This Is War - Chapter 26 - Capture the Princess
“You really think that’ll work?” I asked when Tanner finished detailing his master plan. Frankie was almost done putting a few final touches on my makeup.
“Absolutely,” replied Tanner. He sounded so sure.
And who was I to question him? After all…
he was the brilliant billionaire. If he couldn’t come up with a plan to beat Cole, then who could?
The fact that Isadora the supermodel commando had also helped with the plan made me feel even more confident about it.
But still. It would be up to me to execute the plan.
If I slipped up, everything would be ruined.
Especially my modesty. I quickly put the thought out of my mind.
I couldn’t dwell on that. It was too distressing…
and distracting. I really wondered if Cole would actually bang me in front of the entire camp or if he was just all talk.
Either way, I kind of loved that the threat of it was making Tanner so jealous.
Frankie turned my chair and put one final brush of highlighter on my nose. “All done!”
Tanner nodded in approval. “Wow.”
Does he really mean that?
“Just wait until she puts on the dress,” Frankie said. “In fact, you and the other guys all need to step into the elevator for a minute to give us some privacy.”
Finally! Someone in the Society who understands privacy!
Tanner, Diablo, and Angel all left. I hadn’t seen Nigel since he’d said that weird stuff about fashion-icon Adolf Hitler, but I assumed he was in the bathroom with Isadora and Giovanna.
And even if he did happen to walk in and see me naked, it wouldn’t be a huge deal since I was starting to think he had a thing for Diablo.
Frankie helped me into my dress…which was definitely not a dress. It was a ridiculously skimpy red monokini COVERED in crystals. It barely covered my boobs, and the back was just a thong. I kept telling myself it was less revealing than the lingerie I’d worn to Club Onyx, but I wasn’t so sure.
“Since when is this considered a dress?” I asked.
Frankie answered by clipping a belt around my waist that had a long train of sheer fabric. “There. Now it’s a dress.”
“If you say so.” I was at least happy that the weird skirt thing would help to cover my ass.
I slid on the torture-boots and then Frankie covered my arms in geometric bracelets. She finished the look by sliding a tiara into my very princess-esque braids.
“You look incredible,” said Tanner.
I spun around. “Hey! Were you watching me get dressed that whole time?”
“Who, me? I would never do such a thing.”
I put my hand on my hip and stared at him. I felt like I should cover my barely-hidden lady bits, but I also kind of loved the way he was looking at me. “Do I seriously have to wear this? I look ridiculous.”
Tanner raised an eyebrow. “You look anything but ridiculous. I almost feel bad for Cole. He doesn’t stand a chance against you in that dress.”
“Why is everyone calling this a dress?”
Before anyone could answer, Isadora, Giovanna, and Nigel came out of the bathroom.
I almost fell over when I saw Isadora. Partially because these boots made it nearly impossible to maintain my balance, but mainly from shock.
Somehow, Giovanna had done Isadora’s makeup to make her look almost exactly like me.
And Nigel had sewn a passable replica of my princess “dress.” It looked amazing on her.
“That’s so not fair. You look a million times better than I do in this stupid thing,” I said.
“I look just like you,” said Isadora.
“Kind of. Only you actually look good. I just look awkward.”
“You look stunning,” said Nigel. “If you weren’t my mistress, and my master’s girlfriend, I would fuck you so hard.”
Everyone in the room was silent. There was so much to unpack in that comment. Did Nigel really want to have sex with me? And did he really think I was still Tanner’s girlfriend? I mean like…did Tanner tell him that? Or did Nigel just assume? I really needed answers here.
“Nigel!” yelled Tanner. “What has gotten into you today?” He shook his head. “We’ll discuss this later. But for now, we need to focus. It’s game time.”
***
Our home base was a clearing in the center of a bunch of the girls’ cabins. As the princess, I was required to start on a red platform, but after the games began, I would be permitted to run and hide.
My inner circle stood next to me. I tried to ignore how good Tanner looked in his battle gear. I’d seen him in sweatpants, suits, and tuxedos. But seeing him dressed for battle took his sexiness to a whole new level. The way his muscles bulged as he held his laser rifle… Yum.
“Are you sure you can’t come with me?” I asked.
He thought about it for a second. “I want to. Believe me, I hate the idea of leaving you alone out there with Cole hunting you down. But if we really want to sell this illusion, then I have to stay with Isadora.”
Was that really why? Or did he just think she looked better than me in the princess dress? I tried to shake the thought, but what Cole had said about Tanner having a different girl on his arm every night at Club Onyx had really gotten into my head.
“You have to trust me,” he said.
Like I trusted you with my heart three months ago? I knew he was right, though. We had to try to sell the illusion that Isadora was me. “I do.”
“Good. We got this.” He gave me a high five and then started barking orders at the rest of our team.
I almost tried to get his attention again, but I was distracted when Ocelot walked over and started securing the locks on my boots.
He tugged on each lock to make sure it wouldn’t come free.
When he was all done, he said something into his radio and then asked, “Red team ready?”
“I think so,” I said.
Tanner jogged over. “Troops are all set. Let’s take this cocky asshole down. Save Raven on three.” He put his hand out. The inner circle all put their hands in.
Tanner counted down, and on three, we all yelled, “Save Raven!”
I hope this plan works.
Ocelot’s helper blew his whistle and the game began.
Phase 1 of our plan was simple - we were going to take out as much of the blue team as possible by decorating the tree with false blossoms. In this case, the tree was Isadora, and the false blossoms were her princess outfit.
Diablo swept me up in his massive arms and carried me away from the platform.
I could have walked, but that would have left heel marks in the ground.
And the only heel marks we wanted to leave were the ones being left by Isadora as she walked towards the ambush Tanner had set up with the bulk of our team.
She made a halfhearted attempt to cover some of her tracks, but that was just to help sell the illusion.
If we made it too easy to track her, Cole would smell the ambush coming from a mile away.
It would have been fun to watch Cole get totally demolished, but me staying that close to the camp would have been too dangerous.
“I can probably walk the rest of the way,” I said when we were five minutes out of the camp.
“Nonsense,” said Diablo. “You’d leave tracks. And anyway, carrying you is nothing. You weigh like ten pounds.”
“Ten pounds?” I asked. “What do you think I am? A two-month-old baby?”
“But mainly I just love touching your ass.” He shifted his hand down and gave my ass a squeeze.
“Hey!” I yelled.
“Shhh,” hissed Angel. “I think I heard someone.”
Diablo put me on the ground and then he and Angel bent a small tree down to cover us.
I had no idea how they were strong enough to bend the tree.
And I also had no idea how the tree didn’t snap.
But I didn’t really care, because our hiding spot worked.
A pair of blue scouts walked by us, none the wiser to our location.
“Shouldn’t you shoot them?” I whispered. The scouts’ had their backs turned to us. It would have been so easy for Diablo and Angel to pop out and take them down.
“No,” replied Diablo. “Even if we take them out, they could still run back and tell Cole where they’d seen us. We’d be surrounded in minutes.”
“But you’re supposed to freeze when you get hit. And you definitely aren’t supposed to communicate intel. That would be cheating!”
“Sure is.”
Oh right. Cole’s a dirty cheater.
Once the coast was clear, we continued towards the zipline course.
We didn’t encounter any more scouts on the way.
I had been wondering how they’d hoist me up onto the zipline platform.
But it turned out that there was no hoisting at all.
Instead Diablo just gave me a good old-fashioned piggyback ride as he climbed up some boards nailed to the side of a tree.
It was absolutely terrifying. If my hands slipped, I would have fallen right off his back and literally broken my ass.
Speaking of my ass, Angel probably had a pretty sweet view of it as Diablo climbed up the ladder.
But at this point, I didn’t really care anymore.
I was pretty sure that just about everyone in the Society had already seen it.
And that would be the least of my worries if we lost this game of Capture the Princess.
Diablo called Tanner and put him on speaker phone.
“How’s it going?” asked Tanner.
“Great!” I said. “We made it to…”
Diablo put his hand over my mouth. “It might be bugged,” he whispered. And then he said into the phone. “The package has been delivered.”
“Excellent,” replied Tanner. “The ambush went well. We lost about a third of our troops, but Cole lost more. As long as you guys can keep moving and avoid detection, we should be good to go.”
“Did you take Cole out?” I asked.
“Nope. He wasn’t part of the ambush.”
“Damn,” said Diablo. “We’ll keep our eyes peeled for him. Over and out.” Diablo hung up and turned to me. “Let’s start moving.”