Everyone's Favorite Girl (10 page)

Turns out I was right.

A few minutes in, I realized this wasn’t just about brainwashing me.  It was also about torturing Patton.  He sat in a chair in the corner of the room, covering his face with his hands.  I couldn’t tell if he was crying.  It was hard not to focus on what was happening in the foreground.

After strapping me in what looked like a dentist’s chair, Sean pulled down my pants and underwear and stuck two fingers inside me while I struggled.  Then he started pinching me hard in the side, squeezing my breasts, and he didn’t stop until I was hysterical.

That was when Judy approached with a syringe.

Sean ceased violating me and put all his weight on my arm to keep me still while Judy plunged the needle into my bicep.

Then I seemingly fell unconscious, only my eyes were half-open, lids fluttering, my mouth turning up in a creepy smile.

Five minutes passed with no one doing anything.  Kate ran her mouth incessantly while
everyone in the room tried hard to ignore her.  Mr. Shriver stood there looking grumpy and inconvenienced.  Once Patton stood and walked over to me.  He put his hand on the armrest and hovered over me like a mourner staring into a coffin.

On Judy’s instruction, Kate picked up a script that she would spend the next ten minutes whispering in my ear, the nightmare I awoke from last time, everything I feared all bundled up into one cute little anti-fairytale.

The more I watched, the more my disdain for Kate grew.  I made a commitment right then and there, and as many angry women are wont to do, I said it aloud. “Mark my words you fucking skank.  I’m going to kill you.”

I broke the CD in half and threw it in the trash.  Then I burned the note in the sink, washing the ashes down the drain.

With that done, I went to the shower room to check on Flora.  She stood in the middle of the Jacuzzi pool, the water surface lapping at her knees, her entire body—minus the one arm—lathered in soap, hair matted into a ball with shampoo.  She had her back to me and must not have heard me enter.  I sat down on the ledge and watched her work the lather on her thighs, her sides, her butt.  Someone had taught her to be thorough.

I slipped out of the room without her noticing.

~ ~ ~ ~

No matter what, this would be the last time they experimented on me.  From here I would
either accept the position as production manager and go about the task of enforcing child labor, or I would die feeling Sean’s blade poking around in my intestines.

Having James on our side made the days a lot easier.  He began to sneak us whatever we wanted, starting with wine and bourbon.  We made a list of movies we wanted to watch and he delivered every single one.  That night we got drunk, ate popcorn, and cuddled together on the bed watching comedies.  It even became easy to laugh.  Liquor will do that.

In case these were our last few days, I tried to have as much fun with Flora as possible.  We quickly reverted to children, crawling around on the floor and building tents and tunnels out of bed sheets.

On the final night—the night they would come take me away—Flora and I crawled into the largest tent, built from the top of the broken stereo system and sloping down to the coffee table, to play
strip checkers.

Flora suggested the game.  I added the stripping part.  To my surprise, she accepted the challenge without modesty or hesitation.

A few rounds in, I realized why.  Flora was ridiculously talented at checkers.  She had me buck naked at the end and all she’d lost was a t-shirt and a sock.

As the ga
me progressed, I started to notice her stealing glances at me the way a guy zones in on cleavage when a girl turns her head.  It was cute, and at the same time I started to feel an inexplicable enchantment developing in the air.  Flora was crushing on me—I could see it clearly now—and I was excited about it.  We began the game sitting on opposite sides of the board, but by the end she’d inched her way around to be right next to me, so that by the time our shoulders touched, I was already naked.

“The Floras play a lot of checkers,” she ex
plained, leaning into me playfully, some of her hair falling across my bare chest.

“No strip checkers, I assume.”

She shook her head.  “We showered together, though.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  I mean we had an open shower room, so a few girls might be in there any given time.”

“Just Floras or all the girls?”

“All of them.”

She seemed excited to share this information, like she had a dirty little secret.  Some soft sexual encounter with another Favorite Girl—which one?—who happened to be standing
under the showerhead next to her late one evening when the others were long asleep.

Did Flora once have a girlfriend?

“So you’re used to being naked around other people,” I said.

“Just girls.  Never a guy.”

“I’m a girl.”

She blushed
and dropped her head, but she was smiling.

“If you want me to take my clothes off, you have to get better at checkers.”

“Well how about we play another game?” I asked.  “Only this time I get to pick.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Strip Wrestling.”

“What’s Strip—”

I pushed her onto the bed of pillows we’d made and fought with her to pull her clothes off.  She giggled and squealed and squirmed away, inevitably driving us to the edge of the tent.  In our thrashing and rolling we pulled the tent down on top of us.  Before long we were rolled up in it, like two flies bound together by a hungry spider, me tugging at her jeans, which I’d pulled down to her knees, Flora clinging to them for dear life.  In order to pretend to resist, you must participate in resisting.

Then suddenly we stopped moving and lay with our bare stomachs pressed together, me naked, Flora with her pants pulled down and
her shirt hiked up to just below her breasts, both of us breathing heavily.

I felt her breath on my neck.  Then a cold, wet sensation.  Her tongue, barely grazing my skin.  Her whole body vibrated and I realized she was giggling.  I felt her wiggly tongue again, only this time she licked downward and put her soft lips on my collar bone.  She kissed me in a line up my neck, through the spot where the nurse checks your pulse—this I could hardly stand—and up to my earlobe.

She bit it gently but just a little too hard, and when I reacted she snaked her hand quickly through the tangle of bed sheets and cupped my face, whispering so quiet a person standing over us wouldn’t even hear it, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Cool, moist kisses crossed my cheek like little bare feet walking in the rain, and when she reached the corner of my mouth, she pressed her lips and the tip of her tongue there, and suddenly I felt fingertips gliding slowly down my neck.
 
Slowly
.  As if in slow motion.  It was agonizing.  To distract myself from it I met her tongue with mine, and we began to kiss along with the pace of Flora’s chilly fingers, each stroke of our tongues a film reel in and of itself.  She breathed into my mouth, then turned her face, moaning.  Her fingertips had made it down to my hipbone and I couldn’t take it.  I reached down to grab her hand and ran into an arm.  Her other arm.  She was masturbating.

Slipping my hand down there, I spread
my fingers out to find her middle finger.  When I found it, barely rubbing the tiny bud of her clitoris, I slipped my fingers down farther, finding wetness below, warmth, invitation.

The depths to which we penetrated one another, my God.  Only Patton could match Flora for passion.

Then, during the middle of our sweaty devouring of one another, a layer of sheet suddenly slid off Flora’s back, exposing us to the cold air.  The cocoon had ruptured, and we were wet, naked, and quickly growing uncomfortable.

Flora sprang up and ran to
ward the corridor.  I gave chase, entering as she reached the end and sprang into the shower room, just a flash of ass and legs before she disappeared.  I slowed down to a walk as I reached the end and peeked through the doorway.

Flora was climbing carefully
but hastily into the Jacuzzi.  She walked out a few steps, then turned around and stood facing me, waiting there, her vulnerability palpable but eroding in the steam and the heat.  She cupped her breasts—I thought to cover herself, but her hands didn’t stop moving.  She looked like she was bathing again, only without soap.

I stepped into the room.
  Approaching the ledge, I noticed a sock on the floor.  The one she’d still been wearing after checkers.  The only piece of clothing I hadn’t stripped off her.

As soon as I lifted my foot to step over into the water, Flora turned and waded away from me slowly, wandering not in a straight line but headed in the general direction of the waterfall and the canopy of tropical plants, the hiding place.

I caught up to her where the water was white from oxygen bubbles, just a few feet away from the waterfall, and stopped her by taking up her hand.  She turned to me.  We drew in and kissed, not touching except for our hands and lips.  A warm mist wafted from the impact area, and once in a while a hot drop of water splashed across my chest or neck.

I believe Flora could have stood there kissing me deeply for hours, but
I didn’t have the patience to savor my arousal.

Slowly I dropped to my knees, kissing her along the way: her chest, a nipple, a rib, her soft stomach, above and below the belly button.  Lower.  Like someone repelling down a cliff.  Then my knees touched the floor
.  Flora’s legs were together.  I kissed her on the small crease that showed, over and over, all the while surveying her body, a beautiful landscape, twin mountains in the distance blanketed between and beside them by wavy blonde hair, like low-lying clouds illuminated by morning sunlight.

She tilted her head up and began to moan, the sound lost in the rumble of the waterfall.  I felt her shifting, putting all her weight on one foot, then raising the other leg slightly, spreading herself open for me.  She rested her foot on my hip and I held it.
  When I slipped my tongue inside her, she clamped down on my pinky with her big toe and inhaled sharply, as though she’d been holding her breath.

I brought her to climax
and she lost her balance, the peak of orgasm occurring mid-fall, for all I knew, and then she splashed down in the water, laughing hysterically.

We both laughed until I pulled her to me and gave her a kiss.

Her hands found me underwater.  One of them slid around to my ass.  The other went between my legs.

“Your turn,” Flora said.

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away, shaking my head.

Flora thought we were still playing.

“No,” I said with my commanding tone.

Her arm went limp.

“What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t hide things from her anymore.  All this time I’d kept Flora in the dark, like a child, when everything was at stake for her, too.  She deserved to know, to be involved,
to contribute.  It was the least I could do after taking a scalpel to her flesh.

I touched her face and gave her another kiss, which turned into another make-out session.  I had to pull away.

“In a few hours, they’re coming to get me.  I have to convince them I’ve become someone they can trust.  You know these people.  It’s very likely I’m going to have to fuck somebody tonight.  That’ll be a whole lot easier if I show up horny.”

Flora nodded, taking in the information.  She was obviously disappointed.  After a moment, though, her eyes lit up and she smiled.

“A few hours,” she said.  “That’s quite a while to cool off.”  She leaned in and pecked me with a kiss on the neck.  “I’ll have to keep you horny.”  Another kiss, this one on my mouth.  She blinked twice.  “Let’s go to bed, get some rest.  We’ll just cuddle and kiss, I promise.  Nothing under our PJs.  Is that okay?”

I nodded, and Flora shot up out of the water.

“Great!”

She sprinted off again, headed to the closet where we kept the bathrobes.

~ ~ ~ ~

Lying in bed together in the final hour before Sean showed up to escort me to Level B, I fell in love with Flora.  She kept up her end of the bargain.  Complete, unyielding focus on nothing but stimulating my sexual desire, feeding it, keeping the fire burning without letting it get out of control.  She crooked her fingers over my crotch, held pressure there, and she surprised me under the blankets with kisses all over my body.  She slithered all around me.  Several times I gave in and tried to seduce her, but she resisted.  She cared enough to be steadfast in giving me exactly what I needed so I could go forth into this predicament more prepared.

It was the most amazing agony I’ve ever experienced.

I loved her. 
This
Flora.  Not any other.

Not anyone else.

~ ~ ~ ~

Sean must have come at the same time of night every week.  Moments before he opened the door, Flora whispered, “They want to see you changing.  Let’s help them see it.”