EPILOGUE
T he early winter air was a sharp contrast against the warm dampness of her sweat-soaked cotton long sleeve. It pricked at her skin as she kept running, her shoes pounding against the trail surrounded by pines. Luckily, no snow had fallen yet, but if she looked back, she knew she’d be able to see the disruption of her flight in the shadows of the earth, even through the green hue of her night vision goggles.
She didn’t stop to look back, though, just took a deeper breath and released more energy into her body, lengthening her strides to make more headway into the woods and away from her pursuers. She barely dodged the hanging branches, letting them pull at her mercilessly as she flew by.
“You’re five minutes down.”
“Only ten more minutes on the clock and then you’re ours, Little Fox.”
She heard both voices crystal clear through her earpiece, even over her labored breathing. “I didn’t even need the head start.”
Both of them just laughed in her ear, a dangerous, manic sound, full of dark promise.
She followed the path left at a fork without thinking, peeling off the trail into the brush. Slowing down, she maneuvered through the tightly packed tree trunks until the forest spit her out onto another path. She picked up speed again, bounding over tree roots and broken crags like an animal. And she was just an animal in that moment, being hunted by much bigger prey.
The thrill of it fueled her as she went deeper and deeper into the brush, the blackness of the night illuminated in her goggles. She could hear the scatter of the forest creatures as she disrupted their slumber with her frantic momentum, the sweet petrichor getting denser in the air.
“Another five minutes gone, baby.”
“Are you ready for us?”
She jumped at their voices in her ear, heart racing, and she didn’t dare slow her pace or lift her eyes from the treacherous terrain to scan her surroundings. There was no moon tonight, the constellations above so bright in the undisturbed, inky night sky. But she didn’t even have a chance to appreciate it yet, hunted as she was. Corey was determined to win this game, to outrun her pursuers.
“Are we going to split up, Kay?”
“I think that’s a solid plan.”
“What?” Corey gasped out. “Not fair! The bet was that you couldn’t catch me in less than one hour. If you split up, it’s like there are two people chasing me.”
“There are two people chasing you, sweetheart. That’s why you got the fifteen-minute head start.”
“Better run faster, Little Fox.”
“Fuck you two!” Corey swore, and kept going.
“You’ll be begging us to in less then an hour.” She could hear the sneer. The threat. The excitement of it. Her heart was fluttering in her chest much faster than the physical exertion warranted. It was a runaway train inside her.
She kept going, the thrill like molten lava through her veins and sending her on a rampage of desperation, unwilling to lose.
“On your marks.”
“Get set. ”
The twins’ voices bounced back and forth.
“Go,” they said in unison, and it was like the devil opening the gates to hell.
Her heart dropped from her chest to her stomach and her legs deadened, so heavy in her fear of getting caught that she almost tripped up. She stopped and doubled over, hands on her knees trying to calm her racing heart and frenetic breathing. But she was unwilling to give up any more time. Forcing her legs back into action, she threw herself into her strides.
The minutes ticked by as she ran, the expensive earpiece doing little to dampen the heavy breathing of both twins, wherever they were running in the forest.
After what felt like forever, she slowed down. Taking the earpiece out, she cocked her head, straining to catch any sound. It was useless. The forest was awake at night, its own symphony created by the life within it—the breeze, the rustling, the paws. She put the earpiece back in.
“Do you see me, baby?”
Corey gulped, her throat tight, and she desperately swung her head side to side peering through the low brush and crisscrossed branches.
“I see our prize, Jase.”
“She looks frightened, don’t you think?”
They were taunting her. Could they even see her? She didn’t know if it was just a ruse to trip her up. She took off running again.
“There she goes, Kayden. She’s heading your way.”
“Fuck.” Her breath was stuck in her throat. They did know where she was. She chanced a look at her watch, the same stupid plastic watch she’d always had. They were only thirty minutes in.
The shift in her attention, however brief, had her foot catching on something, and she went down hard onto her knees, falling forward. The next thing she knew, she could feel the bindings of rope tighten around her ankles .
“Hi, baby.” His voiced echoed in both her ears, from above her, and through the earpiece. She lifted her head and pulled the tech out, tossing it on the ground.
“We caught you. Rather quick, wasn’t it?”
“She did well, all things considered. She lasted fifteen minutes against trained trackers. Besides, how many times have we run this trail, Kay?”
She heard a grunt of effort from behind her, and then felt herself lifted off the ground by her feet. With a few more powerful pulls from Kayden, Corey was elevated into the air, hanging upside down by the rope that had taken her out, slung over a wide, sweeping branch. Kayden tied off the excess to another tree and she hung there, spinning slowly.
All the blood rushed to her head, and her anger erupted. “Take me down, Kayden!”
“Jase, I caught us dinner.” Kayden’s words were smug, the smile apparent in the lilt of his voice. “You can do as you please first.”
She let her hands drop towards the ground, hoping to make contact, but she was lifted just a few inches too high. She spun senselessly, her long braid sweeping through the dirt, and Jason’s black tactical pants came into focus through her goggles. Jason’s hands grasped her hips firmly and stopped the momentum.
“Pull her up a little more.”
Corey was jolted higher, and she felt Jason’s teeth sink into her crotch. It wasn’t gentle.
“Perfect height,” he said, around a mouthful of her leggings. Then he pressed his tongue into the material. She could feel the heat of his mouth through the cotton, and she stifled a groan. Looking down her nose to look up at him, she saw his hand move from her hip to his, and heard the distinct click of a switchblade opening.
He tore through her leggings, expertly cutting them from her body without nicking her skin, leaving the bottom half like sleeves on her legs. Jason stepped back, admiring his trophy .
The cold air bit into her skin and she shivered, squeezing her legs together. A grin spread across his face. He looked like a demon in the subtle glow of the night vision goggles, and that twisted, hungry quirk to his lips had need pooling with the blood in her head.
He circled her. “What should I do with you, strung up like this, sweetheart?”
“Touch me.” It was a plea.
“Like this?” he asked, trailing his fingers up the backs of her legs.
“More.”
Stepping back around her, he ghosted fingers between her thighs. “Like this?” he asked again.
“Stop playing, Jase.”
“Oh, but you’re my favorite game, Corey.” He walked his fingers along the trim of her lacey thong, teasing her even more. Her heart had barely calmed down from her sprint, and being upside down didn’t help. She could hear it thumping wildly in her chest, her head starting to feel heavy from the pressure. Jason knew how to work her up with the slightest of touches, the anticipation like a minefield. “Quiet now. I know you can be a good girl, right?”
She nodded her head in confirmation, and watched as the quirk in his lips grew until he was baring his teeth with his smile.
“Tell me.”
“I can be a good girl.” she said, her already flushed cheeks heating to a burn.
“I know, baby. You’re so good. Now, not another word from you.” He crooked his fingers under the lace and ripped her thong off. He pressed both hands between her legs and pulled them apart from each other, making space to latch his mouth onto her lips. She couldn’t contain the moan he elicited. Didn’t want to.
His tongue stole her breath. With every lick, the air caught in her chest as the sounds she made obstructed her breathing. He lapped at her centre, circling her clit, and the blood continued to gather in her head, leaving her lightheaded and writhing from the pure ecstasy of his hot mouth and the rough scrape of his taste buds over her throbbing nerves. He forced his tongue onto her with more pressure, building her up, his spit mixing with her wetness. The sloppy noises of him eating her out echoed through the dense forest. Jason’s satisfied groans reverberated into her, and her mouth hung open with her own moans, her eyes rolling back into her head, vision going spotty.
She gripped onto the back of his legs, digging her fingers into the taut muscles, a lifeline. Her orgasm was cresting, the heat of it already burning through her blood, a wash of electricity on the tipping point of pure ecstasy.
Jason pulled his mouth from her just as she was about to come. She bit down on the whimper of protest. “I know you want to come from this. But not yet, sweetheart. I know you can hold off a little longer.” He knelt down so their faces were level with each other. He cupped her behind her slack, hanging head. “Taste how good you are, baby.”
She flicked her tongue out and licked his lips before he swallowed her mouth in a kiss, pressing his tongue against hers. He pulled away, a spider silk of spit webbing between their mouths.
Jason stood back up and she caught site of Kayden, leaning against a tree, belt unbuckled and pants tugged down. He was gripping his thick cock in his hand, and in the green glow of her goggles she could see the moisture of his pre-cum as he lathered himself in it, using it as lube.
She moaned at the sight of it.
“Fuck. That’s my favorite sound.” Kayden’s hand stuttered and his head fell back.
His voice tickled her skin, her nerve endings frayed from her denied orgasm.
“So perfect, sweetheart. Let me make you come just how you like it.” Jason was back between her legs, his tongue refueling her pleasure. Then he pressed two fingers into her, and she cried out with the pressure. He fucked her with his fingers, the drag of them entering her over and over, rocking her right back to the precipice. She could see Kayden stroking himself in time with Jason’s pace, watching with so much heat in his eyes that she was surprised the whole forest hadn’t gone up in flames.
“You’re going to come all over my fingers now, baby.”
She did. Shaking where she hung, her body was wracked by pleasure rippling through her limbs. Jason slowed his fingers, but didn’t stop their oscillation as she clenched around them, directing her through her orgasm. His thumb kept circling her in big, languid strokes. She shuddered at every pass he made over her clit.
He didn’t stop, a savage smile on his face as she jumped at the pressure, overstimulated. His cock fought against the seams of his pants, needing his own release.
“Jason, please. It’s too much.”
“You can handle it.”
“No, turn me right side up and fuck me. Please ,” she whined.
“I told you we’d have you begging in less than an hour. Finish Kayden off and we’ll fuck you.”
Still gripping his cock, Kayden made his way to her, looking feral in the grainy green of the night vision goggles with the reflective shine of his own lenses.
“Let me feed you my cock.” He tapped his tip to her lips, and she opened her mouth immediately, sucking him down. She felt his nose at her pussy and the pull of air as he breathed her in. “You’re exquisite, baby.”
Then he fucked her face, hard and unrelenting as he always was, hitting the back of her throat so she gagged and constricted around him. He bit into her thigh, breaking skin, and she screamed around his cock with the painful pleasure of it. He gripped her flesh with his jaw, holding onto her as his hips pistoned. She felt just as wild as he was, taking everything he gave her .
His length pulsed in her mouth, swelling impossibly thicker with his looming orgasm. He drew his teeth from her skin and yanked his cock out, gripping it hard at its base as he growled through his release, painting her face with hot ribbons of his cum.
“Look at you, Corey. You’re fucking perfect. Absolutely fucking stunning, wearing my cum like makeup.” Still gripping himself in one hand, he reached out with deft fingers, smearing his seed along her lips. She groaned and licked the salty stickiness from her mouth. He coated his fingers in more of his cum and swiped them over her throbbing pussy. “I don’t want to waste any of that. It’s all for you. It’s yours. Everything I have is fucking yours.”
A sudden lurch towards the ground had her gasping. Then another rope slithered around her waist. Jason was at her back, working the rope in quick, but no doubt intricate patterns, running it under her armpits. They hoisted her up so she was suspended horizontal at hip height. Corey’s vision swam with the reversal of blood flow, the pressure leaking out of her brain and leaving her flying. She had no real sense of where she was in space. But gravity did exist, and she felt her release running down her legs.
Jason had his knife out again, sawing through the rope binding her ankles. Before her legs could drop like dead weight, he tied each one to the rope holding her body up. He pushed her knee so she swung in a circle, slowly turning to face Jase, leaving herself bare to Kayden who was on her other side.
Kayden knelt down, two fingers parting her swollen lips. “Oh, you’re dripping, baby.” Then his tongue was on her, slow, relaxed sweeps, working her up once again.
She moaned, struggling to keep her head up. “Oh god. Oh my fucking god! ”
Breaking his rhythm, Kayden chided, “What god are you calling out for, Little Fox? ”
Jason knelt before her, lifting her drooping head, and their eyes locked on each other. “You are the god.” His breath was hot on her damp skin.
He moved his hand, and her head dropped like stone in water.
Kayden’s mouth was back on her, and she was already riding the wave of another orgasm. Somewhere in her periphery, she heard the clank of Jason’s belt buckle, the rough metal of his zipper undoing.
“Open up, sweetheart.” Jason’s thrusts sent her swinging back into Kayden, Kayden’s face burying deeper between her legs. She was shaking, almost convulsing with the pressure of it. It wasn’t difficult, to surrender to each other completely like this. It was just the three of them. Nothing else mattered. She was ready to break, to fracture completely.
“You know I can make you come so fucking fast, baby,” Kayden groaned against her. “Try to stop yourself from coming and see that you can’t. Because this pussy?” He drove two fingers into her, shocking a scream out of her that had nowhere to go but around Jason’s cock. “It’s fucking ours. We can do whatever we want to this beautiful pussy. Tell me, who owns your pussy, baby?”
He was manic, his filthy words dug out from the very roots of the earth itself. He thrust into her again at the same time as Jason, and she was speared from both ends, a muffled cry of ecstasy vibrating Jason’s dick. There were tears streaming down her face from the unrelenting euphoria of it all.
Kayden smacked her ass hard. “Say it, baby.”
Jason dragged himself out from her mouth and she gasped down enough air to scream out, “You, Kayden! It’s you!”
“Who else?”
“Jase.” It was a sob. “I’m yours. Both of you. Completely.”
“That’s right, sweetheart. And we’re yours.”
“Now come for us.”
In loud, gasping moans reaching out from her very core, electricity running through every cell of her body, she felt her face and teeth vibrating with the onslaught of pleasure. Her mouth was wide open as she screamed, and Jason took the opportunity to press himself back in. If she could swallow him down, she would. She ran her tongue along the underside of him in erratic strokes.
Without warning, Kayden pressed himself into her, and she was once again speared by both her men. Two men that had known a world of pain, yet had capacity to administer ungodly pleasure. It was rapture between the two of them. Salvation. They were holding her together, each of them thrusting in tandem, so deep she felt it in her very soul, their connection, their love. Their utter devotion to her.
Kayden wrapped her long braid in his palm and pulled, gripping her thigh with his other hand as he kept thrusting into her. Jason hadn’t slowed either, but she could feel they were close, both impossibly harder, thicker, pulsing with their need for her.
They came together, her name on their lips, filling her up.
And in their prayers for her, she came again too. Maybe I am a god after all , she thought, just before she blacked out.
She felt catatonic, her limp body wrapped up in two strong arms. She was sitting in his lap while he murmured words she couldn’t quite make out. One of them was packing the ropes back into a bag. He saw her watching him. He finished what he was doing and came to crouch beside where his brother was leaning against a tree.
“You did so well, sweetheart.” He tucked wild strands of hair behind her ear.
A giggle escaped from her throat at the praise, almost as if she was high.
“That’s our girl.” Kayden pressed his mouth to the crook of her neck and stood up, her body limp enough to be carried easily. He walked her through the woods and back to the parking lot at the trail head, holding her like he’d held Jason in the hallways of hell, like a soldier tasked with delivering the most precious of goods. And finally, she could bask in the glow of the stars above her, so bright in the pitch black sky.
When they got to the clearing, Jason slid open the door for their new converted Sprinter van. “We still have a few days of driving to get to Archie’s compound. We should sleep here for the night.”
Tucking into bed, Corey settled with the warmth of her men, the moment a comforting prelude to the chaotic journey that awaited them.