Let's just say I was feeling very mean.

I'd called Jilli and the little one but Grandma Jilli was out or still just shunning me. I left a message, then did what I do, when I'm mean and went to Gina Torres' place.

Dancing is a fair replacement for sex, why else do you think the Puritans had it banned? But, that kind of potent, lively energy isn't always easily stoppered or redirected, productively or harmlessly. That explains why so many Puritan women ended up dead, by judicially sanctioned drowning and hanging.

I bet a Hell of a lot of them "disappeared", "kidnapped by Indians" and such, or more likely a neighbor with an unquenchable, evil thirst and itch. And, a durable shovel.

I danced hard and passionately, trying to burn out my own "unquenchable, evil thirst and itch".

And, it would appear that some easily misguided men really have a thing about a strappy bra top and pants of pink leather poured over a woman's curvy, tan body like butter. Apologies to Gina, but I kind of was the center of a little...fight between two jerkoffs, who looked like they could probably fight better than they could fuck anyway.

My favorite bouncer and all around good guy Che sent me to the roof to cool off, while he and his boy tossed them.

* * * *

She'd stood out pale, still and very out of place on the energetic dance floor, in that diversely colorful crowd. The same could be said when Cassie followed me to my roof. My temperature was already running too hot on a chilly night, my jacket'd cast aside, as I lay on my precarious, stories high, cold, stone ledge, nearly exactly where Guy'd come to me that first night.

I was feeling the driving beats from the dance floor below coursing through me, when I asked her what she wanted. Not what the Hell she wanted, merely what she wanted.

"Ren." Wow, she's so come to the wrong person.

"Well, Cass, since he and Guy both simultaneously cut my name from their dance cards, I suppose even you could arrange that."

She seemed really odd, more so than usual. Normally, she was sort of annoyingly, cloyingly perky, tonight she was solemn and...driven. As if she'd come hunting. A predator Miss Cassie is not. Yet, she'd stepped deep out of her comfortable, private country club zone, deep into "ethnic", "urban" territory looking for me, in this place, where it was painfully obvious she was unfamiliar with the terrain and terrified of the locals, yet had known exactly where to find me.

Someone was tickling her keys, getting her to play a tune she didn't know or could ever play correctly.

I almost felt for her.

"He'd said he'd sent you packing--."

"'He said...'. Ren told you that?"

"Oh, yes, that and lots more...whore. (Ouch.) The things you've made him do. Pulling him down to your level. No wonder that...that last time with me, he was so--. Why won't you leave him alone?"

I didn't answer that, angry people, especially ones feeling righteous, never shut up, so you might as well preserve your energy, until the opportunity when they wind down or worse.

"He...he actually cried, he came to me for solace and forgiveness and...."

'Solace and forgiveness'...and tears from the hardass king himself? Pun intended. Someone must've gotten laid very "tender" and the like.

I didn't have to ask, I knew. Ren'd gone to her, wound her spring ever so well and gently, as she likes and craves, then sicced her on me. Goddamn that Guy. This was some of his shit, coaching Ren to use Cassie to fuck with me; and Ren, no doubt, having a fine time of playacting sweetness and gentility.

I am so not having this.

Fuck that innocent dupe crap, fuck them, and fuck her for being so fuckin' stupid not to know that silver spoon up her tight ass sphincter had evidently been stolen from some truly innocent dupe, by her hardworking, underhanded moms.

God! She's still talking, I wished she'd shut the fuck up!

I jumped down.

That scared her. I was gonna hit her, but freaking her out seemed instinctively a more fun thing to do, which is what happened when I grabbed her by the back of the neck and kissed her, hard. Tongue and all. It wasn't great. Not because she's a woman, but because she's Cassie.

She shrieked from the back of her throat, as well as she could, since my tongue was deep in her maw, as I also fondled her. It took her a while to think of it, and even longer to get up the nerve to do it; but, she finally shoved and I let her push me off her.

Interestingly, she didn't wipe her lips, or spit. Isn't that what most people do when something wrong gets in their mouths?

"Ren was so right about you, he said you weren't my friend."

"I always said I 'weren't' your friend."

"You want him for yourself. You're in love with him." I am not being nice to her anymore.

"I suck his fat cock, the way he likes it sucked...unlike you, who doesn't know what to do with one. Then, he fucks me, down my throat, in my cunt, and up my ass, until his cum shoots out my nostrils."

A visual exaggeration, but she got the picture.

"That's our 'love' making. We 'love' what we do with each other and to each other, and Guy watches us, then Ren watches me do Guy with whatever nasty little things Guy and I 'love' to do. Same bed, at the same time and sometimes, many times, most times, they are both on me or in me...at the same time.

"There is no...'love'. And, you, silly bitch, are the furthest thing from Ren's mind when I'm riding his brother's impressive cock, and his own long, thick dick is shoved, like he loves to shove it, to the hilt up my ass."

She punched me.

Well, at me, missed my face, and hit my shoulder. It wasn't a Ren punch, or as powerful as any number of other punches I've received from loving admirers on dates or on the line between Crime and the Law; but, I wasn't feeling very Law-like, was sick of her not getting the point, and just really--.

I hit her.

She went down in a gush of blood, and I went down on her. Well, more precisely, I jumped her ass to beat the shit out of her.

Someone...someone(s) were screaming my name, as if I were doing something outrageously wrong. Come on. An annoying, rich, former private school bitch like her needs to get a good beatdown at least once in her--.

Che yanked me off her and flung me aside, as Scully checked to see if Cassie were too damaged. I never noticed how badly off she might've been since, when I landed, I saw, several yards away--Guy standing and Ren stooped down nearby. [try mentally casting American actors Russell Wong and Keanu Reeves, respectively] Both dark predators watching the show. If Che had charged a roof admission, he'd've cleaned up.

Guy tossed his fine, Irish linen handkerchief to me. Oh, red on my wet, hard knuckles.

Scully called on her cell phone for an ambulance and asked Che to carry the bloodied princess away, then she asked me to come with her. I heard her and turned to answer but...heard and felt Guy move closer to me, a few paces behind.

"No, Jilli."

"Artemis...Arie, come with me." She'd grabbed me.

"No!" I shoved her away. Hard. Which scared both of us. We'd never--.

"This isn't like you." Take note, she glanced at Guy with great hatred. "You're falling too far, and when this woman presses charges--."

Guy cleared his throat, he was laughing but half attempting to hide it from Scully.

"She won't press charges."

"And, how may I ask, lieutenant, sir, do you know that?" Jillian Scully can be real imperiously snotty sometimes. I like that in her.

"Cassie's pride won't let her, and her mom won't either." He and Ren both snickered. I smiled a teensy bit. Jilli was not pleased with any of it.

"No, really, Detective Scully, there will be no charges pressed, I can assure you of that. God or the Devil only knows what got inside her and possessed her to come way down here in the first place. But, it's really good to know you're on the ball. However, we have private matters to discuss with Detective Belladonna, now. You're dismissed."

"Artemis?"

I backed away and stopped when I felt Guy behind me, his fingertips brushed slightly down the bare skin of my back, then across my ass. An extremely sensitive part of me. That was all. I couldn't leave. Jilli saw my face change and her voice changed in urgency to match.

"A-Arie?!" I wanted to go to her, to please her....

"Detective Belladonna, come to me, please?"

I felt a flush of heat, as I managed a glance at her, before turning to go to Ren, who was still kneeling a few yards back. I think she said she never wanted to see me again, then left; but, I'm not absolutely certain. Not with Guy and Ren both in my head.

"Cassie's not too bright, is she? And, I think, finally, she'll not want to ever see either of us anywhere near her again. Gosh darn."

Ren looked up at me and softly stroked my crotch, which ached terribly to have him, as I felt it cramp and wet its starving palate.

"I told you before how you should come to me."

I got down on my knees. No hesitation, no thought in the matter. Ren stood to his full height over me.

"Now, tell us. Who owns you?"

Since childhood, through job interviews, whenever I've been asked to describe myself, to say what is most important to me, as if I were dissolved like a chemistry project down to one element, the strong answer has ALWAYS been one word-independent. My answer now was very...weak.

"No one--."

"Stop being a child, Arte!"

The vehemence in Ren's frustrated, impatient voice should've, would've frightened anyone else; it made me remember his delicious impatience and force whenever he wants me, when he's inside me. (God, no wonder Jilli looked at me that way.) But, I didn't blush with hot shame this time when I thought of her. There can be a lot of power in...no shame and no pride. (Oh, yeah. Here's where I piss away my independence, as well.)

"I'm yours." He was reaching for my face when Guy spoke...his tone a warning.

"Ren?" Ren ran that same hand over his hair, instead.

"She said it, Guy."

"She didn't say the proper words."

"'Proper'?

"It matter--."

"You and your.... I really want to fuck her, Guy! Now."

"Like Tsianina?"

After the mention of Ren's homicide deceased wife, the rest was evidently a chastisement in Chinese mixed with French. They only do both languages when something's extremely critical. (I gotta get into Berlitz^®, Living Language^®, or something.)

Ren stepped aside, taking my power over him away from me and giving it to Guy, who waited, still as death, while his older brother paced, barely contained.

"You...own...me." I knew it before I said it that that wouldn't please the number one guy in my life.

"Who owns you?"

Guy knew I knew he had me. That he was breaking me first. If for no other reason than he's far more patient than I am.

"René and Guy Fellowes own me."

He nodded slightly. Ren snatched me to my feet to stare at me as though to kiss me, but instead, tore away my bra's leather lacings....