Chapter 14 #3
Marrow doesn’t loosen his hold, he pivots.
He threads between us like a priest blessing a sacrament, spinning me before his lips are reclaiming mine, hands moving with a reverent cruelty.
His palm sweeps the small of my back and then slides lower, anchoring me to the three of them as if I’m the axis they spin around.
“Beloved,” he murmurs against my mouth, “be still and let us adore you.”
Adore is a funny word when your teeth are scraping and your breath is messy.
The three of them press in: Bonehead’s hips pinning me from behind, Marrow’s fingers moulding me like clay, Skully’s nails scoring promises into the curve of my ribs.
Corn stalks crackle and scatter like applause.
The fog clings, voyeuristic, swallowing the rest of the maze in a wet, jealous hiss.
I arch back, offering the hollow of my throat in submission, because if I’m going down I want the descent to be beautiful and messy and loud.
Bonehead growls and answers with more teeth at my shoulder.
Skully laughs against my skin and slides a hand into my hair to steady me, not because I need it but because he can.
Marrow’s thumb skims my pulse, slow and certain, and somehow that steadies the storm instead of stopping it—makes my knees tremble with the delicious knowledge that someone can map me.
We’re a tangle—denim, devotion, velvet, and teeth—corn crackling under our boots, fog swallowing our breath, when a flashlight slices the mist like an accusatory finger. A voice cuts after it, clipped and exhausted and wearing a name tag: “Hey! Hey! Hey—what is going on over there?”
A pair of staffers slam into the clearing like hall monitors with a vengeance.
One’s got a clipboard the size of a shield; the other brandishes a walkie that squeals like a dying rat.
Behind them, a group of costumed actors peer around a stalk, eyes huge, horror turning quickly into performance-evaluated confusion and amusement.
Bonehead looks like he wants to swallow the flashlight. Skully straightens like the spotlight just found him and the director yelled action. Marrow’s mouth snaps shut like a book. All three move in front of me as if to shield me from the gathering group.
The woman with the clipboard narrows her eyes at us.
“This is a family attraction,” she says with the weary patience of someone who just found a raccoon in the juice machine.
“No public displays of—of—of…whatever this is. We have a code of conduct. You can’t-” She gestures at our pressed bodies and the way the corn has been re-arranged like the aftermath of a polite tornado.
“You can’t be in here. You’re scaring the other guests.
And the actors. And the insurance company. ”
I peer around my sexy shield of lined up men and grin. “We were writing a scene,” I tell her. “Method. Immersive. Very on-brand.” I tilt my head at Bonehead, who’s still trying to inch further in front of me. “He’s the leading man.”
The clipboard woman does not smile. “Ma’am, sirs—I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” She points at the stamp on my wrist like it’s Exhibit A.
Skully bounces on his toes, already charming. “We’re just…passionate,” he says, voice syrup. He winks at the nearest actor to sell it—because of course he winks—and the actor’s mouth gapes, unsure whether to laugh or call security.
Bonehead growls something that sounds suspiciously like, “She kissed a clown,” and the staffer’s expression goes through a full loop of outrage, confusion, and, finally, scheduling logistics.
Marrow steps forward, hands up like he’s offering mediation in a war no one anticipated. “We apologize for our…” He searches for a single word that can wrap our mess in velvet. “Enthusiasm.” He pronounces it like it’s art, not apology.
The clipboard woman blinks. “You’re adults,” she says. “You’re damaging corn. That clown-” she jerks a thumb toward the receding rustle where the poor actor is stealing back onto the path “-is traumatized. I’m calling security.”
I bite my lip to stop laughing. “Please don’t,” I say, because I can’t help myself. “They’ll make us do a survey. I don’t want to rate this experience while still breathless.”
Behind the woman, one of the actors in a scarecrow costume gapes, then copies my grin like I invented a contagious disease.
The walkie on the staffer’s shoulder crackles. “Yeah, we have a wild group in Sector Three—possible adult shenanigans-” Someone else chimes in: “Bring the broom.”
Skully slings an arm around my waist, suddenly contrite. “We’ll go,” he says smoothly. “We were only having fun.” He gives the clipboard woman a smile that probably emptied a small savings account somewhere.
Bonehead lets out a big, theatrical sigh that sounds like it costs him effort. Marrow bows his head like he’s offering the staffer a blessing and then, because he can’t help being a poet in a crisis, whispers, “Forgive our sins; we are easily possessed.”
A security guy—tall, tired, not even remotely amused—arrives, and he’s less interested in theology than in rules.
He clucks his tongue at our scene, eyes sliding over the broken stalks, the terrified clown, the rest of the gathered actors, and finally, to me, whose eyeliner is definitely performing above code.
“All right,” he says, very official-like.
“You four need to leave. Now. And please—no more touching the actors. They don’t sign up for this. ”
I pout theatrically. “But we were just about to get to the best part.”
He does not find us charming. He starts to read our ejection like a script. “Please collect your things, exit this way, no refunds for emotional trauma inflicted on performers. You are hereby banned from the corn maze for the remainder of the season.”
Skully leans in, whispers something about “bribing with cider,” and the security officer’s eyebrow does a small, suspicious lift.
We are shepherded, with the dignity of criminals in a children’s play, out of the maze. Staffers wrap a rope around a pole like some charming sheriff; one of the actors offers a trembling curtsey—part disgust, part admiration.
I link my arm through Skully and Marrow’s, triumphant. “See?” I tell them, breathless and delighted. “Even the staff can’t resist us.”
And as we get to the car—hands finding hands, shoulders bumping, lips stealing one another like pickpockets—my whispering thought is loud and stubborn: they’ll chase me all night. They’ll chase me into the dark. They’ll chase me until they can’t.
But it’s still the can’t that worries me.