Chapter 28: Game night
Alex heard the music before he reached the bottom step, a low Brazilian thing with a lot of brushed drums, and under it the smell of pepperoni and scorched cheese. Amber had been down here since six, taping fliers to the banister, the fridge, and one to the bathroom mirror upstairs that read GAME NIGHT 8PM, CLOTHING OPTIONAL, LOSERS PAY.
He pushed the door open. The room glowed amber off the concrete, the pole throwing one long soft shadow across the velvet couches. Four pizza boxes sat open on the bar, steam curling off them, and somebody had already torn the corner off a pepperoni slice.
"Whose idea was the fliers?" Alex asked.
"Mine." Amber was on the couch with her feet tucked under her. "Blossom said my handwriting looks like a ransom note. I took it as a compliment."
The Twister mat lay under the pole, unrolled, the plastic still creased from the box. Red, yellow, blue, green. Blossom stood over it barefoot in her sarong, arms crossed, considering it the way she considered most things that had rules.
"It's a game about contortion and shame," she said. "They sell it to children."
"They sell it to everybody," Stacey said. She was at the bar, cutting a pizza with a knife because the wheel had gone missing. "That's the joke."
"It's not a joke. It's a game where you touch four colors and try not to fall on your face."
Lola came down the stairs last with a bottle of wine and no glass. She wore a loose black slip dress and nothing under it that Alex could make out. She surveyed the room once, boxes to mat to couch, and set the bottle on the bar.
"Rules," she said.
Amber sat up. "Okay. So. Everybody strips. Then we spin. Hands and feet on the colors, normal Twister. Only difference is your mouth."
"Your mouth," Lola repeated.
"Your mouth can go anywhere it wants to distract whoever's losing." Amber grinned and pulled her tank top up over her head in one motion. "Those are the rules I wrote. They're on the flier."
"The flier doesn't say that."
"The flier says clothing optional and losers pay." Amber's shorts hit the floor. She stepped out of them and tossed them at the bar. "That's the same thing at a distance."
Stacey laughed and started unbuttoning. She hung her shirt on the back of a chair, and Alex watched the long line of her back come out of it, the graft scars low under her ribs, the swimmer's breadth of her shoulders. She caught him looking and raised an eyebrow. He took his shirt off.
They ate first, standing up mostly, paper plates gone soggy with grease. Blossom dragged her sarong off over her head and folded it on the couch arm, and then there was no reason for anyone to still be dressed, so nobody was. Alex poured wine. Lola ate two slices with her fingers and drank straight from the bottle and told a story about a man in Fells Point who had tried to sell her a used treadmill, and Stacey laughed so hard she had to set her plate down.
By nine the boxes were cold and the mat was flat. Amber crouched and spun the dial. It clicked. "Right foot, blue."
They started easy, which lasted about ninety seconds. Stacey went over Amber to reach her color and Amber took the chance to drag her tongue up Stacey's inner thigh, hanging there on one hand, and Stacey buckled and went down on her hip, laughing.
"That's a fall," Alex said.
"That's a distraction."
"That's a fall." He spun. "Left hand, yellow."
Blossom got low over the mat, spread wide, auburn hair brushing the plastic. Lola crossed behind her and put her mouth on the small of Blossom's back, unhurried, and Blossom's arms started to tremble and held anyway. She was stronger than she looked.
"Blossom," Amber said from the floor. "Blossom, are you even trying to win?"
"I'm trying to stay upright."
"Because you've got a whole open route to Lola's tits and you're doing nothing with it."
"That's not a route, it's a straight line."
Alex spun again. Right hand, red. He had to plant his palm between Stacey's feet and go over her, chest to chest, and she took the moment to bite his shoulder. He dropped onto one elbow, barely, and the mat creaked under his knee.
The round went long. Lola was the one who kept winning, because Lola never got distracted, or never looked like it, which was worse. She moved from color to color like a woman doing paperwork. When Blossom finally collapsed on a green circle with her legs in the air, Lola stood up, drank from the bottle, and said nothing at all, which was her way of winning loudly.
Amber won the second round by cheating. She went under Alex and put her mouth on the head of his cock, quick, and held it there for a count of three, and he went down hard enough to knock the pizza boxes off the bar with his shoulder. Stacey laughed until she had to sit on the floor. Blossom won the third because everyone had stopped caring.
They lay around afterward in the amber light, breathing, sticky with wine and grease and each other, and Amber rolled onto her stomach and looked up.
"One more thing," she said.
"There's always one more thing," Stacey said.
Amber crawled to her gym bag by the couch and came back with her hands full of something small and matte black. Four of them, palm-sized, with a curve to the shape and a soft silicone finish.
She held them up.
"I bought these in August," she said. "And I've been waiting for a night with enough people to use them properly."
"The kind that go inside," Amber said. "Bluetooth. App on your phone. I checked the reviews."
Stacey picked one up and turned it over. The silicone was matte black, curved like a comma, with a single silver button at the base and a thin seam where the two halves met. It was warm from Amber's hand.
"Remote controlled?"
"Your phone's the remote. My phone's the remote. Anybody's phone is the remote." Amber waggled hers and the little amber light on the base blinked once. "That's the whole reason I bought four."
Blossom set hers on her palm and looked at it the way she looked at unfamiliar fruit. "So the point is that somebody else decides what happens to you."
"The point is that nobody has to ask."
Lola took one without comment and held it against her thigh, testing the weight. She hadn't put her slip back on. The wine bottle stood empty on the bar behind her.
"Where does it go," she said.
"Wherever you want it." Amber crouched by her gym bag and came up with a fifth one, still in a plastic sleeve. She tossed it to Alex. "Pussy or ass. Your call. Mine goes in my pussy."
"Hers goes in her pussy," Stacey said dryly. "Noted for the record."
"Mine goes in too." Blossom slid the curved end along her lower lip. "It's a body. It's a room. There's no argument to have."
Alex turned his over. The thing was smaller than he'd expected, maybe four inches of soft curve with a rounded head. He didn't say anything, which was his answer, and Stacey caught his eye from the couch and lifted her chin an inch in something that was not quite a nod.
"Rules for the games after," Amber said. She climbed onto the couch and sat with her knees apart, already slick. "We play for real. Every time you lose a piece, yours goes off. Not mine. Yours. Everybody controls everybody."
"That's not a game," Lola said. "That's weather."
"It's Trouble. It's literally called Trouble."
Lola drank water, since the wine was gone, and folded onto the end of the chaise. She was first, because she always went first, and she did it without ceremony. Two fingers, in and back out, the toy seated with a small wet click. She crossed her ankles and looked at the wall display, which Amber had left on. Six feet of the five of them, oiled and amber.
Amber went next and made a show of it, lying back with her feet flat and her hips tilted, sliding it in with her thumb braced on the base. She left her hand there a second longer than she needed to. The display caught the shine between her fingers.
Blossom did hers kneeling, unhurried, watching the screen while she worked it in. Her eyes went half shut. "Oh," she said. "That's a specific thing. That's like being spoken to in a language you half know."
Stacey went last of the women, on the chaise, with her knees up and her eyes on Alex the whole time. She took it slow and didn't hide her face, and when it settled she let out a breath and stayed exactly where she was.
Alex sat on the floor by the bar with his back against the cabinet. He got lube off the shelf and used plenty. The curved head went in cold, then warm, and he felt the whole shape of it settle against the inside of him, foreign and full, and he had to put his head back against the wood and breathe for a second.
"All the way?" Amber asked.
"All the way."
"Good." She was already on her phone. "Okay. I'm opening the app. Everybody does the same thing. You'll see five names."
"You named us?" Stacey said.
"Obviously. You're Strawberry."
"I'm what?"
"You're Strawberry, Blossom's Willow, Lola's Boss, and Alex is Big Guy." Amber grinned at the screen. "It's a nickname. It's affectionate."
"It's a fruit."
They got the board out from under the couch, the pop-o-matic bubble clicking as Amber set it in the middle of the mat. Trouble, old and sun-faded, four sets of pegs in plastic cups. Each of them took a color because there were five of them and four colors, so Blossom got stuck sharing blue with Lola.
"That's an alliance," Blossom said. "That's not fair."
"That's geography," Lola said. "We're both blue."
The first roll went to Stacey. Six. She popped a peg out onto the board, and nothing happened, and she looked almost disappointed.
Then Amber lost one. Stacey's peg landed on Amber's square on the third turn and sent her back to start, and Amber's head snapped up and her mouth opened on a noise that wasn't a word. She grabbed the couch cushion with both hands.
"How long does it go?" Stacey asked, mildly.
"Ten seconds."
"Can you set it longer?"
"You can set it however long you want." Amber was breathing through her teeth. "That's the, that's the bad part."
Lola lost two in a row on the next pass, one to Blossom and one to Alex, and she took both the way she took everything, which was with her jaw set and her eyes on the board and her thighs pressed flat together. The second one ran long because Amber had set the blue alliance at fifteen seconds out of spite. Lola's hand moved from her knee to the cushion and back. She never stopped looking at the pegs.
"That's the first time I've seen you sweat," Stacey said.
"I'm not sweating."
"You've got a shine on your collarbone."
"I'm warm."
The board filled up. Pegs went back to start, came out, got bumped again. Amber started buzzing people on purpose, on the app, mid-turn, hands off her own phone and eyes on the plate of cold pizza. Blossom got hit while she was leaning over to move and stayed leaning, one arm braced, auburn hair hanging, until the timer ran out and she sat back down with a small, puzzled frown.
"That's a strange way to be touched," she said. "By nobody."
"By me," Amber said.
"By you. It's still nobody in the room."
Alex lost a peg to Lola and felt it go off inside him, low and pulsing, and it was better than he'd guessed and worse, because he couldn't hide behind his own hand. He had to sit there against the cabinet and take it while four women watched the wall display show his face. Stacey rolled and didn't even look at the board. She looked at him.
"Big Guy's gone pink," Amber said.
"Big Guy's got a game to lose," Alex said, and pulled the dice.
He didn't lose it. He came around the board fast, three sixes in a row, and got two pegs home while Amber's stayed stuck at start and Lola's kept getting knocked back by Blossom, who was playing like a woman settling a debt.
Then Lola set her water down and picked up her phone.
She tapped twice, unhurried, the way she drilled a bracket. The app opened on her screen and showed five names in a column, and under it a slider for duration and a slider for intensity, and she looked at the room over the top of it.
"New rules," Lola said. "Everybody's losing."
She dragged the intensity up with one thumb, and the room hummed.
The hum arrived everywhere at once, a low thrum under the concrete, and every body on the floor felt it in its own place.
Amber swore into the couch cushion. She had her knees up and her feet flat and both fists in the foam, and the sound coming out of her was thin and rising.
"Lola. Lola, that's not how the game works."
"You said every time a piece is lost, it goes off." Lola hadn't moved from the chaise. "I've decided every piece is lost."
Stacey's dice left her hand and rolled under the couch. She didn't go after it. She was on her side on the mat with one arm folded under her head and her hips turning in small slow circles, and she was watching Alex and not hiding it.
Blossom had stopped pretending entirely. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the plastic with her palms flat and her eyes closed, breathing slow through her nose like a woman in a hot bath. Her hair hung down over her breasts and she didn't move it.
Alex felt his own toy climb again. Lola kept her thumb on the slider and nudged it higher in increments, and he pressed the back of his skull into the cabinet door until the wood creaked.
"How long are you going to hold that?" he said.
"Until I get bored." She didn't look up from the screen. "You told me you could lose."
Amber went first. She convulsed around the toy with her palm slapped over her own mouth, trying to keep the noise in, and it didn't work, and the display threw the whole thing six feet wide across the wall. She rolled onto her back afterward with sweat down her sternum and her chest heaving.
"That's one," Lola said.
She tapped the screen and Amber's name went grey while the other four stayed lit.
Stacey got her knees under her and crossed the mat on her hands, unhurried, past the scattered pegs. She stopped between Lola's feet and rested her cheek against Lola's knee.
"Take it out of yourself first," Lola said.
Stacey reached back and pulled the toy free with a wet sound, and it left a shine down her inner thigh. She set it on the mat. Then she pushed Lola's thighs apart with both hands and bent her head down.
Lola let out one slow breath and went back to the phone.
The picture on the wall swung to them. Stacey's back, long and muscled, the two graft scars pale under her ribs, and under her face the spread of Lola's thighs and the dark wet seam of her cunt. Stacey licked it flat from the bottom up, once, and Lola's hand tightened on the phone but her thumb kept moving on the slider.
Blossom got up off the mat and went to Alex. She knelt in front of him, knees apart, and looked at him for a second without saying anything.
"Do you want me to take it out?"
"Not yet."
"Good." She put her palm flat on his chest and pressed him back against the cabinet. "I want to see how long you last with it in."
She kissed him. Slow and open, one hand sliding down to close around his cock and hold it while she kissed him, and the toy inside him pulsed once and made him groan into her mouth.
Amber crawled over on her elbows, still grey on the app. "Rules say I get to do something. I lost, so I get to do something."
"You don't get anything for losing," Lola said, thickly. "That's the whole point."
"Fine. I'm doing it anyway."
She bent over Alex's lap and took him in her mouth, still slick, and Blossom held his shoulders while she did it. She worked him down to the base and stayed there, throat working, and Alex heard himself say something that wasn't a word.
"Careful," Blossom said to her, mild. "He's got a thing inside him."
"I know he does." Amber pulled off long enough to say it. "That's why I'm being mean."
On the chaise, Stacey had two fingers inside Lola and her mouth high and steady on her clit, and Lola's composure was doing what it had done once before in this room, which was come apart at the edges. She set the phone down on the cushion and gripped Stacey's hair.
"Don't stop."
Stacey didn't stop. She turned her hand, knuckles deep, and Lola came with her jaw clenched and her eyes shut and one heel drumming against the chaise.
Nobody clapped for that either.
Lola opened her eyes and picked the phone back up, and found Alex halfway down Amber's throat and Blossom's hand wrapped around his jaw, holding his face where she wanted it.
"Amber," she said. "Off."
Amber pulled off with a wet gasp and sat back, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist. "That's not fair."
"You don't decide what's fair." Lola dragged her thumb down the slider and let it sit. "Blossom, sit on his face. Facing the wall. He can watch himself choke on you while you do it."
Blossom laughed, low, and moved.
Alex tipped flat onto the mat, and Blossom stepped over his head and lowered herself down onto his mouth, knees on either side of his ears. She was already wet and hot and tasted of wine and salt, and she settled her weight slowly until he had to work to breathe.
"Are you going to let him come," Stacey said, from the chaise, "or are you going to make him wait all night?"
"I haven't decided."
Blossom rolled her hips, grinding down onto his tongue, and the wall showed the whole thing, Alex's legs drawn up, the toy still seated in his ass, Amber sitting on her heels beside them with her hand between her own legs and her mouth open.
Lola tapped the screen once. "Strawberry. Come here."
Stacey came off the chaise with her mouth still wet and crossed the mat on her knees, slow, because Lola hadn't told her to hurry. The display caught her from the side, the long shine down her chin, the collar back on her throat since the night before and never once off it.
"Kneel there," Lola said, pointing at the floor beside Blossom's hip.
Stacey knelt. Her thigh pressed Alex's outstretched arm, and she looked down at him pinned under Blossom's weight, his mouth buried, hair stuck to his forehead.
"Hold his wrists."
Stacey took both his wrists and pressed them flat to the mat, and Alex made a sound into Blossom that came out as a hum. Blossom rocked forward on it, one hand braced on the cabinet behind her, her hair swinging down over her knees.
"He's good at this," Stacey said.
"He's been trained." Lola dragged her thumb up the slider and stopped. "Amber. Get the dice."
"The dice is not the point right now."
"The dice is the only point. Sit up."
Amber sat up with a grudge in her shoulders and gathered the scattered pegs off the mat, Lola's blues, Stacey's yellows, one red under the couch. She held them in her fist like a kid caught stealing.
"What am I doing with these."
"Put them in your mouth."
Amber stared at her. Then she did it, all five of them, and the plastic filled her cheeks and made her look ridiculous and she knew it, which was the whole reason. She breathed through her nose.
Alex felt his own toy jack up one notch, hard enough that his back came off the concrete and Stacey had to lean on his wrists to keep them down. He bucked up into Blossom's cunt and she took it and ground down, and the noise he made under her was wet and helpless.
"Don't let him move," Lola said.
"I've got him," Stacey said.
She leaned her weight in, elbow on his forearm, and watched the wall instead of his face. The display showed the four of them tangled on the mat, Alex's legs drawn up with his knees bent and the toy's base a small black comma between his cheeks, Blossom's back arched over his head, Stacey's collarbone and the collar, Amber sitting with her mouth full of plastic pegs.
"That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen," Amber said around the pegs.
"Spit them out," Lola said. "You sound like a dog."
Amber spat the pegs into her palm and set them on the mat in a neat row, all five, like an offering.
"Rules," Lola said. "New ones, because I'm bored of the old ones. Stacey holds him. Blossom stays on his face until she comes. Nobody touches his cock. If he comes without anybody's hand on it, then he loses, and losing is mine."
"Loses what?" Blossom asked, breathing hard.
"Whatever I decide later."
"That's not a wager. That's a threat with paperwork."
"Take it up with the house."
Blossom laughed and dropped her hips low, rolling, and Alex got a mouthful of her and a nose full of skin and the taste of wine gone sour-sweet on her. He worked his tongue up in flat strokes where she was slickest and felt her thigh jump against his ear. Above him the app buzzed again, low and mean, and this time he couldn't hold the sound in.
Blossom came with a hand slammed flat on the cabinet door. Her whole body curled over him, spine rounding, and she pressed down hard enough that Alex saw a white smear at the edge of his vision for two full seconds. Stacey held his wrists through all of it.
"Off," Lola said.
Blossom lifted off him and swung a leg over his head and sat on the mat beside Amber, flushed from throat to sternum, and wiped her own wet off his face with her palm and then licked her palm, which nobody had asked her to do.
Alex pulled air in through his mouth. The ceiling swam. The toy inside him was still humming at whatever Lola had set, and every breath pushed it against something that made his eyes water.
"Amber," Lola said. "Go sit on his cock. Don't move once you're down."
"You said nobody touches his cock."
"You're not touching it. You're sitting on it."
"That's a lawyer answer."
"I know a lawyer." Lola drank her water. "Go."
Amber straddled him and took him in one slow slide down, and the app pulsed him from the inside at the exact same second. He shouted into the concrete and the display caught his open mouth six feet wide.
"Stacey," Lola said. "Give me the phone."
Stacey let go of Alex's wrists and tossed Lola's own phone across the mat into her hand. Lola caught it flat, no look, and set it on the cushion beside her.
Then she stood up, picked her slip off the couch arm, and pulled it on over her head. It fell to her thighs and did nothing to hide anything.
"Where are you going?" Stacey asked.
"Upstairs. There's a pie in the freezer." She smoothed the slip down and walked to the stairs door, bare feet making small sounds on the cold slab. "Amber, you're still grey on the app, which means you don't get to stop until I'm back. Blossom, keep him hard. Strawberry, you're in charge of the ceiling."
"That's not a job."
"It is now."
She went up. The deadbolt threw home with the same heavy chunk it had made the first afternoon, and the music from the speaker ran on without her, brushed drums and one low horn, and the wall showed four bodies in amber light and the empty chaise at the edge of the frame.
Amber rolled her hips, one long grind, and looked down at Alex with her lip between her teeth.
"She left the app open," she said.
Amber rolled her hips again and thought about it out loud. "She left the app open. That means four names lit and one grey. That means I can touch anybody in this room except myself."
"That's not what it means," Stacey said.
"That's exactly what it means." Amber braced her palms on Alex's chest and ground down, slow, and the display threw her face six feet wide with her lip pinned under her teeth. "The rules were her idea. I'm just reading them."
Blossom got up off the mat and walked to the couch, where Lola's phone still glowed face-up on the cushion. She didn't pick it up. She crouched beside it and read the names in their column like a woman reading a menu.
"Willow's mine," she said. "Boss is grey. Strawberry, Big Guy." She looked up. "You're not going to like this, Strawberry."
"Do it."
Blossom reached over and tapped, unhurried, and the room hummed in a new key. Stacey's spine curved where she knelt and her hand went flat to the floor.
"That's deep," she said. "That's further in than where it was sitting."
"Amber picked the size," Blossom said. "I only picked the speed."
Alex felt his own climb a notch without warning, a thick pulsing against the wall of him, and Amber rode it out on top of him with her mouth open and her eyes shut. The two of them were being driven by one phone in a woman's hand across the room, and neither of them could do a thing about it.
"She said don't move once you're down," Stacey said.
"I'm not moving. I'm being moved." Amber's thighs locked and shuddered and she stayed seated, buried, grinding nothing. "God. That's the difference and it's a big one."
Alex put his head back and watched the ceiling beam. The toy sat in him low and mean and the pressure of Amber around his cock made a tight ring of sensation with no exit. He said, "Somebody's going to have to decide something, because I can't."
"You don't get to decide anything," Blossom said. "You're furniture tonight."
"I've been furniture before."
"Not by me you haven't."
She came back across the mat and sat on her heels beside his head, facing the wall, and the display filled with her back and the long fall of auburn hair and behind it the two of them, Alex underneath, Amber riding. Blossom rested a hand on his chest, light, and let her thumb find his nipple and stay there.
"New game," she said. "While she's upstairs. One round. Whoever holds out longest gets to choose what happens when she comes back down."
"That's mutiny," Amber said.
"That's authority." Blossom tipped her chin at the phone. "I'm holding it. I make the rules until she takes it off me."
Stacey laughed, low, still bent over her own hands on the floor. "You've never held anything in your life."
"I hold people every day." Blossom's thumb pressed down, and Alex arched under it. "Most of them don't notice."
The round was simple. Blossom kept the slider where it was and let the toys do the work, and the four of them on the mat held still and lost one at a time. Amber went first, of course, because Amber had already been surviving on stubbornness and there was nothing left under it. She came with both hands flat on Alex's chest and her forehead dropped to the dip of his throat, and the sound she made was loud and ended in a laugh.
"Two," Blossom said. "You're holding up the whole board."
Stacey went next. She didn't scream, she just folded down onto her side with her knees drawn up and her fist against her mouth, and let it run through her like weather. When it passed she rolled flat on her back and stared at the projector beam in the air.
"That's what it feels like," she said, mostly to nobody. "From where I sit."
"You're allowed to like it," Blossom said.
"I know."
Alex held longer out of spite. He had the toy in his ass and Amber's weight still on him and Blossom's thumb on his chest, and he didn't move, and he didn't move, and then Blossom turned the slider up two notches at once and he lost it in three breaths. He came with Amber still seated on him and got it all up inside her, and she made a small surprised sound and stayed put.
"Oh," she said. "That's why she said don't move."
Blossom turned the app down to nothing and the room went quiet except for the brushed drums and four people breathing. She set the phone back on the cushion exactly where it had been.
"You won," Alex said.
"I know."
"Then what are you choosing?"
Blossom thought about it. She looked at the wall display, at the frozen frame of the four of them tangled under amber light, the empty chaise at the edge. She looked at Amber still sitting on Alex with her mouth open and a slow shine running down her thigh.
"Nothing yet," she said. "I want to see what she does when she finds out I won."
The deadbolt turned over at the top of the stairs.
Lola came down with a foil pan in both hands and a fork stuck through the foil. She was wearing the slip and nothing else and she had her hair pushed back behind her ears. She stopped on the third step from the bottom and took in the room: Amber on top of Alex, Stacey flat on the mat with her arm over her eyes, Blossom beside Alex's head with the phone on the couch exactly where she'd left it.
"You didn't stop," she said.
"You told me not to," Amber said.
"I told Blossom to keep him hard. I didn't tell you to keep sitting on him like a hen."
"I'm efficient."
Lola came down the last steps and set the pie on the bar beside the cold pizza boxes and the empty bottle. She pulled the fork out of the foil and licked it, once, looking at the four of them the whole time.
Then she walked to the couch, picked up the phone, and read the screen. The names. The slider at zero. Amber still grey.
"She won," Blossom said. "The round. I hold the phone while you're gone. I take the rules."
Lola looked at her for a long moment. The fork went back into the pie.
"Then you can keep holding it," Lola said. "And you can tell me what you're going to do with the win."