Chapter 18

Dick came in from his sweep and stomped snow off his boots. It was quiet in the house. He wondered if everybody was still in the sauna. He’d only been gone half an hour. Then again, the fifteen minutes he’d spent in there had made him sweat buckets. He detoured to the kitchen to get a snack and heard what sounded like a moan of pain. His head swiveled on his neck and then tilted upward. It was coming from Veronica’s room. He heard another moan and instinct caused his gun to be in his hand without thinking. He stalked quickly to her door and listened. There was another moan.

He hadn’t locked the door when he left. Had someone come in and attacked? Where was the principal? Was she safe? Where were his marshals?

He entered Ronnie’s room in full combat mode, gun held out and sweeping. His eyes registered the naked couple on the bed as his visual sweep completed a comprehensive examination of the room in general. His gaze went back to Bernard, who was on top of Ronnie, his hips thrusting. It was Ronnie who sounded like she’d been shot. The fact that her arms and legs were locked around Bernie made it clear, however, that she was in no danger from anything. Two faces turned toward him as Bernie’s fucking motions came to a screeching halt. Wide eyes stared at the gun in Dick’s hands.

“I heard Ronnie and thought she was hurt,” said Dick, who wasn’t embarrassed in the least about the situation. “Carry on,” he said.

He left without further comment and went back downstairs to the sauna door. Opening it only a few inches, he peered inside to see Len flat on his back on one of the benches. Jessica was sucking his dick.

He didn’t have to wonder where Lacey was but, since all his other personnel were obviously doing something other than protecting her, he went to her bedroom door and opened it quietly. Lacey was sitting on top of Bob. Her hips were making little jerking motions, forward and back again. Her back was to him, so she didn’t see him, and her upper body blocked Bob’s view. For whatever reason, seeing her naked back, with her hair hanging down, affected him and blood suddenly filled his prick.

He closed the door quietly and then returned to the kitchen to resume his snack.

“Shit!” gasped Ronnie, after Dick left her room. “What do we do now?”

“He said to carry on,” said Bernie. He wasn’t about to abort things now. He’d been lusting after this delicious girl ever since she came on the detail. When she’d stood, naked in front of him, letting him look, he’d been almost unable to breathe. It had been taking every bit of control he had in him not to fall prey to premature ejaculation. Dick’s intrusion had actually helped with that.

He started thrusting slowly again. She was so wet that she was producing pussy farts with regularity. He dealt with her panted apologies for that by sealing his lips against hers.

He already wanted to spew in her again.

In the sauna Len rolled his head and opened his eyes.

“Did somebody open the door?” he panted.

Jessica pulled her lips slowly up his shaft, sucking, and pulled off his prick with a little pop.

“Do you care?” She jacked him slowly, just keeping him nice and hard.

“I still can’t believe you’re doing this, Jess,” he said.

“You’re my partner,” she said. “You know how close partners get.”

“But ... Rick,” he said. Rick was her husband.

“Rick cheats on me every time I go on an overnight or out of town mission,” she said. “He never got over his cheerleader girlfriend in high school. She’s a model, now. They think I don’t know.”

“You never told me that,” he said.

“I never felt the need to.” She shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You deserve better than that.”

“Isn’t that what I’m getting right now?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “I’ve always been a good, dutiful little wife. I’m tired of putting my life on the line for strangers and my fellow officers and getting nothing for it but a paycheck. You’re a good partner and a good man. This probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t come out here to Bumfuck Alaska, but I’m not going to worry about that now. I’m just going to have a little fun with my partner, who really is all stressed out.”

“Of course I’m stressed out. I’ve had it bad for you for months,” he said.

“I know,” she grinned. “I can read you like a book.”

“I can help with your stress, too,” he said, his face expressionless.

“I’m counting on that,” she said.

Then she lowered her head and went back to lovingly sucking her partner’s dick.

Lacey and Bob emerged from the bedroom first. They found Dick sitting in an arm chair, reading a book. Both had put on robes, but that was all.

“I seem to have pushed everybody over the edge,” said Dick, dryly, looking up from his book.

“Where are they?” asked Bob.

“Ronnie and Bernard are in there,” said Dick, pointing up towards Ronnie’s room. “Len and Jessica were in too much of a hurry to leave the sauna. We probably ought to get them out of there before they lose too much weight and get heat stroke.”

“Oh,” said Lacey, who blushed. That was one of the things Dick liked about her. Even as much as he knew had happened to her, she still had the capacity to seem innocent and shy. At the same time, he knew she was stronger than most women. He admired her, and Dick Hooker wasn’t impressed easily.

“It’s what some people might call ‘highly irregular’ but under the circumstances I think it’s ... well ... I guess I’ll just say understandable,” said Dick.

“That’s very kind of you,” said Bob, “considering you’re the odd man out.”

“I’ve been batching it a long time,” said Dick. “I’ll manage.”

“I’ll go get them out of the sauna,” said Lacey.

She went to the door and opened it. She froze and then turned around. She wasn’t blushing now. In fact, she was suddenly pale.

“I’ll do it,” said Bob.

He joined her and looked through the door she was still holding open. The rush of heat he expected to come forth wasn’t there and he surmised that the fire, not having been fed, was in the process of going out. Len was lying on his back on the floor. Jessica was crouched over him, flexing her thigh muscles to lift herself and then drop back down. Her hands were on his chest. She must have felt the cooler air coming in through the door, because she looked over at Bob and Lacey.

“We’re almost finished,” she said, calmly. “Be out in a minute.”

“We were afraid you’d waste away to nothing,” said Bob.

“I’m working on that,” said Jessica, who had not stopped rising and falling. Bob could see Len’s erection being revealed and then obscured. It was shiny.

Bob closed the door and pulled Lacey away from it.

“Is that what we look like when we... ?” whispered Lacey.

“Something like that,” said Bob.

“Wow,” she sighed.

“We should get dressed,” he said.

Through the door they heard voices, too dim to comprehend. But the fact they could hear them at all suggested Jess and Len had gotten loud.

In fact, behind that thick, wooden door, Len was having something of a crisis.

“Fuck!” he gasped, explosively as the door closed. “They saw us!”

“Don’t you dare go soft on me yet!” she barked. “I was almost there and now I have to start all over again.”

“Jessica,” he pleaded. “I can’t wait any longer. My balls feel like they must be as big as baseballs.”

“I know you wanted to cum while I sucked you, but I didn’t think we had time for you to recuperate,” she said. “It’s not as bad as I made it sound. I’m almost there. Just a little longer, please?”

“I don’t know if I can,” he gasped.

“Should I stop and let you get control of yourself?”

“Oh hell no,” he groaned. “If I don’t cum I’m going to explode.”

“Do you promise to get me off at least twice later tonight?” she asked, sitting down on him and going still.

“You mean there’s more?” he croaked.

“Oh yes, lover. There’s going to be much, much more.”

“Jess!” he gasped. “Oh fuck! Jess! I can’t wait.”

She leaned down until her breasts rubbed his chest. Her lips grazed his, their first kiss.

“Men are so impatient,” she pouted. “Okay. Give mamma a pussy bath, then. But you owe me.”

She began milking him, something she’d learned to do with her cheating husband. It drove him ape shit. Now it affected Len the same way.

“Oh, fuck,” he whined.

She kissed him as she felt his hot jets streak into her pussy.

She didn’t feel guilty at all.

Her unfaithful husband deserved this. She’d been asking him to get her pregnant for almost a year, but he said he didn’t want children. He insisted on using a condom whenever they had sex. And every man before him had worn a condom, too. She wanted that, back then.

But now she didn’t.

Len Thomas, in fact, was the first man she’d ever let into her fertile pussy bareback.

Now, as his sperm jetted into her, she almost hoped his seed would take root in her garden.

She’d been contemplating divorcing the bum. It would serve Rick right if another man got her with child before she had him served with the papers.

Supper that night was almost a repeat of the stiffness that pervaded the atmosphere when they all got naked in the sauna that first time. Now, though, the elephant in the room was that they all knew what the others had done. There was almost no nervousness about what they’d done themselves, at least not between partners. As has been stated, it isn’t unusual for partners in law enforcement to become close in ways civilians might not understand. A unique kind of love develops between partners who mesh, and it’s a very powerful kind of love. But that doesn’t mean they’re comfortable with others knowing how they feel about each other.

Dick Hooker had been an marshal for fifteen years, and divorced for ten. He’d risen through the ranks and had been a team leader on most of the missions he was assigned to. There had been a big bump in that road after the Black Aces had gotten through the defenses he was in charge of, not to mention she’d almost been raped on his watch. Those higher up had been out of the trenches a long time, if they’d ever been in the trenches, and seemed to have no understanding of how quickly things could go to shit. That his spotless past performance had been completely ignored when he was put on desk duty had been a bitter pill to swallow.

Now, because of Lacey Cragg, his career had been revived, but his bitterness about how he’d been treated over things that had obviously been beyond his control had altered the way he looked at things ... his philosophy of leadership, if you will. The mission still came first, and he was still more than willing to put his life on the line to protect his principal, but all the rules, regulations, and policies the suits upstairs came up with no longer seemed so sacrosanct. He knew people would want his head if they found out the personnel on his detail had engaged in what almost amounted to an orgy.

But what the suits didn’t know couldn’t hurt anybody.

“Look,” he said, calmly, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Our job is to protect Lacey. As long as we do that, I don’t give a flying fuck what happens in the bedrooms. So shake it off and keep your heads in the game. We actually had it pretty good anyway on this mission. Now it’s just better.”

Nobody answered him.

“Of course, not a single whisper of any of this had ever better get out,” he added.

“What happens in Alaska stays in Alaska,” said Ronnie, obviously reciting a “rule” by rote.

Dick smiled and looked at Jessica.

“I would have expected you to say something like that.”

She smiled.

“So can we eat supper without it seeming like a funeral?” said Dick.

Things were much more relaxed for the rest of the meal.

They were also much more relaxed that night. Ronnie and Bernard had the first watch, and they took it seriously. Meanwhile, Jessica suggested that, if she and Lenny were in the same place when it was time to waken them for their shift, it would be easier. Nobody laughed, and she dragged Len into her room.

Dick just went to bed and said that if anybody needed him, they knew where he was. He and Bob would take a four hour stretch on watch, too.

Bob and Lacey stayed up until midnight, talking to Ronnie and Bernie. When they went and woke up their naked replacement guards, tangled together in mussed sheets, Bob took Lacey to bed.

As he closed the door, Bob saw Ronnie leading Bernie into her bedroom by the hand.

Things settled into an easy, companionable existence. The threat to Lacey was minimal, but everyone stayed alert while they were on duty. When they weren’t on duty sex was one of the primary “recreational” activities everybody except Dick engaged in. They all used the sauna naked, and it wasn’t unusual for things to get pretty friendly in that room, even if there were two couples in there at the same time. The only one who complained was Dick, who said it wasn’t fair for the women to get fondled in plain view, and that seeing one of the women holding the erection of the man next to her made him horny.

Then on a Friday, they all got ready to do the things they did when the supply plane was due. The sound of an airplane engine, when it came, sent the deputies into their defensive posture. Lacey and Bob retired to the sauna with a radio to wait for the all clear, when the determination had been made that the plane was, in fact, an authorized one. A knock code had also been devised so Bob would know when it was safe to unlock the door, should the radios fail for some reason.

This protocol had been employed before, of course. Supplies and communications were delivered regularly by a bush pilot out of Anchorage, contracted for that purpose. But whenever a plane showed up, the situation was always taken seriously. They were always cognizant that mob money might end up bribing someone to reveal where they were, and how to get to them. Jody trusted the pilot who’d been hired to resupply them, but that didn’t mean the Marshal Service did. That, this time, it was a different plane than the bush pilot flew only heightened their concern.

It turned out that Jody had arrived for a visit, bringing in the supplies, herself. Nobody approached the plane until she’d gotten out and walked around it completely. By the time she arrived at the house accompanied by five deputies, carrying bundles or boxes, Bob and Lacey had already left the safe room and were waiting on the porch.

“I can stay a week if that’s okay with you guys,” she said, setting a case of canned goods on the table. She hugged Lacey.

“It’s your house,” said Lacey.

“I appreciate the help bringing stuff in,” said Jody to the marshals, who were also setting things down. “It should only take a couple more trips.”

“You guys stay here and unpack,” said Dick. “I’ll go with Jody. I need to work off some energy anyway. I need one person outside on watch with a rifle while we ferry the stuff up here, though.”

What he was referring to was the possibility that Jody had been followed, and that there was another plane up there, somewhere, with people in it who might want to land where Jody had landed, for purposes other than the good of those currently living in the lodge. It was for that reason that they didn’t use the snow machine to ferry the first load of supplies from the plane to the lodge. The noise it made would mask that of anything flying around up above. That scheme - of following the supply plane - would be impossible to work with complete surprise, but if it ever did happen, it would be better to begin the battle before the intruders ever got out of their aircraft, if possible. Having someone outside, armed with something heavier than a pistol, would give the others time to react to any problem.

Now, more than half an hour after Jody landed, Dick rode behind Jody on the snowmobile. The track was bumpy and the seat short. He had to put his arms around her. In the process, his gloved hands ended up all over the swells in her parka caused by her breasts. He apologized once they stopped at the plane.

“Like I could feel anything anyway,” she grinned. “What was all that stuff about working off energy? I’d think just surviving out here would have you dead tired most of the time.”

“Things get tense, now and then,” he said, cryptically.

“That’s too bad. When people have to work this closely together, it’s nice if they all get along.”

“Oh, we all get along just fine,” said Dick as he began to load the sled behind the snow machine. “It’s just that some of us get along a lot better with others of us.”

Jody wasn’t stupid. She knew what being isolated in that big, romantic lodge did to people. She’d seen it many times. On more than one occasion, a little hanky panky at the lodge between bosses and their secretaries had put them in the mood to do business that was very lucrative for her. That her own bed was usually empty was something she’d gotten used to. She wasn’t a virgin, but men didn’t flock around her. And fucking the client went a little too far, in terms of getting them to sign. When she looked at Deputy Dick Hooker, she saw a man who had passed thirty and was going bald on top, but wasn’t there yet. She’d never looked at his ring finger before and couldn’t now, because he was wearing gloves.

“You must be married,” she said.

“What?” Dick’s face showed confusion at her comment.

“Well,” said Jody, putting her analytic mind to work. “Bob is with Lacey, of course. That teenybopper with the tight little tits and hard as steel buns can’t be with anybody except that cute boy ... the other apprentice marshal or whatever you call them ... what’s his name?”

“Bernard,” said Dick, staring at this odd and interesting woman.

“Yeah. She and Bernard are together, right? So that means Deputy Snow must be with ... is his name Leonard? Is that why they call him Lenny? If she had her choice, I’d think she’d go more for you. Ergo, you must be married.”

Dick’s only involvement with this woman had been while they planned the mission. He had questioned her closely about the lodge and its surroundings. And, of course, she had flown them in when they arrived. His initial impression of her had been based on her looks, but he’d changed his opinion about that within minutes of speaking with her. She might look like a hard-bodied, dour-faced gym teacher, but she was intelligent and capable. That she’d figured so much out from his single unplanned comment was pretty amazing. It occurred to him to be more careful what he said around her. He shouldn’t have let his mouth run in the first place.

“Not married,” he said. “Deputies Snow and Thomas are partners. In this business partners tend to form bonds a lot of normal people might not understand.”

“And you don’t have a partner because... ?” asked Jody, grunting slightly as she lifted a heavy case.

“I’m the boss,” he said, simply.

“Then it sucks to be the boss,” she said, smiling widely.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “I was married, but it ended badly. That was ten years ago and I’ve gotten used to it.”

“So you’re not gay.”

“No,” he said, dryly. “I’m not gay.”

“Neither am I,” said Jody, her voice matter of fact. “People assume I am, though.” She stood up from depositing another box on the sled. “It’s my looks. I look butch. I only do that because it’s easy to take care of things. I don’t have to spend a ton of time on my hair. That sort of thing. And clients think I’ll be tough, because I look tough. I’m always amazed how much people screw things up by their assumptions based on what someone looks like.”

“Yeah,” said Dick, uncomfortable because her “butch” appearance had also made some thoughts about her sexual preference flit through his head when he met her. It hadn’t been any more than that. His male “radar”, as it were, hadn’t shown her as much of a blip at all, really.

“Sorry,” said Jody, interpreting his terse reply as discomfort at her nosiness. “I’m used to digging out all the dirt on clients. Helps me make a better deal when it comes to getting them to sign a contract.”

“You blackmail them?” Dick’s right eyebrow rose a full inch.

“Of course not,” she said, smiling. “They just assume I will. Sleazy people think all lawyers are sleazy, too. All I do is make sure they know what I know. I don’t really have to fight for business. When you get a reputation for making your clients money, other clients beat a path to your door.” She leaned into the plane to look around. “I guess that’s it for this load. I’m ready for an inch of good Scotch. How about you?”