Page 41 of Mastered by Them
If the three of us continued, all together as we’ve been doing, maybe it wouldn’t be the disaster I fear.
The camera flashes before any of us is ready. Danica laughs in time for it to flash again.
I tug her toward me for a deep kiss in time for the next flash, then lift her over my lap, pushing her toward Troy for the next one. Their noses bump.
“Ow!” Danica holds her nose, but tries again in time for the next picture.
They keep kissing, even after the final shutter sound.
“Please add more tokens,” an automatic voice says.
“Yes?” Danica asks.
“Yes.” I find some tokens in my pocket and feed them into the machine.
I kiss along Danica’s shoulder while she continues to kiss Troy. She even reaches for my hand. I hold hers. I’m here. I’m a part of this, too.
If the photo booth is flashing more pictures, I don’t notice. I’m too wrapped up in our girl.
Danica’s soft moan sounds so sweet in the tiny booth. With my free hand, I slide the sleeve of her t-shirt down, exposing more of her skin. I cup her tit, pinching through her bra, making her gasp against Troy’s mouth.
The photo booth’s automatic voice demands more tokens. I slot in everything in my pocket, unseeing, uncaring. I only want this needy, squirming girl.
She turns so she’s kissing me again. Her mouth is wet, lips swollen from Troy’s kisses. I do some calculated risk assessment and realize that no, we can’t get her off in a photo booth on this crowded Mirarosa boardwalk. As much as I want to…which is a fucking lot.
The camera flashes again, followed by the robotic voice demanding more tokens.
“That’s enough, angel,” I whisper.
“Noooo.” She clutches my forearm. “More photos?”
“If you want more kissing, we can do that somewhere else. Somewhere either more private, or with a consenting audience.” Salt would be perfect, but I don’t say so. Instead, I kiss the tip of her nose.
“I really hate you.” She flips her hair in my face.
I laugh. “You’re gonna pay for that later, princess.”
I’m glad I cut the make-out session short, because when we emerge from the booth, there’s a line of cranky-looking tourists waiting their turns. Danica clutches our photo album’s worth of pictures to her chest so nobody can see just how risque things got in that booth. Troy tries to pry them from her hands, but she shakes her head. “We should burn these.”
“Come on, let us see,” he insists.
She tucks them into her bag. “Maybe later.”
We spend the next couple of hours walking around. Troy gives Danica more piggy-back rides. We tease her about the photos from the booth, but she won’t hand them over.
The day is winding down, the crowds getting crazier, the boardwalk sultrier. We’re all hungry after walking around, so Troy volunteers to grab pizza slices from a booth that must be good because the line is long.
I sit with Danica on a bench overlooking the ocean.
“Thanks for bringing me here.” She gives me a shy smile. “I didn’t want to come at first, but this was fun.”
“Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go—I’ll take you, Danica. I need you to know that.”
Her smile falls. “You think you can buy me.”
“What?” I feel like she just slugged me in the gut. “No. Not at all. I want to see you happy.”
“You’re trying to manipulate me, like my granddad has done.” The words are more than an accusation—they slice like knives.
