Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (39 page)

Emma raised her bottle and
took a careless gulp of whatever Dean had provided this time. “Play
for me
,
” she
invited.

“
You got it.”

He seated himself on a low,
cushioned stool,
summoned
the sensual
wooden
shafts
Emma was already acquainted with and
planted
his feet
on
pedals
. Emma heard the City breathe,
countless alien sounds filtered to a single, characteristic
murmur.

Dean raised his arms and
t
he
sticks
moved
with the fluidity
of
thought to produce a
music
unlike anything she had ever
heard
;
a shockingly
loud and dynamic phenomenon that harbored an infinitely subtle
language,
expertly compelled by
a
n onward,
erotic
pulse
.

She listened for an awestruck interlude,
astonished at the physicality and precision of the man before her,
realizing any woman hearing him play would anticipate a wild sexual
experience. She certainly was…

Moving closer to him, she innocently put her
hands on his shoulders, let her softly perfumed breasts trace the
writhing musculature of his back. He leaned into her embrace, and
the drums fell silent with a flourish.

Emma felt the effect of the
stillwater take hold of her, blotting out fear and confusion to
reveal an underlying happiness that had always been waiting…
“
S
how me something
else
,
” she woozily
exhorted.

Dean took this playful
demand for a challenge,
sent the
sticks
flying in an
arm-twisting syncopation around the toms,
thrashed the
high-hat
to a staccato
hiss
as
the
kick drums issued humming thunder
.
The
snare
chattered
answering rain and the big ride cymbal on the right was
the
voice
of
the night, sounding
with perfect regularity through the densest improvisations on the
rest of the instrument.
Emma
mashed
against
him, discovered
the
furious excursions of his extremities were calmly reconciled at his
abdomen.

Dean
proceeded to ornament his performance with showy accents and
maneuvers. He chopped along the toms with an untrackable
cross-armed celerity,
produced
a seamless drum roll with just one
stick
, licked cymbals with the other to
generate a funky polyrhythm off the kick,
convolved this fancy soundscape to a jaw-dropping,
stick-twirling crescendo.

He molded himself to her
breasts as the noise peaked, and Emma let him feel the rigid
interest of her nipples. She saw t
he head
of his penis loft and reached
under one arm
to
touch
it
.
He
came
fully rigid
in
her
grasp.
Emma wet her free hand with spit and oiled his penis in leisurely
disregard for the manic expression of his other limbs. Then she
proceeded to beat him off, fist rising and falling to a sleazy
tempo.

He maintained his hectic rhythm despite this
distraction, but Emma sensed she had put him in awkward territory
and mischievously attempted to exploit it. As he chopped and licked
his way to another ferocious climax she masturbated him with a firm
grip, encouraging his sexuality with a slow, even stroke that
casually defied his temporal authority. His performance was still
without obvious flaw, but she fed her lecherous countercadence back
into his body till she heard him falter, confounded by the
independent schedule of her attention.

The solo devolved to a coarse, foot-stomping
din that sounded like something a skulk might have produced, and
Emma grinned, sustained the meter of her lazily shifting fist,
balking any attempt at reconciliation. Dean groaned, missed a tom
and bounced a stick. Emma tightened her fingers, wrung him
mercilessly.

“
Oh fuck!”

His penis jerked, spat a thick, humbling jizz
before them to decorate his snare. Dean choked, muttered
indecipherably as his essence was encouraged by firm,
climax-prolonging strokes, helpfully lubricated by the first
emissions.

“
Ohhhh
fuck
…”

He sagged and his arms went
limp. Emma held him, sweating and breathing hard, till he turned
and
pushed her onto the carpet, began
kissing her with a passion
that was
overwhelming in the sudden quiet.
Hi
s lips ranged lower,
found the
level
of
her breasts, tugged
softly
at her
thick
nipple
s.

He
traced a winding path down her belly, and reaching to
his
sticks
,
took
them in either
hand
,
position
ing
the
m
across
her chest to catch
the
nipples between
, clamping them to
hoist the flesh of her bosom.

“
Yessss…” she gasped.
“I
love
a firm
grip on the tips,” Emma encouraged, instantly enamored with the
technique.

H
is
lips slipped to her pubis,
and
he
began to
pleasure
her with a
nimbly
fluttering tongue.
Her twat was drooling shamelessly and Dean lapped it up, ravished
her clitoris with an astonishing cunnilingual dexterity. The sticks
rolled slowly back and forth in his fingers to induce a
breathtaking nipple torture, complicating and magnifying the
pleasure.

Emma found herself helplessly succumbing to
this schizophrenic manipulation of her body. Bliss neared through a
fog of delight…

“
That’s it…” she willed as
he bore down on her labia with a conclusory
determination.

B
ut
the pressure on the drumsticks
waxed
prematurely, clamping her nipples to a purpled agony,
and Emma
found herself
smothering
a
n
unromantic
objection
. She desperately
accommodated the
lapse
, rephrasing
the tall musician in a
rougher image
,
selfish
and more
stringent
,
a
skulk whose
brutal tatty torture
was just the thing she needed…

She rode this notion to
climax, b
ut
the
pleasure
was
less
than expected, muddled by his untimeliness.

“
Aw, fuck… yeah.
Thanks.”

Emma
was
reasonably
sure
he
hadn’t
noticed
anything amiss
, kissed his cocky grin with as much enthusiasm as she could
summon
. Out in the hall she heard Mark
talking with Ione and Manassa, and she joined them
shortly.

Later, when the others were
asleep, Ione found herself
at the picture
window
, watching
a
stream of
naked revelers as they stumbled
down
the busy avenue spiraling about the
hill, shouting raucously to cars hurtling by, packed with
revelers.

Dean’s
convertible
was visible to one
side
, and its
blue
gnome
lurking
within. She felt a queer
anxiety forming, given sudden voice by the crashing pronouncement
of the Dowser’s pail, a sound she had already come to
detest.

The sky flickered as lightning briefly
disclosed a thick spiral of cloud. It had been raining for days
according to Dean, and Ione guessed tonight would be no exception.
She closed her eyes for a moment.

Too much change, too fast. Ione had faint
memories of the City, but couldn’t reconcile these disjointed
impressions to her present situation. Skulks were rendered men here
by some sociological phenomenon she didn’t understand, a situation
that threatened old certainties, cast her relationship with Mark in
a troubling new light.

She was not ungrateful to be safe, but
couldn’t fathom what was being traded for it, wondered at the
compromises that time might reveal. She missed her old life in the
Lap with an abrupt, helpless desire.

Ione began to shake. There was no going back,
now. It was all gone.

She took a panicked swig of stillwater and
her maddeningly dualized identity smeared to a better unified state
on a gentle wave of euphoria.

Ione stared at Dean’s green
convertible,
imagined for a moment she
was
inside, planted by its capable gnome.
Going somewhere. Anywhere. Changing context with a twist of the
wheel.

It didn’t
look
too
hard…

Status

The following morning they
held a
tactical
discussion in
Dean’s cluttered
salon.
Their host was practicing
down the hall in his music room
. The noise
was deafening even from
that distance
,
but
it
conveniently masked their discussion and served to warn of his
possible approach.
Mark
admitted
the
previous evening
had been
just as
rowdy.

“
So you had company?” Ione
prodded. Emma could tell she was determined to get things sorted
out.

“
Yeah. Just after I left you
I got picked up by these slippers—or women, I guess—on their way to
somewhere. Tried to convince them to go back for you, but there was
no more room in the car, and they weren’t exactly interested in
competition anyway. They had water, and I didn’t pay much attention
to anything else for a while,” he admitted.

“
Weren’t you self-conscious,
being naked around clothed people?” Ione questioned.

“
At first. But they told me
where they were going everyone would be nude anyway. Which was
true. We came to a dance club at the peak of the hill we’re on
right now–

“
You went out
partying?
” Ione demanded
incredulously.

“
Was it fun?” Manassa wanted
to know. Her big body was sprawled over a whole couch, cunt boldly
exposed, complicating the sightlines available to Emma while Ione
was in attendance.

“
Crazy.” Mark shook his
head. “Really, just out of control. I could barely move. All these
people shouting and drinking, and drummers going at it like skulks.
That’s where I first saw Dean, actually. He finished playing and we
bumped up in the crowd and started talking. I guess it’s not that
cool to hang out where you work—unless you work for the Dowser—so
he proceeds to convince all these women dinking around with us to
go back to his place.”

“
And with you as part of the
deal they did not fail to oblige,” Ione archly
conjectured.

Mark looked away, blushing slightly.
Regarding him after a little time apart, Emma realized that his
great charisma would stand out even in the City. It had likely been
the catalyst for whatever followed.

“
Anyway, I was pestering
Dean the whole time about going back for the three of you, but when
I told him you were out by the desert he was adamant it would have
to wait till the next day.”

“
So you brought the party
back here?” Ione confirmed.

“
Yeah.”

“
How many women?” Emma
asked.

Mark coughed, took a distracted sip of water.
“Um, maybe a couple dox or so.”

“
Oh. Just your closest
friends, then,” Ione gibed, crossing her legs. Emma had to suppress
a grin.

“
Ahem.
So
I finally drink this stuff
everyone’s been pushing on me the whole time.
Not
just water, it turns
out.”

“
Well! There we are drying
up in the desert, and you’re getting drinks pushed on you at a
party!” Emma roared in astonishment. They all laughed with her,
loosening the mood a little.

Mark completed the tale.

“
There was a lot of um,
fooling around after that… and as the night wore on I got more and
more frustrated. I just started feeling really weird. I fell asleep
then, or I don’t remember what happened anyway.” Emma wasn’t
surprised. Dean had already explained that the full effect of
stillwater was only possible for about a sixth of a day in total.
And if you did it all at once you were usually pretty tired
afterward.