Authors: Bryan Smith
“Hey, motherfuckers.”
The men visibly tensed when Dez called out to them. Each of them took an unconscious step backward. One guy shifted his grip on the whiskey bottle’s neck in a way that indicated he meant to use it as a weapon if necessary. He was slender but handsome with a day’s worth of dark stubble on his square chin. His shift to a defensive posture was instinctive, but the glint of fear in his eyes betrayed him. This wasn’t a dude accustomed to mixing it up with anyone. Same went for his equally timid-looking friends. All were well-dressed and carefully groomed. Coupled with their proximity to the Corvette, their appearance indicated a not-inconsiderable degree of upward mobility.
The guy with the whiskey bottle raised his other hand in a warding-off gesture. “Whoa, hold up. Let’s not get crazy here.”
Dez laughed and snatched the whiskey bottle from his hand. Echo was surprised when she took a deep slug from it and passed it back to him. She had expected her to smash it across his face. It would have been a very Dez-like thing to do, after all, especially when she was this amped up. “What’s your name, pretty boy?”
The guy shot his friends a wary glance. “Um…Cameron?”
“You don’t sound sure. Is that your name or not?”
Another wary glance at his friends. “Um. Yes. It is.”
Dez blew smoke at him, making him cringe. “Cameron. Huh. What kind of preppy fag name is that?”
“I’m not gay.”
Dez mocked him by repeating the words in a tone meant to emulate the voice of a mentally slow person. “
I’m not gay
.” She sneered. “Bullshit.”
Cameron frowned. “But it’s not bullshit. Why else would I have been in a strip club paying naked ladies to shake their tits in my face?”
Dez shrugged. “Overcompensating?”
Cameron shook his head. “No. That’s not it.”
Dez dropped her half-smoked cigarette and ground it out beneath her heel. She then snatched the bottle from Cameron again and took another deep drink. This time she didn’t pass it back to him. She tilted her chin at his friends. “Tell me the truth, fellas. Your friend here. Cam. He’s a flamer, isn’t he?”
Cameron’s friends laughed at this. One of them—a blond guy who sort of looked like a displaced California surfer dude—smirked and said, “Well, he’s never shown any blatant tendencies, but I guess you never really know.”
Dez laughed. “And what’s your name, sexy?”
“Ogden.” He tilted his head toward the dark-haired guy next to him. “And this is Micah.”
Echo had to laugh. She was still anxious, but this initial exchange with the guys seemed to have calmed Dez somewhat. “Micah. Ogden. Cameron. Those are Ivy League frat-boy names. What’s up with that? You’re not from around here, are you?”
Cameron folded his arms and leaned against the Corvette. Along with his friends, he had picked up on Dez’s mellower mood. He felt safe now. He wasn’t safe at all, Echo knew, but it was good that he believed it. “Actually, we are. We’re just all from very wealthy families.”
Dez nodded approvingly. “Well, well. Mr. Moneybags.” She pursed her lips and gave Cameron an exaggeratedly lascivious once-over. “You know what, fellas? It’s your lucky night.”
The mood of the guys turned palpably more wary at that statement. Nervous looks passed between them before Cameron said, “Are you…whores?”
Dez and her friends burst out laughing.
Dez shook her head. “We’re not whores.”
Cameron frowned. “Oh.”
“Doesn’t mean we won’t fuck you.” Dez shrugged, a playful look on her face. “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. Just kind of depends on how things go.”
Cameron extended his neck and scratched his chin. It was a nervous gesture. The girls plainly saw interest beneath a veneer of calculated aloofness. “What makes you think we’d want to fuck you?”
Ogden coughed and raised his voice. “Um…can I just go on record as saying I’d very much like to have sexual relations with any one of you lovely ladies should you be willing?”
The women laughed.
Cameron glared at him. “Ogden…”
Ogden glared right back at him. “What? Look at them. They’re gorgeous. Like we’re really gonna blow them off.” He smiled and looked at Dez. “What do you ladies have in mind? Why is this our ‘lucky night’?”
Dez beamed at him. “Thank you so much for cutting through the bullshit, Ogden. I may have to take a special interest in you. As for why it’s your lucky night…well, you boys have just come from a place where you pay women to remove their clothes. Since you’re all obviously fans of that kind of thing—with the possible exception of Cameron—you’ll be happy to hear my friends and I are all professional exotic dancers.”
Cameron’s brow furrowed. “You’re strippers?”
Dez gave him a dubious look. “Yes, Cam. We’re strippers.”
“Huh.” Ogden smiled as he gave their bodies a closer appraisal. “You do all have that look about you, now that you mention it. Nice tattoos, by the way.”
Dez smiled. “You like girls with tattoos, Ogden?”
Ogden’s expression was almost smug now. The boy clearly fancied himself a bit of a player, smoothly confident with an effortless ability to charm the ladies. What he didn’t know about Dez—aside from her default preference for vagina—was that when she did indulge her latent heterosexual side, she never went for preppy guys. He also was clearly failing to sense the predatory side of her personality.
“Like them?” He laughed. “Nothing sexier, in my opinion.”
“Cool. I like you, Oggie. Do you mind if I call you Oggie? Of course you don’t.” Dez took a big gulp from the whiskey bottle and passed it to him. “So…you boys live around here?”
Cameron snatched the bottle from his friend and held it close to his body in an effort to keep it out of grabbing range. “Why do you ask?”
Dez shrugged. “Just thought maybe we could continue the party elsewhere. Our original plans for the night got mysteriously cut short.”
Cameron grunted. “Why should we have anything to do with you? I mean, I admit it’s tempting to take advantage of whatever you’re offering, but let’s not forget you pulled a fucking gun on me.”
Dez sighed. “Whatever. Technically I just showed you a gun. I never took it out of my purse.”
Cameron shook his head as she spoke. “I know you think you’re being cute now, but that was still a pretty fucked-up thing to do. Look, no hard feelings or anything, but I think we’re better off going our separate ways.”
Ogden slugged Cameron in the shoulder, making him wince. “Speak for yourself, man. Don’t be such a fucking pussy.” He shot a glance back at Micah. “What do you say, Mike? It’s your folks’ place we’re staying at, so it’s your call, bro.”
Cameron groaned in disgust. “And so our fate was sealed.”
Micah was the shortest of the three by a few inches. You could tell he was self-conscious about it. His gaze locked on Dez’s impressive breasts for a moment. An obvious effort of will was required to lift his gaze and look her in the eye. “Here’s the thing. My parents are in Europe for a few weeks. Since school is out, I agreed to housesit while they’re gone. They’ve got a really nice place with a lot of expensive shit in it.”
Echo couldn’t help smirking as she thought,
That’s very good to know, Micah. Thanks for being so helpful.
Micah’s reluctance to invite them to the parental palace was obvious. “I don’t know, maybe we could all just go to a bar somewhere instead. I’d hate to wreck my parents’ place with some kind of crazy sex party.”
A moment of uneasy silence followed this pronouncement. Partying with these clowns in some lame upscale bar was not what any of the girls had in mind. Conferring with Dez on the subject wasn’t necessary to know that. The goal now was to somehow seal the deal in a way that would squash any concerns Micah had regarding his parents’ property.
Dez dropped to her knees in front of Micah, eliciting shocked gasps from his friends. She tugged his zipper down, reached through the fly of his jeans, pushed his underwear out of the way and pulled out his cock. This occurred with a practiced swiftness so impressive it rendered everyone momentarily speechless. Even her friends had trouble believing what Dez was doing right out in the open.
Then she took him into her mouth.
Micah groaned and arched his back as he grabbed on to the sides of Dez’s head to keep from falling over. She swatted his hands away and continued to work his pole with devastating skill. The look on Micah’s face made it clear the ecstasy he was experiencing was nothing short of mind-bending.
Echo’s shock soon gave way to concern. This was happening outdoors in a very public place. There were voices nearby. Cars were continuing to enter and leave the parking lot. Someone would notice.
Sure enough, in a few moments a booming male voice called out to them. “Hey! Hey! What’s going on there?”
Echo realized there was something familiar about the voice of the interloper when it called out to them again. She turned her head and smiled as she recognized the bouncer who had booted them from Vixens. His intrusion wasn’t good news, but seeing him sent a tremor of inappropriate excitement through her anyway. This was in part a product of the dangerous edginess they’d all been feeling. But the bigger part of it was that seeing him awakened the taste for brutal violence she’d acquired since hooking up with Dez.
The bouncer brushed past her and took hold of Dez by the shoulders, pulling her away from Micah and jerking her roughly to her feet. “You fucked up, you skanky ho. Should’ve gotten lost while you had the chance. Now I’m calling the cops on your ass.”
Dez pouted. “I’m sorry.”
The bouncer’s laugh had a nasty edge. “Too late for sorry. You’re going to jail, bitch.”
Dez shook her head. “No, I meant I’m sorry I’m not gonna get to take my time with you. Skinning you alive would have been fun.”
Echo noticed Dez already had her hand in her purse. She saw her hand flex as she squeezed the trigger of the gun, shooting the bouncer through the purse. The loud report startled the preppy boys, making them stagger backward as they gaped at the big wound in the bouncer’s belly. Dez remained nonchalant as she pulled the gun from her purse and shot him again, this time in the face.
Cameron shrieked as the big man’s body toppled over.
Dez swiveled calmly around and shot Cameron through the throat. He fell backward and landed on the Corvette’s hood, lying there frozen for a moment before sliding off it to the ground. By the time Cameron’s friends thought to flee, it was already too late. Echo and Lana had their own guns out and aimed at them.
Micah started crying.
Echo smashed her gun across his face, shattering teeth as blood came out of his mouth. She then jammed the barrel under his chin and scowled. “You and your friend get Cameron in the Corvette. We’re going for a ride.”
Micah cried some more.
Echo hit him with the gun again.
Micah and Ogden finally understood that instant obedience was their only option. Anything else meant either more brutal punishment or a bullet through the head. And they had already seen enough of the latter to know they wanted no part of that. Once they had loaded Cameron’s corpse in the backseat, Dez and Lana joined their captives in the Corvette. Lana tossed Echo the Impala’s keys. “Heading out Highway 100. Catch up.”
Then she peeled out.
Echo started across the parking lot toward the Impala at a brisk pace. Before she could get there, a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye caused her head to jerk to the left. A trembling young couple—a guy and a tarted-up gal in a red dress—sat hunkered down against the side of a car, evidently having witnessed the bloodshed and now desperately attempting to avoid getting caught up in it.
Echo did a quick scan of the parking lot.
No one else in sight.
She took three quick strides toward the terrified couple, raised her gun and fired twice. They died as she spun about and ran for the Impala. She couldn’t afford to lose any additional ground. She had no cell phone on her and couldn’t know for certain when her friends might take an exit off Highway 100.
After narrowly avoiding a collision with a Gran Torino entering the parking lot as she was pulling out, Echo put the pedal down and took the Impala out toward the highway junction at high speed. Vixens was an out-of-the-way joint and this narrow, curvy road that connected it to the highway had no streetlights, which meant high-speed driving at this late hour was ill-advised. But Echo saw no glowing taillights ahead of her. She put the Impala’s bright lights on as she took it screeching around a bend.
Still no taillights in the distance.
Echo pounded a palm against the steering wheel. The road hadn’t seemed this long on the way in, but she hadn’t been driving then, nor had she been feeling anywhere near as frantic as she felt now. The level of cocaine in her system wasn’t helping matters, either. Her frustration was such that she almost blew past the highway junction when she finally reached it. She screamed as she slammed the brake pedal down, causing the Impala to fishtail in the middle of the road. She knew she had to calm down. A cop might decide to stop her for reckless driving. Then she’d be in a world of shit.
Okay
, she thought.
Deep breath.