A Dangerous Encounter

R.R. Ryan

© Copyright 2025 by R.R. Ryan

NOTE: This work contains material not suitable for anyone under eighteen (18) or those of a delicate nature. This is a story and contains descriptive scenes of a graphic, sexual nature. This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A Dangerous Encounter

It’s summer in the here and now. A couple, who were so bored with life, entered the swing scene. When that turned to routine, they moved further with the idea and tried cuckolding. Nonetheless, George and Sandy still weren’t satisfied and weren’t able to leave their sexual addiction alone.

Preoccupation: sexual thrill seekers. New destination: a bar, on the bad side of town.

Their goal: find someone powerful, someone dangerous, someone, someone, always another someone to end their boredom. Anything to escape their nondescript, commonplace little life of hamsters on a treadmill.

The rain chased itself down the windshield, and George sat behind the wheel, watching. Every drop threatened to become a river and wash the city out to sea. Dabbing lipstick in the vanity mirror, Sandy’s eyes fixed on herself. Acting as if she didn’t notice George’s reflection studying her from the driver’s seat.

With her hair up, a tight blonde coil at the nape, Sandy’s neck was exposed, bare and expectant. The necklace she’d picked sparkled. A cheap and artificial diamond array in the glow of the dome light. Costume jewelry, used as bait to lure a big fish for her to catch. Tugging her black skirt another inch above the line of decency, she waited for him to say something.

But George knew the game, and he didn’t. Instead, George let the silence make the first move.

“You’re stalling. We agreed. Remember, you promised you wouldn’t bail this time,” Sandy said, lipstick paused mid-cupid’s bow.

“It’s a bad neighborhood. That’s why I locked the doors.”

Flashing a canary smile, she arched one eyebrow, the way she did in boardrooms or bedroom negotiations.

“We’re not here for the real estate. The place is famous. Or infamous. That’s the point.”

Tracing the steering wheel with his finger, George weighed the odds. For a moment, he debated listing the statistics for homicides within a two-mile radius. Before they left home, he’d memorized them.

Hells bells, that’d amuse her. Risk thrilled Sandy. Calculated risk. The kind that, if you lose, at least you have a story and a handful of uncomfortable moments.

Glancing down, George studied her legs: smooth, tan, precisely angled toward the passenger door. Uncrossing them and re-crossing them, the hem rode up. Climbing higher until he caught a flash of the special-for-tonight, lacey underwear.

Understanding Sandy wanted him to react, to confirm he was still playing, still buying her act. But he gave her nothing. That drove her mad, which only sharpened her performance.

“I saw you. Second-guessing. Deciding whether to call it off.” Sandy snapped the mirror closed.

“No harm, no foul, we can go home. Ditch the games. Order Thai. Or-”

She cut him off:

“You’ll hate yourself by midnight. And you’ll take it out on me in the most creative way you can muster.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He smiled for the first time.

“Not always, but tonight, I want to see who breaks first,” she said, and let her hand drift to his thigh.

They sat for a minute. It contested the silence. The only thing open for blocks: ten-foot letters blinking in Morse code, stuttering between U and O in LOUNGE, and George watched the glow. The parking lot was full, the sidewalk empty.

Everyone with sense had already retreated indoors. Sandy flicked the door lock, yanked her purse over her shoulder, and stepped into the rain. Marking territory, Sandy’s heels clicked on the cracked pavement. George locked the car behind her, set the alarm twice, and followed.

The air inside the bar tasted like the third day of a hangover.

Cheap disinfectant mixed with old sweat, and something sour, George guessed was fried fish or old pussy gone bad. The floor stuck to his shoes. On the walls, a lampoon of beer signs and yellowed headshots of women whose best years had been behind them before he was born. Pausing inside the door, Sandy allowed her eyes to adjust.

The hostess, a woman in a mesh tank top and a permanent sneer, eyed them from her post by the register.

“You here for karaoke, honey?” the hostess asked Sandy, ignoring George.

Sandy gave her the same smile she used on assistant managers and ex-lovers, the one that implied future business.

“Just here for drinks. I’ll know what I want when I see it.”

“That’s what they all say,” the hostess said, but she gestured them to a booth at the far end. The two of them threaded between men in work boots, studding the air with cigarette haze and the reek of stale aftershave. Their women or women who looked for customers.

Heads turned.

Some leered, some assessed. One or two marked Sandy’s ass as she walked, but George saw most of them checking him out. Sizing him up, looking for the catch. The suit he picked was especially suited because it signaled control. Even if he bought it off-rack at Men’s Warehouse.

They took their seats in the battered booth. Sitting her purse between them, Sandy used it as a barricade. Doing this so everyone understood, if they were brave enough, she was fair game. Scanning the crowd, George leaned back and cataloged faces. He spotted the guy almost instantly.

At the bar, hunched over a bottle of something brown and cheap, sat a man whose size dwarfed the furniture. With his arms muscled and hard. And a neck that started at his ears, spread wide, merging into his shoulders.

A couple of faded tattoos bracketed his wrists, and his shirt sleeves appeared ready to burst. After a few mental calculations, George guessed six-three, maybe two-fifty, and none of it soft. With hair bristled in a military crewcut, dark as wet earth. A clean-shaven face and eyes that appeared black, bottomless, and he analyzed the room, a predator in a bar of prey.

George noticed something else: Nobody else sat within two stools of the man. The bartenders served him with deference, heads slightly bowed, no eye contact. He never looked up, but he identified every move in his periphery.

And George watched him finish his drink and slowly turn the glass. Examining the rim, like he expected to find a message written in blood.

Sandy followed George’s gaze and glanced back at him. Reading the tension in his jaw. She grinned.

“Found your target?” she said, voice low and lush.

“I thought you wanted variety,” he said, keeping his eyes on the man at the bar.

“You said it yourself. This is supposed to be dangerous.”

“You want to fuck a gorilla?” George flicked his eyes to hers.

“Don’t you want to see what a gorilla does with me?” she said and licked her bottom lip.

Yes, he did, and George’s mouth went dry. Searching for a safer candidate, he studied the rest of the bar. The field was full of lost bets and dead dreams. Nobody else promised anything Sandy hadn’t already tasted. But the man at the bar, that fellow was an unknown. A true variable. Not the play-safe-with-the-accountant kind of thrill. George hated that the idea excited him. He hated that Sandy understood it.

“You approach him first. Set the ground rules,” George said.

Sandy laughed.

“What rules? Look at him. He doesn’t play by anybody’s rules.” Shrugging out of her jacket, Sandy let her sleeveless top show off the gooseflesh climbing her arms. She tossed her hair and sat tall, angling her body so the man would have to look her way if he even once scanned the crowd.

“He’s not even looking. It could be he only likes guys,” Sandy said.

“Just because he’s ignoring you doesn’t mean he’s not seeing. I’d bet you fifty bucks he knows how many quarters are in the jukebox.”

“You’re stalling again. It’s your job to talk to him first.” Sandy sipped her gin and tonic, never breaking eye contact with the man at the bar.

George closed his eyes, counted to four, and stood.

“Fine. You want this, I’ll fetch him for you.”

He walked across the room. With her face a mask of idle amusement, Sandy surveyed him. Underneath, George knew, she burned to see whether he’d flinch. He counted his steps. At six feet out, the man at the bar twitched one eyebrow, enough to acknowledge George’s approach. A safe distance away, hands visible, stance casual, George stopped.

“You mind if I sit?” George asked.

The man ignored the question and sipped his whiskey. Eyed the bartender, who appeared before George had finished lowering himself onto the stool.