Thursday, April 14, 2022; 4:43 PM

“I’m telling you it’s too late,” she complained. “Mom’ll be home in an hour!”

“Bullshit!” Sean retorted. “She won’t be home for an hour and a half at least. It’s Thursday, Abs. She usually doesn’t get home unto 6:30 on Thursdays.”

Abbie shook her head adamantly. It was obvious how stressed she was, having just discovered her worthless superpower an hour before (tortured by her superpower was a better description of it, she thought angrily), and Sean still wanted to take off her clothes, take photos of her naked boobs. She wanted to grow new boobs, that’s what she wanted to do. In private. By herself. Away from him. Whatever his supposed older self had said, his was private, not to be shared with someone who’d want to fondle them and take photos of them and maybe even put them in his mouth. She needed privacy to do this. She deserved privacy.

Sean said: “Let’s do this, okay? You want to experiment with your breasts in private—”

Yes! she thought. Finally, some respect for her battered feelings!

“--I understand that, I do. Really, I do. You should be alone to experiment in privacy.”

She ogled him in amazement. Who had kidnapped her brother and left this considerate boy in his place? (We was cute too, she thought wonderingly.)

“But you didn’t go through this alone, Abs. I was every bit as freaked as you when it happened. I had no idea what I’d tell Mom and Dad when they got home and found you 7 years old, again. And of course, they’d fucking blame me!”

She shook her head, adamantly, even knowing it was true. She was normally blamed for everything gone wrong in the Morton household, and the one punished for it, too; but in a crisis situation, Mom and Dad would aim the spear right at the heart of the guilty party, and that was Sean. He’d talked her into this humiliating mess, but Mom would come down on her side for a change, even knowing the truth. Because that wouldn’t happen now, though, he wanted to...

“You still want to see me nude!” she blurted in outrage.

“Of course, I do! That was the whole point of the afternoon, Abs!”

“You are such a jerk!” She bunched her fist to hit him, but banged it against her thigh, instead. “How can you even still want me to do this? What is wrong with you, Sean?” She was so frustrated, she wanted to cry.

He smiled soothingly. “How can you not want to do it, Abs?”

He must be an alien warthog, she thought. Only a warty alien creature would ask her that.

‘You---you---” She raised her fist to hit him this time. Instead, she screamed: “You are such a jerk!” and fled upstairs to her bedroom.

He waited ten minutes to tap on her door.

“Go away!” she bellowed. She had the hiccups again. They had started the moment she threw herself down on her bed.

Sean rattled her doorknob and then tapped on the door again. “Come on, Abs. Open up.”

“Go away! Can’t you see I want to be alone?” She hiccuped, and he tapped the door harder.

“My older self says you have a surefire method of getting rid of those now.”

“Your older self!” she scoffed. “You’re dumber than I am if you believe that, Sean Morton!” And we both know how fucking dumb I am, she thought miserably. Tree trunk dumb. Stone post dumb. Dumb enough to take selfies of my non-existent boobs and leave them on my cell phone for you and Jeremy to find.

He rattled her doorknob again. “I can get in if I want to. Why don’t you open the door, instead, Abs?”

She raised her head off the pillow and hiccuped. “What?”

“The key to your door is right on top of the door frame. Didn’t you know that?”

Aghast, she flipped onto her butt, legs outstretched before her, hands planted behind her on the bedspread and stared at the door. “Don’t you dare come in here, Sean Morton!” She hiccuped, maddeningly loud, banged her knees together in case he made good on his threat, and then scooted back to hide more of her thighs under her skirt. “Don’t you come in here!” she repeated.

“Open the door, and I won’t.”

Open the door, and my clothes will be off me in ten minutes, she thought fearfully, and you’ll be snapping photos of me naked. Fretfully, she nonetheless scootched up the bed and perched on the end of the mattress.

“You promise not to undress me?”

Sean laughed. “I’ve seen every part of you that’s possible to see, Abigail. Including the parts no one but your someday boyfriend has a right to see.”

Mortified, Abbie blushed bright red. She had taken those photos, so Sean lied, referring to her pink parts like that. She had never taken a photo with her legs spread wide. She’d never ... well, yeah, those ones, okay, but he had never seen those photos.

She said nothing for a minute. Her hiccups were gone, so that was good. Not that they wouldn’t come back.

“I want you to tell me the truth,” she said hoarsely.

“Tell you the truth about what?”

“You know what!” she choked out. She couldn’t get redder in the face without bursting into flame, she thought. Her face might set her blouse on fire right now. She was surprised her makeup hadn’t already melted. Her much embarrassment could a 14-year-old endure, without becoming a runaway.

“Do you know what my lady parts look like, Sean?”

He snickered, and then apologized. He coughed lightly into his hand, though Abbie couldn’t see that from inside the bedroom, perched at the end of her bed. “Abbie...”

“Fuck you, Sean Morton! I’m running away from home!”

She threw herself back onto the bed face down and buried her face in the pillow. The other pillow she pulled over her head and kept it in place with her crossed arms. She pounded the mattress with her bare toes, and the headboard with her bunched fists. He had seen the photos she’d erased from her iPhone, then, the ones she never wanted any boy ever to see, especially not Sean. He had shown them to Jeremy, of course, he had! Jeremy knew her as intimately as Sean.

“No,” she moaned, ready to pour tears into her pillow.

“No one’s ever seen your selfies but me, Abs. That’s the god’s-honest truth. Not a one of them. I wanted to show them to Jeremy ... I almost showed them to Jeremy, but I didn’t.”

She shook her head back and forth in denial. “I don’t believe you!”

“I promise you. I haven’t looked at them in a month, either, because I didn’t want to ruin today. It’s probably closer to 6 weeks, actually, if you really want to know.”

She snorted softly into her pillow. That’s supposed to make me feel better?

“Does he know about the pictures?”

He answered immediately. “No!” He hesitated a moment, and then revealed: “I promised to show him whatever I took of you today. I planned to keep that promise. I don’t know why I’m telling you that, but I am.”

She laughed softly into her pillow. “I don’t believe this,” she whispered. Then, yelling shrilly: “You told him about this? Obviously, you did, if you promised to show him my naked pictures, you asshole!” She kicked the bed harder with her toes and pounded the pillow her fists. “How many people has Jeremy told!” she shrieked. “How many guys know you’re taking pictures of me naked? How many people has Jeremy told about my selfies?”

She banshee wailed into her pillow and kicked the bed furiously with her toes. She didn’t care that she was beating against her head through the pillow. Surprisingly, what Sean said next got through to her, though.

“Do you know how many girls’ cell phones Jeremy has hacked at school this year?”

She stopped kicking. She had the hiccups again, but she had expected that. “What?”

“Every girl’s cell phone he’s hacked had topless selfies on it. Every single one. That includes most girls in your class, Abs.” He amended that after a moment. “Every pretty girl in your class. The ones he was able to crack open, anyway. Your friend Jennifer; Hailey Cross, Emma Barton, Madison Jacks, Olivia Rosen, Hannah McCarthy—”

“Stop!” she choked, pushing onto her elbows. “What are you talking about?”

“Jeremy has topless and nude photos of almost every hot girl in school. Your freshman class especially, because he loves 14-year-olds. The point I’m making—”

“He has naked pictures of me?” she keened.

“Not you, no. I burglar-proofed your phone after I found your selfies. Jeremy didn’t get started hacking until mid-November. I also reset your iCloud password so no one could hack that either. You’re completely safe, Abs.”

“Except from you!” she accused. “And Jeremy, the fucker!”

Outside the door, Sean shrugged. “Jeremy would never share your pics, even if he had them, which he doesn’t. You’re safe.” He paused. “You haven’t swapped with other girls, have you?”

Abbie flipped and sat bolt upright on the bed. “What? No!” she choked; the lie unquestionable to anyone that heard.

“Who did you send them too?” he questioned.

Horrified, bug-eyed, Abbie shook her head. “No one!” she lied again.

Sean laughed. “If lies were made of gold, you could buy the West Coast with that one, sugar girl.”

Gulping painfully, she slid to the end of the mattress and perched there again.

“He hacked Jennifer’s phone?”

“Her and most the rest of your friends.”

Her heart lodged in her throat, unswallowable as a baseball-size nugget of gold.

“When did he do that? Hack her phone?”

“Jennifer the only one you swapped with?”

Abbie shook her head but said, yes.

“Don’t know exactly. When did you do the swap?”

“I didn’t,” she said shakily. “I sent her mine. She wanted to send me hers, but I was afraid you might hack my phone...” She gulped painfully again. “ ... so I told he not to. I never imagined...”

Sean said: “Girls never imagine the shit they can get themselves into when they do it. They wouldn’t swap topless pictures of themselves, otherwise, and do all the other air-headed things they do.”

Abbie didn’t need clarification on what other air-headed things Sean meant. She cleared her throat. “He’s seen me naked then.”

“Shit.” Sean sighed. “How many did you send her?”

She reduced the number by half. “Three.”

“Topless selfies? Anything else?”

Thank God, no, she thought. “How many guys have seen me topless, Sean?”

Sean cursed. “He wouldn’t show anyone. He never even told me he had any, and I didn’t think to ask. I thought you were safe.” He cursed again.

“What makes you think he didn’t show anyone else?”

“Because he has a bone in his shorts for you a mile long, Abigail.”

She blushed bright red. She blushed brighter than bright red. “No, he doesn’t!” she blurted stupidly.

“He ain’t sharing you with no one, Abbie. Not even me.”

And suddenly the shiny new dime dropped right into her palm, face up. Abbie understood everything, now. “That’s why you promised to send him my pictures from today, isn’t it? Because he’s given you selfies of every girl in school!”

“Every girl that matters. I had to pay him back, somehow. Besides...” He laughed. Abbie laughed also; she couldn’t help it.

“Because he has a bone in his shorts for me, a mile long!”

She got up and opened the door.

Sean glanced at her alarm clock. The green digits read 5:15. At least he was in her bedroom.

“Of all your friends, I like Olivia Rosen best. She’s a nice girl.”

Abbie gave him a gimlet-eyed grin.

“Not just because of that,” he said.

“Not just?”

He laughed and blushed a little. “Okay, she has a nice body, yeah. Cheerleader stuff if I ever saw one.”

“Olivia?” She laughed. Olivia was the brainiest girl she knew, and one of the most equalist ... she refused to describe herself as a feminist, although that’s exactly what she was. Were she college age or older, Abbie thought, she’d probably head up the local #MeToo chapter. Olivia was only semi-popular at school, and very distrustful of guys.

“She’s Jewish, you know.”

“I guessed that with the name Rosen. I’d do her Bat mitzvah though. Is that one word, or two? Is it capitalized? She’s 14, right? I missed my opportunity?”

Abbie laughed. “You want to know if it’s okay to beat off over her selfies, don’t you?”

Sean blurted a laugh. “The proper word is masturbate, Abbie. Repeat after me...”

She giggled, nearly tittered in embarrassment, and then blushed bright red again at the dangling question. She knew he must. He wanted to fuck her, after all.

He regarded her, smiling. “When I said that I hadn’t looked at your pics for 6 weeks, Abigail...?”

She squirmed like a 4-year-old needing to pee. “You really meant that you hadn’t masturbated over them in 6 weeks.”

His questioning expression gave her pause. “What?” she said, confused. He continued to gaze at her with that expectant expression, eyebrows raised. Until she finally got it.

“Me, not my pictures, right? You were really masturbating over me. Visualizing me as you beat off.”

“I like to wore my cock out over you, Abigail Morton. That 2” I grew in the last year?” He winked with a sly grin. “Your bare body did that to me. Without your selfies, I’d be the same measly 6” as Jeremy.”

Her expected and hoped for reaction colored her from the roots of her hair to the V of her uniform blouse. He laughed at her humiliated, horrified grin. She’d imagined Jeremy’s erection, just as Sean imagined her.

“I hate you sometimes!” she blurted, laughing. “You are such a prick!”

“Your hiccups are gone,” he noted.

She hadn’t noticed in her embarrassment, but they were. She wondered if sucking a boy’s cock would cure her hiccups. She’d eventually find out, she guessed. She also wondered if the first boy’s erection she’d masturbate and put in her mouth would be her brother’s.

“Dammit. It’s 5:30. I wish Mom wasn’t coming home tonight.” She realized what she said, too late, and blushed anew. But Sean was busy with his phone.

“He hasn’t texted since we came upstairs. I wonder what’s going on?”

“Why do we care?” she said obstinately. She shouldn’t blame his supposed older self for her traumatic afternoon, but she did. She should blame Sean. He’d triggered her stupid regression to 7 years old.

“He said other abilities, plural. Your body-sculpting capability isn’t the only one. Maybe the most important,” he said, grinning and eyeing her chest, “but he said you had more.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t want more abilities. I don’t want the one I got.”

“The one proven to work,” he corrected.

“That one, yeah. I’m not so sure about the other one, either.” She eyed him defiantly, even if lying through her teeth. Her breast tissue tingled, and her tiny pink nipples itched, just thinking about it. She deliberately suppressed any thought of her boobs growing bigger.

Sean composed a text to his older self. Reluctantly, she drifted over to see what he’d written. She kept her arms clamped tight over her chest, just in case.

“You said Abbie had other abilities beside the time-travel business, and her ability to grow boobs.”

“Sean!” she complained as he finished with “What else can we expect?” and sent the text.

“Sorry ... we?” They watched as Older-Sean composed his reply. It came unexpectedly fast.

“What time is it there?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” she grumbled crossly.

“5:45. Why do you ask?” He looked down at her after sending his response. “Are you on your period?”

She gasped, offended. “No, I’m not on my period, you shit!”

His phone pinged. Amused, he read the text, and then cocked his head. “Really?” he questioned. She started to look but skipped forward with a yelp as he whacked her hard on the rear end with his right hand.

“Hey!” she cried out, starting to rub her behind and stopping herself. “You can’t do that!”

“I just did, smartie.”

Incensed, wanting to rub her stinging butt cheek but refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching her do it, she moved to stand next to her swivel chair, hopefully out of reach of his big hand. He’d really planted a humiliating stinger on her bottom this time. She remembered the humiliation of her September afternoon spanking, reliving it now, 6 months later. What if he put her over his knee for real? What if he took off her panties and blistered her bare bottom? She couldn’t imagine that agonizing humiliation. Okay, she could.

“Come here and read this,” he said.

“No!” she responded obstinately.

“Now,” he ordered, “before a I lose my temper and buy you a strawberry shortcake.” He grinned, cutting his eyes toward her. She loved strawberry shortcake over all other desserts. She eyed him suspiciously but couldn’t keep from cracking an embarrassed smile too.

“You need to read this. Seriously.”

“So you can hit me again? No thank you!”

He held out the phone. Cautiously, ready to backpedal if her behind appeared in any danger, she inched forward enough to read the text. She blinked in surprise, and then muttered, “Fuck. Are you kidding me?”

“He knew you’d call me a shit,” he said. The text from the future had advised that if Abbie responded indignantly to being questioned about her period, then he should smack her hard on the left butt cheek, one time. It also suggested a reply to her outraged “You can’t do that!”, which he had given.

“He’s as much of a shit as you are!” she complained peevishly.

“He predicted the future,” he said. “And altered it, too. I had no intention of smacking your butt. Not that you didn’t deserve it, dickhead.”

She gave him a retaliatory smack on the arm. “Smartass!”

“Toad!”

“Morphydite!”

“Behave yourself.” He pondered the series of texts. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “We could really—” He paused when his iPhone pinged.

“You just realized what a mind-bending event that was. Forget it, Bozo, I’m not giving you tomorrow’s Powerball number.”

He laughed sharply. “Abigail?”

She typed: “You are such a shithead, shithead. I’m giving the phone back to your older self. He’s instructed me not to tell you anything. I just wanted you and Abbie to know I was here. That’s all I got to say. Hi Abs.”

Dumbstruck, Abbie stared open-mouthed at the screen.

“You never considered that if I’m there, you gotta be there too?”

She transferred her open-mouthed stare to Sean.

“You realize it’s probably you that enables him to text me, right?”

She shook her head, and then nodded dumbly.

“Another one of your gifts, Abs.”

“Another one of her gifts,” Older Sean confirmed. “I’ll tell you what my older-self told me when I was in your shoes: That’s all I got to say, dude. The rest you gotta figure out for yourselves. Just like me and Older Abbie did.

“One thing I will fill you in on though--because my older-self told me--is how Abbie’s in-body time-travel works. Picture a slide rule in your mind. The left edge is the day she was conceived; the right edge is the day she dies. Between the two edges is her entire life span. The cursor is her ability to move left or right along that span, with the caveat that traveling right past her current position in life don’t work. She hasn’t lived it yet, so it’s not there. Mentally adjusting the cursor left takes her to the age directly beneath the hairline. Moving it right brings her back. This is important, dude: she isn’t physically growing larger or smaller when she moves. She’s simply returning to the age below the hairline on her scale. Her mental age is tied to the cursor body, so it travels along the scale but is not directly affected by it. With the precaution of staying above 5 years old like I said earlier, yada-yada-yada. Got it?”

“Got it?” he asked her. And then laughed when she shook her head, and then nodded dumbly again.

“What about the pain she experienced? Do we need to worry about that?” He strongly suspected the discomfort she experienced during her transformation in the kitchen was strictly a female-related phenomenon, and therefore, torment-worthy.

She slowly turned red. He could fairly read her thoughts: You prick!

Laughing, he ruffled her hair. And then laughed even harder when she promptly hiccuped, cursed under her breath and proceeded to get even redder. Hiccups were always torment-worthy, female-related, or not. His iPhone pinged.

“One more thing: You lucked out today, dude, removing Abbie’s earrings before she regressed. Make sure you do that in the future if she regresses below the age of 8 years old, because that’s when she got her ears pierced. This caution works in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION TOO! Never let her age while wearing rings or clothing inappropriate for the age she is scaling up to! SHE COULD BE BADLY INJURED. Think of a 6-year-old’s ring on a 14-year-old’s finger. You maybe lucked out again today.

Anyway, that’s it dude and dudette. I will be signing off now. I’ll write if anything else critical occurs to one or the other of us, otherwise, you two have fun!”

“Wait!” he spat, and then typed it into the message box, along with: “How old are you?” But his older self and his sister were gone.

“Do you think that’s it, really?” she asked worriedly.

Sean glanced as she bit her lower lip (God, she’s so sexy, he thought), and then shifted his gaze to the alarm clock. The green digits now read 6:15. Mom would be home in the next fifteen minutes.

“If Olivia Rosen wasn’t a freshman. I’d serious consider pursuing her,” he said. He laughed as she first widened, and then rolled her blue eyes.

“You and her would mix like a rattlesnake and a mongoose.” She knew what a mongoose was. She might even know what it looked like, she thought. She definitely knew that Olivia was the rattlesnake, and Sean the mongoose. She was the helpless little rabbit both hunted.

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“Really?” she scoffed. “That’s what you want to talk about?”

“I could tell you to take off your clothes.”

She folded her arms with a huff of disgust.

Sean laughed. Then said, “I’m questioning...” Frowning, he glanced at her bedroom door. It stood open just wide enough to conceal the full-length mirror on the back. How did she...?

“How did you take the pictures of your pretty little baby breasts with Mom coming home any minute?”

Abbie blushed bright red again. She remembered being in her uniform skirt in the selfies—one of the selfies, anyway. She wore her uniform skirt every day of the school week, however, so it didn’t have to be today that she took the pictures, despite what Older-Sean had said.

“I don’t get it, either,” she had to admit.

“You don’t get a whole lot of things,” Sean said with a smirk.

She pressed her lips together, miffed. “You asshole.”

He laughed and gave her a one-arm hug around the shoulders. She braced anxiously for the expected smack on her can, remaining tense for half a dozen seconds before relaxing a bit. Sean didn’t mess around. He’d have swatted her immediately, if he meant to swat her at all. He was predictable that way. A premonition warned, however, that at some point tonight—she wasn’t sure when, or how she knew it so certainly—she’d go over his knee for the promised, bare-bottomed spanking. A good one, too. The same foreboding predicted that she’d be naked except for her pleated uniform skirt, and how she would kick and flail and plead and cry humiliating as he spanked her. She envisioned her bare bottom the same bright red as her face. Appallingly, her detested submissive side would enjoy it.

“Wait. If he was you in the future like he said it was, how could he write exactly what his older-self wrote to him? Doesn’t that seem weird?”

He cocked his head. “You’re saying I couldn’t remember word for word a conversation I held with my older self when it came time to repeat it to my younger self?”

She tightened, shoulder’s hunching defensively. “Well...” she said uncertainly, cowed by his critical expression. When was Mom getting home?

He grinned and shrugged. “I couldn’t. That’s what gets me about time travel movies. I couldn’t repeat a word for word conversation I had with you, not five minutes ago.”

She sighed in relief. And then stepped back, startled as he thrust out his iPhone.

“However, Brown-Bunny-Girl!” He scrolled through the text conversation he and his older self had shared. “I do have this!” He quickly sent himself the conversation via email, and PDF’d a copy to send to his printer. Together they listened to the pages begin printing on his laser printer across the hall.

“Voila! We are saved! Any more pubescent questions, Miss Biddable?”

She thought, You did that on purpose, you prick, just to embarrass me. When is Mom getting home!

As though in answer, Sean’s cell phone rang, startling them both. “Hey,” he said into the speakerphone. It was Mom.

“I got called back to the office. You two need to fend for yourselves until I get home. It shouldn’t be that late ... maybe 11 o’clock, or so? Can you manage that okay?”

Abbie’s heart trip hammered against her ribcage, and she suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“11 o’clock leaving, or 11 o’clock getting home, Mom?” Either way, Abbie read the relief in his face. She reddened in chagrin.

“11 o’clock leaving, probably.” She sounded uncertain. “I wish your dad was home. I—”

“You want a ride home? Me and Abbie can come and get you when you’re ready.”

Abbie had a heart attack. “No!” she hissed, grabbing his arm. Sean meant to guilt trip Mom into staying overnight at a motel. She’d done it before after working late in Sevierville. Mom hated driving in the rain, and she wouldn’t want her and her brother, not that experienced a driver at 16-1/2, driving in the rain either.

“Tell her to take an Uber!” she whispered fiercely. She started to yell it out to her mom, but Sean grabbed and silenced her with a hand over her mouth. She struggled futilely against his heavily muscled forearm and biceps.

“No, no, that’s all right,” Mom said hurriedly. “You shouldn’t drive in the rain.”

“Take an Uber?” he suggested letting his hissy-fitting sister go but holding her out of reach by the hair. Outraged, she grabbed his hand with both of hers and tried to kick his shins. It didn’t help to have him sniggering at her as she struggled. You bully! she thought and tried to kick him again.

“I can’t afford an Uber,” Mom said.

It won’t cost as much as a fucking motel room, her daughter wanted to shout at her, but didn’t. Peeved and panting, she crossed her arms and leaned forward, pulling her own hair. She did such self-denigrating, imbecilic things when she was mad. She breathed through her nose, teeth clamped shut, her lips forming a thin white line in her bright read face.

“Maybe I’ll get a motel room,” Mom said. Sean slyly countered: “That’s way more than an Uber ride home, Mom. Let me come and get you. I’ll leave numb-nuts home.”

“What?” Abbie squeaked.

“You’re sister’s there? Good. No ... I don’t want her alone in the house. The company has an arrangement with the Courtyard in Pigeon Forge; I can stay for half-price if they have a room free tonight. The company won’t pay for an Uber ride home, so I’ll just stay in Pigeon Forge.”

Abbie tried to object “No!” but Sean wound her up again and held her in place with the hand over her mouth. She tried to bite him, but his palm was tough as leather from his athletic activities after school. She might as well bite a baseball mitt.

“You are such a bully!” she railed into his palm. It’s so unfair! It’s so fucking unfair, being a girl!

Miffed as can be, she clamped her arms tight over her chest again and kicked his shin with her bare heel. She could at least do that. Let him fucking spank her. She kicked him again and huffed a curse against his coarse skin.

“Can I talk to Abbie?” Mom said.

“You can, but she just went to the bathroom. I’ll have her call you when she gets out.”

Hand over her mouth, Abbie obstinately shook her head and kicked him again.

“That would be good, sweetie. Tell her to give me fifteen minutes before she calls, though. I want to get back to the office; I don’t like being on my cell in the rain. I love you; you know. Thank you for taking care of your sister tonight.”

“I love you too, Mom. Take care in that rain, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“She’s not there?”

Abbie stiffened anxiously.

“Nope. In the bathroom. Why?”

Mom paused. “She’s so immature. Sometimes I think I have a 10-year-old again. Do you know she ... well, never mind. You know how she is.”

He chuckled. “Good thing’s she’s got a big brother, huh?”

Abbie kicked him twice as hard this time and huffed in outrage. She bit his hand, and this time got a sliver of meat. He had no reaction over than to clamp his hand tighter over her mouth.

“You’re in charge. Don’t take any of her guff. If she acts up with you...”

“I have your permission to spank her?” he said. Abbie shook her arm-crossed torso back and forth indignantly and mewed “Mmmmmmm!” into his palm.