Chapter 27: Time to meet the friends...

It wasn't The Night Alex Put Three 'Bangers in Jail. It wasn't That Time Alex Was a Big Damn Hero. Nor was it even The Night Alex Hooked Up with Taylor, No Really.

Rather, Alex's circle of friends on Facebook and various chat programs decided that Wednesday night had been 'The Night Alex Got Beat Up and Shot.'

His disappointment was fairly minimal. All of this unfolded over status updates and comments shown on Lorelei's laptop, which was on the bed with him and the naked succubus lovingly sucking his cock just as she'd threatened earlier. A couple of plates holding the crumbs and stems from a scone and fruit from breakfast sat nearby.

It hadn't taken long to surpass the decadence of merely calling in sick while she serviced him. What's more, none of this had been his idea. "My God, are we sure who's enslaved to who here?" he sighed contentedly.

"This is why it's good to secure a slave's devotion," she winked before returning to her 'work'.

His eyes rolled back into his head at the sensations she gave him. For awhile, all he could do was enjoy it and breathe. Eventually, though, his other senses returned to him.

"Would you like to meet my friends?" Alex smiled at the sweetly affirmative noise she made. "Several of them are playing pool tonight... wow," he mumbled, having trouble forming words again. "Think I'll be up for that at the rate I'm... um... feeling better. Guess there's a party on Saturday night, too."

Her lips formed into a smile, and Alex shivered as teeth gently scraped across his cock as she pulled off. "Master," she asked "what of the rest of our weekend?"

"I think we'd both really like to spend the weekend in a frenzy of passionate lust," Alex grinned. "Probably have to squeeze some homework time in there, but mostly I'm becoming obsessed with sex."

"Indeed. May I make arrangements for a hotel room?"

"Later?"

"As you wish," she said. "What sort of party is this?"

"Birthday thing. High school classmate who went to UW. Not too many of us left town after graduation, so we all sometimes run into one another."

Indulgently, Lorelei kissed his erection again, and then asked, quite innocently, "Have you heard from Taylor today?"

"Not so far." Without thinking about it, Alex went -- as he so often did -- straight to Taylor's page, and blinked. "Huh."

"Hm?"

"I didn't know you could have your relationship status say you were single and that it was complicated, but... oh, jeez. Wow, I guess she and Gabriel really have had things brewing. He's going off and she's ignoring it. This is ugly."

"Gabriel?"

"Her boyfriend since high school. Basketball star. Guess he's been playing the field with his groupies, though. She said this might blow up."

"Has she told him about the two of you?"

He tapped one-handed at the laptop. "I don't think... oh. Huh. Yep. He says he's gonna kick my ass if he sees me. Guess she told him after all."

"You don't sound too concerned."

"What, he's gonna risk his basketball scholarship to defend his honor in a relationship when he's apparently been cheating, too? His page is full of chicks who are jumping up to... aaand now I'm blocked. Meh. She told me to stay out of it, anyway."

"There is only one thing to do about this, master," Lorelei suggested seductively.

"What's that?"

"Confirm your attendance at that party, and then put it out of your mind for now." Alex shuddered as her hot, warm, welcoming mouth took him again. He managed the few actions necessary on the laptop to follow her advice before he was too overcome with pleasure to do anything else but twitch.

He didn't really question why Lorelei was telling him what to do on his Facebook page.

************

 "Ah was good an' freaked out when ah got hit," Wade said, waiting for his shot. "Ah mean, it jus' slammed into me, an' ah was fixin' t' throw a grenade. Ah still threw it, 'cuz whut else was ah gonna do with a live grenade, y'know? Got th' guy ah'd been goin' for, too, but then ah'm fallin' backward an' th' guys are yellin' about flankers an' that's when ah noticed ah couldn't stand up right an' ah'm slippin' all over the place."

Neither Jason nor Drew were really playing pool at this point. They were simply listening to Wade talk. He was dressed in simple jeans, a hoodie, and a John Deere ball cap. Since middle school they, and Alex, had worked to break Wade of his southern accent. By graduation -- a year past, for Drew, being the eldest in the circle of friends -- Wade had mostly lost it. Then he went and joined the Army, and it came right back to him.

He had only come home a few weeks ago. He had been to basic, infantry school, jump school, a handful of other training locations and then many months in Afghanistan. He had brought home that reinvigorated southern accent and a slight limp.

They knew he'd been hurt. Shot, specifically, and the limp implied where, but he didn't really talk about it. It was only now, waiting for Alex to show up at the pool hall, that he was unexpectedly opening up about it.

"Sounds really scary, man," Jason said after scratching his shot. The skinniest of the trio was clad in his Green Lantern t-shirt and jeans.

"It wuz, but it wuzn't, y'know? Ah mean, it hurt, but ah could tell right away that it wasn't nothin' vital. Medic was right there, said ah'd been shot in the ass but ah'd be okay. But you hear things, like about infections, an' how it's your femoral artery that gets cut an' you can jus' bleed out. An ah'm like, ah know the femoral's down in your thigh, but don't that mean the vein's gotta run through your ass at some point? An' that's what freaked me out."

Drew shook his head. He was the largest of them, muscular and much better dressed. He looked over the table to plot his next shot. "I'm just glad you're home, man."

"Ah am, too, but ah'm not, which is weird. Feel like ah'm lettin' the guys down by sittin' this out. Ah mean, ah was surprised they gave me disability an' discharged me. Ah thought ah'd be up for active duty again by now. Prob'ly could be." He shrugged, sitting on his bar stool at the small table next to their pool table, and looked at the menu. "Army logic, ah guess."

Jason and Drew glanced at one another, but said nothing. Neither really felt like they had the right to counsel Wade on this. As happy as they were to have him home alive and in one piece, there was a palpable sense among Wade's circle of friends that nobody had been where Wade had, and didn't really know how to relate. All they could do was keep him close and be ready to listen.

"Y'all're lookin' at me like ah'm traumatized or somethin'," Wade grinned without looking up from the menu. "Christ, all 'at happened wuz ah got shot inna butt. Wanna see the scar?"

"I knew we'd walk in on an awkward comment," came Alex's voice.

"Aw, hey, Alex," Wade smiled, looking up and then blinking. Drew glanced up to say hello before taking his shot, then promptly sent the cue ball off the table as he did a double-take. Jason, for his part, simply looked on in shock.

"This is Lorelei," Alex said, tilting his head to the phenomenal beauty holding his hand. "Lorelei, this is Wade, Drew, and Jason."

As if her tight slacks, bare midriff and low neckline hadn't done enough to dominate the room for all three of Alex's lifelong friends, her confident smile settled the matter. "Hi," was all she said.

It took some effort to get conversation going again after that.

************

"You hadn't told me you tried to enlist in the military," Lorelei said with a slightly surprised smile.

"Tried," Alex shrugged. "Didn't." He stood on the other side of the pool table, waiting for Jason to make his shot. Lorelei and Wade sat at the small bar table nearby. "It didn't really seem like something worth mentioning."

"Quack quack," Jason smirked.

"Naw, it's true, he did," Wade said. "He went through enlistment processin' with me. We wuz supposed t' go to boot camp t'gether, too. It's one of those things they can do when they draw up your papers."

"Why didn't it work out?" Lorelei asked, intrigued. She held her drink -- merely a soda, as alcohol was restricted to a marked-off corner of the establishment -- just below her lips, stirring and looking entirely at Alex while the group talked.

"Alex failed the underwear duck test," Drew put in quicker than Alex could speak.

"Sleepwalking," Alex frowned at Drew.

"The questionnaire they had us fill out asked if I'd ever been sleepwalking, and I did, like, twice when I was in fifth grade. But I was all worried that they were gonna know somehow or something, so I checked 'yes,' and then when we were doing the whole formal screening process the crusty old doctors running everybody through the tests got all freaked out about it."

"And then he fell down while doing the duck walk in his underwear," Jason snickered. Wade laughed, too.

Lorelei's interested smile did not diminish. "Explain," she told Wade.

"Hell, this is like having my mom bust out an album of embarrassing baby photos," Alex grumbled.

"So they give Alex all this shit about sleepwalkin', right?" Wade began. "But they let 'im continue on, an' they do all that stuff where they check your vision, check your hearin', pull you in a back room to turn your head an' cough." Jason and Drew, as if on cue, both grabbed their groins, turned their heads and coughed. Alex grumbled again.

Wade continued. "But there wuz this one test. Ah don't know how or why this makes sense t' anyone. Maybe either they check t' make sure every little bit of you bends right or they jus' tryin' to get embarrassin' footage of everyone. Anyway, they line us up against the wall in this big, empty room, an' there's like a half dozen old, old doctors sittin' on folding chairs on the other side of the room. An' they tell us to strip down t' our skivvies. Stand on one foot, then th' other, that stuff. Then they have everyone squat down as low as they can an' walk like a duck from one end of th' room t' the other."

Lorelei just listened with obvious mirth on her face. "I still say that's just a hazing ritual," Drew put in. "No way is that a combat skill."

"Well, ya never really know what's gonna come up in combat. Ah mean, y'all might have t' crawl aroun' here, climb there, suddenly do some jumpin' jacks in a firefight," Wade said sarcastically. "Strip down t' your underwear an' duck-walk out t' the enemy. Ah imagine th' Taliban are terrified by that, but mah unit never tried it."

"And so Alex failed this test?"

Wade nodded, grinning widely. "Motherfucker fell down twice. Knocked people over."

"I lost my balance," Alex frowned.

"Apparently," Jason giggled.

"You laugh like an eight-year-old girl," Alex retorted.

"You duck-walk like a retard," Jason countered. Drew got a kick out of that one. So did Lorelei.

"So yeah, between that an' the sleepwalkin', they sent Alex home," Wade finished.

"And then I didn't have any of my university applications together in time, 'cause I really didn't think I'd have a hard time getting into the military," Alex sighed, "which is how I landed where I am today in Community College."

"Aw. I'm glad that you had such trouble on that test," Lorelei said affectionately. "Otherwise we may never have met."

"You say that now," Jason nodded, "but someday you'll be watching a Donald Duck film, and you'll turn to Alex driven wild by passion and ask him if he can--oh look, Alex scratched on the eight ball," he grinned. "Can't imagine why. Guess that's game. Rack 'em."

Alex sighed, glaring at Jason, and then grabbed the rack.

"So y'all ain't from 'round here," Wade said to Lorelei finally.

Lorelei grinned, her elbow on the table. "Naw," she said.

"Y'all makin' fun of mah accent now?"

"Reckon ah am," she drawled sweetly. Her own accent was perfect.

"I like her," Drew declared as he picked his glass up off the table for a gulp.

"I'm still suspicious," Jason shrugged. He looked to Alex, who was finishing up racking the balls. "She's too good for you. I'm guessing she's a relative. Cousin or aunt or something."

"Could I perhaps assuage your concerns by making out with my man?" Lorelei offered, dropping the southern accent.

"See, now she sounds British 'r somethin'," Wade said.

Alex rolled his eyes, walked over to Lorelei and kissed her deeply. She was more than happy to accept him, wrapping her arms around his neck and slipping a leg up against his.

"That doesn't prove anything," Jason shrugged.

"Hey, Alex, y'all gotta let 'er up. It's her break," Wade noted.

Laughing, Lorelei slipped out of Alex's arms. She picked up a cue stick, strutted to the end of the table, and put half the balls on the table into pockets right off the break. With barely a glance at the guys, Lorelei strode from shot to shot, sinking every ball in turn until finally she declared, "Eight ball, corner pocket," and stretched across the table before sinking that, too.

Alex wasn't terribly surprised. Drew, Jason and Wade all looked on in stunned silence. "Perhaps it would be best if I let someone else break next game?" she asked.