Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (47 page)

She got up eventually, stretched and padded
down to the music room, gingerly opened the door.

Dean arrested with a flourish, muting a big
cymbal with a deft snatch. The air shimmered with faintly lingering
aftertones.

“
Whatcha think?” he
grinned.

“
You’re amazing,” she
uncynically confirmed, shaking her head.

“
Thanks, Emz,” he beamed,
then grew serious. “But tonight will prove it—or not. The guys I’m
up against are phenomenal musicians and huge celebrities. You
should see how they live!” he marveled.

“
You’ll kick their asses,”
Emma promised and he smiled, swiveled around to find
something.

“
I got something for you.
Look!” With an elegant gesture he produced a beautiful set of
nipple clamps, silver inlaid with big glinting emeralds.

“
They’re beautiful!” she
exclaimed.

“
You’re huggin’ the sweetest
hills I’ve ever seen—there isn’t a man or woman in the building
that’s failed to advise me as to how they should be decorated. I
want everyone fantasizing about those big, beautiful nipples
tonight!”

She fastened one to her right breast,
swiveling back and forth to admire it from various angles in the
giant mirror Dean used to evaluate his physicality.

“
They’re called pronks. With
a sly look he reached over and pinched the clamp. Emma heard a
sharp clink, but felt no effect on her nipple. Dean was grinning
nonchalantly.

“
What?”

“
Wait for it…” he
intoned.

She jumped as the toy bit her nipple
painfully.

“
You fucker!”

Dean was laughing. “Can’t tell exactly when
they’re going to spring. That’s the trick. Adds to the fun,
eh?”

Emma snorted, examined the treacherous little
ornaments with suspicion, then relented to their playful intent,
giggling as she fixed the other pronk to her bosom.

“
I’ll be wearing’em
tonight,” she promised.

“
So… are the others coming?”
Dean hesitantly inquired.

“
Yep. Later on.”

“
Cool.” He kissed her,
obviously relieved by this pledge of support. His skin was dripping
from a morning-long, manic assault on the drums, and she thought of
their last sexual encounter, at dawn. He had applied himself with
great passion to her needs, eventually delivering a decent climax.
Nothing amazing—peaking too late this time—but she had to remember
that Ione and Mark knew her rhythms far better.

“
Wanna shower?” Emma offered
suggestively, licking her lips. “I have a gift for you,
too…”

Dean’s manhood bulged hopefully. “After
you.”

They soaped and scrubbed each other under the
steaming discharge of the showerhead. Emma lathered and rinsed his
penis last so as to leave it stringently aroused, then slipped
ritually to her knees, shaking her blond hair back as Dean settled
into a wider stance.

Her fellatio was measured, earnest and
lovingly rendered. She let him fully into her throat, giving him
his due as friend and provider. The water raining down around her
head gilt the experience with a sultry but ironic symbolism as she
waited for the quick pulse in his cock that marked the imminence of
climax.

She withdrew just before he came. “Are you
ready for your gift?”

“
Oh yes, fuck yes,
please…”

“
Here it is.” Emma rose to
her knees and stepped out of the shower.

“
What? What are you doing!”
he sputtered as she dried off.

“
Something few women can
manage for a man of your stature. You’ll be at your best tonight
this way.”

Dean shook his head in disbelief. “Emma, what
the fuck are you talking about?”

“
If you win I’ll lip the
spitter all night—you can oil up my throat as many times as you
like, okay? All the suck you can handle,” she promised.

He grimly acknowledging the
wisdom of her proposition with a muffled groan. “Look. The Dowser
has a dox of house drummers, so I may very well succeed in getting
placed. I have before. The problem is
defending
that status, and moving up
in the ranks. And that has more to do with popularity.”

Emma knew him well enough already to guess
why he might be challenged by this. For all his clever
musicianship, Dean’s social instincts were a little unrefined next
to what a cooler figure like Mark would do in the same situation.
This was partly why the drummer had been generous to a bunch of
strangers in the first place, she knew. Dean had fallen under the
influence of Mark’s singular charisma, which was rooted in his
sexual authority with women. Only Ione, Manassa and Emma knew the
secret of his tortured need, concentrated by denial to an erotic
radiation that helplessly enveloped any woman coming near.

But it wasn’t just Mark that drew him to
their group, she knew. Emma had met enough city people now to
realize that their culture had a subtly conforming effect—she had
encountered no one yet to rival Ione’s mastering rationality, or
her own emotional intelligence. And Manassa was totally beyond
their estimation, a true force of nature…

“
Why don’t you just finish,”
Dean grumped, gesturing vaguely toward the shower floor. Emma
stared him down.

“
All things in time. You get
ready while I do my hair. We’ll leave when you can hang casually in
my presence again.”

The sky was softly littered by cloud as they
made their way along the ever more richly appointed avenue winding
up the Dowser’s hill. Everywhere she looked there were glamorous
cars on the avenue. Emma rode behind Dean in his sparkling silver
two-seater convertible, waving to random people that solicited her
interest with honking gnomes or shouted invitations. Four vehicles
followed them with the drums and an entourage of Dean’s closest
friends.

The sidewalks bore a river of men and women
visiting shops and residences that even halfway up the hill
surpassed the most glamorous of such on Dean’s hill nearby.
Clothing was entirely absent now, as were mannermen. The dance
clubs and drinking parlors featured progressively grander facades,
some teeming with mid-day crowds already well into their own social
schedules. Pedestrians saluted their noisy convoy as they rounded
to the highest altitudes. Above them the bucket rung and the will
of the Dowser rolled palpably down on them all, stalling every
thought and conversation for a timeless term. Dean pointed
suddenly.

“
There!”

The Dowser’s Club was revealed to view around
a terminating curve in the road.

A cylindrical edifice rendered almost linear
by its colossal breadth, the Dowser’s Club was the epicenter of a
culture that dominated city life for a long way around. Parking
lots and low, manicured gardens with comfortable benches collected
about a forecourt designed to accommodate a large crowd of
socialites lingering for admittance. Employees of the Club were
everywhere, monitoring the grounds of the establishment to its far
perimeter. Emma was astonished by the sheer scale of it all, swept
her gaze back down to the lesser hills where small dreams
prevailed, instantly sympathizing with Dean’s ambition to rise
higher.

They parked around back, close to a busy
loading dock presided over by a high-ranking doorman and a large
contingent of security personnel under his command.

“
Lemme take you in first,”
Dean said. “Gotta friend I want you to meet.” They left his crew to
handle the equipment, passed under a broad arch into a noisy,
gnome-lit panorama of winking and glinting details.

An open floor stretched the diameter of the
building, communicating a total devotion to purpose. Bulky chrome
tables and booths were ranged along the walls, artfully encroaching
on the dance floor in random little tides of furniture. A number of
large mechanisms of unknown function were scattered about, some
with integral seats. Three round bandstands occupied equidistant
locations around the Club, and at the center was a circular bar,
backlit by colorful bottles. The counter surrounded a gigantic
bucket suspended from above, its glittering metal lip visible
through archways rendering access to the well.

“
Hey! Sara!” Dean signaled
to a tallish woman with big knockers and a cynical smile. She left
another conversation on a yapped witticism and sauntered over,
brazenly inspecting Emma.

“
This the one? Has to be.
Wow… you weren’t joking, Deano.”

“
Can you take it from here?”
he distractedly implored.

“
Sure thing,
lovenuts.”

“
See you in a bit, Emz,” he
promised and strode off to meet his crew, staggering in with the
first of the gear.

“
What’s going on?” Emma
questioned, trying to disguise a sudden ebb in confidence. Many of
the women she saw were breathtakingly beautiful.

“
So you’re Emma,” Sara
mused, pacing around her. “Love the clamps,” she snickered,
fingering one.

“
Uh, thanks.”

“
You work in one of the big
clubs before? I don’t recognize you from Dean’s current
gig.”

“
No. Nothing like that. This
is all new.”

Sara quietly snorted. “Hah. Asshole told me
you were going to be a socialite.”

Emma had no idea what she was referring to.
“Huh-uh. Just helping out. I’ve never served drinks or anything.”
She watched a cute brunette with a brief hairdo skip over to a
nearby table of employees, effortlessly balancing a tray crowded
with glasses. “Doesn’t look too hard, though.”

Sara gaped. “You think the
Dowser hires women like you to serve drinks? Dean brought you here
to see if you can handle what
I
do!”

Emma regarded her quizzically. “Which
is…?”

“
I’m a socialite. We create
relationships with the clientele. Build loyalty. It’s a given that
you’re gorgeous if you represent the Dowser, but can you dance?
Unkink a schlong with a long look? Drink one down while a everyone
watches?”

“
You have to have sex with
the customers?” Emma wilted.

“
Have to?” Sara shook her
head. “You have any idea how much status a socialite with a big
following has? At the Dowser’s Club you have sex where you want,
how you want, and only when it makes
you
happy. That’s what makes the
clients want to be in your clique; you’re
above
them, socially.”

Emma considered this. “So if I work here I
would have the status to get my own place?”

Sara smirked. “I have two already,
slipperlips, and I’m looking at a party pad just down the hill.
C’mon. I’ll show you the bar. The Dowser will wanna see you.”

Emma followed, wondering what Dean had said
about her, where she figured in his plans. He was at the bandstand
dais to her right, surrounded by guys busy assembling his drums and
positioning gnomes. A half-dox of glamorous women were loitering
about with a clearly conditional friendliness—he wouldn’t see them
again if he lost tonight, she knew.

Emma abruptly wished Ione were along,
regretted their separation. What was she doing here? She barely
knew Dean, and the Club itself was overwhelming in its scale and
energy. It would make better sense to find some humbler thing to do
first, gradually learn about the City and go from there. Emma knew
Ione had grudgingly allowed her to date Dean because they needed
his resources, the safety of his apartment and car. She would sneer
at their relationship when some alternative to this generosity
developed, and was probably seeing to it right now.

Emma halted in front of the bar, about to beg
off from the whole affair, searching for some way to explain her
sudden need to depart. Her gaze was drawn to the gleaming bucket
hovering beyond the circular battlement of bottles. Then the
largest man she had ever seen stepped into view.

He was almost a head taller than Dean, and
burlier than Mark; so physically intimidating he would not have
made sense in any place less imposing than his Club. Flowing blond
hair draping down bulging shoulders that framed a handsome, rigidly
masculine countenance. Permeating blue eyes appraised Emma’s
presentation, lingering on her feisty nipple clamps.

“
You are here with Dean?”
His voice was formal in tone, resonant with deep, barely perceived
timbers of authority and entitlement, a sound to measure anyone
that heard it.

“
Yeah. Yes. I
am.”

The Dowser stared down at her nakedness for
the space of a long pulse, then gestured for her to join him on the
other side of the counter. She stepped through a staff opening,
turned to abruptly confront the lower half of his anatomy. She
could only stare at the scale of his penis, which more than
fulfilled the standard of his hulking body. It swung like a cudgel,
lazily menacing the way before him, a manly arm that loosened her
lips in helpless awe, imposing enough to check the vanity of even
the most sophisticated woman. Peach-sized testicles lurked behind
it, promising an extravagant conclusion to any libidinal
interaction.

Emma heard a snicker from one of the servers,
clamped her gaping jaw and slid her gaze up to a more dignified
inclination.

“
Two flutes of cloudburst, a
shot of stillwater, and sixtwo glasses of stillwater mint.” The
server waited expectantly, casually balancing a large round tray
with a high lip, a sort of stylized bucket.