by R. R. Banks
Maybe a combination of both.
“She wasn’t wrong,” Gregory said, taking a step toward me. “You do look incredible.” He reached up and ran his fingertips along the neckline of my dress. “It looks like you’re finally coming around to what I wanted from you.”
I wanted to punch him. I wanted to grab him by those nether regions that I had cursed at the grocery store and toss him into the tower of pumpkin beer that Nia had created in the corner. I wanted to scream. Before I could select which one of them I was going to attempt first, however, I heard Alice calling his name from behind me. Gregory smiled as he peered over my shoulder at her, seamlessly forgetting the encounter with Cheryl had even happened. This was his master skill, and one day I knew that it was going to come back and bite him in the ass. For now, though, it just left him basking in as much attention as he could want at any given moment.
“There you are,” he said as Alice approached. “I was getting worried about you.”
You slimy, soul-sucking, twisted son of a—actually, son of a delightful woman. His mother was a wonderful person. I wouldn’t want to put the shame of raising him on her. Twisted waste of space and breath.
Alice came up smiling like a first grader who just got her first Valentine and draped herself over Gregory. She kissed him and stared longingly into his eyes for several seconds before even realizing that I was standing there.
“Oh! Beatrice. This,” she flattened her hand on his chest and smiled at him again, “is Gregory.”
“I’ve heard.”
“This is my roommate.”
“Oh, really?” Gregory asked.
“Well, I’m going to bring my piece of Halloween candy out onto the dancefloor,” Alice said.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her. As they started away from me, Gregory leaned in.
“Roommate, huh? Now that I know you can look like this, maybe I’ll be visiting Alice more often.”
He walked away and I felt my hands ball into tight fists at my sides.
“Are you alright?” Nia asked as she stepped up beside me. “I’m sorry I left you here with him. I thought taking Cheryl away would distract him.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “What’s Halloween without at least one monster, right?”
I looked at Nia and saw that she was holding one of the bottles of beer from the tower. I snatched it out of her hand and downed a massive gulp.
“Bea!” she gasped.
I coughed as the alcohol burned my throat and the strange taste registered in my mind like spoiled pumpkin pie.
“Good lord, that’s awful,” I said, handing it back to her.
Someone walked past with a plateful of jello shots layered to look like candy corn. I took one and tossed it back. It jiggled across my tongue and slithered down my throat, mercifully very little flavor but the orange and lemon behind.
“Maybe you should slow down,” Nia said.
“No,” I said shaking my head. “That one wasn’t bad at all. What was in that?”
Nia glanced at the person who was carrying the plate and I followed her gaze to watch him hand one of the shots to a visibly pregnant mummy.
“Well, considering Ben just handed one to his wife who’s due in three weeks, I’m going to go with those are the plain ones I made for her. So…. nothing.”
“Shit.”
“What are you doing?”
She sounded worried about me, but I didn’t feel like stopping long enough to analyze what I was thinking or feeling. I just wanted it all to go away.
“You said that I should come to the party and have some fun, right? Forget Gregory? Well, since he’s decided to make that so very much harder, I’m just going to have to work that much harder to get him out of my head. So, let’s go have some fun.”
I pushed past her toward the living room where a tall, bearded man dressed appropriately as a Viking was mixing drinks. I danced my way over to this more sophisticated, and hopefully more palatable, version of the beer tower and accepted the clear glass that he held out to me. The red liquid inside glowed thanks to the help of an illuminated ice cube in the bottom and I swirled it around for a second before tossing it back. It burned through my mouth and down into my belly, but the sweet taste counteracted it and I didn’t immediately feel like returning it to the world. I reached into the cup with my fingertips to grab the cube and handed the cup back to the man. He started to fill it again, but Nia grabbed me by my wrist and started guiding me away from him.
“Thank you, Mark,” she said. “I think she’s OK for now.”
“I’ve only had one drink,” I protested.
“Yeah,” Nia said. “Ever. In your life. You keep going like that and you’re going to be blacked out before the party even gets all the way going. Just settle down a little.”
“I don’t want to settle down. I’ve been settled my whole life. I want to have fun.”
I rushed into the room where music was blaring and jumped into the people already dancing. I could feel hands gliding along me and bodies pressing against me as I danced, but I didn’t even care who was near me. My mind was starting to swim just enough that it was amplifying the uninhibited confidence started in me by the mask and costume and I could feel myself getting blissfully lost in the throbbing music, slithering bodies, and flashing lights around me.
As I danced I felt someone watching me. I looked up, dreading seeing Gregory, and instead found the shirtless man leaned against the doorframe, his eyes locked on me from behind his mask. I couldn’t see his entire face, but something about that only made him sexier and I felt my body responding to him. I knew he was older. Considerably older. When I first saw him, I had noticed the streaks of silver in his hair along his temples. This must be one of the men from the hotel that Nia said she had invited. I didn’t care. In fact, that only made it better. I enjoyed the way his eyes on me made me feel and by the next morning he probably wasn’t going to remember me, so it didn’t matter. I could go into November with Gregory out of my system once and for all.
Nia and Cheryl jumped into the crowd beside me and I took a sip from the drink that Cheryl was holding. It was much stronger than the other and I felt it hit me almost immediately. Everything around me was more alive and I didn’t care about anything anymore. I laughed, tilting my head back as I let myself drift away. I danced there until the heat of all of the people around me started to get to me and then broke away to go out onto the porch where some of the party had overflowed. The cooler air out there revived me and I joined another group dancing in an elaborate cemetery scene that Nia had built.
I had to give it to the girl, she knew how to throw a party.
I was twirling around, knowing that I was likely making a complete fool of myself but no longer caring, and shouting along with Vincent Price when I slipped off the edge of the porch. Taking a few running steps to catch myself so I wouldn’t fall, I ended up in the shadowy corner of the yard. The music wasn’t as loud here, creating the perfect environment for me to hear the low, rhythmic grunts and high moans that punctuated them coming from the small gazebo tucked in the corner. I took a cautious step toward it and saw two figures bent over the bench, their bodies pumping in time to the music and their own sounds. I was turning away when I heard a voice coming toward me.
“Hey there, Beatrice,” Gregory said. “Want to join us?”
Disgust rose up in me and I ran back toward the porch. In the blur of people, lights, and chaos, I tripped over one of the tombstones, twirled around to try to right myself, and fell back over another. Losing my balance completely, I started to fall, but felt myself get caught in strong arms. They guided me away from the tombstone and set me on my feet. I turned around and found myself staring at the masked man. My heart was pounding and my mind spinning. I didn’t know what was happening, but an instant later my mouth was on his. His arms looped around my waist and drew me up against the warmth of his bare chest and belly so that he could deepen the kiss. Our mouths tangled, catching
and pulling at one another almost desperately. I felt him guiding me away from the crowd on the porch and into the shadows on the other side of the lawn.
He sat down on the bench that I had positioned on the edge of my garden and pulled me down into his lap. The straddled position pushed my skirt up nearly to my hips and I felt the cool night air rush over my upper thighs and against the wet heat that was building between them. I pressed that feeling into him and was rewarded with a subtle lift of his hips that nudged a rapidly hardening bulge against me. I gasped slightly and he pulled back, looking at me through eyes that I could now see were green, slumbering, and intense.
“Come to my hotel with me,” he growled.
I stammered for a moment, unsure of what to say. This was starting to feel like a runaway train and I wasn’t sure I was ready to go along with it.
“I think I should stay here,” I said.
He lifted his hips again, nudging me more insistently, and brought his mouth to the side of my neck. I felt myself and all of my resistance melting away in the kiss.
“Are you sure?” he murmured.
I was starting to answer when I heard a scream from across the lawn. I jumped off of the man’s lap and rushed toward the sound of the screaming, worried that something had gone terribly wrong. When I got to the other side, I found Cheryl and Alice standing a few feet from the gazebo, where a third woman I didn’t know was scrambling to return her slutty flight attendant costume to its full and upright position. Gregory was behind her, zipping up in a way that was far more casual than her apparent desperation to get away from the screaming women.
“What the fuck, Gregory?” Alice shouted. “What the actual fuck?”
Actual fuck? What does that even mean? Is there a hypothetical fuck? Metaphorical perhaps?
“Calm down, Alice,” Gregory said, stepping out of the gazebo after the flight attendant made her escape and ran into the house. “I was just spending a few minutes with an old friend. I’m still here with you.”
It was like I was looking back in time and I expected the same sickening feeling to rush through me. Instead, I only felt anger and pity.
“Like hell you are,” Nia said, coming down from the porch. “You aren’t here with anybody. Get out.”
The crowd roared around her and I felt like I had stumbled onto the set of a high school angst movie. Gregory scoffed, looking around like he thought this was all a joke, but then headed back across the porch and into the house, hopefully to sink away into the scum from whence he came and not return. His departure seemed to break down the camaraderie that had formed between the two wronged women and they turned on each other, screaming and flailing. Nia and I rushed toward them, peeling them apart and trying to calm them down. When we finally succeeded in getting them to call a truce long enough for Cheryl to go home, I turned back to the bench, but the masked man was no longer there. I let out a sigh.
Maybe that’s for the best.
Dammit.
The party went fairly downhill from there. People chose sides, battles broke out, I spent several minutes screaming at Gregory after finding him in my bedroom and chasing him out, and within a few minutes many of the guests had left. I stood out in the cemetery, looking out over the lawn as the relative quiet settled around me. Suddenly I felt someone step up behind me and warm breath touch the side of my neck.
“Trick or treat?”
I turned around, staying close enough to the masked man that my breasts brushed his chest.
“Treat,” I said.
He took his hand from behind his back and brought a piece of chocolate to my lips. I opened my mouth and let it settle onto my tongue. The explosion with Gregory and the women had taken away the effects of the alcohol from earlier, but the adrenaline was still coursing through me and just the slight touch of his fingers on my lips and the dark flavor of the chocolate melting on my tongue was electrifying.
“What would have happened if I had said ‘trick’?” I asked.
Without a word, the masked man scooped me off of my feet, tossing me easily over one shoulder, and started carrying me around the side of the house. I was too surprised to protest, and before I could fully process what was happening, I heard a car door open and felt myself get tossed inside. Seconds later he was in the driver’s seat and we were zooming down the street away from the lingering remnants of the party.
Chapter Five
Beatrice
I was breathless as we pulled into a reserved spot in the parking deck beneath the hotel and the masked man walked around the car to open my door. He reached in and took my hand to help me out, then scooped me up over his shoulder again. I squealed this time, but a sharp smack on my ass quieted me, a combination of surprise and scintillation stunning me into silence. I heard the door to an elevator open and he stepped inside, setting me on my feet as the doors slid closed. The instant that the elevator started moving, he pushed me against the wall, his body closing in over me so I felt fully enveloped by him. His mouth captured mine and I felt him reach down, grabbing both of my hands and bringing them up to pin them on the wall above my head.
My back arched as he dropped his mouth to the side of my neck again, kissing his way down to my collarbone before drawing his tongue back up in a long lick that made my body shiver. He pulled back, looking at me for a few long seconds before diving in again for another deep, passionate kiss. I could feel the bulge at the front of his pants hardening again, straining against the fabric as if toward me, and a new, almost foreign ache built between my thighs. It was a hunger, a need that I hadn’t felt before, and I threw myself into the kiss that was building it, rushing toward what would satiate the feeling.
When the elevator opened, the man stepped out, walking directly to the door in front of us and using his hand pressed against a sensor beside it to gain access. This struck me, but I was too enthralled by the sight of him as he stood in the middle of the room to think any further on it. I entered the room and reached down to release the buckle on one of my shoes.
“Stop,” he said.
I felt embarrassment burn across my cheeks as I straightened, but he stepped up to me and lowered himself to his knees, settling his hands on either side of my thigh and running them down my leg. When he reached the strap around my ankle, he released the buckle and carefully helped me step out of the shoe. He repeated the process on the other leg and I felt a shock roll through me as his fingers brushed my core when his hands touched my thigh. Once he got me out of my shoes, the man slid his hands under my skirt and grabbed the waistband of my fishnets. He drew them down, gradually revealing my legs to him. When he had tossed the hose aside, he stood and took several steps back from me. His hands went to his belt and I watched, trembling slightly, as he released it. His fingers made quick work of the button of his pants and then drew his zipper down. I was instantly aware that he wasn’t wearing anything beneath them.
My mouth watered as his thick cock sprang out. He dropped his pants to his feet and kicked them aside to join his socks, shoes, and my shoes and fishnets. His body looked even more delectable now and I felt the irresistible need to touch him. I stepped up to him, flattening my hands on his chest and stroking them up and over his shoulders. My fingertips played along the deeply carved muscles there and wove their way down his arms and over onto his back. They were unexpected, something I never would have thought that I would see on one of the men that Nia described, but that only made them that much more enticing to me. I wanted to run my mouth along them, to trace them with my tongue and discover all of their details.
I started that now, drawing up to the balls of my feet to make myself taller so I could brush my lips, still swollen from the intensity of his kisses, across one arm. He groaned softly as I let the tip of my tongue slip between my lips and taste his beautiful tan skin. One hand reached around to my back and he felt for my zipper, grasping it and drawing it down as I started around his body to kiss on his back. The flimsy dress was falling away from my body, but I made
no move to correct it, instead letting it slip away as I explored his skin.
By the time I reached his other arm, the dress was pooling at my hips and he gathered it in one hand, pushing it down so I stood in only a black lace thong that had never been seen on my body by anybody but me. I liked being seen in it now as I watched his eyes rove over me, pausing briefly on my tightened nipples and then traveling to the apex of my thighs. One arm wrapped around my back and then the other swept behind my legs to scoop me up against his chest, his mouth dipping down to mine as he started carrying me through the room. He hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights, but the far wall was comprised completely of windows and the moonlight shining in was enough for him to navigate through the sprawling room. It seemed bigger than my house, but I didn’t mind the time it took to make our way through it. It gave me more opportunity to savor the feeling of his warm skin against mine and the hardness of his erection against my hip.
Finally, we made it into the bedroom and he climbed up onto the small platform that held the bed. He lowered me to my feet, allowing me to slide down his body, and caught my face with one hand. Cupping my jaw, he tilted my head back so that I looked up at him, and lowered his mouth down slowly, pausing just before his lips touched mine. His tongue slipped across my lower lip, then along the part between them. I slid mine toward his, touching it with the tip. The slower, more concentrated movements made me tremble, the anticipation building within me until I felt like my body was going to ignite.
The masked man ran his hands down my body from my ribs into the dip of my waist and onto my hips. He turned me around and pressed me forward so that I leaned over, my hands landing on the bed in front of me. The guiding pressure of his hands continued until I was fully on the mattress on my hands and knees. His fingers ran down my spine, then I felt his tongue replace them, tracing back up to my neck, where he slipped his hand around to cup the front of my throat and kissed the soft dip beneath my ear. He was hovering over me and I could feel his cock dipping between my thighs and nudging at the wet heat that was soaking my panties and dampening my skin. I arched, pressing toward him, inviting him to relieve the pressure.
