested Perry, “by wearing that mountain lion on his head.”

Rowan said, “Or maybe it is another hunter. Don’t they use little caverns to stash their hunting gear?”

Sasha asked, “How far are we from Navajo land? Could the citizen have seen a Native American performing some ritual?”

Perry admitted, “We’ll be onto res land if we keep going, that’s for sure. And they don’t like me poking around in their affairs. El Zeub could know that. Fugitives have been known to hide on res land. But the citizen also would’ve told dispatch that he saw the bomber on res land. Around here everyone knows the boundaries. And sure, Navajo have ‘skin-walkers,’ witches who travel in animal form. They can wear the pelts of their animals—I’ve seen dudes with coyotes or crows on their heads running around, trying to scare people with their evil powers. So yeah, to answer your question. It could have been something like that.”

“Must get confusing out here,” said Rowan, “between hunters, skin-walkers, and Furries.”

“Well, the Furries are no problem,” said Sasha sincerely. “You can tell by their bright colors that they aren’t organic.”

Rowan thought Sasha’s literalness was adorable. She must have to be so completely sophisticated and scrupulous about everything she said for her job. One could not run around being misunderstood when dictating an autopsy report. Being spontaneous as she had been the past couple of days must have been exhilarating for her. “All right,” Rowan allowed. “But telling the hunters from the skin-walkers could be difficult, at a distance.”

“Oh, no problem, really,” said Perry. “The skin-walkers have glowing eyes.”

After another hour, they still hadn’t found the skeleton, and Perry pulled off onto a side road to show them some incredible vista. They had to walk up a steep red-orange sandy hill, and Perry would not leave Sasha’s side. He stuck to her almost as tenaciously as the bomb-sniffing Labrador that followed them. Rowan was irritated because he had something to give Sasha.

“Perry, how did you learn all that fire stuff?” he asked casually. He had taken one of Sasha’s arms and Perry took the other. Now they practically dragged her as though she were an invalid.

“Actually,” Perry said sheepishly, “I was always kind of a firebug. I love the rush, the excitement of watching the flames flicker. My father was always busting me playing with matches. I never set anything horribly on fire. I never let it get out of control because that was part of the fun—controlling the fire. I knew so much about how to put out fires I became a fireman when I was sixteen.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sasha. “You’re a conservation officer yet also a pyromaniac? Interesting.”

Rowan chuckled as Perry hastened to assure his girlfriend. “Oh, I wouldn’t call myself a pyromaniac, per se. How could I be? I’m charged with stopping fires, not starting them. I just think there’s a beauty in the luminosity, the sparks, the flames. It’s more a scientific interest.”

Rowan laughed fully now. He was glad that Sasha was studying Perry under the microscope currently, and not him. “Scientific, I see. And that’s how you learned how to make trails of fire up a woman’s chest?”

“In a way, yes. I never knew it was a thing until years later, but I was a teen when I started playing with fire and women’s bodies. I had a girlfriend once who could swallow a fire stick up her pussy.”

Sasha shook off both men’s guiding hands. “Oh, come now! The hair on her vulva would burn before you could get the fire inside her vaginal canal.”

“Well,” Perry said, “she did shave her vulva.”

Rowan reached for Sasha’s forearm again before Perry could get carried away rhapsodizing about the joys of conflagration. “I want to show you something.”

Sasha allowed herself to be led behind a rocky outcropping while Perry stood like an adventurer at the top of the dune. The sun was low in the sky, bathing him in heroic, amber tones. The dog even sat, posing in profile. Rowan realized he admired Perry for his outdoorsy, healthy lifestyle. The only time Rowan spent outdoors was when he had to stake out a target, and that rarely ever took place out in nature. More like sitting in a car by the side of the road inhaling exhaust fumes. “See?” Perry shouted. “There’s that monolith, standing by itself in the middle of the valley. It looks like god is giving everyone the finger.”

The monolith and its brothers did resemble a miniature Monument Valley, the spires rising straight from the flat desert as though they had erupted through the earth’s crust. Rowan tugged Sasha behind a boulder so she could marvel at the rock formation.

“Here.”

Sasha took the tiny fossil. Rowan had purchased it from a Navajo guy selling stuff by the side of the road days earlier, before he had found Sasha again at the swimming hole—before he had impulsively sucked Perry’s dick against the hood of his company SUV. It seemed like years ago in terms of how much had changed emotionally. Now, love welled in his chest as he watched Sasha examine the little cephalopod with a critical eye. “A pyritized ammonite.”

“Exactly. I thought you’d like it because you’re…”

Sasha looked up at him. “Scientific?”

“Yes,” said Rowan, unsure of himself now. He had probably given her the fossil equivalent of a Justin Bieber album.

ADULT EXCERPT

Rowan’s fingers stilled, so close to her blooming pussy he could feel the heat emanating. He actually had not thought to trace Danza’s travels. That should be easy enough to do by looking at the celebrity website, TMZ. He doubted, though, that Danza had any pressing business in Cheyenne, Detroit, and then Salt Lake, unless he was on some kind of shoddy, pathetic comedy tour. Was Danza even a comedian? “Maybe he’s stalking me.” He said that to take Sasha’s mind off his nuzzling near her pussy. Her wrists were bound but not cinched to anything, so she leaned back on her forearms, making no motion to stop Rowan from nibbling at the luscious flesh where her thighs touched each other. His fingers tangled in her ash blonde curls, and he took her labia between thumb and forefinger, the better to rub them together.

“Oh!” Sasha grunted. There was a definite tremor in her voice now. “Is this how you treat all of your clients?”

“None of them,” Rowan murmured, and took a few laps at the protruding clitoris.

“Ah!” Sasha was definitely aroused now. “Rowan!”

He withdrew only because it was what he wanted to do anyway—to smile up at her and continue drawing the stockings up to her waist. “Sorry, miss. Got carried away. Your sweet pussy smells like violets.”

“You’re making my ovaries throb, you bastard. I could easily knee you in the chin, make you bite your tongue off. I saw that happen once. I mean, I didn’t see it happen, but I saw the end result.”

Rowan shuddered, and not with lust now. That was another thing they had in common. They both had spent way too many years viewing things like that—or the end result of things like that. Now he slid the high-heeled pumps onto her feet, proud of the way she sat on one thigh, like the pinup girl he’d pictured her as earlier, by the creek. It was time to thread the ribbon between her two wrists through the headboard slats. He had to untie one wrist to bring them together over her head. Now she was bound as though on train tracks in the movies, and it was safe to reveal another pair of furry cuffs from where he’d dropped them on the floor.

“If you’ve never done this,” Sasha pointed out logically, “what are you doing travelling around with so many pairs of handcuffs?”

He tightened one around her ankle. “Good question. Easy answer. Nathan Horowitz has a lot of them lying around.”

Sasha gasped, but now her other ankle was bound to the bedpost, so she couldn’t even kick him with her patent leather shoes. “Nathan? Oh, dear God! You spoke to him about handcuffs?”

Cinching the strap professionally, Rowan stood, uncaring if his massive erection was bulging in the crotch of his jeans. He was proud when her eyes strayed there. “We mercs have to stick together. But I didn’t think you’d like the government-issue metal cuffs we carry.”

“Oh, so very thoughtful of you to line my wrists and ankles with fur. Ever the gentleman. Now my entire family knows you’re tying me up.”

Rowan quickly found the small scissors that were one attachment of his Swiss army knife. He got down on his knees between her thighs, amused at the shadow of doubt that passed over her face. “Hey. Not only does he know, he said Xandra said to be careful with these cuffs. They’re antique. She brought them all the way from Charleston.”

Sasha gasped again, for an entirely different reason. Pinching a bit of the real silk that covered her naked crotch, Rowan drew it away and cut an oval in the fabric. “What are you doing?” was her natural question.

“You want to be able to come real nice, don’t you?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

The stockings were ruined now, but who cared? Closing up the knife, Rowan shoved it in his pocket and took a nibble of bare flesh near her labia. He made sure to snort hot breath against her quivering clit. Judging by how strongly she had come when just his fingers had diddled her to her second orgasm in ten minutes, he knew she would simply explode once his mouth started working on her.

“Oh! Rowan! You’re so nasty!” Since she couldn’t grab him, she made do with shuddering and shimmying her hips into the air, giving him better access to her pussy. At first he merely nibbled at her flesh. Her clitoris elongated and reddened, emerging from between her labia, standing up eagerly for attention. Rowan slid his shoulders beneath her ass to lift her, and his tongue tip tickled her perineum. Now he was faced with the little shell of her pussy, and he teased her with the tiniest of licks to the outside of her slit.

“Rowan!” she roared. “If I had hands I’d be punching the daylights out of you! Go, man, go! Stop taking your time! You’re driving me absolutely out of my frigging mind!”

Rowan lifted his head and looked down at her. Her shoulders were pressed to the mattress, the bracelets holding them taut between the bed posts. Her eyes bulged from her skull. She looked genuinely angry, so he soothed her. “It’s called S&M for a reason, my dear girl. There’s the sadist part. That would be me. That leaves only you to be the masochist. Part of our play involves pleasurable torture. You love this form of torture, don’t you?”

“Yes!” she roared. “No! I mean, I don’t know!”

Two Sirs, with Love

STORY EXCERPT

“Speaking of,” said Ian. “Did your father give you any more grief about your activities at the Fett Axel in Stockholm?”

Felicity fiddled with her fingers in her lap. “Yes, he gave me grief, all right. I think he’s been very successful in convincing me to give up the lifestyle.”

“What?” Ian leaned closer to her and put his hand over hers. “You can’t let a man suffering from dementia alter your life so radically, Felicity! Hasn’t he also been known to put his pajama pants on over his trousers, put his wristwatch into the fridge, and accuse his therapist of being Jimmy Carter?”

A laugh forced its way through Felicity’s sorrow. “That’s true. He did think his shrink was the former president, there to force him to build a house for Habitat for Humanity.”

Ian said, “See? So you’re going to listen to him when he begs you to give up your life?”

“Okay, then! If you really don’t want me staying in Utah, I’ll return to Stockholm!”

Victor stepped closer. “Actually, I agree with Ian, not for the reasons you think. Ian can’t stay in Utah either, for obvious reasons, and I’m going to have to go back to the Salt Lake office when I’m done with the current assignment. But Felicity, he’s right. You can’t allow a man to dictate your life who thinks he has to attend the Camp David accords to get the Sunnis and the Shiites together.”

“Oh, yes,” Felicity agreed warmly. “He thinks they just need to have an honest dialogue.”

Victor sat on the couch’s arm. “See? And you’re going to let this peanut farmer convince you to start an entirely new career?”

“Well.” Felicity seemed to blush. “I know he’s said and done some dubious things in recent years, but he was pretty lucid when we Skyped. And his reasons for begging me to change my life were not because I’ve been immoral or corrupt, but because he doesn’t see much future in the Dominatrix field.”

Ian nodded. “I can see his point of view. You need to do something more forgiving in terms of aging.” Swiftly he added, “Not that you won’t age gracefully. But one must be practical.”

Felicity squeezed Ian’s hand. “No offense taken, sweetie. I agree with my father. I’m working on it with my sisters as to what I could possibly do out here. It would be nice to be around them again, especially since they seem as though they’ve all turned out to be wonderful, caring people.” She sighed deeply and stared off distantly. “I know I’ve been running from myself since my husband’s death. I do feel that I’m no more Mistress Klara than I am Where’s Waldo or Marge Simpson. Although I do have hair like Marge, if I pile it high enough.”

Ian squeezed her hand too. “I’m sure your talents for running a club will translate well into running some aspect of the lodge. And speaking of talents. We need you to help—”

“Oh! That reminds me.” Felicity stood and picked up her coat. She rifled through the pockets. “I wanted to give you something, Ian, to symbolize our relationship. Something for you to remember me by.”

Ian waved her away. “Oh, don’t be such a sappy twit, Felicity. I don’t need a gift from you to remember you. Here’s a deal. If you stay at the lodge, I’ll come visit you here. You can torture my cock and balls any time.”

“No, seriously. Here.”

Ian took the black leather...cock ring? “Where did you find such a thing around here?”

Felicity took her seat next to Ian and plucked the cock ring from his fingers. “I had my manager in Stockholm express me some things I thought I might need, and I thought of this. Here.” With relief he saw it wasn’t a cock ring but a wrist cuff, a bracelet. “This is to reward you for being such a good slave. It designates you as my play partner.” Wrapping it around his wrist, she pressed the snaps together with a sound of finality.

Ian looked at Victor, feeling smug. She hadn’t given Victor any such sign of ownership. “I belong to Felicity,” he sniffed. He dared to kiss her for the first time, and her lips were pliant and soft. They smacked at each other’s mouths with genuine love. Ian’s chest swelled with emotion as he held her birdlike shoulders in his hands and inhaled her honeyed scent.

They withdrew a few inches, smiling stupidly at each other. Ian didn’t see her as Mistress Klara anymore. She seemed to be becoming more comfortable as Mistress Felicity.

ADULT EXCERPT

His mouth curled sensuously. This whole Iron Man thing was working very well for him. He probably had women coming out his ears, being a famous biologist who traveled the globe giving knowledgeable speeches to esteemed societies. “You’re a sultry tigress,” he said with wonder. She squirmed, not knowing if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Then he dove back into her cleavage.

Popping a breast from its casing, Victor nibbled and worried the erect nipple. Felicity hadn’t experienced this sensation in months, years perhaps. Once in a while bound fellows got loose and ran amok, and that was probably the last time anyone had nuzzled at her breast. She gasped loudly with the shock of it. He supped at her nipple like a frisky puppy until she could stand it no more. He squeezed her tit at the base and popped it into his mouth, laving the entire tip with the flat of his tongue.

Felicity squealed, truly unprepared for such an assault. She was fairly well schooled in casual modes of self-defense, so it was almost automatic for her to bring her leg up and knee him in the balls. He sucked in air and paused in his gurgling, but she hadn’t kneed him that horribly, and he went right back to his feast. This time he released the other tit from its bondage. He nursed that one enthusiastically, nibbling and sucking, before burying his face between them and applying one enormous lick to the valley there.

Felicity’s pussy was trickling juice into her ass crack, he was making her that hot. She humped his hip bone while shimmying her shoulders, the better to wriggle his face into her bosom. But her words told him a different story. “You rat bastard. How dare you take advantage of me? Just because almost all women are naturally weaker than most men, you use your strength to control me. Do you like taking advantage of women who don’t want you?” Again she grabbed a handful of his tie that now hung from his neck like a noose after their tussling. She was a strong woman, having not much else to do in her downtime in Stockholm but work out and lift weights, and she snapped his head back to attention. He looked even more handsome, if such a thing was possible, with his thick dark hair all in disarray. “Do you hear me, you bastard?”

Victor only grinned again! He said smoothly, “Do you really expect me to believe you’re not enjoying this? You’ve got a spectacular rack, Mistress, in case you weren’t aware.” Even more impudently, he slid his palm over the rise of her boob and diddled her nipple between thumb and forefinger. Here he was practically dangling from the noose she’d made of his tie, still arrogant enough to toy with her like that!

She yanked him with the tie, her other hand shoving his chest. He stumbled back, giving her enough room to leap to her feet. Her bared tits swayed, buoyed up by the bra’s underwire cage. In the towering beige heels and slim slacks with tendrils of her flaming red hair coming undone from her bun, she knew she was the picture of the vivacious Amazon. In the flashing of a few fingers, his tie was undone, limp in her hand.

She growled, “You think you’re the first man who has come along and thought he could best me? You’d be amazed how many men have that fantasy. ‘Oh, I’ll overpower the big, redheaded Domme, and’—hey!”

The next thing Felicity knew, the tie was in Victor’s hand. He twirled her around while simultaneously gripping both her wrists together in the small of her back. Maybe because it was so unexpected, Felicity allowed herself to be handled like a blow-up doll. She came to her senses, but not in time to wrench her hand from the knot Victor swiftly tied with the zeal of a Boy Scout.

“You pig!” she shrieked. “We haven’t talked—we have no safe word—we have no mutual agreement at all! How dare you bind me without my consent?”

The heated slab of his body pressed against her back. He rattled her by the wrists, ensuring his knot was solid. “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose? It’s called bondage and discipline for a reason. You forget, Mistress. I’m experienced in tying women up.”

“How dare you—”

With only a slight shove, Victor was able to topple her face first onto one of the beds.

His voice was breezily cheerful as he stood between her feet, removing first one strappy heel and then the other. “Yes, some women underestimate me because I’m an animal biologist who hangs out in the savannah with the hyenas and baboons. But I tell you, Mistress—there hasn’t been a tigress yet that I couldn’t conquer. And definitely not one as regal as you.”

Felicity wailed, “We don’t play this way in Stockholm! No one tries to take unfair advantage of the other!”

Kneeling between her outspread thighs, Victor slid his hands between her waist and the mattress. He undid the button and zipper like a magician—they parted like butter at his touch. “There’s one thing you’re forgetting, Mistress.” With one yank, he’d bared her generous white butt to the ceiling. She squirmed like someone in a sack race, but her wriggling probably only made Victor randier. He slapped her ass, cupping his palm like an experienced Dom, knowing it would sound louder that way. Felicity gasped, but relished the warm tingling spread of forbidden pleasure, and wished he would spank her again. “I know that you like this treatment.”