"Yeah, give me that big cock, man, fuck me hard, rip me in half, man, that's the way I like it, come on, yeah fuck me man, fuck me. . ."

It was so sexy, such a turn-on, that it didn't take long for me to start to shoot my load.

I pulled my cock out of his ass just as Chris shot a big load all over Eric's back.

"Oh, man." Eric rolled over onto his stomach. "Man, that was so fucking hot. Any time you want to fuck me, you just let me know" He sat up, "Chris, I fucking came without touching myself."

I got to my feet, peeling the condom off. I carried it into the kitchen and dumped it in the trash. I walked back into the living room. Chris and Eric were lying on the mattresses, their arms around each other, kissing. I stood there for a moment, watching them.

I miss Blair, I thought, and choked down a sob.

I picked up my clothes and started getting dressed.

"Hey, don't go," Eric said drowsily. "Come cuddle with us."

"I can't," I said. "I appreciate it, but I really need to get going."

"Anytime, man," Chris said. "Anytime at all you wanna come back over, we're here for ya, man. And everything's going to be fine with Blair, you just wait and see. He loves you, man."

I walked over and kissed him lightly on the mouth, then kissed Eric too. "Thanks. You guys are the best." I walked out of the apartment and took a deep breath. You might as well get used to not having Blair anymore. And Chris and Eric are fun. Who knows where it all might lead? So they aren't Blair. Get over it.

My phone rang when I got to my car. I looked at the caller ID. "Blair?" I answered it, my heart starting to race.

"I'm sorry I was such a dickhead. I miss you. Can you come over?"

"I'll be there in five minutes."

"I love you."

I sat there, not believing my ears. "What did you say?"

"I love you." He said it again, more quietly this time. "I love you and I want you to be with me. Always. Can you forgive me for being such an asshole?" His voice broke. "I don't care if you fuck everyone in the house, as long as I'm the one you care the most about."

"Oh, Blair." I started to cry. "I love you so much. I'll be right there."

I started my car and headed over to the house.

Chapter 9

Blindfolded, with a rag tied around my hand, I sat on the floor in what I thought just might be the Great Room, but couldn't be sure. The floor was hard under my ass, and all I could hear was this horrible noise that sounded like a cross between whale songs and shattering glass. It was loud, so incredibly loud I couldn't hear anything else.

I was also incredibly tired. It was the Thursday night of what the brothers euphemistically called "Inspiration Week" in a nod to the university's (and the national chapter's) stance on hazing-but it really was Hell Week.

The week started with us arriving on Sunday night and lining up under the basketball hoop. We stood out there in our dress clothes, holding paper bags from the grocery store with the supplies they told us to bring: a toothbrush and toothpaste, a brick, a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a pair of white socks, a black magic marker, a pack of chewing gum, and our black books. We also had a bag with clothes for the week. We stood out there silently, all twelve of us-somehow Ted had managed to make it through the whole semester, no matter how much we wanted him to quit-waiting until, at six P.M. on the dot, Marc Kearney came solemnly walking out of the house to us.

"I keep waiting for that music from The Good the Bad and the Ugly to start playing," Chris whispered to me out of the side of his mouth, and I suppressed a laugh.

"Will you two shut up? You're going to get us all in trouble," Ted hissed from my other side.

We just looked at each other and rolled our eyes.

I don't know really what I was expecting out of Hell Week, but the reality was nothing I could have imagined. Marc led us into the house single file, and like on Big Brother Night, we lined up against the wall in the Great Room.

The brotherhood stood in a crowd facing us. I swallowed. Marc stepped out in front of the crowd, holding a clipboard, a whistle around his neck.

"Welcome to Hell Week, pledges," he said, smiling as he walked up and down in front of us. As he passed me, I shifted from one foot to the other. Ever since the night I'd fucked him, he'd been noticeably cool to me. Sometimes I thought I was just being paranoid, and others I thought I was right. I tried to find Blair's face in the crowd, but couldn't. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. This is not going to be good, kept running through my head. "Will your big brothers please step forward and stand in front of your pledge?" I felt some relief when Blair stepped in front of me, his face was solemn, but he winked at me. "Please remove your little brother's pledge pin." Blair reached up and removed mine. "Pledges, you no longer will be required to wear your pledge pin in public. It is now a thing of the past. However," he paused, "you will be replacing your pledge pin with the brick you were told to bring with you. You will carry it with you everywhere-as long as you are on Beta Kappa property. When you are at class or at work you will leave it with your other belongings in the chapter room-it will be safe as long as you are off property. However, when you return to property, you must have it on you at all times-or your entire pledge class will suffer the consequences."

He continued with the rules of the week, and my heart sank with each new one. We were not allowed to eat or drink or sleep until we were released on Thursday morning. As long as we were on property, we had to wear the jeans and white T-shirt. Whenever the whistle blew, no matter where we were in the house, we had to run down to the Great Room and line up in alphabetical order on the wall. While we were on property-unless we were studying for a test-we were at the disposal of the brotherhood; anyone could make us do anything they wanted us to. We would be cleaning the house in preparation for the Initiation Ritual on Friday night-provided we made it through the week. At any time during the week, any one of us could be bounced from the program at any moment by a vote by the brotherhood. We were a unit; and the transgressions of one were visited upon the whole. And when the whistle blew, we not only had to lineup on the wall, we had to hold it up-which meant flattening our back against it, bending our legs at the knee until they were at a ninety degree angle, and holding our pledge brick out in front of us with both hands until we were told to stand up.

"Now, put all of your things in the chapter room, and put on your pledge uniform," Marc went on. "That will be your home until you are released Thursday morning; unless of course you are dismissed any time before then. You need to take your magic markers, and on the front of your T-shirts you are to write Beta Kappa Pledge Class, Fall 2006. On your bricks, on one side you will write Beta Kappa, on another your pledge class. And when you hear the whistle, you need to get to the wall as quickly as possible and hold the position."

And so it began, four nights of mental and physical abuse. I learned to loathe the sound of the whistle; I was certain the sound of it would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. Brothers I'd considered to be benign and friendly turned vicious and sadomasochistic, screaming in my face for not being properly deferential or some other imagined transgression. We were forced to do push-ups and hold that damned wall until our legs ached. I cleaned urinals with a toothbrush, gagging over the foul smell of sour urine. I would finish one only to have a brother come in and use it, and then scream at me to clean the one he'd just used. What I really wanted to do was knock him down and shove the filthy toothbrush in his mouth, but instead I simply shouted "SIR! YES SIR!" back at him and went to work. And finally, at around three in the morning, they finally dismissed us and let us go into the chapter room to sleep for a few hours-they would be waking us at six in the morning.