The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The First Temptation of Kelsey Blankenship

Previously: "The Things You'll Do to Not Be Lonely" 

Steve Patterson is probably the most eligible guy at Westside High School. Tall, athletic, handsome, masterful, and inarguably the second-best player on the basketball squad (and according to some the actual best), he is the kind of guy who owns every room he enters.

And he knows it too, so he is arrogant, swaggering, and casually cruel to anyone who gets in his way. You've never had a serious run-in with him, except for the few times you've been standing in his way and failed to step aside when he came down the hallway, and even then he never did anything worse than spin you around by your shoulder and ram you face-first into a locker. But for all that—and maybe because of all that—landing a date with Patterson is a crowning achievement at Westside.

Or maybe not such a crowning achievement. The guy is the biggest horndog in the school, and is almost contemptuous about picking girls up, stringing them along, fucking them blind up in the private loft above the school gym, and casting them aside.

Kelsey hasn't been one of his conquests. But she herself is just arrogant enough to think that she could catch and hold Patterson. After all, she's the richest and most stylish girl at Westside; an ex-cheerleader who still has the moves and body of one; and she's at the top of her own social heap. She would be a catch for anyone, including Patterson. At least in her estimation.

Which means that you are just arrogant enough to think that you'd be quite the catch for him. Besides (a side of you giggles down underneath) how hilarious would it be to fuck Patterson considering who you really are?

"So come out to my place tonight," you tell him with a wide, smug smile. "We'll see how you handle it."

"You'll have to pick me up," he says. "I got a ride out here."

"I can do that. What time did you say?"

"Eight."

"I'll be here then."

And you are so distracted and dazzled that you leave the store without remembering to ask for the coffee you went out to get.

* * * * *

The next few hours are nerve-wracking as you and a couple of your girlfriends set things up in your wing of the house. There's not a lot of prep, but you and Amanda are both perfectionists who have to have the last word, so you're constantly fixing things that she has messed up, and she is constantly messing them up again for you to fix. And underneath all this is the agonizing sense of anticipation of going out to pick up Steve. You don't tell any of the girls that he is coming out, though. You want that to be a surprise.

Finally, seven-thirty comes, and even though some of the regular guests—Brent Pruitt and Anthony Kirk and a few more—have started to arrive, you excuse yourself by telling them (truthfully!) that there's something in town you need to pick up.

Steve is waiting in front of the grocery store when you pull into the lot, and for a minute you're worried that, at nearly six-and-a-half feet of rangy muscle, he won't be able to fold himself into your sporty little BMW, but he somehow manages. "I have a favor to ask you," he says as you pull away toward the street. "Can we stop by the school so I can shower and change?"

"Not at your place?" you ask.

"I don't want to see my dad," he says. "I got fresh clothes up at the school, though. I just need to run in, wash and soap myself. It'll only take me ten, fifteen minutes. It's on the way to your place too, isn't it?"

It isn't, not exactly, but you make the detour. After pulling up next to the gym, Steve says, "You don't want to wait in the car," which is true enough, so you follow him in.

Steve, like most of the top athletes, has been granted a key to the facilities by the very indulgent coaching staff, and he lets you into the gym via a door that opens directly into one of the basketball courts, and he invites you to take a seat on one of the bleachers while he gets ready in the boys' changing room. But he's still in his original work clothes when he emerges ten minutes later. "My clean clothes are up in the loft," he tells you. He cocks his head. "Have you ever been up there?"

Your heart freezes, and you shake your head.

"You wanna look?"

Ice seems to form in your lungs, so that you can hardly speak.

"We, uh, should get back to my place, Steve," you squeak. "It's my party, and my friends are all waiting for us there."

Steve regards you coolly. Then he strides across the open floor to where you're sitting. You shrink back.

But he sinks to one knee in front of you, and his smile is warm. So is the hand that he lays over yours.

"I'm sure it's a great party out there, Kelsey," he says. "But I'd rather spend my time with you."

He holds your eye, and your breath becomes very labored. His eyes are a cold, clear gray, like icebergs floating in the frozen Arctic seas, and they remain chilly even when warmed by his smile. But they are dominating, and almost hypnotic. For a moment, neither of you speaks.

Before you can find your voice, he stands up and stares down at you from his great height. "But give me five minutes to change," he says, "and I'll be down and we can go out to your place."

But it's not five minutes and it's not ten minutes, but closer to fifteen, and he is still upstairs in the loft over the gym, when you get to your feet to go looking for him. You feel foolish as you do, and you know quite well that you're being manipulated, that he's delaying so as to pull you to the center of the web he's been weaving for you since you asked him his Saturday night plans at the store.

And yet you want to be manipulated. You don't want it to be your fault when—

You mount the narrow, creaking staircase hidden in the corner of the gym, behind the bleachers. At the top is a shallow landing and a scarred wooden door. You tap at it with a knuckle. "Steve?" you quaver.

The door opens, and he is standing there, a hooded expression on his face. "Almost ready," he says, but he doesn't move.

Last chance, you realize. This is the moment. I can go downstairs to wait, and he'll come down to tell me that he's changed his mind about going to my house. Or I can come inside, and then he'll—

No, you think. He won't be able to take me if I take him first!

You step through the doorway, and wrap your arms around his lean, hard torso. You pull yourself to him, and nuzzle your cheek against his chest.

Steve puts an arm around your back, and pulls you closer. The door clicks shut behind you.

* * * * *

He takes the bottom and you take the top. There's no negotiation. He's too big to rest atop you anyway, and Kelsey insists on taking the top when she's with Karl, so it's natural for you to crawl atop him after Steve has laid himself out in the middle of the loft.

It's a filthy room, with heaps of junk—crates and discarded gymnastics equipment and weight sets—packed in under the rafters of the gym. There is one clear space in the middle where some cracked and crusty gym mats have been spread out. Steve lays back on one of these, resting on his elbows, as you straddle him. Then you lay atop him, to kiss. So good is he with his tongue—it feels like it's a foot long, with the strength and dexterity of an anaconda—and with his teeth and his lips that it's not long before you're gasping and groaning and tugging under your dress at your panties. He sits up long enough to help you pull his shirt off, revealing lean slabs of muscle under a rug of curly brown hair. Then he wriggles out of his jeans and you hug the shaft—already, arrogantly rubber-wrapped—that thrusts out. Together, with a minimum of words but a maximum of sweat, you negotiate his entrance, and you clench as he thrusts and pumps. And it's hardly anytime before he blossoms inside you, like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.

That cracks open your own reserves, and after you finish shrieking you fall atop him to rest there, moaning. He clasps you to himself, and nuzzles at your ear.

For half an hour you lay there, murmuring nonsense noises at each other, until he revives and pushes you off. He takes the dress off you, and sets to nibbling at you all over, from chin to cunt and down the insides of your thighs. After he has worked himself up again, and loosened you all over, he rolls onto his back again, changes out rubbers, and does it again with you.

Ten o'clock comes, and then eleven. Texts pile up on your phone, until you are forced—during one of your breaks—to reply with the excuse that you're helping a friend through a personal crisis and will see everyone tomorrow. When midnight comes, you are still with Steve, sprawled bonelessly atop him. He runs his fingertips up and down your spine and breathes softly in your ear. Your eyes droop, and the world fades.

* * * * *

You feel very grimy when you struggle awake the next morning, and you're greeted by an even grimier morning light filtering in through the filthy windows high up under the gymnasium eaves. You pull your discarded dress toward you, but haven't the strength to put it on. You look around.

Steve is nowhere to be found.

Oh, fuck, you think. What have I done?

Next: "Return to Self" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"