Chapter 27 #2
I walked carefully, I didn’t run, as walking created less noise.
I had reached the view of the caretaker’s house, and was nearly to the locked front gate, when a large shadow detached from the rest to my left, and stepped into the aisle.
I groaned at having been caught again, when arms closed around me from behind, and a hand went over my mouth.
I squeaked from behind that hand and practically went limp against the hard chest at my back.
“Gotcha, baby,” the voice in front of me said, and with a chuckle and a few steps forward, it resolved into Grim.
I leaned my head back against the shoulder behind it and craned my neck, trying to see who was behind me, but I’d been told that where Grim was, Reaper wasn’t far behind him.
Sure enough, Reaper held me fast, his chest rising and falling at my back a little rapidly for my tastes, as though he was wrestling with his self-control.
“Oh, will you look at that… there’s two socks on two perfect feet.
Lemme have her.” Grim held out his arms and I was pushed, unceremoniously into them, he spun me around and held me fast the way Reaper had held me the moment before, my back to his front.
I bit my lips together to keep from making a sound to draw anyone else to us as Reaper got really close, looming in front of me.
He took my face between his hands, lowering his lips beside my ear and murmured, “How’d this happen, huh? ”
He took my hands and turned them palms up, stroking his thumbs over the heels of my hands.
I hissed from the sting and brought them up to my face.
They were skinned pretty bad, but I hadn’t noticed.
Partially from the adrenaline swirling through my veins, and partially from the chill in the air, numbing them.
“Must have been when Specter tackled me,” I whispered.
He lowered his face over my hands, his tongue flicking out. He tasted the dirt and the blood and I gasped at the sting in the wake of his warm, wet, tongue against the small wound, the sting intensifying.
“That is so unsanitary,” I murmured, slightly horrified, and Grim chuckled.
Reaper went to his knees in front of me and looked up as though in worship, which made me still, and my heart quiver in my breast.
“One for Grim, and one for me,” he murmured up at me, and took first one sock, then the other, stuffing them in his pocket.
I shuddered and gasped, as Grim’s teeth lightly set in the side of my neck and he flicked his tongue over that sweet spot that sent goosebumps down my arms.
“You smell like peaches and sunshine on this starless night,” he whispered in my ear, as he breathed me in.
I closed my eyes at the poetic words, Reaper’s fingertips skimming up the outsides of my denim clad thighs as he stood.
My eyes flickered open in alarm, and I shrank back into Grim who dropped his hands from my waist and took just a slight step back.
Reaper whispered, “Close your eyes, and count to ten.”
I swallowed hard, doing as I was told, counting silently in my head slowly from one to ten, and when I opened my eyes? Both were gone.
I gasped, and turned, this way and that, but neither were anywhere that I could see.
I moved carefully, picking my way over the gravel in my bare feet, hugging myself and heard from under the front porch’s overhang, “Guess it’s my turn… let’s make it a little more fun.”
I froze and Hangman jumped down, over the few steps, and crunched over the gravel to me. He undid my belt, whipping it through the loops on my pants and quicker than I could follow, he had it twisted and pulled through on itself and he said in an authoritative voice, “Hands.”
I brought them up, palms up as I had for Reaper, and he looked at them in the diffuse light coming from one of the upstairs windows, pausing and saying, “Come sit, I’ll run in the house and we can clean that up.
” He made a noise, out into the dark, and he led me to the porch and had me sit down on the steps.
“The game’s not done,” I said. “I could get more scrapes.”
“True, but we take care of our women, even when we do play these fucked up reindeer games. Hang tight.”
He keyed his way into the house and went to a first aid kit just inside on the wall. He came back with antiseptic spray and some gauze.
“Gonna sting,” he warned, and he spritzed my palms, focusing on the heel of my hands. I hissed between my teeth, and he chuckled, wiping at them with the gauze to get the worst of the grit off.
“How’d this happen?” he asked. “You trip?”
“Tackled,” I laughed lightly.
“Who?” he asked.
“Specter,” I said quietly. “I think he has it in for me or something, our first meeting was… uh… less than polite. He was rather crude, and I, uh, told him to go fuck himself.”
Hangman laughed and said, “He’s a dick to everyone. Good on yah for not taking his shit. Still, it’ll be handled. This is a bridge too far, Corvus is going to want a word. This is supposed to be a haunted house thrill ride, not actually damaging.”
“I mean, it’s been more fun than it hasn’t,” I said with a dry chuckle.
“Good, come on out here – resume the position if you will.”
I went out to roughly where we’d been standing and put out my hands, palms up, like I had before he’d hit the pause button on our little game of cats and mouse.
He put my belt around my wrists and pulled the free end and the cuffs he had fashioned out of them cinched down tight. Like really tight, holding me fast. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so… how did he know how to do that? Better yet, why would he know how to do this? I thought.
He stepped back, made the mourning dove call, and said, “You better git, the pause on the game is over.”
I moved carefully in the direction of the Jewish portion of the cemetery, past the caretaker’s house, and was relieved when I found less gravel, and more sand and grass.
I twisted and pulled at my wrists, but whatever he’d done with my belt wouldn’t budge.
I crouched behind a grave and fucked with it, trying to see what he’d done, but there wasn’t enough light.
If it hadn’t been so dark, I wondered if I would be able to figure it out and if I’d have been able to free myself.
Shit, I was disadvantaged as hell, but still – I was holding my own against how many of them versus me? At least, I’d like to think I was. They were honestly probably just playing with me.
I checked my watch, which was always present on my wrist and was riding higher, over where my belt acted like cuffs. It was too dark and too hard to read to get an accurate time but it felt like I’d been in the same spot for too long and that I’d have a better chance if I moved, so I moved.
I didn’t know how long we had all been out here, but the more I slunk and hid, the more the chill in the air was starting to affect me. My nose starting to run a bit. I meandered carefully through things, hiding and dodging anymore encounters for what felt like a while.
I was outside little Gracie’s grave plot’s enclosure, looking through the bars at the lighter white of her marble carving when a body pressed me into the enclosure.
“Bella,” a voice I didn’t recognize murmured in my ear, and it lit off in a string of Italian which was beautiful to listen to, but I had no idea the meaning behind any of the words except the first… Bella meant beauty or beautiful.
He turned me and pulled my restrained wrists up and over my head, hooking the belt that held them fast on the spiked iron bar above me. I swallowed hard as Death made me rise on my tippy toes and I was held helpless by the gate.
He trailed warm hands over my shoulders, and in a caress down my ribs, and stopped at the waistband of my jeans.
“Time to lose these,” he whispered, and he pulled the button through the loop loosening them, and lowered the zipper sensually slow.
“Shit!” I gasped as he pulled the denim off my legs, slow, so painfully slow, my desire increasing with the eroticism of his gentle strip tease.
“You’ve been out here driving us all crazy for a while now,” he said, placing a kiss on my panties, over my mound at the apex of my thighs. He drew a deep breath, scenting me, and made an appreciative noise.
“Well done, you,” he pulled my jeans off my feet completely, and took his time kissing his way back up my body in light butterfly kisses that started at my knee and stopped at my chest, just above my bras’ band between my breasts, his eyes rolled up to meet mine.
I was down to bra and panties, but the look in his eyes?
I might as well have been nude and I was scared he was going to take things further than the game allowed for.
I didn’t want that. I wanted Corvus between my thighs, inside me, but in the moment, I was very afraid that if he did go further, I would be caught up in the moment and welcome his cock as long as he promised to make me come.
The cognitive dissonance was real as my pussy ached to be filled.
Death stepped back and looked at me appreciatively, a thumb at his bottom lip as he looked me up and down, hanging there, helpless.
He had my jeans dangling from his other hand and he slung them up and over his shoulder as he said, “Ciao, Bella.”
“Oh, you!” I cried pulling at my wrists. “You’re not even going to get me down?”
He walked away, whistling softly, and I thought to myself, oh, shit…
“That’s cheating!” I hissed. “Unfair advantage!” I pulled at my wrists and tried to gain enough height by standing on my very tippy toes to push my hands up and over to let myself down, but it wasn’t happening.
The sense of fun evaporated in an instant, and I was suddenly terrified.
I tried everything I could think of to get myself off the fence, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t get on my toes high enough or get enough of a little jump to disengage myself from where I was caught by the leather of my belt.