Tessa sat on the tacky, leather chair in Lucas’s bedroom, the very same room where she encountered him in flagrante with two barely-legal women. The room was expansive, it was the master bedroom of the farmhouse. Though whatever tasteful farmer’s décor might’ve brightened the place was gone, replaced with tacky colors, garish posters, and drug paraphrenia that seemed to cover every available surface.
She felt insulted, as though he were rubbing her face in what was going on, that he had succeeded in stealing her away from Atticus, that he had managed to get her right where he wanted her, despite her wishes and protestations. And the worst part was that she knew there was nothing she could do.
“See, this is pretty nice, isn’t it?” asked Lucas, throwing open the curtains of the bedroom, exposing the vast tract of cleared land behind the farm, the first half of which was packed with partygoers, the crowd trailing off into the distance.
It was a massive throng, a black, shifting mass dotted by tiny flickers of light that she assumed were drugs being sparked up. What’s more, she noticed that the crowd was even larger than it was before, meaning the amount of users addicted to Lucas’s poison had only increased. She feared that soon the entire town would be under the thumb of Lucas and his gang.
Tessa glared at Lucas from her seat, her arms flat on the rests, her nails digging into the glossy, red fabric of the chair. Lucas looked out of the window, shaking his head in awe at the masses of people below.
“That’s something, isn’t it?” he said, his eyes fixed forward. “You remember when we first moved here? This place was nothing, just a handful of buildings surrounded by the woods, that big mountain looking down on everything. Population, what, 300?”
He shook his head.
“Now look at it- it’s like an actual city. Sure, it’s mostly junkies and drifters, but it’s more than it was before. And the best part is that I run things.”
“Oh?” asked Tessa. “You’ve ruined this town and you think this is an improvement?”
“Better than wasting my days in that cabin, waiting for a big break that was never going to come.”
He turned towards Tessa.
“And now that the bears are done for, this whole area is under my control.”
“You’re not going to get away with it,” said Tessa, glowering at Lucas.
“That’s where you’re wrong, my dear,” he said. “Because I already have.”
With that, there was a gentle rapping on the bedroom door.
“Come in!” called Lucas.
The door creaked open and Tessa's eyes shot towards whoever it was that was none other than the two girls who she’d seen Lucas cheating on her with. Her stomach dropped as the two scantily-clad women sauntered in, their gazes sensual and fixed on Lucas.
“Tess, I’d like you to meet Becky and Jessica,” said Lucas as the two girls made their way over to him, Lucas slipping his bare arms around their slim shoulders as they reached him.
“Hey,” said the redhead, waving her fingers.
“Hey,” said the blonde, her eyes tracking up Tessa’s body.
“What’s going on?” Tessa demanded.
“Well, you all recognize each other, right?” asked Lucas, to which the two girls nodded in agreement. “Good. Well, I figured that we all got off on the wrong foot that night. And now that Tessa’s back into the fold, I think we ought to give her a proper welcome.
“Sounds great to me,” said the redhead, a seductive grin on her face.
“Mmm, I’d love to,” said the blonde.
The redhead then pulled her shirt over her head, revealing a pair of small, pert breasts with small pink nipples. The blonde followed, her larger, tanned breasts tumbling out from underneath her thin t-shirt. Tessa wanted to get up and leave, to run out of the house right then and there just like before, but she knew there was no way she’d get far.
Instead, she dug her nails into the fabric as the two girls moved their hands up Lucas’s body underneath his shirt, pulling it over his head and off, revealing the sculpted, perfect physique that Tessa knew so intimately. The two girls began kissing his torso, their lips dragging across his body as Lucas took a long swig from a nearby bottle of whiskey.
Then, Lucas ran a hand through each of the girls’ hair, guiding them away from his body and towards one another. The girls got the hint right away and locked their lips together as they kneeled in front of Lucas, their wet sounds of their kissing loud and sensual.
“Didn’t we always talk about spicing things up in the bedroom?” asked Lucas, turning his gaze towards Tessa. “Well, now’s the chance.”
Tessa watched as the blonde scooped one of the redhead’s breasts into her hand and began sucking and licking her nipple, the redhead moaning all the while. But as Tessa watched, a strange feeling began to come over her. She was disgusted by Lucas, sure, but something about watching these two beautiful women kiss and touch one another aroused something deep in Tessa. She watched the girls kiss and fondle one another, the redhead slipping her hand up the blonde’s skirt, the blonde taking in a sharp breath as she did so.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” said Lucas. “See? It’s good to be king.”
Lucas left the girls to their business and walked over to a nearby dresser, retrieving drug paraphernalia from it.
“You know what would make this even better,” he said, a lighter in one hand, a glass pipe in the other.
The two girls eyed the drugs with hunger and as Tessa watched how their expressions lit up as they looked at Lucas’s offering, whatever arousal she was feeling disappeared like mist on the wind. The two girls eagerly took the drugs from Lucas’s hands and got them ready to smoke.
But right at the moment they would’ve sparked them, the lights in the room cut out, leaving the four of them in total pitch darkness.
“What the hell?” demanded Lucas.
But a slim smile crossed Tessa’s face as she sat in the dark. She didn’t know how she knew, but there was only one thing this could mean: Atticus was here.