Unsafe Love
Cullen swaggers. Swaggering is a stride that says I own everything I see. People of the club notice his swagger, not so much because of the walk itself, but because he's shirtless, wearing fringed short shorts and a backpack spray painted gold, no socks, no shoes, just Cullen.
Bella trails behind, immersing herself in his dust, the others who latch onto his swagger, and follows him to the neon bar.
Cullen smacks the bar and shouts above the looping bass note, "Bloody L bar keep. Bar keep." The bartender, pouring someone's shot, snaps her head at his voice and overfills the shot. Cullen beckons her with his flickering hand and its rings. She flicks out her Jagered hand that will become sticky if she doesn't wash it off.
Bella slips through the others who gathered around him. His arm wraps over her. His minty breath tells her, "Hennessey." His coarse hand warms her up by passing up and down her arm.
The bartender comes to Cullen despite the plethora of vying customers. He orders twenty shots of Hennessey, noting those around him. While she's pouring them, he puts his bag on his lap and unzips it, pulls out a prescription pill bottle, and snaps it open.
The others want in. Cullen gives them none, popping two out, one for him and one for Bella. He holds Bella's out for her between his thumb and index finger.
Bella closes her eyes and opens her mouth. His fingers and their pill enter. She sucks the pill from them. Its bitter grazes over her tongue as she swallows. Her eyes still closed, his hand grips behind her head within her hair. His softness throttles her by lips and tongue to the point where she feels lightheaded. Their lips smack off, and her breath returns. Her body pressed against him, her eyes open, and he's laughing at her.
The shots are ready. Everyone grabs for them. Cullen sets aside two for him and his girl.
He hands Bella one. She still holds herself against him, taking it in her other hand.
"Cheers to the wankers who invented the deadliest devices"—his face, blue, flashes to green, and he spitting-shouts—"Kollisch and Hennessey." He raises his glass and roars like one. Glasses clink (Bella reaches for his, but someone clinks hers aside). They all shoot them down.
Cullen hands her the other. She holds it and stares at it and then turns it in her hand. He rests his hand on her shoulder to take her attention. "You going down the hatch or going to play the ass." She laughs with him and says, "Make sure you take me home when I'm dead."
"The death of the ole kitty cat, kitty cat"—he serenades her: opera over the club hop, but just a pub howl, the same volume whether at pub or club, his fingers twittering around her hips—"Pussy-pussy, won't you drink with me? Drink with me. Drink with me, my whittle, oh so whittle, kitty cat and queen," and they intertwine their arms like a married couple would with champagne. Down the hatch.
Her head shudders upon Hennessey's impact with her stomach where the beers and jägebombs wait, and the shudder flows through her body. She shakes herself out all the way to her hands and bounces a bit.
"That a girl," Mitch says. While goosing her, he smacks the bar and shouts, "Bloody L bar keep. Bar keep."
The bartender is close by drafting a beer. Cullen orders another round of Hennessey to the cheers of others and slaps on the table two crumpled hundred-dollar bills he pulls from the tight pocket of his short shorts.
He puts his bag on his lap, pulls out his prescription pill bottle, and drops three pills in his coarse palm, the light shake of the full bottle.
Goosebumps crawl over her skin even though her temperature rises. He pops two pills, no drink, while holding another between that thumb and index finger. The bartender pouring more shots, he reaches the pill for Bella, and she takes it, sucking her lips up his fingers to his rings, no teeth, her tongue salivating, and the hit.
The flashing lights, the dancers throw neon paint on each other; the splashes frame the lights. His coarse hand, which has grown clammy, passes over her goosebumped arm. Oh, the heat is soon to come. His voice in her ear, she closes her eyes like she does often and pictures a professional man, an English professor with Shakespearian tendencies: "Nancy boy has had enough already"—she nods and bites her thumbnail—"You're feeling a draft now? Getting up and over the moon with me?"
They part. Again everyone grabs at the shots. This time Cullen sets just two aside and says in her ear, "Just one more, and then we'll get this groove on," like a lion.
Her thumb at her teeth, she smiles at that. He hands her her shot, and she grips it, the strange force of glass between her fingers. It slips from her hand and shatters, but they can't hear the break. Cullen stumbles back against the bar, cracking up, smacking it a few times.
Without herself pressed against him, she leans her back against the bar and pulls her hand through her hair, both of them grazing over and wrapping her hair into a ponytail.
Cullen grabs one of the other's shots. "There on your mate," he manages to say. He spitting-shouts, "Do you want me to hold it for you, princess?" It's vague to her ear, but the crowd's laughter is dominant above the dropping beat.
Bella releases her ponytail and takes the shot, focusing on her grip, not letting that glass fall, triggering her finger's nerves.
Cullen shakes his head out and raises his glass. "To Swans and Ducklings!" Glasses clink, but Bella doesn't even raise hers. She brings it to her lips and tosses it back, throwing her head back. Some spills down her chin, but most gets in. "They've got no clue what the shuck you're talking about," she says at him.
"Eh, shuck you," he says loud enough for everyone pointing.
"I could be saying anything right now. Fish, space, bottle, nit."
"Hey you"—Cullen up close, his hand at the top of her throat, the soft chin.
Bella reaches up his face and pulls herself to his ear. Her lips close but only because Cullen stooped for her. She says, "You don't want to be alone." Kissing him, feeling his risen temperature.
"Come with me, dancing queen, strong and sweet," Cullen serenades, screams, like the big ape, he is.
The dropped beat of the dreadlock MC whose name they still don't know, but he's up there, he's rocking his crowd, he's controlling it on his raised platform.
Cullen's jump and finger-point work in his favor as he thrust the crowd out of his way, still singing to her ears, "Feel the beat of the tambourine, yeah aa." She doesn't jump but runs, holding the end of his arm, keeping him from lifting off without her. Cullen tosses people to the ground in the process. Then again so do the others, those big enough to follow his lead, behind him. They reach the middle in a sprint.
His crew, you'd say—she recognizes some of them in the blur of neon paint—create enough space for the grinding, the rough physical stuff the Victorian's feared until the modern millennia.
They were so fast it's only now at the center of the field that the 'Stop worrying about your eyes' (no way to talk here, but 'I told you you'd understand') paint wet as water but staying on her, hits her. Soaked, Bella thrusts herself against his chest, his leg between hers, the other gyrating. She grabs at the back of his neck. His face in the crevice of her neck, he breathes the paint, a mix of yellow, red, and purple skittles. She tilts her lips to him. His coarse hand moves to her neck, and he throttles her by lip, tongue, and throat to the point of utter annihilation: the taste of skittles and Hennessey saliva, every sensation.
Cullen releases her, and she bends forward, letting him ride her hips, hands passing over her torso, gripping at times, his torso against her. Ooh, the sweat is coming.
She comes back up, turns to face him, and kisses again but this time she throttles him with both her hands. Pause. His neck tenses, and she lets go.
Cullen turns the kiss to the other side and they take a breath. Skittle paint slides among her sweat, with her fingers, from her belly button. She circles her lips with both his lips and his fingers, and minty breath breathes into her mouth.
He's wet, Bella's wet, painted, covered, fingers working her erection, and he fingers her off beat from the dreadlock MC's beat, slow with two fingers. She kisses him, and her arms wrap behind his neck as she pulls herself onto him, his other hand scooping her under her butt. Her legs lock around him. He rocks her, allowing her to use no strength as he holds her and gyrates.
He smacks his lips off hers, saliva dripping between them. Another splash of neon paint from the crowd on the deck surrounding the center of the flashing dance floor, Bella says, "Give me a boat, the water is wide, I can't make it."
Her legs unlock. Her back limbos. He holds her, pressing his face to her chest. She's facing the flashing lights of the ceiling. The skittle paint swirls with the flashing lights. Cullen lifts her straight, his head cradling against her chest, and her eyes close.
The paint getting in her nose, cool water smelling like nothing else, a combination of plastic and wax, she may say to friends, but not yet to Cullen. She slides her hands in his greasy hair. His fingers inside her to the rings, cold metal, water.
Cullen lifts Bella over the crowd. "Somebody's been knackered." His mates who have had far less than Bella laugh as Cullen scoops her into his arms—another splash of skittle paint, amp, a movie, his palm rubbing her clit, his fingers deep.
Their car waits in the parking lot, a dark world outside the warehouse club, off the highway. The bouncers nod them outside. He brings her to the car, stops fingering her to open the door. Her hand passes over his hair. They have sex in the backseat, easy listenings, his short shorts undone, just at the knees, erections…We…Bella is left; he kisses her again and scoops her legs all the way into the car.
Bella opens her eyes. The soundtrack still plays, Abba long gone, being the first. A small child sits between the front seats, where he opens 'the vault'. She blinks at him. He says, "You're in trouble, lady."
Three hours have passed. She blew it, but he's inside, over, there. He kicks his feet out. Her thong is still down, but her skirt falls to her thighs. He sees her inner most mechanisms. She blinks her eyes and attempts to pull herself out of view with her hands. "What's going on?" but she doesn't say that. The kid giggles an elementary schoolyard giggle. They rip her out of the backseat, others neon paint-less. The parking lot hits her, and they super villain laugh around her. The taste of skittle paint in her mouth, she pulls up her thong, stumbling away from them.
The bouncers see her hobbling, shoeless, covered. The parking lot guys run, but they catch the kid. They rip him around in the air, the kid kicking and screaming behind her now. She enters the club. The line shouts nonsensical things. Too late, bop and bop and bop and etc.
She stumbles about the first entrance hallway and can hear everyone's happiness with ease, but that vanishes when she's among them, close to the neon bar, out of her head: "Bar keep. Bloody bar keep."
"No chance, sweetheart."
But she doesn't hear him and moves onto the bathroom. She doesn't know where it is even though she's been there, done that. So many bodies bumping into her, many dodging her as she stumbles.
"You should puke, lady."
She heard that because he said it in her face. She pushes him back and flips him off. "Shuck off." She grabs him by the lapel. "Bathing area. Fine sir, bathing area."
"What're you talking about?"
"You new-new baby, snitch."
"Snitch?"
She's on him. Shorter than Cullen, she pulls his face right to hers and locks lips. He doesn't fight. She smacks their lips off. "Bathroom."
Her hand grips his hair. He's already grabbing her ass, her skirt is so short. She got skittle paint on him. He nods and leads her to the bathroom.
It's packed outside the bathroom area next to the bar. He has to force them through, pushing people out of the way. She holds his arm and puts a lot of weight on him. Other bodies don't touch her.
"Men or women?" He turns and asks, lips closing in, when they reach the open archway, two sides of stalls, flashing white and dark lights within, people dancing everywhere.
She pushes him off her. "Shuck you, poop-pee-banana stick." Flipping him off, he moves to follow. She disappears among the bodies, stumbling by. They bump up against her, in their grind.
She squirms her small body through them and makes it to the stalls of the men's room that has men and women in it. She gets on all fours and slips under a stall to a man sitting on the toilet and using his cell phone, who says, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She rips his phone out of his hands and throws it over her shoulder, out of the stall. "Who's a wussy, wussy, pussy."
The man stands, and she gets on all fours again, crawling into the next stall, where a couple is making love and doesn't pay attention to her. Then she sees them, the bare hobbit feet. She makes her way to them, and Cullen is shagging a girl in the stall. She just peaks her head in, sees the truth, the long blonde her and long legs, before crawling out of the stall, pushing her way out of the crowd, and taking off her stilettos outside.
"Could you call me a taxi," she says to a bouncer, who hugs her and nods, letting her face fall on his chest.
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