Unnatural Calamities (9 page)

She had been as selfish as Penny or Zack. Poor Rachel. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He smiled. “That’s probably the tenth time you’ve apologized, you silly woman. Cut it out, please. And hold still. No, wait a sec.”

He leaned toward her and kissed her. She tasted the brief delicate caress of his tongue.

“Okay, good. Thanks. Now hold still,” he muttered.

A considerate man, a nice person. And she wanted him as badly as she’d ever wanted any man. No, she couldn’t remember being quite so boggled by any other case of lust. She sighed and tried to keep her hand as still as possible.

Zack groaned and moved on the bed.

“Damn,” Toph whispered. He reached over and dug his hand into her pants pocket, shoving the file and scissors into Janey’s front pocket. He breathed in her ear. “Glad your pockets are deeper.”

He settled next to her.

Rustling and more groans came from the bed. How long had Zack slept? Janey guessed an hour and a half.

“Janey? I’m horny.” Zack sounded like Rachel when she whined about being thirsty in the middle of the night.

Ugh.

“Sorry,” she said. “I am most definitely not interested.”

He slipped out of bed and walked over to them. Buck naked. Eww.

Janey quickly shut her eyes.

“Janey. I’ll let you go,” he coaxed in a whisper.

“No, Zack.” A frisson of disgust and fear skittered down her spine. Was she this much of animal? What was it with all of the sex, anyway? Had she and Toph charged the air somehow?

Then she remembered what Penny once said. If Zack went a few days without sex, he worried he’d lose his touch. And apparently, though Zack did not have a lot of God-given talents, he was pretty good in bed, or so Penny had assured her. Of course, at that time, Penny’s idea of fun was getting so blitzed on drugs she drooled, so Janey tended to discount Penny’s opinions of what constituted a good time.

“A blow job?” Zack suggested hopefully.

Next to her ear, Toph muttered an impressive string of obscenities. She grabbed the hand attached to hers and gave it a squeeze.

“Zack. No.” She drew in a breath and attempted an imitation of Toph’s calm authoritative tone. “And I would appreciate it if you would put some clothes on.”

“I hate cold women,” he grumbled, and slouched into the bathroom. Janey wondered if he was going to discreetly take care of his own problem, when he came back out again almost immediately, dressed only in jeans.

“Hey, Dunham.” He nudged Toph with his bare foot. “My shirt stinks. Take yours off.”

Toph slowly sat up. “Unlock me,” he growled.

Zack squatted down. With one hand, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the cuff keys which he tossed to Toph. The other hand held the gun steady, aimed at Janey.

Toph’s plain white dress shirt was too long and too broad for Zack. Janey glanced over at Toph. He didn’t look like a Cro-Magnon but his shoulders were even broader than Zack’s. He had a body like the boys on the swim team. Long and lean, muscled across the chest and well-defined shoulders. A little less skinny than some of those whippet teenaged swimmers. The dark hair swirled on his chest and tapered to a line down to his stomach.

God help her, she was back to thinking about sex again. Even with the stellar example of horny Zack, she couldn’t stop herself. She had spent several reasonably happy years without sex, and the same day her life was turned upside-down, her sex drive turned itself back on at full volume. So loud, it thudded through her body and she couldn’t hear anything else.

Zack ordered Toph to lock himself to Janey again.

“I’m gonna check out the bar next door. I’ll be back soon,” he said.

He turned up the television. “Don’t bother making noise. There ain’t anyone who’ll hear you. Okay, kiddies? It’s late so don’t go out or anything.”

He guffawed and rubbed his fingers over several-days-old stubble. Then he picked up the gun and, whistling, strutted out of the room. He slammed the door hard.

They listened to his footsteps recede then spent a few useless moments shouting for help. The only answer was the clack and thud of the ice machine.

“Do you suppose he went to get a beer?” Toph said. He ran his free hand wearily over his face.

“No, probably a woman. Zack has this amazing ability to pick up women.”

“A prostitute?”

“No. He never pays, or so Penny told me. Scratch the end of my nose for me, will you?”

Toph gently rubbed her nose. “I wonder how long it’ll take him?”

“No idea.” She wiggled her hand and the handcuff rattled. “Do you want to keep working on the cuffs?”

“Yeah. I can’t see the one under the TV.” He patted his chest. “Let’s put our hands up here.”

He settled back down next to her. They lay in silence for a while, with only the rattle and scrap of Toph’s work on her handcuff. The cuff bit into the bottom of her palm and the rug was scratchy on her back where her shirt had hiked up. He cursed and said, “I can’t believe that damn sex shop sold real cop handcuffs. There ought to be a law.”

Janey shuffled closer to him and pushed her head onto his chest, near his armpit. He stopped messing with the handcuff and lay still as she burrowed around his warm skin, breathing him in, getting comfortable. He didn’t appear to mind.

The crisp hair grazed her cheek as she settled on his chest, and she sniffed the slight tang of his sweat and his scent of clean chlorine and lemon. She swallowed her longing to kiss the skin on which she lay. The best idea was to talk.

“I’m tired of being afraid of that jerk,” she said at last. “I want to be safe. Where do you feel safest?”

He gave a little laugh and the vibration rumbled through his chest and the side of her head. She didn’t think he’d answer, but after a long while he said, “Water. I like swimming.”

That explained the scent of chlorine. “Is that why Cynthia is a swimmer?”

“Probably, but she’ll be better than me. Diving—scuba diving—is my idea of fun. Where do you feel safest?”

She didn’t say “right here”, but gave in to the urge to plant a light kiss on his throat.

At her soft kiss, he swallowed hard and turned toward her to rub his face in her hair. As if in silent agreement, neither of them groped toward a real kiss, but she knew he wanted her as much as she did him. Or almost as much.

She sighed. “My old apartment, the one I gave up when Penny went to prison, had a flat roof, and sometimes I’d go up there and lie on my back looking up at the sky, usually at night. And I feel safe in a kitchen.”

She closed her eyes and drifted into her soothing image of cooking a meal for friends. “My favorite time when I’m cooking is when everything is coming together and I know it will all be perfect.”

“You’ve made me hungry, you wretch,” he murmured. And laughed again, a deep, dirty laugh.

She gave a wiggle of pleasure. “Ah. When we get out of here, I will make you dinner. Deal?”

“You’re on. And I’ll take you diving.”

Whoa. Now that prospect made her seriously squirm.

When Zack returned fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t alone.

Toph thrust the tools into Janey’s pocket as Zack called out to the woman who giggled in the hall. “Just a second, sweet thang. Give me three minutes. Gotta do some straightening. Just wait out there.”

Janey heard the woman’s giggle even as he locked the door behind him. He charged over to them, and with a trembling hand, unlocked Janey’s cuff on the television cabinet.

He pulled out the gun and pointed it to the bathroom. When Janey didn’t move to the bathroom quickly, he gave her an impatient shove.

“You.” He pointed the gun at Toph. “Get in the tub.”

“Sit,” he ordered Janey. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, her back to the wall. “Yeah, this’ll work.” He cuffed her to the handicap rail next to the tub.

“Good. This is more comfortable,” remarked Janey.

Zack snarled like a badly trained dog. “Listen to me. You will now shut the hell up. If you make a single peep while I’m entertaining company, I will make you very sorry.” He ran the gun up and down Janey’s body.

Toph growled again. His free hand balled into a fist.

Janey spoke up before the atmosphere—or the gun—exploded. “Good gosh, Zack, we’ll be quiet. You’re being very scary.” He was too.

“Don’t you forget it.” Zack nodded and his handsome face looked amiable. Apparently he appreciated being called scary. Half a second later, he returned with the pillows and covers. He searched his pockets and pulled out four packets of peanuts.

“Here’s dinner. Sleep well,” he said. He turned off the lights and slammed the bathroom door.

Chapter Eight

In the dark, towels dropped softly on her head. Toph was working his hands along the rack above the tub.

“Here,” he whispered. He thrust a small towel, no, a face cloth, into her fingers. “Tuck it into the handcuffs.”

Janey groaned with relief. “If I ever buy handcuffs, I’m going for the deluxe, padded model,” she whispered.

The soft rumble of his laughter flowed over her. “You plan on buying handcuffs after living through this? You
are
a sick cookie.”

The towels muffled the sound of their efforts to free themselves. After a futile few minutes, they gave up on yanking, pulling and tugging on her handcuff attached to the handicap pole.

“It’s starting to hurt my, um, wound,” Janey whispered.

“Okay, that’s out. We already managed to get your poor arm winged by a bullet. Don’t need to break it too,” Toph murmured.

“Maybe this’ll help?” He pushed a pillow under her arm, so the weight of it didn’t dangle from the pole.

“Much better.”

“We might as well try to get some sleep. Figure out how to thwart the rocket scientist tomorrow.” Using the pillows and the comforter, he created something like a nest in the bathtub.

They settled, wedged together. He lay nearly on his back. She lay on her side facing him, her arm attached to the handicap bar slightly above their heads. The solid warm mass of Toph pressing her from head to knees took her mind off the slight discomfort of the cuff’s pressure.

“Hey, as long as you don’t breathe too hard, this is comfortable. For me, anyway,” Janey whispered into his shoulder. “Is this position okay for you?”

He mumbled something under his breath that even she, jammed against him, couldn’t make out.

In the bedroom, the rustling and giggling ended. The moaning began. Within a few minutes came thumping and thudding. And then the woman’s cries.

“Yeah, baby! Give it to me. Give it to me haard! Oh yes, oh yes! Give it to me!”

“I didn’t know people actually yelled stuff like that,” Janey whispered into the total darkness. “Other than in porn movies.”

Toph gave a soft, shaky laugh. “I’d offer you popcorn, but all I have are peanuts.” She heard the foil packet rustle as he tore it open with his teeth.

“There are some in my hand,” he whispered. “Can you find them?”

She nuzzled around the palm of his hand, eating by touch in the dark. She felt like some kind of animal as she licked the salt off his fingers and hard palm. When she heard his rasping inhalation, it set off an interesting ripple in her center. Very intriguing.

“Ooooo!” the mystery woman shrieked. “Yes, yes! You’re so BIG. Give it to me.”

“Noises, yeah, right.” Janey ignored her own body’s reaction and continued the color commentary. “But the dialog is so clichéd. Just plain insipid.” She did not add,
and Zack isn’t so big.
She didn’t want to sound as if she had given Zack’s genitalia much of an examination.

Toph didn’t say anything. His body had tensed and his breathing turned hard and shallow. Janey brushed her face against his hair and smelled the peanuts on his breath. She shifted a bit—her butt pressed up against the side of the tub was falling asleep. When she twisted to get more comfortable, Toph groaned and shuddered.

She realized he was completely turned on. Men. They were so very strange.

“Toph?”

“Hmmm?”

“You okay?”

He snorted, not bothering to stay quiet anymore. No point. The woman and Zack would not have noticed a freight train rumbling through the bedroom. “You mean other than the fact that I’ve been kidnapped and am being held for ransom by the stupidest man I’ve ever met?”

“Yeah, other than that.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the loud sound of their breath in the enclosed space and the woman in the bedroom, who was moaning. “Oh, yes, oh yes, oh yes!”

“I’m fine,” Toph whispered after a moment. “Absolutely fine.”

“Harder,” the woman shouted. “Harder, harder!”

Toph abruptly twisted and pushed himself up onto his elbow. Janey slipped all the way into the tub. He leaned over her, and his breath fanned her face. With his free hand he delicately stroked along her face in the dark. Then he pushed his fingers into her hair, sending her hair clip to the bottom of the tub with a soft thud. His long fingers held her head steady as he gave her a hard, very heated and peanut-flavored kiss.

Okay, Janey admitted to herself that men weren’t the only creatures she found mysterious. Almost at once her body flooded with need. She was fully wired for sound and clamoring again. She had never experienced such instantaneous arousal. Must be what life was like for the typical male. She was ready.

Now.

“You’re right. A bunch of clichés.” Toph’s whisper hitched with lust and an edge of amusement. “What would you be yelling? Any Gilbert and Sullivan fit the occasion?”

Janey groaned as his hand slipped under her shirt and he smoothed his palm over her breasts, one at a time, and rubbed her nipples with his thumb. She tried to duck down to press her face against the bare skin of his chest and torso. He wasn’t letting her, the tease.

Come on, Toph
, she silently urged.
Please. We might die.

She doubted Zack would kill them on purpose, but he was probably dumb enough to do it by accident. She did not want to die without having felt Toph everywhere possible in, on and around her body.

“Oh, please,” she whimpered.

“Oh, please, what?” Toph gasped as he lay on top of her, grinding against her. She lifted her hips, flung a leg over the edge of the tub to make room for him so he could push his erection against her exactly where she needed him.