Wanderlust

by Skye Warren

  I scowled at him, then reached back and threw the next piece. It landed a few feet farther. I unlatched the seatbelt so I could turn my whole body. The rest of the pieces landed only a few feet from the treeline.

  The meat rested there, small pockets of brown amid the grass.

  I glanced back. “Will she find it?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, she’ll find it. She’s just wishing we’d get the hell out of here.”

  With that, he gunned the engine and we sped back onto the freeway. He used his radio to tell someone about the tiger and they messaged him back something about a wildlife rescue organization going out to set a trap.

  Only as the minutes ticked away did the events fall in order for me. The way he’d protected me, yes. Even more interesting, the way he’d protected the tiger. He could have shot her and been done with her. Instead he’d risked his own life for hers, he’d fed her, he’d sent help for her.

  And maybe most shocking of all: I was riding up front.

  He glanced over, seeming to follow my train of thought. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “Are you going to make me go back there?”

  After a moment, he shook his head. “Good girls get to ride up front.”

  The words were humiliating but stirred something inside me. I was beginning to recognize that tension as lust. Dirty, wrong, but undeniable. It was spacious in here. The seats were a soft black leather. Like the waitress had said, very comfortable.

  I huddled against the door, staring straight ahead. My exhilaration from the encounter with the tiger morphed into excitement. I was in the truck! Inside the truck. I didn’t want to mess this up. And maybe I would have been excited even without the kidnapping. This was like an adventure. A slightly perverted adventure of questionable consent, but beggars like me couldn’t be choosers.

  As the truck rumbled forward, I noticed the swaying of a necklace roped around the rearview mirror. No. I looked closer and realized it was a rosary. Pale cream beads and a silver cross. I wondered if it had belonged to someone he loved, like maybe his mother. It humanized him a little bit. There must have been someone he loved, before he had turned into this, a man who had to force women into staying with him.

  We drove for several minutes in silence. I stared out the window, watching the farmland rush by. The sky was a brilliant green-blue like I imagined the sea would look, though I had never been. I blinked up at the clouds that seemed to hang above us, even as we sped eighty miles per hour down the highway, even as the clouds themselves must be floating along in a different direction.

  On Earth, it was much more dismal. The farmland was brown and flat. Even someone as clueless as I knew that was a bad sign in terms of producing crops. And there were no houses, no people. Not that I could jump out of a moving vehicle even if I saw someone. We were so high off the ground, almost flying, with a tint strong enough that no one would see me wave for help.

  I had traded one prison for another, this one mobile but absolute. Inescapable even as it sliced through the countryside. Neither my mother’s home nor this eighteen-wheeler were gilded, but I preferred the view in this cage.

  Except to the left of me, where Hunter sat, tapping the wide steering wheel in a restless beat. His legs were long, reaching leisurely to the floor. His whole body was slouched slightly, clearly quite comfortable. In contrast, my own knees were pressed together, my fists balled together right on top.

  “So tell me about yourself, sunshine.”

  Tell him…about me? He couldn’t really care, and I couldn’t really want to tell him—could I? Sadly, I wasn’t so sure. I had spent most of my twenty years with one person. Here was a new one. The novelty was too much to resist.

  “I’m not sure what there is to tell. I’m not…anyone special.”

  His insouciant expression slipped slightly as he looked at me. “How about you let me judge that? Tell me what you do. You in college?”

  He kept that gaze trained on me, even though we were hurtling over the road. Nervous, I glanced ahead. We were still in the lane, still steady, and he seemed unconcerned.

  “Um, not anymore. I graduated…but just with an associate’s degree. In graphic design.”

  “Oh yeah, you an artist?”

  “No, it was just something good to do from home, because…” Because I was a loser who had listened to my mother for far too long. And I had stopped listening at the one moment I should have heeded her safety advice. I couldn’t seem to win.

  I stared at the rushing pavement as it slid under the truck. “But I was moving out. I was going to Little Rock, Arkansas. I had a job there at a camera shop.”

  My voice had lilted up at the end in a small challenge. We both knew why I was no longer on my way to Little Rock. I didn’t even know where we were anymore, but I wasn’t on track to Niagara because of him. Bringing it up had almost been an accusation, the closest I could come to things better left unsaid: Why did you take me? When will you let me go? How could you do this to me when I had finally broken free?

  Terrified of his anger or retribution to my impertinence, I slid my gaze over to him. He didn’t look mad, just thoughtful.

  “A camera shop, huh? You ever been there before?”

  “No.”

  “You know anyone who works there?”

  “No.”

  “You like cameras?”

  Despite my fears, a small smile played at my lips. I liked scenery and majesty. I liked angles and lighting. I liked seeing in a photo what I yearned to see for real. I wanted to take a picture of Niagara Falls.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I like cameras.”

  “Yours looks pretty fancy. Heavy, too.”

  My eyebrows snapped up. Had he looked through my stuff back at the hotel? Of course he had. And he must have been disappointed to find less than a hundred bucks. What did he think of my book?

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Got no destination.”

  I blinked. I had expected him to have some delivery or route or something. Wasn’t that the point of an eighteen-wheeler, to transport things?

  He chuckled. “I like to drive. Sometimes I do jobs, but in between them, I keep driving.”

  It seemed…well, inefficient. It also seemed wonderful, like a ball without friction, with nothing to slow it down, just rolling around, seeing everything in every direction but not having to participate. Not really being able to join in, always separate.

  How lonely that must be. Almost as lonely as I had been, locked up in my mother’s house. That was when I realized—if this was a cage, then he was caged too. Even though he could go wherever he wanted, he couldn’t escape these steel walls. My mother was trapped too, even if it was by her own fears.

  Maybe we were all held captive by something.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking…” I paused, wondering if it was wise to speak so openly with him. He didn’t seem to get angry with me when I did, but it could be I exposed myself this way, made myself weaker by my own speculation. “I was thinking it seemed a little lonely.”

  He was quiet so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “Sometimes we do things only because they are better than the alternative.”

  “The lesser of two evils?”

  He grinned. “Exactly.”

  And I thought, what could have been so bad to make him avoid all human contact?

  He was not so unlike my mother, and that thought should have made me hate him, but instead just made me sad.

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” he continued. “I know a lot of people. People who live along some of the main lines. I’ll stop by for dinner or even overnight. I know the other truckers, and I can talk to them over the radio or my cell phone, if I wanted to.”

  My heart beat a little faster, although I struggled to hide it. A radio? A cell phone? Methods of communication, means of escape. There was no obvious device on his dashboard, just a high-tech panel of flat screens, currently bl
ack, and buttons. Where would he keep his cell phone? His pocket? Somewhere else? Luckily he didn’t seem to notice my frantic plotting.

  “Besides, I have you to keep me company now.”

  Something about the extra emphasis on the word company raised the hairs on the back of my neck. He grinned, and I closed my eyes against the lust that glimmered there. But even with my eyes closed, I could feel the charge in the air, setting off little sparks against my skin, strumming awareness into body parts that had been well handled recently.

  “If you’re going to stay up here, you might as well make yourself useful and keep me awake. Tell me something new about you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said caustically, “I haven’t had a very interesting life so far. That was what I was trying to do before you—”

  “Fine. What’s the deal with your book? About Niagara Falls.”

  I didn’t want to tell him what it meant to me, how it had been my goal for so long and how it tore me up inside to be battered off course.

  “I can tell you a story from the book,” I offered. “It’s called the Maid of the Myst. A Native American myth. Have you heard it before?”

  “Why would I have heard it before?”

  “Right. Well, the people used to listen to the thunder, and it would teach them about the world, how to grow food and be kind to each other. But then they stopped listening, and the god of thunder grew angry and went to live under the waterfalls.”

  “So he just left them. Kind of immature for a god, huh?”

  I ignored him. “The people suffered and they decided to sacrifice this girl, but she ran away. She takes a canoe down the river, but the rapids take over and she can’t control it. As the boat fell over the waterfall, the god of thunder caught her in his arms and saved her.”

  “Very romantic.”

  “Yes, it was romantic. They fell in love and lived together underneath the falls.”

  “Hmm. Happily ever after, just like that?”

  “Well, not exactly. She wanted to see her home one last time, so she convinced the god to let her go. There she realized how much she missed it so she decided to stay. In his anger, the god of thunder destroyed his home, flooding it with water from the falls.”

  “Anger issues. He’s really not much of a catch, is he?”

  “Back with her people, the girl realized how much she had changed and could no longer live among them. So she returned to the god of thunder. Since their home under the falls was destroyed, he carried them up to the sky where they watched over their people.”

  “And you believe this bullshit?”

  Anger simmered inside me. “Why are you doing this?”

  The words immediately meant more than his antagonism over the story. They were about taking me, keeping me. About hurting me when he could have simply walked away. Part of me wanted the truth, however cruel, while the other part hoped that my words had been swallowed by the hum of the motor, the quiet rush of the air outside the window.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  Not much of an answer, but the raw honesty I heard in his voice felt like an opening, a crack in the veneer. Not that he would let me go with apologies or anything that extreme just because he’d displayed a moment of doubt, but that I could learn something about this man who held me, see around the thumb that pinned me down, see beyond the walls that always penned me in. What made someone like him tick? Why did he do something like this? Had this moral ambiguity always been inside him or was it learned, evolved—forced upon him just as it was me?

  “Who gave you that?” I asked softly, gesturing to the beads swaying from the mirror.

  He scowled. “A man who will no longer speak my name. Does that make you happy?”

  “What did you do before you became a truck driver?”

  He looked at me sharply. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “I’m curious,” I said defensively, though not really giving up ground—not yet. “It doesn’t matter, right? It doesn’t matter what I know. I can’t do anything to you.”

  “No, you can’t do anything to me, not a goddamn thing. You think you’re clever, huh? You want me to open up to you, and then what? Maybe I’ll fall in love with you? Maybe I’ll let you go? Not gonna happen. You’re mine. I caught you, and I’m not giving you back.”

  My throat stung, but I refused to back down. Maybe I was goading him. Would it be so bad if he snapped? Then it would be over. The words tumbled forth, unruly and vehement along the dashboard.

  “You can keep my body and you can hurt me and have sex with me, but you’ll never really know me. You’ll never really have me, just like she didn’t.” It became a prayer, one for each bead on the rosary. “Never, never, never.”

  A low growl seemed to emanate from his chest. “I don’t give a shit about knowing you. I just want to use you.”

  His hand tangled in my hair, dragging me down to the floorboards. Tears flooded my eyes at the pain—at the defeat. He unzipped his jeans and shoved inside my mouth, still guiding my movements with his fist in my hair. I didn’t have time to consider whether I’d fight. I was already doing it. Not really sucking, but then I didn’t have to, couldn’t keep up anyway. There was salt and heat and liquid-coated skin, and then I was gagging, choking on it, hearing him tell me he still didn’t care as long as he got what he wanted. He was inflamed, and I had made him that way.

  “You’re just like them anyway,” he grunted. “Just like them, just like them.”

  Like a prayer of his own.

  The body will cope with what it is given—that was what I learned then. My mind shut off in increments, until he hit the back of my throat and I didn’t feel like throwing up anymore. I didn’t feel anything at all, just floating in a sort of trance while he pulled the truck off on an abandoned weighing station. Not even when he pushed me back and I sprawled back onto the floorboard. Not even when he pulled up my skirt. I tensed slightly, braced against the impact of his invasion, but that was only physical—it didn’t mean anything. He couldn’t move me.

  Until he bent his head between my legs. At first there was nothing. What was he doing? Then I felt it, small wet caresses. Not blinding pleasure or searing pain but slow licks, sensual caresses, and a little bit of unwelcome comfort. It felt like an apology, as he knelt between my knees. Like atonement.

  The blissful paralysis I’d been floating in began to thaw with each wistful swipe of his tongue until I was making little urgent sounds and rocking my hips up to meet him and hating myself, just hating that he could draw me out so easily, disprove my grand denials. He wouldn’t know me? He already did.

  He saw into every corner and every secret. He gave me exactly the right touch or word that I needed to submit. There wasn’t anything left to hold back, and he knew that too. His hands tightened on my ass, spreading me apart, pushing me up into his face.

  He lifted long enough to say, “Come on, sunshine. Give it to me.”

  And I was helpless to resist, too weak to fight the mounting pleasure, too relieved to find myself spread and held and wanted, oh finally, someone did want me, and even if it was perverted and dirty, at least it was new. My stomach tightened first, clenching as I bucked up, seeking more. Then it spread, the tension. White-hot pleasure slid up my spine. My mouth fell open but no sounds came out. Nothing but half-cut gasps and raw groans.

  Before I could catch my breath, he slid inside me. His way was easier this time than before, a smooth glide from first entry, and he took full advantage, moving at a brisk pace. He pumped into me quickly, harshly, but I didn’t get the feeling that he sought his pleasure this way.

  Instead, he seemed to be making a point, saying with thrusts what he couldn’t put into words and cementing the ones he had. You’re mine. Try to understand, I have to do this. I’m as trapped as you are, can’t you see? Although it could have been wishful thinking, wanting to believe that the man lodged inside me, pulsing and shuddering his way through release, wasn’t a monster.

 
He collapsed, breathing hard. His weight bore down on me, though not unpleasantly. There was safety in bondage, that much I knew. He turned his head and kissed my temple, the wisp of sweat above his lip mingling with the dampness of my skin.

  “You make it bearable,” he murmured, though his voice was slurred, so I couldn’t be sure. So I lay there, feeling his chest push into mine and then mine push back into his. We breathed together, we held each other. There was no acrimony in that moment, no pleasure either. Just a ship pulled into port.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The first tightrope walker to cross the Niagara Falls did so in 1859.

  We existed like nomads in the following weeks. We used deserted truck stops for bathroom breaks and daily showers. At night we slept in the fold-out bed in his truck. He would fuck me every night, sometimes tenderly, other times rough and urgent—though each time felt more like intimacy and less like coercion.

  The hardest part was meals, because where there was food, there were people. We had a somewhat painstaking routine where he would stop a few miles out, put me in the back of the truck, then pull into a diner or restaurant and get take-out. I always debated banging on the walls, but I would never know if anyone was there. Hunter could be standing right outside and punish me for it.

  Instead, I would press my ear to the metal, straining to hear anything. If I had heard voices or thought there were people, I would have beaten the door for all I was worth. Instead there was almost complete silence—probably he parked far away from everyone else—and then eventually, the steady crunch of gravel as he returned with food.

  We were going through mountains now. The highways were cut into them, sliced straight through like a butcher knife, leaving a tall, straight wall of striated rock. I watched the lines bleed together through the window as the truck rushed past.

  My stomach grumbled.

  He glanced over. “You hungry?”

  I lifted my shoulder in a shrug. He turned back to the road, but I watched him scanning the blue highway signs as we passed each exit, looking for something decent to eat but sparse enough not to be crowded.