The Imperfections by Sam Mariano

2

Brant

I’msurprised by how easy it is to get into her house.

For some reason, when my suburbanite brother-in-law started telling me about her, I assumed she’d be a pampered middle-class princess.

The house he gave me the address for is nothing like that. A rundown shack, it has a brown flaky exterior; a rusted, once-white pick-up in the driveway; and a screen door that looks like it’s been through a few tornados, but is still hanging on.

I let myself in without worrying about alarms. This ain’t the kind of house that has alarms. There’s not so much as a guard dog asleep on the floor when I step inside.

The living room is dark and smells musty, like the kind of place no one’s really taken care of in a long while. Shag carpet that should’ve been replaced a couple decades ago covers the floors.

I’m surprised and a little alarmed to see baby toys tossed all over the place. There’s a little round saucer type of thing for a baby to jump in, an old baby swing in the corner, and a well-used high chair pushed up against the wall behind a folding card table that appears to be used as a dining table. On top, a coloring book lies open with a few broken crayons scattered around it.

Why are there already baby things in this house?

I guess maybe someone else lives here with her and her parents. That, or she has a significantly younger sibling. Theo said she was a virgin when he fucked her six months ago, so there’s no chance she already had a kid.

I scowl as I move through the living room and down the hall. He showed me a picture of her on his phone, but I won’t know which room is hers until I open the door, and if I open the wrong one, I’m shit out of luck.

I make my way down the hall, looking at each closed door, checking underneath to see if any light comes from inside. I’m just about convinced I’ll have to come back after I’ve had a chance to scope out which room is hers during daylight hours, and then I come to a stop at the end of the hall.

Straight ahead of me, hanging off the scuffed white bedroom door is a little pink sign that helpfully announces Alyssa’s Room in girly script.

Damn, she is accommodating.

My grip on the gun at my side tightens as I take a step forward, my muscles tensing in anticipation. I turn her doorknob slowly and ease the door open, silently cursing when it creaks.

Her bedroom smells nicer than the rest of the house, remnants of a faintly sweet scent hanging in the air. Looks a little nicer, too. There’s not much she can do about the state of the ugly wood paneling on the walls, but every surface she’s able to leave her mark on is decorated and neat. The hardwood floors are visible, and there’s no mess of clothes or piles of magazines or anything I’d expect to find in a teenager’s room.

Sheer curtains hang on her windows, completely and utterly pointless. If I wanted to, I could stand outside and look right in at her. Moonlight streams in, enough that I can see her on the bed with her back to me.

She’s got a sheet pulled up over her even though it’s hot as hell in this house. It’s summer, and they don’t seem to have air conditioning. We didn’t have air growing up, either, but as soon as I was able to get my own place, air conditioning was one thing I made sure it had. Nothing worse than being miserably hot when you’re trying to fall asleep.

I close the door behind me and move closer to the bed. She still hasn’t rolled over, so she must be asleep.

At least I think so until she says, “I’m sleeping.”

I frown, wondering who she thinks I am.

“I promise we’ll talk about your date tomorrow,” she adds, apparently feeling bad for shooing away whoever she thinks I must be. Only problem is, she rolls over to look at the person she thinks she’s speaking to, and her eyes widen in horror when she sees me instead.

I move quickly so she doesn’t have time to process the fact that there’s a strange man in her room and react accordingly. I lunge forward, jumping on top of her and clamping a hand over her mouth so her shriek is muffled.

“No!” she screams, but the sound is muted against my palm. Her body thrashes desperately beneath me as she tries to shout and get me off her, but I already have my knees planted on the bed on either side of her, and she’s not strong enough to shift a full-grown man intent on pinning her down.

Her hands go flying, smacking my arm, my side, whatever she can reach. She tries to shove me off of her bed onto the floor, but I don’t budge. I’m plenty bigger than her and a hell of a lot stronger. I’m not going anywhere unless I want to, no matter how much she fights me.

Even though it doesn’t really hurt, I grab the hand that’s doing the most smacking—left; I wonder if she’s a leftie—and pin it against the mattress. Her already wide eyes inch open a little more and she thrusts her hips upward, trying again to buck me off.

Despite the uselessness of her physical resistance, she’s making enough noise to make me worry someone will hear her and come to see what’s wrong. That needs to be handled quickly, before this gets uglier than it needs to.

“Stop screaming,” I snap, my voice low and dangerous as she struggles to fight me off. To give her incentive, I release the hand I was pinning down and retrieve my gun off the bed, bringing it up and pressing the cool metal against her temple.

Her eyes are wide as she stares up at me, confused as to what’s happening and why. Her whole body is alive with panic, her natural instincts telling her she’s in danger and she needs to fight like hell or run for her life.

Since I’m significantly stronger than she is, she must be realizing fighting isn’t gonna get her out of this one. Her instincts will be looking for an alternative to keep her alive, so I figure I should shine some light on the scenario I prefer and give her a little nudge in the right direction. Knowing what I know about her, I think it’ll probably be easier to silence her with fear than violence, anyway.

“Quit squirming,” I tell her, keeping my voice low and calm so she knows this isn’t a battle; I’m in charge, not her. “You’re never gonna unseat me. You’re just gonna annoy the hell out of me and waste all your energy.”

Her gaze searches my face, but she must still be too afraid to see reason because then her expression crumples and she bucks, trying to thrust me off her with her pelvis again. “Go away,” she cries out against my palm.

Pressing my hand tighter against her mouth, I lean close and demand roughly, “You make enough fucking noise to wake anyone up, I’ll kill everyone in this goddamn house. Do you understand me, Alyssa?”

Her body stills beneath me, whether because of my threat or because I used her name, I’m not sure. She’s quiet enough now that I can hear her labored breathing. She swallows, searching my face. I can see the conflict warring inside her, but after a couple of seconds, she nods her head.

“I’m gonna move my hand,” I tell her before slowly inching it away from her mouth.

She draws a shaky breath when I do, but she doesn’t scream. Maybe she can see the distrust in my eyes as I wait for her to be a reckless little pain in the ass and break the promise I coerced out of her, but she doesn’t do anything to earn it.

There’s a full-grown man on top of her in her bed, and her nubile body is completely vulnerable, covered only by a thin nightgown. Despite my threat, given the position she’s in, it’d be hard to blame her for disregarding the safety of everyone else in the house and trying to fight me off anyway to save herself.

But she doesn’t. My threat is effective, and like Theo led me to believe she would be, the girl is cooperative. She appears to trust that if she does as I say, things won’t end badly for her.

It should alarm her that I’m letting her see my face, ’cause if I just wanted to burgle the place, I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to describe me after the fact. Her gaze darts around, taking in the planes and the look of me. It’s exactly the wrong thing to do, but she doesn’t know that.

A wave of discontent rolls over me, thinking about it. I don’t like it that this girl’s barely had a chance to start her life. She’s clearly in the dawn of those youthful years where she’ll waste time making some truly terrible decisions, but unlike most of us, she’ll never get a chance to do better. She won’t be around long enough to learn all the shit she doesn’t know, all because my brother-in-law couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.

“You know who I am?” I ask her.

Of course she doesn’t. She shakes her head, still holding my gaze.

I have the impulse to touch her, probably because of all the shit Theo told me about her. I keep the gun at her temple, but with my other hand, I reach down and gently run my fingertips down the side of her face.

She makes a noise caught somewhere between a horrified gasp and a fearful squeak. Her whole body stiffens and her eyes go wider again, but she doesn’t make a noise. Her gaze leaves my face for the first time since she saw me and darts to the door.

“You expecting anyone?” I ask idly.

She looks back at me and shakes her head no, but it’s too quick and there’s a look in her eyes like she’s lying.

“You sure? I’m not asking for me—I’m asking for them. Someone comes walking through that door, I’m gonna shoot first and ask questions later.”

That alarms her. I see her debating whether or not she wants to believe me, but she must decide she doesn’t have any better options at the moment, because she finally breaks her silence.

Quietly, not wanting to make much noise and draw anyone to her room since I’ve threatened to kill ’em all, she says, “My older sister.” Her voice is wobbly with fear but sweet. She’s soft-spoken, just like I would’ve envisioned if she’d had a speaking part in my earlier thoughts of her.

“She went on a date tonight?” I question, given how she greeted me.

Alyssa nods her head, looking at the door again. “Sometimes when she comes home after a date, she comes in to talk to me about it.”

Without moving off her, I lean over to grab her phone off the nightstand by her bed. It means moving my gun away from her temple, but she must not have faith in her ability to wrestle it away from me, because she doesn’t try.

She keeps an eye on me as I reach for her phone, and I keep an eye on her, too. I see the flicker of hope in her eyes when she catches sight of it, but then she looks back at me and does a piss-poor job trying to hide it.

“Don’t get too excited,” I tell her. “We’re gonna text your sister and tell her you’re going to sleep and you’ll talk to her tomorrow. What’s her name?”

She hesitates, clearly not wanting to give me her sister’s name.

I’m stunned when I open her phone and I don’t have to put in a passcode or anything to gain access. I go straight to her messages and open them, figuring I might be able to tell which conversation is with her sister by what was said in the last couple of texts. She must not ever delete messages, though, because there’s a shit-ton of them in here. I scroll down and see a fuck-ton more.

“Jesus, you don’t believe in letting go, do you?”

She scowls at me. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Brant.”

Surprise flickers across her face since I actually answered her. “And what are you doing in my house, Brant?”

“Sorry, I guess I should add a little more context than that, huh?”

Confused by my congenial tone, she hesitates before nodding.

“I’ve got a twin sister named Bri,” I tell her. “I think you’re familiar with her, and especially familiar with her husband, Theo.”

Her face falls. I expect it’s because she’s swiftly realizing she’s fucked, but I’m thrown by the next words out of her mouth. “Oh no—Bri knows?”

I frown at her and tilt my head to the side, trying to figure out what to make of her. “You can’t care too awful much,” I remark. “You’ve been fucking her husband behind her back.”

“I know,” she says miserably, bringing her hands up to cover her face. “I didn’t want her to find out. I didn’t want to hurt her, I swear. It was so stupid. It’s completely over with him now, and I hoped Bri would never have to know it happened.”

As I’m scrolling through her old messages, I find a chain of messages to and from Theo. On a whim, I open it to check his story. Much to my surprise, the video she sent him is still right there in the text thread.

Before I can decide against something that will undoubtedly alarm her, my curiosity gets the better of me and I push play.

I can see her all right in this bedroom with the moonlight spilling in the windows, but as the video starts, I get a really good look at her pretty face. The flush in her cheeks, the untarnished twinkle in her eyes—they’re the hue of the ocean, and her golden hair hangs in a side ponytail over one dainty shoulder.

“I’ve never done this before,” she tells Theo with a nervous giggle.

Beneath me, the flesh-and-blood version of her gasps in horror and makes a grab for the phone. “Oh my God, don’t watch that!”

I find it a little funny that she wouldn’t grab for my gun, but the idea of me watching a video of her masturbating is too much for her to bear. I drop the phone anyway, letting her win for a minute—but only so I can turn her over onto her stomach, lock my arm around her neck, and crush her beneath me. She struggles, gasping as she flails and tries unsuccessfully to kick me.

“Knock it off,” I snap.

She keeps fighting me, but she can’t go anywhere. I tighten my arm around her throat until she gets really scared. Her hands fly to my arm and she tries to pry it off.

“You gonna settle down?” I ask her.

She doesn’t nod or even try to, just keeps fighting me.

Ignoring her, I flatten her against the bed with my weight and reach out to touch her phone. It’s lying face up on the mattress now, the screen dark. In the tussle, the program must have closed, so I have to open the message again to get back to the video. Once I push play, she lets out a low whine.

“Quiet,” I tell her, turning my attention to the screen of her phone.

She can’t do a damn thing, now. She doesn’t have use of her hands, I’ve got her neck squeezed tight so she has to arch up just to keep from choking, and I’ve got probably a good 70 or 80 pounds on her tiny little ass.

Even though she clearly objects to my watching the video she made for my brother-in-law, she can’t do shit to stop me as it begins to play again.

Even though it’s not a decent thing to do, I watch it. I got too curious while Theo was detailing the times he fucked her. I want to see what she looks like naked and aroused, and considering she’s not much longer for the world, I don’t much care if she doesn’t want me to.

She starts the video wearing this white dress with little pink roses on it. There’s a white cardigan over it, not meant to be sexy at all. She’s the picture of innocence, until she starts stripping.

Even then, she’s playful, revealing just a sliver of shoulder at first and then laughing. She’s clearly shy about it, but she wants to please him. That shouldn’t matter to me beyond the fact that it’s my sister’s husband, but I’m not sure that’s entirely the reason for the rush of displeasure it brings me.

Buried deep, there’s maybe a little bit of jealousy—not because I give a damn about this girl, specifically, but it doesn’t seem right that a shitty fucking man like Theo has two women desperate to please him, and I go home alone every night without so much as a clumsily recorded striptease video to help stave off the loneliness.

As Alyssa peels off her cardigan in the video, I ask her, “Why’d you wanna waste your time with a married man, anyway? Plenty of single ones out there.”

Even if she wanted to answer me, she probably couldn’t in this headlock, but I’m busy watching the video anyway. We can talk after I finish.

In the video, she takes her dress off, then her bra. My cock hardens at the sight of her, at the way she cups a breast in her hand and looks at the camera, running her thumb back and forth over her own nipple and sighing with pleasure.

It’s so easy to imagine this video was meant for my eyes instead of his. She never says his name, so when she looks into the camera and teases, it’s me she’s teasing now.

She shimmies out of her panties next. Once she does, she moves the phone and sits down directly across from it, spreading her legs and showing me her pussy.

The sight of her like that sends a fresh rush of blood to my cock. Since I have myself crushed against her like this, I know she feels my arousal pressing against her. She lets out a whimper, but I ignore her and go back to the video.

Alyssa’s hand drops between her spread thighs and she starts to play with herself. I watch as she presses the tip of her finger inside. I watch the way her whole body arches, her pretty little tits bouncing slightly, making me want them in my mouth.

Theo was right—her tits are fucking perfect.

It’d be an additional sin to kill a woman with tits that perfect, especially without enjoying them first.

My cock is already pressed against her, but now I let my hand slide down her side. She’s wearing some kind of thin nightie, but it’s not too long. I easily reach the bottom and start drawing the fabric up.

I expect to encounter panties, but when I slide up past her hip, it’s all smooth skin. My pulse quickens and I slide my hand over to make sure. Sure enough, I grab a handful of that tight little ass Theo was telling me about.

Fuck.

“You don’t wear panties to bed, huh?” I murmur against her ear.

She tries to wiggle, but she’s still trapped, immobile beneath my weight. She can only lie there while I run my uninvited hand over her bare skin. I give her ass a firm, appreciative squeeze and she goes rigid beneath my body.

Without moving my hand away, I look back at her naughty video. I caress her smooth flesh on this bed while her fingers move in and out of her pussy on the screen. They come out slick with her arousal and my cock swells even more in response.

“Fuck, you make a good dirty video,” I tell her.

She rears back and tries to head butt me. It makes me smile. I watch the rest, letting her helpless little sounds of pleasure get me hotter and hotter. When she comes and cries out in the video, my cock twitches against her, desperately in need of attention.

I tell myself I didn’t come here for this, but I think I might be lying. Theo piqued my interest when he told me about her, and maybe I wanted to see for myself.

Now maybe I want to try her out for myself, too.

Balls-deep inside the tightest hole I’ve ever fucked, he said.

I wonder just how tight she is.

My cock tells me I should find out, but just thinking of that struggle… I want to fuck her, not fight her.

I had to put my gun down on the bed when I was fighting with her before. I look at it now, just past her phone, then I grab it and bring the muzzle back to her temple. I feel her stiffen, and I press my lips to the shell of her ear.

“Let me tell you something, sweetheart. You know much about guns?”

She’s too afraid to turn her head with the gun pressed against it, so she doesn’t shake her head or nod, but I’d put money on her not knowing shit.

“First thing you should know is pretty simple. They’re dangerous, capable of a whole lot of destruction. You shouldn’t rest your muzzle against anything you’re not willing to fucking destroy, and do you know what that is pressed against your temple, baby? It’s my muzzle. That means I’m more than willing to destroy you. Hell, I’m willing to hold a loaded gun on you even when you’re fighting me, escalating the risk that much more, so that tells you I’m really willing to hurt you. In the interest of driving this point home, I’m gonna tell you the truth: I came here tonight to kill you. Theo asked me to after he confessed to this little affair you’ve been having. Told me you’re pregnant and you won’t go away, so he asked if I could handle it before my sister finds out and his whole life goes to shit.”

I was going to pause here anyway, but I momentarily forget where I was going when I feel something wet on my arm. I frown and pull her neck back so I can look down and see what the hell that is.

Her face is wet with tears. That was one of her tears that just hit my arm.

It feels a little like the breath got knocked out of me. I’ve had some knock-down drag-outs in my time, but I’ve never had someone cry on me.

I can’t figure out why she’s crying right away, then I replay what I just said to her. Theo, the bastard she gave her virginity to, sent me here to kill her to save himself the hassle of his wife finding out he fucked her. She matters so little to him that he is willing to sacrifice her life to make his a little easier, and I guess maybe she didn’t know that.

I guess that’s probably hard to hear.

Rather than dwell on it and make her feel worse, I tell her, “Now, I might not go through with it. I haven’t decided yet. It mostly depends on you. I hate to put it all on you like that, but that’s where we are. If you’re worth more to me alive than dead for the time being, well… then maybe we can figure something out.”

She sniffles but doesn’t say a word.

“As you can probably guess from the way my cock’s butting against you, I have some ideas about how you can convince me to let you live to see another morning.”

Another teardrop hits my arm. I don’t know if it’s fresh or it’s just made its way down her cheek from a minute ago. I’m not familiar enough with people crying to have the faintest idea. I guess an old tear probably would have had enough time to cool before it hit my arm and that one was more or less body temperature, so it’s probably fresh.

“Now, I’m not gonna hurt you,” I tell her, trying to set her mind at ease. “Not unless you make me.”

She still makes a little whining noise low in her throat as I work the material up her body.

“I don’t want to fight you,” I tell her again. “I’m gonna release your neck, all right? Don’t make me regret it.”

I let go of her slowly, the same way I moved my hand away from her mouth, so I can react quickly if she does something stupid.

I’m alert, waiting for her to do just such a fucking thing, but she doesn’t move at all. Her body shifts with the labor of breathing through all the emotions she must be processing, but with her tummy down on the bed the way she is, I don’t have to look into those big eyes and see what kind of feelings they’re full of.

Once I’m reasonably confident she won’t surprise me with some reckless attempt at escape, or some brazen call for help because she didn’t believe my threat—or because she just doesn’t care at this point, and wants to get away more than she wants to buy her family’s safety with her body—I relax a little.

I finally put my gun down on her bedside table since I’ll need both hands for this. I grab her phone and put it there, too, to remove any temptation she might have to grab it. Then I drag her nightie the rest of the way off her body. I’m relieved as hell when instead of fighting me like I was afraid she might, she moves her arms and lifts her upper body so I can pull the garment off her.

I toss it and look down at her bare back. I drag the backs of my fingers across her smooth skin, blocking out the sound of her dismay as I do.

It’s been just long enough since I’ve been with a woman that I don’t especially care about her dismay. It’s been a lot longer since I’ve been with one who wasn’t a straight-up whore, but I’ve never been with anyone like her before, never someone so close to pure, not even when I was her age.

I can’t help running my hands along her soft skin, appreciating the feel of her, the shape of her, the dip along her lower back right before her smooth ass bubbles back out.

Purely on impulse, I scoot back so I can lean down and kiss that spot. She gasps in surprise, and I keep peppering her skin with kisses. I kiss lower and lower until I’m running my lips over the gentle curve of her ass cheeks. I’m tempted to flip her over and get a taste of her pussy, but I get the feeling I wouldn’t like what I see in her eyes if I let her look up at me.

Nah, I’ll keep her on her tummy.

“You got any lube?” I ask her.

“What? No,” she says, like that’s a ridiculous thing to ask.

Maybe it is; I don’t know.

I shrug, even though she can’t see me. At least I tried.

Since I’m aching with need and there’s little point in dragging things out, I unzip my jeans. Just as I’m fixing to take my cock out, her voice wobbles and she tries to ruin my good time.

“Please don’t do this,” she says quietly. “I know I made a bad mistake. I know it was wrong and maybe I deserve to be punished, but you don’t have to do this. I’ll go away, I promise. I already went away. I had no intention of ever seeing Theo again even before you showed up, I swear. I’m not going to cause anyone any trouble. I just didn’t want an abortion, that’s all. I didn’t ask him for anything and I never will. Bri never has to find out. She’ll never even see me again. I promise it’ll be like it never happened for you guys.”

“Not for you, though, huh?” I point out. “Why do you wanna do that? You’re young, got your whole life ahead of you—why tie yourself to a worthless shit like Theo?”

“It’s not about him,” she says. “I wouldn’t be tied to him. I knew he wouldn’t…” She pauses, considering, then I hear her swallow. “I never wanted or expected his life to change because this happened. I didn’t want Bri to know, I didn’t want him to leave her and the boys. I didn’t have malicious intent. It’s not like I planned to get pregnant… I just wasn’t sleeping with anyone, so why would I have been on the pill or brought condoms with me to a babysitting job? It just happened, and then it just happened again, and if it had been a regular enough thing, then yeah, I probably would have looked into birth control, but I didn’t think we were going to do it again. I didn’t even think he’d ever call me again, but then Bri asked me to come out of the blue, and… It was just an accident. It was all an accident,” she finishes quietly.

Given my sister’s the one who could’ve gotten hurt, I could probably be madder at her about all this, but it’s pretty clear to me Alyssa was in over her head and got swept up in a situation she had no business being part of in the first place.

It’s not her I blame; it’s Theo. He’s a grown-ass man, and she was 17 the first time he fucked her. She didn’t know what the hell was happening, but he did. He had no business ever touching her, and now because he did, her life’s gone to shit. The affair was Theo’s crime even more than it was hers—he’s the asshole who made vows to my sister, but this vulnerable young girl is the only one paying for it.

It’s not right.

None of this is right.

Heaving a sigh, I look down at my cock apologetically. “Sorry, buddy.”

A little confused, the girl says, “What?”

Before I can change my mind, I climb off her. Once I’m off the bed, I tuck my aching dick away then bend down and grab her nightgown off the floor. Tossing it to her on the bed, I tell her, “Put this back on.”

The girl is startled, but she doesn’t question her good fortune. Quickly, she tugs her nightgown back down over her naked body. Then she just sits there for a second and looks at me. “You’re… you’re not gonna hurt me?”

I don’t like the way her words prod my conscience. I haven’t had much use for a conscience for most of my life. I still don’t, but there’s just something about the way everything is going down that doesn’t settle right in my gut.

“Not right this second,” I tell her, glancing around the small but tidy room. “You got a suitcase?”

Her eyes widen and she shakes her head.

I cock an eyebrow. “You don’t? Who doesn’t have a suitcase?”

Her tone is guileless, but her words do more to drive home how fucking inexperienced she is than anything she could say to try to make me feel bad. “I’ve never been anywhere.”

I stare at her for a long moment, her in her pale blue nightie, looking like something out of a more adult version of Peter Pan. I get the feeling low in my gut, in a place that never lies to me, that this girl’s gonna be a whole heap of trouble if I let her be.

If I’m smart, I’ll walk straight over to that nightstand beside her bed, grab my gun, and blow her brains out like I’m supposed to do. I won’t give her a chance to change my mind, and I won’t have to hear another innocent thing out of that pretty little mouth, clawing at a conscience that shouldn’t have a hand on the wheel anymore.

If I let her live, she’ll be trouble, plain and simple.

So, I shouldn’t.

I walk over to the nightstand and grab my gun. I look back at her on the bed, waiting for fear to grab her again, for her to gasp or crawl away in terror, but she just sits there and looks at me like she wonders what I’ll do next.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me anymore?” I demand.

Her eyes widen at the bite in my voice. She shifts and fidgets with her nightie, looking away from me. “Well, I am, but you said you’re not going to hurt me right now.”

Because I fucking said it—that’s her reason? Because she believes what I say, after I broke into her house and damn near raped her, after telling her I came here to kill her?

That’s a shitty fucking reason, but I like it.

I like it a lot.

Heaving a sigh, I tuck my gun in the back of my waist-band and look around her room for something that could serve the same purpose as a suitcase. I spot a big pink handbag hanging off the closet door, so I point to it.

“Go grab that,” I tell her.

Quiet as a mouse, she climbs off the bed and scurries over to retrieve the bag, then she turns back to me expectantly. “What do I need it for?”

“Put some clothes in it.”

“Why?” she asks, staring at me.

Offering her a crooked smile, I tell her, “I’m about to take you on your first weekend getaway. If you don’t want clothes, we can just leave, but I thought you might not want to be naked the whole time.”

The veiled threat of making her stay naked all the time does the job of extinguishing her curiosity. Instead of questioning me further, she stops wasting time and starts filling the bag.