Hyper

by Lawrence Ambrose

  We were cruising into "mansion alley." The huge houses occupied the oversized lots with a startling variety of shapes, colors, and landscapes – some traditional or colonial, others modern, and a few just plain freaky. The driveway Georgia pulled into led to a collection of cubes stacked on each other. On the freakier end, I thought.

  One of the two garage doors opened and we rolled in.

  "Be right back," she said. She paused after scrambling out, squeezing her legs together as if battling an explosive bladder. "You want to use the bathroom?"

  "No, I'm okay."

  Rising would've entailed pole-vaulting in my present condition. Or was I being too generous with myself? My current plan was to take off the instant she was out of sight. I should be close enough to get home safely, and spending any more time alone with Georgia Selby struck me as a bad idea. I could thank her again later by phone.

  The moment the house door closed behind her, I slid out of the seat and headed for the open garage door. I froze as a police cruiser rolled up, blocking the driveway. A quick calculation placed the odds of that happening coincidently as roughly one hundred trillion to one. That was the fun of probability theory: the wildly improbable happened all the time. Or maybe it just happened around me?

  I had time for other calculations. First and foremost, I was okay. Lacking any clear identification of the guy they were chasing downtown, they couldn't prove anything about me. My getaway was fait accompli, as the French would say. Second, there was nothing legally or morally questionable about my being here. No need to panic or run.

  The cop that stepped out of the car was female. Somehow that figured. She was slim and short, possibly Hispanic, and of course cute. Which reminded me of the persistent tightness in my jeans. I edged sideways and leaned against the wall, acting casual. A slight, quizzical frown formed on the female officer's face as she approached.

  "I'm Officer Gabriella," she said. "Is Ms. Selby home?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you her son?"

  "No. Just a neighbor."

  She stopped a few feet away, looking puzzled. Her eyes lingered on my groin. I pressed closer against the dividing wall between the two garage doors.

  "Are you okay?" she asked.

  "Fine." I stopped my gulp halfway. "Why do you ask?"

  "You seem a little nervous."

  "Oh, well..." I forced a smile, digging into my verbal bag of tricks. "I guess I'm not used to police officers being so pretty."

  She blushed, her puzzled frown twitching into a weak smile. She brushed a stray lock of hair off one eyebrow. The house garage door opened and Georgia emerged in a brisk walk that gathered moss with each step when she noted her visitor. Her expression turned wintry.

  "Can I help you, Officer?"

  "Ms. Selby, I'm Officer Gabriella Tomassi. I have some questions about the incident at the Narcissus which I'd like to discuss with you."

  "I have some questions myself," said Georgia. "But I'm tired and we'll need to resume tomorrow. You can have Captain Arnold contact me in the morning and we'll set up a meeting."

  Georgia's hard smile lent a predatory light to her eyes, I thought. She looked like a beautiful but deadly bird of prey.

  "Okay, Ms. Selby. Jefferson P.D. will be in contact with you."

  Officer Gabriella turned from her, giving me a shy mile before starting back to her car. Georgia stood beside me, and we both watched the police cruiser drive away.

  She turned to face me, smiling as though she knew I'd been about to run off. It was the first time the light had been good enough to see the color of her eyes: a pale, almost grey-brown with golden streaks. A surrealistic version of hazel, I guessed. With her sharp nose and firm, somewhat broad jaw line she actually did resemble a pretty hawk or something. Though her skin was smooth and tight, I had the impression she was older than I'd first thought. Maybe closer to forty than thirty. But that made her just that much more sexy.

  Georgia's eyes drifted downward, and her smile grew even more wondering. I turned a bit to my left to reduce my exposure.

  "That's not helping," she said. "The bulge is even more obvious from the side."

  I coughed out a laugh. I untucked my shirt and let it drape over my groin.

  "Still not helping." She broke out laughing. "Come on, let's go inside for a minute. I have some chamomile tea that might calm you down a bit. You wouldn't want to go home to your parents in that state, would you?"

  "Mom," I said. "That's the only parent I live with."

  "Even worse."

  I gave her a wan smile. She nodded to the door.

  "Okay," I said, with a deep feeling of doom.

  Georgia had me sit at a steel and glass table in her kitchen that struck me as more of a sculpture than a table. She filled two mugs, dropped in tea bags, but after heating them in the microwave she pulled a flask of purple liquid I assumed was alcohol from a cabinet and splashed some in one cup.

  "How about some of that for me, too?" I asked, surprised by my audacity.

  She raised an eyebrow. "It's brandy."

  "I figured it was something like that."

  Georgia smiled at me for a long moment before shaking her head. "I'm already dealing with accusations of underage people in the Narcissus. Oh, well. Alcohol supposedly has a dampening effect on male estrus pheromones."

  She sprinkled some brandy in the other cup and carried them both over, sitting across the table from me. She raised her cup. I raised mine, and we gently clicked. I ventured a quick sip. It tasted strange, but then I'd never tasted hard alcohol before. Did brandy even qualify as "hard alcohol"? Another research project.

  "What do you think?" Georgia was smiling over her cup at me.

  "I don't know." I took another sip. "It's better than beer, I guess."

  "Are you a beer drinker?"

  "Sometimes."

  Georgia studied me. I was used to girls or women looking at me curiously or intensely or desirously, but she seemed to be doing more than that. She dabbed at another bead of sweat forming between her pale hazel eyes.

  "You're different from other boys, aren't you?" she asked in a soft voice.

  "I prefer 'proto-adult.'"

  She chuckled into her tea. "I think you just reinforced my point. But seriously, taking private sessions with a university professor, running from the police...and there's something else. You're putting out something way beyond the norm. My nostrils are actually tingling. And they're not the only thing tingling."

  I nearly dropped my cup. Her face flushed.

  "I really didn't mean to say that. Damn."

  "It's okay." My body had gone beyond tingling. It was as if one of my toes was stuck in an electrical outlet. "I can have that effect on people."

  "So you're aware you're putting out something unusual?"

  "Yes."

  "Um, good. I was beginning to wonder if I was going crazy. I mean, you're a good-looking kid – sorry, proto-adult – but that wouldn't explain it. No offense."

  "No," I said. "The truth is..." I choked down a breath. "I'm hyper."

  Georgia sat back in her chair, her face a mask of disbelief. "No way."

  "I guess I could've explained sooner."

  "That would have explained a few things." She smiled and sagged in her chair with apparent relief. "Thank God. So I'm not entirely a perv."

  "Being hyper is the perversion. A perversion of the natural order of things anyway."

  "Not a lot natural about male estrus, true." She frowned at me. "So you're Jefferson's one famous hyper. I remember reading or hearing a rumor we had one."

  "Yeah." I resisted another sigh. "That's me. I'm surprised no newspaper person has tried to interview me."

  Georgia pushed a lock of blond hair back from her forehead and continued her study of me. "I can't believe it. A hyper is sitting across the table from me. I've never even seen one in person. I'd probably have better odds being struck by lightning."

  "You might actually be right about that."

/>   She smiled and slid her gaze away from me, leaning back sideways in her chair. We finished our teas in silence. I tried not to stare at her shapely legs through the glass table.

  "How's your problem doing?" she asked.

  The sensation of arousal had been such a constant this evening that I'd mostly stopped paying attention. A glance down confirmed the worst. "Uh...well, it's still, uh, unchanged."

  Georgia nodded and smiled as if that was expected. "It must be very strange being you."

  "Sometimes it seems like I'm in someone else's body." I paused. "Or someone else's life."

  "Even I feel that way sometimes. I never planned on being an attorney for nightclub businesses, believe me."

  "The estrus nightclub business, you mean?"

  She smiled and shook her head. "There is no other kind of nightclub business, Aiden. Only men in heat go clubbing now. Not that people don't still go to bars to get drunk, but not nightclubs."

  "That's logical, I guess."

  Georgia added some brandy into both our cups. My protest stalled on my lips. I didn't want this – whatever it was – to end yet. I was getting a mental hard-on along with my physical one – something I wasn't sure had ever happened with a woman before. Maybe a little with Dr. Stephanie, but I couldn't even talk to her like a regular person – a friend. Was it the brandy?

  "Are you going to tell me now why you were running from the police?"

  I raised my eyes to meet her penetrating gaze. I had the sudden sense she had X-ray vision and was seeing through to my core. I wondered what my core looked like now.

  "It's okay," she said. "Consider it attorney-client privilege."

  "I met this girl in the park," I said. "She was running from the cops. While we were hiding behind this tree it got sort of..."

  "Up close and personal?"

  "Yeah." I shrugged. "You probably know it's illegal for an underage hyper to have sex. And that would've been my second offense, so..."

  "Five-year sentence, if memory serves."

  "So you can understand why I ran."

  "Of course, it's illegal for an adult to have sex with an underage hyper, too."

  She said that with a sharp smile that verged on a wink.

  "I know." I felt a guilty twinge as I thought of Mary. Fortunately, she'd only served three months in the county jail before being released for "good behavior."

  "The belief that something constructive comes from that statute has never made sense to me," said Georgia. "Hypers are known to be infertile and disease-free because of their jazzed-up immune system. And there're such a tiny number of them. So who, exactly, are they protecting?"

  I thought of Ragnar saying the same thing and smiled. "I think that law sucks, too, but then the power I have over most women is pretty freaky. I'm not sure they don't deserve some protection."

  "That's very considerate of you." Georgia's smile was impish and skeptical. "And I can confirm the strength of your power. But people also have the power to choose. I agree it would be unfair of you to unleash this on some young innocent girl, but adults should bear full responsibility for their choices."

  I liked the idea of adult responsibility a lot. Every "relationship" I'd had was with an adult, except for Gertie. But even Gertie was a year older than me. When you stepped back and thought about it, why should I be the one wallowing in guilt? Shouldn't the adults be more responsible than a silly lust-filled teenager like me? It was an awfully comforting thought, yet even now, with someone as intelligent and worldly as Georgia telling me it was true, I had trouble buying into it.

  "Well, I better get you home." Georgia wobbled a little as she rose. "Speaking as the responsible adult."

  She walked around the table, her fingers touching the glass top as if to balance herself. I stood up – and the room shifted.

  "Steady, big boy." Georgia grasped my left arm. "Maybe you should sit back down for a minute."

  I started to sit, but misjudged the chair's location – could've sworn it was still directly beneath me – and when I started to fall, Georgia yanked me back to my feet. That knocked her off-balance, and she tripped backwards onto the table. As she landed on the glass, I had a horrific vision of it shattering and stabbing her with a dozen steak knife-sized shards as she fell through.

  But the table held with barely a quiver. And she was lying with her legs and dress drawn up right in front of me at waist height. Her semi-transparent panties didn't leave much to my imagination. It was as if someone had meticulously posed her for an old porn magazine pussy shot. Someone artistically talented.

  To complete that image, Georgia slid her panties down to her knees. I stared, transfixed, at what had been fully revealed.

  "Little help?"

  For an instant I thought she meant to help her sit up...but considering the circumstances that seemed illogical. Her giggle directed me to the correct interpretation. I tugged her panties down her smooth thighs and muscular calves and past her high heels. I was so turned on that I was close to losing it. She smiled at my painfully swollen groin.

  "I'd say it's about time to free that hungry monster."

  "But your table..."

  "Don't worry. It's bullet-proof glass."

  THE MONSTER was freed, exhausted, resuscitated, spanked, and finally semi-tamed. I lay exhausted in Georgia's bed – a bed so large that it could've been rented out as a living space. She was sprawled a few feet from me, sleeping. Her long, deep breaths flirted with but didn't quite achieve a snore.

  Georgia had come the closest to matching my sexual energy of any woman so far. She didn't start to wind down until after the fifth or sixth time, matching me gasp for gasp, thrust for thrust, and – I guessed from her cries – orgasm for orgasm. Watching her naked backside now I did feel myself stirring, but it was more of a pleasant suggestion than a demand.

  A distant strain of classical music carried into the bedroom. It took me a moment to recognize the Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute – my ring tone. My phone was in my backpack on Georgia's kitchen floor.

  Oh, crap. I knew who was calling me. Mom. The clock by the bed told me that ninety minutes had passed since I'd arrived here. It was now a bit past nine. I was only a couple of hours late. I should be able to play this off.

  I considered waking up Georgia to say goodbye, but the appeal of a clean and quick getaway was too strong. I could always call her later. Or maybe not. She was an adult, as she'd said. I was merely a "proto-adult," and needed to think this through.

  A barefoot walk on cool grey-blue marble carried me to my backpack and my Mozart-singing cell in its side-pocket.

  "Hey, Mom," I said.

  "Where are you?"

  "Just walking. I ran into a friend and we had some ice cream and talked for a while."

  "Why didn't you call?" Disbelief and hope mixed in her voice. She wanted to believe the best. I could build on that.

  "Just got caught up talking. And it's not that late."

  "It is when you should've been home two hours ago, Aiden. We've talked about this."

  "Yeah. Well, I'll see you soon."

  "Okay. Make it soon."

  After locking Georgia's front door behind me, I jogged home without incident. My mom, of course, was waiting, sipping coffee and pretending to read the newspaper on the living room couch.

  "Hey," I said, not breaking my stride toward my room as I entered. "I think I'll crash. It's been a long day."

  "That's fine. Go ahead and get out of your pack and coat. But then come back here. I want to talk to you."

  "Uh..." I knew that any excuses would just inflame her bloodhound instincts. "Sure."

  My sister, naturally, popped into the hall as I approached my room. She sniffed.

  "What's that smell?"

  My heart skipped a beat or two. "What smell?"

  She moved closer, nostrils flared, inhaling odeur de Aiden.

  "Musk," she said, her face inches from my neck.

  "I've been running." I pushed her
back not all that gently and ducked into my room. She followed.

  "Doesn't smell like running." Melanie inhaled the air and made lip-smacking sounds as if wine-tasting. "Hmm. I'd have to say it smells like sex."

  "My Andrydox might be wearing thin. You're probably getting a whiff of pheromones."

  "I doubt it. Besides, you get this that weasely look when you're lying, and right now you look like the Weasel Prince. Plus, you're blushing."

  I'd almost never wanted to commit a violent act against my sister, but this was definitely one of those times. I imagined grabbing her by the hair, throwing her down on the bed, and –

  D'oh! I ground my teeth, brushing past Melanie into the bathroom. I took my time washing my face, combing my hair, and adding some deodorant. I checked myself out in the mirror. Yeah, that was the look. All preppy and innocent. I hoped it would do the trick.

  Mom closed her newspaper and regarded me coolly. I sat in the recliner facing her.

  "May I ask whom you were having ice cream with?"

  "Just a friend from my calculus class last quarter."

  "Male? Female?"

  "Ah, female. Xandra Moore. Don't think I mentioned her to you."

  "No, you didn't. But then you don't mention a lot of things to me. How old is this girl?"

  "Around twenty." I sighed under my mom's stern, eyebrow-raised stare. "And yes, Mother, I did have a thing for her. But it was never reciprocated, for once. Maybe because I never used my 'special powers' on her."

  "Why not?"

  "I wanted it to be real. Just that once."

  My mom's stern stare softened. She nodded. I had her sympathy now, but I could tell from her stiff posture that the battle wasn't quite won.

  "So you talked with her for almost two hours?"

  "Not that long. I walked for a while afterward."

  My mom's nose was twitching. "What am I smelling?"

  Stay cool. "I don't know. My Andrydox might've worn off."

  She shook her head. "It smells like alcohol. Liqueur."

  I sagged. So close. And here I thought my bloodhound metaphor had been merely metaphorical.

  "Probably just Xandra's or someone else's perfume."

  "Come over here."