by Paula Cox
“Chelsea, you feel so good,” Blue whispered. “I want you to feel it, too.” Suddenly he pulled himself out of her and Chelsea looked at him in confusion. Blue sat down, putting his back against the wall, his erection was hard and it sat straight up between his legs. Chelsea crawled over to him and he spun her around.
He kissed her neck and then down her back and Chelsea shuddered at the sensation of his touch. No one had ever driven her wild like this before. He reached around her and buried his fingers between her legs spinning circles of pleasure as Chelsea moved her body against his erection. She turned around and kissed him deeply and then eased herself down onto his cock.
“Blue!” Chelsea whispered, her voice hoarse. She moved up and down on him. In this position his cock inside of her was stroking her clit and Chelsea moaned Blue’s name into his ear as she wrapped her arms around him. Blue guided her hips and she began to move faster and faster as she rode him.
“Chelsea. God. Yes,” Blue whispered. His hands were running up and down her back as he thrust deep and hard into her.
Chelsea could feel her second orgasm approach. Her entire body was tingling and she raked Blue’s back with her nails as she sped up in search of the release they both so desperately needed. She writhed against him pushing him deeper with every thrust.
“Yes, Blue. Don’t stop,” Chelsea begged as she rode him harder. “I’m so close,” she whispered into his ear as she sped up her movements. She was so close, just a few more strokes from his cock and she would be lost in ecstasy. Blue grabbed on tightly to her and pulled her close as her orgasm grew inside of her. She wanted it, she needed to finish, she would have done anything he asked if it would have kept him going. “Blue! Yes! Blue!” She bit down on her shoulder to keep from crying out as her orgasm exploded around her. Her entire body shuddered and contracted as Blue drove himself deep into her and with a loud groan he finished inside of her. Her body continued to rock against his as they rode out their orgasm together.
Chelsea collapsed back on the bed and Blue quickly fell down beside her. He rested his head against her shoulder and Chelsea ran her hands up his arm and smiled. For a moment she had forgotten all about tomorrow and what it meant. She wished she could keep forgetting and just lie here next to him like they were any normal couple.
Blue kissed her shoulder and Chelsea smiled at him. He propped himself up on his shoulder and kissed her deeply.
“I am still mad about it, but I’m glad you came over.”
“I had to see you and I don’t regret it,” Chelsea said.
“Chelsea,” Blue said, looking down at her. “I love you. I’ve always loved you, I just couldn’t say it until now.”
Chelsea heart skipped a beat in her chest. “I love you, Blue. I always have, ever since we were kids in high school. I want to be with you and only you. No matter what happens tomorrow. I will still love you, always.”
He lay down and snuggled up against Chelsea and she relaxed her body against his. It felt so good and right to lie in bed with him; she couldn’t ever imagine sleeping in bed alone again.
Chapter Forty Five
At two-thirty, Blue had woken her and told her she should leave for her own safety. He had given her one last kiss, but refused to let her stay another moment longer. Chelsea had come home around three in the morning and crawled into her own lonely and cold bed, quickly slipping into a deep sleep. But at six o’clock it was like some alarm went off in her brain and suddenly she was wide awake. Her eyes opened and she wasn’t the least bit tired. She had no desire to roll over and go back to sleep.
Chelsea sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Her phone was next to her, plugged in and fully charged with the sound as loud as it could be. Today, even more than usual, her phone would be a part of her. She would never be without it; Terrance was going to call today. He was going tell her when and where the fight was. Now all she had to do was wait.
She showered and made coffee while her mother slept. She wondered what Blue was doing. She knew the blank expression he would be wearing. To an outsider, or someone who didn’t know him, it would look like he wasn’t thinking about anything. He would look like some simpleton lunk head. But it would be a calm surface that hid a swirling sea of passionate emotions only Chelsea had been given permission to glimpse.
Paul and Molly came over at nine when her mother woke up. Together they drank coffee, made food and didn’t eat it, and paced around the house waiting for the phone to ring. The wait seemed endless. Chelsea remembered some talk at school about hell. The speaker had been a priest who had come to talk at an assembly. A couple of kids had spray painted a pentagram on school grounds. It had been a joke, but the school had taken it “very seriously” and brought a priest in to remind them that stuff like that was no joke.
He told them that hell wasn’t just a pit of fire. Hell was your biggest mistake replayed over and over again. Hell was your regrets played on repeat for all of eternity. This was Chelsea’s hell: waiting for the phone to ring. She had no idea where Blue or Jamie were; she had no idea if Terrance was going to keep his promise. She had no power, no say in what was happening. She could only sit and wait.
At five-thirty her phone finally rang.
“Hello,” Chelsea said quickly into the phone, she put it on speaker so Molly and Paul could hear.
“Chelsea,” came Terrance’s oily voice. “How lovely to hear your voice.”
“Thank you for calling me,” Chelsea said. She couldn’t blow this now. She was so close to the answers for all of her questions.
“Nine-thirty, 748 East Marshalls Street. Come dressed as I asked.”
“Understood,” Chelsea called and the phone went dead.
“Okay,” Molly said, the moment the call was ended. “Here’s how this goes down. Chelsea, you have the actual invite; you’ll go in with a wire and scope the place out. There’s still a chance Terrance might be testing you. He might send you to one place and then have the fight in another. So you will go in and once it’s clear that this is where the fight is taking place, you’ll give us the go ahead and then you get out and the SWAT team will go in.”
“Chelsea has to go in first?” Colleen asked. “That’s too dangerous. Why don’t you go? You’re the one in the FBI.”
“Because Terrance didn’t invite her,” Chelsea answered. “The fights are by invitation only and I was the one who was invited. So I’m the one who gets to go.”
Colleen covered her mouth and looked away trying in vain to hide her tears.
“I need to get dressed,” Chelsea said. She walked into her room and began to pull out the clothes she had brought with her. She settled on a very short, low-cut, black mini-dress with lace on the back. She pulled her hair back and put on heavy black eyeliner and shadow giving her eyes a smoky, slept-in look. She matched it with a red lipstick and a pair of high, black stilettos.
She drove there alone. A wire secured in her padded bra. She knew Molly was tracking the GPS on her phone and she felt safer knowing that she was being watched. She drove slowly and with every mile she began to feel more and more sick. Nausea pulsed in her stomach and her throat and her hands were shaking. Don’t cry, don’t cry, she repeated to herself. She couldn’t afford to ruin her make-up.
The car took her far out of town, far past the houses and businesses and even past the farms until she was far out into the woods. Pine trees lined the dark roads and she drove for miles without seeing another car. Her fingers were twisting on the steering wheel and her stomach was churning. She didn’t want to see the fight. She didn’t want to watch Blue forced into the ring. She wanted to go back to LA where it was always sunny and warm and everyone was stylish and beautiful.
The house was lit up like a Christmas tree, as the saying goes. Cars lined the street as Chelsea pulled up to a valet stand and in confusion stepped out of her car.
“Good evening, Miss!” an energetic young man said as he jogged to the car and gave Chelsea a ticket in exchange for her keys.
This wasn’t what she had expected at all. This wasn’t a grimy basement under an abandoned gas station. This was a catered party with a valet staff. What did these boys think was going on? Just a normal party, did they have any idea what was happening in the house behind them?
Chelsea’s heels clicked on the paved driveway as she walked up to the house. It was a stunning log cabin with a wooden frame and huge windows; there was a large wrap around porch with chairs and tables and fire pits. Inside the house was filled with bright white lights that shone through the windows. Had she passed the house at any other time she would have thought someone was throwing an early holiday party, not a fight to the death.
A girl in a dress almost identical to Chelsea’s opened the front door. The girl gave her a knowing smile as Chelsea passed and Chelsea stepped into the party. Men in suits lounged on leather couches and stood at the bar while women in short, tight dresses walked around with bottles of champagne, whiskey, and bourbon freely filling the glass for any man who raised one.
It had an air of elegant refinery, but that was only on the surface. It was clear that something else much darker was going on. For starters all of the guests at the party were men and all of the servers were young and beautiful girls. The men clearly felt free to touch the girls however they wanted as the snuck bills down their dresses. The room stank of cigar smoke and booze and Chelsea wished desperately to be anywhere else.
“What do you think, Chelsea?” Terrance’s voice was like the twisting words of a snake whispered into her ear and she had to resist the urge to lean away from him. “Surely this is just as nice as the parties they have out in Hollywood, right?”
“It’s very nice,” Chelsea lied with a nod. “It’s just not what I was expecting.”
“Yes, it’s very refined and classy. This is what I was trying to explain to Blue. No more fights in dirty basements for pocket money. This is a real business with rich men with a lot of money to lose. Money that could make Blue very rich.”
“When is...the...well, you know?” Chelsea asked. She didn’t know if there was some rule about saying the word fight. She didn’t know if the waitresses or valets knew or not.
“The fight begins in about thirty minutes, in the basement,” Terrance said, nodding to a door towards the back of the house. Two men stood at attention next to it with guns sitting securely on their hips. “In the meantime, please, have a drink, look around, enjoy yourself. You’re among like-minded people, Chelsea. Enjoy yourself.”
He placed his hand on her bare arm and she hid her revulsion until he passed. A girl came by with champagne and Chelsea grabbed a glass and headed to the bathroom. Once in the stall she pulled out her phone and texted to Molly, “did you get that?” and then she watched as her cellphone spun a little clock and she waited and waited and then she watched as she went from three bars, to two, to one.
She frantically dialed the number, but the call wouldn’t connect. It just hung in the air, trying unsuccessfully to dial. She knew Molly wasn’t far away. The van was parked only about ten miles down the road. But the communication was only one way and she just had to hope that Molly was listening.
Chapter Forty Six
Thirty minutes later the lights flickered and as if on cue all of the girls in their tight dresses receded to the kitchen and Terrace took center stage in the middle of the living room. The men gathered around him as Chelsea hung in the back near one of the fires trying to blend in. She was the only woman left in the room.
“Gentleman,” Terrance said loudly as he took the floor. A hush fell over the crowd as Terrance looked at everyone he had assembled there. “I would like to thank each and every one of you for coming so far out into the woods tonight; however, I am sure you all appreciate the finer accommodations we’ve provided.” The men around him chuckled and nodded and Chelsea suddenly wished an asteroid would come and wipe them all from the face of the earth. “I would like to thank our sponsors for tonight, the boys from Detroit: Isaac and Amos Sonata. Please, let’s all raise a glass to their hospitality.”
The words “hear, hear” echoed around the rooms as various glasses were raised.
Chelsea, hidden in her corner didn’t move. Did Molly hear what Terrance had said? Did she know the fight was happening? Was she on her way? To her left the men who must have been Isaac and Amos Sonata stood up and gave quick half bows to the crowd before sitting back down. They were two totally ordinary looking men in neat business suits. They looked like insurance adjusters, not mobsters.
“So, without any more babble from me, let us descend to the basement.”
Chelsea pushed herself as far back as she could into her small little corner as the men in the room stood up and languidly made their way to the basement door. It was held open and in pairs of twos and threes the men descended the steps.
When they were all down, Chelsea followed. To her surprise neither of the men tried to stop her from going into the basement. In fact they barely glanced at her as she passed.
Where is Jamie? Chelsea thought as she walked into the basement. She passed through the wine cellar and through a door towards the back and descended into a basement with a dirt floor. The men were gathered around the ring, which was nothing more than a circle of chalk drawn in the dirt.
Chelsea looked around desperately. She didn’t want to be here; she didn’t want to watch this fight. She needed to find her sister and get her out of here before the fight started and before the FBI showed up, if they showed up at all. She was halfway down the stairs when she turned around and tried to go back up.
She had only taken two steps when the boys from Detroit and Terrance came walking slowly down the stairs.
“Isaac, Amos, this is Chelsea Riley. She’s Blue’s girl,” Terrance said. They all looked down at her as a shared smile crossed their faces.
“It’s bad luck for a woman to come to her man’s fight, don’t you know that?” one of the boys from Detroit asked.
“Blue doesn’t know she’s here. It’s just a secret between me and Chelsea,” Terrance said. “Where are you going, Chelsea? Don’t you want to see the fight? That is why you came, right?”
“Yeah,” Chelsea stammered. “It’s just a little hot and crowded down here. I was going to get some air.”
“Oh no,” Terrance said. “You’re here then you’re here. There’s no leaving until the fight is over.”
Chelsea nodded and turned around and slowly made her way down to the floor. Her heels gave her a good vantage of the fight, she could see the entire ring, but she still hung back, hoping she could sneak back up before the fight started. But her hope that she could leave was dashed when the two men who had guarded the door now took their place at the bottom of the stairs.
“We have an excellent match up tonight!” Terrance called out from the center of the ring. He had no microphone, but his voice echoed loudly through the basement. “Our first fighter is a local boy with a long history in the pits. He’s an underdog, but don’t count him out yet, boys. He’s a good fighter and he wants to win so in Red, we have Jimmy Dimaggio!”
Chelsea watched as Jimmy came down the stairs. He wore just a pair of loose fitting gym shorts. The men cheered as he came down the stairs and he raised his hand high above him as bookies shouted for bets. The crowd parted and Jimmy walked to the ring and waited.
“And now, the man you have all come here to see. He was raised in the pits and then he went to serve his country. He fought hard for years, honing his skill and now he is back by popular demand. I present to you, the best fighter any of us has ever seen, Blue DeMarco!”
The crowd screamed. It was obvious who the favorite was as the shouts got louder and louder. Then, Blue appeared at the top of the stairs. He was wearing the same loose shorts as Jimmy, but he was also wearing a boxer’s robe tied around his waist with the hood pulled over his head creating a shadow that hid his face. She could only make out the vague outline of his profile, but he looked stern and a little terrifying. Unl
ike Jimmy he didn’t seem to notice the crowd at all. The men were cheering for Blue, but his face remained frozen as he walked down the stairs.
Chelsea hid back in the corner; she didn’t want Blue to see her. She didn’t want him to worry about her. She didn’t want to distract him. But her heart broke for him as he walked to the ring. He looked like a man condemned, a man walking to the gallows.
The two men were in the pit. They didn’t shake hands. Blue removed his robe and Terrance left the ring and then a bell sounded and suddenly, the fight was on. Jimmy launched himself at Blue, but Blue was ready, his hands up and protecting his face as he took the hits. She could hear the sick crunch as Jimmy pounded Blue’s arms and chest. She could hear the crack of bones. Blue was being driven back and Chelsea wondered if he was waiting for the FBI, if he were trying to stall. But she understood how impossible that was. Jimmy wasn’t taking it easy; he was hitting Blue again and again and soon Blue would be out of the fight if he didn’t fight back.
