Standard disclaimers, blah blah blah blah blah.
"You should probably close your eyes for a bit, Steph, we'll be here for a while."
Vince, the Moderate Merry Man
By Alfonsina
"Steph, you need to move," he said quietly.
"Mmmmm? Wha?"
"I can't feel my arm anymore, I'd like it back."
"Don't you like to be a pillow?" I asked.
"I don't have a lot of practice at it. I usually sleep alone."
"That's a shame, you make a great pillow," I said as I tried to change positions. We were both on our backs but my head was using his arm for comfort. "I could use a new pillow."
I tried to close my eyes but realized it wasn't going to work, my warm pillow was gone.
"Wanna talk now?" I yawned.
He looked at his watch, it was 2:37 a.m. "No. I'd like to get back to sleep. But I'm cold now."
"If we change sides, we can spoon and maybe you won't be quite so cold and your other arm won't feel deprived."
It was his turn to yawn as he crawled over me and proceeded to cuddle me.
"Night little one," he said as he let out a deep breath.
"Sweet dreams, Vince," I said and then I was gone.
About an hour later Vince made a noise and tried to pull his arm out from under my head. Inconsiderate man.
"I'm just not used to being a pillow, Steph, sorry."
He could probably sleep anywhere, but what good was that going to do me? I was now cold and uncomfortable and feeling a little cranky.
I made a noise, it probably wasn't flattering.
"I've only ever slept with someone I'm married to," he said sleepily. "And my marriages haven't worked out very well."
"Been married more than once," I asked.
"Definitely."
"I was married a lifetime ago for less than a year," I said.
"I've been married nine times," he said with a shrug. "The longest one was when I was seventeen and we were married about seven months."
"Was she pregnant?"
Nine times? He wasn't even thirty and he'd been married nine times. Hell, I hadn't even slept with nine men.
"No. My folks were going to move, we thought we were in love. Both sets of parents signed off on the paperwork so we could be married and stay together. She decided she loved someone else when I was at boot camp." He sighed and rubbed my back a little.
"I was raised not to sleep with anyone unless I'm married. I just can't do it. That's probably why I keep shifting around and can't get comfortable. Sorry," he said.
"Just how exactly have you convinced these women to wait for you until you get married?"
"It's not so much a matter of convincing them to marry me, it is having reasons to stay married to me."
"I don't get it," and I honestly didn't.
"Well, three of them married me thinking that I'd get American citizenship for them. Two thought it wasn't a real marriage and it was just a way to play for the weekend. You already know about my first wife. The others thought I was kidding when I told them I'd been a mercenary and when they saw some of the tools for the job kind of freaked."
"They've all left you?"
"Yeah, except for the ones who wanted citizenship. I had those annulled for false pretenses."
Wow.
"If we were married and had already done the sex part," I said wishing that maybe we could do that part, but not planning on it, "what position did you like to sleep in with any of them?"
I figured that if we got to a familiar body position, he might just get some sleep.
"You probably won't like it," he said quietly.
"Why not?"
"Because you'd have to sleep on top of me," he said.
That's definitely not what I'd call a hardship.
"I drool," I said.
"I'm good with that," he said. "But if you want more than sleep, you're gonna have to marry me when they let us out of here."
"Not a problem," I said.
"I'm serious, Steph. I've got the rings and I have all my divorce papers saved as PDF files on a flash drive in my pocket. So if you start getting frisky, you're gonna wind up married."
Oh God.
"I promise to be good," I said. I wanted to cross my fingers, but didn't have the heart. I wasn't going to be number ten, no way.
He stretched out on the landing and had me climb on top of him. He slipped his hands under my shirt and started rubbing little circles until he fell asleep.
At around 6:00 he started to play with my hair and put his hand on my hip, again with all the rubbing. It was safe, wholesome and incredibly erotic.
I had a hard time going back to sleep. I tried to move and his arms became like iron bands. He was apparently still asleep and wasn't going to let his teddy bear go anytime soon.
When I let my body relax, so did his grip. I fell back asleep and was dreaming about a movie, it was an old Tarantino flick.
I heard a voice on the other side of the door, "Boss, we've found them. Nope, it's padlocked closed. Talk to you later." Pause. "Hey, did anybody bring bolt cutters so we can snap this thing open?" I recognized the voice as belonging to Caesar.
Another voice said, "No. What do you think we do, carry around an entire hardware store?"
The Calvary had come and wasn't prepared to make a rescue.
"Fuck. In that case, we're gonna need a block of wood, a bucket of ice and a hatchet," said the voice I knew to be Erik.
"Erik, don't be an ass," said Caesar.
"No man, we need the wood and the hatchet to break the lock open."
"What's the bucket of ice for?"
"Vince's probably gonna get a black eye for spending the night alone with Stephanie."
"We don't know that anything happened."
"We don't know that anything didn't, either. You've seen Vince in action. He gets the girls all hot, bothered and frustrated and leaves them that way until they agree to marry him."
That's a novel approach.
"Steph's not the marrying kind."
I was too the marrying kind. I just hadn't had any real offers in a very long time.
The guys might be able to sneak up on anything, but no one had ever taught them how to modulate their voices. There should be a way to make them suffer for their speculation.
Vince had heard the conversation and didn't look any more pleased than I felt.
"Want to have a little fun today?" he asked with a wink.
"What do you have in mind, big boy?" I asked batting my eyelashes.
"Let's pretend we got married and see what happens. They won't have to know it isn't real."
"Why not? There's already a lot of speculation about me and my life. I'm game."
"Get off me so I can get to my wallet," he said.
Usually when I heard that comment it was so that condoms could be employed.
"Give me your left hand," he said.
He slipped a simple gold band over my ring finger. It wasn't very big or very expensive, but it looked very much at home on my finger. He then put his own band on.
Just before I could hear the lock break, Vince took me into his arms and kissed me with an intensity that instantly soaked my panties. Actually if the kiss had been any hotter, my panties would have self combusted and that would have left us with an even more difficult situation.
The three stooges, Erik, Brett and Caesar came through the door only to find me in a very tight and highly charged clench with Vince whose wedding band was glimmering in the light.
"Fuck," the stooges said in unison.
A/N: I personally find someone under 30 to have been married nine times to be at least a little interesting. Don't you?
