Despite the fact that one or the other ordered another round as soon as they noticed the drinks were getting low, there was a noticeable tension in them that hadn’t been there before they’d noticed the tall, dark strangers.
She grinned at her friends as the music was abruptly lowered and the dimmed lights brightened. “This was really special! Thanks, everybody!”
Sharon laughed and snatched up the bikini she’d given her. “Oh, this isn’t the ‘special’ part!”
Simone frowned but turned to look when she pointed to the dance floor. It was already beginning to clear as a man took up a microphone and announced it was time for the ‘grand event’. Simone glanced at Sharon questioningly and then back toward the announcer and discovered the club bouncers were busy taking up the flooring. Beneath the dance floor, she discovered when they’d removed the boards and the bracing, was a mud pit.
The man announced the first two ‘contestants’. A spotlight moved to illuminate two women dressed in bikinis and Simone’s belly did a flip-flop.
“We’re next!” Sharon exclaimed, bouncing up and down excitedly.
“Oh no! NO!”
“Aw, come on! Don’t be such a wuss! It’ll be fun!”
“Rolling around in the mud while everybody watches my cellulite jiggle?”
Simone asked dryly.
Everybody burst out laughing as if she’d told a joke. “I’m not joking!”
“When’s the last time you got to play in mud?”
“I never played in mud!” Simone retorted tartly.
“Well, then, there’s no time like the present! A few more years and they’ll think you’re senile if you try it!”
“Ha! Ha! You’re so funny! I’m not that drunk!”
Sharon turned and yelled for the waitress. “Bring us another round of jell-shots!”
“I cannot get that drunk!”
“Ok, tell you what—we’ll watch for a little bit and if you still don’t want to ….”
“We’ll shove you in!” Shelly announced.
Simone shook her head at them, but she stood as they did to watch. The guys in the bar, of course, had begun hooting and cheering almost deafeningly as soon as the first two contestants were announced. The moment they climbed into the mud pit, the crowd went wild. In spite of her reluctance, Simone couldn’t help but laugh until her sides hurt.
The mud was so slick they spent more time sliding down in it than actually ‘wrestling’.
They seemed to be fairly evenly matched. Neither one actually managed to pin the other. It was beginning to look like it might turn into a hair pulling fight when the ‘referees’ stepped in and dragged both of them out.
To Simone’s horror, Sharon hadn’t been joking. The next contestants announced were Sharon and Simone. The spotlights hit the floor beside the announcer and then, moved around the bar. Sharon stood up on the bench and yelled, “She says she isn’t drunk enough yet!”
Everybody laughed uproariously and the announcer moved to the next to contestants.
“Please? Pretty please? Come on, Simone!”
Simone rolled her eyes. “Where’s your bikini?”
Sharon grabbed her bag and dragged it out triumphantly. “That’s not a bikini!”
Sharon shrugged. “Bob won’t let me have one. It’s the skimpiest thing I had.”
“Awwwww,” everyone at the table chorused sadly.
Sharon tried a puppy dog look.
“All right!” Simone said, yielding to peer pressure with a laugh. “It’s a good thing for you that I decided to shave for the occasion!”
That was what came of having an exhibitionist for a friend, Simone thought with a mixture of amusement and irritation as they made their way to the changing room. She was more than a little horrified when she looked down at herself, but someone had been wise enough not to put mirrors in the rooms.
Sharon was toasted and completely in her element anyway. The minute the spotlight hit her, she went through a series of weightlifter poses, flexing her muscles for the screaming crowd. Simone merely plunked her hands on her hips.
The mud, she discovered was a lot colder and slimier than she’d expected. She made a face as she stepped into the bog at her corner. The referee slogged to the middle and summoned them. Taking a deep breath, Simone picked her way carefully. Sharon stumbled to the middle and flattened the referee.
Simone was laughing so hard she was too weak to help her friend up but between her and the referee they finally got her on her feet. Sharon immediately threw her arms up in a victory pose.
“Contestant, Sharon has taken out the referee!”
“Sha-ron! Sha-ron! Sha-ron!” their friends chanted, inciting the entire bar into a chant.
“Ok! Now you have to wrestle the other contestant!” the announcer said with a laugh.
Sharon, a born ham, assumed a sumo stance.
Shrugging, Simone also bent down. She wasn’t sure of what came over her, but the moment Sharon charged her, self-defense class took over. Grabbing Sharon, she pitched her over her hip. Sharon hit the mud flat of her back and began to sink. “Oh god! Sharon! Are you ok?” Simone gasped, dropping to her knees.
Sharon blinked at her. “What happened? Did I fall down?”
The referee counted her out before she managed to get back on her feet, then grabbed Simone’s arm and announced her as the winner.
“Si-mone! Si-mone!”
“Well that was fun!” Sharon said a little drunkenly as Simone tried to help her out.
“You’re sure you’re ok?” Simone asked uneasily.
The announcer grabbed her before she could make her escape with Sharon.
“Hey! You won! You have to take on the next challenger.”
“Oh no!”
Sharon sat down on the edge of the mud pit. “Don’t be a wimp. Go whip her ass, Simone!”
Simone was still trying to think of a graceful way to decline when the new contestant climbed into the pit. She turned, took one look at the girl and tried to climb over Sharon and the announcer. They dragged her back amidst the laughter of the audience.
Simone really didn’t want to wrestle anymore and she especially didn’t want to wrestle the woman who clearly meant business if the expression on her face was any indication. Sure, the prize was a hundred bucks! But she didn’t feel like getting twisted into a pretzel for a hundred bucks! The woman was a half a head taller and at least twenty or thirty pounds heavier!
Somehow, she found herself facing off with the woman—Donna—however.
When the referee blew his whistle, the woman charged her with a feral snarl.
Simone leapt out of the way and slogged around in a circle when she discovered the mud was too thick to allow her to outrun the woman. Stopping abruptly in her tracks, the woman whirled and leapt at her again. Simone didn’t manage to completely elude her that time. Donna grabbed her and they both slammed into the mud.
That time, Simone summoned her self-defense lessons for the simple reason that the woman seemed determined to shove her under the mud and hold her there. They rolled several times. All Simone really wanted was to get loose, but every time their grips slipped, the woman found a new hold and finally pinned her on her back in spite of all she could do. Heaving, Simone discovered, didn’t do any good. The woman definitely had weight on her side. The moment Donna started to get up, however, she saw her chance. Drawing her knees up, she planted her feet against the woman’s belly, grabbed a firm grip on her shoulders and pitched the woman in a somersault over her.
She landed flat of her back as Sharon had. Simone wasn’t about to let her get up and charge her again, though. She rolled over and rushed to plant her knees on Donna’s arms before she could get up, holding her until the referee finally called it.
Huffing for breath, she got up.
Donna was a sore loser … or she’d wanted that hundred dollars a lot worse than Simone had. She crawled up as the referee was holding Simone’s arm up as the victor, uttered a gr
owl and charged. Simone snatched her arm free. Grabbing Donna’s outstretched arm, she used the woman’s own momentum to flip her onto her back again.
That time when she hit the mud, two of the bouncers joined them, grabbing her as she got up. The crowd was booing. Simone’s friends were screaming, “Kick her ass!”
Simone’s shoulders slumped as they dragged the woman out and led her away.
She was so tired it took all she could do to make it to the side of the pit. She paused there, trying to gather the strength to climb out. A male hand was extended to her as she planted her palms on the edge. She looked up instinctively in appreciation. The smile died on her lips.
Chapter Two
Simone recognized everything right up to the black cowboy hat, still tilted over his eyes and hiding them in shadow. The part of his face that she could see sent a jolt through her, though, made her belly go weightless. He grasped her beneath her arms without waiting for her to take his offer and stood, pulling her from the mud as he straightened and setting her firmly on the floor. For several moments more, she stood staring up at him trance-like. She wasn’t certain she could’ve broken the spell then except that he tipped his head down to look at her, reminding her that she was mostly naked and covered in mud … and she discovered she’d planted her muddy hands on his shoulders when he’d helped her out.
Grimacing, she tried to brush the mud off, but it only seemed to make things worse. “Sorry. Thanks!” she said uncomfortably and hurried toward Sharon.
The announcer grabbed her wrist before she could elude him and pronounced her the winner. She allowed him to detain her until he was finished with his spiel and finally, gratefully, escaped with Sharon to wash off in the back.
“Ooooh!” Sharon cooed. “One of the hunks o’burnin’ love noticed you! Ain’t you special!”
Simone chuckled. “Shut up, Sharon!”
“Did you give him your number?”
Simone rolled her eyes and turned on the shower—a camping style shower hooked up to a water hose. She and Sharon both screamed when the cold water hit them.
“Oh my god! I don’t know if I can stand this!”
“Have to,” Sharon said, her teeth chattering. “I’ve got mud in everything … and I do mean everything. I can’t go home like this! Bob will want to know what I was up to!”
Simone glanced at her. “He doesn’t know you came here?”
“Of course he does!” Sharon exclaimed, but she didn’t meet Simone’s eyes.
“Alright, actually, I told him we were having a girl party at your place.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because he would’ve been pissed off I’d told him I wanted to come here!”
Sharon said reasonably.
“And he isn’t going to be pissed off if you come home drunk?”
“Of course he will, but I already had my fun. It doesn’t matter now. If I’d told him before, we would’ve had a fight about and it would’ve spoiled my fun. I think you should hit on that guy. He looked yummy.”
“He looked young!” Simone retorted.
“Give me a break and don’t start that ‘I’m old’ shit, alright? He has to be at least drinking age and that means above the legal age of consent.”
“A little young for a meaningful relationship,” Simone dryly.
“Sex can be meaningful!”
Simone uttered a dismissive chuckle. “Yeah, well you have to watch the young ones. They don’t worry about safe sex. They’ll nail anything and that means they can be dangerous and I’m betting that one has so many carvings on his bedpost that it looks like termites got hold of it!”
“So tell him he can’t have it without the overcoat!”
“Be real, Sharon! For gods sake! Every woman in that place was drooling over those guys. I’m thinking snowball’s chance in hell about describes the odds. Anyway, I’m tired. I’ve had all the fun I can handle, and I have to work tomorrow.”
Sharon sighed. “You’ll be sor-ry.”
“Probably.” Simone chewed her lip, tempted to tell Sharon about the appointment card she’d gotten, and then decided against it. It they accepted her, then she’d tell Sharon. There was no point in telling her anything until she knew something herself.
It was a damned good reason to behave herself, though!
God! She would absolutely love to get her hands on a man like that!
“I need a cigarette.”
“Damn it, Simone! You said you were quitting!”
“I am! I’m on my last pack—swear!”
“Right!”
“I mean it! This time I’m really quitting.”
Sharon huffed but, thankfully, left it at that. “I guess I’ll call a cab. I’m pretty tired, too. It was fun, though. Admit it!”
Simone, in the process of skimming into her jeans, looked up at Sharon and grinned. “It was fun—Ok, so wrestling that crazy woman wasn’t so much fun, but the rest of it was.”
Sharon grinned. “Maybe we’ll try it against sometime, champ! You riding with me? I know you’re too drunk to drive.”
“Shit! I didn’t think about that. Fine! I’ll meet you out front after I’ve burned one.”
Sharon rolled her eyes. “I’ll gather up your goodies and call the cab. Be quick!”
Simone rolled her eyes that time but merely nodded. She supposed she could add her birthday presents to the collection she’d gotten the year before.
It was chilly outside with wet hair, Simone discovered, particularly when she’d had to rinse off in cold water to start with. It was still better than going back inside looking like a drowned rat!
And she did want a damned cigarette!
Pulling her pack out, she counted what she had left, reminded herself she was quitting and she wasn’t going to keep risking buying cigarettes on the black market, and then lit one. Taking a deep drag, she blew it out and headed for her car. She could at least get out of the wind while she enjoyed one of her last, absolutely last, smokes.
The clock on her dash displayed 12:01. “Shit!” She was looking at probably an hour cab ride and then a real bath with soap and hot water. She was going to be lucky if she got to bed before 2:00! At least the nightcaps were going to make getting to sleep a breeze!
But then she was going to have to roll out at 6:00 if she had any hope of getting to work on time because she was going to have to take a taxi back to the club to collect her damned car!
Trying to ignore the little voice in the back of her head saying ‘call in sick’, she got out, locked the car and headed around the building to meet Sharon. She’d almost reached the corner of the building when a guy barreled in to her. She was so stunned, she didn’t think she would’ve realized that he’d snatched her purse if not for the burn on her arm from the strap.
The shock didn’t last more than a couple of seconds. It hit her almost instantly that the bastard was making off with her last twenty bucks, all of her identification … and her last five cigarettes.
It was the cigarettes that did it. She darted after him, but he hadn’t slowed down appreciably since he’d slammed into her and grabbed her purse. Cursing, she looked around for a weapon and spied a beer bottle. Snatching it up, she threw it at him as hard as she could, hoping to knock the bastard unconscious or at least hit him in the back.
She was probably the worst shot in the world. It didn’t really surprise her when she saw that the trajectory of the bottle meant that it was probably going to completely miss him.
It did, but somehow, as it flew between his legs, he got tangled up by the neck of the bottle. He hit the pavement so hard, he slid almost a yard. Uttering a whoop of success, Simone charged toward him, leaned down to snatch her bag up, and walloped the hell out of him with it when he made a grab for her. “You bastard!”
“Bitch!” he yelled back at her, grabbing the strap and giving her a yank that nearly brought her to her knees.
That, unfortunately, was when she saw he’d whipped out a knife.
>
She would’ve let the bag go right then except, somehow, her wrist had gotten tangled in the strap. The faint scrape of a boot on the pavement didn’t even register at first. Simone was too focused on trying to get away from the purse snatcher before he could stab her. An instant later she was surrounded by a virtual wall of flesh. The strain on her wrist vanished, and she was grasped bodily and set aside.
“Oh! You want some of this mother fucker?”
“No.”
Simone sucked in her breath as the punk lunged at her rescuer. Everything happened so quickly after that that she barely grasped that there was a tussle before it was over. When the stranger stepped back, her attacker was lying on the pavement. Simone stared down at him blankly, disturbed by the odd angle of his head. Finally, she dragged her gaze from him and looked up at the man who’d helped her.
Her cowboy—she thought. It was dark, too dark to tell anything except that he was one of the cowboys. The other two, she discovered, were standing at the end of the car where the fight had ended.
Feeling oddly as if she was trapped in slow motion, she turned to look at the man next to her and saw that he was holding his hand out, palm up. As dim as the lighting was, she could see a slash across his palm and blood pooling. “Oh god! He cut you!”
He closed his palm and looked at her. “Are you injured?”
Simone shivered and looked at the man on the pavement again. “Is he alright?”
“He is dead.”
Just like that. Completely without emotion. A wave of coldness washed over her.
“You’re … sure?” she asked in a quavering voice.
“Yes.”
She slammed into the car behind her when he reached for her. Scrambling away from him, she ran as fast as she could toward the front of the building where she knew there would be cops waiting to grab any drunks that tried to get in their cars. She didn’t look back.
* * * *
Camryn watched her until she’d vanished from his sight and glanced at his cousin, Kael, and his brother, Ean. “She will notify the authorities.”
Alien Penetration Page 2