Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One Read online

  It grew quiet eventually as the night wore on and Emma fell sleep, head cushioned on Ione’s thigh.

  At some point in the night she was doused by a gentle cloudburst; warm, heavy droplets that washed her clean from the hot trek across the sand.

  Ione barely endured the following day, tormented by thirst as the sun idled across the sky, occasionally baffled by thin detachments of cloud flung from the City to etherealize at the desert’s edge. She thought of stopping every car that passed, but was intimidated by the prospect of going naked before clothed citizens, resolved each time to give Mark until night as promised before venturing in herself, dressed in darkness.

  Later, as the evening dragged on, they were roused to attention by a huge, open-topped vehicle painted a fantastic green. It had already swung past twice.

  “Emma…” a voice tiredly called. “Ione! Manassa!”

  Ione rose cautiously to view, and the car immediately pulled over near them. The driver opened the front door and stepped out. He was very tall, stood a little higher than Manassa even, and quite good-looking. He had short, sandy blond hair casually ranging a smile-prone countenance and his hands were very prominent, hovering restlessly at his side, ready for anything.

  “Hi!” he said. “I’m Dean. I can only assume you’re the women I’m looking for.”

  “Maybe,” Ione cautiously offered. To her surprise he made eye contact with Emma first rather than the larger women flanking her.

  “I’m Emma,” her lover drily confirmed, evidently too tired for cagey exchanges at this point.

  Dean regarded Ione’s stately figure and Manassa’s singular nudity in grinning appreciation as they matched themselves to names.

  “I assume Mark sent you. What happened to him?” Ione inquired.

  Dean winced. “Ah. Yes. Interesting situation. I met him pretty much by chance last night at a club. We got to talking, went back to my place with some friends. Everyone was drinking and at some point he just conked out. If he hadn’t already told me where you were—like four times—I would never have found you.” He stared at them in frank appraisal, wide green eyes breezily declaring the unhappiness of that alternative, then glanced around in concern.

  “I know you have questions, but we better continue this party on the road. I brought stuff to drink. And clothing—you gotta wear it in these neighborhoods. Hop in.” He ushered them within the car, which comfortably accommodated them on two wide, plushly upholstered couches that faced each other from either side to leave an open space in the middle. At the far back of the seating area a gnome of unknown purpose slouched next to a few odd-looking pieces of gear.

  “Just push that stuff out of the way,” he said, shoving the blue-toned creature to a more compact configuration. Stepping around to the front he flung the driver-side door open and sat next to the gnome installed there. “I’ll crank up the top for some privacy,” he added, muscularly pumping a hydraulic lever. A segmented shell crawled overhead with a metallic crepitance to enclose them, locked in place above the windshield.

  “Cool,” Emma remarked, favoring him with a flirtatious look.

  Throwing an arm over the lateral seat back that separated the front and rear of the car, he handed Ione a clinking turquoise bag.

  “First things first. Drink up!”

  They fell to slaking their thirst with bottles of cool water, then sweet juices; a gulping and choking resuscitation punctuated by rapturous declarations of gratitude. When they had recovered somewhat Dean directed them to an assortment of clothing under the seats, fragrant from recent laundering.

  “Find something you like. Just make sure your goodies are covered. And don’t forget the bras and panties; they check for those.”

  “Uh… who?” Ione demanded.

  “No one, if we’re lucky,” Dean muttered cryptically.

  She adorned herself with a dress of thin blue linen skeptically selected from the pile, then watched as Emma did likewise with a striped lime-colored number that set off her hair. Manassa squirmed into a huge pink chemise that still barely contained the extravagant dimensions of her physique.

  Dean waited until they had composed themselves, assessed their appearance with renewed appreciation, then reached over to the gnome at his side and pushed its left nipple. The vehicle lurched slightly. “All set?”

  Ione nodded, willing for the moment to journey anywhere that promised an end to the horrors of the desert.

  “Let’s go!” said Manassa, rambunctiously slapping the seat, her customary ebullience restored by the prospect of new adventures.

  Dean gripped the steering wheel and began to pedal a set of cranks. The gnome sitting to his right responded by stomping aggressively on its own, much heavier cranking apparatus, multiplying the driver’s energy to motivate the vehicle. They surged forward.

  “This is crazy,” Emma murmured in awe as the acceleration forced them back with a headily masculine authority. Ione was fascinated by the vigorously pedaling gnome—the first she had observed to display such functionality. They were soon moving at some speed.

  The City was immense—countless neighborhoods of houses and buildings and gnome-lit parks, organized into bigger districts of varying character, comprehensively interconnected by a labyrinthine network of nameless roads and highways. Gnomes perched above major intersections, signaling right-of-way by the color of their eyes, and others threw great cones of light down onto the street. Dean maneuvered without complication through a series of steadily more luxurious territories till they reached a broad thoroughfare, trafficked by an intimidating flow of commuters moving at high speed. Wind rushing by the open windows tugged playfully at Ione’s hair as he proceeded to call out various features of the metropolis gliding by.

  “The neighborhood where I found you is heavily influenced by the Dowser, one of the judges that administrate the City. We’re gonna swing through an area that’s under the control of the Gnomon—he’s the other judge—then we’ll be downtown. You can already see the mist rising off the park at the center of the valley.”

  From the back seat Ione watched Dean bear down harder on the pedals, prompting the gnome’s muscular legs to a furious activity on its cranks. The vehicle—which Dean called a convertible—hurtled into traffic and Emma giggled at the effect of its acceleration on Manassa’s bosom as her nipples were momentarily presented in high relief. The big woman was just as amused, pinched herself playfully to accentuate the effect. Ione took a deep draught of juice, finishing the last bottle.

  “What’s that? Can I try it?” Emma inquired, referring to a beverage Dean was sipping from a thin green flask.

  “Um… actually, no.” He turned to them apologetically for a moment. “Mark kinda made me promise.”

  “Why?” Manassa demanded over the wind and traffic.

  “It’s different from anything you’ve had. Aged water. The Dowser dispenses it. Makes you feel groovy.”

  “Oh, then never mind of course,” Ione snorted. “How could we possibly be interested in any kind of pleasure after stumbling around the desert for days?”

  Emma sniffed. “We’ve had all kinds of water, anyway.”

  “This is different. It remembers.”

  “Remembers what?” Ione retorted.

  “C’mon! Let us try!” Manassa demanded, stamping her feet.

  “Yeah, don’t be stingy,” Emma wheedled, flashing a winsome smile.

  “Oh, fuck. Alright,” Dean reluctantly agreed, swishing the bottle speculatively. “Only a bit left anyway.”

  They each got a swallow. Ione wondered at its sublime effect on her palate—not a flavor exactly, but different from pure water in some indefinable way. She decided it was good.

  The traffic slowed for a bit, restrained by a shadow leaning over them from far across the metropolis, thrown by the setting sun. Ione felt her awareness of time and place deepen, a faint but definite hyperlocalization. “What’s happening?” she asked, and Dean pointed.

  “It’s the shadow of th
e Gnomon’s Tower, the largest building in the valley. Its reach is weak here, but if you go anywhere near the place you’ll experience its effect more personally.” Dean shrugged it off. “Creepy,” he muttered, but it didn’t bother Ione.

  A trio of women pulled close in a red sedan, bantering noisily. Ione had already noticed that ladies drove cars as typically as men, displayed daring levels of personality when protected by velocity and steel.

  “Hey, gorgeous!” one called to Dean. “Wanna party?”

  “Come on over!” Manassa belted. Ione chuckled at the thought as a strange, reckless feeling lifted her exhaustion. The other women laughed and sped on to wherever they were going.

  Dean wove through traffic with quick bursts of acceleration, arresting just as suddenly when required. The sun departed and more glow gnomes blinked into service, beaming wide pools of radiance onto roads and homes and buildings in dauntless defiance of the night. The convertible’s big side-windows put them on constant display, and Ione became gradually aware their group was drawing an unusual level of interest.

  Emma picked up a thin wooden rod she discovered among the clothing under her seat, elegantly tapered like a long penis. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a drum stick,” replied Dean.

  “What’s it do?” wondered Manassa, grabbing it from Emma.

  “I’m a musician,” he explained with a pride no one could miss. “I play the drums.” He proceeded to explain drumming in more detail as they drove and Ione realized the gear lying around the convertible served this avocation.

  Goaded by the Dowser’s drink, stirred by the tight embrace of her panties and the sensual vibration of the vehicle, she found herself inconveniently libidinous. She hadn’t gotten off since they left the Laplands. As they made their way lower into the valley her imagination wandered to a gleaming little toy she had spied under her seat among the clothing. After a little, in the relative privacy afforded by the street-gazing of the other women, she contrived to acquire it; a solid metal bulb with a curved extension terminating in a thick ring. Called a finger, it was mostly used for sexual conditioning, but in the present situation…

  When the moment was right she turned to conceal her right side, lifted her hem and slipped the toy within her panties, feeding the smooth bulb into her vagina. Its finger-like appendage curved up her vulva to press the metal loop down about her clitoris.

  The weighty device shuddered from the effect of the gnome’s athletic cranking, a vibration that was delicately conveyed to her womanhood by its rigid curve. The periodic bounce of the convertible over inconstancies in the road induced a random vitality to the effect, and she leaned back, arms sprawled wide, a faint smile on her face.

  “Look over there,” Dean pointed.

  “Wow!” Emma involuntarily remarked as the busiest part of the City was spectacularly revealed around a hard bend in the highway. Ione had to agree.

  Cars hustled along in many lanes now. Round towers thrust into the night air, densely gathered about one of their number, built to a scale that couldn’t be reckoned even at a distance. At the center of the metropolis Ione saw a vast grove of fog-shrouded flora that issued vapor in a slow dance to endow a wheeling mass of clouds.

  A low, gleaming vehicle with an open top pulled alongside them, filled with raucously shouting men. “Look at that slipper!” one appreciatively observed, pointing to herself.

  “Wanna race?” the driver shouted.

  Ione had already identified a minimal but widely acknowledged transportational culture that functioned to blur the line between skulk and man in the context of the road. She waited to see what might happen, preoccupied by the steady romance of the finger at her vulva, now expectantly drenched.

  “You’re on!” Manassa raged, clambering over Emma to thrust herself out the window, dress flapping noisily in the wind. The smaller woman opportunistically assaulted her ass, flogging its bounty with unrestrained zeal as Manassa’s huge legs danced with rowdy impatience on the padded seat.

  “Go! Go! Go!” she yelled, thumping Dean’s headrest.

  He stomped on the pedals, cranking spastically, and they were hammered back with a force Ione could not have anticipated. Manassa tumbled with a shout and they quickly equaled their competitor’s position, kept pace as the City flew by.

  “You suck!” Manassa blustered over the noise. Emma jeered at the men, laughed till her throat caught.

  The convertible, motivated to a furious shudder by its macho operator, induced a hard resonance in the toy between Ione’s legs, which fingered her clitoris with a lively, secondhand tremor. “Ohhh fugg…” she groaned, momentarily unable to contain her excitement.

  “Oh yeah!” Dean echoed, accelerating again. The finger was agitated to a new urgency and Ione stiffened in proximity to climax, desperate to pull it off somehow.

  “Go, Dean!” Emma bawled.

  Ione closed her eyes, let the welling bliss in her clamped pubis develop unchecked by caution. Orgasm lingered tantalizingly within reach as they raced on.

  Another vehicle pulled close on her side of the convertible, packed with goggling men.

  “Whoohoo, look at those bitches!” one shouted.

  He smiled avariciously at her, and Ione was abruptly glad she was protected by the convertible, knowing that these skulks—for it was obvious only the structure and protocols of the City rendered them peaceable—would have terrified her back in the Lap. But here the danger only added to the runaway thrill of the moment…

  Manassa clambered over her to confront them. “You got a problem?” she truculently inquired. Her knees set the seat lurching, and her sprawling breasts filled Ione’s immediate view. Dean had brought no lingerie capacious enough to restrain them.

  The men in the adjacent vehicle cheered lustily, and the total effect of so much stimulation—amplified by whatever Dean had given them to drink—put her over the edge, to a place where she no longer cared who detected the ecstasy swirling in her lap. She bounced up and down on the cushions as Manassa kneed about, letting flesh connect where chance provided, wound up with a huge tit in her face. Ione opened her mouth to let a thinly veiled nipple between her teeth.

  “Mmmmmnnnn,” she breathed, mindlessly sucking the stiffened tip as orgasm suffused her crotch. The pleasure crested, dallied timelessly, diminished at last to a satiated warmth as Manassa locked eyes with her in amazement, unavoidably aware of Ione’s passion. But the big woman turned away when someone shouted again from the rival car, sparing Ione any further awkwardness. Emma hadn’t seen a thing.

  “Fuck!” Dean suddenly cursed. The convertible slowed.

  “What?” Ione queried in alarm, blinking as the other women hurriedly settled back in their seats. Ahead she could see cars were being randomly stopped by large men, imposingly dressed in formal, crimson suits. People were being called out of their vehicles to be examined in intimate ways.

  “Mannermen,” said Dean with a mixture of annoyance and fear in his voice. Ione tensed as a pair of pastel green panties were held up for inspection. A woman stood naked on the sidewalk, shifting in humiliation.

  Dean turned, looked them over, lingering on Manassa’s barely restrained anatomy. “Keep quiet and don’t make eye contact.”

  Ione reached down, removed the finger from her vagina with a clandestine tug, dropped the gleaming little toy under the seat. “Who do they work for?” she whispered.

  Dean shrugged. “No one knows.”

  One of the mannermen turned to their vehicle as it neared, soberly scrutinizing its interior. His eyes widened at the sight of the women and he muttered urgently to his comrades, who swiveled to regard them. Then they stepped toward the convertible as one being.

  “Oh, fuck this…” Ione whispered, terrified.

  Dean swiveled to regard the oncoming lane. “You got it,” he promised and hammered on the pedals. They screeched into the oncoming lanes. Gnomes blared their indignation as cars were forced to swerve out of the way. Dean returned to the c
orrect side of the road once they were out of view of the mannermen.

  “What happened?” Ione demanded.

  “I don’t know exactly. But I think they wanted to check her out,” he gestured to Manassa, who seemed completely unintimidated by the notion. “Her nipples were pretty obvious, and you can’t get away with that in this part of town. Sorry I didn’t bring a bra that fit,” he apologized.

  “They really gave me the creeps,” Emma said, snuggling close to Ione for protection. She put a protective arm around her lover.

  Dean wove skillfully through traffic, and the tense confrontation soon lapsed from consideration as new features of the City materialized.

  They were now winding through a series of densely populated elevations. In their midst an enormous hill reared, lined with stately homes and buildings that ascended a tightly spiraling avenue to the top, where a colossal, round edifice dominated the skyline. As they stared a thunderous clang issued from its direction, washing over them to the distant reaches of the City. They had heard it many times already as they waited by the desert, but here the effect was awe-inspiring.

  “The Dowser’s bucket,” Dean eagerly explained. “Huge thing hanging in the middle of his bar. It hauls stillwater up from a reservoir under the hill—that’s the stuff you just drank, but in pure form.” Ione was bemused by the lofty grandeur of the place, hovering high over a multitude of imitators. “Hottest dance club in the City,” Dean added, staring up wistfully.

  There were people everywhere about them now, clogging the sidewalks, shouting and laughing, crossing the streets when glow gnomes directed, and sometimes when they didn’t. New dress standards were in evidence; the dull conservatism of the outer neighborhoods had given way to sophisticated fashions closer to the park, which lapsed to bolder, more revealing outfits as they ascended a well-lit hill directly adjacent to the Dowser’s prominence.