DM and the Dirty 20s Ch 63-64

Hey folks! New story getting update, same situation - I'm currently on my writing retreat and working from a tablet and tethring to my phone, so this is another 'messy' post that will get Editing and file downloads in a cleaned up post when I return. This is the first 5.5k of 20k backlog for Dirty20s.

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Aka the project formerly known as Untitled D&D Group Story

Chapter 63

Rhia answered the door before I could get there, since I’d been cramming in the last few emails that I needed to send before I took the rest of the afternoon off for the Game. I could hear the surprise in their voices, finding their friend not only already here since they’d arrived early themselves, but also already in costume.

I was coming down the stairs when Elyse said, “Wait one flippin’ second, I know that look.”

“What look?” Rhia asked.

“That look in your eyes, and that stupid little grin!” Elyse cackled, her eyes darting to me as my head cleared the floor above and I could see them. “You got fucked.”

Tori snorted, grinning over at me as well and rolling her eyes as if to say, ‘These two have no tact.’

“OK, maybe I came over here early,” Rhia grinned, and then all three of them were laughing and hugging.

I still had a hard time wrapping my head around the relationship that had evolved between them on this. They hadn’t been all gung-ho to share a sexual partner before the Game had started; in fact, I’d heard them complain loudly during conversation topics about people they knew from college not following ‘girl code,’ both back during the year and during summer. Really, I knew way too much about the dating lives of several college kids I’d never met. But for some reason they were celebrating the fact that all three of them had fucked… me. Like it was a special club that Rhia had finally joined or something.

Tori broke away from the other two first as your feet hit the first floor, coming to you for the now-traditional welcome hug and kiss. Today she’d come wearing a cute little summer dress that looked better suited to a fancy brunch at some golf club than to hang out for nerd shit, but considering she was going to change into her costume as well I didn’t think much about it. Her kiss was insistent, slipping her tongue between my lips and then sucking on my lower lip for a moment before pulling away. The fact that she was being so forward was something I needed to brew on a little - was she feeling more forward today, or was she reacting to the news of Rhia’s sexual advancement in the group? With everything that had happend so far I didn’t see her suddenly getting a spat of jealousy, but it was something that I was going to need to keep an eye on just in case.

“You look gorgeous today, Tori,” I told her as our kiss slowly ended, my hands on her waist.

“I didn’t have a chance to change after work,” she grinned. “Thank you.”

Elyse was jumping up into my arms a moment later, full of energy, wrapping her arms around my shoulders as I was forced to catch her with my hands on her tight, plump little ass. She laughed into our kiss and pulled back, looking me in the eyes. “Do I look gorgeous today too?” she asked with a smirk.

“You look like trouble,” I snorted, giving her a firm peck. She was dressed in a tight grey vintage T-shirt of the 90s X-men cartoon and a pair of jean booty shorts that just barely stopped short of showing the bottom inch of her ass. “Hot, steaming trouble.”

“I’ll take it,” she grinned, pulling me in for another kiss with her hands in the hair on the back of my head.

“What a horny slut,” Rhia chuckled, giving Elyse’s ass a clap below my supporting hand, making Elyse start giggling all over again as she released her leg-lock on my waist.

I let her drop, and Elyse turned to face Rhia while also leaning back against me, wholly comfortable with the over-the-top amount of physical contact. “Says the girl who… I’m betting he fucking creampied you, didn’t he? Put a big load of jizz right up that little snatch of yours to satisfy your craving for his dick.”

That made Rhia blush a delightful pink. “Fuck off,” she laughed.

“Dirty, dirty Rhia,” Tori teased.

“Alright, you two,” you sighed, rolling your eyes at their antics. “We’ve got a lot going on with the game this week, how about you girls go get into character so we can get started?”

They headed off towards the back bathroom to get changed, which was kind of funny considering how much I’d seen them all naked. They really could have just changed in the game room, or right there in the front hall. But routines were important, and this had become part of their ‘getting into character’ routine.

Rhia, already wearing her faux chainmail, strappy sandals, headband and other little bits and bobs that she’d slowly been adding to Olivia’s character, grinned sheepishly at me. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?” she asked.

“You three talking about what we do sexually?” I guessed, and she nodded. “It’s weird, but it doesn’t bother me.”

“You don’t talk about the stuff you do at The Game with the others?”

“Not like that,” I chuckled. “Sometimes, sometimes, with your Mom when she’s over here for coffee, but not like that.”

“Well, maybe it’s a good thing we’re more open about it,” Rhia shrugged, grinning. Then she stepped forward and took my hands, placing them on her bare waist and then sliding them up under her ‘chainmail’ to her bare tits as I leaned down to kiss her. “Mmmmhmm,” she hummed into the kiss, taking in a deep breath through her nose as my fingers found her nipples and softly massaged them.

“That what you were looking for?” I asked quietly once the kiss ended, my hands still cupping and kneading her breasts under her shirt.

“Yeah,” she breathed heavily, eyes half drooped as she leaned a little heavier towards me. “But, fuck, I might have made a mistake. I’m getting horny all over again and I have no idea if it’s a Sexy game session or a Fighty game session.”

“Could be one,” I smirked, teasing my fingers back down from her tits to her bare waist. “Could be the other. Could be both.”

“Tease,” she chuckled, which made me laugh because that was my entire job as a dungeon master. Keep secrets, tease them out, then play out the repercussions.

- - - - -

Olivia of Parnasus, Paladin of Revelry, felt like there was more she should do. Something to bolster the spirits of the few defenders of the keep, the rally the will of the people. Revelry was about life, living it to the fullest in celebration.

Except, before morale could win the day, before there could be celebrations to spit in the face of destruction, there was work to be done.

“We’re running out of lumber, m’Lady,” one of the three men skilled in carpentry left in the Keep said, panting slightly from his jog up to the top of the walls where Olivia was examining their current project. There was no one hole, per se, that Alexander Houndsfang’s bandit army could pour through, but the Keep hadn’t seen proper maintenance in decades. Even before the Dark Lord rose in the West and the wars began, the most Duke Unger’s duchy had feared was from wild monsters and bandits that were hunted by both his own trained rangers and the lawmen of the King’s Highway. Armies had not set foot in the quiet wilds at the edge of the kingdom for untold generations.

Before the war, the duchy had sprouted dozens of small towns like Tremulous Crook, full of persistent settlers and hardy folk willing to carve out a life for themselves and their descendants from the wilds. Now the Keep could barely protect itself, let alone all those withering communities.

“Then we need to make more,” Olivia grimaced. “We need to shore up the Northern wall there, and there. See? And we haven’t even touched the Eastern gate yet.”

“We would need to fell trees, m’Lady, and the Duke ain’t given permission for that,” the carpenter said, wringing his wrists nervously. “And it would take time to age the wood so it won’t warp an’ such.”

“Will it warp in the next few days?”

“Mayhaps,” he winced.

“Will it warp enough to cause more problem than it will fix?” she asked more pointedly. “If we were aiming for a longer lasting solution, we’d be sending for masons, my friend, and you could focus on artisenry instead of raw work. These patches only need to hold through the battle. Once we turn away the Bandit army, the Princess will take a stronger hand in her father’s stead to look towards the future.”

“It- It can be done,” he said. “But the trees, they’re the Duke’s property, m’Lady. We must get permission to fell anything that has not fallen itself.”

Olivia sighed. She loved the people she’d met in the rural counties she’d traveled through since leaving Parnasus, the Greatest City in all the world, but some of their problems were so strange. 

“Then come, we’ll see the Princess,” Olivia gestured. “Let’s be about it quickly.”

- - - - -

“I like this not,” hissed the Priest to his two cohorts.

“Hush, Freddie,” the Lady of Benevolence whispered back. “It’s necessary.”

“It’s not necessary,” Father Fred said. “I’m the holy representative of Duty, I know what’s necessary.”

“Will you two hush?” Renee de l’Ombra grumbled. “I need to keep my concentration.” She went back to painting her runes on the ground in the middle of the chapel.

“It really is quite ingenious,” the Hedge Monk said to his companions after a long moment of silence. “If it works.”

“I’m sure it will work,” the Lady of Benevolence said.

“She’s a- a- a witch, Dorothy,” Father Fred hissed under his breath. “A heathen witch.”

“A heathen witch blessed by a Paladin of Revelry," Renee said. “One ordained in the Cathedrals of Parnasus.”

“She’s quite sure it should work,” the Lady of Benevolence said.

“Should being the key word there,” the Hedge Monk muttered. “Though I say again, it is ingenious if it does work. Tying the Keep walls magically to a brick of lead to ward off destructive magics? I’ve certainly never heard of it being done before.”

“That presumes this so-called ‘army’ even has arcanists among their ranks,” the Priest of Duty sighed. “And that they would be powerful enough to do anything at all to our walls, let alone while we sing a Prayer of Bastion.”

“If there are wounded, I cannot be part of your chorus,” the Hedge Monk reminded him.

“A duet then,” the Lady of Benevolence said, trying to offer encouragement.

“Mm,” the Priest grunted. Everyone knew that the more voices in a holy choir, the stronger the Prayer spell would be.

“Finished,” Renee sighed, standing up and shaking out her wrists. The brick of lead in the middle of the floor, melted down by the blacksmith earlier that day and poured into a simple mould to create a heavy block worthy of being set in the foundation of the keep walls and then etched with some basic transproperative shadow runes, was surrounded by concentric rings of runes, with directional flows outlined towards the cardinal directions along with in the direction of each of the keep towers and gates. They were drawn in thick black ink that would take a significant time to scour from the floors when this was all over.

They also had a distinctly… witchy aesthetic.

“What now, then, Shadow Witch?” the Priest demanded.

“Now I need to paint the matching runes in the precise locations of the inside of the walls,” Renee sighed, rolling her neck and all four of them hearing a pop. “And then we perform the ritual.”

“There’s a ritual?” the Hedge Monk asked.

“You said nothing of needing a ritual. The Lady Aileen said nothing of us needing to take part in a ritual, either,” the Priest complained.

“What sort of ritual, dear?” the Lady of Benevolence asked.

“It shouldn’t take long, just a binding ritual to connect the outer runes to the circle, and the circle to the lead anchor,” Renee said. “Then the castle walls should reflect the same magic-resistant properties as the block. We’ll just need a goat each. Oh, and baths waiting for us once we’re complete. These things tend to get messy.”

“What?” the Priest asked in horror.

“I’m joking,” Renee said, already grabbing her bucket of sludgy ink and heading for the door of the chapel. “We don’t need any goats. I will need you three to all be naked though, so go trim anything that you might worry is overgrown.”

Renee smirked to herself as she left the three stodgy holy folk behind, heading first of the main gate. The plant-summoning cunt serving Houndsfang was her main concern, outside of the werewolf himself, and if she could keep the sorceress from taking down the gates or walls with some super-plant spell, or even doing anything inside the ring of the walls, that would be a major win.

- - - - -

Fourteen guards, five local trappers who had been found and rallied, a curmudgeonly Castellan who was technically in charge of the martial defense of the duchy but was unlikely to be able to take more than one swing with the sword that was sagging from his belt (let alone climb the stairs up to the ramparts), four young stablehands and workers whose only training was wielding a pitchfork or shovel to move hay and shit, and Aaron Tide, Captain of the Guard.

“And Fergus,” Elyse quickly pointed out after I had outlined for Tori exactly how many fighting men and women Jade had available to her.

“You can’t forget Fergus,” Rhia agreed. “He’s the DM Insert, he’s got plot armour.”

I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes, making a show of starting to scratch out a note to myself.

“Nevermind, forget Fergus. Forget Fergus!” Rhia said quickly.

“Red alert, bail of Fergus! No one mentions Fergus!” Elyse laughed.

Jade sighed, trying to figure out how she could put together a half-decent defense with fifteen trained men, four untrained ones and an elderly man who had less years left in his life than teeth in his mouth - and he had a pretty gap-filled smile for a nobleman, even for an elder. Apparently he’d been a big Yarrowroot chewer in his younger days.

“Three men to a wall was always the plan I had in mind,” Aaron offered as they looked over their rough map of the keep and the surrounding environment. 

“That could work,” Jade said, scratching at the rabbit fur under her chin. “If we put two of your guards on each wall, and one of the lads, then we have you, me, Olivia and six trained fighters to respond where they attack or to hold the gate. We can split the trappers on the South and North towers, and Renee can station herself on the North overlooking the main gate.”

“You don’t want to use the East tower?” Aaron asked with a frown. “It’s the tallest of the three and has the best few of the eastern approach and the inner courtyard if they break through.”

“It’s also tall enough that they can’t try to climb up and get in that way,” Jade pointed out. “And it covers the approach, but it’s too tall for the archers to hit anyone up against the wall. With enough archers it would be fantastic, but with what we have I’d rather put the men where they might need to block a siege ladder or grapnel.”

Aaron’s face was pinched as he regarded the map again, moving around several of the painted stonesthey were using to denote the men they had to hand, trying out different numbers to see if he could spare even a single man for the East tower.

“We could put Castellan Garland up there,” Jade smirked. “He can hold the tower and send a runner if he spots anything.”

“We’ll need to carry him up there,” Aaron smirked back. “The old dog can barely make it up one flight of stairs in the keep at a time.”

“Better that than him leaning on his sword inthe courtyard, getting in the way or being pincushioned by arrows,” Jade said.

Aaron winced and nodded. “I’ll find someone to act as a runner. What about the gates? If we send to many of the reserve to the walls, we won’t be able to hold them if they start to push through.”

“If they start to push through, we’re all finished anyways. They have the numbers to swamp us, swarm us and then it’s better we die than be captured,” Jade grimaced. “I’ve seen the inside of that army, Aaron. If all the bands join up with Houndsfang, there aren’t many who I would consider ‘best of the lot’ to be captured by, and even then it won’t matter much. The only people in this keep I can see being safe are Lady Eileen, the cook, and maybe the Priest of Duty.”

“They would kill thee Lady of Benevolence?” Aaron asked, horrified.

“The Lady of Benevolence is to pretty to kill,” Jade grimaced.

“Oh,” he said, then darker. “Oh.”

“Filthy, feral mongrels,” Jade said. “Not all, but most. Too many.”

“We’ll hold,” Aaron said, gritting his teeth. “For every life in this Keep, for Lady Eileen, and for Valmar, we’ll hold.”

“Wait, who’s Valmar?” Elyse cut in when there was a quick pause between me and Tori.

“Right, maybe his name hasn’t come up,” I said, quickly checking my nots behind the DM screen. “Valmar, of the Schrader noble line, is Lady Eileen’s late husband. You girls would have gotten that information through some basic osmosis of being around the keep by this point.”

“Wait, Schrader as in, like, Victor Schrader?” Rhia asked.

“Mhmm,” I nodded, playing innocent.

“As in Victor Schrader’s younger brother?” Rhia asked, half standing out of her chair.

“Possibly,” I said, tutting softly.

“As in the guy who got murdered was the younger brother of my Dad’s character in The Game, who that whole party rescued from a thieve’s guild trying to ransom him?”

“... That might have happend,” I said.

“Jesus,” Rhia said. “Jesus, Shane! Dad’s gonna kill me if his younger brother is dead and I could have stopped it. Hell, he’ll be all like, ‘You didn’t evn get revenge, Rhiannon? You just let my brother’s murderer be a bandit lord?’ if we don’t fucking win this.”

Tori was watching this back and forth with her jaw dropped open, realising how interconnected my games were again. Elyse was snickering, trying to hide her smirk behind her hand.

“What’s so funny?” Rhia asked her, turning her ire off of me for a moment and toward her blonde friend.

“You had fictional lesbian sex with your Dad’s fictional younger brother’s widow,” Elyse laughed. “And I was the widow.”

Rhia froze, the information processing in her brain for a long moment, and Tori started to snicker as well. “Aw, hell,” Rhia said, throwing up her hands and glaring at me again. “I’m so fuckin’ screwed.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you girls didn’t even ask for the dead guy’s name,” I shrugged.

She flashed me the finger, narrowing her eyes at me like she was promising to get back at me for that one.

Then I remembered that she could easily do that by asking me the name of every NPC they came across, and something about their backstory. In character. Oldest trick in the book to annoy the DM. 

I made a note that I needed to refresh my big list of names and backstory factoids.

Chapter 64

With their plans in motion, the three adventurers reconvened to update each other and Lady Eileen on the state of the siege preparations.

“There’s more we could do,” Olivia said. “There’s so much more we could do, but we need to take a big swing, a big risk, if we’re going to go make all of this work.”

“What do you mean, Lady Olivia?” the widow asked. She’d taken to calling her erstwhile lover that while anyone else was around. “Is there something more we can even do?”

“Your father, Lady Eileen,” Renee said. “He set traps on his bedroom. Magical ones. They aren’t there to protect his bedsheets. There may be something useful to us now, something he left behind instead of taking it to war in the west.”

“I’ve told you this already,” Edmond, the elderly Dwarf chamberlain grumbled. “The Duchy treasury has been near empty for some time. It isn’t sitting up in that bedchamber.”

“The treasury wouldn’t help us now, anyway,” Olivia said. “Houndsfang can’t be bought off, and we don’t have the time to try to hire mercenaries or something. And mercenaris can be just as bad as bandits.”

“I mean that magic can be used to protect magic,” Renee said. “It may not be a weapon, I assume he would have brought that to the war, or left someone here who knew how to retrieve it. But it might still be something useful.”

“Might,” Jade winced. “Might be useful. It could be a deed for the keep, or the whole Duchy, and then what good is it if we lose the battle? It could be a dragon’s hoard of gold, and that wouldn’t do us much good unless we started melting it down to dump on anyone climbing the walls. Hell, it could be a dragon - that might be useful.”

“What do you suggest we do then, Jade?” Olivia asked.

“I’ve found out that one of the Trapper’s knows the route to the Forest Tomb,” Jade said.

“I’m sorry, the what?” Lady Eileen asked. Edmond groaned a deep, rumbly sound similar to rocks grinding together.

“The Forest Tomb,” Jade repeated herself, frowning a little. “The tomb of your- What was it? Great-Grand Uncle? The one who worked as a Mercenary in the southlands.”

“Why have I never heard of this?” Lady Eileen asked sharply, turning to Edmond.

He grumbled wordlessly for a moment, wringing his hands and grimacing, then let out a belagured sigh. “Your Father chose to take the same path the his father did, my Lady,” he said. “Which was to not inform any of his children of it, except in a letter that was to be handed to the new, rightful Duke or Duchess. The Tomb is dangerous, and he didn’t want his children seeking it out. One of his uncles was lost, trying to plumb it’s depths to reclaim the treasures his uncle had taken to the grave with him.”

“I’m losing track of who was who’s uncle,” Renee said.

“Hastor Unger was a mercenary captain, and the third son of the then-Duke Unger,” Edmond tried to clarify. “He returned after suffering an array of injuries, claiming that all the healers of the Southlands could do nothing for him any longer. He used his collected wealth to build himself Dragonshead Lodge as his personal home, about fifteen miles west up the King’s Highway and deep into the woods.”

“That’s the family hunting lodge now,” Lady Eileen cut in. “I always assumed Grandfather built it. I remember there was som issues with craftsmen working there when I was a child.”

“That was a renovation, my Lady,” Edmond said. “One that unleashed a specter that frightened away the entire workforce. Your father had to hire a band of ghost hunters to clean it out before the Lodge could be put to use again, and they never did figure out why there was an angry spirit showed up so suddenly.”

“Was that some previous adventure in The Game that I’m not remembering?” Rhia asked.

“Nope,” I said, dropping my ‘Old Dwarf Man’ accent. “But you can take it as a reminder that you’re not the only Adventuring Parties in this world. Well, you or my other game. There’s other bands of mercenaries, adventurers, crusaders, etcetera out there.”

“Alright, so Lady Eileens… Great-Great-Grandfather’s younger brother was this mercenary who is in this Forest Tomb?” Jade asked, getting the conversation back on track.

“Her Great-Great-Great Uncle, yes,” Edmond confirmed. “And Lady Eileen’s Grandfather’s older brother Winston, the second son at the time of his death, attempted to delve into the tomb to recover what he considered wealth that would replace the inheritance he would nevr receive since he wasn’t the heir. He intended to follow in his Great Uncle Hastor’s footsteps, and use the arms and armour on his journey south. Little did he know that the then-heir, Wallace Unger, would die three years later in a tragic hunting accident involving a three bears and an entire barrel of mead, which would have made Winston the heir, except that he had disappeared into the Forest Tomb and never resurfaced. That left Wingum, Lady Eileen’s Grandfather, as the heir, and he made sure to quash and discussion of the Forest Tomb so that his sons and daughters would not be struck by the same idea as Winston. Our current Duke Unger, upon learning the tragic history of his decesed uncles, decided to do the same.”

“How do you keep track of these people?” Olivia asked, shaking her had ruefully.

“Well, I knew them all,” Edmond shrugged. “It’s easier when you can put a face to the name. I’ve served the Duke.”

That had all four women in the room reeling for a moment, trying to place how old Edmond truly was.

“So you knew Hastor?” Renee asked.

“Well, I met him several times towards the end of his life, but I wouldn’t say I knew him,” Edmond said apologetically. “I was a young dwarf then, apprenticing under the last Chamberlain of the Duchy. I can tell you that the funeral was conducted in secret, only Hastor’s nephew, the then Duke Unger, in attendance. That would be Lady Eileen’s Great-”

“We can skip the fact that you have this Great-Great thing down, Shane,” Tori smirked.

“The funeral was conducted by several clergy who traveled from afar,” Edmond said after clearing his throat. “I was always curious they knew to begin their journeys before he was dead, but I wasn’t in the position to ask at the time, and it didn’t seem so important a decade later when I took over as Chamberlain.”

“Alright,” Olivia said. “So we have a wealthy mercenary captain who was almost-definitely buried with his armour and weapons, if not other wealth as well, in a secret funeral that involved mysterious clergy, out in a scret tomb that people haven’t been talking about openly for decades, and at one point that tomb ate a member of the Duke’s family. Or we try the Duke’s bedchamber and see what he’s protecting there - unless of course you’ve got other secret you might think we, or Lady Eileen, should know about considering the circumstances?”

“I’m sorry,” Edmond shook his head. “The Duke did not tell me why he had his bedchamber enchanted, he only passed along the warning that none should enter it until he returns, or until his death has been confirmed and the new Duke has been properly named.”

“Well, we don’t have much time,” Jade said. “The trapper I spoke to said the tomb is about five miles to the north - that’s away from the path the bandit army will take, so we shouldn’t be running into them or their scouts or anything. I think we should head there immediately.”

“If Lady Eileen gives her blessings that we can go rob a family crypt,” Olivia said, looking over at the heir.

“You hav my permission, Lady Olivia,” Lady Eileen said, standing up and putting a hand on her shoulder. “What you do not have my permission to do is to falter or die. We need you hear when the storm comes to rattle our eaves and break against our battlements. Be careful.”

“We will,” Olivia promised.

- - - - -

We called a break - Tori and Rhia both needed to pee, we all needed a refresh on our drinks, and I wanted a chance to break out some snacks as well as get the supplies I’d set aside for the possible Tomb Delve ready (leaving the supplies for the Bedchamber Trap hidden, in case they decided to tackle that situation in the future.)

As Rhia and Tory left the table, Elyse got up as well but she stopped short at the corner of the table. “Hide your notes,” she said with a grin.

I did, closing my binder and flipping over my note pad, and she practicaly hopped over the corner between us, straddling my lap as she pressed her chest to mine and kissed me. My hands immediately went to her ass, grabbing a firm hold on her perfect little butt through the thin silk robe she wore as her costume. She didn’t wear any underwear at all under it, and I could feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric. My fingers started to delve a little deeper, into the crack of her ass, looking to see if I could feel if she was wet or not…

“Hey, you little skank,” Rhia called from the doorway. “I knew you’d do that. No hanky panky with Shane during game time when it isn’t part of the game.”

“Whaaat?” Elyse complained, looking back over her shoulder at her friend while also grabbing my hands and pulling them from her ass and up to her chest, sliding them inside her silk robe so that I could fondle her bare little tits and nips. “Since when is that a rule?”

“Since Shane needs a break too,” Rhia smirked. “And you being all slutty on him is going to distract him from that.”

“Hey, this is being lovey,” Elyse smirked right back. “If I was bing slutty, I would have crawled under the table and his cock would be in my mouth.”

“I, for one, welcome both sets of behaviour,” I said, chuckling at the two of them. I’d found her nipples and softly pinched and rolled them. “But, my dear, Rhia is right. I need to get up and stretch my legs, grab some supplies, and I have snacks to break out.”

“Oh, alright,” Elyse said, turning back and giving me another quick kiss and a smile. “If snacks are involved, I guess I can let you up.”

She climbed off of me, and Rhia had already headed back upstairs to go to the bathroom since Tori was in the back one. I stood as well, and caught Elyse by the hand and tugged her back to me. She turned, a mildly confused look in her eye, and I wrapped her little frame up in a big hug and kissed the top of her head as she hugged me back.

“This is really nice and all, but you mentioned snacks,” Elyse mumbled into my chest.

“I just want to make sure you’re good,” I said softly, keeping my voice low. “About Rhia, earlier.”

Elyse pulled her face from my chest and looked up at me. “You mean her coming here to fuck you, after we had our night together?”

“I’m not assuming anything,” I said, rubbing her cheekbone with my thumb for a moment, just enjoying how she looked with her big eyes, quirky but pretty features and her hair up in a bun, showing off the buzzed sides of her head. “I’m just making sure I’m communicating.”

She quirked her lips softly, a quick tick of emotion passing over her face that was fast enough that I couldn’t read it, and she let out a breath. “Just communicating? Because… I mean…”

“Everything starts with communicating,” I prompted her.

“Fuck it, OK,” she said. “Communicating. I don’t care that Rhia came and fucked you. In fact, I’m relieved she did it - she was pissed when she found out I came over here the other night. And I don’t care if she comes over her more than that, or if Tori does. I just don’t want you to tell me I can’t come over, because I want more of that. More of that night, more of you. Hell, I want more of the next morning.”

“OK,” I agreed. “More of that, more of me, more of the next morning. Just, maybe give me a little bit more warning than knocking at my door?”

“Really?” she asked, lighting up like she’d just found out she’d forgotten her birthday was today. “I mean, I assumed after the way everything went, you wouldn’t be opposed to it, but- I mean-”

“It’s nice to know for sure, and it’s nice to be wanted,” I filled in for her.

“It is,” she grinned, then bit her lower lip and backed away, putting her hands of defensively. “Apparently I’m not allowed to kiss you right now, or else I’d be all over you, Shane. So you better go get those snacks, and whatever else you need.”

I winked at her and she grinned as she laned her butt back against the edge of the table, her robe still askew and flashing one pretty little titty at me. It was really fucking good to be me.