Fantasies R Us, page 11
“Don’t be foolish, man,” Scarlet said. “She’s winded and got a hurt foot and they—” he lifted his chin in the direction of the ever nearing whistling, “—are not quitting. Your only chance to escape is over that outcropping of rocks.”
“I believe him, Michael.”
“He’s one of them. He could be sending us into a trap.”
“But I have a good feeling about him.”
Michael peered down at her. She looked back at him. “I had a good feeling about you the first time I saw you. I was right about that, wasn’t I?”
He nodded, gave Will Scarlet one last appraising look and hefted Jayne onto the boulder. Will offered his clasped hands as a step up to Michael. Michael glanced up at her and she nodded reassuringly back at him. The next instant, he was on top of the rock beside her. He glanced around and, like her, apparently saw nothing threatening. They waved at Will, who saluted and sprinted off in the direction he’d come.
She and Michael dropped behind the boulders and listened as the merry men went whistling past where they hid. Michael looked at her. “You have good instincts, Jayne.”
“Thank you, Michael.”
He stood and scanned the forest behind the stone.
“What are you looking for?”
“Someplace safe,” he said as he climbed back to the top of the rock. From his high perch, he resumed his scan of the area. “If they catch up to Scarlet, they’ll know they missed us. Then they’ll backtrack looking for us. Besides, that foot of yours needs tending.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
He hopped off the rocks to her side and looked hard at her. “You are one tough lady, my Jayne.”
“Tough? Me?”
He scooped her up in his arms. “You are a keen judge of a person. You are athletic. And you don’t complain even when you’re hurt.”
“My foot is more bruised than anything.”
“You are brave,” he said, striding into the woods behind the rock pile.
“Brave?” She snorted. “Hardly.”
“You faced down those thugs handily enough.”
“I had you and—” she gave him an apologetic look as she finished, “—Will Scarlet to protect me.”
He grunted. “Will Scarlet’s intent isn’t entirely to protect you.”
She smiled. “Are you jealous?”
His eyebrows bunched together above the bridge of his nose as though pondering her question. Then his brow smoothed, one corner of his mouth twitched and his hand brushed the side of her breast. “Perhaps I do want you all to myself.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I knew there was a reason I picked you.”
“You picked me,” he said, carrying her off through the woods, “because you’re a good judge of character and because you are brave.”
“Picking you was hardly brave.”
He gave her a curious look.
“It was being a good judge of character,” she said.
He brushed his lips against her temple, murmuring, “Your good judgment is my good fortune.”
As good as his words made her feel, they also saddened her. Out in the real world there would be no Prince Charming for her, no Michael. He existed only here for her, within the machinations of Fantasies R Us and her fantasy time was running out. The low position of the sun made that clear.
She tightened her arms around Michael’s neck, tucked her cheek into the curve of his shoulder and pressed her lips to the pulse in his neck. She’d soon have to leave Fantasies R Us and…Michael. Unless they could lose themselves in this woods. Oh that it could possible. She wouldn’t even need a roof over her head as long as she had him. They could construct something. Maybe a tree house like some shipwrecked castaways.
“Aha,” he said as the trees thinned and the scent of a wood fire teased her nose. “I knew I’d spotted a rooftop from that boulder.”
Jayne lifted her head and saw they’d come upon a clearing and in the middle of it was a thatched roof bungalow.
“Perfect,” murmured Jayne, as happy as if he’d just presented her with a palace.
* * * * *
There was no one inside the bungalow. But the table was set with three bowls and a pot of porridge bubbled over a low fire in the fireplace. Had those bowls been filled, she’d have expected one to be too hot, one to be too cool and one to be just right.
She winced. No more fairytale creatures. She’d had enough with The Five Fucking Dwarfs. They could keep their legendary Robin Hood and his Merry Men, too. All she wanted was the man of her dreams.
She kissed Michael lightly, her tongue feathering between his lips. He hummed with pleasure.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“For being perfect.”
“I’m far from perfect,” he countered, setting her on the nearest of the three chairs in front of the fireplace. It was a rather small chair, but Jayne wasn’t going to waste a minute of the few hours she had left with Michael complaining. Besides, they had a cozy fire in front of which they could while away what time was left to them.
Okay, maybe not while away the time. Before this fantasy was over, she intended to take advantage of the romantic setting and make love with him in front of that fireplace.
Michael poured water from a warming pot on the hearth, dropped to one knee in front of her and washed her wounded foot.
“You’re pampering me,” she murmured.
“Your feet are dirty,” he said, washing her other foot.
“So they are.”
Giving her a meaningful look, he kissed the arch of her foot and washed higher.
“Are my ankles dirty, too?”
“Aye. And your calves,” he said, stroking the warm washcloth up the back of her knee. “And your thighs,” he added, stroking the washcloth further up the inside of her thigh.
He touched the cloth to the jewel nestled in the curls at the apex of her legs. She moaned and threw her head back…and promptly banged her head on the back of the hard chair.
“Ow!”
He tossed the washcloth aside and smiled up at her. “I know a better place to finish this.”
As he lifted her, she eyed the trio of beds against the back wall pondering how to use each one. But he didn’t head for the beds. He turned to the second of the three chairs.
“Mmmm,” she murmured. “It’s big enough for both of us.”
He shook his head. “Too big.”
He moved to the last chair. It had longer legs than the other two, which placed the seat at the height of a tabletop. When Michael set her on the chair, she protested.
“Isn’t it too tall?”
“On the contrary, my beautiful Jayne. It’s just right.”
She still didn’t understand until he stepped between her legs. The burgeoning bulge in his pants bumped against the juncture of her legs. She started…and smiled.
He grinned and stepped back.
“No,” she cried out, reaching for him.
“Patience, my princess,” he said, pushing the hem of the shirt up her legs.
Easy for him to say. He had eternity in this place…or however long cyborgs functioned. She had mere hours remaining with him.
He bowed and kissed the insides of her thighs, his tongue tracing tiny circles over her sensitive flesh…chasing away thoughts of her fantasy’s imminent end. She squirmed, eager for that tongue to trace that circular pattern against an even more sensitive piece of skin. Even more eager to be filled by him.
She lifted her hips, begging for more. He settled her legs over his shoulders, spreading her, blowing his hot breath on her.
Her juices surged from her pussy. She squirmed for more contact from him, her need an ache that carved a path from her sex to her heart. The reason her heart ached nagged at her.
But when his tongue nudged her clit, she forgot about the ache in her heart. Her pelvis jerked against his touch, she was so sensitive, so ready to come. His tongue barely completed three rotations around her clit when her orgasm exploded against his mouth.
She clutched his head, clinging to his contact yet, at the same, pushing him away because his touch was so excruciating. He didn’t move, there between her legs, his mouth closed over her, his hot breath easing her down from the orgasm and making her vagina pucker to be filled.
When she released him, when she slid her legs down from his shoulders, he burrowed his head under the shirt and kissed a path up her belly to her breasts. She sank into the sensation of his hot, wet mouth. That heavenly mouth that plied her skin with an expertise no real man would be able to duplicate. The reality of that brought tears to her eyes.
But when he peeked at her through the laces holding the shirt closed above her breasts and begged to be released, she giggled and the tears evaporated from her eyes before they could fall. She loosened the laces. He poked his head out of the neck opening.
“I’ve always loved poet’s shirts,” she said. “Now I know why.”
“Nice and roomy,” he said, rubbing his bare chest against her naked breasts.
She gazed into the eyes clear as a cloudless sky. Without closing her eyes, she leaned in and pressed her lips to his, tasting him, her and their sex on his mouth. She memorized the glossiness of his eyelids as they drifted shut, the tilt of his head as he sank into the kiss and the desire contorting his features as he kissed her back.
She lifted her lips from his and murmured, “I want you inside me.”
He nodded and reached down between them, the back of his hand brushing past her belly and pubic hair. The flap of his pants fell open and his hot cock slapped heavily against her abdomen.
He shifted his weight fully to his feet, drawing her to the edge of the chair. He teased the head of his cock against her wet folds, her slick clit and her vaginal opening. She groaned and lifted her pelvis to him, her pussy juices surging.
She clamped her legs around his hips. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “My lady is learning.”
Without further words, further enticements, he sank into her. Reflexively, her pelvis tipped to take more of him. He groaned and she found she liked knowing she gave him pleasure.
He pulled back, his cock sliding from her for what seemed an eternity then he pushed back into her. Back and forth. In and out. Beneath the drape of the poet’s shirt, they rocked against each other, his naked arms holding her, his hands caressing her bare skin. Their mouths came together in the shared neck opening of the shirt, their tongues mimicking the give and take of cock and cunt until they moved as one.
She may have only hours left with her Prince Charming, but she would have this memory forever, this singular movement of their bodies, this rhythm they alone shared, this orgasmic cataclysm building between them, around them and through them.
They came, not quite at the same moment. It was more perfect than that, more in sync, as though she started the orgasm with its pounding waves of pleasure and he finished it with his searing spurts of semen. And their cries of release echoed in their joined mouths.
Chapter Nine
Jayne didn’t remember moving from the chair to a bed. But she remembered waking in Michaels’ arms, firelight the only illumination in the night-blanketed bungalow. She’d shed the poet’s shirt and climbed on top of his rigid cock. He’d let her explore the position, laughing when she took him too deep and “ouched” when his cock hit her cervix and guiding her hips when she was having trouble finding her rhythm.
He’d instructed her to lean back to get an angle that would put the most pressure on her G-spot. He showed her how she could take him deep inside her without discomfort by sitting face-to-face with him on his lap, supported by him instead of her knees. He demonstrated how these positions allowed their hands freedom to fondle, tweak and rub nipples…his as well as hers.
And she had watched him as she moved against him, around him. Watched how his chest rose and fell when his breaths grew ragged, how his color heightened as his arousal grew, how his lips parted and his tongue moved as she tightened around him and milked him.
They had collapsed together, blissfully spent… for the time being.
Now, awakened by the sunlight pouring through the windows, she was again reminded of how little time they had left. Judging by the brightness, they must have slept most of the morning away. Most. Hopefully not all of it.
She rolled onto her side against Michael, pressing her body the length of his and hooking one leg possessively over his. If she believed in birthday wishes, hers would be to stay with Michael forever in the little bungalow in the middle of the forest. But this wasn’t reality. This was make-believe. And Michael was a— She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged him tight to her.
“What is it, my precious Jayne?”
She willed the tears gathering in her eyes to recede and swallowed back the lump in her throat. “We have so little time left together.”
“I know,” he said, stroking her head. “But we’ll make the most of it.”
She buried her face in the curve of his throat, trying to ignore the daylight marking her last hours with Michael. “Just hold me. Hold me until my fantasy time runs out.”
“But I have so much more I wish to teach you, Jayne. So much more pleasure to introduce you to. Surely you don’t want to spend the entire remaining time of your fantasy just holding each other.”
Maybe they had time for one more fuck. She hoped so. But then, the clock on the mantel began to chime. One, two, three, four.
How many chimes would there be? Not twelve. Please not twelve.
Five, six.
“Hold me,” she said.
“I am,” he said.
Seven, eight.
“Tighter,” she said, determined to hang onto him until the final second.
Nine, ten.
“Not yet,” she prayed aloud. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean, not yet?” he asked.
Eleven.
Jayne held her breath, her fingernails digging into Michael’s skin.
Eleven. The chiming stopped at eleven.
She released her pent-up breath.
“Jayne? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Not yet. We still have an hour.”
He went still beneath her arm. “An hour? What do you mean we still have an hour?”
She relaxed her grip on him, but remained tucked against him. “An hour before my time runs out.”
He sat up, breaking the hold she had on him, and gaped down at her. “You’re supposed to have a week.”
“I couldn’t afford a full week.”
“But I have a week,” he said.
“What are you saying, you’ve been programmed for a week?”
He frowned. “Programmed?”
“I’d love a full week with you,” she said. “But I can’t afford it.”
“But—”
“What’s wrong? Can’t cyborgs be programmed for less than a week?”
His eyes narrowed at her. “Jayne, I’m not a—”
The bungalow door slammed open and a gruff voice roared, “Who the hell is sleeping in my bed?”
One look at the trio of bears standing in the bungalow entrance and both she and Michael cursed.
“Doesn’t look like they were sleeping, Papa,” squeaked the baby bear.
“And in my freshly laundered sheets,” cried the mama bear.
“This is too much,” Jayne growled through clenched teeth, gathering one of Mama Bear’s sheets around herself and clambering out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” Michael asked.
“To find the panic button and get us out of this ridiculous situation,” she howled. “I still have an hour left to my fantasy.”
* * * * *
“I’m telling you I have an hour left to my fantasy,” an exasperated Jayne repeated for the umpteenth time to Ninety-Nine. “At least I had an hour when I was pulled out of my fantasy.”
They were standing in the middle of the dressing room, the facilitator coifed to perfection as always while she, Jayne, clutched a sheet from one of the three bears’ beds around herself. If only Madame Amour was there with her. The dressmaker had a knack for making her feel more confident.
“You pressed the panic button,” Ninety-Nine recited yet again, “thereby requesting removal from the venue.”
“I was not requesting removal from the venue,” Jayne snarled. “You were supposed to appear in the venue and evaluate the problem. That’s what you told me would happen.”
“In such cases where the client interrupts the fantasy with less than an hour remaining, the fantasy is deemed finished,” Ninety-Nine explained in her maddeningly calm tone.
“You never told me that,” Jayne insisted.
“It was in the small print of your contract.”
Much as Jayne hated to admit it, the clause had been there in the small print. All the times she’d read and reread that contract looking for loopholes… Yet she’d forgotten about that clause…until it was too late.
Jayne’s shoulders drooped, the minutes ticking away along with her resolve. This was it. Her fantasy was over. Abruptly ended without any words of farewell…or rather goodbye. She’d never see Michael again, not with her meager income.
“This way to the exit,” sang Ninety-Nine as she turned toward a panel sliding open at the rear of the room.
“Not zo fast.”
Jayne wheeled about to find Madame Amour striding into the room through another open panel.
Jayne rushed to the dresser’s side. “They cut my fantasy short.”
“So I am hearing through de thin walls of my apartment,” she said, not stopping until she was nose to hologram with Ninety-Nine.
“De girl asked for a fantasy, not a fairytale.”
“And she has received her fantasy,” Ninety-Nine stated.
“It was interrupted repeatedly by fairytale characters,” Jayne interjected.
Ninety-Nine’s holographic head tipped in her direction. “You requested the Cinderella. That is a fairytale.”
“But I didn’t ask for a mauling by five dwarfs. I didn’t ask to be ogled and pursued by a randy band of merry men. Then there were the three bears and they were mad!”
