Chapter 40
He desperately wanted to get to bed, but there was work to be done before he could sleep, and his brain was still moving a mile a minute. It generally did, but his conversation earlier in the day had been rolling around in circles over and over again. Phil was one of the smartest people he'd ever met, but Andy knew
everyone
was capable of making mistakes.
There was something they were missing about all the information Phil had presented to them. Phil's plan had all the things it should, but there was so much that Phil hadn't had time to tell them. He wasn't sure what he thought he might glean from it, but he decided to let it keep running on cycles in the back of his brain for the rest of the night.
He hoped maybe it would just come to him.
Different people in his household went to bed at different times, and typically, Piper and Sheridan went to bed not too long after dinner. He glanced at his watch, seeing it was just past 10:30, and he figured they were probably crawling into bed about now, since both were early risers.
Niko was probably also heading to bed about now, so she could be up early in the morning, in case Lexi woke up before most of the house was up. Niko tended to be an early riser as well, as did Lauren and Taylor, so they were also probably also turning in for the night.
Hannah and Asha were typical college students without classes, so they'd be up past midnight gossiping, and Taylor was probably more than a little sad she couldn't join them, but as she'd told Andy at dinner, she was taking her responsibilities over at 49ers HQ very seriously.
Fi and Moira were trying to get adjusted to West Coast time, but the jet lag hadn't fully let go of them yet, so Andy guessed they were probably starting to get ready for bed as well.
Em and Sarah kept their own schedules, but since Em planned to talk to her family in the morning, she had likely turned in also, and where Em went, Sarah usually followed, so he was fairly certain they were both snuggling up in bed, bemoaning the lack of him there, but knowing that he would join them when he was ready.
Tala and Jade had formed a surprising friendship and had spent most of the day getting the pool house further converted into a workspace for the curvier woman. Jade was used to teaching, so he suspected she probably had also turned in relatively early.
Aisling, however, kept her schedule in tune with his, and so he knew she'd be up, and willing to watch a bit of television before turning in for the night. He'd found that she'd never seen
Farscape
so as of late, they'd been making a point to watch an episode or two before bed every night, and in between they'd chat a little bit about their respective days.
He was going to head down to the living room that was furthest from the bedrooms, which had sort of become the default theater room of the house, but found Ash in the kitchen, sneaking herself a pickle from the fridge, so they sat around the kitchen island to have their chat before their nightly television binge.
This particular night Andy walked Ash through what Phil had asked of him, and as he talked through it, she asked pointed questions, most of which he didn't have an answer to, but eventually, she asked one that he hadn't even thought of, and it all snapped into sense for him.
"So why not just use this Evie as the test case, instead of asking Jenny to do it?" she said to him.
"What?" Andy asked, as if it hadn't even occurred to him.
"Look, she made it here safely, right?"
"Right."
"That means she was imprinted, and if Evie's being asked to be imprinted to Nate, that means she was already imprinted to this McCallister prick, and you can use that to analyze her blood and the effect it's having on it. Shit, you could smear a little of McCallister's precum onto her skin at first, check that it causes a rash, then give her a little from the guy who's supposedly a
de
-imprinter, then have Nate imprint her and take her blood again. I mean, if this Evie wants to get out from under her husband, ex-husband or whatever, then she's gotta to be willing to show she believes in all of this."
"I don't tell you that you're brilliant often enough, Ash," he said, leaning into to kiss her, which started tender but definitely amped up in intensity a bit before she pulled back, a wry smile on her face.
"You don't, but it's okay," she said. "You say it lots, and lots is brilliant. Before we head to bed tonight, though, mister, I was given a request this morning, so we're going to go and fulfill it, you and I. The request was made to me, because they were worried you might take offense to it, but I want you to know, in advance, this is what
everyone
wants, they're
hoping
you'll lean into it, at least a little, and the safeword, should it be needed, is limoncello. Okay?"
She was pulling him to his feet, that playful expression widening on her face, as he waggled his eyebrows. "You girls certainly do love testing me," he told her.
"This one's not me at all, love," she said, sliding her arm around his waist. "It's more of just a thing to show you what you can be capable of when it's asked of you, and this particular play partner wants even more than you gave her last time."
"Uh oh," he said. "That sounds like I'm not living up to my end of the bargain."
"Stop. No," she said, squeezing his hip. "You did great, but the girls in question just want you to know you can and should go further."
She led him down towards the room they'd been planning to go to anyway, the basement living room, but instead of heading for the television, Andy saw that over near where he'd usually sit, one woman was standing and another was kneeling, the room barely lit, as if the atmosphere of it was important to the ambiance of the moment.
Andy's nighttime eyesight wasn't great, but as they got closer, he could make out who the two people were. The woman standing was Nicolette, but she had ditched her typical French maid's outfit for something that looked a lot more dominatrix. She wore a leather corset that was tied tight to force her tits into nearly a shelf of flesh, propped up and pushed out but still marginally covered. She also had black leather shorts, fishnet stockings and long leather high-heeled boots that came up to her mid-thigh. The heels were at least a few inches, because it made Nicolette look huge, her blonde hair done up in a tight bun atop her head.
In her hand was the end of a long leash.
At the end of the leash, on her knees, was Whitney, completely nude except for the collar around her neck, her hair done up in jetblack pigtails, her pale white flesh almost the shade of moonlight in the summer. Her arms were folded together in front of her to make her smaller breasts press together, the rosy pinkness of her nipples like strawberries, her wrists resting on top of one another, as if she expected them to be bound at some point, or maybe they already were in her mind. He could see the black curls of her pubic V peeking from between her thighs.
Ash took his hand and gave it a soft squeeze. "You did well with Whitney the first time, babes," she whispered to him. "But you need to know you can go further, you
should
