by Amber Burns
Should I really do this? He heard his consciousness speaking to him. Fuck, Rowan, this is everything you have ever wanted, to get away from it all. A big ol’ hearty fuck you to the establishment, to run from all of the SHIT that most people fucking wade through every day, day in and day out, until they die, and it has just been handed to you on a silver platter. For the price of what? Mother fucking cuff links? That you have never thought twice about? That, if anything, you fuckin’ hated because they were stupid bits of over excessiveness that always just served to remind you of how much of a shit hole of a world you had got yourself in?
He chugged the beer and slammed it back down on the bar, his eyes still staring straight ahead. He ran his tattooed fingers through his hair and laughed soundlessly.
Fuck, man, look at you, all these inky tattoos crawling up and down your body. You might be able to fake it, you might be able to make that six digit figure a year, but holy fuck you are NOT a corporate pawn. You are not here on this planet to serve corporations and make money. You are here to live. And this guy right here, this guy right here, he has just served you the chance of a lifetime. So what are you gonna do? What the fuck are you going to do, Rowan Davis?
The burly twenty-something eyed Rowan, his brow crinkling with the anxiety that waiting for the well-dressed man’s answer brought upon him.
“Well?” he asked. Rowan said nothing and enjoyed how the man slammed his fists upon the bar, wiggled his knees, looked as if he might explode with curiosity. “WELL?!”
Rowan scratched at his beard, pretending to be thinking very hard about this proposition. Then he reached into his pocket and snatched his cell phone from the depths of the gray material.
“Hmm,” he said, putting on his best professional asshole face. “I’ll have to make a few calls.”
The bearded man stared at him, then raised his hairy hands upward.
“No, no, no, of course, of course,” he said, waving his fingers in the air. “I know it’s all a shitton to think about, dude, but I feel your energy, and I’m just feeling like you really gotta, uh, want this, yea so… yea, you make those calls.” The man turned away quickly and smashed the beer down his thick, meaty throat.
Rowan allowed himself a small, private grin, his long black locks of hair concealing his face from view. He quickly dialed his go-to real estate’s number and pressed the phone to his ear.
“Hey, Quinton?” he said. “Yes, it’s me. Yes, I know it is late. My apologies. I just wanted to ask you if you could please sell the property.” A moment passed as Rowan listened to the voice on the other end leap and jump with shock and rage. “No, I know, and you are correct, it is a ridiculous request. Ah haha! No, Quint, I have not been drinking,” Rowan said, reaching behind him to tap the bar for another round. “Look, I just know that this is right at this moment in my life. So please, Quinton, do not make me ask again.” The barmaid slipped Rowan another glass of deep amber liquid, and he nodded his thanks. He shouldered the phone to his other ear and swiveled around on the bar stool so that he could look directly at the burly, hairy man. The man stared back, his shoulders raised in a questioning motion. Rowan nodded several times, said several “mmhm. mmhms” , and then nodded again, more firmly and absolutely this time. “7.5 million. That’s decent. Alright. Yes. First thing. Thank you, Quinton. Thanks.” He slipped the phone away from his ear, punched the end call button, and dropped it back in his pocket. Then he turned his attention towards the fresh beer, wrapping his fingers fondly around the frosted glass, staring deeply into the foamy top head of the liquid.
The burly man leaned forward, eyebrows raised, eyes wide, not wanting to say anything, but desperately desiring an answer from the well-dressed man he had propositioned. Rowan took a small sip, then another. He dunked his finger into the foamy head of the beer, pulled it out, licked it. The stranger could take no more. He jumped up and took a step towards Rowan.
“Well?” he asked, his voice jumping up several octaves, excitement piquing his bassy vocals to new never before explored heights. “Well? Whaddaya think old buddy, old pal, my guy, good sport? Twenty-seven whopping acres in the middle of fucking nowhere, uh, central to everything. Whaddaya think? Sounds like paradise, huh?”
The man stared at Rowan intently, biting down nervously on his bottom lip. Rowan still sipped his beer. The man glanced back at his friends, still seated with their rifles at the booth in the back. The men all leaned forward in their seats, staring at their buddy. They nodded encouragingly, gripping their beers nervously.
“Well?!” the burly man asked again, hopping from foot to foot.
Rowan finished the beer and placed it neatly back on top of the counter. He smoothed out one of the bits of peeling linoleum. He cleared his throat. He turned towards the impressively hairy young man.
“Well,” he said. “Well, you hairy, unfortunate man, my answer is… I am interested, yes. And I would very much like to take you up on your proposition.”
The man stared at Rowan, frozen to the spot, and Rowan suddenly realized he was not certain that the stranger had understood what he had just said. To be emphatically clear, Rowan plucked the two shiny, silver cuff links from off the scuffed counter and slapped them into the stranger’s hairy hand. The man stared down at his hand for a moment, visibly overwhelmed by the fact that he now clutched two thousand dollars in his sweaty palm. Then he looked up at Rowan, grinned a broken toothed smile, and pumped the man’s hand up and down enthusiastically.
“Alright, my man, ALRIGHT!” he bellowed, laughing and shaking Rowan’s hand so hard Rowan worried his arm might become accidentally dislocated.
Then the man turned to his friends and raised his hands high into the air, balling the hairy digits into triumphant fists. The men leaped from the booth and belly thumped each other, screaming and yelping in joy. Rowan watched, absolutely amazed at what was happening before his eyes. And suddenly he found that he, too, was laughing, belly thumping with the hairy, burly stranger, wrapping a muscular arm around the man’s rounded back and thumping him warmly on the shoulder, thanking him for this opportunity. And then he was signing a document, and then he was shaking hands again, pouring scotch down his throat, kissing Kandi on her plump, bubble gum painted lips, slapping hands in stinging high fives with the other young men from the back booth, buying shots for the entire bar.
8
The strong smell of well-brewed coffee woke him up. It pulled him from the dream world and back into reality. Rowan rubbed at his eyes and shrugged himself into a sitting position. He was back in his bed, away from the drunken clamor of that tawdry bar on that dusty night. He blinked several times and a grin spread across his sleepy face. He realized that Nina straddled his body, her breasts perked up in a good morning salute, her bare pussy pressed against his legs. In her hands she cradled a cup of fresh coffee, steam swirling from the top of the glass in a beautiful S. Rowan smiled more deeply and shook the hair from his eyes. He leaned forward and wrapped his big hands around Nina’s tiny waist, squeezing her to him. She yelped as hot coffee sloshed over the rim of the cup and splashed them both, the hot liquid staining the white bed sheets and dribbling over the mountains of Nina’s breasts. Rowan laughed and ran his tongue over Nina’s nipples, lapping up the hot liquid, enjoying her squirming and moaning. Then he looked up at her, felt the piercing warmth of those green eyes pressing against his own irises, and kissed her, deeply, gripping her neck gently, pulling her into him, closer, closer, wishing the moment would never end.
Rowan reached out with itching fingers and tore the bathrobe from off of Nina’s shoulders, beyond eager to set her bouncing breasts free. At the same time as Rowan worked the bathrobe off of Nina’s body, Nina reached an arm beneath the waves of white blankets and yanked Rowan’s jeans down his muscular legs. She grabbed at his bulge and squeezed lightly, staring into his dark eyes. Rowan’s eyebrows slanted upward, and he dove towards her, that tiny squeeze was all the encouragement he had ever needed.
He finally fre
ed the bathrobe from Nina’s shoulders and allowed the full slant of morning sunlight to warm the entirety of her naked body. Nina’s perfect breasts burst out towards him as if in an overexcited salutation and he pressed his face into her chest, licking and biting and kissing and sucking those impressively buoyant tits. She purred with pleasure as his fingers wound their way down her stomach, lovingly tracing the slender curves of her body, and finally, his fingers slipped inside her tight pussy. She shoved her hand into his briefs and began to work her fingers up and down the girth of his thick shaft, easing him into ecstasy. Rowan’s eyes rolled back, and he pressed his fingers hard against Nina’s insides, feeling her body roiling in pleasure around him.
He hurriedly pulled his hardened dick from his briefs and threw the blankets away from Nina’s body, revealing her round, perky ass. He slapped her lightly and watched in joy as her flesh sang back at his touch. She shivered with pleasure, and he slipped his throbbing cock into her soft pussy. He drove himself deeper and deeper inside her, faster and harder, and Nina cried out and grabbed at his neck with her painted nails. She forced her fingers into his mouth, and he bit and sucked as he slammed his thick cock inside of her warm center.
Rowan wished they could stay forever like this, pressed closely together, breathing, gasping in pure pleasure, grabbing handfuls of each other’s’ flesh and making each other’s’ bodies sing just by uniting them together so nakedly, so wholly. He reached out to press a loving hand lightly upon Nina’s head, to fondly stroke that fire of a head of a hair, to cup her soft pale cheek, flushed now with the exertion of their loving, in his own hand. He ran his trembling fingers down her back, tracing her spine, staring at her; this woman, this goddess, in true wonder. He wished he could always have her here, pressed to him like this; if Rowan could have chosen to make it eternal: that moment, with the golden sunlight falling across their naked bodies, the white sheets tangled like turbulent ocean waves, Nina’s ass sliding up and down his thighs in rhythm with her breathing, he would have. He would have chosen foreverness without so much as a single second thought.
And then, abruptly, Nina pulled away. She smacked his hands down, the coffee sloshing over his chest this time, and her not reaching out her small pointed tongue to lap it up. She shuffled backward on the bed, slapping the mug onto the top of the wood fire stove, her ass leaving ruffled imprints in the quilts as she pushed herself away from him. Rowan stared at her in shock, his hands till hanging in the air where they had formerly been caressing her neck, his lips still parted as if he might lean back any second and continue to enjoy the feel of her warm pink lips upon his flesh. Yet Nina did not pull herself back towards him. Instead, she pulled her legs into her chest and stared at Rowan, her face unreadable, her cheeks pale and her eyes cold.
“Nina,” he breathed, reaching out a hand for her. “I do not understand…”
Nina slapped his hand away and stared at her knees. She ran her fingers over her legs absentmindedly and grated her teeth together. She took a breath, then spoke.
“Rowan,” she said. Her voice sounded like glass, cool, shimmering, possessing the magical and yet dangerous ability to shatter at any moment. “Rowan. I really have to be going now.”
The words hung in the air around the two, refusing to fall to the ground. Rowan stared at Nina, the stunning goddess that sat on his bed, all curving pale skin and freckled flesh, her golden red hair spinning down her back, licking her breasts with fire, her green eyes no longer electric and dancing but stagnant now, closed off, frozen. He tried to remember how to breathe but could not seem to find the way to make his lungs jump back to life. Finally, he found his words, but even they did him a disservice. He stuttered, rambled, finding that he could only trip over syllables.
“Ni… why but… I ca… You mus…”
Frustrated Rowan let the language stop attempting to slide out from between his lips. Instead, he threw back the blankets and pushed himself up and onto his knees in the midst of the puddles of quilts and bed sheets, kneeling before her, pleading, pleading, for some sort of an answer.
“Nina,” he begged, his words suddenly returning to him as his heart revved up to life with all the power his motorcycle had ever possessed. “Please. Please. Tell me how, tell me what, tell me where this is coming from. Nina, I love you,” he said, and he felt the shuddering truth of the words tumble around him, flood his insides with fiery emotion. “Nina, I really and truly love you.” He allowed his eyes to fondly caress her naked form, to follow the gentle bounce of her breasts as her breathing hefted them lightly up and down, up and down; he kissed her freckled cheeks with his dark eyes; he stroked her mane of fire with the tender glances of his ebony pupils. Then he reached out a tentative hand and touched the tips of his tattooed fingers to her knee caps. “Please, Nina, baby,” he whispered. “Please. Explain it to me. I can just not…” he gulped, finding that the words did not want to come out of his mouth; as much as he wanted to confess it to her, still his mind clung to the truth, unwilling to make him so vulnerable to this true goddess of a creature. “Please, Nina,” he said, forcing the words from his lips. “Please. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are my truth. Nina, you are the most honest bit of my existence. You truly are my everything, and I know how crazy that sounds, knowing that we have only spent a number of days together. I know that I love you more deeply than I have ever before known anything. You have got to feel it too. I know you do,” he dared, staring deeply into her eyes. He saw her shiver slightly and noticed that tears were prickling the corners of her stunning green glass orbs. He pressed his hands against her thighs, and she did not resist. “Please, Nina. Please, baby. Please. Just tell me what to do, and I will do it. Your will is my command. Because Nina, you are mine and I am yours. And I know, I know in my heart, that it was always meant to be this way. You were meant to lose your way and get yourself all confused and lost that day. I was meant to find you in the forest. And we, Nina, we were meant to be here now, to hold each other, to find each other in the midst of this crazy, confused world, and to love each other. I love you Nina so please, please tell me. What is going in inside that beautiful, goddess mind of yours, you babe?”
Nina stared at her hands for a moment. The sounds of birds chirping, welcoming in the early morning, fluttered through the window and tickled the two lovers’ ears. Yet the normally comforting noise did nothing to make Rowan feel at ease on this particular morning. Instead, he felt his heart pick up speed, thumping against his ribcage at such force that he felt a cold sweat begin to prick his muscular form. He ran a shaking hand over his beard, trying to distract himself from the pulsating anxiety he was beginning to feel squeezing his throat and bubbling to life in the pit of his stomach. He never once took his eyes off of the girl that sat before him, Nina, the morning light hitting her just right and making her look so beautiful, so soft and curved and perfect, even in her current state. For it was her current state that caused him such anxiety, her normally perky lips turned downward in a frown, the furrowing of her beautiful smooth brow. The way she cast those green sea glass eyes downwards at her palms, refusing to meet his gaze. Something was wrong, Rowan was aware of that much. But what on earth could it be?
Finally, after what felt to Rowan like hours but had most likely only been the brief passing of several anxiety-laden moments, Nina took a breath. She parted her pretty lips and looked up at Rowan. And instantly the feeling of her eyes upon his own sent butterflies dancing through his insides. He swallowed and met her somber gaze.
“Rowan,” she began, careful to keep her voice even and calm. “I truly do love you. Oh, I love you so so deeply, Rowan. These past few days have really and honestly been the best few days of my life. I would love nothing more than to stay here with you and to continue loving you. To wake up every morning to your body pressed against mine, well, that would be nothing short of a dream come true. But the fact of the matter is, Rowan, that I really can not stay here.” Nina shook her head, her fiery hair slapp
ing lightly against her cheeks. “No, I really and seriously can’t,” she said again, almost as if she was reassuring herself of this fact. “I have to go. I mean, god, I have already been gone like what, days? And yea that might not seem like much, but the reality of it is just….” She swallowed and again shook her pretty head back to forth, more violently this time. “Rowan, my friends were expecting me to come back that day, no, fuck, they were expecting me to come back that hour. They probably got so worried when I never showed up back at that clearing where we had the picnic. And then there is the fact that I have not texted a single person since I walked away from the clearing that day, I have had, like, literally, no contact with any person. So basically to all those people, I am as good as dead.” She stared at him, her features washed over with distress, and Rowan saw the pain she carried plain as day upon her pale face. He swallowed as she took a breath to continue. “I cannot let all those people, like my friends, my parents, all those people who really fucking care about me, and love me, to think I am dead. They are probably so fucking worried, Rowan. Holy fuck, they are probably worried sick. They’re probably doing searches and having the police be all involved, and that is, like… Like knowing that I did that to them, that I caused them all that distress, that is just totally…” Nina paused, her voice faltering and cracking, tears threatening to pool in her eyes. She looked away from Rowan, and stared fiercely back down at her hands, forcing herself to regain her composure. After a silent moment, she took a swallowed, took a breath, and looked back up at Rowan. “That is totally not okay,” she finished, her lips buckling into a twisted, heartbroken pout.
