Cupid's Elf

NOTE: This is my entry for Literotica's 2022 Valentine's Day Story Contest. It is a stand-alone sequel to my story "Elf on a Shelf" and picks up with Honey and Zach a couple months after the events of that story. I hope you enjoy it, and please don't forget to vote and comment!

Honey Lane sat on a tall stool in the corner next to Zach's kitchen counter, sulking as she watched him walk slowly around the table at which sat a girl and two boys between the ages of 7 and 10. The dour silence of the spacious industrial loft suggested more that the children were completing a college entrance exam with a severe proctor, rather than completing Valentines to be distributed in class the following Monday.

Honey crossed her long legs and sighed again, earning a piercing glare from Zach. She had been looking forward to helping Zach's niece and nephews with their Valentines for weeks, and now she was only allowed to observe it from five feet away. She crossed her arms and sighed again. This was the worst punishment ever.

Zach continued circling the table, trying not to notice how Honey's folded arms pushed her breasts together, the neckline of her fuzzy sweater dipping between them. Beneath the soft woven folds, the silken white skin of her breasts probably still bore the red marks of his passion, his teeth and lips remembering the feel of her shuddering with pleasure under them only moments before his sister dropped her kids off for the afternoon. Jesus Christ... she just uncrossed and crossed her legs again, totally oblivious to the way she flashed him an upskirt every goddamn time she did it. Unless she wasn't oblivious to it... with Honey, it was hard to tell.

Zach could tell that Honey was just dying to hop down from the stool, scamper over and huddle with Amarie, Fallon and Logan, as they wrote their names on the stupid little perforated papers and stuck a pencil through the pre-punched holes for a stupid commercial holiday that was supposed to celebrate love. Honey would ask them questions about their classmates, help them choose the right stupid Valentine message for the right classmate, put stickers and shit on the cards, and generally sprinkle that fairy dust that she seemed to bring to anything she did. She was a born nurturer and would make this whole thing magical for the kids, but it couldn't be helped. Honey had scared the shit out of him and she needed to learn a lesson. It would be hard, but he just had to be strong. She would not be getting out of this. Not this time.

"Done!" Fallon yelled, slamming his pencil down on the table.

Logan looked up from where he was working on his third personalized Valentine message, apparently trying to sign each of them in rudimentary calligraphy, and frowned, "You just put 'F' on all of them," he said in disgust, "It looks like you're giving them a bad grade..." he said, shaking his head and returning to his careful scrivening.

"I am. Everyone in my class is a jerk. What are these things supposed to mean, anyway? All these cards sound stupid. Like you'd really walk up to someone you like and say 'Let's swing!' I haven't asked a girl to swing in years. I'm too old for swinging," Fallon griped, looking at his Spiderman sticker cards.

A snort of suppressed laughter came out of the corner of the room, followed by the sound of a body collapsing to the floor in a fit of coughing. "FOURTH FUCKING PLACE! ON YOUR FACE, MAGGOT!" Zach roared. In the corner, hidden among the gym equipment, Zach's friend and loyal wingman Terry promptly scrambled up into pushup position again without a word.

"Thirty-two," the children said in unison, prompting Zach to put another dollar into a large money-stuffed jar labeled "Language Arts Scholarship" in the middle of the table.

Amarie sighed and looked longingly over at Honey, who smiled ruefully and gave her a little wave from her stool. "Why is Miss Honey on the naughty stool, Uncle Zach?" she asked.

"Cards," Zach ordered, walking over to block Amarie's view of Honey with his massive body. Amarie resignedly turned back to signing her pink and purple mermaid cards that came with scented tattoos.

Zach knew Amarie would be a problem. She adored Honey, and there was very little that Amarie's big brown eyes and reddish curls couldn't talk him into. She had a tender heart that couldn't believe anyone deserved to be punished... especially not someone as soft and sweet as his Honey. Goddammit.

Honey leaned forward and pressed her cheek against the tightly muscled wall of Zach's back, then reached her hand up under his t-shirt and began gently scratching him. She could feel the warmth of his skin seep through the tight cotton, and smiled as she snuggled into him, still grazing her fingernails across the skin of his back. Zach's mind flashed back to this morning when her nails were not so gentle as he pounded into her tight, wet pussy, her nails digging deep, scoring his flesh in her ecstasy.

A noise of pleasure escaped him before Zach disguised it as a barking cough, and quickly stepped away until he was a safer distance away from the irresistible vixen sitting, most deservedly, on the naughty stool. Shaking his head to clear it, Zach tucked his t-shirt back into his jeans and folded his arms. "Miss Honey is on the naughty stool because the other day when I got back from the race in California where I had to drag Terry's ass across the finish line in FOURTH PLACE BEHIND THE FUCKING BUBBLEHEADS," Zach ranted, before pausing to collect himself and continuing, "I go over to get Miss Honey at her apartment and find her giving a fucking haircut to a naked guy in her fucking living room!"

"You cheated, Miss Honey?" Fallon gasped in disbelief, at the same time Logan called out "Thirty-six!"

Zach fished a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and put it into the jar, taking a one out for change. A foot stomped on the floor and he glanced up to see Honey with her hand raised in the air, outrage written on her face. He raised his hand, blocking his view of her face and the heart-melting effect it had on him, and looked away dismissively. "He was not naked! Cade had a towel on!" Honey yelled in protest.

Zach strode over to her, took her chin in his hand, trying to think of something harsh and authoritative to say, but got distracted by her plump lower lip instead, remembering how it felt to suck it between his own and have her open her mouth, hungry to accept his tongue. He could smell the faint strawberry scent of her lip balm and closed his eyes, clenching his jaw in an effort not to kiss her. "No talking on the naughty stool," he murmured, his eyes dipping down to let his gaze rove over her soft breasts, loosely wrapped in her fuzzy sweater. Honey smirked and kissed his palm.

"Miss Honey would never cheat," Amarie said with resolute confidence. Honey nodded in agreement and thanks to the young girl, tossed her long hair over her shoulder and grinned up at Zach.

"Towel or no towel, I still saw Cade's nuts when she was goin' after him with the Flowbee," Zach explained, turning from Honey as Logan opened his mouth with a look of question, "And no, 'nuts' doesn't count as a swear," Zach finished, pointing at Logan.

Zach resumed his rounds of the table, continuing his story. "So, of course, I reacted like anybody else who saw another guy's nuts in his girlfriend's living room, and she has the balls to tell me not to yell because it's not good for Cade."

"I think 'nuts' should be fifty-cents... 'balls' too," Logan said, thoughtfully. "They might not be swears, but they are... indelicate."

Zach turned to Honey and silently mouthed the word "indelicate?" to her, a discomfited look on his face. Honey bit her lips, and another snort of laughter erupted from the corner where Terry was still in starting push-up position. "FOURTH PLACE, MAGGOT! YOU GOT NOTHING TO LAUGH ABOUT EXCEPT THE SIZE OF YOUR—" Zach roared, before pausing and breathing deeply and continuing in a calmer voice. "Anyway. Turns out, this guy Cade just got back from a tour and was dealing with some PTSD when he saw another guy's balls in his living room, too, only his girl wasn't exactly giving the other guy a haircut. So, after a bit of trouble, he was living on the streets. No job. No money. Nothing. Then, a few days ago, Honey sees him eating some of the food she left out for a stray cat," Zach said, his voice constricting as his throat tightened. He turned away from the kids to hide his face for a moment, only to meet Honey's deep blue eyes and a whole new set of problems... like not remembering anything he was talking about before. She reached up and stroked his cheek, and then he felt all the blood in his brain drain down below his belt. Fucking hell.

"Miss Honey helped him, though, didn't she?" Amarie said expectantly, more as a statement than a question.

"What? Yeah. Of course, she did," Zach said with exasperation, looking down into Honey's face, and trying not to laugh at her stubbornly set jaw. "Miss Honey never fucking heard of "stranger danger," or met a wreck of a person she couldn't care about. So, she takes this 'Cade' in, feeds him, gets him washed up, takes him shopping at the Salvation Army, and then takes his ass to the library to write up his fucking resume and apply for jobs, for cryin' out loud," Zach said, putting another two dollars into the jar before Logan could remind him. "When I got there, Cade was there in her living room with his nuts showing under the towel, getting a vacuum cleaner haircut, because he'd gotten a job interview with a moving company."

"Yeah, but if she wasn't cheating, I don't see what she did wrong," Fallon said, applying a scented mermaid tattoo to the back of his hand. "Is this what mermaids smell like?" he wondered.

"Yeah, well, just as I was cooling down, this 'Cade' starts in on me for letting Honey stay in that piece of crap apartment of hers and taking in homeless guys. Even had the nerve to ask me what woulda happened if he'd been some addict, or worse, if someone that got to thinking that she was his girlfriend?" Zach said, folding his arms and looking down at Honey, who looked quite unrepentant.

"What? So, Miss Honey can't be nice because they might have problems or fall in love with her?" Amarie asked. "That's not fair! You wouldn't even like her if she wasn't happy and nice all the time because she was always worried about what would happen if the boys fall in love!"

"Ugh. Love ruins everything. Maybe that's why these Valentines are all so stupid, so nobody actually falls in love..." Fallon said, with an air of realization. "Yeah... and then girls can take the pencil from the card and jab anybody that wants to kiss them, too."

"If the burden was placed on women to be preemptively hostile to avoid rejecting unwanted affections, it might explain the decline of romance in the modern era... and 'crap' is an excremental swear," Logan added offhandedly, not looking up from his fourth Valentine message. Zach's eyes grew wide, his jaw going slack as he looked at his oldest nephew with unnerved awe and added another dollar to the jar without argument.

"They should really make these things with nunchucks..." Fallon added, looking down at his Valentines, "Nobody can kiss you if you have nunchucks."

"The point is, even a freaked out homeless guy knew that Miss Honey did something dangerous that nobody should ever do! You don't just grab strangers off the street and take them into your homes because there's a lot of crazies out there that will mess you up for no reason at all!" Zach ranted at the kids.

A stomp from the corner made Zach turn back to where Honey waved her hand insistently in the air, her sweater pulling up and exposing a narrow bit of skin at her waist. The skin was pale and beautiful, like the rest of her, except where there was a slight bruise where his fingers had gripped her tightly as he pounded into her from behind in a haze of animalistic lust, only a few hours ago. "Yes?" he asked hoarsely, a dew of sweat breaking out over the back of his neck.

Honey cleared her throat, "Okay... say someone threatened to kill you and then scared you to death for a whole year by following you around... and then one day you wake up at their house all beaten up and they tell you that they're going to keep you there and take care of you until you're better. Should you give them a chance, or just phone an Uber and get the heck out of there?" Honey asked, putting her hands on her hips. A peal of laughter rose out of the corner where Terry was, and Zach stomped his foot, ending it quickly.

"I don't know. That person sounds scary, Miss Honey... " Amarie said, her large eyes concerned.

"That's just insane. That's like that movie where this crazy lady kidnapped this guy and makes him write books for her and then she smashed his legs with a sledgehammer when—"

"Who the fuck is letting you watch 'Misery,' Fallon?" Zach roared.

"YouTube," Fallon said, shrugging.

"Jesus Fucking Christ..." Zach said, waving down Logan's hand and stuffing more bills into the jar, then walked back to where Honey sat with a smirk on her face. Glaring down at her, he crossed his massive arms, and she crossed her legs again, squirming slightly on her stool. "Maggot, come watch the kids," he barked as Terry collapsed on the floor with a relieved sigh. "I wanna talk to you in the other room," he said, gripping Honey by the back of her neck and steering her up the stairs as she tried to control her giggles.

"But there isn't another room... it's all just one big room. Even your bedroom is just a big shelf—" Honey began, until Zach steered her into the bathroom and locked the door.

"Hey kids, what do you say we turn this into a dance party!" Terry yelled, and loud music quickly started blasting outside the bathroom door.

"Did they just fucking compare me to Annie Bates?" Zach asked as Honey dropped to her knees, unzipped his jeans and took out his painfully excited erection.

"Mmm hmph," Honey said, hungrily filling her mouth with his hard cock, as his hand gripped the back of her head. Zach's breath hitched as she began rubbing her tongue on the bottom of his mushroom head, clutching his flexing thighs. Groaning, he thrust back and forth slowly, watching his cock slide in and out of her wet lips.

"Just for that, you're swallowing my load this time," Zach growled, gripping her hair tighter and thrusting deeper. Honey just wrinkled her nose and relaxed her throat, letting him plunge and withdraw, clenching his jaw, loving the noises he made as his excitement grew beyond his control. With a strangled moan, he thrust deep and watched her eyes widen when he swelled and throbbed down her throat, until he slowly pulled out and spilled the last hot pulses on her tongue.

Honey's eyes glowed as she took him once more into her mouth and slowly slid back, cleaning him with her tongue, until the head of his cock slowly emerged from her wet lips and received a sweet kiss on the tip. He shook his head in amazement and lifted her up in his arms, overwhelmed again at the miracle of having her there with him, when there were so many ways that everything that had happened between them could have gone wrong. Still breathing raggedly, he bent down and kissed her, her eager and innocent passion for him touching him more deeply than he cared to admit. How in the hell had he managed to get this girl?

Zach lifted her up and set her bottom on the bathroom countertop and stripped her sweater over her head, bending and going after her neck first. He loved the way she shivered when she felt his lips and teeth drag across the smooth skin, the way she completely lost herself to him. She was already panting those soft sighs against the top of his head when he freed her breasts and took them in his mouth, and then he chuckled when she jumped at the sensation of it. God, he hoped she never changed.

Diving in, he devoured her soft pale flesh, her rosy nipples tightening under his busy tongue. He reached down, pushed her skirt up, and moved the wet gusset of her panties aside. He laughed again, feeling the abundant slippery nectar between his fingers, leaving no doubt that she wanted him just as much as he did her. He wanted to taste her, to feel her hips rise up under his mouth, begging him for more, but he knew Honey could never stay quiet enough, even with Terry blasting a dance mix.

Lifting his head from her breasts, he returned to her mouth, her nose, her cheeks... God, he couldn't get enough of her. "Look at me," he said in a rough whisper, smiling when Honey's eyes opened obediently, seeking him through her haze of need. She bit her lips and whimpered when his fingers found her clit. "Don't you come until I say," he rasped, toggling her bud expertly. Honey moaned and wound her legs around him, pulling him closer, her back arching in restrained pleasure.

"Nnnnn... I can't do it... please... please..." she begged, crying softly in loss when he slowed his ministrations, "Noooo..." she whimpered.

"Don't you want to come on my cock, baby girl?" he said, finding his mark and sliding home into her warm welcome. "Now, come..." he said, kissing her softly and pulling her hips to him as he thrust deep.

"Aaaaaaaamph—" Honey's cry was quickly contained by Zach's hand covering her mouth, his other hand holding her steady as he thrust into her and felt her shaking and squeezing around him as she came. If he hadn't just released in her mouth, there was no way he could resist filling her full of his cum again now. Instead, he just watched Honey's eyes roll back as she clung to him, letting her orgasm take her away until it left her weak and pliable in his arms.

He held her against him, slowly moving inside her, waiting for her to recover. Always before, it had been a relentless push for the intense frenzied moment, almost blind to whatever person he was with, but with Honey that was all on its head. She was the experience, for him. Seeing her discover, taste, and feel was everything he wanted. He didn't want to feel a surge ripping through him if she wasn't there, too. It wasn't real... wasn't complete if she wasn't there with him. Fuck... he was gone for this girl.

"There she is..." he murmured when he saw her eyes clear and smiling into his again. Relieved, he thrust faster, joining their bodies together with more force, now that she was able to be present to it. "There's my girl..." he said, smiling and kissing her again.

"Zach..." she said, smiling back at him for no reason other than thinking he was something wonderful.

Looking at her, he started shaking his head, "God, Honey... I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, it scared the fuck out of me... thinking what could've happened to you... but Amarie's right. I couldn't stand it if you were any other way," Zach rasped, lifting her off the counter just to hold her closer to him. Honey wrapped her arms and legs around him, clinging to him as he kissed her desperately, plunging into her again and again. "Promise me... promise me you'll never change..." he panted, lifting her and pressing her against the wall as his need grew.

"Ooooh Zach... it's coming... uh... uh... uh... unnnhhhhhhmph—" Honey's squeals were again silenced, this time by Zach's lips. Thrusting with joyous abandon, Zach filled her again and again, pushing into her body, his release tearing through him, made complete only by her embrace, pouring into her his need, his heart, his everything... because she was the only one he wanted to have it.

A short while later, Zach and Honey slunk out of the bathroom, carefully primped and looking like nothing at all had happened. They needn't have bothered, though, because the children were transfixed with a story Terry was telling, with his foot on the table and his pants leg pulled up to show a small wound on his ankle.