Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (37 page)

Emma sniffed. “We’ve had all kinds of water,
anyway.”

“
This is different.
It
remembers
.”

“
Remembers what?” Ione
retorted.

“
C’mon! Let us try!” Manassa
demanded, stamping her feet.

“
Yeah, don’t be stingy,”
Emma wheedled, flashing a winsome smile.

“
Oh, fuck. Alright,” Dean
reluctantly agreed, swishing the bottle speculatively. “Only a bit
left anyway.”

They each got a swallow. Ione wondered at its
sublime effect on her palate—not a flavor exactly, but different
from pure water in some indefinable way. She decided it was
good.

The traffic
slow
ed
for a bit
,
restrained
by
a shadow lean
ing
over them
from far across the
metropolis, thrown by the setting sun
.
Ione felt her awareness of time and
place deepen, a faint but definite hyperlocalization.
“What
’s
happening?
”
she
asked, and Dean
pointed
.

“
It’s
the shadow of
the Gnomon’s Tower, the
largest building in the valley. I
ts
reach is
weak
here
, but if you go a
nywhere near the place you
’ll
experience its effect
more
personally
.” Dean shrugged it off.
“Creepy,” he muttered, but it didn’t bother Ione.

A trio of women pulled close in a red sedan,
bantering noisily. Ione had already noticed that ladies drove cars
as typically as men, displayed daring levels of personality when
protected by velocity and steel.

“
Hey, gorgeous!” one called
to Dean. “Wanna party?”

“
Come on over!” Manassa
belted. Ione chuckled at the thought as a strange, reckless feeling
lifted her exhaustion. The other women laughed and sped on to
wherever they were going.

Dean
wove through traffic with quick bursts of acceleration,
arresting just as suddenly when required. The sun departed and more
g
low g
nomes blinked
into service, beaming wide pools of radiance
onto roads and homes and buildings
in
dauntless defiance of the night. The convertible’s big side-windows
put them on constant display, and Ione became gradually aware their
group was drawing an unusual level of interest.

Emma picked up a thin wooden rod she
discovered among the clothing under her seat, elegantly tapered
like a long penis. “What’s this?”

“
It’s a drum stick,” replied
Dean.

“
What’s it do?” wondered
Manassa, grabbing it from Emma.

“
I’m a musician,” he
explained with a pride no one could miss. “I play the drums.” He
proceeded to explain drumming in more detail as they drove and Ione
realized the gear lying around the convertible served this
avocation.

Goaded by the Dowser’s drink, stirred by the
tight embrace of her panties and the sensual vibration of the
vehicle, she found herself inconveniently libidinous. She hadn’t
gotten off since they left the Laplands. As they made their way
lower into the valley her imagination wandered to a gleaming little
toy she had spied under her seat among the clothing. After a
little, in the relative privacy afforded by the street-gazing of
the other women, she contrived to acquire it; a solid metal bulb
with a curved extension terminating in a thick ring. Called a
finger, it was mostly used for sexual conditioning, but in the
present situation…

When the moment was right she turned to
conceal her right side, lifted her hem and slipped the toy within
her panties, feeding the smooth bulb into her vagina. Its
finger-like appendage curved up her vulva to press the metal loop
down about her clitoris.

The weighty device shuddered from the effect
of the gnome’s athletic cranking, a vibration that was delicately
conveyed to her womanhood by its rigid curve. The periodic bounce
of the convertible over inconstancies in the road induced a random
vitality to the effect, and she leaned back, arms sprawled wide, a
faint smile on her face.

“
Look over there,” Dean
pointed.

“
Wow!” Emma involuntarily
remarked
as the busiest part of the City
was spectacularly revealed around a hard
bend
in the highway.
Ione had to agree.

C
ars
hustled
along
in many lanes
now
.
Round
t
owers thrust into the night air, densely
gathered about one of their
number
, built to a scale that couldn’t
be
reckoned
even
at
a
distance.
A
t the center of the metropolis
Ione saw a vast grove of
fog-shrouded
flora that issued vapor
in a slow dance to endow a wheeling mass of
cloud
s.

A
low, gleaming vehicle with an open top
pulled alongside them
,
filled with
raucously
shouting
men
. “Look at that slipper!” one
appreciatively observed, pointing to herself.

“
Wanna race?” the driver
shouted.

Ione had already identified a minimal but
widely acknowledged transportational culture that functioned to
blur the line between skulk and man in the context of the road. She
waited to see what might happen, preoccupied by the steady romance
of the finger at her vulva, now expectantly drenched.

“
You’re on!” Manassa raged,
clambering over Emma to thrust herself out the window, dress
flapping noisily in the wind. The smaller woman opportunistically
assaulted her ass, flogging its bounty with unrestrained zeal as
Manassa’s huge legs danced with rowdy impatience on the padded
seat.

“
Go! Go! Go!” she yelled,
thumping Dean’s headrest.

He stomped on the pedals, cranking
spastically, and they were hammered back with a force Ione could
not have anticipated. Manassa tumbled with a shout and they quickly
equaled their competitor’s position, kept pace as the City flew
by.

“
You suck!” Manassa
blustered over the noise. Emma jeered at the men, laughed till her
throat caught.

The convertible, motivated
to a furious shudder by its macho operator, induced a hard
resonance in the toy between Ione’s legs, which fingered her
clitoris with a lively, secondhand tremor. “
Ohhh fugg…
” she groaned, momentarily
unable to contain her excitement.

“
Oh
yeah!
” Dean echoed, accelerating
again. The finger was agitated to a new urgency and Ione stiffened
in proximity to climax, desperate to pull it off
somehow.

“
Go, Dean!” Emma
bawled.

Ione closed her eyes, let the welling bliss
in her clamped pubis develop unchecked by caution. Orgasm lingered
tantalizingly within reach as they raced on.

Another vehicle pulled close on her side of
the convertible, packed with goggling men.

“
Whoohoo,
look
at those bitches!”
one shouted.

He smiled avariciously at her, and Ione was
abruptly glad she was protected by the convertible, knowing that
these skulks—for it was obvious only the structure and protocols of
the City rendered them peaceable—would have terrified her back in
the Lap. But here the danger only added to the runaway thrill of
the moment…

Manassa clambered over her to confront them.
“You got a problem?” she truculently inquired. Her knees set the
seat lurching, and her sprawling breasts filled Ione’s immediate
view. Dean had brought no lingerie capacious enough to restrain
them.

The men in the adjacent vehicle cheered
lustily, and the total effect of so much stimulation—amplified by
whatever Dean had given them to drink—put her over the edge, to a
place where she no longer cared who detected the ecstasy swirling
in her lap. She bounced up and down on the cushions as Manassa
kneed about, letting flesh connect where chance provided, wound up
with a huge tit in her face. Ione opened her mouth to let a thinly
veiled nipple between her teeth.

“
Mmmmmnnnn,” she breathed,
mindlessly sucking the stiffened tip as orgasm suffused her crotch.
The pleasure crested, dallied timelessly, diminished at last to a
satiated warmth as Manassa locked eyes with her in amazement,
unavoidably aware of Ione’s passion. But the big woman turned away
when someone shouted again from the rival car, sparing Ione any
further awkwardness. Emma hadn’t seen a thing.

“
Fuck!” Dean suddenly
cursed. The convertible slowed.

“
What?” Ione queried in
alarm, blinking as the other women hurriedly settled back in their
seats. Ahead she could see cars were being randomly stopped by
large men, imposingly dressed in formal, crimson suits. People were
being called out of their vehicles to be examined in intimate
ways.

“
Mannermen,” said Dean with
a mixture of annoyance and fear in his voice. Ione tensed as a pair
of pastel green panties were held up for inspection. A woman stood
naked on the sidewalk, shifting in humiliation.

Dean turned, looked them over, lingering on
Manassa’s barely restrained anatomy. “Keep quiet and don’t make eye
contact.”

Ione reached down, removed the finger from
her vagina with a clandestine tug, dropped the gleaming little toy
under the seat. “Who do they work for?” she whispered.

Dean shrugged. “No one knows.”

One of the mannermen turned to their vehicle
as it neared, soberly scrutinizing its interior. His eyes widened
at the sight of the women and he muttered urgently to his comrades,
who swiveled to regard them. Then they stepped toward the
convertible as one being.

“
Oh, fuck
this
…” Ione whispered,
terrified.

Dean swiveled to regard the oncoming lane.
“You got it,” he promised and hammered on the pedals. They
screeched into the oncoming lanes. Gnomes blared their indignation
as cars were forced to swerve out of the way. Dean returned to the
correct side of the road once they were out of view of the
mannermen.

“
What happened?” Ione
demanded.

“
I don’t know exactly. But I
think they wanted to check
her
out,” he gestured to Manassa, who seemed
completely unintimidated by the notion. “Her nipples were pretty
obvious, and you can’t get away with that in this part of town.
Sorry I didn’t bring a bra that fit,” he apologized.

“
They really gave me the
creeps,” Emma said, snuggling close to Ione for protection. She put
a protective arm around her lover.

Dean wove skillfully through traffic, and the
tense confrontation soon lapsed from consideration as new features
of the City materialized.

They were now winding
through a series of densely populated elevations.
In their midst an enormous hill reared, lined with
stately homes and buildings
that
ascend
ed
a tightly spiraling avenue to the top, where
a
colossal,
round
edifice
dominated
the
skyline
.
As
they stared
a thunderous clang
issued
from its
direction,
washing
over
them
to
the distant reaches of the City
. They had
heard it many times already as they waited by the desert, but here
the effect was awe-inspiring.

“
The Dowser’s
bucket
,
”
Dean eagerly explained.
“Huge thing hanging in the middle of his bar. It hauls
stillwater up from a reservoir under the hill—that’s the stuff you
just drank, but in pure form.” Ione
was
bemused
by
the
lofty
grandeur
of
the
place,
hovering high
over a multitude of
imitators
.
“Hottest
dance club in the City,” Dean added, staring up
wistfully.

There were people
everywhere
about them
now
, clogging the sidewalks, shouting and
laughing, crossing the streets when
glow
gnomes
directed
, and sometimes when they
didn’t. New dress
standards
were in evidence; the dull
conservati
sm
of the
outer neighborhood
s
had given way to
sophisticated
fashions
closer to the
park, which lapsed to
bolder,
more revealing outfits as they ascended a well-lit
hill directly adjacent to the Dowser’s prominence.