#Canadian Car Company
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Exploring The History And Success Of A Canadian Car Company
Buckle up, gearheads! Today, we are revving our engines and taking a thrilling ride through the fascinating history and remarkable success of a Canadian car company that has left an indelible mark on the automotive industry. From its humble beginnings to conquering international markets, this company's journey is awe-inspiring. So, fasten your seatbelts as we dive into the exhilarating world of innovation, challenges, triumphs, and everything in between!
Impact On The Canadian Automotive Industry
Established decades ago, the Canadian car company has played a pivotal role in shaping and driving the automotive landscape within Canada. Its presence has bolstered the economy and fostered a sense of national pride in producing quality vehicles on home soil. The company's commitment to innovation and excellence has set new standards for the industry, inspiring others to push boundaries and strive for greatness.
This company has become an integral part of Canada's automotive sector by providing jobs, investing in research and development, and supporting local suppliers. Its impact ripples through various communities across the country, creating opportunities for growth and advancement. As a beacon of success in a competitive market, this Canadian car company continues to pave the way for future automakers to follow suit.
Expansion Into International Markets
The Canadian Car Company's expansion into international markets marked a significant milestone in its history. It opened up new opportunities for growth and global recognition, and by venturing beyond national borders, the company showcased its ability to compete globally.
With a strategic approach, the Canadian Car Company penetrated various international markets, adapting to different cultural preferences and regulations. This adaptability was crucial in establishing a strong presence in diverse regions worldwide.
The Canadian Car Company successfully introduced its vehicles to consumers worldwide through partnerships and collaborations with local distributors and dealerships. This approach not only boosted sales but also solidified the brand's reputation on an international level.
Expanding into international markets allowed the Canadian Car Company to showcase its commitment to innovation and quality across borders. The company's dedication to excellence resonated with customers globally, increasing demand for its vehicles.
Key Innovations And Technological Advancements
One key factor contributing to the success of this Canadian car company is its continuous focus on innovations and technological advancements. From the early days of manufacturing vehicles, they have strived to stay ahead of the curve by integrating cutting-edge technology into their designs. This commitment has allowed them to meet evolving consumer demands and set new industry standards.
The company's investment in research and development has led to breakthroughs in fuel efficiency, safety features, and overall performance. By harnessing the power of innovation, they have created cars that are not only reliable but also environmentally friendly. These advancements have positioned them as a leader in sustainable transportation solutions.
Moreover, this Canadian car company has incorporated advanced software and connectivity options into its vehicles through strategic partnerships with tech companies and suppliers. This forward-thinking approach has created smart cars that offer customers a seamless driving experience.
By staying at the forefront of technological progress, this Canadian car company continues to push boundaries and shape the future of automotive engineering.
Success Stories And Notable Achievements
One of the most renowned success stories in Canadian Car Company's history is its groundbreaking introduction of electric vehicles to the market. This bold move not only revolutionized the industry but also solidified the company's position as a forward-thinking and environmentally conscious automaker.
In addition, the company's commitment to innovation has led to numerous accolades and awards for its cutting-edge designs and advanced technology integration. Its dedication to pushing boundaries and setting new standards has earned it a loyal customer base around the globe.
Furthermore, their strategic partnerships with key players in the automotive sector have paved the way for collaborative projects that have further enhanced their brand reputation. These successful collaborations have resulted in mutually beneficial outcomes for all parties involved, showcasing Canadian Car Company's ability to thrive in competitive environments.
These notable achievements are testaments to the Canadian Car Company's unwavering commitment to excellence and continuous growth in the automotive industry.
Challenges faced by the company
Navigating the competitive landscape of the automotive industry, the Canadian Car Company has faced its fair share of challenges. From economic downturns to shifts in consumer preferences, staying ahead of the curve requires continuous innovation and adaptability.
One significant challenge has been balancing sustainability with performance in an environmentally conscious market. As regulations tighten, the company continues to address the delicate balance between investing in eco-friendly technologies and maintaining high-quality standards.
Moreover, global supply chain disruptions and fluctuating raw material costs have posed logistical hurdles for production and distribution. Finding efficient solutions to minimize delays and optimize operations remains a top priority for sustained growth.
Despite these obstacles, the Canadian Car Company's commitment to excellence and resilience has propelled it forward. By embracing change, fostering creativity, and prioritizing customer satisfaction, this iconic brand continues to make waves domestically and internationally.
As we reflect on its journey through history filled with achievements, innovations, and challenges, overcome, one thing is clear - the legacy of this Canadian car company will undoubtedly continue shaping the future of automotive excellence for years to come.
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Okay so. We were driving on the freeway home. A two lane road out of the mountains. There was a truck camped out in the left lane, pacing the van in the right lane.
Now common courtesy is that you use the left lane to pass and move right when there’s a car behind you because it means they’re going faster than you.
But this truck. Had a line of seven cars backed up in the left lane, all stymied by this blockade. The right lane backed up too, all because this truck wouldn’t move over. He was dedicated too, braking when the van did to keep them level and keep any cars from getting passed. This went on for over ten miles to much honking and frustration.
When the van finally broke free and traffic was able to move through we saw that the asshole truck was a company truck. So….
Edit to clarify: I cannot call the company, it’s international, and there’s no business email.
#ramblies#I am still mad but perhaps I shouldn’t stoop to such pettiness#also the truck was a Canadian company and at first I wanted to be like maybe this is a cultural misunderstanding#but there’s literally signs saying keep right and the honking and that was a deliberate act of terrorism on all the other cars
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"Canada, Mexico and car companies have been declared the winners in arguably the most important trade dispute under the new NAFTA, landing the U.S. on the losing side in a case about calculating the origin of auto parts.
The long-expected decision was known for weeks to the parties involved, yet it was withheld from public release until after North American leaders appeared together at a summit this week in Mexico.
It involves small print with big consequences for the industry at the heart of the continental trade agreement: Automobiles.
At its core, the dispute was about how hard to push car companies to use parts from North America, at a time when countries are seeking to pry back manufacturing jobs.
The specific case involved two conflicting methodologies for calculating the origins of a car's parts: One stricter, one easier.
Americans took a hard line. The U.S. wanted the toughest interpretation of the rules, which would force cars to include more North American parts to avoid a tariff.
Mexico fired off a suit against the U.S., calling its method damaging, costly to companies and counterproductive to the continent's car industry.
Canada joined the suit. Car companies eagerly supported the suit. And the complainants ultimately won."
Full article
Tagging: @politicsofcanada
#cdnpoli#canada#canadian politics#canadian news#canadian#NAFTA#mexico#united states#cars#car companies#auto parts#trade
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"TOO MUCH SPEED IN COURT FOR JUSTICE," Toronto Star. May 16, 1918. Page 2. ---- Man in Position of Trust Got Off With Lighter Sentence Than He Deserved. ---- THE CROWN HELPLESS ---- Companions in Offence, Who Weren't in Position of Responsibility, Get Stiff Terms. ---- By means of a key specially made for the purpose, Frank Gorham, a trusted employe of the Canadian Express Co., opened United States bonded cars and removed goods at his own sweet will. Clock, dress goods, and other things, valued at $97 are known to have been taken by him. For that offence he was to-day sentenced by Magistrate Kingsford to 90 days on the Jail Farm. The warrant of committal was duty signed. The prisoner was hustled off to jail. Half an hour later, when five other men had been convicted for stealing from the same company, and Magistrate Kingsford suspected a conspiracy, he remarked that if he had known all this at the time, he would have given Gorham a very much longer sentence. "Call Gorham up again," ordered Crown Attorney Corley. Too Late To Change. "He's in the jail now," reported the police. "I can have him brought right back again," said Mr. Corley. But counsel objected, the magistrate decided that it would be rather an irregular proceeding. and the accused escaped with the original sentence.
Ben Benjamin, a young Englishman, "picked up" 12 packages of cigarets, a bath robe and other small things in the car he was cleaning. He, too, must do his 90 days.
In the dock, all the while, were four other men, Squire Milner, Imperiale Enrico, Ernest Wheeler and Samuel Sparks, all charged with a similar, but much more extensive offence; and Walter H. Kilworth. charged with receiving the stolen goods. All were convicted. Enrico, Wheeler and Sparks, each got six months; Killworth got nine months: Milner, whose part in proceeding consisted in taking one cap, was remanded until to-morrow. $2,000 In Stolen Goods. Altogether, more than $2,000 worth of goods were found in possession of the gang. It was the largest single "haul" of railway thieves ever made by Grand Trunk Detective Smith. and served to reveal where at least a part of the $100.000 worth of good stolen from the same railway last year had gone to. Only a small por tion of the recovered goods were brought to court, but that portion made a pile bigger than the Crown Attorney's table.
#toronto#police court#stealing from railway cars#forged key#canadian express company#inside job#pilfering#stolen goods#bonded mail#sentenced to prison#toronto jail farm#burwash industrial farm#world war 1 canada#organized criminals#burglary gang#crime and punishment in canada#history of crime and punishment in canada
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The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you
On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.
In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst data-breach in world history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans and 15m Britons, (and 19k Canadians) into the world, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and premade identity-theft kits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach
Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just that their top execs liquidated their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach – it was also that they ignored years of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.
Things didn't improve after the breach. Indeed, the 2017 Equifax breach was the starting gun for a string of more breaches, because Equifax's servers didn't just have one fubared system – it was composed of pure, refined fubar. After one group of hackers breached the main Equifax system, other groups breached other Equifax systems, over and over, and over:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html
Doesn't this remind you of Boeing? It reminds me of Boeing. The spectacular 737 Max failures in 2018 weren't the end of the scandal. They weren't even the scandal's start – they were the tipping point, the moment in which a long history of lethally defective planes "breached" from the world of aviation wonks and into the wider public consciousness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737
Just like with Equifax, the 737 Max disasters tipped Boeing into a string of increasingly grim catastrophes. Each fresh disaster landed with the grim inevitability of your general contractor texting you that he's just opened up your ceiling and discovered that all your joists had rotted out – and that he won't be able to deal with that until he deals with the termites he found last week, and that they'll have to wait until he gets to the cracks in the foundation slab from the week before, and that those will have to wait until he gets to the asbestos he just discovered in the walls.
Drip, drip, drip, as you realize that the most expensive thing you own – which is also the thing you had hoped to shelter for the rest of your life – isn't even a teardown, it's just a pure liability. Even if you razed the structure, you couldn't start over, because the soil is full of PCBs. It's not a toxic asset, because it's not an asset. It's just toxic.
Equifax isn't just a company: it's infrastructure. It started out as an engine for racial, political and sexual discrimination, paying snoops to collect gossip from nosy neighbors, which was assembled into vast warehouses full of binders that told bank officers which loan applicants should be denied for being queer, or leftists, or, you know, Black:
https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans
This witch-hunts-as-a-service morphed into an official part of the economy, the backbone of the credit industry, with a license to secretly destroy your life with haphazardly assembled "facts" about your life that you had the most minimal, grudging right to appeal (or even see). Turns out there are a lot of customers for this kind of service, and the capital markets showered Equifax with the cash needed to buy almost all of its rivals, in mergers that were waved through by a generation of Reaganomics-sedated antitrust regulators.
There's a direct line from that acquisition spree to the Equifax breach(es). First of all, companies like Equifax were early adopters of technology. They're a database company, so they were the crash-test dummies for ever generation of database. These bug-riddled, heavily patched systems were overlaid with subsequent layers of new tech, with new defects to be patched and then overlaid with the next generation.
These systems are intrinsically fragile, because things fall apart at the seams, and these systems are all seams. They are tech-debt personified. Now, every kind of enterprise will eventually reach this state if it keeps going long enough, but the early digitizers are the bow-wave of that coming infopocalypse, both because they got there first and because the bottom tiers of their systems are composed of layers of punchcards and COBOL, crumbling under the geological stresses of seventy years of subsequent technology.
The single best account of this phenomenon is the British Library's postmortem of their ransomware attack, which is also in the running for "best hard-eyed assessment of how fucked things are":
https://www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf
There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.
That was the starting point for Equifax – a company with a massive tech debt that it would struggle to pay down under the most ideal circumstances.
Then, Equifax deliberately made this situation infinitely worse through a series of mergers in which it bought dozens of other companies that all had their own version of this problem, and duct-taped their failing, fucked up IT systems to its own. The more seams an IT system has, the more brittle and insecure it is. Equifax deliberately added so many seams that you need to be able to visualized additional spatial dimensions to grasp them – they had fractal seams.
But wait, there's more! The reason to merge with your competitors is to create a monopoly position, and the value of a monopoly position is that it makes a company too big to fail, which makes it too big to jail, which makes it too big to care. Each Equifax acquisition took a piece off the game board, making it that much harder to replace Equifax if it fucked up. That, in turn, made it harder to punish Equifax if it fucked up. And that meant that Equifax didn't have to care if it fucked up.
Which is why the increasingly desperate pleas for more resources to shore up Equifax's crumbling IT and security infrastructure went unheeded. Top management could see that they were steaming directly into an iceberg, but they also knew that they had a guaranteed spot on the lifeboats, and that someone else would be responsible for fishing the dead passengers out of the sea. Why turn the wheel?
That's what happened to Boeing, too: the company acquired new layers of technical complexity by merging with rivals (principally McDonnell-Douglas), and then starved the departments that would have to deal with that complexity because it was being managed by execs whose driving passion was to run a company that was too big to care. Those execs then added more complexity by chasing lower costs by firing unionized, competent, senior staff and replacing them with untrained scabs in jurisdictions chosen for their lax labor and environmental enforcement regimes.
(The biggest difference was that Boeing once had a useful, high-quality product, whereas Equifax started off as an irredeemably terrible, if efficient, discrimination machine, and grew to become an equally terrible, but also ferociously incompetent, enterprise.)
This is the American story of the past four decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between "too rotten to stand" and "too big to care."
Remember last February, when we all discovered that there was a company called Change Healthcare, and that they were key to processing virtually every prescription filled in America? Remember how we discovered this? Change was hacked, went down, ransomed, and no one could fill a scrip in America for more than a week, until they paid the hackers $22m in Bitcoin?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Change_Healthcare_ransomware_attack
How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.
United's execs are the kind of execs on a relentless quest to be too big to care, and so they don't care. Which is why their they had to subsequently announce that they had suffered a breach that turned the complete medical histories of one third of Americans into immortal Darknet kompromat that is – even now – being combined with breach data from Equifax and force-fed to the slaves in Cambodia and Laos's pig-butchering factories:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/data-stolen-healthcare-hack/index.html
Those slaves are beaten, tortured, and punitively raped in compounds to force them to drain the life's savings of everyone in Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK and Europe. Remember that they are downstream of the forseeable, inevitable IT failures of companies that set out to be too big to care that this was going to happen.
Failures like Ticketmaster's, which flushed 500 million users' personal information into the identity-theft mills just last month. Ticketmaster, you'll recall, grew to its current scale through (you guessed it), a series of mergers en route to "too big to care" status, that resulted in its IT systems being combined with those of Ticketron, Live Nation, and dozens of others:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hack-data-breach.html
But enough about that. Let's go car-shopping!
Good luck with that. There's a company you've never heard. It's called CDK Global. They provide "dealer management software." They are a monopolist. They got that way after being bought by a private equity fund called Brookfield. You can't complete a car purchase without their systems, and their systems have been hacked. No one can buy a car:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/business/cdk-global-cyber-attack-update/index.html
Writing for his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tells the all-too-familiar story of how CDK Global filled the walls of the nation's auto-dealers with the IT equivalent of termites and asbestos, and lays the blame where it belongs: with a legal and economics establishment that wanted it this way:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-supreme-court-justice-is-why-you
The CDK story follows the Equifax/Boeing/Change Healthcare/Ticketmaster pattern, but with an important difference. As CDK was amassing its monopoly power, one of its execs, Dan McCray, told a competitor, Authenticom founder Steve Cottrell that if he didn't sell to CDK that he would "fucking destroy" Authenticom by illegally colluding with the number two dealer management company Reynolds.
Rather than selling out, Cottrell blew the whistle, using Cottrell's own words to convince a district court that CDK had violated antitrust law. The court agreed, and ordered CDK and Reynolds – who controlled 90% of the market – to continue to allow Authenticom to participate in the DMS market.
Dealers cheered this on: CDK/Reynolds had been steadily hiking prices, while ingesting dealer data and using it to gouge the dealers on additional services, while denying dealers access to their own data. The services that Authenticom provided for $35/month cost $735/month from CDK/Reynolds (they justified this price hike by saying they needed the additional funds to cover the costs of increased information security!).
CDK/Reynolds appealed the judgment to the 7th Circuit, where a panel of economists weighed in. As Stoller writes, this panel included monopoly's most notorious (and well-compensated) cheerleader, Frank Easterbrook, and the "legendary" Democrat Diane Wood. They argued for CDK/Reynolds, demanding that the court release them from their obligations to share the market with Authenticom:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-7th-circuit/1879150.html
The 7th Circuit bought the argument, overturning the lower court and paving the way for the CDK/Reynolds monopoly, which is how we ended up with one company's objectively shitty IT systems interwoven into the sale of every car, which meant that when Russian hackers looked at that crosseyed, it split wide open, allowing them to halt auto sales nationwide. What happens next is a near-certainty: CDK will pay a multimillion dollar ransom, and the hackers will reward them by breaching the personal details of everyone who's ever bought a car, and the slaves in Cambodian pig-butchering compounds will get a fresh supply of kompromat.
But on the plus side, the need to pay these huge ransoms is key to ensuring liquidity in the cryptocurrency markets, because ransoms are now the only nondiscretionary liability that can only be settled in crypto:
https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/
When the 7th Circuit set up every American car owner to be pig-butchered, they cited one of the most important cases in antitrust history: the 2004 unanimous Supreme Court decision in Verizon v Trinko:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-682
Trinko was a case about whether antitrust law could force Verizon, a telcoms monopolist, to share its lines with competitors, something it had been ordered to do and then cheated on. The decision was written by Antonin Scalia, and without it, Big Tech would never have been able to form. Scalia and Trinko gave us the modern, too-big-to-care versions of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other tech baronies.
In his Trinko opinion, Scalia said that "possessing monopoly power" and "charging monopoly prices" was "not unlawful" – rather, it was "an important element of the free-market system." Scalia – writing on behalf of a unanimous court! – said that fighting monopolists "may lessen the incentive for the monopolist…to invest in those economically beneficial facilities."
In other words, in order to prevent monopolists from being too big to care, we have to let them have monopolies. No wonder Trinko is the Zelig of shitty antitrust rulings, from the decision to dismiss the antitrust case against Facebook and Apple's defense in its own ongoing case:
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/073_2021.06.28_mtd_order_memo.pdf
Trinko is the origin node of too big to care. It's the reason that our whole economy is now composed of "infrastructure" that is made of splitting seams, asbestos, termites and dry rot. It's the reason that the entire automotive sector became dependent on companies like Reynolds, whose billionaire owner intentionally and illegally destroyed evidence of his company's crimes, before going on to commit the largest tax fraud in American history:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-robert-brockman-accused-of-biggest-tax-fraud-in-u-s-history-dies-at-81-11660226505
Trinko begs companies to become too big to care. It ensures that they will exponentially increase their IT debt while becoming structurally important to whole swathes of the US economy. It guarantees that they will underinvest in IT security. It is the soil in which pig butchering grew.
It's why you can't buy a car.
Now, I am fond of quoting Stein's Law at moments like this: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As Stoller writes, after two decades of unchallenged rule, Trinko is looking awfully shaky. It was substantially narrowed in 2023 by the 10th Circuit, which had been briefed by Biden's antitrust division:
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/22-1164/22-1164-2023-08-21.html
And the cases of 2024 have something going for them that Trinko lacked in 2004: evidence of what a fucking disaster Trinko is. The wrongness of Trinko is so increasingly undeniable that there's a chance it will be overturned.
But it won't go down easy. As Stoller writes, Trinko didn't emerge from a vacuum: the economic theories that underpinned it come from some of the heroes of orthodox economics, like Joseph Schumpeter, who is positively worshipped. Schumpeter was antitrust's OG hater, who wrote extensively that antitrust law didn't need to exist because any harmful monopoly would be overturned by an inevitable market process dictated by iron laws of economics.
Schumpeter wrote that monopolies could only be sustained by "alertness and energy" – that there would never be a monopoly so secure that its owner became too big to care. But he went further, insisting that the promise of attaining a monopoly was key to investment in great new things, because monopolists had the economic power that let them plan and execute great feats of innovation.
The idea that monopolies are benevolent dictators has pervaded our economic tale for decades. Even today, critics who deplore Facebook and Google do so on the basis that they do not wield their power wisely (say, to stamp out harassment or disinformation). When confronted with the possibility of breaking up these companies or replacing them with smaller platforms, those critics recoil, insisting that without Big Tech's scale, no one will ever have the power to accomplish their goals:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens
But they misunderstand the relationship between corporate power and corporate conduct. The reason corporations accumulate power is so that they can be insulated from the consequences of the harms they wreak upon the rest of us. They don't inflict those harms out of sadism: rather, they do so in order to externalize the costs of running a good system, reaping the profits of scale while we pay its costs.
The only reason to accumulate corporate power is to grow too big to care. Any corporation that amasses enough power that it need not care about us will not care about it. You can't fix Facebook by replacing Zuck with a good unelected social media czar with total power over billions of peoples' lives. We need to abolish Zuck, not fix Zuck.
Zuck is not exceptional: there were a million sociopaths whom investors would have funded to monopolistic dominance if he had balked. A monopoly like Facebook has a Zuck-shaped hole at the top of its org chart, and only someone Zuck-shaped will ever fit through that hole.
Our whole economy is now composed of companies with sociopath-shaped holes at the tops of their org chart. The reason these companies can only be run by sociopaths is the same reason that they have become infrastructure that is crumbling due to sociopathic neglect. The reckless disregard for the risk of combining companies is the source of the market power these companies accumulated, and the market power let them neglect their systems to the point of collapse.
This is the system that Schumpeter, and Easterbrook, and Wood, and Scalia – and the entire Supreme Court of 2004 – set out to make. The fact that you can't buy a car is a feature, not a bug. The pig-butcherers, wallowing in an ocean of breach data, are a feature, not a bug. The point of the system was what it did: create unimaginable wealth for a tiny cohort of the worst people on Earth without regard to the collapse this would provoke, or the plight of those of us trapped and suffocating in the rubble.
Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car
Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
#pluralistic#matt stoller#monopoly#automotive#trinko#antitrust#trustbusting#cdk global#brookfield#private equity#dms#dealer management software#blacksuit#infosec#Authenticom#Dan McCray#Steve Cottrell#Reynolds#frank easterbrook#schumpeter
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The House Guest 4
Warnings: non/dubcon, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.
My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.
Character: Bucky Barnes
Summary: an old acquaintance calls in a favour, leaving you with an unexpected house guest.
As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️
The drive into town, or the few shops that cluster together at the midpoint of the backroads, is quiet. As you lazily steer around the long bends. As you come in sight of the beer store banner, you squint into the rear view. Bucky’s been so silent, you’re half certain he’s asleep.
He sits with his arms crossed as he stares out the window. His eyes could be closed. As you roll into the gravel lot, he clears his throat.
“Not much to this place,” he comments.
You give a start and shift into park, “nope.”
He nods as he unbuckles his seat belt and sits up, “quiet.”
“Very,” you agree.
He makes no other comment as he gets out. You really can’t tell how he meant it. Does he like the quiet? Hate it? Does he long for the New York rush?
You push yourself out of the car and head for the front door. He steps ahead to get the door and you thank him. It’s not too unusual. A lot of the men in their plaid fleeces insist on doing the same. You enter and greet Dustin behind the counter.
“Foster sending you ‘round again?” He asks.
“Mr. Foster’s drying out. At least his wife says so. And I told her I wouldn’t bring him anymore gin.” You explain.
“Ah, you got company,” Dustin comes to the end of the counter, “Dustin, and you?”
He holds out his hand. Bucky shakes it with his gloved one and introduces himself.
“Ha, boy, fingers’ cold already? Must not be from around here.”
Bucky sniffs and drops his hand. He has both covered. It’s probably best he not draw attention.
“Yeah, came up from the States,” he says. “Not a fan of the Canadian beer though.”
“Ah, you like piss water. Well, head to the back, you’ll find that yankie river water.”
You chuckle and shake your head. You go down the middle aisle and Bucky catches up to you with a grumble. You notice his glower as he peruses the cases.
“Don’t take it to hear. That’s just Dusty. If you’re a hockey fan, don’t mention it unless you wanna hear about the Leafs for an hour.”
“Right,” he nods and grabs a green case. “More of a baseball fan.”
“Don’t mention that either. He’s a Jays fan.” You head down the far aisle and peruse the smaller bottles. That should be enough.
“Thought you don’t drink,” he comments as you pick out the brown bottle.
“Rumcake. I’m gonna check in on the neighbours later this week. Make sure they’re okay. Plus, you add a bit to some fried bananas. It’s great.” You explain.
He drones again and clicks his tongue. He probably doesn’t care much about the neighbours or your mother’s rumcake recipe. You go to the counter and put the bottle down. As you reach into your pocket, Bucky leans the case on the edge.
“Charge hers with mine,” he takes out his wallet and slips out some bills.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Least I can do,” he insists and hands over the money, “Sir, you keep the change.”
“Boy, this is a beer store, we don’t take tips,” Dustin scoffs.
“Then put it in that charity box,” Bucky shrugs and hauls up the case. “Got somewhere else to go?”
You take the bottle and say goodbye to Dustin before you follow.
“Groceries,” you say as you follow him out.
You fish around for your keys. What pocket did you put them in? You stop beside the driver’s side and search for them. Of course, you locked the car.
Frustrated, you set the bottle on the car roof. You look down as you continue to pat your jacket. You finally find them and then you hear it. The subtle friction of the bottle slips down the curve of the roof.
You panic and try to catch it. As you do, you press against the wall that appears behind you. Bucky reaches over your shoulder as he saves the bottle. You get your keys free and teeter between him and the car. He backs up.
“Got it,” he says.
“Uh, thanks,” you hid your discomfort. You weren’t expecting him to be so close.
He easily carries the case under one arm and takes the rum with him around the passengers side. You unlock the doors and he opens the back to put the alcohol in front of the seat. You swing into the driver’s and get yourself situated.
You’re overthinking. He probably didn’t even realise how awkward that was. You put your keys in the ignition as he drops in through the opposite door.
“Real friendly around here,” he remarks as check the rear view.
You reach over to grip the passenger seat as you crane to see behind you. By accident, you grab his shoulder. He grunts and you release him quickly, grabbing the seat instead.
“Sorry,” you say.
“It’s fine,” he shrugs and you slowly reverse, hooking around to put your car straight.
You rescind your hand and turn forward, steering out of the lot and down to the next street. There, the grocery store is a bit more lively with the early risers. You draw up and park again. You get out and he follows suit.
He grabs a cart before you can. You’re not sure if he’s being overly helpful or what. You walk beside him toward the front doors. As you do, Cathy comes out with a paper bag in her arms. Before you can hide, she shrilly calls your name. Great.
“Oh, haven’t seen you lately,” she smiles beneath her fuschia lipstick. “Oh my,” her heavily lined eyes flick to Bucky, “and who is this? Don’t see a lot of new faces in Caribou.”
You glance over at your escort as he stops the cart.
“This is Bucky. He’s visiting Canada.” You say.
“Visiting? Oh, how wonderful,” she walks up the side of the cart, squinting at him. She never wears her glasses. “Ah, look at him. Strapping.” She grabs his square jaw.
“Um, Bucky, this is Cathy.”
“Look at those eyes,” she squeezes him so her acrylics sink into his cheeks. He looks stunned by her latch on him. She is one of a kind, especially around there.
“Uh, nice to meet you,” he speaks stiffly as she stands on her toes to inspect him.
“About time you found yourself a handsome young man,” she lets go and he brings his hand to his cheek.
“Cath, it’s not like that,” you chuckle. “It’s nice seeing you but we gotta grab some stuff.”
“Oh, don’t let me stop you. Oh, the pharmacy got some of those new ones. You know... the ones with the ribbing,” she winks.
You take a moment to catch her meaning. Your lips part but you don’t have much of a response. Bucky shifts beside you.
“Gotta be safe,” she smirks, “anywho, if I was you, I’d be in a hurry too.”
You set your chin and grab the side of the cart. You pull it along and Bucky goes with it. The silence is stifling.
“She was nice,” Bucky says as you enter the store.
“She’s... Cathy. Don’t mind her,” you say as you stop at the shelf of pears.
“Been a while since anyone called me young,” he snorts as he lingers with the cart.
“Well, around here, you might just meet a few of your peers. Or close to,” you mutter, paying overly much attention to the pear. You’re too embarrassed to look anywhere else. As usual, Cathy has to make her little comments. “You mind grabbing some maple syrup? I uh... I’m almost out?”
He doesn’t respond right away. He wheels the cart up in front of you and backs up, “think I can manage that.”
As he turns, you almost feel bad. You don’t want to treat him like an errand boy. You just need some space. You’re still getting used to someone else being around. All the time.
#bucky barnes#dark bucky barnes#dark!bucky barnes#bucky barnes x reader#series#drabble#the house guest#mcu#marvel#captain america#winter soldier#avengers
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basement noise * fem!driver
logan starts to feel a little left out
pairings: logan sargeant x fem!driver, sebastian vettel x fem!driver, oscar piastri x fem!driver
notes: hey surpRISE AND EARLY UPDATE WAHOOOO i'm trying to finish up her 2023 year before i start moving onto her 2024 season <3
(series masterlist) | (📂 the rookie season)
logan stares at the unanswered text message in their group chat, clicking his tongue as he glances at the time at the corner of his phone screen. it’s been an hour since he sent his text message.
he’s not saying his friends are ignoring him, but it is slowly starting to seem that way. his call time to the paddocks isn’t as early as theirs and that’s why they’ve arrived way before him.
he sighs. since the season had begun, it hasn’t been easy to integrate himself into the grid unlike his two other friends. oscar’s gotten along with lando and is doing great with his team. meanwhile she’s done exceptionally well, and even if she wasn’t, max and some of the older drivers seem to have taken quite the liking to her.
which shouldn’t be all that surprising to him. she had already found herself a new group of friends even before the season had started. from the kickstart of the pre-season testing, max had already paraded her around like he was a proud older brother.
sure, he has alex. by default. because they are teammates. but realistically, alex will always find himself preferring george’s company to his. they’re best friends, after all.
logan presses his lips together as the team car slowly comes to a stop right outside the paddocks. he glances at benny, focused on his own phone, texting his wife.
so he just keeps to himself as he alights the car. hopefully, he’s kept busy enough this weekend not to notice the distance that might go unnoticed by his friends, but is very prominent for him.
just as he walks through the gantries into the paddocks, he watches the smaller girl walk past him unknowingly, engaged in serious conversations with marta and susie. she’s turned the other way, so she doesn’t even notice him.
when he approaches the livelier areas of the paddocks, noticing oscar walking around with lando. oscar does notice him, smiling at him politely before he makes a sharp turn into the mclaren garage.
logan just sighs again, navigating his way to the williams garage with a weight in his chest.
“i’ll see you again later before your race! i promise!” she shouts, waving her arms in the air as she leaves susie and marta. she runs through the paddocks, truthfully unaware of where she is heading.
when sebastian had asked her to meet him somewhere, it could be anywhere in the paddocks. it could very easily well be at the aston martin home where fernando is hanging out, or their own.
she feels around in her pockets for her phone, halting in the middle of the crowd. she turns around, ready to chase susie to ask if she’d left her phone in her office by chance. but she can vividly remember where she left it in her driver’s room right before she bolted out, late for a lunch date with some of the drivers from the f1 academy.
she clicks her tongue, picking up her feet to start running again. she hears max calling out for her but she’s late, from what she can tell.
if only she was better at restraining herself from staying extra minutes just to hear the latest paddock gossip over lunch. but she couldn’t help herself as she increasingly got invested, giggling in her mind about how she’s going to tell logan everything in the evening when they leave the paddocks to get ice cream.
she arrives at the aston martin home, chest heaving as she approaches the one person loitering outside the building. “lance!”
the canadian whirls around at the call of his name with wide eyes, shocked that the younger girl is calling for him. yes, he is terrified of her, but that’s a story for another time.
“yes?”
“has my race engineer been kidnapped by your grandpa?” she asks, hands on her hips and slightly hunched over as she tries to catch her breath.
“my,” lance takes a deep breath, “grandpa?”
“fernando. has fernando kidnapped my race engineer? he told me to meet him, but i don’t know where.”
lance presses his lips into a thin line. “have you tried texting him?”
she sighs, shaking her head. “no, i left my phone in my room. i don’t have the time to go and get it.”
“oh!” lance perks up, reaching into his back pocket and offers it to her. “here, you can use my phone.”
she mutters a soft thank you as she takes the phone into her hands, navigating lance’s contact list. she raises an eyebrow and looks at him. “you saved my number as grid princess? really?”
“we all have your number saved as that.”
“i-“ she shakes her head, finding for the number she needs. “not important.”
she presses the phone to her ear as it rings, hoping that sebastian answers his phone. hopefully he’s not as forget as her.
“lance?”
“no.”
“you sound different, lance.”
“seb! it’s me! i left my phone in my room.”
“oh, (y/n)!” there’s a pause. “why are you using lance’s phone?”
“i can’t find you,” she mutters, shaking her head in shame as lance watches her. “tell me where you are or i’ll be even later for our meeting. was it over a cup of coffee or what?”
“coffee. come quick.”
“come on, mate.” logan stares at alex blankly, watching the older driver tug at his hand towards the door of his room. “you’ve got to join us for a snack. george is buying food.”
“i don’t feel like eating,” logan mutters, retracting his arm immediately. he lies on the massage table of his room, moving his hand under his head. “go without me.”
“i can’t!” alex frowns. “your best friend told me to take care of you. i can’t grab food and leave you here by yourself.”
logan shrugs. “if you’re only inviting me because she told you to, i don’t wanna go.”
“what?” alex tilts his head. “no, george asked me to bring you! we’re sneaking out of the paddocks for a bit to get food! come on! the local food here is amazing.”
“i don’t want to go.”
“logan.”
“alex?”
“i’m telling james you’re locking yourself inside your room again. he won’t be happy.”
logan looks at alex without moving his head, the glare shooting daggers at the older driver. alex raises his eyebrows with a small smile, never having seen this emotion in the rookie.
“i don’t care if you tell him.”
“fine, be that way,” alex sighs dejectedly. he doesn’t want to use more names as a bargaining chip, but it seems that he will have to resort to exactly that. “i’ll just tell oscar and (y/n) you’re being like this.”
logan scoffs, dropping his phone by his head. he breathes out exasperatedly and rolls to lie on his back. “as if they’d care.”
alex, already halfway to the door, stops in his tracks and turns around. “mate,” he trails off softly, “what do you mean by that?”
“it’s so obvious,” logan sighs again, turning to face the wall. “she’s always with max or whoever. i’m alone.”
“i’m here with you right now.”
logan furrows his eyebrows. that’s not what he means. alex probably knows that too. “i just wanna be alone right now, alex. i’m sorry.”
“oh, okay. i’ll bring you something back.”
logan turns around quickly, chasing for alex’s presence. “alex, wait.”
alex turns around just as before he is able to close the door. he’s hopeful that logan would join him and george for some food — the rookie often spending time with his two best friends means that he doesn’t get many opportunities to get to know him outside of team content and meetings.
“don’t tell them i said that, okay?” he sighs before looking down to avoid the curious brown eyes. “i don’t want them knowing i feel that way.”
alex hums. sometimes he sees his younger self in the rookie. the rookie’s often introverted demeanour makes it very easy to sympathise with him, especially when he had a rough couple of years in another team all by himself. he knows what it feels like.
perhaps what logan needs is space. hopefully he opens up soon, and then alex can finally put his mind to rest with some reassurance. because it’s not like his performance is helping him out with his confidence. he’s been there, done that.
“okay,” alex nods. “your secret’s safe with me.”
lando hums, looking around the paddocks. his eyes lands on his teammate, who is simply staring off blankly at the grandstand as he chews away on his sandwich.
“what?” oscar asks monotonously, still looking ahead with his eyes half open. he’s sunk into the small seat situated at the edge of their garage with his leg over the other. “i can feel you looking at me, mate. what is it?”
“oh,” lando says softly, chuckling to himself. he sinks into his own seat and turns away to take a bite from his own sandwich. “nothing. i was just wondering where dumb and dumber are.”
he sees oscar perk up with realisation, turning to look at him slowly. his eyebrows are furrowed at the sheer realisation of what’s been missing the entire day. he lets out a soft “ah” before he turns to look at the grandstand again. “i don’t actually know. we’ve been so busy today — i hadn’t even noticed.”
the older driver laughs, nodding along. “yeah, we only get busier from here, mate. i haven’t texted max back still. actually, i don’t even know where my phone is.”
oscar laughs, licking his lips. “neither do i. i barely even got to have a 5 minute phone call with lily this morning. i had to leave so early.”
“just one more interview and we’re free,” lando sighs, shaking his head. truthfully, he’s grown quite tired too. for someone like him, running out of energy to be talking to everyone doesn’t come often. but it feels like the day is finally getting the best of him.
he’s simply dreading the next interview they’ve got. he doesn’t know how many more fake laughs and forced smiles he’s got within himself. he doesn’t want to do small talk anymore. he just wants to head back to the hotel and get some sleep for what friday has to bring them.
“getting ice cream with the powerpuff girls tonight?”
oscar laughs with a simple nod. “of course. she’s not going to let a weekend by where we don’t try some local ice cream.”
“alright, good meeting,” sebastian grins at her, slowly closing his laptop. “so you know what to do this weekend, kid? confident you’ll score some points?”
“of course,” she laughs with a small nod. “i’m ready to tackle the weekend.”
sebastian stands up, holding the laptop against his chest. “good! so, where are you headed to now?”
she smiles. “hopefully off to take a shower and start getting ready for my ice cream date with the boys.”
“ah! exciting,” sebastian grins. “well i’ve got one more meeting. you’ll be okay on your own?” she nods. “okay, well, if you leave before my meeting ends, let me know, alright?”
“of course!” she beams with a grin. she spots a familiar shade of blue across the paddocks, beaming when she spots logan in the crowd of williams personnel. she tries to push past sebastian, who’s now opening the door, and attempts to dart out to stop logan for a quick conversation to confirm their ice cream date that evening. before she can make it to the top of the steps, another familiar face pops up in front of her with a wide smile.
sebastian greets max before quickly excusing himself, leaving the girl with the older driver. “hi?”
“hi!” max greets her with an excited wave. “are you busy? i need your help.”
she opens her mouth, deciding her answer as she peeks over his shoulder. she answers with a soft ‘yeah’ as she watches the crowd of blue walking away and disappearing from her sight. “what is it?”
“we’re going to the uk for a vacation this summer and p’s coming along with us. i wanna plan something — she really wants to meet you.”
logan sighs to himself, leaning up against the railing of the stairs leading up to the andretti racing home. he looks around the paddocks and then glances down at his phone for the time. everybody is late. could it be possible that plans were cancelled without him knowing?
could it be that her and oscar agreed to call raincheck without remembering to let him know? which would them simply confirm his suspicions that he is slowly losing his best friends.
but there’s no other time but tonight to get ice cream together. unless she’s planning to get it with somebody else? he huffs to himself and pushes himself off the railing to start his journey back to his hotel room for a lonely night. that was, until he hears a voice calling out to him.
“oh, logan! are you waiting for her? why don’t you come in and sit down while you wait?” sebastian smiles, letting the door close behind him. he walks down the steps, immediately noticing the sadder aura around the boy.
sure, he knows that logan is typically soft spoken by himself, but he believes that he knows logan well enough now that he is comfortable being himself. “is something wrong? the media picked you apart again today, kid?”
logan looks up and quickly shakes his head. he rubs the back of his neck and hisses softly. “no, it’s not that,” he laughs sheepishly, trying to ignore the heavy weight on his chest. “have my plans been cancelled, seb? did i not know?”
maybe he should try opening up to sebastian? if anyone knows what it’s like falling out with a friend, sebastian is definitely one of those people, right?
he watches sebastian process his words. he immediately regrets opening up to him. “ah, forget it.”
“no, no! i’m glad you’re opening up to me,” sebastian snaps out of his trance and puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. “i’m not judging you. i get it. are you feeling okay?”
logan shrugs with a soft frown. “i don’t know. just a little weird — my text in the group chat from this morning’s still unanswered.”
sebastian stares at him, trying to come up with the words to try and make him feel better. until it hits him. “oh! is that what you’re concerned about?” sebastian laughs, pulling logan into his side for a hug. “she wasn’t ignoring you! she left her phone in her driver’s room and never had the time to go back in to get it. we were riddled with interviews and meetings all day. then max hijacked her early in the evening to plan something with penelope.”
logan looks at him, skeptism written all over his face. “are you serious?”
“i’m serious, kid,” sebastian confirms with a firm nod. “and i ran into oscar and lando earlier. they were super busy too. oscar even told me he can’t wait to finally sit back and relax with you guys at the ice cream parlour.”
as if on cue, oscar pops up from the corner of the racing home with his bag lazily strung over his shoulder. “why are you guys hugging?”
sebastian frowns. “what’s wrong with that?”
oscar shakes his head, blinking rapidly. “nothing, i suppose.” he rubs his eyes and groans. “i’m just a little tired, probably. i can’t wait to get some ice cream.”
logan feels the weight slowly lifting from his chest. logan slumps his shoulders slightly with a grin. he tries to confirm sebastian’s allegations. “i haven’t seen you all day, mate. busy day?”
“busiest i’ve had in a while,” oscar yawns, covering his mouth. “i haven’t even gotten to talk to lily at all today.”
the door swings open with a loud shriek, their body suddenly knocked back by a body throwing itself against them. he looks down in shock at the smaller girl who has her arms thrown around his and oscar’s bodies. “hey!”
she hops back excitedly, hair pulled back into a new hairstyle. “ice cream?” she nods excitedly at logan and then she turns to oscar, repeating the question.
oscar throws his head back with a laugh. he wraps an arm around her shoulder, and smiles. “of course. i’ve been looking forward to ice cream with you guys all day.”
sebastian finally steps away from him with a small smile and a thumbs-up. he returns the gesture, his warm smile finally putting the older man at ease. it would be a shame to watch a friendship as genuine and great as theirs fall apart. as much as he can, he would like to make sure that their authenticity never ever leaves them.
“come on! i wanna go and walk around town after we get ice cream,” she shrieks, reaching out to pull logan along with her. she glances at sebastian. “would you like to join us, seb?”
sebastian laughs, politely declining her offers. “i just want to take a nap after the day we’ve had.”
she nods, wrapping an arm around logan’s torso as they start to walk to the exit of the paddocks. “which one of you’s driving tonight? cause it’s definitely not me.”
“i’ll drive,” logan nods willingly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a soft squeeze. “i heard you left your phone in your room all day. how’d you survive being apart from your phone for that long?”
she throws her head back with a groan. “barely! i can’t believe i went the whole day without chatting with you guys!”
oscar scoffs. “clingy.”
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#logan sargeant x reader#oscar piastri x reader#sebastian vettel x reader#fem!driver#female driver#f1 fem!driver#f1 female driver#vettel reincarnate#disneyprincemuke#disneyprincemuke imagine#disneyprincemuke imagines#disneyprincemuke f1#disneyprincemuke vr#formula 1 x reader#f1 x reader#f1 grid x reader
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Hearts in Conflict
Lance Stroll x Mob!Reader
Warnings: Arranged marriage, Mob stuff (violence, murder, blood and guns) angst with a happy end
Summary: Your arranged marriage was something you never wanted, but much like with anything in life, you will deal with it one way or another.
A/N: People like to say how Lance's father is like a Mobster/Gangster, well I turned the tables.
You were supposed to take over your father's empire, not marry a rich boy.
You were supposed to become the next boss, not the wife of a spoiled brat.
And yet, your father decided to marry you to a Stroll.
Lance Stroll, is a Canadian and Belgian racing driver competing under the Canadian flag in Formula One. He has driven for Aston Martin since 2021.
According to Wikipedia at least.
But in your eyes, your father's latest attempt to have you marry someone.
You made 3 boys run already, you don't know why he insisted on this stupid idea.
"You will marry Stroll and it is final."
But you also didn't want to play the part of the spoiled princess who refused to get married.
You let out a long sigh as you entered the restaurant.
You tried your best to put a smile on as you sat down at the table, Lance wasn't here just yet.
But he arrived only two minutes later.
"Hi," he said and you smiled.
"Hello, I'm Y/N Y/L/N."
"Lance Stroll, please call me Lance."
He was respectful, a gentleman. But even so, you didn't want a husband, you didn't need one.
"How do you feel about what our fathers arranged?" you asked him after long conversations. You wanted to get to the point.
"I'm not going to lie, I didn't like it. I thought you would be a brat who just wanted my family's money. But now that we spoke, I realize that is not the case, and I assume from your question that you didn't want to marry me either."
"I wanted my father's company, not yours. But he is relentless about me needing a husband."
"I heard you drove away 3 potential candidates."
"Christopher Crooke, a playboy wannabe with a cocaine addiction. Stephen Fringo, a Spanish asshole who thinks women belong in the kitchen and just last month, Alfred Smith, an American asshole with three baby mamas and millions in credit card debt. I wouldn't really say they had potential."
"And what about me? What do you think about me? Be honest and I shall do the same."
"You go first," you said hoping he would do it so you would know how hard to go in on him.
"Alright, if the Lady wishes. I think you are stunning, that is the first thing I noticed, you are beautiful and smart. Very smart. I'm trying to figure out what the problem is with you, you are strong, independent and clever. There has to be a but. I'm looking for that. So, you go then, what do you think of me?"
"My first impression was almost the same as yours. Handsome, but the moustache does nothing for you. I thought you would be a spoiled brat and to a certain degree, I was correct. But I'm the same, I'm riding on my father's name just as much. I know you don't do drugs, you wouldn't be able to be an F1 driver. No baby mamas or recent girlfriends. Your lisp is annoying and cute and the same time. For me, your but is that you are way too normal. Rich, yes, but way too normal. For you, my but will be when you realize what my family business is because it is not cars and corporations." you smiled as you stood up. "I'm looking forward to our next meeting. I have to leave now as I have another meeting to attend. Good day." and with that, you left.
Leaving Lance sitting at the table, stunned.
He liked you.
And he had to call his father.
---
"Mobsters?! Are you kidding me, Dad? You want me to marry someone that kills people?"
"They don't kill people. They just blackmail them."
"That's even worse!"
"Her family is rich and influential. Just the mention of their name brings fear and respect in people. Word about your marriage with her will spread like fire and then our name will become one with theirs. This is a chance you won't turn down, Lance." Lance looked at his father in disbelief.
---
"So, how was your meeting with Lance?" your father asked as your order arrived. You waited until the waiters were gone.
"He is my type, Dad, you know that. He has a certain boyish charm."
"So? Will you marry him? I mean you did check his background already. He is clean. No baby mamas, drug addictions or prior arrests.”
“He is a brat. Rich. And handsome.”
“You must like him. You called him handsome twice already.” Unfortunately, your father did have a point.
You hated it when he had a point.
—-
Your next meeting with Lance was set for Saturday. You told your assistant to set a date, but you were informed that Lance will have a qualifying race. So, you decided to fly to Australia and meet him, well truly, it would be a surprise for him.
His father knew about and encouraged you to meet with Lance, so he gave you an all-access VIP badge.
You even got yourself a guide who showed you around.
It was all very interesting, you got to see the Ferrari paddock closer and even caught a glimpse of Max Verstappen himself.
And you got to ask many many many questions.
But soon, you found yourself in an air-conditioned room with a cold drink in your hand as the qualifying began.
You were lucky enough to be in a good spot where you could see the start line.
You wouldn’t say you were a fan, but you did enjoy it.
Even if Lance didn’t qualify high on the board.
You enjoyed the vibes. It was all so fast, everyone in there.
But you also noticed the smug behaviour of many people.
Influencers were invited to advertise the event and F1 as a whole.
You did not like that part.
Pretending to be interested only to receive free tickets? You paid for your own even if you got it as a present.
You smiled when you saw Lance enter the room you were in.
"Why are you here?"
"Harsh. Your father invited me." technically you weren't lying per say.
But it was also not the truth. "And I did want to see you."
"I know about your family business."
"Why did you say it like that?"
"Because you are a murderer."
"Harsh, again but also false. I have never killed anyone."
"Then you ordered someone to kill them, don't play with me. I can't believe my father set me up for this!"
"Well, believe it or not, we will be married by the end of the summer break."
"Over my dead body." his voice was cold, it excited you. You liked it possibly way too much.
There was a fire in him.
"You can either continue to deny the facts or accept them. Believe me Lance, I will not leave just because you wish it. The decision is out of our hands."
"My father will hear about this."
"Alright Malfoy, do as you please." You put your sunglasses back on and continued to sip your drink.
---
You went wherever Lance went, following him almost like a shadow, all part of his father's plan.
He told you to just keep trying and be stubborn because his son is a very stubborn man as well.
No matter what Lance threw at you, you simply smiled and continued.
You didn't give up but you did start to notice changes in your future husband.
Lance slowly but surely warmed up to you.
You even had dinner one time. And it was very nice.
It started to feel like Lance was slowly accepting the fact that you two were to marry. And so every effort you made didn't meet with a brick wall.
You asked him on dates and he did the same. He showed you his hobbies.
One time, he asked you to go biking with him.
It wasn't really your thing, but you did end up going.
He fell. And he fell hard.
And it was all your fault.
You were being playful and it caused him to lose balance. You didn't push him or run into him.
But it was your fault still.
You sat in the corridor of the hospital waiting for his doctor to get you when your phone rang.
It was his father.
"Sir?" you tried to hide it, but it was obvious from your voice that you have been crying.
"Y/N, what happened how is he?"
"It was my fault. He fell during a bike ride, he hurt his hands... The doctor is in there with him, I don't know what's going on." you took a deep breath. "I'm so scared."
"Darling, it will be fine, I'm going there right now, please call me as soon as you hear something."
"I will." you ended the call just as the doctor came to get you.
"How is he?" you asked, desperate for any answers.
"The scans showed I had a fracture and displacement in my right wrist, a fracture in my left wrist, a partial fracture in my left hand and another fracture in the big toe on my right foot. He will have to undergo surgery."
"Fuck." you said and took a deep breath. "Can I see him?" the doctor only nodded and left you alone.
"Lance?" it was terrible seeing him in hospital. Your heart broke into a million tiny pieces.
"Why are you crying?"
"This is all my fault. I was so stupid." you admitted as more tears fell. "I ruined your life, your career. I will speak with my father, arranged marriage or not."
"Slow down. This wasn't your fault. I ran into that curb and fell. I should have been looking where I was going. You didn't ruin anything, Y/N. And secondly, why would you talk to your father?"
"I feel so bad. I made you fall." he rolled his eyes as you continued to cry.
"Please, don't cry. You were laughing so beautifully only a couple of hours ago."
"How can I laugh at this, Lance?"
"Come on now, I will be fine! The doctor said it will all be good, I will have the surgery tomorrow. Please calm down, everything will be fine."
"Your father is on his way, he will be soon. I'll... I'll get myself something to drink." you said and he nodded.
Hoping you would be back soon, but your pain and guilt took you over. Instead, you wrote a small letter and asked a nurse to give it to him in about three hours.
And you left.
You walked out of that hospital with the guilt of ruining a life.
---
What's better than a pity party?
Being alone, with an ice cream and Bridgett Jones playing on the TV.
Running away was not your style. But what more could you do?
You left for Greece, got on one of your father's many yacht and cried yourself to sleep every night.
They tried to call you, look for you but couldn't find you.
You only picked up the phone for your father.
"Lance was here today. His surgery went well but he is looking for you. He says he won't give up."
"How he used to hate me. He should be happy the wedding is off."
"I really don't think the boy will give up, Darling."
"Okay, can you set up a date for me?"
"What's your plan?"
"Show him the real me."
"Poor boy." your father said before he hung up the phone.
---
Throughout your entire life, you looked up to your father.
You never knew your mother but it was okay. Your father was enough.
Even as a young girl, he taught you stuff no one should know let alone a 5 year old. He always had a plan and he loved you.
But no 5 year old should have a panic room attached to their bedroom in case her father's enemies found him.
But it was your life.
When the idea of marriage came to play your father had a lot of options for you.
He allowed you to choose.
Lance Stroll caught your eye. He was so different, yet similar to you.
Many people didn't like him, thinking he was only an F1 driver because of his father. Something you could relate to. People often said how you are leaning on your father too much.
Not exactly the words they choose.
He was handsome and the world of professional drivers excited you.
And so, you went on a date with him.
That stupid date now turned your life upside down.
Falling in love was the goal. But after you ruined his life, you knew better than to keep going.
So, you set him free. No arranged marriage.
And yet, he kept looking for you.
Much like now, as he entered the restaurant, looking everywhere for you and he finally found you.
He wanted to run to you but one of your bodyguards stopped him and made him sit before they left you alone.
"Why are we here? I was hoping you would come home." he said as a waiter placed your drinks in front of you.
"Lance, I know you didn't want this marriage. So, I made it... dissapear."I know this is all because you feel guilty about my injury but it wasn't your fault and I'm fully healed now. You didn't ruin my career."
"But I could have. I could have and it was just such a simple moment, Lance. Such a tiny mistake on my part and-"
"I'm not a child! I'm sick of you, my father and the entire world pretending that I am one! I fell because of my own stupidity. I was watching you when I should have been watching where I was going. All because I fell in love with you and your smile just... It just made me so happy. Because in that moment, on that small country road, I wasn't a rich kid who drives in F1 and you weren't the daughter of a powerful Mobster. We were simply a man and a woman in love." you felt a tear run down your cheek as he let out a long sigh. "How dare you spend all those months smiling at me and then during the first problem you run away?"
His words hurt, but only because you knew he was right.
"One night when I was only fourteen, I thought it would be fun to sneak out with my friends. There was a boy I liked, Jake, he was older as well. He was nothing like you, Lance. He was... aggressive. I didn't see it then, but during that night, he tried to drug me and kill me. Apparently, my father was the reason his father died, so he decided to kill me to hurt my father. Everyone I ever knew only cared about me for my money. I know you understand that. I never knew love and it fucking scares me. Of course, I ran Lance. The first time I have ever felt love and I ruin it? Scares me so much. I rather lose you than have you hate me like others do."
"We are in the same boat, you just didn't notice me yet. We do have a lot to talk about but please, do not push me away. I'm only here to beg you to not leave me, we don't need marriage in the mix. Just please... give us a chance. I love you."
"I love you too. Fuck I do..."
You looked into his eyes and all of the plans you had for the night went out the window.
Your pity party was long over.
You wanted this man.
And you always got what you wanted.
#lance stroll x y/n#lance stroll#f1 lance stroll#f1#f1 fanfic#f1 imagines#f1 x reader#formula 1#f1 imagine#formula one#lance stroll imagines#lance stroll x reader#lance stroll imagine#lance stroll x you#f1 lance stroll x reader#f1 lance stroll x you#f1 one shot#f1 fanfiction#f1 fic#lance stroll AU#arranged marriage
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Canadian Newspaper Globe And Mail: Conservative Leader wants harsher jail sentences for repeat offender auto thieves.
Nora Loreto, self-described Socialist: Stealing cars is a victimless crime!
Loreto: Also, most people in our jails are innocent!
Loreto: As long as you use the extremely technical definition of “jail” that means “a place where people are usually held before trial and are therefore legally innocent”, which is not how it is generally used.
Loreto: I say this while ignoring how car theft means there is a victim, by definition.
Me:
Some idiot also claimed the real issue was car manufacturers making a ‘defective product’, and the “logical step” should be the government going after them for obvious collusion with insurance companies.
The intellectual titan agreed.
Even though about five seconds thought would go “wait, wouldn’t having an insecure car reduce sales? And don’t insurance companies try to avoid paying out money? And isn’t car insurance mandatory anyway?”
She has a substack post about it, and it’s, uh, special. As in Ed. (archive)
>For me, I understand a victim to be someone whose life is irrevocably impacted, negatively, by forces they cannot control.
>You’re not a victim if things can be made well through consumption.
If someone spills my drink in a bar, I'm still a victim even if they or I buy me a new drink. It doesn't un-spill the drink.
Even if I get a new car, that’s a lot of trouble to go through.
>You’re a victim if you’ve experienced something that means that you’ll never again be the person you were before.
Because no one's ever been permanently traumatized by someone using force to take their stuff. Even leaving aside the times where the thief assaulted and seriously injured the car owner.
>My immediate, half-serious reaction, that jailing people for a victimless crime is ridiculous, caught a lot of heat.
Ah, yes, the classic "I wasn't serious (except when I was)" dodge.
>Thousands of men told me how much they love their cars, how their cars hold them at night and make love to them. My emails and direct messages filled up with lots of “if you steal my car I will kill you”s and “where do you live so I can steal your cars”es. The people were mad that I could assert such a thing.
Along with the classic "let's make this a gender issue, for some reason" and "talking about the harassment so I look more like a victim while ignoring the actual criticism".
>It’s the formulation that this object is so premordial that anything that may befall a car, whether a jacking or an overpacked highway, is a personal attack on the car’s owner. It’s silly.
And naturally, a red just starts making up entirely new arguments for and assumptions about the critics from thin air instead of addressing the actual criticism.
A carjacking is a violent theft of an occupied car.
Which means the operator must a) be removed, by force and/or threat of force, or b) become a hostage of the 'jacker. Sometimes both.
It's amazing that this intellectual titan can even type while she's staring so hard at her navel. Or...another body part. From the inside.
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OK...I'm asking....
Yay!
So this happened in what I consider the worst job I ever had. And that is saying something because I very much worked retail in a mall. I had just graduated uni, I couldn't afford toronto anymore, and I needed a full-time job to make ends meet now that the stability of university was gone. So I went to edmonton because I had one family member I could stay with until I got on my feet. And I was not in a position to turn away a job that paid.
So I took a door to door sales position. For telus. I can hear the canadians in the room wincing so to everyone else: telus is one of the three whole mega megacorporations that control the ENTIRE canadian telecommunications network. And all three of those companies are buddy buddy and have us all by the balls. That's why canadian phone plans are the most expensive in the world. Not in the developed world: in the WORLD.
The meth lab incident happened on my 3rd whole day on my own. I was in St. Albert, which is this suburb of edmonton that is like if a kale smoothie and that guy who won't shut up about bikhram yoga had a baby they abandoned in an HOA meeting. Which is what makes this that much more unhinged: it was in the most cookie cutter suburbia part of the EMR.
So I was doing my knocks in my blue Jay's hat and my telus branded polo shirt with my clipboard and I knock on my next door. I'm greeted by a middle aged woman who proceeds to dump on me that she's divorcing her husband of 30 years and moving to New Brunswick. I'm like okay cool I just wanna sell you cable packages, good luck with that?
I write that off and continue along the cul de sac until I knock on this other lady's door. And when I say talkative I mean a real chatty Kathy. She practically grabs me by the collar and plops me down on her deck chairs, shoves a coffee in my hand, and says "HEY TELUS GUY DID YOU KNOCK ON METH GUYS DOOR???" And points to the house of the lady who just told me she was getting a divorce
At this point I have forgotten about my commission. I have forgotten about my shitty supervisor and how every part of this job sucks and how I wanna go back to Toronto. I have thrown away my clipboard I have started sipping her coffee that could very well be spiked with something and I go "you have to tell me about the meth guy"
That house I knocked on? The weird oversharing lady who was getting a divorce? Her husband was running a meth lab out of the basement THEIR ENTIRE MARRIAGE and she ONLY FOUND OUT THEN?? He called it his man cave and said that she wasn't allowed in?? And then one day she went down out of curiosity and it was a METH LAB??? All the bonuses he said he got at work were meth money.
I'm still enamored by how this happened. Did it not smell? Like for those who don't know edmonton there is a HUGE meth problem here. Like across the political aisle we all agree that something has to happen about all the meth, the details get foggy and that's where people argue, but needless to say I have smelled and been offered meth before just by virtue of living downtown. That shit REEKS. Like you know meth smell because it somehow smells like the word "meth." You will know what you are smelling even when you've never smelled it before. And it lingers. It hangs. It gets into walls. I know when I've taken a train car before because the smell of that guy who hotboxed it with meth smoke last week will still kinda be there. There's no way that house didn't smell like ass down to the foundation.
And the "you arent allowed in my man cave" excuse... im enamored by both the sexism towards his OWN WIFE and the way she just... went along with it for 30 years? Never set foot down there? The sexism and the just believing it?
I kept trying to steer the conversation back to the meth lab and this lady I was on the porch of kept actively trying to buy internet deals from me. Like she was the only person I ever pitched who was TRYING to get my bundles. I ended up just handing her my list of products and told her to check off what she wanted and was like "more meth lab?" And she went right to "yknow i think if I was your age I would've been a boy now. We didn't really have those terms when I was a kid" I DID NOT BRING THAT UP MA'AM I DONT HAVE TIME FOR YOUR GENDER CRISIS TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE METH LAB
That job was so shit that that was the only one I ever quit with no back up plan and did not regret for a second. I then went to the mall and handed out CVs and got my retail job by the end of the week from doing that.
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1973 Dodge Monaco
On this date, August 7th, in 1980, "The Blues Brothers" was released.
"It's got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas."
The film used 13 different cars bought at auction from the California Highway Patrol to depict the retired 1974 Mount Prospect, Illinois Dodge Monaco patrol car that would affectionately become known as The Bluesmobile. The vehicles were outfitted by the studio to do particular driving chores; some were customized for speed and others for jumps, depending on the scene. For the large car chases, filmmakers purchased 60 police cars at $400 each, and most were destroyed at the completion of the filming. More than 40 stunt drivers were hired, and the crew kept a 24-hour body shop to repair cars.
According to Dan Aykroyd, the horn-shaped loudspeaker atop the Bluesmobile was actually a duplicate of a massive Cold War-era air raid siren (CLM Model 92729DP) installed in the schoolyard at Our Lady of Annunciation where Aykroyd attended elementary school while growing up in Ottawa, Canada. The siren was manufactured by a Canadian company called CLM Industries, and Aykroyd specifically requested the same CLM model be used in the movie to portray the loudspeaker the characters affixed to the top of the Bluesmobile and used as a public address system.
Director John Landis has claimed that the portion of the final chase sequence beneath the elevated train tracks, which briefly showed a reading of 118 miles per hour on the car's speedometer, was actually filmed at that speed, a testament to the Monaco's police car heritage. He has also stated that he re-shot some of the scenes with pedestrians on the sidewalks, so viewers could see that the film had not been sped up to create the effect of speed.
For the scene when the Blues Brothers finally arrive at the Richard J. Daley Center, a mechanic took several months to rig the car to fall apart.
At the time of its release, "The Blues Brothers" held the world record for the most cars destroyed in one film until it was surpassed by a single car in its 1998 sequel. (Wikipedia)
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Patriots in the Netherlands are walking the streets dropping flyers at the homes of citizens in hopes of awakening the people. According to Rem64 it is having great success. He sent me the flyer and I translated it to English so everyone can read it. 👇
Message to the population The information below is distributed worldwide by hundreds of scientific, legal and political organizations to inform humanity. Evidence for the stated facts can be found in the detailed evidence reports on StopWorldControl.com
The World Economic Forum wants to shape your life The world's richest come together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, is known for statements such as: We determine the future and We infiltrate governments. The WEF trains Young Global Leaders who are positioned in governments around the world. French President Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and German Chancellor Merkel are Young Global Leaders of the WEF. The Netherlands and Belgium also work closely with the WEF and serve their agenda. Part of this agenda is to replace privacy with transparency. They want every detail of your life to be known soon: what you do, who you meet with, what you eat, what you buy... The WEF announces that new technologies will record everyone's thoughts, feelings and dreams in the cloud , where governments have access to this intimate data. To combat climate change, the WEF wants to abolish all private property. You will have to rent everything: houses, cars, work tools, etc. The WEF calls for blocking sunlight by massively releasing chemicals into the air. The WEF encourages the normalization of pedophilia, while the UN and WHO instruct all schools to teach sexual techniques to small children in kindergarten, so that they start having sex as young as possible, with people of any age or gender. As absurd as these plans sound, they are promoted by the WEF, the UN, the EU, the WHO and companies such as. Google and Facebook. They are part of the sustainability goals of Agenda 2030, which are supported by governments worldwide. All evidence of this can be found on StopWorldControl.com
The World Health Organization wants to rule the world The World Health Organization is being legally restructured as an effective global dictatorship, able to impose binding mandates on all countries whenever they declare a pandemic. However, the WHO is a private organization that operates outside any democratic process. One of the WHO's main backers is Bill Gates, who has no medical training whatsoever, yet is promoted as the medical authority around the world. As the world's largest vaccine dealer, his health advice is to inject everyone all the time, making him billions of dollars. WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus also has no medical training. Yet Gates and Tedros dictate to all the millions of medical experts worldwide what they can and cannot do. Article 18 of the proposed Pandemic Treaty allows the WHO to shut down any source of information that does not align with what they want all of humanity to believe. This means censoring millions of experts in every field. Only what the WHO and Bill Gates say should be heard. Do you want undemocratic organizations to become dictators over your life and over all humanity? Do you want all objective scientific and medical information to be hidden so that you only hear what a single private institution wants you to believe? Do you want to be forced to receive dangerous injections for the rest of your life, without being informed about the risks? If you do not agree with this course of action, we invite you to inform yourself carefully at StopWorldControl.com
The news is determined by investors Many people do not know that all major news agencies are owned by a small group of investors, who determine what can be said in the news. In addition, billionaires such as Bill Gates and George Soros donate hundreds of millions of euros to news organizations around the world, to determine what they broadcast Udo Ulfkotte, an editor at one of the largest newspapers in the world, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which is published in 148 countries well-known I have been a journalist for 25 years and I have been trained to lie, betray and never tell the public the truth, journalists) are being bribed worldwide by the CIA, billionaires and governments to manipulate the public The world's best-known political commentator, Tucker Carlson, she The news you consume is a lie of the most insidious kind CNN technical director Charlie Chester said: There is no such thing as objective news. All newsreaders are told what to say. He admitted that CNN deliberately creates fear to manipulate their viewers, whether it is about a pandemic or climate change. Texts from Matt Hancock, British Health Secretary, read: We are making everyone scared? The World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the European Union, which are owned by the same financial entities that control the news, are calling on governments worldwide to censor any information that does not follow their narrative. Any investigation that exposes their criminal operations should be labeled conspiracy theory or disinformation.
Vital information is hidden Thousands of scientists, doctors and medical organizations are sounding the alarm as millions of people have died and hundreds of millions of people have been disabled after being injected with the experimental vaccines for COVID-19. Data from the US CDC shows that in the US alone, one and a half million people suffered from side effects including death, stroke, heart failure, brain disorders, convulsions, life-threatening allergic reactions, autoimmune diseases, arthritis, miscarriage, infertility, rapid onset muscle weakness, deafness, blindness, etc. Worldwide there is an explosion of turbo cancer and sudden death. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care's famous Lazarus report revealed that overall, only 19% of vaccine side effects are reported. According to this study, the number of adverse events and deaths must be multiplied by a factor of 100 to understand the true prevalence of serious vaccine injuries. COVID-19 has a 99.7% survival rate, comparable to the seasonal flu, and there are many effective medications, such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, budesonide, chlorine dioxide and many more. These have hardly any side effects, are completely safe and available everywhere in the world. This means that no vaccine is needed. However, the WHO instructed governments worldwide to ban these drugs for the treatment of corona and to censor any doctor who spoke about it, that vaccines are the only answer.
What's going on in the world? Why are governments controlled by private institutions like the WEF and WHO? Why is vital information hidden? These are not conspiracy theories as claimed, but facts that can be verified on the international website StopWorldControl.com. We work with world leaders in the fields of law, science, medical care, journalism and politics. Our network consists of more than 100 organizations that jointly inform humanity. They include Nobel laureates, presidents and presidential candidates, former generals of the US army, organizations of police officers and investigators, as well as top officials of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the European Union. We encourage every right-thinking person to inform themselves carefully Visit the website StopWorldControl.com Pass this flyer on to others.
Stand Strong! Stand United! Be Prepared!
✨ 🛡️ 🇳🇱 WWG1WGA 🇺🇸 ⚔️ ✨
#pay attention#educate yourselves#educate yourself#knowledge is power#reeducate yourself#reeducate yourselves#think for yourselves#think about it#think for yourself#do your homework#do your own research#do some research#ask yourself questions#question everything#netherlands
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Northanger abbey - I think we need to see jealous sebastian 👀👀 he would be so hot I swear...
JEALOUS BOY. ❨ sebastian vettel x reader ❩
✩⡱ warnings: allusions to sex
days in the paddock were long. you hated thinking it, because you knew how much it meant to sebastian for you to be there, but when you’d done it time and time again — it got a little repetitive. especially when sebastian was busy, off doing practice pls or inspecting the car. times when there was nothing you could do but wait.
it was completely innocent. you were stuck in the aston martin garage waiting for sebastian to finish his practice. lance had just so happened to be there too, having finished his practice lap a little while before. he’d spotted you, sitting all alone, and decided to keep you company. you appreciated it, really, the boy was always sweet to you.
“how’s the new job?” he asked you, passing you a cup of coffee he’d brought from hospitality. you forgot you had mentioned that a few weeks ago, a new job that allowed you to work online and travel with sebastian.
“it’s been really good!” you chirp, eyes lighting up. it was the first time that day someone had asked you a question that was actually about you. “they’re super flexible with travel and stuff.”
“that’s good. i’m sure you’ll smash it,” lance insists, sitting next to you. “i mean, who wouldn’t love to have you?”
you blush a little, a small smile pulling at your lips. you had to admit, lance was incredibly charming — an expert flirt. and while you were utterly dedicated to sebastian, it didn’t mean you couldn’t enjoy some flattery.
sebastian’s practice had ended not long ago, and he headed straight back to the garage to find you where he left you. he didn’t expect to find his teammate with you, though, making you giggle and blush like a schoolgirl. sebastian felt jealousy rise in his throat.
he was always quite possessive of you. not to a worrying extent, just that he liked people to know that you were his. and he, yours. but you were younger than him and beautiful — he would be lying if he said he didn’t notice how people looked at you.
lance was closer in age to you than sebastian was. maybe that’s why the green envy that filled him was worse than usual. he knew you loved him, and he was sure you would never be unfaithful, but he despised seeing another man make you look so… happy.
“seb, hey,” lance spots him first, smiling over to him. you turn and smile widely at him. much wider than you’d smiled when lance was speaking to you.
“how’d it go?” you ask, waiting for him to come over. he doesn’t though, only grunting something incoherent. he passes by you both, storming straight to his driver’s room. lance looks at you, confused, and you know just what’s wrong. rolling your eyes, you pat the canadian on the shoulder and leave him there.
“seb?” you call, sticking your head around the door. he’s sat at the little table, arms crossed and sulking like a child. “seb, c’mon.”
you shut the door behind you, hands finding his shoulders. he shrugs you off but you persist, moving until you’re sat on his lap, legs straddling his waist. he can’t ignore you then, hands subconsciously going to your waist.
“he was just keeping me company,” you tell him, brushing back his wild blonde locks. sebastian looks up at you then, eyes dark and heavy. his hands grip your waist a little tighter, pulling you close.
“you’re mine,” he reminds you, softly kissing your bottom lip, teasing.
“i know,” you say, head dizzy already. “yours.”
“mhm,” the german man hums, tucking his finger under your chin and guiding your gaze straight to his. “can he make you feel like i do?”
your head shakes quickly, grasping at his drivers suit. “no. no one can.”
“good girl,” he quietly praises, fingers slipping under your shirt. “now, let him hear who you belong to.”
#🍾 ﹐ becca hits 1k!#🌙 ﹐ drabbles.#formula 1#formula 1 x reader#formula 1 imagine#sebastian vettel imagine#sebastian vettel#sebastian vettel drabble#sebastian vettel blurb#sebastian vettel x reader
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It is 240 pm in the afternoon and the sun is beneath the horizon and my marbles are on the loose as a result so let me tell you about the shitshow going down on the Dalton highway at this very moment.
The Dalton highway is a gorgeous strip of frozen dirt through the dead center of nowhere with no services for about 400 miles or so. The road runs up to the oil fields and generally doesn't see non commercial traffic because when I say there's nothing up there I mean that nothing has changed much since the last ice age. It is also, and this is important, December at the far extreme reaches of the northern hemisphere.
so. At mile six, first major hill of the way, there is a Canadian company with 3 oversized loads who have never run the road before. They were very confident. The road is closed because between the 3 of them and all the pilot trucks there is a single set of unbroken chains, and while I am sure they will preserve and dig themselves out of their shitshow, there is an unpleasant lesson being learned.
That said, the over confident Canadians are not the dumbest people on the road right now.
There is a group of tourists who have elected to drive up into the arms of the frozen north in the depths of winter. This is fine, its a bucket list thing, if you want to experience the true impress of the arctic from the comfort of a vehicle, running up the Dalton is the way to do it.
However.
The thing about electric vehicles is that, well, they're really not suited to extremely cold environments. The heater eats the battery and there's no combustion to generate heat in the first place. Batteries freeze. There's not even a gas station for 400 miles and it's further to a charging station. Its approximately the same issue Mark Watney had in The Martian except there is no sun and no option for solar power.
And there are some supremely ambitious tourists currently driving a little caravan of electric vehicles to the north slope. With the beginning of the road closed thanks to the overconfident Canadians, they won't be getting help for a while.
Supposedly they have a generator with them. Now, personally, for me, that's too many confounding factors in between me and the goal of not dying. The electricity powering the cars came from fossil fuels anyway, but it seems to me that carrying fuel with you to run the generator to power the car has an unnecessary step.
AFAIK there isnt any weather beyond the usual rolling in so these probably won't be fatal lessons to learn, just cold and uncomfortable ones. But also, people die like this all the time and there isn’t as if its anyone's job to stop people from committing to suicidally stupid road trips, there is no consequence that could be inflicted by a traffic cop that is worse than what will happen if you do fuck up doing the thing he told you not to.
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;; meant for loving Dedicating this one to @hockeyboysimagines
Summary: Desperate to relax on the final long weekend before he has to return to St Louis, Vince and his best friend, Miles head out to the cabin for the weekend. Waiting in their tranquility, is Miles' baby sister, Samantha who keeps Vince on the verge of chaos as he has desperations of her own: to love her virginity before she goes off to university. Kinks & TW: male pov, original character, age-gap (5 years), situation ship, brother's best friend, virginity trope, teasing/banter, breast play (mild), missionary, protected sex, (i probably missed something here so please be sure to yell at me if I did) ABOUT THE OC: Face Claim: Sydney Sweeny Name: Samantha aka “Sam” aka “Sammy” aka "Princess". Is the little sister of Vince's friend Miles. Sam is 18 and is set to go off to college come fall while Vince is set to report to training camp. Word Count: 14k+
Listen to their playlist while you read.
Taglist: @starshine-hockey-girl @mp0625 @misunderstoodwerewolf @callsign-denmark @puckmaidens @xciciix @cixrosie
There were two things people knew Vince Dunn for and they were hockey and his love to party in the off-season. What they didn’t know, however, was that Vince loved to escape the chaos. He always had, ever since he was a kid, growing up back in Lindsay. There was a certain peace in it all. From the way the tall, green coniferous trees towered high into the gray and stormy skies, to the way the rain hit the windshield with its soft hollow drum, it all drew him away from the city. The cabin was one of his favorite places to escape before the hockey season, especially with the right company.
Vince could have invited anyone to go with him, a teammate or the girl he was casually fucking and they would have come. But he only invited one person, his best friend, Miles. The pair had grown up playing hockey together - sharing toothless grins back when you gifted them to the tooth fairy instead of going to the dentist and hoping they could splint it back into place. And while their careers had taken them down separate paths, they had always made the summer theirs. Together, at the cabin their families used to vacation at when they were kids, Vince knew he could relax and rejuvenate - and maybe pick up a hot chick at the beach - before the season began.
But there would be no trips to the beach today. Not with how the rain was pouring down, leaving the cold wet rubber of his tires to slide over the winding Canadian highways that would narrow into roads of gravel and dirt. The slippery conditions left Vince gripping his steering wheel tight, but he wasn’t tense. He welcomed the calm that came with the rain, even if it wasn’t too kind to the car.
He could always buy another one.
The drive to the cabin was long, and he spent the entire time in silence. Vince listened to the rain as it fell, growing harder, then softer and harder again. Only for it to be drowned out by the rocks as his tire kicked them up and left them to scrape the paint on his car as he rolled to a stop in the driveway. The windshield wipers made their awful screech against the wet glass as he undid his seatbelt and leaned across his center console to look at the car parked beside him. The water against the glass distorted its body, but he could tell it was some kind of sedan in a color he didn’t like. And he knew it didn’t belong to Miles. He didn’t know whose it was, but he was going to find out real quick.
Reaching into the backseat, he fisted the handles of his duffle bag. He lifted it with ease - he only packed enough for the weekend - and lifted it up over his head to keep his hair from the rain. But it didn’t stop the icy rain from soaking into his t-shirt and sending chills down the length of his spine. It left him dancing through the front door with zero consideration for knocking. This was like a second home to him. He didn’t need anyone’s permission, and he was curious.
Miles didn’t mention that anyone else was coming when they had made the plans. And the last time Vince checked, Miles wasn’t seeing anyone.
Tossing his duffel bag on the floor, he looked over the living room. No sign of life.
“Mom?” He called out, knowing he wouldn’t hear his own mother calling back to him. Miles’ mother had been just as much a mother to him as his own, so it all slipped off his tongue with ease.
“Dad?” He called out again as he kicked off one wet sneaker and then the other - still nothing.
There was nothing in the kitchen either, as he walked on through. Vince even opened the fridge. Nothing. Whoever was there didn’t plan to stay long.
His every footstep was quiet as he moved through the main floor and up to the spiral staircase that led up to the second story. There, he looked up and down the hall and didn’t notice a thing out of place. That was until he took a single step down and his bright eyes caught the familiar glint of the tarnished metal door handle in the sunlight. Peering up over the top step, he noticed every single door on the second floor was open, except for one.
Samantha’s door.
Little Sammy Fraser. Though she probably wasn’t so little anymore. He hadn’t seen her since St. Louis drafted him, and that was five years in the past now. She had been only thirteen then. And through Miles, she was the baby sister Vince had never wanted but would torment all the same. And after so long, it was due time he caused a little trouble again.
Vince’s lips pulled back in a too-perfect troublemaker’s grin as he cracked his knuckles and took the quick steps onto the second-floor landing. It only took a single stride from the top of the stairs to reach for her door, his large hand gripping the cold handle and pushing it open without a single thought in his brain about why he shouldn’t. And then he saw the very reason he should have knocked.
Samantha sat on the bed, once propped up against the pillows, she sat completely upright now. Her expression, mortified. Vince had caught her in nothing but a tight pair of denim shorts and a bright pink lace bra. The color alone would have been enough to make him stare. Her heavy cleavage - that he didn’t quite remember her having before - was the fixation of his stare. Even as she tried to cover herself with her arms, Vince’s gaze didn’t break. That was until he realized she wasn’t alone in the room.
Beside the bed, half dressed though, Vince was sure that wasn’t always the case, was some lanky teenager. The guy couldn’t have been older than nineteen, his hair a mess, and his shirt lost somewhere in the room. It only took a second for Vince to conclude what was happening there, especially when he watched the panic on the kid’s face melt into relief when he realized that they had not been interrupted by her parents or Miles.
“Who’s this?” the young man, if Vince would even call him that, questioned as he looked up from where he fastened his belt around his middle.
It was a valid question. Vince wasn’t her brother, and he sure as hell wasn’t her parents catching them alone in her room. If it had been, the kid would have been as good as dead. Though, with Vince, he still might be.
“I could be asking you the same thing, dipshit,” Vince shouted back as he stepped into the room with no hesitation or regard for the fact that Samantha still sat nearly petrified on her bed. He didn’t dare look at her, not wanting to remind himself just what state of undress she was in. That was until he heard her broken words pierce the air. It drew his gaze up to her as he stepped towards the bed and fisted the young man’s t-shirt in his hand. Then, he threw it at him.
“Vince don’t-” Samantha had said.
Vince was quick to answer. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
But his firm words felt soft against his tongue. It felt swollen in his mouth at the sight of her sitting there on the bed, her blonde hair a mess that framed her features and hung over her bare shoulders. Vince held his breath, his eyes burning in their socket as he desperately fought to keep his eyes fixated on her face. On how her wide eyes were glassy with the threat of crying, and how her full bottom lips seemed to quiver. But he was but a man. A man with eyes that could clearly see all that tempted him.
Samantha knelt on the bed, her shirt still lost. She was still bare from the waist up, except for the bright pink bra that he could only see glimpses of from behind her arms as she crossed them over her chest. It was her attempt at modesty, but it only emphasized her already eye-catching cleavage. The mere weight of her breast alone left the fabric looking flimsy as Vince’s bright eyes flickered over each swell.
Vince had to choke out his next words. “Put a goddamn shirt on.”
In the time that Vince was staring, Sam’s guest had pulled on his shirt, but he had yet to make any attempt to leave. Vince’s skin went hot, his jaw going slack as his head leaned back on his shoulders. His shoulder rose and fell in a heavy sigh, and then as Sam groaned out his name in protest, Vince lurched at him. His hand fisted around the guy's shirt collar, his knuckles white as he tugged on the fabric and pulled the lanky trespasser towards the bedroom door.
Leaving Sam and her harsh words behind him, Vince moved back down the path he had come. Down the winding staircase, and through the kitchen before he came to the front door. The young man stumbled behind him. He tripped on the stairs and then his own feet, but Vince didn’t slow down. Vince would have dragged him all the way to the front door if he had to, and he only stopped when he came to the door. It was a brief pause, just long enough time to step into his sneakers before his free hand reached for the door handle and he stepped outside.
The rain filled the gravel driveway with murky puddles that soaked into white socks as Vince shoved the uninvited guest out towards his car. He hadn’t given him the time to put on his own shoes, and for a moment Vince considered making him leave without shoes. It would have been a cruel thing, but only a small punishment for trying and failing to get into Samantha’s pants. But then, he would have to make up an explanation for the random, too-small pair of shoes to Miles. And he wasn’t going to rat on Sam. The embarrassment of him catching her would be punishment enough for her.
Reaching back inside, Vince hooked his fingers around the shoes and tossed them out the door and into the driveway. It was a shame really, he had good taste, but it was satisfying all the same as he shouted, “If I see you around her again, I’ll kick your ass, kid.”
He scrambled for his shoes, but the rain had already soaked through his socks, and for a moment Vince met his eyes. They stood in the rain. Vince’s confident stare met the teenager’s terrified as they were both soaked by the downpour and then the man ran. He took off through a puddle with complete disregard for how wet he became and moved straight for the sedan, which Vince only saw now was some kind of Subaru. As he expected, the kid took off down the driveway like some kind of idiot and disappeared down the road before Samantha could reach the doorway behind him.
“What the fuck? Vince!” was how she greeted him.
Turning in place, Vince smiled, even if he knew he shouldn’t have. If she hadn’t been upset already, his smile was sure to do it as Vince turned in place to face her.
Sam stood in the doorway, fully dressed now, which brought on a sigh of relief - even as she stepped out into the rain with him and placed both hands on his chest. She shoved him firmly, her soft features twisted into a scowl as the cold rain hit her. But she didn’t seem to care. She stood there, away from the cover of the awning, and let the rain soak her. Her straight blond hair began to kink and curl as it dampened, and her white linen blouse became damn near see-through as the rain sent it to cling to her curves.
Again, Vince struggled not to stare.
“I’m doing you a favour.”
“A favour? You just stranded me here!”
One of her arms reached out wide, gesturing to the now empty spot in the driveway, but Vince’s eyes fixated between her lips and her collarbone and glanced so subtly down to her breasts.
“He was your ride, huh?”
���Ah yeah!” Her attitude only left him grinning further, and any guilt he might have gotten hearing he had gotten her stranded at the cabin with him and Miles for the weekend was gone.
Vince took a step forward, his body nearly colliding with hers as he towered over her. He looked down, smirking as his dark, wet curls hung down into his eyes. “I’m your ride now.”
He watched as her hardened expression wavered. Sam was trying too hard to be tough. It was almost laughable. “You can’t just walk in here and-”
“And what?” He interjected, challenging Sam. It sent her face flushed with colour, but the rosiness of her cheeks paled with his next words. “You’re lucky it wasn’t your brother that found you.”
“Fuck,” her bright blue eyes shot open wide, “he’s on his way?”
“Should be here soon,” Vince spoke, his words kept their cockiness as one hand reached up to push back his wet curls, “he would have kicked that guy's ass, and you know it, Sammy.”
She could only nod as they stood there, so wet that the rain no longer phased them. Sam was stubborn and always had been. She was not ready to concede to him. And Vince? He liked to stir up trouble, even with his best friend’s sister.
“What were you thinking coming here with a guy like that?”
“Guy like that?” Sam scoffed in return, offended.
The pout that took her features brought Vince to laughter. She couldn’t be serious, right? It was clear just by the car he drove and the shoes he wore, what kind of guy he was. Someone who was superficial, materialistic even, and put the thrill of his ride before the safety of his passenger. Vince didn’t like it, and Sam, well, she didn’t like what Vince was implying. That was clear in how her arms came up to cross over her chest. He knew it was something she did to show him just how unimpressed she was with him, but all Vince could focus on was her breasts. He could see them through her shirt. From the bright pink lace to each swell and the cleavage in between.
“Believe me, I know the type,” Vince told her, his voice firm as he looked down at her.
Her cheeks had flushed a brilliant shade of pink as embarrassment consumed her, and silence hung between them. Vince didn’t need her to say it to know that he was right, and she didn’t want to tell him. His smile only grew as they stood there, getting drenched by the rain.
“That’s why you had him drive you all the way out here, didn’t you?” Vince had a bit of a laugh in his words. “So the guy could get in your pants without your parents getting in the way. I’d say I’m sorry, princess, but as I said, I did you a favour. The guy couldn’t find the clit if you drew him a map.”
Those should have been the words that ended the conversation. That brought Samantha to the silence of her shame and embarrassment and left Vince with a cocky smile as he took his stride towards the front door. Towards dryness and warmth.
But Samantha was quick to stop him in his tracks with a soft scoff. “As if you could do any better.”
It’s a weak, unexpected jab that left Vince laughing in the door frame. “Damn right, I could.”
Vince would never admit it, not to Sam and not to anyone, but he had taken more women to bed than he would ever want his mother to find out about. He couldn’t define what a serious relationship was because any attempt at a relationship he had didn’t last more than a series of late-night fucks. But that left him well-practiced and confident in his abilities in the bedroom.
He had no doubt in his mind that he could leave Samantha satisfied, but the thought alone should have been enough to leave him choking. He had never thought about her like that before - well, before now.
There would be no ridding his mind of the vision of her back in her bed with her body so freely accessible to his gaze. And now, as they took in the rain so completely soaked that her clothes clung to every curve of her body.
It should have left him feeling dirty. Samantha was Miles’ baby sister. His best friend’s baby sister. But she wanted so desperately to be fucked. Vince could hear it in her strained words as she challenged him, and in her stare as she held his, her wide blue eyes glassy and hopeless. She was practically asking her to fuck him with so few words, and he was so close to caving.
Vince cussed under his breath as he reached out to her, a single hand finding her back and pressing against it firmly. “Get in the house,” he told her and let the gentle guidance of his touch usher her back inside the cabin and out of the rain.
Together they stood in the narrow entryway, so close he could feel her warmth cut through the cold air as he reached into his back pocket for his phone. While he dialled, he held her gaze, silently telling her that their conversation wasn’t over. Then he brought his phone up to his ear, and her face fell. “Hey buddy, I just arrived. How far out are you?”
He was talking to her brother.
Sam inched closer to him, her expression soft as she tried to make out what her brother was saying, but Vince only let her hear what he wanted her to hear.
“You haven’t left yet?” His brow raised up as he looked at Samantha, her panic only growing as he spoke. “Nah, it’s all good. You’ll never guess who’s here…”
Vince has to look away as he trails off. It’s the only way to keep himself from smiling. His eyes fixated on the window, watching as the raindrops fell over the cold glass as he answered, “Yeah, your sister.”
The mere mention of her left Sam lurching for his arm. Both of her hands found one of his forearms, clutching to him with her desperation and drawing his gaze from the rain and back to her face. She didn’t have to say a single word. Her eyes did all the pleading for her. Still wide, still glassy, but begging. Begging him not to tell Miles what he had caught her doing up in her room. And he wouldn’t, Vince liked the leverage.
“One of her friends dropped her off,” he paused, listening to Miles as he listed off some of her friends' names as if it mattered who left her there, “yeah, that’s the one. She’ll keep me out of trouble until you get here.”
Or they would get into some trouble of their own. That fate still was yet to be determined.
His thumb stroked over the screen of his phone, ending the call and sending it to darkness before he placed it face down on a nearby console table. Vince thought the simple action would get him off the hook, that Sam would back off and let her guard down, relieved that he didn’t let her little secret slip, but she remained, her hands on his forearm as they stood in the entryway.
“He’s going to be a few hours,” Vince told her.
And her brow raised up with her sweet and simple, “So?”
“So,” he hesitated for a moment, his tongue dragging over his lower lip. His body rocked with a careful sigh, unsure if he should entertain the dangerous temptations in his mind, but he did it anyway. “So, you want to lose your virginity as desperately as I think you do?”
Her hands fell from him, her jaw slacked, “I’m not-”
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Vince interrupted her firmly, his cold eyes hardening, “Couldn’t get it done on prom night, so you sneak out here the summer before college just to get it out of the way? I got that little fantasy, right?”
Samantha’s face faded free of any expression, shock consuming her. And Vince can only smile. Fuck, he loved being right.
But Sam didn’t answer him, so he pressured her further. “So you don’t go in all prudish and innocent?”
“Vince,” she spoke his name so slowly, so meekly, it gave him goosebumps.
“Did you even bring condoms?”
She paled.
And he laughed.
Of course, she hadn’t come prepared.
With a careful tug, Vince was out of her grasp and moving towards his bag that he had discarded on the floor. He had only packed enough for the long weekend, but what he searched for, he kept buried at the bottom. It was half empty, crushed by the weight of his belongings, a box of condoms. Vince always carried some with him, let it be in his car, in his bag or in his pocket. He was always prepared. Unlike Sam, who watched him from her place in the entryway as she chewed at her bottom lip.
At the sight of them, her eyes lit up like he had some sort of prize in his hands. Any worry she had seemed to fade with her offering, a thank you on the tip of her tongue as she reached out for the box, only for Vince to tug it just out of her reach with a smile of his own.
“I’ll give them to you, on one condition,” he told her, only for her brow to raise in a silent question. He answered, “I’m the one who fucks you this weekend. Not that idiot kid, not some lifeguard, me.”
Vince didn’t know what to expect when he had made the proposition, but he hadn’t been expecting for her to take a step towards him, a cocky little smile on her own lips. He was struggling to accept that she may not be the timid teenager he remembered. Samantha was very much all grown up now, and she knew exactly what he wanted from her now.
“And what makes you think I’d want it to be you?” Sam’s question was slow as her large blue eyes looked up at him through thick lashes.
And Vince laughed.
It was a low rumbling as he smirked and cocked his head to the side slowly. “You wanted it to be him?” His arm raised lazily, gesturing to the door that he had forced her little friend through.
They both fell into silence, their smiles small and their stares unbroken until she backed off and moved for the spiral staircase to begin her ascent.
“I’ll take that as a no?” His words are a question, not a statement that had her freezing halfway up the staircase to look back at him as he remained in the entryway.
Her smile remained small, a cocky troublemaker’s grin that told Vince that he just might have gotten himself in over his head with her and her words only confirmed that for him. “It’s an; I’m thinking about it.”
It rained all day, and into the night, trapping Vince inside the cabin, awaiting an answer to the proposition that hung too heavily in the air. The longer he had to wait, the more conflicted he felt - the more stupid he felt. He should have never put Sam in this position. He should have never, so bluntly, asked to fuck her. Yet, she was considering it. Considering him. She was interested, maybe only a little or greatly, and it was a weight that hung over him as he lounged in the living room and waited for the rain to pass. For an answer. For Miles to arrive.
Miles arrived before the rain could stop, and before he could receive an answer from Sam. She had remained up in her room, hidden away until her brother arrived. Vince almost wished she had stayed there. Seeing her in her little shorts that were made more for sleeping than covering anything up and her sweatshirt left him near choking on the fact that their window to do anything had closed.
Vince wasn’t all that mad about that fact. It would save him the headache of having to deal with the consequences later. But that didn’t mean the idea of it all didn’t linger. Samantha’s exposed body was all he could think about when she was in the room, even if she had covered herself up. The worst part was what she did with the knowledge of him wanting to fuck her. When she could have told her brother about the pass he had made on her, she withheld it from him. Much like Vince, it gave her leverage.
If he told Miles about the guy he had caught her with, she would tell him that Vince was all too willing to take on the responsibility of taking her virginity himself. So they both remained tight-lipped and casual, but Sam teased him.
Every playful glance she gave him, every moment her hands had been so casually placed on him, stewed in the back of his mind and his needs were desperately close to boiling over. The thoughts left him tossing and turning in bed at night. The rain was gone, and the hollow sound of the drops hitting the window couldn’t drive each forbidden thought from him. They couldn’t drown away the thought of what it might feel like to touch the smooth skin of her waist, or what she might sound like when he made her cum. They were thoughts that ran rampant, leaving his body shimmering with sweat and his cock raging so hard it ached.
Vince needed a distraction, and he found it out on the back porch where the silver moonlight glistened off the lake water in the distance and the cold autumn air that threatened the last few days of summer left him shivering. Any other night, he would have retreated inside, but he needed the chill. It raised goosebumps over the flesh of his arms and his chest as he stood, leaning against the porch railing, in nothing but a pair of sweatpants. And while it was cold and uncomfortable, it calmed him.
The crest of the water against the shore freed his mind, and the ache slowly faded. It all lulled Vince into thinking that he just might get to go back up to his room. That he might just be able to get some sleep.
That was until he heard the open and shut of the flimsy screen door behind him. A heavy sigh shook his shoulders, and for a moment he thought he might just see his breath in the air as he let it go. Then he let himself look back, hoping to find Miles, but the sight of Samantha was what greeted him. He almost cursed and knew he should have gone back inside at that moment and left her alone. But his eyes fixated on the hem of her oversized sweater and how it crept up the skin of her thigh with each stride. It left him convinced she was wearing nothing else and forced him to look back out over the lawn and down to the lake water that he suddenly felt like he was drowning in.
“Sneaking out?” Vince asked, his brow raised up even though he wasn’t looking up at Sam for her to see it.
“I just wanted to get some air,” Sam answered him simply, and while he didn’t look at her as she spoke, he felt her warmth as she leaned up against the railing beside him, “can’t sleep.”
“Yeah, me either,” Vince sighed and reached a hand up to knot in his curls.
“Got a lot on your mind?” Her sweet question left a smile on Vince’s lips.
She didn’t even know the half of it, and he knew better than to indulge her. It would only get them both into trouble.
“Something like that,” Vince sighed, his head turning to give her a quick glance.
He regretted it in an instant. Samantha was petite, standing there at his side. He towered over her by seven inches still - maybe more. And while her hooded sweatshirt consumed much of her, there was no stopping his eyes from dragging down the angles of her legs and back up again The simple movement of resting her chin on her arms raised the sweater up inches on her body, the hem resting on the curve of her ass and confirmed that she was wearing nothing else but a pretty pair of panties.
Vince cleared his throat.
“You really should put some clothes on if you’re going to be prancing around here.”
“Prancing?” Sam asked him, her words sweet as she cocked her head to the side. She seemed so innocent, so naïve, but she knew exactly what she was doing.
Toying with Vince.
Tempting him.
“I’ve seen that little hop in your step since our little conversation earlier-”
“Oh, have you?” Sam cut in, “Maybe I’ve always had that little hop in my step. You’ve just never cared enough to notice.”
“Of course, I care,” Vince’s eyes rolled as he stepped in closer to her, sighing under the feeling of her warmth as he was so close to touching her body as he had wanted to all night, “that’s why I never let myself notice.”
“So what changed?” Sam asked him slowly, leaning in and looking up.
She looked so pretty there in the moonlight. The pale silver light illuminated all of her features, and for a moment Vince found himself distracted, staring. Samantha’s skin had been kissed by summer, giving her this warmth that Vince wanted to lean into. Her eyes were a brilliant shade of blue, so bright beneath stray blond locks that the breeze tossed into her face. And her lips, so pink, pouted and kissable, he was one mere temptation away from taking her face in both hands and drawing her in for a self-indulgent kiss that would answer so many of the questions that plagued her.
But his silence didn’t lure her in. It left her fumbling with the sleeves of her sweater as she sought any semblance of clarification. “I mean, I know why you wouldn’t have before, but I’m still my brother’s baby sister…”
That would never change.
Samantha would always be Miles’ baby sister. 5 years younger than both of them. The kid they were stuck babysitting for years - but she wasn’t a kid anymore. And he couldn’t offer her a more complicated answer, even though he wished he could. This wasn’t some love story of a lifetime in the making. This wasn’t some kind of connection he had felt for years, just waiting for the right moment to act on it.
No, this was primal. Selfish.
When Vince had found her in her bedroom, so vulnerable and leaving so little to the imagination, she showed him almost all of what she could offer him. That enough was enough to catch his attention, to plant that nagging thought of wanting to take her to bed. Then he learned she was still untouched. A virgin. And it only made her more desirable.
All he could think about was her tits, and now her ass as it peeked out from what little coverage her cotton panties and her sweatshirt concealed from him. It leaves his mouth dry, his tongue licking over his lips to moisten them.
Then, he doesn’t answer his question and instead asks one of his own.
“Aren’t you cold?”
Samantha narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re dodging my question.”
He nodded. She wasn’t wrong. But his mind was clouded, focused on her body, not her words, and he didn’t think he could string together an answer she deserved, never mind an answer she would want to hear.
“I respect your brother, but-”
“But?” Sam interjected, and she inched so close to him he had to shut his eyes to keep himself from temptation.
A low groan vibrated through him, his hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose, knowing all too well he might regret what he was about to say. “Your first time should be something special.”
Her scoff was just short of a laugh and left Dunn’s stomach heavy. He was right. He regretted saying that.
“Your ego is, wow-” He could hear the smile in her voice as he let his eyes open to take in the darkness. Vince watched her as she stepped away from him and the railing and spun around as if her laughter was sweet music. When her feet stilled, Samantha leaned up against the screen door. It was then she spoke again, a smile in her words, “What makes you so special, Vince?”
“I know what I’m doing-”
She barely let him answer before she laughed again. Mocking him.
“Do you? On whose word, your own?”
Vince’s jaw set as he turned to face her fully, his eyes dragging over her features that were alight with amusement. She was playing a little game with him, and he was letting her.
“You want testimonials?”
“I don’t need to hear shit from the bunnies you fuck.”
There was a bit of harshness in her words, and Vince couldn’t tell if it was judgment or jealousy because she wasn’t wrong. Vince couldn’t even count the women he fucked since being drafted in 2015. Hell, even before that, he had developed a reputation for sleeping around. From the OHL to the AHL and the 3 seasons in the NHL that included a Stanley Cup Win - Vince had many options when it came to which women he took to bed. He had one in every city he played in and knew that the moment he sent that all too typical “you up?” text, they would be catching a cab to his hotel room. Because he was just that good in bed.
“Sounds like you’re jealous.” His words were a baseless accusation, but they challenged her in a way that left her confidence wavering for a moment before she found her words again.
“Jealous? No,” she hummed, her chin tilted up so she could meet his eyes. Samantha didn’t shy away from him, and Vince both loved and hated that. Part of him wanted her to be meek, to both accept the imminent collapse that would be her in his bed or go to the opposite extreme and reject him so harshly that he never contemplated the thought of being between her thighs again. Yet, she continued to toy with him just as he toyed with her.
“But I know you. I’ve known you for a long time. You’re hot, don’t get me wrong. But you’re also filthy rich. An athlete. I’d fake it too if that meant I might get a piece of that life. Fuck, some might just do it for the bragging right alone,” there was a humour in her voice, one that dropped into a low hum as her lips curled with her next words, “but I’d bet you couldn’t find the clit if I drew you a map.”
It was Vince who laughed as he took his lazy strides away from the porch railing. Bare feet stepped over wet wood, the chill coursing up the length of his now heated body. He felt on the verge of sweating as he came to stand toe to toe with Samantha, towering over her and trapping her with her back against the door. As if he could risk getting any closer to her, he took in a steady inhale as he braced himself against the screen door, giving her nowhere to run.
He stared down at her, and her up at him as they stood in silence. The only sound around them was the water of the lake in the distance crashing against the rocks on the shore and the trickle of water down the eavestrough as the remnants of the rain slowly faded into the night. Then, so faintly, yet so loudly in his ears, he heard Samantha take a quivering breath.
He was so close to her, and her to him, that he could feel the night’s chill on her body, and he was sure that she could feel every breath he took on her cheeks as he stared down at her.
“Let me warm you up a bit?”
Full pink lips parted to speak, but she found no words. His mere proximity had rendered her to silence, and he hadn’t even touched her yet. Samantha could only nod as she looked up at him, her hands fisting the too-long sleeves of her sweatshirt.
If he had wanted to be cruel, he would have pulled back and went up to bed. To leave her standing there until she realized just how close he was to kissing her, to touching her. He would have loved to tease her, leaving her craving his kiss on her lips when she was just a breath away from having it. But not even Vince could deny himself of just a simple pleasure when he had gone through the entirety of his day at the cabin thinking about it.
Vince leaned in nice and slow, almost waiting for Samantha to speak a single word. To tell him to stop before he could even taste her, but that moment never came. Instead, he watched as her eyes fluttered shut and her lips parted in a subtle breath as she welcomed the caution of his kiss. Her lips were smooth against his own, so soft and plush that Vince’s hand which had lain flat against the door gripped into a fist. Samantha returned his kiss, easing his cautions, and what little restraint he had was quickly dwindling.
His tongue ventured out through parted lips, coaxing her lips into parting and giving himself a taste of her. Vince’s tongue stroked against her own, and he heard the softest of moans as she let it slip into his mouth. She tasted sweet, like strawberries, and was only beginning to ease the hunger that consumed him.
It was a hunger that had him throwing all caution away now that he had gotten a taste of her. His body pressed firm into her while one hand remained up above her against the door. His other hand explored. It found the curve of her waist, craving so desperately to travel upwards to grope at her breast, but Vince’s touch travelled down. Down along the curve of her waist and over the swell of her lip before stroking over the skin of her exposed thigh and settling between her legs.
Samantha quivered as her breath hitched. Vince’s fingers had stroked over the thin cotton of her panties and dipped down just low enough to rest just over her clit. Then his hand stilled, and his kiss halted. Vince just stood there, his fingers a ghost of his touch over her clit without giving her the satisfaction of pressing into it.
Vince just wanted her to know that he knew exactly where it was.
Drawing back slowly, Vince smirked down at Samantha, who looked to be on the verge of collapsing if it wasn’t for the support of the screen door against her back.
“You should go back up to bed before we do something stupid,” Vince tells her slowly, and she still can only nod.
She took a moment to find her composure there against the door before she fixed her sweater and pushed off of it. She didn’t have to go far, taking only a mere step before she turned around and pulled it open to let herself inside. But he wasn’t following her, and it left her lingering in the doorway as she spoke. “You’re not coming?”
“I’m going to need a minute,” Vince admitted, stepping back to lean against the porch. The moonlight caught him just right and cast the shadow of his own erection against his thigh. He didn’t hide it. He wanted her to look. To see the effect she had on him, and what he can offer her in return.
And she noticed. It was clear in how red her cheeks became, and how quick she was to look away when he caught her admiring the outline of his cock. Samantha’s hair fell down into her face in a golden curtain that hid her bashful smile as she retreated through the door with nothing more than a simple, “goodnight”.
It shut hollowly behind her, leaving Vince to stand on his own. He welcomed the breeze, and he welcomed the quiet, but calm did not come as easily. Vince has to fight off every corrupt thought, the feeling of her skin that lingered on his fingertips and the taste of her on his tongue. The mere essence of her remained with him even after the night’s cold shocked Vince back into a calm, and as he returned inside. Samantha was a lingering thought as he moved through the main level, up the spiral staircase, and when he stopped just outside her door.
His eyes dragged up and down the door frame, fixating on the tarnished handle as he stepped a little closer, his hand outstretched, only for it to ball into a fist before he could take it in his hold. He shouldn’t. He couldn’t. And he sighed as he took a step back and retreated into his room for a restless night of sleep.
Come morning, Vince did what he should have done since he caught Samantha in her room. He kept his distance. After a restless night, he woke up with the sun. It was barely cresting over the horizon when he had pulled on his sneakers and went for a run through the familiar trails that wound through the trees that surrounded the cabin. When he returned, Sam and Miles were both making breakfast. And while his stomach growled with hunger, he made his excuses and disappeared into the bathroom for a quick, cold shower. It was only when the kitchen was clear; that he stood at the counter and ate breakfast alone. Strawberries, eggs, and toast. The strawberries were all that remained on his plate when he was done, knowing he could not last a day where the taste of them lingered on his tongue.
Then Vince spent his day away from the cabin, out on the water. Unlike the day before when the rain left it feeling more like autumn than the last long weekend of summer, the sun was out in full force before noon. He enjoyed every moment of its warm embrace as he whipped around the lake on the back of a jet ski.
Out on the lake, it was just him and Miles. The perfect distraction from the temptations that waited for him back at the cabin. But it didn’t keep his mind from wandering, wondering. When the warmth of the sun met the chill of the water and didn’t shock him, Vince thought about Samantha. About what happened the night before, and what she might be doing. He hadn’t seen her since he had given her the cold shoulder at breakfast, but it didn’t stop him from hoping that she was staying out of trouble.
Vince got his answer when he pulled up at the dock behind Miles just after noon. Samantha was down by the edge of the water, her body glistening with water as she climbed out from a swim. Even from a distance, he could see how it glimmered like glitter as it travelled down her curves as she made no effort to dry off. She had pulled her hair up in a claw lip, giving him a better view of her body than she had unintentionally given him the day before. And her blue and white gingham bikini was too tiny, leaving very little to the imagination. She might as well have been standing in front of him naked.
Vince had to bite his tongue as he threw his life jacket down on the dock. He wanted to desperately to tell her to go inside, to put some clothes on, but he couldn’t give any suggestion that his view of her had changed. Vince needed to be unbothered, even if the mere sight of her made his skin crawl in the best of ways. Especially as Miles led the way back up to the cabin.
With his eyes fixated on the ground, Vince followed Miles’ path with no guidance beyond watching his ankles. It was the only way he could keep himself from staring at Samantha as they walked up the dock - but the moment Miles called out to his sister, Vince’s eyes strayed from his hollow steps on the dock and found their way back to Samantha.
She had settled back in a lounge chair at the edge of the water, her petite body sprawled out in a way that almost looked staged. Like she was waiting for someone to take her picture. Sam wanted him to look at her. And in her hands, she held a book. Not that Vince cared to notice it as his eyes dragged up the length of her legs. It was her brother who made him aware of it in the cradle of her hold.
“Good book?” Miles’ words were simple as he approached his sister, Vince following in his shadow.
“Very. I’m almost done,” Samantha held up her book with one hand, and let the other fall on her sunglasses to push them back up into her hair, “just started today.”
“You’ve been out there that long?” Miles asked, and Vince almost groaned. He just wanted to get back in the house, but he wasn’t about to push past Miles to do it.
It would beg too many questions if he didn’t loiter. If he didn’t wait for the two siblings to finish whatever mundane conversation they were having.
“Yeah,” her answer was slow as she looked past her book, and to her brother and for a moment Vince was sure her eyes flickered to him. Just to make sure he was looking. And he was. So shamefully, he was.
“Did you put on sunscreen?” Miles' question left both Vince and Samantha groaning, and he could only hope that Miles didn’t notice.
“Of course,” Sam sat up, almost offended by the accusation, and her breast seemed to bounce at the motion. Testing the flimsy hold of her bikini and catching the stare of his eyes as they settled.
“Recently?”
“You sound just like mom,” Sam tossed back at Miles and set her book down on the chair beside her and she reached for her sunscreen.
It was the end of her conversation with her brother, sending him up the path back up to the house. And Vince moved after him, but Samantha wasn’t done with him yet.
“Vince, hey,” she called out to him, stilling his steps and drawing his gaze back to her as she sat in her chair, “can you help me get my back?”
Sam wore a devilish smile on her lips as she held out the sunscreen to him, wiggling it silently as if her body alone wasn’t enough to entice him.
“Sammy,” Vince sighed, his jaw slack as his eyes rolled.
She shouldn’t be asking him to do these things, but she knew that.
And he should have said no and gone back up to the house with Miles, but he couldn’t. She knew that too.
“Please,” she pouted her bottom lip out at him, and it had him backtracking.
The smile Sam gave him was one of triumph as he took the sunscreen from her hand and sat down on the chair next to her. He kept his eyes fixated on the bottle and the lotion as he squeezed it out into the palm of his hand. It was all he could do to keep himself from staring, but he regretted it the moment he looked up.
While he had been distracting himself, Samantha had reached back with both hands and unknotted the back of her strapless bikini. Vince had looked up just in time to watch as the wet bathing suit fell away and he panicked.
With one hand full of sunscreen, he dropped the bottle that he held in the other and reached out to her. It was a reflex that fried his every thought process. One moment, he was telling himself he needed to stop the fabric from falling away from her body. He needed to stop Samantha from exposing her breasts. And the next, he froze, mere inches from her body at the realization that if he stopped that fabric from falling, he would have a hand full of her breast.
His hand flexed as he flinched back, his eyes narrowing as the fabric fell, but her arms came up to cradle her breast in her hold. He wanted to curse at her, to shout for being so reckless, but he didn’t want to draw in any unnecessary attention.
Vince could only sigh.
“Jesus, Sammy. What are you doing?”
Her smile was unwavering as she sat there facing him so confidently with her smile. Not even the risk of her own breast spilling over the hold of her arms had her shying away from him as she innocently answered, “What? I don’t want to get tan lines!”
And he almost believed her. Almost.
If it weren’t for the testing twinkle in her eyes, he would have thought it was an innocent thing. But paired with her little smirk, Vince knew she was teasing him.
He watched as she turned in place so that her back was to him. A heavy breath caught in his chest when he thought she might have to reach a hand up to hold her hair away from her back before his eyes flicked up to the clip that held her hair in place. The clip alone helped put him a little at ease, even if his body was rigid as he reached out to spread the lotion over the flesh of her back. His hand moved in gentle strokes as his eyes looked up at the cabin to ensure her brother had gone inside before he let his eyes return to her.
Before he could see it, Vince could feel Sam’s reaction to his touch. She was melting beneath his fingers, her shoulders falling forward and her head lulling back on her shoulders. Vince watched as the tension of her muscles disappeared and he smirked as she leaned back into the caress of his hands.
“I think you’re just making up excuses for me to touch you,” his words were a low growl as he leaned in to mutter them in her ear. There was a long moment of silence that fell between them, and he waited for her to deny it, but she didn’t. “You like how my hands feel on your body?”
His words hit her in a breath, and she refused to answer him with words. But her body was all he needed to know about the effect he was having on her. He noticed how her toes flex in anticipation, and how her hips angled her pelvis down. Vince couldn’t see what exactly Sam had angled herself into, but he was sure she was one touch away from grinding against the lounge chair.
“My offer still stands,” Vince told her as his hands settled on the curve of her waist and gripped her flesh carefully. It’s a touch that leaves her glancing over her shoulder at him, her face-framing strands falling into her eyes as she bites at her lower lip.
There was no more wonder. No more contemplation. She wanted him and Vince could only wish that he could take her right then and there, but it was too risky. Too stupid.
“Tonight?” she offered in a quiet yelp as Vince guided her hips in a careful roll that sent her cunt grinding against the lounge chair.
“No, we can’t do it here, not with your brother around,” Vince sighed, leaning forward to place a careful, reassuring kiss on her shoulder, “I have an idea, but you’re going to have to follow my lead. Okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded, “okay.”
With her answer, Vince left her there, out on the lawn in the embrace of the sun, and didn’t see her again until dinner.
The three of them sat around the small dining table, the sound of forks scraping against glassware filling the silence between mouthfuls and casual conversation. It was with them, all together, that Vince could put his attempt of a plan into motion.
“Hey, man,” Vince nodded to Miles across the table casually, “can I take your truck into town in the morning? Early. I just want to grab a few things, and I don’t think my car will handle the back roads.”
His eyes glanced over at Sam as he spoke. This is it, princess, he thought as she watched her straighten up in her seat, her fingers toying with the drawstring on her sweatshirt hood.
“Yeah, go for it,” was the answer Vince expected, and the one that Miles gave to him.
“Thanks man, I-”
“Vince,” Sam cut in, and Vince had to try not to smile. “Do you mind if I tag along? I, ah, I need a few things.” The way she emphasized the word, things didn’t leave room for Vince or Miles to question it.
All Vince needed to do was accept, and he did it with a look of annoyance to hide the satisfaction that had him melting back into his seat. “Yeah, that’s fine. Just be up on time or I’m leaving without you-”
On the cold morning, the truck’s windows were fogged, and the cab left chilled even as the motor ran. Vince’s stiff, tired fingers toyed with the dials of the air conditioning that was left on. He was quick to turn it off, replacing the cool air with a gust of warmth that left him leaning back in the driver’s seat. Beside him, resting on the bench seat, was a pile of heavy blankets and on top of them was the box of condoms. He couldn’t hide the crooked smile that consumed him at the sight of the tattered cardboard as his head leaned back against the headrest. He had waited all weekend to get to use them. His original intention was to pick up some random, desperate woman from the beach, but his plans quickly changed because of Samantha. And while it left a heavy feeling in his gut, his cock was already half-hard just waiting for her.
Watching through a patch in the window that he had wiped clear of the fog with his fist, Vince waited. For how long, he didn’t really know, but it was long enough that doubt crept in. His hot breath mixed with the cold air, and would fog up the window once and then again as he watched the front door. There was no sign of life. No light. No movement. No Samantha.
Eyes dropped to the bright, blue-green glow of the digital clock. It was still early. Earlier than he told her, but even he got nervous when the stakes were high. The minutes ticked by and Vince began making excuses as to why he didn’t make it into town after all for when Samantha didn’t join him - but then the front door opened and a wave of relief hit him.
Samantha left the house as if her brother didn’t know that the two of them had plans to run into town. Her every moment was slow, deliberate and careful, and she had the hood of her zip-up sweatshirt pulled up over her head as if she needed to conceal who she was. It left Vince chuckling as she climbed into the seat next to him, her blonde hair framing her face and the bright blue of her eyes as she looked at him.
“What?” she asked him slowly, a weakness in her voice that sounded more like insecurity than sleepiness.
“It’s nothing,” Vince assured her slowly, his hand reaching up to throw the truck into reverse before Sam could put her seatbelt on, “you’re just a dork. Sneaking out like that. Your brother knows we’re going out.”
“Yeah,” she breathed out, her hands reaching up to push her hood back, “right.”
Together, they sat in the truck cab in silence as they drove down the road. The fog beaded into drops of moisture, streaking down the windows as the heat cleared it away. On the horizon the sun was only just rising, flooding the dark skies with the many shades of sunrise. It was a beautiful sight, even with heavy tired eyes, even if they wouldn’t be able to see it for long as he turned down a back road that was smothered by the overgrowth of towering trees.
Thin branches reached out over the narrow road, their baring branches hitting and scratching at the truck as it passed. The tires kicked up the dirt, and even while he slowed, it left a dust cloud in their wake. It wasn’t an unfamiliar road. Miles’ dad had taken them all fishing when they were kids, just beyond the dead end. Where the road met thick brush, and beyond it the water. But the paths once taken had long since grown over, and there were no other vehicles parked along the edge of the road. There would be no one to interrupt them for now, but Vince knew they would have to be vigilant.
“Alright, get in the back,” Vince broke the silence, his hand reaching out for the pile of blankets.
He tucked them under his arm, and in his hand, he carried the box of condoms in his firm grip as he slid out of the driver’s seat and rounded back to climb into the truck bed. The truck bed was cold and it wouldn’t be the most comfortable of things for her, but Vince was going to do his best. Tossing the condoms down, he unfolded one blanket and laid it out, then another. The third he would use to keep them warm.
Samantha stood at the end of the bed, watching him with curious eyes before letting herself climb up into the bed with him. He watched her as she crawled up the length of it. Her black leggings hugged her body with each movement, right down to her chunky white sneakers on her feet. She looked like she was going for a run more than she looked to be going to a dick appointment. But she was comfortable as she sat down at his side - a little nervous, but comfortable all the same and it left Vince smiling.
“Come ‘here,” he coaxed her as he reached across the little space between them for her hand.
He held it carefully in his hold, giving it a careful tug to draw her in close, only to drop it when she was near enough to place his hands on her hips. His hold on her was gentle, his thumbs stroking over the swell of her hipbone as he guided her down to straddle his hips. Vince could feel her warmth on every side of him, bleeding through the thick fabric of his black hooded sweatshirt and his grey sweatpants as they warmed between her thighs. With her there, he took a moment to admire her, his bright eyes flickering over her softened features. She was doing a good job of hiding her nerves, but he could still see it there in her eyes, as she couldn’t quite meet his own.
When he spoke, his hand moving up and down over her thighs in a soft stroke as he did so, he only made it worse. “Alright, Sammy, tell me what I’m working with.”
Her gaze shifted from where they seemed to stare at his lips to the trees beyond as she chewed at her bottom lip, “I, um.”
She was hesitating. Unsure of what exactly he was asking, or too nervous to tell him the dirty little details he didn’t know, he encouraged her all the same. “How far have you gone before?”
Sam blushed, her eyes coming to find his face again, and only for a moment did he meet his eyes. “Over the clothes.”
“And what do you do when you’re by yourself?”
“Vince!” His name was soft on her tongue, her eyes wide as her mouth full agape. She hadn’t been expecting him to ask her that.
“Hey,” he met her, his own voice dropping to her softness as he reached his hand up to caress her cheek, “You don’t have to worry with me, okay? I’m not here to judge you,” she relaxed into his touch, a heavy sigh rocking her body, “and if I’m going to fuck you, Princess, I want to know what you like and what you’re going to be able to handle-”
Her insecurity broke, her lips spaying into a confident smile as she leaned in to challenge him. “I can handle anything you give me.”
There she was. The Samantha that was so eager to toy with him.
“Humour me then?” His head cocked as his hand left her cheek and traced the outline of her curves. It ghosted over the swell of her breasts, and his hand hesitated there for a moment. Vince craved to grope a handful, but his touch travelled over her waist and settled on her hips once more. He gripped them tight and guided them into their first gentle roll over his cock.
Sam’s eyes fluttered shut at the friction. Her lips parted in a silent gasp before she could bite down on her lower lip.
“How often?” Vince asked.
“Often,” was her simple, feeble response.
A smile grew over Vince’s lips as she crumbled for him. He sat up from where he leaned against the back window of the truck and leaned in. She had found her rhythm, her lips rolling over his slowly, but not enough to tease him. She, much like him, was too eager to wait. Vince’s eyes shut as he fought off a groan of his own, his face finding the warmth of her neck just below her ear. It was there he kissed her, his hot breath warming her skin as he muttered, “Fingers or toys?”
“Fingers.”
His lips dragged over the smooth angle of her jaw in a slow kiss before he spoke again, “Clit or-”
“Vince-”
He kissed down her neck, his teeth grazing over her flesh as he tried to coax an answer from her. “Sam.”
She hesitated, and it had Vince leaning back to look up at her. No answer. No sex.
Pouting in his lap, Sam let out an embarrassed huff. “You know the answer.”
“How many fingers?”
Her face was bright red, her skin so hot that Vince forgot that he had been cold. And while she hesitated, she answered him, “Two.”
Vince’s hands left her hips and took hold of one of hers. He drew it up so she could see it in front of her. There, his palm met hers and they compared how much bigger his hands and fingers were to hers. He let her stare, her eyes wide as her tongue stroked over her bottom lip. He knew exactly what she was thinking about at that moment without her needing to say a word. Vince had planted the very thought of wondering what his fingers would feel like as they plunged into her core. And he felt her shudder.
“I’ll be gentle,” he promised, “but you have to promise me that if it becomes too much, or it hurts, you tell me to stop. Got that?”
Samantha nodded slowly, her teeth biting her lip before she let it fall with her words. “I promise.”
“Good girl,” he praised her, and she shuddered again.
She liked praise. And he noted it.
“So,” she hummed slowly, “where do we start?” Vince could only hush her as his hand reached up to stroke through her thick blond hair. His fingers toyed with her soft strands as he pushed them away from her face before they came to rest at the nape of her neck. With that hold, he guided her in and met her lips in a kiss.
There was no caution between them. No hesitation as their lips fell into that same hunger that they had fought back on the porch during the night he had let his desire to fuck her swelter cloud every bit of her better judgement. Her tongue was in his mouth, her hands were in her hair. Tangled in each tendril as he held her head in his hands. Thumbs coaxed her carefully, guiding her mouth open further. The kiss became sloppy, saliva-coated chins and teeth clashed in the desperation of it all. And then his hands dropped.
Samantha had maintained the careful roll of her hips over his raging cock, so she didn’t need his help there. Now, he got to explore.
There was no stopping how his smile splayed over his lips as his hands found the swells of her breast and brushed over them in a feather-light touch. Vince had wanted to indulge himself in them from the very moment he had spotted her there in her bed, and now he was finally going to get the chance. A single hand found the zipper of her sweatshirt, and he pinched it between his thumb and forefinger before dragging it down. It took all of his willpower not to break the kiss and not to look down to see what she wore beneath her sweater. His hands got to do all the exploring as he pushed the sweater open, but not off of her. And he let out his first audible groan when he felt what was beneath.
Samantha wore nothing but what felt like a lacey bralette beneath her sweater as the delicate fabric that dropped off to her smooth flesh greeted Vince’s fingertips. His hands moved blindly, stoking over soft skin and fingers hooked on the flimsy fabric that concealed her breasts and pulled it down. There was no holding back now, not as he could feel the heavy weight of them spill over the excuse of a hold that was the bralette. He needed to see them.
Strong arms embraced Sam around her middle, coiling around her as Vince broke the kiss in a desperate gasp. So selfishly, he housed her up to sit just a little high on her hips so that the very swells of her cleavage were in his sight. His lips came together in a satisfied hum, his hands gripping at the bralette in both hands to fully rid her chest of it before taking a breast in each hand. Large hands kneaded at her flesh, groaning when Samantha’s breasts seemed to overflow from his hold.
They weren’t better than he had imagined. So full, so soft, and so tempting to his mouth as Vince leaned in to place sloppy open-mouthed kisses over the swells of her breasts. Then his lips travelled down, his tongue lapping over a single pert nipple before he was taking it fully in his mouth.
He wasn’t sure if it was the warmth of his mouth, or the stroke of his tongue that coaxed it out of her, but with his mouth consuming her breast, Samantha’s lips parted in a soft sweet gasp. It had Vince smiling against her flesh. But what he liked more was how her hands stoked up the back of his neck and found his curls. He could feel the gentle scratch of her manicured nails over his scalp as her fingers knitted and tugged carefully at his locks. It sent a hum of pleasure buzzing through him, one that had his hands drop to her hips to get a good grip on her. And then he flipped her, her breast falling from his mouth as her back hit the truck bed, and quaking with the impact.
A heavy breath left him as his eyes fixated on her breast again, watching them bouse as they settled and a groan ripped up the back of his throat. Selfishly, he wanted to fuck them. To press them together with his hands and thrust his cock between them until he came. And he would unload all over them and watch it drip down over each swell.
The thought alone made his cock throb.
But that’s not why they were there - and he was done holding back.
“You’ve got such a great body,” he complimented her in a rush of words that sounded more like one as his hands traced the curve of her waist and settled at the top of her tight black leggings.
He gripped the fabric in his fists and tugged them down the length of her legs, only to hit her sneakers. Two kicks of her feet and they were gone, leaving her in her panties and her unzipped sweatshirt beneath him. Then, he reached up, pulling off his own sweatshirt, baring his chest to her, and shivering in the breeze. Vince’s mouth opened to apologize for the cold, but his words were unspoken as Samantha leaned forward, her lips kissing over the toned muscles of his abdomen.
And he just smiled.
That was the beauty of sex. It didn’t need to be learned or taught. It was all instinct. Once he had gotten her caught up in the moment, in the rush of the feeling, Samantha knew exactly what to do. Biting his lip, Vince’s head lulled back. He relished in the feeling of her sweet pink lips against his skin, and every breath that washed over him. But there was a risk in taking his take with her. At any moment, another truck could roll up, and he intended to get back to the house long before Miles woke up.
Reaching out with one hand, he took hold of the third and final blanket while the other stroked back Samantha’s hair from her face. “Lay back, Princess.”
She didn’t hesitate, and Vince positioned himself fully between her thighs. His hands made quick work of the blanket, draping it over his back and leaning in close so that it fell over them both to give them some semblance of warmth. Then his hands were on her body once more. He stroked down over her thighs before dipping down into the heat between them. The skin of Samantha’s inner thigh was so delicately soft that Vince was almost worried that the hardworking callouses on his palms might hurt her. But any thought of worry was gone the moment a single finger stroked over the damp fabric at the crotch of her panties.
“You’re so nice and wet for me,” his words were a growl as his fingers settled on her clit. This time, he didn’t just tease her with the very knowing of where it was. Vince pressed into the sensitive nerves, stroking her slowly and coaxing her into a heavy breath and the careful buck of her hips.
“Would you like me to take these pretty little panties off?”
Nothing more than Samantha’s desperate nods met his question, and Vince didn’t make her wait. The careful rise of her hips helped him as his finger hooked along the thin fabric and dragged it down. She was already such a mess for him, and he’d barely touched her. Vince could see it in how her face softened for him and felt it against his fingers as he slipped her panties from her ankles and took them in his fist. He gripped them tight for a moment before he shoved them into the pocket of his sweatpants.
As to not to lose them - or maybe to keep them as a souvenir.
He smiled at the thought of getting to keep them. Of getting to bring them back to St Louis and keeping them in his own drawer. And it had fully consumed him as he leaned in close and let his hand settle between her legs again. Bare for him, he could feel everything. From her clit to the slickness of her core, he stroked her with a single finger. Gathering that sweet arousal around his index finger before he eased it into the tightness of her cunt.
His thrust was slow, careful as he eased into her inch by inch until he was knuckle deep.
“That’s it, princess,” he encouraged her in a hit whisper that washed over her face as she let out a silent moan, “doing so good for me, you want another?”
He met her eyes that seemed to flutter with every careful pump of his fingers, earning a sweet, “Yes, yes, Vince, please,” from her lips.
“Ready?” he asked her, his words as slow and agonizing as his last thrust with his single finger. And before she could answer, his middle finger had joined in on the plunge, stealing her words and sending a moan into the air.
Birds in the trees above flew in a flock from the treetops, startled by the noise. “Easy there, Princess, it might not just be me and you out here,” Vince cautions her, his eyes meeting hers and he feels her core flex around his fingers. “Oh?” his head cocked. “You like that? The idea of being caught? That someone could walk out of the trees or drive in from the main road and catch us here. My fingers knuckle deep in your pretty little pussy.”
Each word coaxed out a heavy breath, and her walls squeezed around his fingers in a warm embrace that left Vince salivating. He was so close to making her come already. And it was a good thing too. The tension between them over the last two days had left him on edge. Once he had her, he knew he wouldn’t last as long as he would like to with her.
“You ready for my cock, princess?”
Samantha let out a weak hum and reached out her hands to tug at his sweatpants that already hung low on his hips. The tips of her fingers grazed over his flesh, tracing over the angles of his toned body as she brought them down just enough that his cock sprang free. Vince had half hoped to see a shocked expression take her features, but he wasn’t naïve enough to think his cock wasn’t the first she’d seen. He had been one or more unsolicited dick-pic away from that honor, but he was going to be the first of what really mattered.
Vince reached out for the almost forgotten box of condoms, crushing the already battered cardboard in his hold as he fished for the foil package with two fingers. Securing it, he tossed the box aside again, spilling the contents in the truck bed, before ripping open the package and working the thin latex onto his cock. Choking back a groan at the stroke of his own hand, Vince asked, “You watch porn?”
She didn’t shy away from answering him now that her mind was dizzy with lust. “Yeah,”
“Forget everything you’ve ever watched for a second, and just enjoy the moment, the feeling.”
Vince had pressed the top of his cock to the narrow entrance of her core before he could finish speaking. The very pressure of the tip punctuated his words as it eased his way into the embrace of her walls. She was warm, warmer even as Vince leaned in to press his body flush against hers. All the morning cold seemed to disappear around him, the warmth of her body all so consuming as she entwined herself with his by body and limb. He could feel all of her, from how her feet dragged down the length of his lengths before hooking behind his knees to how one hand knitted in the curls of his hair while the other scratched and gripped at his back. But her hold on him, and the slow, steady and deep thrusts, were not enough to keep them anchored in place in the back of her brother’s truck.
Reaching his hand out, Vince pressed it firmly against the cold glass window. The temperate sent a shock right through him. It was such an intense contrast to her warmth, to the pulse of her core around his cock with every one of his thrusts. He fucked her good and slow, kissing her slowly just to feel her sweet moans against his own lips as if he could taste them. And then her climax hit her, so hard he could feel every wave as it consumed her. Vince could feel her legs weaken and tremble, and her grasp on him only grew tighter, as she didn’t quite know yet how to handle the intensity of the pleasure he had brought her.
The pulling on his hair, the coaxing of her core and the squeeze of her legs around his tights brought his own soft groans as he fell into the chase of his own high. His every movement that followed was primal. The sound that left his lips uncontrollable as his thrusts hastened, and his cock twitched against her core’s insistent grasp. Pleasure strangled his final moan as his hips crashed into hers and Vince kept himself buried deep inside her cunt as he unloaded. It left him panting, sweating, groaning, relieved as he had finally gotten what he had been craving the entire long weekend.
Yet, he felt a sense of disappointment. He wished he could have been able to take his time with her. To really enjoy her and teach her a few things outside of being a pretty little pillow princess.
“Fuck, I could have so much fun with you,” Vince told her in a low muttering that he was sure would become lost in the wind. And it was the truth. She had the perfect body, and Sam was still so impressionable in the bedroom. Vince wanted to be the one who walked her through all of it. To be the one who ruined every single other man for her. But she would be off to university in a few days, and he had to report to training camp. Even if he wanted her, there would be too great a distance between to satiate and desire that took him.
Drawing out of her, Vince eased the condom from his cock and pulled his sweatpants up quickly. Fingers knotted up the end, and with little regret, he tossed it into the grass beside the road before he hunted down his clothes. The two of them moved around the truck bed, gathering their things and shrugging into their clothes in silence. That fact left worry hanging heavily in Vince’s stomach. By now, women would have complimented him on anything, everything, desperate to get inside his head after a hookup. But Sam had barely met his eyes as he stared at her breasts one last time before Sam zipped up her sweater.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she breathed out, coming to stand in front of him, but she didn’t offer another word to him. Instead, she leaned in and pressed up onto her toes to place a simple kiss on his cheek, “but you might have to help me down.”
“I can do that,” Vince grinned and made that his priority.
He jumped down from the truck bed and reached his arms out to her. Hands settled on the curve of her waist and lifted her down with ease. But he didn’t stop there. Vince wrapped one arm around her and watched her with soft eyes and an amused smile as she walked to the passenger side on weak legs. Her strides had been slow and careful, and he had been the one who did that to her.
“Get in. I’ll take care of the rest.” Vince helped her into the passenger’s seat before closing the door firmly behind her.
Then, he made quick work of the mess they made in the truck bed. Vince folded the blankets in on one another, hiding the stray condom that had fallen out of the box, and any traces of sex they may have left behind. They ended up in more a ball than nicely folded, and he tossed into the backseat before Vince found his seat and started up the engine just as another truck pulled into the end of the road.
The driver, an old man, his face thick with wrinkles and his smile friendly, so Vince rolled down the window and offered a friendly wave.
“Any luck out there this morning?”
His mind was cloudy, stuck in a bit of a daze of his own, and left confused by the stranger’s question before he watched him reach into the back of his truck for an old fishing rod.
“No, nothing for us, though we weren’t out long,” Vince upheld the friendly conversation as he reached his arm up to stretch over the back of the seat of the truck. He patted the soft leather of the bench seat, coaxing Samantha over to lean into his side casually. His hand stroked over her arm as he spoke to the man, the conversation falling on the nice weather the day was supposed to have for fishing, but it wasn’t long before he was wishing the man luck and Vince was putting the car in reverse.
With Sam pulled close to his side, he drove into town on the back roads in silence. Not that they really needed anything from the store, but Vince knew if they didn’t return with anything, Miles would get suspicious.
When they arrived, Vince left Samantha in the truck and went into the store alone. He grabbed odds and ends of things. Items that he could have easily forgotten to pack for the weekend, and he even bought Samantha a box of tampons just to cover all the bases before he returned to the truck. She had turned the music on and eased back into her place by his side on the bench seat, but they continued to ride in silence.
Vince could hear her every tired breath and the music that was just loud enough to hear but not loud enough to make out the lyrics. And when she rested her head on his shoulder, he almost groaned. The silence was getting to him, his own curiosities now eating away at him. Vince wanted to know what she was thinking, what she felt. But he was only a quick glance in the mirror from seeing that her eyes were softly closing, sleep threatening to take her as they travelled down the final stretch of road before they were back of the cabin.
He let her flirt with the idea of sleep, but the moment he pulled into the driveway his touch had found her face. He pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her head just enough to look up at him. Her eyes fluttered, and her smile pulled at her lips as just how close they were. And he smiled too as he whispered, “You still upset with me for scaring away your little friend?”
Her head shook slowly as she tried to look away to hide the smile that played on her lips, but his hold on her kept her in place. Days ago, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had screamed at him for what he did. Shouted, hell, he wouldn’t have put it past her if Sam had told him she hated him for what he did, but it was all very different now.
She had no frustration in her eyes. No anger.
“And how do you feel right now?”
Glancing back at him, Samantha could only shrug as her cheeks were the faintest shade of pink. There was a dreamy look on her face, one that Vince had seen so many times before. One of peace, one of calm and adoration.
Lust.
Longing.
Love.
“That’s the endorphins.” His words were soft, a long hum as his hands cupped her face in his hands. “You see, this is the shit they don’t teach you about sex in school. When I fucked you, made you feel so good, it fucked with your brain chemistry. Releases Oxytocin or some shit during orgasm.” His thumb trailed down her cheek oh so slowly, drawing her into a heavy breath that left her bottom lip quivering. Vince stroked it slowly. “Fucking dangerous thing it is. It’s why every time a man touches you from here on out, and he doesn’t get you there, you’re going to think of me. When you touch yourself, you’re going to think of me. And when you do, fucking call because I want to see the mess I’ve fucking turned you into.”
Samantha’s features softened, her eyes wide and her mouth agape in awe at his words. There was nothing she could say to change the effect he would have on her for the rest of her days. A little piece of her would always belong to him. It went beyond the physicality of it all, and Vince fucking loved that.
His thumb stroked over his lower lip one last time, knowing that just touching like that in the driveway was too great a risk, but he wanted more. Vince leaned in and kissed her hard. He wanted to taste her tongue later in the day when he wanted to fuck her, but could only reminisce about the feeling. His fingers nearly knotted in her hair. So close to drawing her in and fucking her in the truck cab, but the possibility of being caught by Miles there left an uncomfortable knot in his gut. Yet, he didn’t pull back until he knew her lips would swell from the kiss. But it might have been too late.
The front door was the first thing he looked at when Vince pulled back from Samantha, his hands still cradling her face. And his body flooded with panic when he saw the door wide open, and Miles making his way out the door, his eyes fixated on the gravel beneath his feet. The truck cab filled with a series of rushed curses as they rushed to put as much distance between themselves as possible. Samantha went as far as to press her back against the passenger side door. There the both of them stayed, panting, watching as her brother looked up towards the truck and he smiled.
Miles hadn’t seen a thing.
#vince dunn#vince dunn fanfic#vince dunn x original character#hockey rpf#hockey imagines#hockey romance#hockey smut#nhl fanfic#nhl rpf#nhl fanfiction#;; { i've been working on this for weeks it feels like }#;; { it may not be edited as well as some of the other fics }#;; { but it's long and i really wanted to get it out today }
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Canada sues Google
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/03/clementsy/#can-tech
For a country obsessed with defining itself as "not America," Canada sure likes to copy US policies, especially the really, really terrible policies – especially the really, really, really terrible digital policies.
In Canada's defense: these terrible US policies are high priority for the US Trade Representative, who leans on Canadian lawmakers to ensure that any time America decides to collectively jump off the Empire State Building, Canadian politicians throw us all off the CN Tower. And to Canada's enduring shame, the USTR never has to look very hard to find a lickspittle who's happy to sell Canadians out.
Take anti-circumvention. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a gnarly hairball of copyright law whose Section 1201 bans reverse-engineering for any purpose. Under DMCA 1201, "access controls" for copyrighted works are elevated to sacred status, and it's a felony (punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine) to help someone bypass these access controls.
That's pretty esoteric, even today, and in 1998, it was nearly incomprehensible, except to a small group of extremely alarmed experts who ran around trying to explain to lawmakers why they should not vote for this thing. But by the time Tony Clement and James Moore (Conservative ministers in the Harper regime) introduced a law to import America's stupidest tech idea and paste it into Canada's lawbooks in 2012, the evidence against anti-circumvention was plain for anyone to see.
Under America's anti-circumvention law, any company that added an "access control" to its products instantly felonised any modification to that product. For example, it's not illegal to refill an ink cartridge, but it is illegal to bypass the access control that gets the cartridge to recognise that it's full and start working again. It's not illegal for a Canadian software developer to sell a Canadian Iphone owner an app without cutting Apple in for a 30% of the sale, but it is illegal to mod that Iphone so that it can run apps without downloading them from the App Store first. It's not illegal for a Canadian mechanic to fix a Canadian's car, but it is illegal for that mechanic to bypass the access controls that prevent third-party mechanics from decrypting the error codes the car generates.
We told Clement and Moore about this, and they ignored us. Literally: when they consulted on their proposal in 2010, we filed 6,138 comments explaining why this was a bad idea, while only 53 parties wrote in to support it. Moore publicly announced that he was discarding the objections, on the grounds that they had come from "babyish" "radical extremists":
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/copyright-debate-turns-ugly-1.898216
For more than a decade, we've had Clement and Moore's Made-in-America law tied to our ankles. Even when Canada copies some good ideas from the US (by passing a Right to Repair law), or even some very good ideas of its own (passing an interoperability law), Canadians can't use those new rights without risking prosecution under Clement and Moore's poisoned gift to the nation:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest
"Not America" is a pretty thin basis for a political identity anyway. There's nothing wrong with copying America's good ideas (like Right to Repair). Indeed, when it comes to tech regulation, the US has had some bangers lately, like prosecuting US tech giants for violating competition law. Given that Canada overhauled its competition law this year, the country's well-poised to tackle America's tech giants.
Which is exactly what's happening! Canada's Competition Bureau just filed a lawsuit against Google over its ad-tech monopoly, which isn't merely a big old Privacy Chernobyl, but is also a massively fraudulent enterprise that rips off both advertisers and publishers:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/canadas-antitrust-watchdog-sues-google-alleging-anti-competitive-conduct-2024-11-28/
The ad-tech industry scoops up about 51 cents out of every dollar (in the pre-digital advertising world the net take by ad agencies was more like 15%). Fucking up Google's ad-tech rip off is a much better way to Canada's press paid than the link tax the country instituted in 2023:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising
After all, what tech steals from the news isn't content (helping people find the news and giving them a forum to discuss it is good) – tech steals news's money. Ad-tech is a giant ripoff. So is the app tax – the 30% Canadian newspapers have to kick up to the Google and Apple crime families every time a subscriber renews their subscriptions in an app. Using Canadian law to force tech to stop stealing the press's money is a way better policy than forcing tech to profit-share with the news. For tech to profit-share with the news, it has to be profitable, meaning that a profit-sharing press benefits from tech's most rapacious and extractive conduct, and rather than serving as watchdogs, they're at risk of being cheerleaders.
Smashing tech power is a better policy than forcing tech to share its stolen loot with newspapers. For one thing, it gets government out of the business of deciding what is and isn't a legit news entity. Maybe you're OK with Trudeau making that call (though I'm not), but how will you feel when PM Polievre decides that Great Replacement-pushing, conspiracy-addled far right rags should receive a subsidy?
Taking on Google is a slam-dunk, not least because the US DoJ just got through prosecuting the exact same case, meaning that Canadian competition enforcers can do some good copying of their American counterparts – like, copying the exhibits, confidential memos, and successful arguments the DoJ brought before the court:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies
Indeed, this already a winning formula! Because Big Tech commits the same crimes in every jurisdiction, trustbusters are doing a brisk business by copying each others' cases. The UK Digital Markets Unit released a big, deep market study into Apple's app market monopoly, which the EU Commission used as a roadmap to bring a successful case. Then, competition enforcers in Japan and South Korea recycled the exhibits and arguments from the EU's case to bring their own successful prosecutions:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all
Canada copying the DoJ's ad-tech case is a genius move – it's the kind of south-of-the-border import that Canadians need. Though, of course, it's a long shot that the Trump regime will produce much more worth copying. Instead, Trump has vowed to slap a 25% tariff on Canadian goods as of January 20.
Which is bad news for Canada's export sector, but it definitely means that Canada no longer has to worry about keeping the US Trade Rep happy. Repealing Clement and Moore's Bill C-11 should be Parliament's first order of business. Tariff or no tariff, Canadian tech entrepreneurs could easily export software-based repair diagnostic tools, Iphone jailbreaking tooks, alternative firmware for tractors and medical implants, and alternative app stores for games consoles, phones and tablets. So long as they can accept a US payment, they can sell to US customers. This is a much bigger opportunity than, say, selling cheap medicine to Americans trying to escape Big Pharma's predation.
What's more, there's no reason this couldn't be policy under Polievre and the Tories. After all, they're supposed to be the party of "respect for private property." What could be more respectful of private property than letting the owners of computers, phones, cars, tractors, printers, medical implants, smart speakers and anything else with a microchip decide for themselves how they want to it work? What could be more respectful of copyright than arranging things so that Canadian copyright holders – like a games studio or an app company – can sell their copyrighted works to Canadian buyers, without forcing the data and the payment to make a round trip through Silicon Valley and come back 30% lighter?
Canadian politicians have bound the Canadian public and Canadian industry to onerous and expensive obligations under treaties like the USMCA (AKA NAFTA2), on promise of tariff-free access to American markets. With that access gone, why on Earth would we continue to voluntarily hobble ourselves?
#pluralistic#link tax#big tech#corruption#canpoli#cdnpoli#monopolies#ad-tech#publishing#canada#competition bureau#usmca#nafta#anticircumvention#r2r#right to repair#interoperability
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