Kass
Kass inserted the key in her front door—or she tried to, anyway. The key wasn’t cooperating, and neither was her brain. Above her, the moon and the stars were swirling around, turning the night sky into a giant, blurry, cosmic video game.
She felt like throwing up.
The door opened abruptly. A fat middle-aged guy stood there, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers with tiny aliens all over them. Or were they martini glasses? He looked her up and down critically.
“I told them I wanted a blonde,” he snapped. “With, uh, something on top. What are you, a Thirty-two-A?”
“What? Oh! I must have the wrong house!”
“This is two twenty-nine.”
“I think I’m down the street somewhere. Sorry to bother you!”
Kass spun around and ran, or tried to run, down the sidewalk. She felt so dizzy, even dizzier than before, and what did that man mean, was she a 32-A? Was he talking about her address? A car drove by, honking, and then everything was quiet again. Except for the soundtrack to Footloose. Was she in a movie? Or was this a dream?
She finally reached her door. She checked first to make sure this was definitely her and Kamille’s house. Yes, here was the terra-cotta frog. And the flowering cactus plants. And the blinking neon turkey hanging on the palm tree, in honor of Thanksgiving.
This time, Kass didn’t bother with the key, which was way too complicated, almost as bad as calculus, and made her head spin. Instead, she rang the doorbell. “Kam? Are you home?” she shouted.
After a moment the door opened, and she found herself face-to-face with Kamille. Except that she was bigger and taller and blonder. And not Kamille. And not a girl.
It was Ballboy, wearing nothing but baby-blue pajama bottoms.
“Uh, hi?” Kass gave him a little wave.
“Hey. Did you lose your key or something?”
“Yes. Well, not really. Which way is my room?”
Chase laughed. Why was he laughing? “It’s this way, party girl. You want a glass of water? And some Advil?”
“No, thanks, I’m really not hungry. Where’s Kamille?”
“She’s out. I was waiting for her.”
Chase took Kass’s arm and guided her into the front hall. She teetered a little on her heels, wondering why the ceiling and walls were shrinking and then expanding like the inside of a carnival fun house. She remembered, or thought she remembered, that Chase sometimes spent the night at the house. On occasion, she’d had to cover her ears to block out the noise of his and Kamille’s arguments. Or lovemaking. Especially the lovemaking.
“Why are there diamonds all over the living room floor?” she said, suddenly noticing the bright, glittering jewels scattered across the carpet.
“What? Oh, that’s broken glass. I gotta clean that up.”
“Did Valentino break something?”
“Who?”
“Valentino. He’s our dog.”
“Come on, crazy, we need to get you into bed.”
“Okeydoke.”
And then the next thing she knew, she was lying down, and someone was pulling off her shoes. Chase. She closed her eyes, feeling his hands as they moved up to the waistband of her panty hose. How had she gotten from the front hall to this bed? Her bed? Maybe she and Chase had beamed over, like the people on Star Trek.
“Chase?” she murmured sleepily. “I should probably call you that, right? Since it’s your name? I didn’t mean to call you Ballboy behind your back. It’s nothing personal. Well, maybe it is, because I wasn’t sure I liked you, before. But you’re actually kind of a nice person. Aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
Kass felt him turn her over slightly as he unzipped her dress. “I’m so sorry about our fight earlier,” she rambled on. “It’s that stupid magazine’s fault. I used to believe in the First Amendment, you know, freedom of the press and free speech and free love and . . . wait, where’s Eduardo?”
“Who?”
“But now I think censorship’s the way to go. Those magazines should be banned. Professor what’s-her-name—the one with the big boobs, almost as big as those girls on Kyle’s Nature Channel show—says that in Europe they don’t put up with the kind of . . . hey, Eduardo? Did you get highlights? ’Cause your hair used to be black.”
Silence. Kass felt strong, warm fingers massaging the back of her neck. “Mmm, that feels good,” she murmured.
“Yeah?” Eduardo kissed her there, ever so gently.
“Mmm, do that again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
His lips trailed deliciously down her back. Kass’s entire body tingled with fire, and she arched herself against him. This was way, way better than . . . what had she been doing earlier in the evening? She couldn’t recall. Yelling at someone and then watching a really excellent movie with Kyle? His arm encircled her waist, and he tugged tantalizingly at her panties.
Think less, hook up more.
“Take them off,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Take them off.”
Eduardo—it was Eduardo, wasn’t it?—slid her panties down her legs. Her bra came off next. And then she was on her back, and he was on top of her, doing something to her breasts that made her gasp and moan and dig her fingers into his massive biceps. (Wow, had Eduardo been working out?)
“They’re in the drawer, over there,” Kass heard herself say.
“You sure?”
“Yes! I got them at Rite Aid today!”
“No, what I meant was . . . never mind.”
He went away and returned a second—or was it a minute, or an hour?—later. Kass heard the lock on her bedroom door click shut. His breath reeked of whiskey, or maybe that was her. He mounted her, completely naked and unspeakably gorgeous, with those hard, rippling muscles and that tousled blond hair and those big blue eyes and . . .
She screamed. With pleasure. He was inside her, moving ever so slowly, then faster, then faster still.
She didn’t remember Adam Kerrigan feeling this good. Not even close.