“Maggie!” Libby countered aggressively, and with the hand she’d been patiently cupping under her friend’s chin she wrapped her fist around the totalitarian sibling’s wrist, trying to force her to cease and desist with her current activity.

            “Wha?  ‘Oo ‘ill wan’ ‘im?” Maggie asked innocently as she fought back a giggle and resisted the pull of Libby’s hand, unable to close her lips to form consonants, as she continued caressing her limp captive’s body over every inch of her tongue.

            “C’mon, please stop it.  He’s had enough,” Libby requested with concern as she began shaking Maggie’s forearm in a failed second effort to end Scott’s torment.

            “You’re gonna make me drop him!” Maggie chuckled truthfully, finally withdrawing her miniscule brother from the gooey reclamation of him she was apparently making by reapplying a thick gloss of saliva over his torso and limbs.  “Seriously, he’s only an inch right now.  If you shake me too hard, I might not be able to hold on.”

            “Then stop licking him like he’s a piece of candy.  For God’s sake,” Libby grumbled, her tone increasingly adamant, though she released her grip on the girl’s trembling wrist at this unfortunate suggestion.

            “What makes you think he’s not?” Maggie said with a shrug, refocusing her attention on her brother as her baby blue irises seemed to alight again as a grin glowed victoriously from her lips.  “I bet Scotty’s not even sure anymore.  Are you, little boy?”

            Scott had neither the energy nor the willpower to try defiantly answering no, though he had a feeling the end result wasn’t going to change dependent on his response.  This didn’t happen to be one of those instances where his sister was upholding her occasional policy of giving him choices.

            “See?  He doesn’t even know what to say,” Maggie snickered.

            “That’s because you’re scaring him,” Libby insisted desperately.  “Please stop.”

            “You know what he did, right?” cut in the sixteen-year-old with acute clarity that sliced right through her previously playful tenor.

            “What?  You mean the…”

            “I mean, you know why he’s here, right?  And why I get to do this if I want?”

            “Because… of the Shrink Act.”

            “No, not just that,” Maggie corrected.  “Because he was driving his car after he’d been drinking a ton and didn’t care what happened to anyone else.  And because people got hurt.  You know that too.”

            “I…” Libby mumbled, coughing in her throat.  “I… I know that…”

            “And you just want me to carry him around and give him kisses and tell him everything’s gonna be okay, don’t you?” the middle Stevens child accused in the least demanding tone she could manage, her brow furrowed, as she continued brandishing her brother just an inch away from her lips as they billowed hot air.  “Don’t you?”

            “I’m not saying that.  But… but everybody needs a break sometimes, and the way you’re treating him right now…”          
            “What?”

            “It’s… it’s not right.  How’s he supposed to get better?”

            Maggie scowled, her face paler than it had been, as she redirected her attention to the tiny life pinched between her fingers again, her face contorted into a determined sneer.

            “He knows what he did.  And we made a deal.  He knows he needs to do this to keep up his end.  Don’t you, Scotty?” she intoned gracefully.

            “Scott?” Libby questioned.  “What’s she talking about?”

            “Go ahead,” Maggie continued to her brother, running her fingers through her silky golden locks, hardly able to keep the maniacal smirk from cracking. “I’ll stop right now if you want, and the deal’s off.  All you have to do is ask me to lick you again, one more time, and I’ll give you what we agreed.”

            “Agreed?  Maggie, what are you-” the girl sputtered, wringing her hands together.

            “Go on,” the girl commanded in a chillingly delicate voice, almost a lullaby.  “Tell big sissy you want her to lick you again, little boy.”

            “Scott?” Libby whispered.

            “I w-want big sissy…” Scott croaked, evolving to a new level of self-loathing, and in equal measure feeling darkly encouraged by the shaky promise of what laid at the end of this ordeal.  Even if he had to give Maggie the satisfaction of hearing this said, he would not let her break him before he earned what he’d been working for all this time.  He wouldn’t.  “…to l-lick me ag-gain.”

            “Thought so,” Maggie giggled, shutting her eyes as she deposited her brother back onto the flattened, soggy plain of her tongue.  This time, rather than merely slaking him along the surface and slurping into his face, she laid him spread-eagled and face-down on the sticky pink terrain and placed her index and middle fingers onto his back, gingerly pressing down with just enough pressure to let him sink into the saliva-streaked valley as deeply as possible without bending his spine.

            Libby, dumbfounded by the grotesque sight, stumbled back a step and continued nervously rubbing her fists together, before finally getting her bearings and frowning.

            “I can’t believe you made him say that,” the girl mumbled, her voice quivering.

            “Huh?  ‘e ‘aid it, ‘ot ‘e!” Maggie defended with a disingenuous chuckle.  Satisfied with the way Scott had been buried into her tongue, she curled it around him like a slimy burrito and closed her lips again, sealing him inside a second layer of heat and slobbery flesh.  Her cheeks constricted and she began lightly sucking on him again.

            “That’s not fair.  He just said it because he knew you’d do something worse if he didn’t,” Libby declared angrily, taking a step back toward the bed, her hands on her hips.  “Maggie.  That’s enough.  Stop it.”

            The sixteen-year-old Stevens daughter held up a pointer finger to her friend, indicating her desire for her to wait, and tilted her chin up slightly as she rolled her brother back between her inner cheeks again, the excess saliva sloshing audibly as she pinned him beneath the mammoth weight of her tongue and tossed him like a cork against her palate.  A glistening droplet of it even managed to escape at the corner of the girl’s lips, but she wiped it away with her wrist before it could dribble down her chin.

            “You sure you still want him?” Maggie managed to say, only partially able to open up, given her full mouth.  A tiny arm appeared in the brief opening of her lips, but her tongue curled back underneath it and it disappeared from view, followed by the girl’s resealing of the plush pink barrier into the darkness.

            “Yes.  Give him to me now,” Libby demanded, her volume rising, as she cupped her hand beneath Maggie’s chin again.  “Spit.  Him.  Out.”

            Her attention caught by the sudden rigid imperiousness of her friend’s tone, Maggie shrugged and let a smile creep over her lips before scooping her brother back up into her tongue and opening her mouth just wide enough to spit his flailing inch-tall body into Libby’s waiting hand.

            Weakly sprawled and exposed, the inch-tall Scott breathed a choked sigh of relief, coughing up a couple mouthfuls of his sister’s frothy saliva into the creases of Libby’s warm palm, as she delicately curled her fingers around him in a defensive wall and carried him toward the bathroom, away from Maggie’s raucous snickering.