Hotwife Key Party: Willow (Chapter 2)

Dragan narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her. “Refresh my memory.”

Willow laughed. “It’s not coming to you, is it?”

“I’m thinking.”

She said, “You’re a big deal to me. Or you were at one time.”

This confounded him, and he shook his head like he wanted to rattle the revelation loose. “I’m just not getting it.”

“Think harder,” she said. “It would have been, oh… ten years ago.”

“My rookie year?”

She shook her head. “Your second year.”

Now he shook his head no, long side to side wags, his handsome mouth turned down at the corners. “Impossible. I didn’t date back then.”

She said, “Oh, but you did.”

His forearms fell to the arm rests and his giant hands curled on the wooden ends. “No, I was too busy. . . . Where do I know you from?”

She slumped and put a hand over her chest as if wounded. “You’re breaking my heart.”

Dragan chuckled, looking around, eyes low, the way a guy does when he is deep in recollective thought. How they already knew each other evaded him, and the moment dragged on and on, still the famous athlete not coming up with a thing. He shook his head again, grumbling but smiling.

She said, “You should be embarrassed, Dragan.”

He sighed, head leaning back. “Maybe I am,” he said, cocking one roguish eyebrow and looking her over again.

She said, “This should be the part where you say something like, ‘How could I forget you, you’re so beautiful,’ you know, and then move on from this boring, awkward interplay so you can get down to business, get what you came here for.”

“I’m not like that.”

“You’re in this room,” she said, crossing her arms. “You seem like that.”

“No, I mean, I’m not a player—”

“And yet you’re in this room,” she said slyly, finishing his sentence.

Dragan sighed, a long, comfortable and masculine sound, like a patient father. He had her attention, and she stopped playing her petulant character and gave him space to say what he wanted. “I want to know who you are. I’m not some player who wants to dribble past you to get to the basket. I want to know who you are, and I want to know why I don’t remember you. I don’t know how I wouldn’t remember you.”

It was a subtle nod to her beauty, she figured, though he didn’t use those exact words. She shrugged a shoulder, a sort of temporary surrender, then she rolled her eyes up, nodding, assessing his response. “That’s pretty nice,” she said. “Good recovery.”

Dragan raised his chin, imitating the cute expression of a boy who liked to be praised. Then: “So how do I know you? Ten years ago, where did we meet?

“I’ll give you a clue: there was a theme to our night together.”

“A theme?”

“You don’t know what I mean?”

“Tell me,” he said, encouraging her with a smile.

“Does this ring a bell? . . . picture blue bunting on cinderblock walls—”

“What’s that?”

“Bunting? Decoration, paper, hung in swashes… Okay, never mind. The theme was this—you ready?”

“Hit me.”

“We were”—she paused for dramatic effect, then slowly waved her hands apart in theatrical revelation, saying with flourish—“Under the Sea.”

Dragan frowned, not getting it at all, and then she watched as the revelation dawned on him, and his eyes widened, his jaw slackened and he took on a look of amazement. “Oh, no,” he said.

She smiled and nodded, “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”

A smile spread across his handsome face. He said, “You have got to be kidding me.”

* * *

The voice speaking behind Adrian belonged to the host of the party; an A-lister, a legend, a tall and handsome and well-built black man who couldn’t hide his identity behind the black mask he wore, but did so to put a barrier between his real persona and his guests. Here in the mansion for this event, he wasn’t the famous Academy Award winner and platinum record selling rapper, he was playing the role of a lifetime: thirty-third degree, Scottish Rite, Master Mason of a secret celebrity sex club for the rich and beautiful.

Adrian regarded him over his shoulder, a man named tonight only W, at once with the awe of an acolyte in his cult leader’s gaze, and also with the business savvy of a guild-member writer in the presence of Hollywood royalty who cold help his career. Either way, he wanted to impress him.

“Should I recognize him?”

W stooped behind the chair, that mask with the scary antlers looming above him. “That’s up to you, Adrian. I don’t know what you know and don’t know. I suspect you don’t know him, but I believe you should.”

“Crafty,” Adrian said, meeting his golden-brown gaze through the mask’s eye holes, enjoying his cult leader’s smile. But W didn’t answer, only lifted a finger indicating they were missing something on the screen.

Adrian watched as Willow and this large and unknown man laughed with sudden good humor, the man throwing his head back. Then the man lifted himself out of the chair and stood at his full height. He was oversized, like a circus specimen. Beyond tall, he had to be seven feet or more. The man put out his arms in warm reception and Adrian muttered, “What a fucking wingspan.” Willow mimed the tall man, putting out her long arms, and the two of them came together and embraced like old friends.

“Re-u-ni-ted,” the man in the mask sang, in the key of Peaches and Herb, “and it feels so good…”

Adrian held up a lone finger to indicate for him to shush.

Willow was tall—taller than Adrian by a hair—but her cheek rested below this man’s enormous chest. The man stooped and she went on her toes so they fit together in a more comfortable embrace.

Adrian said, “What the fuck? Where does he know her from?”

The man in the mask chuckled, enjoying this. “I guess she never told you.”

“Told me what?”

“About her affair with Dragan Kursar.”

“What do you mean affair?”

“Fling, then? Maybe I’ll let Willow describe it.”

Adrian shook his head, watching his wife on the screen in the arms of a giant.“Dragon? What, did this guy name himself? If I named myself, I wouldn’t be named Adrian, I’d be a Dragon too, or Hawk or Eagle or Grizzly.”

“Grizzly doesn’t suit you.”

“No, I guess not.” Five-seven, a buck-fifty. Then he muttered, “Wolf, maybe. Or Fox, ‘cause of my strawberry hair. Ah, shit that would be Redd Foxx then, no, that’s no good, the kids would have made fun of me, say I owned a junk yard and shit.”

“You’re a little worked up, talking fast, giving yourself imaginary names, talking to yourself,” W said, enjoying the mystery he’d set up. “I can grab you a Lorazepam if you need one. Just a tiny dot, you won’t fall asleep or anything. Bring that blood pressure down.”

He took a quick breath and let it out. “I’m fine.”

W patted then gripped his shoulder. “His name’s not Dragon, it’s Dragan. Yugoslavian.”

“The guy’s a giant. Willow looks like Bruce Lee when he went up against Kareem Abdul Jabbar in that movie, the one where he wore the yellow track suit. . . . How tall is this guy?

“Funny you should mention Kareem, Adrian. You really don’t recognize that man?”

“Well, he’s not Kareem Abdul Jabbar.”

“You have a good eye. No, he’s not.”

“Who is he?”

“You don’t know the name Dragan Kursar?”

“No. I said I don’t.”

“He’s famous…”

“For being tall?”

“Close. For playing pro basketball.”

Adrian sunk into the seat, a small part of the mystery solved. “Oh. I don’t follow sports.”

“If you did, you would know our friend in your wife’s room.”

“Willow knows him?”

“Sure looks like it, wouldn’t you say?”

Adrian regarded the screen again, tiny Willow enveloped in the arms of a handsome, seven-foot tall, pro basketball player. A man from her past.

* * *

“Willow,” Dragan whispered near her ear, and this famous man’s remembrance of her name thrilled her in an unexpected wave of giddy affiliation, like she couldn’t wait to tell her friends the Dragon Kursar remembered her name ten years later. Then Dragan added, “Miss Willow Sparks.” She swooned.

She stepped back out of his embrace, tidying her hair, smiling in an unstoppable way. “You remember my last name?”

“I might not recognize you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember Willow Sparks.” He offered a huge, princely hand, and she put hers in it right away. He went down on one knee on the bedroom floor and placed a soft and gentle kiss on her knuckles while she giggled like a schoolgirl. “I’m afraid I didn’t bring a corsage tonight.”

She regarded her small hand in his enormous one, and couldn’t help saying to herself, Well, howdy doo, Mr. Long Dong. Her whole hand barely eclipsed just his palm. Their first and only night together, lo, those many, many years ago, she’d thought the same thing, too—she had an excuse then for such juvenile conjecture though: she was a juvenile.

She said, “It would be weird if you did.”

He stood again, letting her hand go, towering over her, looking her over in a hungrier way. More like the way he had when she’d entered the room as a woman coming for one thing: to get fucked. Her heart fluttered. No way in a million years would she have anticipated this kind of excitement coming to the key party. Her fingers and toes tingled and she felt as light and buoyant as a feather in this man’s presence.

She reintroduced the hand he’d held, wiggling her wedding ring finger, big old happy diamond sparkling in the lamp light. “And it’s not Sparks anymore,” she told him.

“Of course it isn’t,” he said, smiling, his narrowed eyes still roaming all her grown-up curves.

“McKay,” she continued. “It’s Willow McKay.”

* * *

Over his shoulder, W said, “Your wife is gorgeous.”

“I know she is,” he said. All the wives here were gorgeous, though. He cocked his head to the side to regard W in his periphery. “Are you surprised or something?”

“That you could pull such a magnificent creature? No, Adrian,” he chuckled, “You’re very defensive.”

“I didn’t grow up big and tall like you did.”

“You made up for it in other ways.”

He considered a lot of comebacks, but didn’t want to veer into uncomfortable territory. He grumbled, “I guess that’s a compliment.”

“I watch your show, you’re a—”

“Hey, whoa, whoa,” he said, stopping one of the most famous men in the business mid-compliment. Later he would kick himself for it, but right now, Willow and this Dragan guy were talking about him.

Dragan said, “Who did you marry, my love?”

“You don’t know him,” Willow said.

Dragan wound his finger in a slow circle, his hand held up but finger pointing down, and with his height and that gesture, it was like Willow was his marionette. Willow obliged the man, doing what he signalled, turning in place and showing off her body, up on her tip toes on those hot-ass high heel shoes, black leather with the steel studs, her calves flexing, her butt sticking out. She turned in place, always trying to keep her eyes turned up to Dragan’s face, gauging his reaction to her body over a slender shoulder.

Dragan liked what he saw. “I know he’s a lucky man.”

Willow stopped turning, facing him again but still posing, showing off her toned and supple body. “You can say hi to him if you want. I know he’s watching.” Willow had spotted the camera, and pointed toward it now, eyes on Dragan.

“What’s his name?”

“Adrian.”

Dragan stepped behind her, putting his hands on her—touching Willow, good god—enormous hands bracing her upper arms, turning her so they both faced the camera. Willow smiled like she loved his hands on her body, slinking her back against his stomach.

“Hello, Adrian,“ Dragan said, addressing the camera. “Thank you for this incredible gift. Your wife and I have a past, but you’ll be happy to know I was a gentleman.”

Willow writhed against her partner, winking to the camera, winking for him because she knew it would drive him wild. “Only because I was seventeen.”

Dragan chuckled. “Yes, you’re right,” he agreed. Then, to the camera, “Only because she was seventeen—otherwise I would have ravished her.” With this revelation, one of the man’s hands went from Willow’s upper arm and stroked down across her body, between her breasts, and spreading across the expanse of her flat tummy, the middle finger touching his wife’s mound over the dress’s short skirt.

Both Willow and Dragan laughed, and the sound of their combined enjoyment, separated from him, had his heart going fast, his face flushing, and his eyelashes fluttering with the strangest, most intense thrill he’d ever felt in his life.