I wake Rowan up for her shift at 3 AM then crash in bed with Lucy, pulling her to me so I can snuggle, my face in her hair. She sleeps on, her whole body relaxed, and pulls me easily to sleep, too.
The sun is in my eyes when I wake up. I reach for Lucy but there's just my brother's quilt. I lie there. For the first time in my life I do not want to get up. I don't care if my mother comes in and burns me with a cigarette in order to get me out of bed. I don't care if Rowan's waiting to discuss whatever the fuck she wants me to do. I don't care if I die in bed and scare the shit out of her kids. I sigh and wriggle further under the quilt, turn away from the sunlight, and close my eyes again.
Not much later, the door opens. I keep my eyes closed. I'm ashamed that I'm acting like a six-year old.
"Rebecca," I hear Lucy's voice. Eyes still closed, I reach out a hand. She takes it and I adjust my grip so I'm holding her wrist. I tug on it. The bed bounces a little as she sits on it, her hip against my side.
"Re-"
"Quiet," I whisper, "Don't say anything."
She's quiet. I listen to her breathing and feel her pulse under my fingers. I pull on her wrist again until I have her torso draped over mine. I turn slightly to free my other hand so I can grope her breasts. I gently run my hand back and forth, over her shirt, exciting both her nipples. I feel them harden under my touch.
"Okay," I say, "Now you can talk." I start pinching her nipples through her shirt. I like the way they feel, hard and squishy at the same time. Small but not too small. The fabric adds something to the tactile experience. I find myself thinking I should get her nipples pierced.
"Rowan's up and so are the girls. Breakfast is ready." She sucks in a breath as I pinch one nipple particularly hard, "And she told me to tell you that someone named Reynolds," she gasps again, "called, looking for you, and she said you weren't here but she doesn't know if they'll recognize your car out front. . . oh my God, Rebecca. . ." her voice trails off into a moan.
For a moment or two I'm content with pinching and massaging her breasts and nipples to dissolve her words into moans and shifting flesh. It's enough pleasure to replace the blank despair in my head.
Up, I tell myself, get up. If you can off all those men who cared about their women, you can fucking get up and kill a few more men, men who don't care about anyone. What's the difference between Ray's money and Rowan's Loop?
I push Lucy down, off my torso and onto my lap so I can sit up. My thin cotton tank top is rouched up, my thin cotton undies have slid down. I feel so completely in disarray. I look at Lucy, who looks up at me, at my mouth, and I want, more desperately than ever, I want to liberate her, even from myself. I want her to look into my eyes and choose to submit.
"Lucy," I whisper, "If I can figure out how to undo Ray's mind control --" I stop when I see her wince. She brings her arms and hands in, as if I'd slapped her.
"No," Lucy says. She never says no. I'm looking at her eyes. They are looking at something far away, or maybe looking inwards, at something that really, truly hurts her. I wait a moment, hoping she'll speak, but she doesn't.
"It's okay," I say, "You're still my brainwashed toy." The hurt look goes away. Her body relaxes. She's with me again.
"Yes," she sighs, "Knowing that makes me a happy, melted puddle of mind-controlled sex slave."
She's being honest. I am instantly, overwhelmingly, horny. I grasp her by the shoulders and pull her up from my lap for a long, deep, and hungry kiss. Her hip is next to mine. She supports herself with one hand on the bed and the other on my shoulder. I crush her mouth against mine. I want to crush all of her against myself.
Her hand slides down to my breast, cups it gently, like a fragile gift, a baby bird. She moans into the kisses, opens her lips like a flower to my tongue.
We're still kissing passionately when the bedroom door opens and Rowan says, "Come to the kitchen and eat." She leaves the door open.
Lucy doesn't respond, and that doesn't surprise me; her conditioning makes her focus on the person dominating her to the exclusion of everyone else. I'm the one who has to stop the kissing, and I don't want to, but The Loop has me conditioned to do whatever Rowan tells me to do. I'm annoyed, now, but no longer feeling that blank and passive helplessness.
I gently push Lucy away, breaking the kiss. She arches one lovely eyebrow at me.
"I could do that all day," I say, "Thank you." And I mean it.
She smiles at me, that brilliant, bright smile with the slight, teasing quirk at one corner. I reach around to tug on her braid. I notice she's had time this morning to brush and re-plait her hair.
She notices me noticing, says, "Rowan had me take the third shift so you could sleep. Plenty of time to brush my hair and tidy myself up a bit."
"I prefer you disheveled, particularly in that 'I've just been fucked by my dominating girlfriend' way," I say, scootching away from her and off the bed on the other side. I reach for my suitcase, unzip it, and rifle through it for an outfit: fresh undies and tank top, jeans, socks, and a flannel shirt. Once dressed, I tuck Ben's handgun in the waist of my jeans. I look at Lucy in time to see she's eying my piece.
"Like what you see?" I ask. For once, she blushes.
"I do," she half-whispers.
I walk around the bed to the side she's sitting on. I grab her by her hair and pull her face toward me and down a little bit, burying her nose in my crotch.
"The sight of a gun turns you on?" I ask. She whimpers and nods enthusiastically against me. I grind my mons against her face before pulling her head back.
"The next moment we have alone together," I say, looking down into her face, her quickly reddening nose, "I'm fucking you with it." She gives a little gasp, half fear, half excitement. My clit, which had been getting needier and needier, jumps at her reaction.
I pull her up by her hair and out the door before finally letting go of her. She follows me down the hall to the kitchen. I want to make her kneel at my feet. I want to feed her from my plate. I want to make her beg for each morsel. Instead, we each sit at the table like normal people, each with our own plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast.
Rowan and her daughters are already eating, are nearly done.
Without preamble, Rowan says, "Ben and I agree that it's time to be as proactive with Renolds and his setup as we were with Ray's."
"And how are you going to trick Reynolds into The Loop," I ask.
Rowan shakes her head, says, "Different opportunity, different approach. I think we send you both in, you and Lucy. I apologize to Reynolds for overreacting yesterday, I tell him I've still got you under control, sorry for your behavior towards his men, blah, blah, blah, you get in there and you see what, if anything, he's doing to the honey pots we've already rescued. You report back -- photos, recordings, whatever you can get your hands on -- and we take that evidence to our managers. With Ray we could roll with your idea, with Reynolds we need to play a bit closer to the rules."
"Who's rules?" I ask.
"FBI and CIA," Rowan says.
"FBI rules, CIA drools," chants her youngest, Tilda. Her older sister, Reba, elbows her, gives her a look. Tilda looks around at the adults, gauging our reactions, then sticks her tongue out at Reba.
Rowan ignores them and says, "Ben and I were assigned to this case years ago, before Ben even started working for Ray. We're FBI."
"So Ben's been paid by the FBI to get paid by Ray for doing illegal accounting," I say.
Rowan nods, says, "Ben's creative accounting ideas have made it easier to infiltrate and break up everything from drug cartels to slavery rings."
"But, why so long at Ray's?" I ask, "Three years of smuggling out honey pots, just to have them replaced by newly kidnapped and mind-fucked women? Why not just get Ray on money laundering or something?"
"Because it's bigger than Ray," Rowan says, "You really think Ray was smart enough to invent the reprogramming system?"
I give a half-nod. Ray's almost a genius. Almost. I had myself convinced he'd come up with the system, himself.
"If not him, then who?"
"That's what we were trying to figure out. Now that you got him in The Loop, Ben's been taking advantage of that to figure out where he got that tech from. And now we know."
"We do?" I ask.
"Reynolds," she says.
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