by H. T. Night
“Hey there,” I said, surprised as hell.
“Hey, yourself,” she said in a sultry voice.
I peeked out the door and saw that she seemed to be alone. There wasn’t even a vehicle in sight. “Do you want to come in?”
“Sure.”
“What were you looking for outside?” she asked.
“I don’t know...I thought maybe you had your friends with you.”
“Nope. Just little ol’ me. Sorry if you’re disappointed.”
I grinned. Girls and their games. “I’m anything but disappointed. I was just surprised to see you, that’s all.” I sat on my couch. Yari walked over and sat next to me with about a foot separating us.
“I hope it was a good surprise,” she said.
“Very good. You look incredible.”
“Thanks.” She spoke with an air of confidence that only the most beautiful women have, women who receive a steady stream of compliments. “You’re looking good, too. Were you going somewhere?”
“I was just going to get a bite to eat.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “By yourself?”
“Yeah, I do most things by myself these days.”
“That’s too bad.”
“So where are you headed? You look like you’re dressed up for a party.”
“That’s why I’m here. I’m heading over to a party in Victorville. I was thinking you might want to come.”
“You drove all the way out here to see if I wanted to come to a party?”
“Well, I didn’t have your number, did I?”
“How did you get here? There are no cars outside.”
“Some friends dropped me off.”
“And what if I wasn’t home?”
“Then I would had called my friends to come get me. Your light was on so I told them they could take off. What’s up with the third degree?”
“There is no third degree. I’m just flattered, I guess.”
“You should be. If you haven’t noticed, I look smoking hot right now. I don’t know how often a hot woman comes to your door and asks you to escort her to a party.”
“That happens like...never,” I said.
“Then do you want to scratch your pathetic dinner plans and come with me?”
I grinned. “Sure; let me grab a jacket.”
I went to the closet and did just that. When I returned, Yari was looking at me with a big smile.
“What?” I asked.
“You look good, Josiah. Real good. I just might want a taste before we go.” Yari leaned into me and kissed my lips. I kissed her back. I had a lot of pent-up energy considering I subscribe to the no-jacking-off rule before a fight. Her lips felt soft and tender. She was such an amazing kisser. I pressed her up against my wall in my hallway and turned her body around. Her dress felt amazing. It was silky and soft. I placed my hands around her body and onto her thighs. Her perfectly-shaped buttocks pressed against my groin. I kissed her neck and slid my hands up the front of her body until both my hands were cupping her breasts. She turned her head and kissed me. Her tongue was soft and wet. Her pheromones were flying off the chart. She smelled incredible, and even her saliva smelled refreshing.
“In my entire life,” I said, “no one has ever turned me on the way you do.”
Yari stopped and looked at me with a tenderness I had not seen from her before. “That’s good,” she said. “Now we should get going.”
Then she walked to my door and outside my house. I was left there turned on, but at least I did have a place to go.
Chapter Seven
I drove us to Victorville in about a half an hour. Victorville is one of those little desert cities along Highway 15 that people pass on their way to Las Vegas. It’s in the high desert and still has a sort of old-time feel to it, the kind of place where a young Clint Eastwood might squint and settle a score, in exactly that order.
Anyway, the party was another thirty minutes off the highway, and when we finally arrived at the house, I pulled into a long, narrow driveway. I noticed there weren’t that many cars out front. I also noticed a lot of black birds flying around outside. They appeared to be the same type of birds that were hovering around Flatlands. I looked up through the windshield at the house in front us. It was, as Tommy would say, ginormous. It had a stately feel to it, and seemed better suited for a Governor or Senator, not a place you would expect deep in the heart of Victorville.
“Am I going to know anyone at this party?” I asked Yari.
“Atticai and Lena should be here, along with Wyatt and the others.” Yari looked down at my wrist. “Your wrist seems to be healing.”
“Yeah, the teeth marks look more like I got branded than bitten.”
“You know that Wyatt feels bad about that.”
“I bet he does. I still have no clue why a grown man would want to bite me.”
“You can ask him yourself.” Yari motioned to my rear view mirror. Sure enough the infamous black van pulled up behind me.
I opened my door and got out.
Atticai stepped out of the van’s side door with his held high as if he was royalty. He turned and saw me but gave no indication of recognizing me. His face looked paler than before. Lena came out after him. She saw me and ran over to me.
“Hey, you!” she said to me.
“Hey yourself,” I replied.
“What? Are you too good for me?” she asked, putting both hands on her curvy hips.
“Why you say that?”
“Ever hear of returning a call?”
I looked at Atticai to see if he was annoyed that his girlfriend was calling me. Again he had zero expression on his face. He just continued walking up to the house.
“Oh, sorry. I’ve been training hard for my next fight and turned my phone off. You know, to cut down on the distractions.” I winced the moment that last sentence left my mouth. Yari whistled next to me.
“Well, it’s good to know that I’m only a distraction.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I’m just bustin’ your balls. I know you’re busy. I was just wondering what happened to you. I guess I know now—and look, you’ve lost some weight. Damn, boy, you look skinny!” Lena leaned in to pinch my stomach, but Yari promptly blocked her hand with her own hand.
“You don’t have to touch,” Yari snapped at Lena.
“Wow, Yari. Down, girl. I was just playing around.”
“Nobody has time for your games,” Yari responded.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had already marked him.”
“I haven’t marked anybody. Why don’t you go find Atticai and you can play your games with him?”
“Fine. I’m going to go inside.” Lena looked at me sadly and walked off.
“You really didn’t have to do that,” I said to Yari. “She was just fooling around.”
“Look, you two can play grab ass all you want. I’m going inside, too.” Yari stormed off and I was left alone with the guy that enjoyed my arm as snack a couple weeks earlier.
“Chicks, dude.” Wyatt laughed. “I have no clue what any of that was about.”
“You’re telling me,” I said.
We shook our heads some more in one of the strangest moments of male bonding I’ve ever had, and then he showed me inside the house. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but I know I wasn’t expecting this. Except for a few dozen flickering votive candles, the whole house was completely dark. I stopped in the foyer, but Wyatt urged me along. Deeper in the house I saw that there were candles placed just about everywhere; in every room and on every table. The candles provided just enough light so that I didn’t run into furniture, but not enough to make me feel anywhere near comfortable.
What the hell was going on?
As I walked through the small party, I noticed a lot of couples making out. I had been to a lot of parties in my life but never one like this. It reminded me of a junior high make-out party. Well, everything but the insane candles.
I took my time with the wings, enjoying each bite. When I polished off the last knobby bite, I quickly downed the two or three shots of tequila I had poured and blew out of my mouth. I learned that trick a couple years back. Somehow, blowing out of your mouth and not inhaling through your nose helps with the harsh aftertaste.
Almost immediately, the tequila seemed to be doing its job. Feeling buzzed and a little more relaxed in this house of spooks, I decided to look for Yari and see if she was in a better mood. I first looked around downstairs, ignoring the folks sucking each others’ faces, but she wasn’t in the house. I peeked in the backyard but no luck. I went back inside and, still feeling buzzed, headed upstairs. The second floor was almost completely dark, and all the doors were shut. All of them except one. I had just decided to check it out when a drunk, pale-skinned, bald guy walked out of it and straight over to me. Amazingly, he leaned over me and sniffed me. Yeah, sniffed me. As he did so, he made noises that sounded disturbingly like lip-smacking. The same noises I had made just five minutes earlier when I had come across the wings. He continued on, stumbling his way downstairs. I half expected to hear him pitch forward and tumble all the way down. Somehow, amazingly, he made it.
Just then, Yari walked out of the same room the drunk guy had been in.
“You don’t want to be up here, Josiah. Let’s go downstairs.”
“No problem. I was looking for—”
But she grabbed my forearm and steered me back down the stairs. As she did so, I couldn’t help but notice the woman’s grip. Sweet Jesus she was strong. Once back down the stairs, I heard a squawk and saw two big black birds flying in the house. I nearly dove for cover, but someone calmly opened the rear sliding glass door and the birds flew out of the house. Not a single person called attention to them or seemed to care that two birds had been inside the house. I looked around to get some kind of reaction from somebody. Nothing.
What the hell was going on here?
Yari led me to one of the downstairs bedrooms. “Let’s go in here,” she said, and opened the door. The room was lit by a couple of candles in the window still, and there was a mattress with a comforter on the floor. She laid on the mattress, and I stood there looking at her dumbly. I was still trying to wrap my brain around everything I had just seen, from the candles, to the secret upstairs bedroom, to the damn birds.
One at a time, I thought.
Yari’s eyes were bright and expressive, as if she was amped up on something. So I started with the obvious question, even though I suspected I already knew the answer. “So what was going on up there? Drugs?”
“No one was doing drugs, Josiah, but trust me, people were having a good time.” She stared at me long and hard and I wondered if she was one of those having a good time. A good time doing what? “Why don’t you lie down next to me?”
“Look, if all you wanted to do was fool around, then we didn’t have to come to the world’s freakiest party to do it. We could have just stayed at my house.”
“World’s freakiest party? Is Josiah scared?”
“I’m not scared. It takes more than a few pale-faced dudes and a house that seems to have zero electricity to scare me.”
“Oh, this house definitely has electricity.” Yari took her hand and rubbed it on my upper thigh.
Yari was holding a silver flask. She reached up and grabbed a shot glass that was on the dresser next to her. “This looks clean.” She giggled and poured a sort of red alcohol into the shot glass. She handed me the shot glass. “Try it, Josiah. You’ll love it.”
“Thanks, but I had some Tequila; I’m feeling good.”
“Trust me, this isn’t Tequila.”
“I really don’t want to get wasted. I have to train tomorrow.”
“Josiah, you’ve been training real hard. Tonight have a little fun.” She got up from the mattress and slipped behind me. I was wondering what she was doing until she put her left hand around my waist. She then reached around with her right hand and held up the shot glass full of red liquor. I puckered my lips and turned my head away.
I said, “I really don’t want it.”
Yari kissed my neck. I froze. She had definitely hit the right spot. “Try it...for me...please. You know I would never hurt you.”
“Actually, I really don’t know that.”
“You really do need to trust me.” Yari slid her hand down and grabbed my inner thigh. “Please, Josiah, just one sip.”
I continued to resist the drink. And the more I resisted the higher Yari’s hand rose up my thigh, massaging as she went. I let out a long, shuddering breath. Honestly, what guy could have resisted her? I clearly wasn’t strong enough. And besides, it was just something to drink, right? If these Goth nutjobs were going to poison me, they would have done it out on the Flatlands, when I drank that weird shit.
I said, “You promise you’re not trying to kill me?”
Yari leaned even closer and whispered real softly in my right ear. “I just want you to loosen up so we can have some fun.”
Then she completely grabbed my groin. I gasped, all the breath leaving my lungs. She continued to massage. I was excited, to say the least. Then she lifted the flask to my helpless lips and gently poured the drink down my throat. It was really thick and sweet. It didn’t taste anything like alcohol.
“All right. I drank it,” I said. “So now what?”
“Now here’s where the fun starts.”
Yari took me by the hand and led me out of the room, and back to the living room, where party-goers were kissing so deeply and rhythmically, that I suspected some of them were doing the dirty right then and there. But then again, with the absence of any real light, it was hard to tell.
Yari scanned the room, looking for something. And then she found it. A beautiful blond girl who was sitting close to an equally beautiful brunette. Yari took the blond girl’s hand, who rose from the couch without hesitation or question. The blond, I could see, was lean and very sexy. She smiled at me shyly.
As Yari held our hands, she continued leading us through the undulating party, where we stopped this time in front of a sexy Latina woman who was probably in her early thirties. The blond girl nodded and reached out her own hand. There was some sort of chain reaction going on here that I wasn’t fully getting. The Latina simply nodded and took the proffered hand. Once done, Yari led the three of us back into the same bedroom with the mattress on the floor and locked the door behind us.
I think this is where I swallowed. Hard. What the hell was going on?
Yari led me to the bed. I went, to say the least, willingly. Without asking or hesitation, the Latina woman took off my shirt, and now the blond girl began kissing my chest. That’s when the room started spinning. Or maybe it was my head. And everything kept on spinning until I couldn’t see anything at all. I suspected I had been drugged but I really didn’t care, not with three women swarming around me, touching, kissing, licking. All I could do was feel. And feeling was enough. Hands all over me. My entire body groped and kissed.
“I have one rule girls,” I heard myself say from somewhere seemingly outside my body. “No biting. Everything else is fair game.”
The next two hours were the greatest two hours of my adult male life.
* * *
At some point I either passed out or fell asleep.
I opened my eyes and could finally see. I was alone in the room. I pulled out my cell from my pocket. It read 2:12 a.m. Four hours of my life gone. I got up and my legs
felt wobbly.
What the hell was in that drink?
I slowly got dressed and weeble-wobbled to the bedroom door and then made my way to the living room. There were still a lot of couples making out. Smoke from the many candles hung suspended in the air. The whole scene was surreal and bizarre and now I was a part of it. I needed fresh air. With my legs feeling a little stronger, I headed out the front door.
I stood on the brick steps and took in a lot of fresh air, which did wonders to clear my head. And that’s when I heard the sounds of crying. Off to the right, in a small patch of grass near the side of the house, was a swing hanging from the thick branch of a tree. Lena was sitting alone and crying softly, her muffled sobs reaching me easily in the quiet night air. I walked over to her.
“Hey,” I said.
Lena looked up at me. “Hi, Josiah.” She wiped her eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem like it’s nothing,” I said. “What’s going on? Where’s Atticai?”
“Atticai left with a couple of his friends.”
I looked over and noticed the van was still in the driveway.
“The van’s still here. Is he coming back?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t like to tell me what he does.”
I paused. “That’s a pretty weird party going on in there.” I didn’t mention the foursome I had had, although thanks to the power of that witchy potion I had drank, I was beginning to remember less and and less of it. Which was a damn shame.
“You have no idea,” she said. “Did you go upstairs?”
“For a moment, but Yari found me and told me I shouldn’t be up there.”
“Be glad that she did. They might not have known.”
“Not known what?” I asked.
Lena looked at me. “You really have no idea what they were doing up there?”