The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(11)
Tic-toc-tac! She jumped when another pinecone fell out of the trees, landing within feet of her. She looked up, seeing nothing but tree branches.
Fucking squirrels.
Somewhere, in the not quite so distant distance, brushes rustled.
Fucking bunnies, too. That sounded much too big and heavy to be a squirrel.
She fidgeted with the lock picks in her hand, anger growing as she swallowed her unease. Get in, she told herself. Get the finance ledger and get out again, only two grand richer. Eye on the prize, Goldi girl.
Eye on the prize.
The back lock was one of the easiest she’d ever picked, and the most unnecessary. Had she checked latch first, she’d have noticed the door was already unlocked. She tsked, as much at the owners as at herself. “Apparently, some people don’t realize how dangerous the world can be.”
Apparently, she didn’t either. She was just about to go inside when a stick snapped behind her. Flattening into the shadows of the ivy trellis, Goldi peered through the wood slats and leaves. Her heart thumped to a sudden stop. Less than fifteen feet away, a shaggy brown bear was venturing from out behind two giant red cedars. Breathing heavily, nose to the air, it looked right at her.
“Oh shit,” she breathed.
She didn’t move. Neither did the bear, not for the longest time. In the end, easing herself over the threshold as slowly and as non-threateningly as she could, Goldi slipped into the house and shut the door. She locked it too, although fat lot of good that would do if the bear decided it wanted in. Both hands pressed against the door, she waited for her heart to either re-start or explode. She touched her chest, reassuring herself that it was indeed beating, and by the time she eventually peeked out through the side window, the bear was gone.
“Shit,” she said again, craning her neck and leaving face and hand prints on the window that she then had to erase. But no, the bear really was gone. Give her five seconds and the ledger, and she’d be gone too.
Relieved, Goldi assessed the main floor of the house long enough to get her bearings. She was a little surprised, frankly. Although the caller had told her this was the home of a woman, there wasn’t a single feminine frippery anywhere in evidence. In fact, the décor was singularly masculine. That didn’t make sense. The furniture was blockish, wooden and looked like it had come straight out of a Medieval Dungeons R Us catalog. The dining table was long enough to double as a rack with a fathomless array of ropes and pulleys dangling from the ceiling above it. Of the four chairs arranged around it, one had thick leather straps on each arm and leg, as well as a seat that could be changed out. The one on it right now was perfectly normal, but there were three others stacked neatly against the wall—one with a giant hole in the seat, one with metal bumps and knobs, and one with a rather sizeable and suggestive protuberance positioned where one would have no choice but to sit directly on it. Her pussy underwent an involuntary spasm, though she wasn’t at all convinced that was where such a protuberance was intended to go.
To the right, she saw far enough into the kitchen to recognize some of the tools hanging from the over-the-stove utensil rack and on the hooks on the wall were implements that would have been more at home in any gruesome mafia murder scene. To her left in the living room, positioned right in front of the unlit fireplace was a wooden horse. Again, it was blockish, but complete with neck and head and even a long, flowing mane. It was also complete with straps upon its back and at the top and bottom of all four legs.
“What sick bastard lives here?” she was startled enough to say out loud.
A puff of heavy breath was her immediate answer. Goldi jerked back from the door to find a giant black nose pressed up against the window right at face level. The bear was back and it was breathing in the air, picking and discarding through all the many scents until it found hers.
Goldi retreated from that thin pane of glass and only stopped retreating when she accidentally bumped up against the wooden horse. She leapt back from that now too, crashing into the wall where an array of wide to thin leather straps, braided whips, crops and canes were hanging. Two fell from their hooks to the floor. Her skin tingled, not just from where she’d touched the horse, but now feeling every place on her back, hips and buttocks where those now swaying implements had brushed her. Her stomach tightened. Her nerves tangled and twisted together in an odd and uncomfortable… warm but scared… unnerved and yet vaguely aroused sort of way. It moved through her in sinuous, serpentine motions, taking root deep in the pit of her fluttering belly, so low that that she could almost feel it prodding between her legs.
The ledger, she told herself. Get the ledger and get the hell out of this place.
And then she had it, that oh shit moment when for all her alertness and caution, she heard the slow shuffle of heavy footsteps crossing the hardwood floorboards of the room directly above her head. A lesser thief might have forgotten everything and bolted right then; not Goldi, although she did bolt. Out of that interrogation-slash-serial killer-style décor of a living room, down the hall past the corner staircase and into the study. The ledger was exactly where the directions she’d been given had said it would be. A stark black book almost a foot wide, twice that in length and heavy enough to balance out a baker’s morning sack of flour—it was lying open on the desk where anybody could steal a gander at the contents.
Normally, Goldi would have been tempted, but now was not the time. Already those shuffling steps had reached the upper-floor staircase and now were coming down the steps. She ducked back out of the study, striving hard to be quiet even knowing she was trapped. With every step she took and every step she heard—it had to be a man; he sounded so heavy; what, did he weigh a ton?; and why did his boots on the stairs make a sound like claws scraping the wood?—she knew she wasn’t going to make it out without being seen. For the first time in the whole of her nefarious career, she was caught.