Last Off the Bus

The charter bus is uglier up close than it looked from the receiving door.

White paint gone gray. Bug splatter across the windshield. A sun-faded stripe and a charter number that used to mean a trip, not a hiding place. It sits crooked in the trees behind the grocery, nose pointed at a drainage ditch like Derek had shoved it there in a hurry and called it parking.

Grant takes Maya’s keys and the sun tag clicks against his knuckles. The door hisses open on a smell of warm vinyl, spilled soda, and too many hours of girls sleeping upright.

“Luggage only,” he says. “Grab your bag. Come straight back to the store. Nobody wanders into the trees.”

They move in a messy line. Ashlyn, Riley, Maya, Brooke, Chloe, Natalie, Sadie, Emma, Jordan, Kelsey, Tatum, Grace, Piper. Then some of his: Lily helping with zippers, Paige hauling two suitcases like they weigh nothing, Jaycee watching the tree line, Noor counting heads under her breath. Mary stays at the edge of the lot first, talking to Leanne about blocking the automatic doors and what goes on the Explorer versus what goes on the bus.

Grant checks them as they come off.

Riley’s sunburn is worse in daylight. Maya keeps touching the pharmacy keys in her pocket like they might vanish. Brooke has a stuffed animal zipper pull on her suitcase that makes Grant’s chest feel strange. Piper’s braids have come half undone. They all look like the last day of a trip that never got to end.

“You good?” he asks Grace, who has been quiet since he took over the store.

“Yes, Grant.” She swallows. “I have my bag. I can carry more if you want.”

“Just yours. Go.”

One by one they peel off with rolling bags bouncing over roots. The map in his head is crowded now. Thirty-seven. No new strength. No new anything. Just more lights.

Ashlyn is last.

She comes down the steps with a small pink suitcase and a backpack hooked on one shoulder, then stops on the bottom stair like her feet forgot the ground. Up close she still looks like the girl who should be taking a selfie in front of a fountain, not standing in dirty woods after being claimed…twice…and the first man died in soup. She has perfect, soft lips. Her smeared mascara doesn’t hide her stunning brown eyes. Her black hair is up in a cute ponytail. That same innocent face that made the bat in her hands look like a prop. Such a petite thing. She is naturally beautiful and cute at the same time. Her Asian features are delicate, almost doll-like. Grant can’t help but stare before catching himself and shaking his head.

“That’s everyone,” Grant says. “Go with Riley.”

Ashlyn glances at the trees, then at him. Her new loyalty is already sitting in her eyes, bright and simple.

“I wanted to thank you.”

“You don’t have to—”

She drops the suitcase. It thumps into the dirt.

Then she gently backs Grant back into the bus. Before he can think to object, she is on her knees, and her hands are on his crotch.

Grant’s brain does a stupid half-second of hesitation while his body eagerly wants exactly what is happening. “Ashlyn. Hey. You don’t owe me—”

“I know.” Her voice is soft. She pops the button. Zipper down. The heat of her breath hits him through his boxers before she even gets him out. “I still want to. You got us away from him. Let me thank you.”

He should stop her. He can feel Mary’s attention somewhere behind the store, a sharp point on the map, not close enough yet. He can hear bags rolling. He can see how young Ashlyn’s face looks when she tugs his cock out into the humid bus air and her eyes go wide at it.

He does not stop her.

“Mmmm,” he mutters.

Ashlyn makes a tiny pleased sound, like she got the reaction she wanted. She wraps both hands around him. Her fingers look small. She strokes him once, slow, from base to the head, spreading the bead of wet already there with her thumb. Then she leans in and licks him, flat and careful, from the underside all the way up, and takes the head into her mouth.

It is hot. Wet. Soft. She looks up at him while she does it, that innocent face ruined by his cock stretching her lips. She cannot take much at first. She has to work at it, jaw opening, spit already shining at the corner of her mouth. She sucks just the tip with a tight seal and strokes the rest with both hands, then pushes farther, gagging once, eyes watering, and stays there anyway.

Grant’s hand finds the seat back next to him. The other ends up in her ponytail without him deciding to put it there.

“Easy,” he says, and it comes out wrecked. “You don’t have to—”

She pulls off with a wet sound, a string of spit still connecting her lower lip to him.

“I said I want to,” she whispers, and goes back down.

This time she is less careful. She bobs, messy, taking him until her throat flutters and then backing off to suck hard on the head. Spit runs down her chin and onto her fingers. Every time she sinks forward her nose almost hits him. She tries to swallow around him and fails and tries again, humming, the vibration going straight up his spine. The map spikes. Thirty-seven women, and one of them is moving closer while another is on her knees in a charter bus with her mouth full of him.

“Grant?”

Mary’s voice, from the trees. Not panicked yet. Annoyed. Worried.

“Grant, you’ve been back here too long. If something’s wrong, say so.”

Ashlyn does not stop. If anything she takes him deeper, like she wants to finish before she gets caught. Grant’s hips twitch. He does not thrust hard. He does not trust the new strength for that. He just holds her hair and watches his cock disappear between that sweet, ruined mouth.

Mary climbs into the bus and stops.

For one second there is only the wet sound of Ashlyn sucking him.

Mary looks at Ashlyn on her knees. At Grant’s pants on the floor. At his hand in her ponytail. Mary’s face does a complicated expression and then settles into something sharper than shock.

“Of course,” she says, quietly. “Of course this is why.”

“Mary—”

“Don’t you dare stop on my account.” She moves behind Ashlyn, close enough that they almost touch. Her eyes stay on Grant’s face while Ashlyn keeps working him, sloppy now, spit on her chin, one hand stroking what she cannot fit, the other braced on his thigh. “Look at her. She looks like a hitchhiker asking for a ride home. And she’s choking on you.”

Ashlyn moans around him. The sound is filthy coming out of that face.

Mary’s hand slides down the front of her own pants without ceremony. Grant sees her fingers move, the tight circle she makes against herself, the way her breath changes.

“You going to come in her mouth?” Mary asks, voice low and dirty in a way she almost never lets herself be. “She wants it. Look at her. Pretty little thing on her knees, thanking you with her throat. Don’t be gentle just because she has that face. She devoted herself to you the second you said the words. This is her purpose now. This is your right.”

Grant’s grip tightens in Ashlyn’s hair. Ashlyn takes him until her eyes water and stays, swallowing around the head, then pulls back to lick the spit off him and dive again. The wet sounds of it fill the bus. Mary watches and rubs herself in matching rhythm, her other hand braced on a seat, cheeks flushed.

“That’s it,” Mary murmurs. “Use her mouth. She can take it. Fuck, Grant, you should see yourself. You look like you’re afraid she’s breakable and she’s trying to prove she isn’t. Fuck her face like she was made for it. She’s begging for your cum.”

Ashlyn pulls off just long enough to gasp, “Please,” and then her mouth is on him again, deeper, messier, spit running down to his balls. Grant’s control frays. He holds her there and gives her short, careful thrusts, not the full strength, just enough that she gags and then moans and sucks harder. Mary’s fingers move faster. Her dirty talk breaks into breath. She tugs at Ashlyn’s shirt and the girl separates from her feast just long enough for Mary to remove it. Then she dives in again, even hungrier. Next, her bra falls to the floor, revealing her small, perky breasts. Her hard nipples look like tiny pebbles reaching for their master.

“Come on. Give it to her. Let her taste what she asked for. I’m right here. I’m watching you fill that innocent mouth. Don’t look away from me when you do it.”

Grant looks at Mary and then down at the exposed breasts of the ravenous teen beauty devouring his cock. Saliva falls from her hand as it strokes his cock, landing on her chest, and slowly rolls down to her nipple.

That is what does it.

He comes with a groan he cannot keep down, pulsing hard into Ashlyn’s mouth. She tries to swallow and cannot get all of it. It spills out the corner of her lips, white on that pretty chin, and she keeps sucking through it like she is afraid he will take it back. Mary watches his face the whole time and comes with a bitten-off sound, thighs tight, hand still moving inside her pants, eyes never leaving him.

For a few seconds there is only breathing, the distant sounds from the store, and Ashlyn’s small, wet swallows.

Ashlyn sits back on her heels, wipes her mouth with her fingers, then licks those too, looking up at him like she did something helpful.

“Thank you,” she says, hoarse.

Grant zips up with hands that are not as steady as the new strength should allow.

“You don’t thank me for that.”

Ashlyn smiles, shy and not shy at all.

“Okay. Then just thank you for the rest.”

Mary takes her hand out of her pants, face still flushed, composure clicking back into place in pieces.

“Luggage,” she says. “Then the store. Before one of your friends comes looking and gets an education.”

Ashlyn puts her shirt back on, leaves her bra on the floor with a wink to Grant, and then exits the bus. She grabs her things and then walks toward the grocery store like nothing happened.

Grant looks at Mary.

Mary looks back, unrepentant.

“I told you we need to be careful,” she says. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t watch.”

She grabs Ashlyn’s discarded bra with a smirk. Grant shakes his head and then they leave the bus and go back to join everyone.

After that it is work.

Leanne has the front doors blocked and a path cleared to receiving. Noor has a list: water, rice, canned protein, baby formula they do not need yet and take anyway, painkillers, antibiotics, bandages, batteries, lighters, salt, soap. Maya opens the pharmacy with keys that still have someone’s store lanyard on them. Willa and Sarah pack a crate like they have done this in another life. Paige and Kelsey haul water cases. Zoya and Magdalena take the heavy stuff because they want the heavy stuff. Jose backs the Explorer to the dock. Garret loads when Grant points and does not look at anyone too long.

The bus becomes a moving pantry. Seats that held sleeping teens now hold cases of water and bags of rice. The Explorer takes medicine, tools, the first-aid overflow, and a stack of batteries. They make trips. Not elegant. Effective. Grant feels thirty-seven women moving between trees, dock, aisles, and vehicles, a whole ugly machine that used to be a field trip.

By the time the light starts fading, the penthouse elevator — once they unlock their own traps without losing a shin to Willa’s shower rod — is full of the smell of cardboard and bleach instead of panic.

They stack the island. They fill the second unit’s unused rooms. They put pharmacy stock in the guest suite that is not a guest suite anymore.

Ashlyn carries her pink suitcase into the second penthouse and sets it down like she lives there.

Mary stands at the glass with Grant, city going gold, store now theirs, bus now theirs, Explorer ticking in the lot below.

“Thirty-seven,” she says.

“Thirty-seven.”

“Still not the right number.” She contemplates.

“I guess not.”

Mary’s mouth ticks, the ghost of what happened on the bus still on her mind.

“Then we eat,” she says. “After that, we sleep in shifts. Then we figure out what we need to do next.”

Grant watches Ashlyn cross the cut wall with a bottle of water, ponytail swinging, chin clean now, eyes finding him like a compass.

He should feel like a man who saved a group of girls from a worse fate.

He feels like a man who came in a girl’s mouth on the bus that was supposed to bring her home.

Both things are true. He sighs. The penthouses are full.

They now have a bus, food, meds, and other supplies that should last them for awhile, even with the new additions to their family.