The Murdered World 26

Frank did not sleep in the pitch-black room that was made for slumber. He tried not to think, so that rest could slip in and take him unawares, but it was hard not thinking. Painkillers, alcohol, they made it easy. He didn’t want to rob their little hospital of painkillers that might be needed, though—he never had, not when he wasn’t injured.

And alcohol… he didn’t want to get drunk so early, when things were still so unsettled. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing to the girls. He didn’t want them to think that he wasn’t in control.

Thoughts of Christina and her nudity recurred in his head, but so did the feel of Emma within his embrace, how easy it would be to move her lithe body, to use her… how satisfying it would be to watch her go to sleep after he knew he’d comforted her in the best way he knew how.

Pills, chocolate, retail therapy—it was all bullshit. Nothing changed a woman’s mood like being fucked by her man.

We all just have to feel needed, he thought to himself. But what do I need?

There was no more light outside the bunkroom than inside—shuddered, artificial moonlight spilling across the floor with the malicious thoughtlessness of a discarded toy. But Frank sensed the door opening.

He allowed himself no motion, pretending sleep, only canting his eyes down his supine body to see two silhouettes, flitting through the gentle haze of softened light to come inside. Straining his ears, he could hear their bare feet, almost feel the care with which they worked their bodies about in the dark, carefully shifting their weight to be as quiet as possible.

“Frank?” It was Christina’s voice as a cautious whisper. “Are you awake?”

His eyes were more used to the dark than theirs were, more trained to disregard the flutters of imagination and see what little the night let pass through it.

The light glanced off their bodies. It shone through Emma’s towel and Christina’s robe. It showed everything they were and all they had to give.

Frank reached down to the side of the bed and gripped the stock of his Colt Commando. It laid propped against the bedpost, muzzle down. It felt good to hold it in earnest. Like a last meal would taste—he might never eat again, but right now, his mouth was full.

He wouldn’t use it. He didn’t need it for two girls who, put together, weighted not half again what he did. But there was a charge to the possibility of racking a bullet into the chamber, of pointing it, of seeing a warm body through the iron sights—needing his permission to keep living.

It was anticipation only; he reminded himself that they weren’t criminals, weren’t scum. Even if they attacked him, he could defend himself without the gun. But if he didn’t want to—

Maybe this was how a smoker felt, after they put the cig in their mouth but before they lit it.

“Something I can help you ladies with?” Frank kept his voice even, but coming after their polite quietness, it sounded like thunder without lightning.

“We were just thinking,” Emma spoke, her voice still a little hushed, her words slurred. He could see a half-empty wine bottle dangling from one hand. “There’s no reason we should all sleep alone in this big creepy underground haunted house and shit—”

“Except that, since there are three of us, there’d be one left out.” Christina seemed a little less drunk, or better able to hold her liquor. She had plenty of places to hold it, he could see. “It could be pretty unbearable to be left out, for six whole weeks…”

“I can take it. You can have as many sleepovers as you like,” Frank deadpanned, only halfway able to see the humor in it—what they were suggesting was tempting enough that he had a hard time keeping his libido in check.

“C’mon, man, there isn’t much to do down here,” Emma said, lifting her bottle of wine, then lowering it—apparently thinking she’d had enough. “Only one thing worth doing, really.”

“And there’s no reason one of us should have to be lonely… and, and jealous… who’s still around to say it’s wrong? No one—except for us.”

Frank looked at Christina. He had read once that the perfect breast fit neatly into a champagne coupe. Emma’s might, but Christina’s would be better suited to a punch bowl. And she was still perfect.

The bathrobe hugged her body tightly, delicately, intangibly. It was hard to tell, when she wore a thing like that, whether she had on anything at all. In the dark, it seemed frail enough to disappear at any moment, like a wisp of webbing liable to be swept away—even by a wish, if it was fervent enough.

“We both want the same thing,” Emma added. She came closer. Her towel was slipping down her lithe body, but she didn’t bother to pull it up. “So that’s kinda like us being on the same side. Do you wanna be on the same side as us, Punisher man? All you have to do is want what we want…”

“If you only want one of us, we’ll understand—” Christina said.

“Hell, I won’t,” Emma hiccupped.

“But we’re both very grateful for what you’ve done for us…”

“Which of you did I kill Angel for?” Frank asked drolly. “Big sister or little sister?”

“Dammit, Frank!” He heard Christina’s foot stomp with a squelch on the unrelenting floor. “We just don’t want to be alone tonight? Can’t you understand that?”

“I understand,” Frank said. “But I don’t let myself want things I can’t have. You get into my bed, you’re mine.”

He saw Emma’s eyes glint, maybe better for the darkness. “If you can make me yours, I’m yours.”

Christina gave a tight nod. Perhaps not willing to say the words, but meaning them all the same.

Frank couldn’t say how strong with conviction would be come the morning. But he could be satisfied that it was firm enough for tonight.

“Strip,” he told them. “This isn’t a pajama party.”

Emma only had to twist her body a little and the towel fell away. She was sylphlike, with her mouthfuls of breasts like the sleek artfulness of a classic car, curving out from her body just the right amount. Not a pinch of wasted flesh, there or anywhere.

The decadent fullness of Christina was perhaps more seductive, but he could tell Emma would have more energy, perhaps more enthusiasm. She wouldn’t be one for slow lovemaking. She’d want to go and go and go until she either broke or was satisfied; seemed a coin-flip which it would be.

And Christina, fuller, more luxuriant. A little more timid in opening her robe and letting it come loose of her shoulders, but with even more to reveal. Bountiful breasts, an hourglass figure, skin pale enough to glow. Womanly hips that flared out from supple legs and a pinched waist. A coppery bristling of hair between thick thighs.

If Emma looked like she could match his passion, Christina’s abundant body looked like it could take it, all of it, receive his desire no matter how much of it there was to release. And Emma standing next to her, to take all that Christina couldn’t.

He wanted them like a drowning man would want air.

“Time for bed,” he said, and Emma let out a little giggle and Christina sharply breathed in and they both went on all fours at the foot of the bed.

Frank heard a glug of spillage before Emma raised the hand holding the bottle—“Whoopsie”—and she flopped onto the mattress trying to go on all fours down the length of the bed without turning the bottle horizontal. So Christina made it to him first and he felt her cool fingers on his chest as they found where the bedsheet started covering him. Then Christina pulled it down.

The warm blanket came away, leaving stagnant air, which quickly became the chilled, moist bodies that covered him better than any sheet ever could. Christina laid down against his side, all but spooning him, while Emma gave up on pulling herself any further up the bed and threw an arm around his waist. Her other hand shoved at his face, bearing the wine bottle.

“If we're going to share everything, let's share everything.”

Frank accepted it when she upended the mouth of the bottle against his lips. He gulped the wine down; didn't care how it tasted. He had better things to put in his mouth.

Christina flattened her voluptuous breasts, as much as they would flatten, against his ribs and kissed his collarbone from end to end. Emma set down the bottle—it leaned against the headboard—to purr her fingers up through Frank’s chest hair. One hand ended up kneading a broad shoulder while the other caressed his lips.

Frank sucked on her forefinger when it went into his wine-wet mouth. His body felt like a fire that they were trying to put out with the cold splashes of their bodies, but they only fed the flame—giving into his heat like masterful ice sculptures thrown into a furnace.

In some moment of familial telepathy, or maybe feminine solidarity, they both had the same thought. Two sets of hands embraced both his wrists and they pinned either arm to the headboard, holding his groping hands out of the way while they shimmied their bodies against his, kissing and mewling and massaging with their own sweaty, satiny flesh. Frank’s cock strained up from his crotch like the flames of a bonfire at its hottest.

One of them—Emma?—forked a leg over his midsection and rubbed her thigh against his towering prick. A sultry laugh electrified the darkness.

“That’s a lot to cuddle up to.” It was Emma’s smoky voice, surprisingly deep for such a slender woman.