Claimed

by Pratt, Lulu

  “No problem. Go kick some ass.”

  “I’m trying to bang him, not beat him up.”

  Her grin was so large I could make it out even on my tiny phone screen. “You’re trying to bang him?”

  I scowled with half-hearted menace at the phone, and said, “Okay, you’re getting kicked off the screen.”

  “Finally.”

  I crossed the room and clicked the red button, hanging up on her. We were old enough friends that formal goodbyes were rarely necessary.

  Exhaling, I sat down on my bed and looked at the mountain of crap I’d accumulated around the room.

  “Simple,” I told myself. “Sexy. Black.”

  A thought dinged in my head. With a start, I jumped off the bed and made my way back over to the closet, which by now was half-empty. Peeking my head deep inside the closet, I looked to the right and spotted it, an item I’d long since forgotten about. I reached a hand back into the abyss, and pulled out a black corset.

  For Halloween a few years back, I’d been some kind of vaguely sexy pirate wench with a few friends, and the outfit had, for whatever reason, necessitated me buying a black corset. I wasn’t spearheading the creative design of the look, obviously. I’d kept it in the back of my closet, more because I was too lazy to take it to Goodwill than anything else. Well, that and I thought Goodwill might judge me for donating a slutty piece of clothing.

  But now, I was passed being judged. My internal debate had waged on for nearly an hour and I was at my wit’s end. I yanked out the corset and stared at it thoughtfully. It was black with a satin-like finish, gold grommets and black silky ribbon up the front. The cups molded perfectly to my chest. Down the back, there was another black, silky lace-up ribbon that fell past my hips, all the way down to my knees. It was sexy, almost too sexy, but fuck it.

  I took off my bra — the top didn’t allow for undergarments — and pulled the corset on, lacing it up in the front. I took a deep breath, then turned to face the mirror.

  I was stunned by my own reflection. Suddenly, I was no longer a young girl in peaches and blues. I was a woman, damn it. A little breath sputtered past my lips as I looked on in awe and delight.

  That settled that. The rest of my outfit came together swiftly. A pair of low-riding black jeans, black combat boots salvaged from my moodier high school days, and a black, cropped leather jacket. I finished off the ensemble with black smoky eye and a pale lip. I was ready to go.

  I took a final step back to do a once-over in the mirror, flipping my hair as I moved. The final vision was, I had to admit, ravishing. I looked like the kind of girl who would take you out back, kick your ass, then fuck you until dawn. I belonged on a motorcycle, the breeze blowing through my hair.

  A smile crept over my face. This dude wasn’t going to know what hit him.

  With that, I picked up my phone and called an Uber to the concert. The driver pulled up to my house five minutes later, idling on the street corner. I locked my door and slipped the keys back into my pocket. I figured bringing a purse to these kinds of things was frowned upon and it would have been one more thing to worry about. I bounded to the car and shoved myself inside. The driver gave me a questioning look, his eyes falling on the bare half-moons of my breasts, but he knew better than to comment.

  I tapped my passenger-door window, enjoying the calming click of my nails on glass. Click, clack. Will he like me? Click, clack. Is this a good idea? Click, clack. I want this. Badly.

  After a half hour or so, the Uber driver pulled to a stop outside an inconspicuous warehouse in East L.A.

  “You sure this is the address, Miss?” he asked. Even from the back, I could see his thumb poised over the “call for help” button on the Uber app.

  I double-checked the address. It was right — well, assuming I’d remembered correctly what Hot Boy had said. That was a big assumption. But there was nothing to do but get out and hope for the best.

  “Yes,” I said. “This is it.”

  He tentatively unlocked the door, allowing me to exit the vehicle. The moment I slammed the door shut, I heard him re-lock the car. What a chicken, I thought. I’m no chicken.

  The driver tore off into the night and I began to stride to the warehouse. I heard no music, but did sense a faint vibration in the earth, like deep bass was coursing through the ground.

  Where was everyone? I looked around, then down at my phone. It was eight on the dot. Shouldn’t other people be here?

  I felt panic began to encroach. I willed it away, but the panic had different ideas. You’re all alone, it whispered. He lured you here to rob you. This is a big set-up. Common sense prevailed in this regard. I wasn’t exactly a big mugging target. A yoga teacher? Not precisely rolling in the cash.

  The panic was busy transforming into utter dread when I heard a voice say, “Cybil?”

  I whirled to the left and, beneath a street light, bathed in a yellow glow, was Hot Boy. Man, I reminded myself. For he was definitely a man. The light caught the edges of his black curls, illuminating him and curving shadows around his cheekbones, which were now over-laid with scruff. His eyes burned, black against harsh street yellow. His body was taut beneath a black leather jacket quite similar to my own. We match, I thought. And I meant more than just in clothing.

  And, God, I really, really wanted to fuck him.

  “Hey,” I called out. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  He smirked and strode up to me. As he came closer, the details of his face came into focus. That roguish grin rectified into a full image of a scoundrel. And then he was right in front of me, a mere foot or so from my body. I knew I was too far to actually feel his body heat, but it radiated off him in waves.

  “Hey,” I said again, too overwhelmed by his physical form to say much more. “Uh, where are we?”

  He tilted his chin down, staring deeper into my eyes. “Do you trust me?”

  I shouldn’t have, but I did. “Yes,” I replied truthfully.

  Without another word, he spun back around. “Follow me!” he called over his shoulder, his boots already hitting the pavement.

  I scrambled to keep up with his quick pace. “Where are we going?” We were getting further and further away from the relatively safe illumination of the street lights.

  His face was turned away, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “To hell.”

  Within a few moments, he came to a stop, and I looked around, confused. Weren’t we in a similarly deserted place?

  “Is this it?” I asked, hoping my raging fear wasn’t too obvious.

  He walked backwards a few steps until he fell in line with me. “Look closer,” he said, then put his hands around my head to turn it a few inches. His strong hands could have crushed my skull. Instead, it felt as though they were cradling it.

  “I don’t—” I stopped. Just as I was about to say ‘I don’t see it,’ I, uh, saw it.

  The moving shapes I’d taken as the pools of light bouncing from the street lights were people, only about twenty feet away from us. They were all in black — I gave myself a pat on the shoulder for my outfit choice — and blended into the shadows. The smoke emitting from the crowd also created an illusion of haze, of pre-dusk.

  “Is this it?” I whispered, almost afraid to disturb the sanctity of the quiet.

  “Yes,” he affirmed. “It’s about to get much, much louder. Are you ready?”

  I swallowed. I spent most of my day in an environment engineered to be clean and calm, to look expensive, to make rich people feel safe. These people in the shadows were from an entirely different side of the universe. In retrospect, I thought, I’m surprised this even had a Yelp page.

  And then, in spite of myself, I nodded. “Yeah, let’s go in.” I wanted to see this guy’s world.

  “Okay,” he murmured. Once again, without warning, he began to stride forward, his long, lanky legs covering the ground swiftly. I kept up behind him, and suddenly, we were passing by a group of quiet, glowering smokers and into… another worl
d.

  A hand grabbed me, and I almost screamed before I recognized that it belonged to him. I heard faint echoes of his deep voice, but couldn’t make out the words over the thumping music, so loud it drowned out all possibility of complex thoughts. Was this the appeal? The deadening effect of music so loud it dominated your body, leaving no room for questions or anxiety?

  The place surged around me. In what had superficially appeared to be an abandoned warehouse, there were hundreds of bodies moving in time to the noise. Well, as ‘in time’ as one could move. Heads were banging, fists pumping in the air, beer sloshing on the ground. A band in tattered black denim was shredding up on the stage, their faces painted with Egyptian symbols, spittle flying from their mouths.

  Mouth.

  A mouth was up against my ear, and now it was whispering. “Do you like this?” it asked.

  It belonged to him. We were so close, all he had to do was wrap his lips around my earlobe.

  “Yes,” I replied, immediately surprised by my answer. “I love it.”

  This was concrete meditation. All these people were looking for the exact same thing I looked for in my yoga — an escape and an acceptance.

  “I’m glad,” he whispered. And then, more loudly, less intimately, “I’m going to get us some drinks. Stand here and try not to start any fights.”

  “Wait—”

  But before I could get the words out, he was gone once more. He seemed to have that habit, disappearing and apparating without notice. Why couldn’t I pin him to the earth? Hell, I hadn’t even gotten him in one place long enough to ask his name. I’ll get it next time, I vowed to myself. He can’t flit around the whole night.

  I looked for his black, curly hair in the crowd, but the mass seemed to have swallowed him whole. That’s when I felt a hand on my lower back.

  That was quick, I thought. Then aloud, “What kind of beer did you get?”

  A gruff voice, jarringly different from Hot Boy’s, replied, “I dunno, what kind you want, little princess?”

  I pivoted around and saw that a towering demon of a man, closer to seven feet than six, was leering over me, giant, red sausage fingers wiggling near my face.

  “You a daddy’s girl?” he snickered. “I could smack you across the ass to teach you a lesson.”

  “Fuck off,” I mumbled. I’d meant to shout it, but he was huge. Even I couldn’t take this guy on.

  And then his two friends started to move in. They were similarly disreputable thugs, varying in appearance but with a unifying theme — tough, muscled and scary. And horny. And they were all closing in a circle around me.

  “Back away,” I said louder. “I’m here with a — a friend. Don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t be a prude,” the giant shouted.

  “Yeah, sweet cakes, he just wants a taste of you,” said another.

  My heart was racing and my palms were growing sweaty. Finding my voice, I yelled back, “Go to hell.”

  “We’re already here,” the ringleader snickered. “How’d you fall so far, angel?”

  Just as I could see his meaty hands diving to my lower half, presumably to pull a “grab me by the pussy,” my date reappeared.

  And he was pissed.

  In a low voice that somehow managed to make itself heard over the music, he asked, “What do you boys think you’re doing?”

  The thugs looked at him and laughed. Hot Boy was over six feet, but thin. Having watched him do yoga, I knew that this was deceptive — he was all lean, tight muscle — but he didn’t give off the same “imminently threatening.” For a fleeting moment, I almost felt sorry for them.

  “I asked,” he repeated, “what the fuck you think you’re doing?”

  The tone in our little circle shifted. One of the men visibly gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing against a neck tattoo of a chain link fence. Hot Boy had an edge to him, a sort of terrifying vein of steel in his voice that suggested violence was something he’d seen plenty of, and that it didn’t scare him. He smelled of raw bravery.

  The ringleader, the one who’d grabbed me at the waist, managed out a gruff reply. “We’re just getting to know your lady. She’s quite the thing.”

  “I know,” my date replied. “And I think she made it clear she doesn’t want you anywhere near her.” He turned to me, and politely asked, “Is that right, Cybil?”

  I nodded, afraid to speak because the tension was so thick.

  He turned back to the men. “There you have it. So move along, either to the opposite side of the room or out of the place, period.”

  The leader scoffed. “I don’t think so. Not my fault your piece was asking for it.”

  I saw Hot Boy’s chest rise just once. I thought it was a gulp of fear, but then in the same moment, I realized he was sighing with boredom.

  “All right,” he said and in a flash, his fists and legs were flying through the air.

  I screamed, but the bass drowned it out. In the strobing lights of the club, the sequence happened in slow motion. My date was throwing the men across the floor. He was punching them in the jaw, causing blood to splash across his companions. He was kicking them right in the balls. Every couple of seconds, a roar would emerge from the tussle — the sound of another member of the gang getting their ass handed to them. I stayed as far away from the fray as possible, watching with fear, and okay, maybe a little sexual interest, as Hot Boy demolished the men who’d been preying on me.

  The fight seemed to stretch on forever, but in reality, it couldn’t have lasted longer than a minute. My date extricated himself from the pile of men lying on the ground, bloody and bruised, and came over to me. I noticed a cut above his sharp black eyebrow, but he showed no other visible damage. More astonishing yet, he was grinning.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I gestured to his eyebrow, and then the pile of men. “Are you okay?”

  He cracked his neck. “Yup.”

  I looked at him skeptically. “You can’t be serious.”

  He shrugged. Shrugged! As though he hadn’t just totally demolished a group of guys who would’ve intimidated sumo wrestlers or the Secret Service.

  “I’ve been in plenty of fights in my time,” he said, by way of demented explanation. “Compared to some of the army boys, these fuckers—” he jerked his finger back to the men, “don’t scare me.”

  I shook my head, still in disbelief. “Well, thanks for coming to my defense.”

  He wrapped his arm around my waist, whisking away all bad memories of that other man’s hand on my body, and said, “That’s what white knights are for.”

  I swooned. Do women still swoon? They must, because I certainly did.

  “Did you ever get those drinks?” I asked, anxious to move on from the dampening effect of the harassment.

  He shook his head. “I saw what was happening as I came back and handed them to some chick. She’s probably enjoying them with her friend now.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I’ll try again. But this time, you’re coming with me.”

  I agreed readily, knowing that I needed his accompaniment to get through this place — and knowing that I wanted it, the time in his presence, the woodsy smell of his skin. Even in this alternate reality, this world that was far brighter and louder and denser than my own, he shone through, dominating even the most outlandish aspects of the venue.

  Ugh, I’m rambling. Listen, forget all that. My point is that he was like, like… like noise-canceling headphones. He allowed me to focus on the important sounds, and block out all the rest.

  Anyways, I stepped away from my shitty metaphors to focus on the present. He had led me to a bar — if it could even be called as much — in the corner of the room, where one lone woman with a neon pink Mohawk was handing out plastic cups of beer.

  “You want?” she asked gruffly as my date and I sidled up to the makeshift counter.

  “What kind of beer is it?” I questioned, and immediately knew it was an unwelcome query.

&
nbsp; The woman raised her eyebrow, which was drawn on in a thin line, and grimaced. Through the music, I could hear him chuckle under his breath.

  After a long, withering gaze, she replied, “It’s beer. That’s what kind of beer it is.”

  My face turned beet red as he broke out in a full-blown howl of delight.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked him. “It’s a normal question.”

  He wiped a small tear from the corner of his eye. “I just… I like that you don’t give a fuck about fitting in.”

  I harrumphed and turned back to the bartender. “I’ll take one.”

  She rolled her eyes, promptly sliding a cup across the sticky counter. I took it in hand and had a sip. I tried to cover my disgust, but the two of them clocked it.

  “Not your taste?” he said with an ill-disguised smirk.

  “You drink it, you buy it,” the bartender interrupted with a growl.

  I pulled a few singles out of my pocket, and stuck them in her hand, saying, “Here’s the money. You should consider stocking something less gross. Have you heard of Goose Island? It’s pretty good, and reasonably priced.”

  She rolled her eyes again and turned to the person behind us. Hot Boy must have sensed as much, because without any other banter, he whisked me away from the bartender and back into the depths of the crowd, nearby elbows and shoulders jostling my brimming cup. From somewhere, he produced his own frothy drink.

  “When’d you get that?” I asked. I hadn’t seen him order anything.

  “I got it while you were busy making faces,” he laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, hoping I hadn’t come off as impolite. “I’m just not used to this. As you can tell, obviously.”

  He waved off my apology. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t apologize for being yourself, especially not when I like that self so much.”

  What? My mouth went dry. Was he already laying his cards out this early in the night? I wanted to reciprocate, to tell him that I felt the same way, and ask if this was love at first sight. And to maybe mention that, the more the lights played through his hair, the more familiar he had begun to look, like an irritating memory buried in the recesses of my mind.