The Love of Money II
Copyright© 2025 by MindSketch
Chapter 12: Lit Fuse
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 12: Lit Fuse - Marcus and the others are no longer just surviving the world—they’re shaping it. Erin has always known what she wants. Now she’s orchestrating it. Helen is learning that submission isn’t surrender. Bobbi, stripped of her old identity, stands at a crossroads. New women cross his path. Old ones return. Some hand him their heart. Some, a leash. Some, a knife in the back. And then there are the ones waiting for him to stumble. It's hard to rest when you have a target painted on your back.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Mult Coercion Consensual NonConsensual Reluctant Romantic Lesbian BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Rags To Riches BDSM DomSub MaleDom FemaleDom Light Bond Rough Sadistic Spanking Group Sex Harem Orgy Interracial Black Female White Female Oriental Female Indian Female Anal Sex Analingus Cream Pie Exhibitionism Facial Massage Oral Sex Petting Pregnancy Sex Toys Squirting Voyeurism Big Breasts Small Breasts Slow Violence
Tuesday, September 10th, early morning
Something very different from the forest noises woke me up, and it was already fading by the time I realized what it was.
A helicopter.
A fucking helicopter had just flown overhead, and I was caught with my pants down.
No. My pants were still off.
I glanced beside me to see Chloe gone, and snatched my pants as I rolled from under the blankets. Being in such a hurry, I barely noticed how stiff they were getting from the lack of washing. A day in the forest was like five days in civilization in terms of garment maintenance.
Slipping my pants on as I stepped outside, I only vaguely registered the cold morning air creeping over my bare skin. The helicopter had too much of my attention. I peered through the canopy of trees, ears strained to hear the whisper of blades, but they’d already faded, leaving nothing but the stillness of early morning.
“Came from the southwest,” Chloe’s voice drifted from behind me. I turned to see her approaching, still limping a little from yesterday’s activities. She was fully clothed and had a small satchel that carried the two rockets we took from one of Tanaka’s mercenaries.
“Isn’t that the direction we came from?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said, stopping well outside my personal space. She set the satchel on the ground. Then, she took a moment to check me out, her eyes doing a quick scan up and down my body. “Damn,” she said. “You’re coming along nicely.”
“What?”
“You’ve lost a few pounds,” she said. “Getting a little more muscle, too. “Your workouts are starting to pay off.”
I glanced down, and that’s when the temperature hit me. It wasn’t unbearable, but it was definitely uncomfortable without half my clothes.
Refusing to be distracted, I said, “Thanks. You’re going to the cabin right now?”
“That might be our people. The sooner I get there, the better.”
“I should go with you,” I said.
Chloe shook her head as she reached just inside the hut and pulled out the pack she’d taken with her the last two days, straightening as she slung it over her shoulder. “I need to move quickly. You’ll slow me down.”
She must have seen the offense on my face because she continued before I could even open my mouth.
“You know I don’t think you’ll be a burden, but you don’t have my training, and I’m faster alone.” She reached between two trees and pulled at a large cylinder—the rocket launcher. “It’ll be slow enough going with this thing,” she said as she slung it on top of the pack.
I studied her, noticing the dark rings under her eyes. Other than that, she looked completely unfazed. “Chloe, you’re hurt, and you have your limits. I should be going with you.”
She pointed to the rockets. “Hand me that bag, would you?”
I obliged as she continued, “I already told you, no. Besides,” she jerked her head in Astrid’s direction, “someone’s got to keep an eye on the princess.”
I considered pushing back against her insistence to go alone, but even with her injury, she could have cracked my head open with that rocket launcher. Besides, she was probably right. With our luck, if I went with her, that was likely the moment when a wolf or something else showed up and ate Astrid, who was practically defenseless.
“Be careful out there,” I said, leveling a look at her to let her know I meant it.
She winked at me, the only sign that the Chloe I’d gotten to know was still there. “I’ll be back this evening. Hopefully, with help.”
Heading in the direction of the cabin, she called out, “Astrid has the remote. Keep sending that signal. That chopper might not be our people.”
“Okay,” I called out, annoyed that she hadn’t even addressed the giant elephant in the room—her resignation.
“We’re going to talk later, though,” I called after her.
“No, we aren’t,” she said without looking back or breaking stride.
Yeah, she knew what I meant.
And if Chloe thought we wouldn’t talk about any of this later, she had another thing coming.
Tuesday, September 10th, late morning
“Feel better?” I asked, as I leaned against the doorway of the helicopter and sat down.
Astrid sighed and passed me the remote. “I didn’t realize how washing my face would make me feel like a completely new person, and brushing my teeth is almost enough to make me forget about being trapped here.”
“Yeah,” I said as I repeated the all-too-familiar pattern on the remote. “Sorry I let you go without it for so long.”
“It’s okay,” Astrid said. “It’s low on the list of priorities right now. Thank you for everything that you’ve done for me.”
“No problem,” I said, distracted as I stared at the remote. It still bothered me how Chloe had seemed so ... tactical this morning. We barely exchanged any words before she traipsed into the forest again, and it was like she couldn’t wait to get away from me. Of course, I knew better; she was in a hurry to reach the cabin just in case those were our people.
Still...
I leaned my head against the wreckage and recalled our conversation from the night before. Chloe’s words came back to me:
I’m thinking of quitting when we get back to the States.
“I’m thinking of quitting when we get back to the States.”
“What?” I’d asked, lifting my head to look at her.
“My position. I think I might have to vacate it after we return home.”
“Why?” I asked.
Chloe had studied me for a while, and I’d never seen her look so uncertain and vulnerable. I thought she was about to ask me to kiss her again, but instead she simply said, “I crossed a line.”
“I’m okay with that,” I said.
“I’m not,” she said, her tone flat. “I can’t trust myself to make good decisions, and you can’t trust me to do my job.”
“Chloe—”
“I’m not changing my mind,” she said. She rolled away from me, exposing her back.
“I don’t care about you being compromised,” I said to the back of her head. “I don’t want anyone else!”
“You’re gonna,” Chloe muttered.
“I don’t accept your resignation,” I said.
“I don’t care.”
I sighed and rolled on my back, staring at the low ceiling of the hut as the shadows played across it in the flickering flame’s light.
“Let’s say you quit,” I finally said, cutting through the minutes-long silence like a knife. “Would you leave?”
“I wouldn’t have a job there. Of course I would.”
I wasn’t sure what hurt more, my heart from the callous way she was suddenly treating me, or my neck from the proverbial whiplash. What the hell had happened in the sixty seconds between heaven and heartbreak?”
“Chloe...”
“Go to sleep, Marcus. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
We’re not out of the woods yet.
I violently cranked the remote to its highest setting, imagining that Helen still had the egg inside her. A desperate SOS by way of sex toy: Bitch! Get me the fuck out of here!
“What’s the matter?”
I looked up to find Astrid watching me, her head tilted ... half curious, half amused as she lay back on the twisted remains of the helicopter seating.
“Lover’s quarrel?”
I blinked. “What?”
She gave me a ghost of a smile. “You and Chloe. You’ve been intimate at least twice. Something happened last night. She seemed more surly than usual this morning when she brought me the remote.”
Helen, Erin, Natashya ... now Astrid. God save me from insightful women.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Astrid rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Marcus. I’ve seen the way you have looked at her since we met. You’ve been wanting her badly for a while, and now that it’s the two of you alone in the wilderness on these long, cold nights, you’ve given in to your passions.” She smirked. “You’ll get no judgment from me.”
There was no point in denying it. Astrid had my number, and if I were to continue denying it, I’d just look like a fool. It didn’t mean I had to confirm anything, though, so I simply shrugged.
“At least, I know why you haven’t come to see me at night. I was hoping you’d offer to keep me warm in a way more fun than these thermal packets.”
I snorted and nodded at the twisted frames of the seats that had been her prison and, likely, her savior. “Really? Kind of limited on our options, don’t you think?”
“I’m very creative.” Astrid purred, reminding me a little of Helen. “I’m sure we could have found a way to make it work.”
“Oh, fuck!” I suddenly realized that I still had the slider up, and quickly dropped it back down to zero. If Helen still had that thing inside of her and was getting my signal, I was giving her one hell of a ride right about now. I decided to give it a rest for a few minutes.
“Tell me about her,” Astrid said.
“Chloe?”
“No. The one who is hopefully receiving your signal. Helen, right?”
“Oh,” I said, not feeling like opening up right now. “There isn’t much to say.”
Astrid closed her eyes and smiled amusedly. “I’m sure she would be flattered to hear that. It’s not true, though. It’s Roger VanCamp’s wife, correct? They’ve been married for years, now.”
“Was married to Roger,” I quickly corrected. “That’s over.”
“They got divorced?”
“Eh ... not officially,” I admitted, “but they’re separated. The paperwork just needs to be filed.”
“And now she’s walking around New York with a vibrating egg inside her, and you have the remote.” There was a twinkle in Astrid’s eyes. Up until this point, she’d been sweet and pleasant. I’d called her out when she tried to manipulate me, and I guess I’d made enough of an impression that she had been relatively docile with more of a friend vibe than the in-control femme fatale one. I saw a little of that return as she asked me about Helen, but it was more charming than alarming.
And I found myself wanting to give it to her. We were being hunted in a cold, damp forest. Chloe was doing the heavy lifting, and I felt like the little kid standing there holding the flashlight. Our only communication with the outside world was by tapping out Morse code on my lawyer’s cooch. My only respite had been the sudden intimacy I’d gained with my beautiful bodyguard.
Now, with Chloe’s sudden shift in mood after handing me her two weeks, I needed a pick-me-up. Astrid’s rapt attention as I told her the story of how I cucked Roger VanCamp in every way possible seemed like a cheap way to feel better.
So, I filled her in on all the juicy detail—how Roger had sent Helen to influence me, and how I’d learned about his propensity to pimp out his wife. I told her how much Helen loathed the man and how, after confronting her, she switched allegiances. I confided in Astrid that it was Roger who had taken part in my kidnapping, and that he’d threatened me at my house party. Finally, I told her how I’d come to his partners with proof of his crime against me and threatened to leave their firm unless they dropped him as a partner. By the time I reached the end of the story where I confronted Roger in his own office and in front of his own partners, it was impossible not to smile.
“So,” I finished, “now Roger VanCamp lost his partnership and got disbarred while I get to fuck his very willing wife, and I hope he falls asleep every night in squalor, crying about it.”
I wasn’t the only one grinning. My story enraptured Astrid. “God, Marcus. That is the sexiest thing I have ever heard. Did you fuck her in front of her husband?”
Immediately, the image of Roger VanCamp tied to a chair, being forced to watch as I took his wife right in front of him swam into my mind. The dark part of me that had broken Bobbi, seduced Ashlee, and fucked Carla Tanaka was very attracted to the idea of taking Helen in full view of her husband and looking that bastard in the eyes while I cucked him again and again.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I had some of my security escort him away. I was going to question him about my kidnapping, but he got away before I had the chance. I have a guy looking for him now.”
Astrid slowly closed her eyes and rolled her head back, stretching as well as she could underneath her prison. Something between a moan and a purr escaped her lips, which were curled into a smile that almost resembled post-orgasmic bliss. “I’m sure he regrets crossing you,” she said. “He lost so much ... and that wife of his...”
She rolled her head back to the side, her eyes fluttering open as she fixed me with a smoky gaze. “She’s certainly beautiful enough. Tell me, was she worth all that trouble?”
“Helen?” Once again, I let my head fall back against the wreckage. My arms were resting on my knees, and I let one slide off so I could rest my hand between my legs. I was only half aware of grinding my palm against a rapidly hardening prick. “God, I don’t know where to begin.”
“Well, I know what she looks like,” Astrid said, “and I’ve had limited interaction with her in a business setting. What’s she like behind closed doors?”
“She’s one of the coolest women I’ve ever met,” I said. “A lot of her good qualities are just ... better when we’re alone. She’s always been a little guarded, but she lets a lot of it fall around me. She’s a great listener, and she’s almost always right. She’s been invalusable, and I’d go through Roger’s crap all over again if I had to to keep her.”
“High praise,” Astrid said. “How’s the sex?”
I unconsciously dug the heel of my palm into my erection and then tried to mask it by fiddling with the remote. I thought about Helen’s body ... her lithe form stretched out on the bed the first time I saw her nude. She had that classic, elegant shape—long, lean legs that met a well-sculpted, firm ass. Her waist curved in a way that gave her a subtle hourglass shape, with just enough feminine padding to prevent her from having a prominent six-pack. Her breasts hung naturally, light golden from recent sun exposure. She was forty-three, but a life of luxury and the most expensive products had her looking five to ten years younger.
And god, could she fuck...
“She’s one of the best lovers I’ve ever had,” I admitted. “Tender and caring when needed ... wild and fierce when that’s what I want ... and the way she handles Bobbi...”
I recalled that first night in the dungeon she commissioned for us. Helen was dressed in all-black, wielding a crop. The way she caressed Bobbi’s skin with the tip of it ... the way I watched Bobbi, who claimed to have no interest in her own gender, turn into a veritable puddle around that woman...
I sighed ... I missed Helen. I missed her calming presence. I missed her wit and charm. I missed feeling her lips on mine as I slid inside of her.
“She’s one of the most important women to me,” I said.
It would have been hard to choose between the two women who had become the twin pillars in my life: Helen and Erin.
“She sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime girl.”
“A lot of the women in my life are,” I said. “I’ve realized that it’s one of the things about being this wealthy—it’s much easier to find the really good ones.”
“You’re right,” Astrid said, her simmering expression faded as she got a far-away look in her eyes. There was a subtle change in her smile, becoming less predatory and more ... wistful. “Often, they find you.”
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” I said.
“Mmm,” she said, staring at something in the middle distance that wasn’t there. “I had a relationship like the one you had with Helen. Isak.”
“Had?” I asked.
Her wistful look turned a little sad, and she didn’t answer immediately. Her stare slowly shifted until I had her gaze again. “He’s gone.”
“You mean he left you? Or he died?”
“Both,” Astrid said. “My family gets a lot of attention in Northern Europe. He ... some of the lifestyle disagreed with him, so he left. I found out a year later that he passed. Cancer.”
Suddenly, my problems with Chloe seemed so insignificant compared to this woman trapped in wreckage and remembering an old love that she’d lost. “I’m sorry to hear about that, Astrid.”
She gave me a faint smile. “Thank you. I sometimes wonder if he had more faith in us, would I have been able to provide him the type of care he needed to survive?”
“You can’t think like that,” I said. “It’ll drive you crazy.”
“I think we both know I’m already a little crazy,” Astrid said with the faintest sting in her tone. The sudden shift left me flat-footed, and it took me a moment to figure out what to say.
She was referring to our earlier disagreement about how she treated Bobbi and our lesser moment of tension when I called her out for manipulating me. At both points, I thought of her as a monster. I’d written her off as a spoiled, rich princess who got exactly what she wanted without concern for how she treated others. I assumed my first impression of her as a mild-mannered, sweet woman was nothing more than a facade she employed to disarm people around her.
What if there was more to it than just that? What if she were just a broken woman? How did the saying go? “Hurt people hurt people?” She reminded me of Bobbi and Helen—Bobbi, who had no family she could rely on and had been taken advantage of, only to be discarded because she hated herself so much that she actively pushed people away. Helen had been conniving and manipulative in the early stages of our relationship. Then I discovered that she was simply scared of her husband and the gilded cage he’d built around her. My relationship with Bobbi still had a long way to go, but I felt like we were making progress.
Helen, though...
I gave her a second chance, and she had risen to the task. She wasn’t just a lover and a damn good lawyer. She was a compass and one of my most trusted advisors...
Maybe Astrid needed the same thing?
“I might have been a little harsh a couple of days ago,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Astrid gave me a smile tinged with sadness. “I might have been trying to pull at your strings a little, but with good reason. You’re my lifeline, Marcus. I’m completely at your mercy here, and you’ve been nothing but good to me. You could have left with Chloe, but you didn’t. Part of me wanted to show you how grateful I am.”
A pang of guilt shot through me. I had stuck around, sure, but it was only on Chloe’s insistence—something Astrid didn’t need to know.
“That was only part,” she continued. Her earlier heat grew brighter in her eyes once more. “You’re attractive, Marcus, and despite making me as comfortable as possible, I’m cold and lonely. I wanted a little more attention from you.”
An intense moment of silence followed, and that smoldering gaze did things to my body that I had a hard time ignoring. Astrid was a lovely woman—tall and willowy with a dancer’s build. She had the poise and grace to match. Even injured and trapped, she carried herself with a regal bearing that belied a bravery and steadfastness that few could match. Her porcelain skin and cool demeanor gave her fine, elfin features a cold, almost immortal beauty. The twin furnaces of blue-green flame suggested that she was anything but cold to the touch, though.
I was confused. Two days ago, I considered this woman a monster. Now, I was connecting with her on levels I hadn’t with the woman I’d been sharing my bed with. Chloe had been hot with a primal need. She had shared her body with me, and I had been given a glimpse behind the veil she kept up, but I was still starving for intimacy. Now, Chloe had turned cold on me, making it harder to ignore whatever this was between me and Astrid.
And let me say one more time, Astrid was a gorgeous woman.
“I’m going to get us some food,” I said, adjusting the erection in my pants as I got to my feet.
“I would love that,” Astrid said. She didn’t seem put off by the fact that I hadn’t acknowledged her confession, which, if anything, demonstrated her diplomacy and grace even more. She would have made one hell of a companion when navigating the waters of business and wealthy social dynamics.
“Before you go, though,” she said, “Could you get my neck and back with one of these wipes? I know it’s been rather cool, but lying down like this for days has made my back sweat, and it feels a little uncomfortable.”
“Um, sure,” I said, approaching her. I took one of the wipes from the small packet I’d given her as she sat up about as far as she could, which was at roughly a fifteen-degree angle.
“How do you want me to do this?” I asked, stepping into position. Once again, I found myself just behind her with the top of her head just above my crotch as she supported herself with her elbows.
She tilted her head so she could look up at me, her summer-sea-colored eyes luminescent. “Just get at whatever you can.”
I crouched behind her as I wrapped the wipe around the fingers of my right hand and then slipped it down the back of her shirt. Astrid’s eyes fluttered shut as I ran the cool, alcohol-soaked rag across her skin, wiping away days of grime.
My lips were inches from Astrid’s forehead as I set to work, and my free hand slid to the back of her neck, resting at the base of her skull to help support her head. I gave it a light squeeze, and the corners of her lips turned up in a little smile.
“Mmmm,” she groaned softly, her head lolling back a little more so that her nose and lips were inches from my face.
This felt a hell of a lot like manipulation, but after what she’d confessed, it didn’t feel like much of a threat. Besides, giving her a quick wipe-down in a place that was impossible for her to reach felt like a reasonable ask. It wasn’t exactly her fault that I was making her feel good in the process.
I worked up her back with my other hand, concentrating on the ridges of muscle along her spine and turning it into a half-bath, half-massage. She let out another soft moan and then swallowed, giving me a lovely view of her throat as it worked—that pale, perfect throat.
Up her traps and onto the back of her neck, I finished wiping her down and then slowly lowered her to the cushion. As I slid my hand from underneath her head, her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed up at me again. I could have been seriously burned by the heat from them.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.