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 black, 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, some
one 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.
“What’s the deal with the book?”
I glanced at him. “What?”
“You told me the story from it, about the girl and the canoe. Is that why you keep it?”
I played at the hem of my dress, distracted and jittery. “Not really.”
“So what’s the big deal with Niagara Fucking Falls?”
Despite myself, I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Hunter to be irreverent whenever possible. “No big deal, okay? I’m just curious. Am I not allowed to be curious?”
He eyed me. “Mouthy, huh?”
I was mouthy, though I wasn’t sure where the hint of attitude had come from. Was I becoming more comfortable with him? Was I coming to trust him?
Scary thought.
“So you want to go there. Then why were you heading to Little Rock?”
“Didn’t have enough money,” I mumbled. Then stronger, “But I guess you know that, seeing as you already looked through my stuff.”
He snorted. “Okay, so why haven’t you gone there before this?”
Because of my mother, I wanted to cry. But that was a lie.
“Too scared, I guess,” I mumbled. It wasn’t as if I had any pride with him anyway.
His gaze softened.
A smile turned my lips. “Don’t imagine you have much experience with that.”
He squinted into the distance. “Depends on what you’re scared of. Me, I’m scared of standing still.”
My heart skipped a beat at his confession. Maybe we could open up to each other after all…and then what? What as the end goal? Even Niagara had lost some of its appeal, just another point on the map, a way-station to a true and unimaginable destination.
I expected us to stop at another fast food restaurant or a diner. But this time, we didn’t pull off the road for him to stash me in the back. Instead we exited the freeway where a large sign had the icons for gas, food, and lodging, and continued on until we were pulling into a truck stop.
He wasn’t hiding me.
This truck stop was a lot like the first one, and it made my heart speed up. Maybe it was foolish to hope, but he could let me go here. I’d served my usefulness. I had pried into his life. I had opened up about my hopes and dreams. For whatever reason, he could be finished with me, and now he’d leave me here in a place where he found me.
So why did I feel disappointment?
It was premature, I knew, but a spark of hope could conflagrate a wildfire. If I were freed, I would call the cops, file a report, and return to my car. Then I would drive to Little Rock, where hopefully the job was still available, the one at the camera shop where I had never been. I swallowed thickly. So why did it feel like a step backward?
Faced with the loss of him, I suddenly wanted what Hunter could show me. For all that he was a little unhinged, he saw things—really saw them. I wanted that. Maybe I even wanted him to keep me.
But that was insane. Completely loco. I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t see the craziness of that wish—the same way a Kamikaze pilot must have felt in the second after he volunteered, like what did I get myself into?
Besides, the part of me that could be spontaneous and risk-taking had atrophied long ago. I was like my mother, bound by fear, but instead of being restricted by geography I was restrained by societal conventions. He was a bad guy, a kidnapper, and I shouldn’t want anything he had to offer—not even freedom.
So I pressed my lips together and ignored the flutter in my belly. Even when he pulled into one of the long diagonal parking spots meant for trucks—right next to another one!—I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even trying to hide our presence here. It was all out there in the open, in the waning late afternoon light.
He turned to me. “Don’t give me any trouble, okay? Let’s just have a quiet dinner.”
I blinked. We would eat…and then he would turn me loose?
“If you can’t be good for your own sake, do it for theirs. Anyone you get to help you answers to me, and they’ll live to regret it. Understand?”
“You’re not letting me go?”
He stared impassively for a moment, then he laughed. “I thought we went over this. No.”
Was that relief? Oh Jesus, it was. I was as crazy as he was.
“I just thought…you might…”
His voice lowered. “Sunshine, if you’re trying to look less appealing to me, it’s not working.”
My heart thumped in response, and I felt my eyes widen. “But the people inside. They’ll see.”
“They’ll see that you’re mine and if they’re smart, they won’t lay a finger on you.”
I had been up-close-and-personal with this man’s cajones and not even realized how huge they must be. He had no fear, none. He was going to walk into a non-empty place of business during the day with a captive in tow. And judging by the disturbingly self-aware smile that played at the corner of his lips, he wouldn’t even break a sweat doing so.
It was
strangely attractive. My own lips pursed in restraint, but I wanted to smile too, without fully understanding the humor. We could laugh at the people we would see, blind to the egregious crime happening in front of them, or maybe we’d chuckle at his chutzpah. But I feared that the joke was really on me. Stupid, naïve girl who’s too afraid to cry for help in a public place. I’d show him. Hopefully.
This diner was similar in feel to the last one, both grungy and aging poorly, but this one had at least tried to be homey once. Cherry wood paneling lined the walls and formed booths over brick-colored linoleum. Fake ivy along the walls was coated in thick layers of dust. A young black waitress poured coffee at a table where three men sat.
We walked inside hand-in-hand, so I knew that his hands weren’t sweating. Mine were, though, and clammy, trembling, as if I were the one doing something wrong instead of him. Hunter didn’t wait for the waitress to look up. He just tugged me over to a booth.
He gestured me inside in what could have been mistaken for a courtly gesture. I scooted in and he sat beside me, hemming me in. As the waitress walked over to us, he pushed up my skirt, slipped his hand over my thigh, and slid his fingers into the crevice between my legs. I tensed.
If the waitress noticed, she didn’t show it. After a quick glance at Hunter’s face then mine, she turned to her notepad. “Can I take your order?”
“We’ll have steak and eggs. Medium rare. Two over easy. I’ll have a Coke.”
He turned to me. “What do you want to drink?”
“I…I…” My lips were numb, tongue tied in knots. I could barely function on my own but now there was pressure. What if I messed up, and this girl got in trouble? She was about my age. What if he took her too? Of course, all these thoughts swirling around were making me mess up, and I sat there with my mouth open like an idiot, until she looked up from her pad.
“Orange juice,” I said weakly.
After she left, I glanced over at the men, but they were engrossed in their meals. Hunter’s thumb brushed over my skin—back and forth, and it sparked something very near there. I felt my skin almost ripple beneath his, as if it could urge him closer to that heat.
Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire Page 59
