Page 6 of Witch Upon a Star
2
STARBUCKS
Well, this sucked. I’d been in some shit situations before, but this truly was one of the more frustrating. Steel, my President and a man I admired, was currently sitting in a fucking jail cell on a no-doubt trumped up charge while I and my brethren were standing here on a rented stage being auctioned off like livestock. Don’t get me wrong, I was playing it up. I had a role to play, and just like my Raider days, I would do it to the best of my ability. Steel would allow no less, especially after all the time and energy his woman, Jenna, had put into this day.
But fuck, did it suck.
Up until yesterday, I was looking forward to the auction. Some of my brothers and I had bets on who would get the highest bid. Pumpkin, who wasn’t even in the running, had kicked our asses. That is, until Keys stepped up on stage.
Keys was a hard one to put in the running. We all looked after him like he was our kid-brother. Wicked smart—a fucking genius, really—but didn’t have much luck with the ladies. Some of us suspected he’d been a virgin when hejoined the club at nineteen, the youngest prospect the club had ever claimed. I didn’t know a lot about his history, other than he’d been in Navy Intelligence and had worked with Ghost, who had vouched for him. Keys had only been a patched member for a few months when I’d joined as a prospect, and even on the sidelines, I saw how differently he was treated. The Honeys, the women who used to work for the club as housekeepers and cooks were essentially paid to sleep with us, would look at him like he was a teenager hoping to pop his cherry. I wasn’t the only one who made sure he had condoms that hadn’t been tampered with and gave the Honeys a stern talking to about treating him right. But while we watched over him, he still stood apart from us. Maybe it was age, or our desire to protect him.
When I patched in, I took Keys under my wing. I had to start small. The distance between Keys and his fellow patched members wasn’t entirely one-sided. With his head always ducked behind a computer screen, it wasn’t like Keys was trying to socialize with us either.
But Keys and I had something in common that the others did not. I was a fellow gamer. An amateur in comparison, but I wasn’t half bad. We played Red Dead, the Last of Us, World of Warcraft, the Witcher, God of War, and whatever else struck our fancy. I wondered if the others even knew that Keys held several world-wide records in various games, in addition to running his cyber security business.
After gaining his trust, I was able to help Keys branch out a little. Took him to the club’s bar, even taught him how to play pool. Pirate, who had prospected with me, caught on quickly and also joined us. Turned out, Keys was a bit of a hustler. Because I’dneverbelieve he’d never played poolbefore in his life and yet was able to sink a ball or two on every shot his first game.
He started to break out of his shell more and more. Not that I wanted to change him, but I wanted him to feel comfortable around his own brothers.
But he never lost his shyness when it came to women. I wasn’t sure why. In a completely heterosexual way, even I could admit he had a cuteness to him. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and when he finally got glasses, he looked like a young Chad Michael Murray. Yet anytime a pair of boobs even looked at him, he clammed up, got redder than a tomato, and would duck behind the nearest object. Usually a computer screen or one of us.
When Steel had decreed that all of us were to participate in the auction—well, all but Scar for obvious reasons—I had no idea how Keys would handle it. But he seemed to put on a brave face, despite that he’d chewed his fingernails down to bloody stumps last night.
Then he stepped up on stage, and all of us waited with bated breath as Louisa, Papaw’s ol’ lady and Bulldog’s mother, announced him.
Nothing.
One could have heard a mouse fart, it was so quiet.
Many of the ol’ ladies had already won bids, and therefore were unable to bid again. I silently scolded the entire club, including myself, for stupidly not putting Keys first in the lineup.
And then all our phones rang. Fiftythousand? Who the fuck did Keys know who had that kind of scratchandcould pull off texting all of us at one time? I briefly wondered if he’d done it himself just to get out of the embarrassmentof, one, no one bidding, or two, someone bidding and Keys being forced to go on a date with them. But when Louisa showed him the text message that had come across her phone, I saw the surprise on his face, and it was too genuine. Keys wasn’tthatgood an actor. In fact, hesuckedat acting. His ears turned red the second he got a good hand in poker.
If he ever found a way to control that ability, it would make for an excellent bluff.
With Keys being our new high roller, wealllost that pool. And with Keys’ auction out of the way, I was the last one.
When I had been a prospect, and then a new member, the title of club’s Casanova had belonged to Cage. I’d heard many women, including his own wife, refer to him as an Adonis. With stunning, Greek looks and a tall, muscular build, it was no wonder he could make even a nun’s panties disappear. After Cage had fallen for Angel, and had essentially been neutered, that title fell to me.
I did not take offense that I was second place and had only been promoted due to Angel putting a ring on it—or a patch, as it was. Cage proudly claimed the title as Angel’s ol’ lady. While it had started out as a joke, it was now common knowledge, and Cage even joined in on the club’s ol’ ladies’ gatherings.
As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t a default. Cage was the one who’d lost. One woman for the rest of his life? I shuddered at the very thought.
When I’d stepped up on stage, I saw a group of women I knew well. Quite well. Biblically well. Of the six, I’d slept with five of them. Some more than once and two of them at one time. I wasn’t playing any of them, nor were any under any misconceptions that our time together was anything butphysical. It was fucking, pure and simple. They got theirs and I got mine. A mutual exchange. There were others in the crowd that I’d been with too. I spotted Becky Something towards the back with her two kids. Like me, the widow wasn’t interested in falling in love and only wanted to sate her needs, and I was happy to provide that relief.
I wasn’t an asshole about it either. I learned their names—for the most part—and I never ghosted them. They knew from the beginning that it was just sex, and while there had been a few who thought they could change that, none had ever gotten too upset when I shot them down. Some were persistent, but I just never went there again.
Kora let out a loud catcall as I struck a pose. She was one of my regulars. Last week, I got laid at three in the morning by simply texting her a question mark to see if she was awake. She answered back in the affirmative, and I drove one of the club’s SUVs to her apartment building where I fucked her over the hood.
The bidding began, Kora calling out a starting bid of two hundred dollars before Louisa even finished the announcement. Immediately, others called out their offers, and Louisa even had to scold them for their bids not being in fifty-dollar increments.
If I had to choose a woman to win my bid, it would be Kora. One, because she knew the score. No feelings, just sex. And she wasgoodwith that. Very good. And two, because she was an anal virgin, and was interested in popping that particular cherry. She told me if she won, she’d get a date out of me whileIgot her dessert.
My cock twitched at just the thought. I loved anal sex,but not many women were into it. At least, not in this small town.
I loved my club, and I loved my brothers. After leaving the Marines, I hadn’t been sure what was next for me. I’d been one of the lucky ones, departing with all my limbs and most of my sanity. But when I’d been asked to reup after ten years, I hadn’t jumped on it as I’d always assumed I would. It wasn’t like I had anything waiting for me at home.
I knew, though, that if I stayed chances were Iwouldend up losing a part of myself, either loss of limb or my mind. I had the occasional nightmare but nothing like what many of my fellow veterans had. To say I had PTSD would be offensive to those whoactuallydid. I could handle a nightmare or two, especially when there were many who needed care a lot more than I did and weren’t getting it.
