Red: Burning Desire (Spectrum Series Book 7)

by Allison White

  Grinding and bumping becomes the necessity to pass through the area, so I stay away, nearly holding up the cross-chain around my neck like they are possessed by demons who want to shake their asses just one last time before being sent back to their crevices.

  By the time it hits twelve, the party grows to a massive scale. I’m pretty sure the front door is struggling to contain the amount of people scrambling inside of the house. Ty wasn’t exaggerating when he said the party would be, in his words, wicked. The floor is the Red Sea, in the sense that Solo cups, primarily red, litter the ground, more than the few bodies passed out from over-exertion.

  The smell is overwhelming: sweaty, musky, and tainted with smoke, from either cigarettes, or weed, or crack. I don’t know what people are smoking nowadays. But it must be crack, because there is a guy swinging on the crystalline chandelier above the area next to the stairs. And when he hits the ground, someone has jumped into the large pool out back while—get this—riding a dirt bike…how insane! Am I right? Or am I not drunk enough to understand either of the insane guys doped up on some kind of drugs?

  Twenty minutes past one, I am leaning against a wall on the main floor, witnessing my fellow classmates party like the world’s going to end tomorrow. I should get something to drink—strong. I did say I would party like a college student, that I wouldn’t just lay down and take whatever my parents threw at me. But a sort of precaution is holding me back. Sorry if I’m not jumping at the same liquor Chandelier Boy and Pool Boy gulped moments before almost taking their lives unintentionally.

  I remain against the wall for maybe five more minutes before the memory of my father strolling in and destroying my carefully crafted life, and I suddenly need a drink. Or two. Or three. Fuck it—let’s get a whole gallon. He didn’t have the right to do what he did. I would have flown the coop, discreetly bought a flight for Egypt or something, but something tells me they would have found me the moment I stepped foot outside the plane. My parents may be underhanded and traditionally brainwashed, but they are also very persistent.

  Ugh. I want to stop thinking about them. I want to drink, get drunk, and find my tongue down some girl’s throat. I just want to forget.

  In the kitchen, Mike and Ty are laughing at a lanky boy three inches shorter than them knocking back shots. He looks like a freshman in high school, rather than a college student. When I walk over to them, I tower over him, but really, I tower over everyone.

  “Oh, hey, freshie! You finally joined the party, huh?” Ty says jokingly, nudging me and grinning.

  “Thought I’d give it a shot.” I shrug.

  “Did someone say shot?” he shouts like a battle-cry through cupped hands around his mouth.

  People cheer and do fists pumps, though I doubt they even know the context. I don’t even know the context until Mike leans over and tells me to get ready for a wild night, then nods to another small boy who sets out small shot glasses, his hands shaking and his eyes looking like he’s seen things.

  “Who is he? And him?” I ask Mike, pointing to the two boys.

  “High school seniors,” he says loudly over the dubstep music. “They go to a school nearby and wanted college experience. So—”

  “So we made them our bitches. Gotta learn how the big dogs roll before you sprout your canines,” Ty interrupts with a smile too big to be sane. He motions us over to the line of shot glasses and begins filling them haphazardly.

  “That and they really know how to fold.” Mike shrugs.

  “That’s kind of messed up,” I say, laughing.

  “Ah, don’t worry about them. They can handle it. Aren’t I right, boys?” He flashes the lanky boys an award-winning smile, and they give weak smiles back. Oh, bless their poor souls. “Now, forget about them and let’s have one helluva night!” I’m handed two shots.

  “On three,” Mike says. “One…two…three!”

  I throw back the shots, and my nose scrunches as the lava-like substance stings my throat. Trust me when I say I will never get used to the taste. And I’ve been taking shots and drinking since I’ve been traveling. One of my biggest mistakes in doing so was drinking the strongest Russian Vodka when I was staying in Moscow. I was blacked out for two days, and when I finally woke up, my right palm was slashed open, there was a monkey in the bed with me, and a Russian girl named Anya was wearing a Scottish kilt. It’s safe to say I spent my weekend there like the men in The Hangover movies, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

  “Woo—my God, that is a bitch.” Ty wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then holds up another glass. “But we are not bitches. Drink up, fellas. We have a long night ahead of us.”

  And a long night we had.

  After flinging back one more shot, I feel loose all over and sedated. Dazed. We talk and laugh and watch the high school students do pushups with one hand, failing over and over. I slowly but surely melt away from them and find myself on the dance floor. Despite the code of the gyrating attendees, I don’t grab a girl and force myself onto her.

  I just dance by myself, which means jumping around to the loud R&B song that everyone knows the lyrics to and shouts. One large voice sweeps across the house, drawing people from the backyard and every other crevice of the mini-mansion, making the floor even more packed. It is like standing in a pack of sardines, not including the smell.

  I’ve danced and belted out the catchy pop song that girls shake their asses to for what feels like an hour before one of them backs up onto me. A petite girl with raven waist-length hair and a heavily made-up face, wearing a short red dress that covers almost nothing at all, spins around and throws her small arms around my neck. She howls the lyrics like I am, and I laugh as she tosses her head back and shakes her body against mine.

  I cautiously wind my hands around her waist, drawing her into my sweaty chest. But she doesn’t mind the sweatiness. In fact, she purrs and brings my head down so her lips are near my ears.

  “Wanna go somewhere quieter?” she whispers.

  “Show me the way.” I hold out my hand, smirking.

  Giggling, she takes it and pulls me toward the stairs that’s cluttered with couples making out against the railing, and Solo cups. I’m guessing they were too horny and couldn’t make it up the stairs. I don’t blame them, I think as we walk upstairs. She’s wearing these really lengthy glittery high heel shoes and keeps wobbling. I’m no better myself, as the liquor I knocked back maybe an hour or two ago seeps into my bones and makes me half-crippled. But I manage to grapple a hand around her waist and help us up the stairs that must lead to Heaven or Emerald City—because gosh.

  When we finally reach the top of the stairs, I look over the banister. From above, the party looks kind of like a Jay Gatsby party. Part poppers are popped into the air. Dance moves are busted out. And the music is so loud, the walls vibrate. I stand here for maybe two seconds, admiring and smiling from ear to ear, when I feel like there are eyes on me, on every inch of my body. I’m about to let this girl whose name I don’t even know drag me into an empty room when the feeling intensifies and my stomach clenches. Tightly.

  I look closer and closer, and just when the scene looks like a page from Find Waldo, I see her.

  Red.

  She’s staring at me, head cocked to the side, smirking just slightly, but enough to make my heart go crazy. My breathing hitches in my throat as I look at her outfit from earlier, but this time she’s wearing a band t-shirt. I think. It’s too crowded to be sure. But what is clear as day is the smirk on her lips. Her very red lips. Red like the vivid painting of a meadow of roses. I begin to wave at her, but the petite girl holding my hand pulls me away so I can’t see her anymore or a guy in all black sidling up to her and leads me to a bedroom. My bedroom.

  “You are so hot,” she murmurs in my ear.

  “So are you.” I smile. I try to wave the thought of Red away from my mind, but she sticks on like she’s covered in Gorilla Glue.

  The girl pushes me onto my bed and smiles
down at me. She drops to her knees, and her small hands work at my jeans zipper and button. With determination to focus on this pretty girl on her knees in front of me, I help her pull my pants and boxers down. The minute her lips find my cock and she moans lightly, the blonde girl with face piercings leaves my brain for a few minutes. Thank God. That would have been awkward if I thought about her while I was getting head from another girl.

  Like, could you imagine me fantasizing about her plump red lips? Or the feeling of her cold metal ring jutting into my bottom lip? How her golden hair would feel clutched around my fist as I fucked her mouth…

  Shit.

  I come hard after a few minutes of imagining Red’s cold piercing and vivacious painted red lips surrounding me. What the actual hell? Why am I thinking about her? I don’t even know the girl, yet one look at her prior to getting head and I’m coming like a damn hurricane.

  “Damn. That was a strong one.” The girl chuckles, gulping thickly. I should come again at the sight of her swallowing my release, but all I can do is wonder if she can sense there’s some on her cheek.

  “Sure was.” I feel stiff and stupid, so I pull her onto my lap and kiss her. And I kiss her fully. I’m not one of those timid guys who doesn’t kiss the girl after they get head. That’s just stupid and unfair and makes them feel like shit. Used. No matter how close or not I am with a girl, they don’t deserve to be treated like that.

  “I have to pee. Like, really badly,” she whines in my ear and pulls back, out of breath and eyes wide and frenzied. “But you stay,” she pauses to swallow what I think is vomit, then chuckles, “right here.” She pushes to her high heels and stumbles. I reach out to steady her, but she laughs loudly and points a finger at me. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move!”

  When the door shuts behind her, I sigh into my palms. “What the hell, Noah?” I mumble to myself. Not cool, dude. Not cool at all. “You’ve got this. You’ve got this. You’ve got…” I pause when I hear her mumble something and see light from the bathroom spread across the floor.

  “Shirt off,” she commands in a low tone, wearing nothing but…well, nothing.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I take off my shirt, and she giggles and walks over to me. She trips, but I grab her before she can fall on the floor and put her on the bed. As I take off my clothes and fuck this pretty girl, one thing just won’t stop nagging at my mind: the girl with a color for a name and that damned smirk of hers.

  Chapter Four

  Gunshots wake me up the very next day. I jolt up out of bed faster than a bullet en route. But I move too fast and my body is strangely heavier than normal, and I’m hurled off my bed. My face snaps on the floor, and I cry out and groan, but it’s all masked by the insistent shooting coming from downstairs. I figure maybe the guys are playing Call of Duty or Modern Warfare or some other stupid video game.

  As I sit up and gingerly rub my aching face, I wonder, Do they really have to have the volume up so high? And then as I stand and stretch out my limbs that are tight and lazy, I add bitterly, And why the hell are they even playing it now? They are so inconsiderate. I want to stomp down there and shoot them with a real gun. But nothing too serious.

  Ugh. Great. I’m grumpy. I guess downing shots like water and dancing in a sweaty, gross, mob pit of people has that effect. Through the tunnel of visions in my head, I remember someone swinging on a chandelier. Someone maybe jumped into a pool via helicopter? I don’t know, and they don’t make sense. Either I have really bad memory, I have slight alcohol poisoning, or I’m too hungover to think correctly. Or college kids really do party as hard as shown on TV. If so, the party in the movie Party X had nothing on the one here last night.

  I rub my eyes and moan at the muffled spike of pain behind my eyes. I need a bucket of aspirin and water. I look down at my morning wood and groan. And a nice, ice cold shower. A loud snore erupting the otherwise silent air makes me freeze, and I scramble to remember how I got in bed, naked, last night. I slowly turn on the heels of my feet and breathe out in relief. It’s just a girl; I remember us stumbling up the stairs and her giving me head and…other things. A smirk can’t help but melt onto my face like butter. So I got some last night. Self-high-five doesn’t sound too nerdy right about now.

  But as I give myself a high-five like the absolute dork I am, I see a flash of red. And I mean the color, not the girl. Well, now that I’m thinking about her too…yeah, definitely a cold shower, I decide as the memory of her smirking up at me from downstairs pops into my head like a firework. Something about the way she was looking at me makes the hair on my forearms rise for some reason. I don’t know the girl, yet I have goosebumps thinking about her and not the girl lying in my bed. She’s naked, for goodness sake!

  Frustrated and a little horny, I grab clothes from my dresser and my phone from the floor. I walk into the ensuite, lock the door, and sit on the toilet after twisting on the shower faucet. I call an Uber for the girl, whose name I am ashamed to say I don’t know, then hop into the shower. The hot water slides down my back and works out the kinks in my shoulders. I stay under the running water for maybe fifteen minutes.

  When I get out, I get dressed in a white V-neck and sweatpants, leaving my hair wet. I do run a hand towel over the forming curls for a few seconds before deciding munching on pain killers sounds more appealing. So I throw the towel in the hamper and grab the aspirin bottle and take two tablets.

  The girl is still sleeping when I walk back into the bedroom. I shake two pills out of the aspirin bottle and snag one of Ty’s bottled waters he has in his mini fridge by his bed. I leave them on my nightstand, then leave her to snore for a while and check on the Uber. The app says a guy named Craig with four stars will arrive in ten minutes. I drop my phone in my sweatpants pocket when I finally look up and around at the colossal mess the party created.

  There are more passed-out bodies and red Solo cups than wooden floor. I bypass a few puddles of what can either be piss, water-vomit, or liquor, or all of the above. A few guys are weaving around the bodies and wiping up the substances and tossing a majority of paper towels flung around aimlessly in huge garbage bags. They look almost immune to the mess. I want to help out, so I tip-toe through cans of beer and enter the kitchen.

  Mike is in the kitchen dumping half-empty plastic cups in the sink. Red is beside him, but she’s on her phone. A bolt of energy spikes my spine, and I stand up straighter, smile a little. But it drops when flashes of her lips and eyes cross my mind, while I am in bed with that girl upstairs. Oh crap. I completely forgot about that. I’m extra appreciative humans can’t read each other’s minds.

  “Hey, guys.” I wave at them to get their attention, drawing them from their barely audible conversation. They look at me as I walk over to the fridge and grab a bottle of orange juice and shut it using my hip. Mike smiles at me friendly-like, but Red just stares at me with an unreadable expression. I wish I can see what she’s thinking; she can kill me with those eyes of hers.

  “Hey! You’re up early. Mind helping to speed up the process?” Mike asks, nodding to the pile of bottles and cans beside him.

  “Sure. No problem.” I walk over to them but halt because Red’s long legs are stretched out in the short distance from the kitchen island, her body slanted with the counter behind her as leverage. “Mind if I get by?”

  “Walk around,” she mumbles, pulling out her phone. She scrolls through her phone and acts as if I’m not one foot from her. Does she act like this all the time?

  Mike snorts out a laugh that says, “Been there, buddy. Good luck.” I want him to give me a guidebook on how to handle her, but I guess I’ll just have to figure it out on my own. Should be fun, I decide as I smirk and walk over her legs, raising my knees high.

  She watches with narrowed eyes, and I laugh as I sidle up next to Mike and begin dumping out unfinished drinks people were too lazy to dump out themselves. People become so self-involved when they get a few drinks in them.

  “How was the party last night? Hav
e fun?” Mike makes conversation after a while of uncapping and dumping.

  “I actually had fun, more than I thought I would.” I toss an emptied can of cheap beer in the recycle bag. “You?”

  He shrugs. “It was the usual. They all blur together when you’ve lived here for two years.”

  “Lucky. You’ve almost got two years left.”

  “And you don’t?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Started this year.”

  “Oh, you had a gap year?” he inquires.

  “I tried to have a gap life, but yeah.” I laugh pathetically. It hurts to remember that I could be in Italy right now, waking up next to a beautiful girl and exploring Rome, maybe. I haven’t been there in a while. I would be getting gelato just because I could and visiting the Colosseum and snapping pictures as I rolled down the canals.

  Just imagining seeing the sky there gives me chest pains. I feel like a mother ripped from her child. Art is a part of me and always will be, and I’m being limited from it. Painting a girl passed out on the lawn, hair stuck to her drool, is not exactly the same as painting a beautiful girl outside of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  “Big whoop. Now you’re back in reality,” Red scoffs and pushes off the counter, glaring at her phone, then at me. “At least you got to have a gap anything. Most people don’t get that opportunity.”

  Oh Lord, I’ve pissed her off. That guidebook would be really great right about now.

  “I know. I just got so used to it. I never had the intention of even coming here,” I say honestly.

  “Well, then get used to it, prep. ’Cause you’re stuck here.” She slips her phone in her back pocket, still eyeing me with a fiery gaze. I can sense a hidden undertone in her anger toward me, but I don’t comment on it. I don’t want to piss her off even more than I already have, which I’m beginning to learn is easy.

  A piercing scream sounds, and we all look over to the entry way. Majesty stops in front of it, her hazel eyes blown wide, makeup smudged. “We’ve gotta go before Ty wakes up.”