PREAMBLE

HUNTER

            I have a feeling there’s a heavy metal band playing only in my head, I open my eyes very slowly and light hits my iris like a thousand needles.

With difficulty I sit on the bed and look around, two naked women sleep entangled together and I make and effort to remind me how did I end up here. This is not my bedroom, I drag myself to the edge of the bed and I get up, stretching myself. The sheet falls off and I hear one of them whistling, provoking me.

            “What a tasty little ass, right, Sickle?”

I smile ratter yellow and get the sheet from the floor, covering myself again.

Oh my, please, give me a hand, I just need to know the name, what are these women’s names?

‘Dear’, I better call them that, is sweet and I won’t betray myself saying the wrong name.

            “Hey, dear, I’ll take a shower.”

            “I’m waking up Paige, could you pay us now, tasty?”

I go towards my pants on the couch and I trip on a bunch of empty whisky and champagne bottles on the floor.

            “Sure, just give me a minute, how much, how much…

How can I ask how much I settle the night for with her, without seeming vulgar?

            “We deserve an extra for being able to take you whole, but if you don’t have it five hundred dollars will do and we don’t say anything else.”

            I counted eight hundred and gave it to her before going to take a shower. The one called Paige woke up with her mascara stained face, looking like a panda bear. They got dressed quickly and Paige threw me a kiss before closing the door, licking her thick lips, drawn by some kind of plastic surgery.

            I take a cold shower and dress slowly because of the migraine that’s fucking with my day.

            Did I say fucking with my day? It wouldn’t be the migraine doing that but, Calvin calls my cellphone insistingly, till I answer it and hear him screaming like a mad man on the other side of the line.

            “Sickle, what the fuck did you do, man?”

            If I know everything I had done, I could risk it defending myself, but my mind got stuck on the moment I went through the front of a restaurant and saw Pamela, my ex fiancé, swallowing the mouth of my biggest enemy, a kiss worth of a magazine cover.

            I need to stop thinking about it, words have power, did I say magazine cover? Newspapers? Yes, that was what I told Calvin, that Pamela was fucking Snake in a a newspaper-front-page-kiss, Calvin yell hallucinating, making me very awake.

            “It wasn’t just her on the newspaper front page, I have my hands on today’s edition of the New York Times, with your picture on the it, drunk as a skunk, dancing only in your underwear in a nightclub. I’m out Sickle, if you don’t do something to solve your drinking problem, I’m going to leave you alone, man. Since you have been suspended from UFC, you’re doing shit after shit, do your brothers know you’re sinking this way? Do you think the old man Jeremiah would be happy to see his son being defeated by alcohol like this?”

            My brothers, my parents, I think about them, this shit I’m burying myself in deeper everything and the knot in my throat that stops me of telling Calvin, I finish our conversation, murmuring in a low voice:

            “I”ll solve this, today I’ll fix my life, Calvin.”       

            A long pause on the phone silences the place and Calvin sighs saying, “I hope, man, before being your manager, I’m your friend, remember that, Hunter.”

MAGGIE

            “Yeah, like this, Fred, fuck me faster, faster, you tasty whore.”

            I slowly open the apartment door I share with my fiancé and I slowly walk down the hall thinking I have heard too much.

            It wasn’t Fred’s name I’ve just heard, or was it? And these sounds I hear coming from the bedroom, are they moans? My heart is pounding with each step and when I open my bedroom door, the bedroom we planed to be our love nest when we got married, Fred was on fours on the bed, fucking a big breasted blondie, while a huge black woman, all dressed in leather, had a dildo up his anus.

            Stop this derailed train that I want to get down! Fred tries to cover himself in bed and the dominatrix complains with him, kicking his ass with her hight heel shoe.

            “What the fuck, man? You paid a lot for both, you didn’t say anything about fucking this girl, you either pay more or I’m out.”

            Fred sits on the bed and raises his hands to his head, as if he didn’t believe he was caught red handed, trying to explain the inexplicable.

            “Please, Maggie, let me explain, I drank, I don’t know what came up of me.”

            The big breasted blondie gets her latex outfit on the floor, dresses herself quickly, complaining, “I didn’t come here to witness a couple arguing, could you pay us now, so we could leave and you two can get a long?”

            Fred and I get along? Never more.

            Before leaving the apartment, I told Fred, “Leave my key with the doorman and never look for me, understood, Fred?”

            Three weeks later, I sold my apartment in California and bought Pet Save, a veterinarian clinic in Portland, the city my mother was born in.

            Six months went by flying since I had dived into work and I had no time to think about my life. I think I can count on my fingers the number of times I went out with my new friends. Fred’s betrayal still depresses me, sometimes I cry curdle up on bed, hugging an old stuffed bear, with its eyes patched back. There are certain things in life that we can’t patch it back, a broken heart is one of them. It has been four years dedicating my life to a relationship I had bet all my chips on it and to realized I had been fucked over it was hard, really difficult to swallow.

            Janet, Latoya, Tiffany, Rebeca and Penelope made a girls night, and I went on not to be the boring one of the group. They set it up at a new bar near downtown Portland, Sickle Bar, or Hunter’s bar, like everyone called it.

            I get to the bar with the girls and tonight is ballad night, which is terrible, in the depressing state I’m in listening to romantic songs it’s the same thing as shooting my own foot, pure torture.

            A huge guy passes by our table and asks if we are being well served. Very tall, slightly tanned, short black hair, dark eyes and full, plump lips. There’s nothing smooth or harmonious in his face, his traces were hard and viril, but not even the two little scars, one on his chin and another one on the eyebrow were able to take away that man’s beauty. The strong face and muscle in a way that hit was impossible not to look at him. He smiles with the corner of his mouth, in a way kind if dirty way that made me hold my breath for a few seconds.

            One word, just a thought hammered my head while he went away, parading his well shaped ass in jeans involving it perfectly.

            TEMPTATION… And I’m running away from some kind of provocation like this, that’s why it’s better not to look.    

            He goes on to the pool table and talk to a few clients, Penelope whisper in my ear, making me embarrassed:

            “Hunter, his name is Hunter Vaugh, he’s the owner of this bar, close your mouth Maggie, you almost drooled after he went by our table.”

            “Me? No, that’s what you think, I thought I knew him from somewhere else.”

            Penny laughed throwing her head back.

            “Only if it’s from planet orgasm! Because it’s the only thing I think of when I look at that man, he could be that hot on my bed, and the voice, what a voice?” He looks like some hot action movie star, ah! I know! His voice sounds like Vin Diesel’s, only even more yummy, ah, my panties, I think they’re soaked.”

            “Stop it, Penny, you’re engaged, Andrew wouldn’t like a bit to hear you complimenting the big guy like that.”

            “If I had the luck of grabbing that man, I would never let him escape me.”

            He goes from the pool table, to the bar and our eyes cross.

            For a few minutes, I allow myself to be a woman again and I openly flirt with this beautiful specimen of man in front of me. After I look away, feeling an intense heat up my thighs, thinking how delicious it would be Hunter’s month on mine.

            Hunter is synonymous of TEMPTATION… Irresistible, delicious, forbidden and addicting, everything I’ve been running from right now in my life.