Trophy 26

“What about snacks?” Bella asked.

“I bring you food.”

“On your timetable. I don’t like feeling like I’m in a fat camp. I don’t ask for much, but maybe a few salad kits? Lunchmeat, cheese, bread. Baby carrots. Some Diet Coke…”

“You want a refrigerator to put it all in?” Frank asked laconically.

“Yes. With a freezer for some Ben & Jerry’s. And a cold compress.”

“Is that all?”

“My freedom?” Bella suggested, grinning.

“I might get a coffee machine, if we can agree on what grounds to get.”

“I’m fine with anything. I want half and half, though. And some sugar cubes. And do you ever go out for food? Because I know a few places that do take-out and if you could bring me Chinese once in a while…”

“You’ll want wine too, I imagine,” Frank said dismally.

“I actually don’t like it. I’m more of a beer drinker.”

“I’ll put it in the fridge. If there’s room.”

“I’ll need fruit, too. Not just processed foods and meat. Fresh stuff, green stuff. Bananas, apples, oranges—” Bella began to undress, peeling her panties down her legs. “Milk. Two percent, I think. Some people I know get skim and some get whole milk. I guess two percent is about in the middle, so that’s what I try to get…”

“What are you doing?” Frank asked her.

Bella hid a smile as she took off her corset. “Getting changed. Don’t flatter yourself, honey. I’m not in the mood. You keep blowing your chances with me; well, I’m not hot all the time. Now I just wanna put on something that doesn’t feel like someone played basketball in it.”

“Don’t you want to wash up first?”

“With what, the rag? I’ve been doing that, polpetto. I’m as clean from that as I’m going to get.”

“Sounds like you could use a shower.”

He left her sitting on the bed, naked, while he went to the end of her chain embedded in the concrete. He took the key from around his neck and unlocked it. Once more, he had her on a leash.

“Grab a change of clothes and come on,” he told her.

Bella obediently grabbed a top, slacks, and a pair of panties (from, thankfully, an unopened packages of Hanes). She followed Frank as he took her on another walk, part of her trying to cover herself with the folded clothes and another part wondering why she should bother.

“Coccinella, you are either the kinkiest motherfucker I’ve ever met or the most dead below the waist. Here you are, leading a naked woman around on a chain like it’s nothing. If anyone else were doing this to me, I’d expect to get fucked six ways to Sunday.”

“It has been a while since you showered,” Frank said.

“Funny joke, Punisher man. Real funny.”

He led her around the hanger, onto the side that bordered the woods. The concrete that underwrote the Quonset kept going for a few feet before becoming dirt, so Bella walked on that until they came to a camp shower Frank had rigged up. It was like a tent made in the shape of a cylinder, with a water tank the size of a steamer trunk at the base. A hose led out of it, up to the top of the nylon walls, where it fed into a showerhead mounted on a pair of prongs.

“Get in, please,” Frank said.

Bella turned on him. “You know, I bet that’s the first time you’ve ever said please to me? It’s kinda hot. Almost gets me going.”

“Please,” Frank stressed, and loomed close enough to Bella to force her inside the nylon. He pointed to a pedal where the nylon sat against the water tank. “Step on that to start the water. Step on it again to shut it off.” He pointed to compartments built into the sides of the weird little stall, like the mesh in a backpack to carry a water bottle. “Soap’s there, shampoo is there.”

“No conditioner?”

“No.” Frank reached down to the bottom of the opening in the nylon that led in and out of the stall. “You can zip this up if you want some privacy, except for the chain, of course.” He was still holding onto that. “I’ll set your clothes on top of the water tank. You can put them on when you’re ready. Towel’s hanging from a hook on top of the stall.”

And he moved to get out of her sight. Bella could see it all. He’d lean against the wall on the other side of the stall, let her wash herself and get out and get dressed, then take her back to the bed and chain her to the floor again. It was halfway like he was protecting her. Her black knight, making sure she couldn’t go back to being held captive in the tower again. Using her to slay all the dragons that wanted her.

But she wanted a dragon. And she wanted him. And she hated him, not least of all for making her want him.

“Don’t,” she said, putting her foot on the zipper before he could use it to close up the stall. “Don’t go.”

“I don’t need a shower.”

Bella ignored his weak attempt at humor. He was deflecting. Just like a boy. He couldn’t admit how much he wanted her. Maybe he hated her just as much as she did him.

She turned the water on. It came out of the showerhead in a fine mist, dousing her with no water pressure, but it was warm and it was flowing freely, carrying away all her feelings of being dirty and sweaty and gross and hot. She wetted her hair in the flow, running her hands through it to make sure all of her dry, oily tresses got soaked.

“What have you been up to, Frank? You made it look like the Haitians were the ones who kidnapped me, then you made it look like the Beluccis went after them… is that all you’ve done, Signor Incasinato?”

“I went after the meth lab you told me about,” Frank said, his eyes like a well-trained hound, never straying from the proscribed territory of her face, even as she lathered up her hands with soap and caressed herself with the suds. “Killed them all, put some Haitian graffiti at the scene. They’ll think it was a reprisal for the Beluccis’ reprisal.”

“A nice little gang war.”

The needles of water striking her flesh woke her body up, reviving the desire that’d been circulating in her, untouched, for far too long. She felt the chain against the flesh of her hips with every little move she made. It struck her as fetishistic now. She purred when the links brushed against her shifting legs.

“Vincenzo will want to know if the Scagliones are behind this. He’ll think so, but he won’t know one way or the other, and he won’t move until he knows for sure. Or at least convinces himself he knows for sure.”

The heat from the shower spray only felt better and better, crashing against Bella’s face and breasts, melding with the sweeter warmth she felt down in her loins. She lazily scrubbed her full breasts, lovingly drawing autoerotic joy from her stiffened nipples. Soap bubbles flowed down her sleek tummy and jeweled her pubic thatch, before more pearls coursed down her legs.

Frank listened attentively. He kept staring at Bella’s face, but what he saw was the look of pleasure on it. The flushed warmth, the little tremors of delight as she rubbed the bar of soap between her legs. Bella made no effort to keep those expressions from showing.

Her clit throbbed and the hot water revitalized her tired muscles, as though preparing them for long, strenuous activity. Her pussy grew hotter, wetter—she knew it was sweet as honey now. Bella let her head drift back, her eyes closed, confident that Frank would keep looking at her, keep seeing the arousal that was his to take advantage of.

Her tongue flicked at her full lips, tasting them while Frank couldn’t. “He’ll call for a meeting with the Scagliones. His boys and theirs. Their don and him. It’ll be a powder keg. One spark could set it off. You start a firefight there, mostriciattolo, and it’ll be full-blown war.”

“Where will they meet?” Frank asked, his voice level, so damn level. It was all Bella could do not to grab his cock and make it clear to them both how much he wanted her.

Bella set the soap aside and turned around under the shower spray, letting it rinse off all the suds from her perfect, Junoesque body. “There’s an old family restaurant. The Trattoria. The Beluccis and the Scagliones have always met there before. I can’t imagine they’ll want to go somewhere else this time.”

“I’ll scope it out.”

“Really? I’d have thought you’d gone blind. Can’t you tell how wet I am?” Her back turned to Frank, Bella looked over her shoulder at him. “Wash my back?”

“When did it have a chance to get dirty?”

“Come on, Frank. You promised. If I’m a good girl, I get rewarded, right?” She picked up the bottle of shampoo from its little tray and held it out to Frank. “Use this on me. Really get it into me. If there’s one thing we both know you’re good at, it’s foreplay. Only this time follow through, certo?”

Frank dropped his end of the chain to the ground. He pulled his shirt up over his head. The moment it passed over his face was the last time his gaze left her body. His chiseled physique showed no trace of weakness, any more than his eyes did. His belt dropped to the floor. He toed the heel of one shoe off, then the other. She turned her face up to the water, eyes shut, to rinse it again. Teasing him with her lack of need to watch as his pants slid down his powerful thighs.