Exquisite Poison (Original Draft)

Chapter 6 - Dry

Netta was startled awake by someone shaking her.

Rushing so that she was sitting up in her seat, she turned and looked up at the man who leaned over her.

Looking tired himself, the stranger shook his head disapprovingly at her and began to walk to the back of the bus. It was then that she realized that her phone's alarm had been blaring in her lap.

Oh, no.

Netta reached down, resurfacing with her phone clutched in her hand. She hardly needed to look at the time to see that she had gone well over five minutes past the time that she would have needed to cast the Banishment.

She had gotten onto the bus - according to the clock on her phone, three hours back. By the time that she had gotten on the bus, the weather had all but died down, leaving a relatively calm ride through a gentle haze of snow as the bus drove on its way out of the city.

Still, she clicked the alarm off, sinking into the bus seat.

Her heart pounded in her chest - the shock of being woken up from the man shaking her, as well as the realization of what she had just done. Despicably - traitorously - her body, it seemed, was recalling with shocking muscle memory things that Ashwood had planted firmly in her sleeping mind. Things that she could not recall to save her own life.

Her breasts seemed to have become heavily swollen in her bra, and between her legs she could feel a tight, discomforting sensation that she was loath to admit to the reason for. When she moved, she could feel the undeniable sensation of warmth, moisture between her thighs. She groaned, dropping her head into her hand.

And then she heard Ash as It spoke up - sitting in the previously empty seat next to her.

"Whoa, you slept through that whole alarm!" The creature whistled. "I mean, you were pretty tired before, and you just looked like you were so enjoying that little dream of yours. I couldn't bear to wake you."

Netta closed her eyes, and turning to the man that only she could see, hissed out, "Abi sis, belua!"

Ash blinked, then Its eyes lit up, a boyish smile framed by dimples came to Its youthful facade. "Oh, now there's a fine waste of effort. Lovely," It leaned in closer to her, until the Monster was only a breath away from her. "your chance to do anything to me with those words left five minutes back. I'm here to stay for the long haul, it seems."

Ash blew air towards her, then laughed as Netta almost leaped away, to the concern of the other people on the bus.

Four bathroom breaks, three meals, and uncounted hours later, a very haggard Netta was resting, slumped, on a public toilet.

She focused on breathing in through her mouth and out through her nostrils. It aided little in pushing away the rough fire that tore through her.

She had not yet had the heart to examine the plethora of text messages - or listen to the phone messages - that Wallace left on her phone.

She had fallen asleep again, sprawled back in the bus. When she awoke, she found the needy desire that she had woken up to before was nothing in comparison to what she felt then.

When Ash made a quirky remark about how haggard she looked, Netta had ignored It, rushing to the rest room in the stop that the bus had pulled into.

Sighing, Netta removed her hand from where it had been buried between her thighs.

She wanted to keep those fingers there, to gyrate them until the furious desire, mindless, was gone from her body like a toxin. As it was, she was surely a few moments from being late to catching the bus. For another thing -