Page 55 of Among the Screaming Trees

“Fuck,” comes the halted whisper behind me. Yeah, he can speak; he just doesn’t want to. Now he can’t avert his eyes, nor his hand from stroking himself through his jeans.

“She’s close.”

“That’s it, Doc, fuck her onto my fat cock.”

Aspen moans around Luk’s veined shaft, her body taking Jack’s with exquisite precision. Her fingers curl into the plush fabric, knuckles white and rigid. Right before the two interlopers showed up, Jack and Aspen were discussing the power of an orgasm for natural pain relief, relying on the neurotransmitters of dopamine and oxytocin to fog her brain enough that her pain was manageable. Part of me had thought he was joking; the rest of me realized he was not. Had the other two idiots not turned up in a deathtrap relic, that would be my cock disappearing down her warm, wet throat right now.

“That’s it, baby. Your cunt squeezes my cock so very well. You love being dicked down, hmmm, don’t you? Luk, she’s coming. Let her breathe.”

Lukaz pulls back, taking his cock in hand. The line of drool connects to her cheek as she pants through the trembling, before her head hangs below her shoulders. Jack follows with a roar, withdrawing and coming over her round ass and lower back.

Aspen raises her head, she locks eyes with Luk, and he winks. Pushing off her palms, she straightens, kneeling upright and grasping full, heavy tits with each inadequate hand. Luk jerks himself once, twice, and then shoots his cum across her breasts and down her rounded stomach, watching it drip past her pussy and onto her thighs. Jack’s cock still pulses, urged on by his shuttling hand and guttural growl.

Aspen is a kneeling vision dripping with lines of slipping spend. Ropes of it cover her ass and back, with more decorating her front as she pants. The moaning, however, has ceased, as has the pained look in her eyes, replaced by glazed satiation. A smile hints at the edges of her lips, swollen and dark red from all that sucking and licking. She is perfection.

“Did you get everything?” Jack’s question shakes me from my stupor, and Fox nods. At least one of us can still communicate, because, similar to Foxglove Muir, my voice won’t deliver the words my brain is forming.

“Fox, bring the pain relief. Eli, stop fucking gawking and go get her a glass of water,” Jack snaps, and my feet move me into the kitchen by muscle memory.

“And what do you want me to do, Doctor?” Luk asks.

“Go upstairs and turn on the shower. I’ll bring her up in a second.”

Vaskari’s pale ass is shrouded by denim as he hurls himself onto the stairs, his grubby, cum-slick fingers leaving a white mark on the mahogany. Fucking heathen. Aspen accepts the glass and two tablets after Jack has popped them from the blister pack. He places them on her tongue, the same tongue that explored every inch of another man’s cock just moments earlier. I should be livid, but a strange calm warms me from marrow outward, and it has nothing to do with the curling flames in the hearth.

“Did you enjoy that?” Jack asks, and we both answer together.

“Mmm, yes. I feel so much better now, thank you.”

“That was fucking perfection.”

As usual, Fox says nothing. He stalks forward, crouching down in front of a naked, cum-stained and trembling Aspen. Neither of them looks away. The second her chin dips, he’s there lifting it again, as if the idea of her being embarrassed is a complete travesty. His other hand glides across her coated breasts, gathering up Luk’s cum on his index finger, before bringing it to her lips in a deliberate tease. Still holding his lust-filled gaze, she opens her mouth just as the digit lands on her bottom lip. He works it inside, watching with hooded eyes as her tongue swirls around, cleaning his finger of release. When Aspen mirrors his hooded stare, releasing his finger and licking her lips, his are on hers before she can blink. He pulls her to standing, dragging her naked, dripping body to his as he kisses her like it’s his last benediction. Her legs tangle around his waist, his hands under her juicy ass while he walks her to the stairs and climbs, still kissing her with languid strokes of his tongue while his elegant fingers press and punish the plush skin of her backside. I’m still struck dumb. My obsession, in my house, naked and covered in cum that isn’t mine, carried upstairs by a different guy who has never had sex before. She will be his first. If not tonight, then soon, her cunt will be the one his dick disappears into. Lucky fucking bastard. And still I stare, slack-jawed, incapable of conversation. I tend to be rendered speechless by poor exam results and stupid questions in class after explaining the concept repeatedly. Never have I been struck silent by a naked woman in the arms of another man; only the actions of another man to claim the one I so desperately wanted and ended up losing anyway.

Chapter Thirty

Aspen

REVELATIONS

Revelations may well be the final, and sixty-sixth book of the Christian Bible, but the revelations that concern me are not of a religious persuasion. I came to Alaska to get answers, only now do I have even more questions, and nothing seems final. The database of known facts and possibilities in my mind has so many fucking tabs open, a complete system meltdown is imminent. If I go backward in chronological order, I am living in a house with four other men who I have some kind of relationship with. Two of those men are lecturers at a college I’m on scholarship at, with a hefty age-gap trope adding to the forbidden one on the blurb. Another student has died on campus, and some turd sent me live spiders through the post, not to mention another faculty member being found in my room while I was out. Said faculty doesn’t like me, and while the feeling is mutual, I don’t trust her more than I don’t like her. Her lessons are interesting and her knowledge incredible, but many parts of Amber Donnelyn rub me the wrong way. She seems friendly with some students, while borderline cruel and aloof with others. The Dean of Wyldan U taught my mother at college and was friends with my father. Not just we teach together, sort of dipped head at alum meetings, but they went to conferences together and away on field trips with a research group. To say my head is exploding would be like saying the stench of the corpse flower is mildly bothersome. Those things reek like the rotten flesh of a thousand dead marsupials.

Russian knapweed was one of my Larch gifts. Lukaz Vaskari speaks Russian. If his name is one I cross off my list, the rest send coils of icy shivers through each vertebra. Four Larch gifts; four Larchers. Four men I share a house with, two of whom are teachers. If Elijah Wyldan and Jackson Bonner were two of my Larchers, then a process of elimination suggests Foxglove Muir to be the other. Without Digitalis purpurea or common foxglove as a botanical, what did he give me? The willow, the lily, or the orchid? It’s not like I can throw the dried remnants of the botanicals onto the ottoman I was spit roasted over and arch an eyebrow now, is it? Wyldan shut me up in his office with a pinecone for fuck’s sake. If he participated in the Larch, wouldn’t he use that as his calling card? The answers swim like bacteria under a microscopic slide, swirling and rousing but not offering anything valuable. Dean Grundy and I need to have another discussion. Perhaps he’ll shed some light on how many days or weeks the dorm will be out of action after fumigation, and if there is an update to Merda’s collapse and subsequent death near the fountain. I hate looking at it now. Before she succumbed in front of it, I ached for the poor salmon, knowing it was about to be devoured. Then my mind shifted to the predatory bear, knowing he was entitled to his meal, but at the expense of something smaller and weaker? Now the watery sculpture reeks of vile death more than a corpse flower would. Fuck the flowing water meant to symbolize life cycles and renewed energy, all I see is death and detritus. Merda was a bitch, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her.

The Dean’s assistant waves me through her sub-office space where theDean is resetting his desk phone onto the cradle. In some ways he reminds me of my dad; in others, my mother. His face, a weathered, lined map of advanced years, with no regard for sun protection. His eyes still burn with a joy one only possesses when spending time doing something that makes them feel alive. Dean Grundy is passionate and proud, knowledgeable and kind. While his answers tend to ramble and circle back three or four times before revealing themselves, his knowledge holds a key to a lock I can only picture.

“Aspen,” he beams. “How are you?”

How am I? Conflicted? Confused? “Fine, thank you, sir. And yourself?”

“I won’t complain, Aspen. The weather is still temperate enough that we can move about outside and not battle through feet of snow; no further students have been sent live mail or passed away. Today is a good day.”

I want to smile at his outrageous humor, but he’s holding on by a thread, and what if he snaps? More than once over the past weeks, I’d wondered what Arthur Aldereyne would be like as a Dean, and how he would cope with a crisis. His answer was not always the bottom of a bottle, but seeing anyone in danger would bring out a strangely protective side at war with his peace-loving tendencies.

“Dean Grundy, can you tell me more about the history of Wyldan U, please? Not the history on the website and in the brochures. Regarding the botanical science program, can I ask specifically about certain clandestine activities like the Larch?”

The Dean flattens his smile and fiddles with the coiled phone cord to busy his restless hands. “The history I know, Aspen, is the history on the website and in the brochures. I only took the position of Dean a year prior, so am quite new to the University.”

“But you were Dean in Colorado, right?”