Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One Page 24

  Status

  The following morning they held a tactical discussion in Dean’s cluttered salon. Their host was practicing down the hall in his music room. The noise was deafening even from that distance, but it conveniently masked their discussion and served to warn of his possible approach. Mark admitted the previous evening had been just as rowdy.

  “So you had company?” Ione prodded. Emma could tell she was determined to get things sorted out.

  “Yeah. Just after I left you I got picked up by these slippers—or women, I guess—on their way to somewhere. Tried to convince them to go back for you, but there was no more room in the car, and they weren’t exactly interested in competition anyway. They had water, and I didn’t pay much attention to anything else for a while,” he admitted.

  “Weren’t you self-conscious, being naked around clothed people?” Ione questioned.

  “At first. But they told me where they were going everyone would be nude anyway. Which was true. We came to a dance club at the peak of the hill we’re on right now–

  “You went out partying?” Ione demanded incredulously.

  “Was it fun?” Manassa wanted to know. Her big body was sprawled over a whole couch, cunt boldly exposed, complicating the sightlines available to Emma while Ione was in attendance.

  “Crazy.” Mark shook his head. “Really, just out of control. I could barely move. All these people shouting and drinking, and drummers going at it like skulks. That’s where I first saw Dean, actually. He finished playing and we bumped up in the crowd and started talking. I guess it’s not that cool to hang out where you work—unless you work for the Dowser—so he proceeds to convince all these women dinking around with us to go back to his place.”

  “And with you as part of the deal they did not fail to oblige,” Ione archly conjectured.

  Mark looked away, blushing slightly. Regarding him after a little time apart, Emma realized that his great charisma would stand out even in the City. It had likely been the catalyst for whatever followed.

  “Anyway, I was pestering Dean the whole time about going back for the three of you, but when I told him you were out by the desert he was adamant it would have to wait till the next day.”

  “So you brought the party back here?” Ione confirmed.

  “Yeah.”

  “How many women?” Emma asked.

  Mark coughed, took a distracted sip of water. “Um, maybe a couple dox or so.”

  “Oh. Just your closest friends, then,” Ione gibed, crossing her legs. Emma had to suppress a grin.

  “Ahem. So I finally drink this stuff everyone’s been pushing on me the whole time. Not just water, it turns out.”

  “Well! There we are drying up in the desert, and you’re getting drinks pushed on you at a party!” Emma roared in astonishment. They all laughed with her, loosening the mood a little.

  Mark completed the tale.

  “There was a lot of um, fooling around after that… and as the night wore on I got more and more frustrated. I just started feeling really weird. I fell asleep then, or I don’t remember what happened anyway.” Emma wasn’t surprised. Dean had already explained that the full effect of stillwater was only possible for about a sixth of a day in total. And if you did it all at once you were usually pretty tired afterward.

  In the pause that followed Dean’s manic drumming stirred the air to an oppressive din. Emma realized they had almost been shouting.

  “So what’s next?” she wondered. No one said anything for a bit, then Ione muttered something under a crescendo of percussion from down the hall.

  “What?” Mark said, and she replied in a louder tone, but Emma still couldn’t hear, and from Mark’s reaction it seemed important.

  “What was that?” she repeated, to Ione’s irritation.

  “We have to find another place to stay!” she piercingly clarified.

  “Just because of the noise?” she rhetorically confirmed. Dean, now thoroughly warmed up, aspired to yet mightier feats of amplitude as they conversed. Emma thought he was showing off.

  Ione shook her head. “Not that alone.” She stared out the salon window onto the immensity of the City. “As accidental guests of a man we barely know in a complicated new environment, our strategic position is untenable. We have to have more than one option when it comes to our living arrangements, even if we don’t immediately exercise it.”

  Mark shrugged. “That makes sense to me. I can easily foresee a time when we might not want anyone to know our whereabouts.”

  “Okay. So how do we go about it?” Manassa wanted to know.

  “Well… I suppose we have to find someplace suitable first, then convince someone to let us stay there,” Ione hesitantly speculated.

  “It could get back to Dean pretty quickly if we did that right around here,” Emma theorized. “Might hurt his feelings.”

  “Not to be unduly cynical, but are we even sure he wants us around long-term?” Mark questioned.

  “Maybe not,” said Ione. “In which case it’s crucial we look for other quarters.”

  “Should we walk down the hill, then?” Emma suggested. “There’s lots to see. It could be fun.”

  Ione shook her head. “This isn’t the Lap. We need a vehicle. I already talked to Dean, and he said we could borrow his convertible if we want to see the City. I gather he normally uses another one, anyway.”

  Mark blinked. “Uh… ‘borrow the convertible,’ you said? We’re just gonna hop in and drive it?”

  Ione couldn’t suppress a defiant expression. “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Just seems like the kind of thing you might have to practice. Dean didn’t talk to you about that?”

  Ione faltered. “Well… I may have let him assume a few things.”

  Mark chuckled, but for Emma the decision was already made. If Ione said she could do something, then she could. Emma had never seen otherwise.

  Manassa rose from the sofa as a cacophonous wave of percussion advanced down the hall. “Well, we’re off to…” she yawned and stretched magnificently.

  “Wherever,” Mark phlegmatically concluded, heading for the door.

  Ione pulled onto the broad avenue spiraling down the hill, almost ramming a sedan in the next lane over. She twisted the wheel violently and they straightened out just in time, arresting with a screech. Cars behind them halted in a cascading pattern of deafeningly attested indignation, a chorus of bleating gnomes. She carefully accelerated again, aware for the first time just how much power was available from the go gnome next to her on the front seat, magnifying her will with its sturdy legs.

  “This is going to be interesting,” Mark decided.

  Dean’s hill proved to be a good place to practice, as their stop and go progress down its busy spiral avenue allowed her to rehearse the relevant procedures and responses at a lenient velocity. When they had circled it a few times she could already conduct the vehicle with some skill, and by the time they reached the base Ione had driven long enough for the novelty of the experience to be displaced by their original purpose.

  Manassa cheerfully bounced around on the cushions, head periodically issuing out the window to confront anyone bold enough to address them. Emma made wondering observations about the City that Ione scarcely bothered to audit. They were all nude at the moment, but she had brought clothing for other circumstances as required. People of the City were clearly long adapted to frequent changes of apparel.

  “There,” said Mark, pointing. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

  A small complex of mint-colored apartments faced the avenue, several doors signed with a circle, indicating availability. An expansive park graced with lush grass, picturesque ponds, meandering streams and scattered groves of shade-conferring trees dwelt beyond it, one of many such havens they had seen scattered about the metropolis.

  Ione pulled them out of traffic and parked without complication. They assumed casual clothing, bumping around in the limited space available, then exited
the convertible and walked to the foyer.

  The doorman stood at once when they entered, politely barring their way.

  “May I ask who you’re visiting?”

  “Looking for a place to stay, my friend,” Mark cordially explained, channeling all his formidable charisma through an engaging grin.

  The doorman stared them up and down, shook his head in negation. “You don’t have the status to live here.”

  They turned to each other in dismay.

  “How do you know?” Ione blurted following an awkward pause.

  “It’s my business to know,” he replied, brusquely terminating the exchange.

  They exited the foyer under his stolid surveillance, confused and intimidated.

  And so it went where they attempted at three other locations to procure lodgings, denied for the same reason in each case; no status. No standing, no stature. With each new judgment their perception of this intangible quality grew more acute, and as the day wore on Ione felt her customarily bold personality compress to a less extroverted shape. She found herself subtly giving way to other drivers on the road, particularly those in high-status cars, hating what it did to her image in front of Emma. But if they couldn’t even find a place to stay, who knew what might happen if they made trouble…

  They searched about the various territories of the City till evening arrived, carefully skirting the enormous fog-shrouded park at the center of the metropolis where mannermen lurked in numbers, knowing the convertible might be easily identified again. They dressed as required for each situation till it became second nature to do so. Rumpled clothes were strewn all about the vehicle.

  Chance took them close to the Gnomon’s round Tower and its stark shadow, sweeping around the City like a commandment. As it fell on the car a preternatural awareness of all things mechanical blanketed Ione’s mind by some uncanny means, rendering the angular, blue-tinted gnome next to her subtly threatening in the dimmed immanence of its creator. Ione stared at its clean, muscular form at work, hands clenching lateral struts for stability as it exaggerated the delicate movement of her legs to a shuddering motivation of their whole party.

  Her courage failed, and she turned before coming any closer to the Gnomon’s cloud-high redoubt, depressed to see the bold ambitions of the day raveled to nothing.

  As darkness settled she became increasingly concerned for their safety. The sky tendered a moonlit roil of vapor, and the air was suffused with a warm humidity. It would rain soon, she knew. No one was talking now.

  They rolled along ill-lit, winding neighborhoods of the Dowser’s persuasion, assaulted at intervals by the insufferable clanging of his bucket, momentarily fixing their distance and direction. She had steadily ascended toward the circumscribing edge of the desert, where apartments and motels of a very undiscriminating sort could be found. Ione drove past several before at last, in a narrow, unkempt alley where shifty, unsmiling men lurked, she pulled into a two-story tenement with a multitude of vacancies.

  “C’mon. We have to get something.” Her competence to lead the group was in question now, and she wouldn’t return to Dean’s noisy hospitality unless she absolutely had to.

  The doorman leered in interest as they entered, and Ione stepped forward with a baseless, jittery confidence, tactically expending the last of her bravado in a brazen attempt to simply take what they needed.

  “We’ll have a room,” she imperiously informed him.

  The doorman slowly looked them over, the first to grant them such a promisingly ambiguous reaction, lingering on their borrowed clothing and the bottle peeping out of Emma’s bag.

  “Expecting guests?”

  “No.”

  He smiled thinly. “Alright, then.” Ione hid any sign of elation, hoping the others had sense to do likewise.

  “Follow him,” said the doorman, pointing to an associate lingering nearby.

  They trailed him up a set of stairs onto the second floor and down a long hall. From the silence and sense of disuse Ione guessed no one had been assigned to the rooms they passed. The hotel functionary opened a room near the end and gestured inward. They entered and he departed with a meaningless smile.

  Ione stared. There were two rumpled beds situated athwart a crouching glow gnome, a ramshackle cluster of drawers under a counter with an embedded sink, and a curtainless shower installed in one corner. A premonitory roll of thunder issued high over the City, conspiring with all the other uncertainties of the moment to finally deplete her reservoir of self-belief. She knew they should not have come to this place. They could still leave…

  “Well, here we are,” Emma tiredly declared.

  Ione crossed the room, brushed curtains aside to stare out a large window overlooking the parking lot below, wanly lit by a pole-mounted gnome in the alley. “Quite a reduction from Dean’s hospitality,” she skeptically observed, about to suggest their removal to the safety of his lodgings.

  “Whatever,” said Mark, throwing himself onto the nearer bed with a muscular sigh.

  “No sand and sun to torture us, and no drums either. So it’s okay by me,” Manassa grinned.

  “We’ll be fine,” Emma said, tumbling down next to Mark.

  “Huh. Okay. Guess I’ll park the car closer,” Ione decided.

  When she returned to the room Manassa was pushing the beds together, skirted haunches working in muscular steps till they had been joined to effect a larger social space. Ione took a last look down the hallway, then carefully barred the door, verifying there was no way to manipulate it from outside.

  Rain began to pensively spatter the roof.

  Night claimed the metropolis.

  “We should go try that tavern down the street,” Emma suggested, feeling bored and pent up following a brief nap. They were all naked now, and more comfortable for it.

  Manassa grinned at this idea. “Yeah. Why not? We can handle the rain.”

  Ione was unconvinced. “Things are uncertain enough at the moment.”

  “But they got music,” Emma wheedled, though she had to admit what she heard in passing from the car sounded leadenly uninspired next to Dean’s artistry. She already missed the tall musician’s energy and affection.

  “Let’s leave any new adventures for tomorrow,” said Mark, siding with Ione as usual.

  Emma fretfully paced the narrow alley of carpeted floor. “Well, if we’re gonna be stuck here…” She rummaged about in the bag they had packed to produce an elegant green bottle, lofting it triumphantly to gleam in the low gnome light. Its voluptuously tapered profile expressed a sly intimation of its effect.

  Mark sat up. “Hey. That’s the stuff,” he accused, pointing to it with a frown. “Messed me up at the party…”

  “Maybe ‘cause you didn’t know what to expect,” Emma flippantly postulated. She opened it with a twist before Ione could object.

  Mark grimaced. “Could be. But is this the right time and place to go experimenting?”

  “Well, I do believe that it is,” she retorted with supercilious eloquence and took a deep swig. It was pure water, as clean as she had ever tasted, but an eldritch distinction lurked in its essence that bespoke ages lost to recall. “Wow. Fuck. Try it.”

  It was much more potent than anything yesterday had produced, and Emma giddily realized they had vaulted past the middle territory of the drink hierarchy to access its far end. Dean had coddled them, and she decided not to regret sneaking off with the last bottle of his best stuff. She passed it around and Manassa was acquainted with it next.

  “Crazy cool… I can feel myself from both ends!” she exclaimed, whimsically attempting to identify the elusive principle of Dowser drink. “Who’s next?”

  Mark relented with a shrug at her blissful solicitation and took a shallow draught. Ione cautiously followed when it came around to her.

  “It’s ancient,” she admitted, trying to sound analytical. But Emma could hear the awe in her voice.

  The stillwater warmed Emma’s inner self, swept grandly f
orth to her extremities, delivering a euphoria only hinted at before. The bottle circulated and came around again. She drank without fear, seduced by intimations of happier times barely remembered, moved to long for their return.

  The steadily deepening rain was transformed in her imagination to the chattering ambience of the Lap, their cramped hotel accommodations rendered fit for persons of unlimited significance. Overcome by the potency of the bottle, she jumped on top of the bed, spinning about till dizziness brought her tumbling down into Ione’s embrace. Their lips met spontaneously and Emma kissed her with an elemental need.

  Mark watched the effect on them, decided he was powerless to challenge it and solemnly raised the bottle in toast.

  “I know it’s been confusing, trying to understand me. Things have been weird. But I want you to know that whatever happens tonight… however desperate I get toward the end…” he trailed off, voice husky with emotion. His dark eyes held them with a strange intensity. “I really don’t wanna wake up in bondage here,” he bluntly advised, sealed the oath with a hearty swig.

  “Fine,” Emma drawled. “Don’t have to be an asshat about it. We’ll take care of you some other time.” He dodged her playful slap.

  Manassa was shuffling around in the bag, curiously fingering its contents. She acquired a long, delicately curved form with a thick phallus hinging from one end.

  “What’s this?” she inquired.

  “It’s a header,” Emma said. “Kind of like a jape, but easier to use. Wanna see me use it?” she teased, reaching for the lubricants.

  “I do,” Mark declared. He maneuvered into position behind her, hands reaching around to enfold her breasts, playfully thumbing the nipples. Ione took a bolder swig from the bottle, brow rising in interest.

  Emma licked the rubber cock of the header, tickling along its underside with roving, infatuated kisses, familiarizing her lips with its burly shape, then slid it into her mouth, slurping theatrically. She opened her legs wide, setting the heavy, oiled length of the device down on the seam of her vulva. Its underside featured a deeply engraved channel traveling the long direction of the toy in a gentle wave.