With Annabelle gone, my two stepbrothers closed in on me immediately. Chase slipped under me, laid on his back, and pulled me on top of him for easy access. He pushed the head of his dick into my box, then slowly eased me upright. My nerves stood on end and I held my breath as I sank all the way down on Chase’s cock, feeling him pulse against the suction of my inner flesh. Foster was behind me, about to press the head of his dick back into my ass. The two of them were making a disgusting joke about going “family style” on me when shouts of chaos followed by a shrill scream rang out and echoed from the floor below.
Chase and Foster were off of me and down the stairs in seconds, fully naked. When I got to the railing overlooking the entry foyer, I saw one of the Mexicans from the motel room holding a naked Annabelle with both arms behind her back while she tried to jerk away, screaming. Further into the house, beyond where I could see into the first floor from above, I heard destructive chaos and could make out Pete’s and Foster’s voices among the confusion.
“Where’s she at?” shouted a man in a Spanglish accent, followed by animated cursing and the sound of glass shattering.
I ran back into my room to throw on at least a shirt and shorts, in the process, avoiding the melee that erupted in the great room. Unfortunately, the post-scuffle scene I encountered when I finally got there wasn’t much better.
“You Nikki?” asked a heavy-set man in a wife-beater and track pants, looking like he was prepared to lurch and grab me, even with Pete already hanging from his other side in a headlock.
“I’m Nikki,” I answered, darting my eyes around the room to survey the situation.
“We know this piece of shit has no money, but you do,” he said.
“So we’re here to collect it, and that’s all” said another.
Foster was dazed and bloodied on one cheek, laying among the crushed remains of the wood and glass coffee table, and two other men stood amidst the shattered urn and ashes of my father on the floor, one of them keeping Chase at bay with balled fists nearby. The fishnet-stockinged girl was standing apart from the others, squirming guiltily; and at the door to the kitchen, Carlos and Maria were frozen in fear, desperately trying to go undetected.
“How much,” I asked, slumping my shoulders and weary of Pete-related crises that ended with me coming out of pocket.
“Fifteen hundred!” the man answered, immediately less hostile at the prospect that I was willing to pay him.
“This fucker took it right off the table in the middle of the night, like we wouldn’t notice!”
Pete squirmed, prompting the man to flex the grip around his neck again. I looked outside, noticing that they’d rammed their van straight through the rolling driveway gate, mangling it and bending it back into the lawn. I nearly asked why all this was necessary for less than two large, but thought better of it.
Besides, one of them was forcibly holding Annabelle- laughing and taking gropes of her freely swinging tits while keeping her arms locked with one big hand - and without guns or a history of violence, we were at a disadvantage.
“Okay,” I said, raising my hands to signal surrender. “I’m going downstairs to get the money. I’m taking Chase with me.”
I gestured toward Chase, who quickly scurried past the menacing glares of the three intruders and down the stairs behind me. I signaled for him to stay out in the hallway just in case they tried to follow and get wise to where we kept our money.
“Have I mentioned lately that your fucking cousin is a problem around here?” he said, voice quivering with anxiety.
I ignored him and quickly counted money from the jewelry box, then ran out of the cellar and back up the stairs. All parties were frozen in place, aside from Annabelle, still trying in vain to squirm free.
“I’ve got your money,” I said, voice shaking uncontrollably and holding the cash up for them to see. “Now let her go.”
The man by the door released Annabelle, who ran over to where Chase and I stood.
“There’s an extra five hundred there,” I said, handing it to the man, who dropped Pete the moment it hit his right hand. “You leave now, you never come back, or else I call the cops and email the security footage, and maybe your life gets a little more complicated.”
They nodded dismissively and started to leave.
“One more thing,” I said, to which they wearily turned around.
“Never talk to Pete again. Don’t give him work, don’t let him hang around. Nothing. He’s just a kid.”
With this, I started to tear up.
“Yeah, yeah, white bitch,” he said. “You think we’d give that little fucker anything now? For real? Shit...”
And with that they left the house, and I left the room in order to fall apart privately.
Annabelle came into the sunroom where I laid on the daybed, putting her arms around me silently while I cried. She felt strangely distant, telling me she was a little freaked out and needed to take something; I simply nodded and watched her disappear.
Chase came in to tell me that Maria had asked to go home after cleaning up the mess, and that Carlos and the gardeners were clearing the mangled gate from the property. My only response to anyone for the next hour was for somebody to save a few of the spilled ashes for me to keep.
-
“Nikki,” she cooed softly, standing in the doorway.
I was halfway through a movie I wasn’t even watching, too jittery to get up off the daybed, and hadn’t noticed Annabelle’s presence until she spoke. She’d showered and gotten dressed, and was letting me know that Maria had saved the ashes in a jar that was placed in my room. I noticed that everything she had on - other than a necklace that I’d loaned her the day before - was purchased since her arrival just a few days earlier. Her allure needed no help from her clothes, but I especially admired her matching pink sleeveless blouse and Steve Madden wedges, both of which we’d bought together.
“I’ve gotta go to my orientation at the college now. I’ll be back later; maybe we can forget about all this and pick up where we started this morning.”
She smiled devilishly and her eyes glinted, but were glassy and hollow behind their shine. I could spot it from ten feet away: she was on something- and it was a lot of something from what I could tell. I didn’t think much of it, especially after what we’d been through earlier, but I did ask if she was okay to drive.
“Girl, pssht,” she said, frowning at my apparently needless worry. “I’m fine.”
“That sounded familiar,” I thought, catching the hint of a stumble as she twirled around to leave.
“I’ll catch up with you here in a bit. And don’t worry about those guys...they’re gone. Everything’s gonna be okay,” she said. “You know I love you, right?”
I nodded, trying to smile while she walked away.
I called Omar to tell him what all had happened, and being able to actually share what needed venting right now made all the difference. Talking to him managed to bring my bearings back to me, especially when he promised he’d come by later to check in. But even then, I was unsettled beyond calm and really needed to take something; my voice was rising and speeding up every two sentences, it seemed, and there was a sense of doom welling up inside of me that I couldn’t shake.
I called DeDe to distract myself, giving her the unfortunate update that all stemmed from her discovery in my wine cellar the morning before.
“Oh my god, what the fuck? I’m so sorry girl! Did you call the cops?”
“No. I mean, he did owe the money. Besides, I just wanted them gone.”
“Still though, that shit is crazy! You want me to stop by tonight?” she asked, though she wasn’t really asking. “You need to get your mind off of this, we’ll take a few peeps together and chill by the pool. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with your place if we’re all there protecting it!”
I told her I’d call her back, but appreciated the support.
-
When I walked back into the great room, everything was eerily back in perfect order, minus the large blank space on the floor and the empty pedestal on the mantle - where the coffee table and the urn had been. Foster had gone to the beach, claiming the understandable need to “get the fuck out of here.”
He had taken Pete and the fishnet girl with him, in addition to a sizable fold of twenties, in hopes that they would use those means to end up somewhere other than back at the Chateau Glissant later on. Pete couldn’t even bring himself to look me in the eye after this last episode, so I doubted I’d see him again for several days. I just hoped that when I did it wasn’t because he was in more trouble, or dead.
I contemplated the odds of both as I climbed the stairs, unsure of how I’d handle either scenario.
“Hey, druggie,” he called from inside his room as I walked by.
I was going to take a shower, ready to finally wash all the grime off my body from whatever it was that happened out on the beach the night before. I’d lost track of Chase, thinking he must have left, too; but there he was, sitting on his sumolounge in a pair of jeans with a glass of whiskey in his hand. The Black Keys were playing, the lights were off, and his bong plus a bottle of Crown Royal were sitting nearby on the desk.
“I thought I was alone here.”
“Yeah, same.” I said, standing in the doorway. “Little early for the heavy shit?”
“That’s hilarious coming from you,” he said in a low-key sneer. “And no, not after the Latin Kings fucking broke the door down looking for your idiot cousin.”
He was right; maybe I needed a drink, too.
“Which reminds me,” he said. “New rule: that kid never sets foot here ever again.”
He took another sip of his drink, but otherwise hadn’t moved a muscle since I appeared, and his voice barely registered above the music.
“Chase, you can’t make that rule. He’s not your family, he’s mine,” I said, softly.
“What more do you need to see, dumb ass?” he asked. “You either need to be more high or less, ‘cause you aren’t thinking straight, I know that much.”
I didn’t care to argue with him about Pete; I knew he was right. That drink was looking better and better.
“I’m betting on ‘more high’,” he said, reaching over for the bong and a lighter. “So, don’t make me do this by myself.”
We sat snugly side-by-side on the red sumolounge, passing the bong between us. I savored the sweet smoke as it seeped in, slowly hitting my bloodstream at first, then gathering intensity like a spring creek tumbling down a canyon.
We talked about nothing, neither of us willing to wade back into the very thing we were trying to escape, passing the bong back and forth, and re-packing it periodically with no regard to how much we were going through. I never got to the whiskey, and didn’t want it anymore. This was what I needed: to lay back and bathe in the stone-thick but crystal-clear high of high quality cannabis.
It was during “Everlasting Light” that he began to tease me in his trademark stoned drawl, reprising the “family-style” joke that he cracked just as the thugs were bounding into our foyer a few hours earlier.
That memory, with the aid of organic drugs, had detached itself completely from our minds, leaving only the tension behind, hanging in the air along with the residual scent of the weed and the thundering bass from “Howlin’ For You.” Once I allowed my eyes to hesitate on his lean bare chest, there was no stopping my hands from wandering, then gripping; the rest of my body followed shortly after. By the opening strains of “Gold on the Ceiling”, all our clothes were off, aside from his jeans hanging around his ankles. He pulled me on top of him, the base of his cock pressing lengthwise against my slit, and we locked eyes.
“I guess I’ll finish what I started earlier,” he said, reaching between us. I lifted up on my knees, sucking in a breath at the friction of his cock pushing past my skin and into my cunt. “Fuck, Nikki...” he said, eyes bloodshot and dead-focused on my body.
His hands gripped my hips, urging me to fuck him. I held him balls deep within me, slowly grinding back and forth. “Let’s do this, come on,” he said through a chuckle.
I rubbed my hands across his tanned washboard stomach and began a slow bounce on his cock. My high was focused, clear: I felt the ridge of his cock head parting my insides, the surfaces of his rod sliding past my folds. I wanted more.
My nails raked across his chest, curling at the sensations of his cock pistoning deeply inside of me. I was slapping his body with mine, making him moan, feeling each and every one of my erogenous zones buzz and tingle to the rhythm of my body swallowing his cock. My mind went back to that hotel room: stroking him, feeling his spongy rigidness against my fingers as I squeezed and rubbed it for the first time. I leaned back, supporting my hands on his legs, bouncing hard, wishing only that he had more hands to caress me with. I remembered what it felt like right before he came that night: how it grew and stiffened even harder than before. I leaned upright again, slamming my pussy down on his cock, urging him on. I imagined him cumming right then the same exact way, tightening up, swelling, pulsing, then spurting his cum everywhere.
Chase arched his back and moaned loudly, gripping my hips, channelling my cum-lust.
I felt him swell up and stiffen against my convulsing pussy; I felt his cum shoot up inside me like a geyser, sending his body into convulsions; and I felt the wetness hitting the air and my surrounding skin as he continued to fuck me, forcing it out of my pussy.
He never went completely soft, stroking his chubby cock inside of me until he came around to full hardness again, loudly slurping the air and frothy cum out of my body with each thrust. He was on top of me with my head hanging off the edge of the sumolounge; that’s where I saw Annabelle watching from just outside the door. I didn’t invite her to join us, or even acknowledge her presence. Maybe I was too high to react, or maybe I saw that she wasn’t feeling it at all.
“So, honestly, do you like doing it with Chase?” she’d asked me at lunch the day before. ‘No’ was my answer, but I knew this didn’t look much like a ‘no’.
Chase hammered me, making me scream, smacking against the back of my thighs and sucking my toes. I might have made fun of him for that if it all didn’t feel so fucking good. I stroked my clit, trying to bring myself off as he shot another load inside of me. When he finally pulled out and released my legs, allowing me to sit up for the blood to drain from my head, Annabelle was gone, just like that very first night with Omar.
Once again, I knew I’d knew I’d better follow up with her before it all got away from me; assuming it hadn’t already.