by Lynn Red
The two of them relaxed back into the couch, almost like neither one of them wanted to interrupt their physical closeness, the strange emotional bond they’d built in just a few minutes. She felt closer to him than anyone else in memory, recent or otherwise. He didn’t want to get anywhere that wasn’t right beside her, but they had to. They had to get up and they had to go to a place with balls and holes, but no ass licking.
Finally, Blake pushed himself off the couch. The motion he made was more of a peeling one than standing, and he held his hand out for Lexie. She took it and joined him standing. A moment later, he had his arm around her back, and he was holding her like they were about to tango.
“Shall we, my dear?”
“Shall we what?” she asked, blushing and smiling at the same time.
“Shall we golf?”
She snorted a laugh, at which he cracked a grin. “Balls in holes,” he said. “Let’s go put some balls in holes.”
7
“Hello?” Lexie knocked harder on the front door of the Mating Call building, and cupped her hands around her eyes to try and peer inside. As far as she could tell nothing was going on in there, and worse still, there weren’t any lights or movement to indicate someone was actually in the building.
She looked back at Blake where he was sitting in his truck. He had a kind of star-struck, blissed-out look on his face that gave her a little shot of both confidence and warmth squirming out from her center. Just knowing that a guy like him would sit in his car and simply stare at her while she was doing nothing of interest was pretty great.
He’s really just watching me, she thought, just sitting in his car and watching. I have no idea what I’ve done to get this guy under whatever sort of witchcrafty hex I put on him, but... hey, what the hell, when something at Golden Corral actually tastes good, you don’t question it, do you?
She giggled to herself as she turned back to the door. “Hello? Anyone in there?” she banged again and when the deadbolt slid out of the doorframe with a violent click! she just about pissed her pants. She went to knock again, even with the door swinging open, and instead of her knuckles meeting glass, they met empty air and she stumbled straight through the opening, wheeled her feet like Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff.
“Hi!” Dora chirped, and then immediately grabbed ahold of one of Lexie’s flailing arms. With something approaching superhuman dexterity, the squirrel-shifting office manager laughed, repositioned herself and helped Lexie find the floor again. “How’re you?” she asked, not missing a single beat.
“Uh, hi!” Lexie said, slightly out of breath and entirely amazed at the series of events that occurred seconds before. “That was incredible.”
Dora shrugged, flicked on the overhead light, and returned to her visitor with a smile. “I’m used to catching people when they fall.”
A few seconds of eye contact followed, Lexie thinking she heard more in that brief statement than just the words Dora spoke, and then the two parted. “Well,” Lexie said. “Either way, I appreciate you not letting me face plant on the tiles. That would have put a damper on the whole date thing.”
“Oh I doubt a broken nose and a busted lip would do much to stop that guy.”
Questioning, Lexie looked back out the front door and could just barely make out Blake, who was still watching, and still had that same dumbfounded look of being completely content on his face. “You know,” she said, turning back to Dora, “I think you might be right. Still I’d like to avoid busting my head open just in general.”
“That’s probably a fairly good policy. So, what brings you here at quarter-past nine?”
Lexie looked at her for a second. “Probably the same thing that you’re waiting to give me. I doubt you live here,” she said with a smile. “You don’t seem like the type to hang around your job just for kicks.”
“You got that right,” Dora said. “Although sometimes it does feel a little like I live here. Eve said something about a box, right?”
Lexie nodded. “Yeah, she said there was something I needed to pick up on her desk. That’s about all she gave me to go on though.”
“There are about fourteen boxes on Eve’s desk,” Dora said, shuffling through keys on an overfilled keyring. “Uh... let’s see here.” She stuck one in, jiggled it a couple of times, and turned the key with some fairly obvious effort. “I really need to get someone in here to fix this stuff.”
“Blake’s a mechanic,” Lexie offered. “I don’t know what that has to do with fixing doorknobs and locks, but maybe he could do something to help?”
“You think?” Dora asked. “I wouldn’t mind getting a little more time to stare at him while he was bent over messing with a door handle,” she said with a wry grin. Then, she let out a loud huff. “Right, so as you see there are a bunch of boxes piled up here, and I have no idea which one she’s wanting me to give you.”
“Tell you what,” Lexie said. “I’ll go get my boyf—Blake,” she didn’t notice how Dora smiled at that little Freudian slip, “and you figure out which box it is?”
“Works for me,” Dora said, still smiling as Lexie turned and trotted out the door, with another hot flush running down her neck.
Why the hell did I say that? she asked herself. I must be going nuts to call a guy boyfriend that I met like three hours ago. Then again, I’ve been thinking that I was going crazy for quite a while now, so maybe this is just how the final break comes through. My brain turns to mush, I start drooling on myself and yammering, and calling every hot guy who spends a little time around me ‘boyfriend.’
But even with her sharp self-criticism, she couldn’t stop smiling. She just couldn’t wipe the grin off her face, she couldn’t keep from feeling like something real had happened, something had changed in the tiny temporal space she’d spent with this guy. She pushed open the building’s door, and couldn’t keep herself from actually running to the car.
And whew boy had it been a long time since Lexie ran anywhere.
“Hey!” she knocked on the glass, and as soon as the window rolled down, pushed up on her tiptoes and planted a little peck of a kiss on Blake’s lips. He reached through, grabbed the back of her head and held her still, enjoying her even more than she thought he would. He slid his tongue around her lips, the inside her, tasting, exploring every tiny line.
“Hi,” he finally said with a blissed smile, when he let go of her a couple of seconds later. “What’s shaking?”
“Besides my knees?” Lexie laughed. “They got some screwy doorknobs in there.”
Before she could finish the thought, Blake was out of the car. “I owe these people the damn world for finding you for me. If all it takes is a few locks getting greased, then baby, I’ll do that all day long.”
His fingertips curled ever so briefly on the back of Lexie’s neck as he strode past, toward the building. She just watched, smiling to herself. She drew a breath, and let it out with a sigh. “I don’t even know what the hell to think of you,” she whispered, forgetting that Blake’s bear ears could have heard that a football field away.
“Don’t think anything,” he said. “It usually just gets in the way of the really important things.” He crouched down by the front door and peered at the lock for a moment. “Can you grab me the can of WD-40 out of the toolbox in the back of the—”
He was interrupted by Lexie jumping on his back, straddling him and dangling the spray can in front of his face. “Figured you’d need this,” she chimed.
To her surprise, instead of taking the can, Blake took her. In a motion that was unbelievably fast and smooth, he grabbed one of her ankles spun her around and pressed her back against the prickly, rough surface of the red brick wall. “I don’t need that,” he said in a low, gruff voice. “I need you.”
He pressed her there, kissed her again, and for the briefest of moments, Lexie felt the same hard, thickness, burning with heat, that she had felt when she draped herself across his lap back on the couch. “I can tell,” she whispe
red, then kissed him back, clutching his face between her hands and giving him every ounce of kiss that he’d given her.
Instead of dropping her legs down, she wrapped them tighter around his waist, thrilling at the way he pressed between her legs, and immediately started thinking really naughty thoughts.
“I’m not the only one,” he whispered. “I can feel how hot you are through these jeans, and that’s impressive. We might end up in trouble about that whole getting arrested for PDA on the golf course thing.”
Staring straight into his eyes, Lexie watched him for just a second, and felt another surge of warmth spread from between her legs all the way up her back. “It might just be worth it,” she said with a grin and another kiss.
When Blake lowered his head and sucked a kiss from that sensitive little hollow beneath Lexie’s ear, she let out another long, almost growling, sigh. He gave her a nibble and she laughed softly. “You have a way of making things all seem perfect,” she said when he looked back into her eyes.
“Only when I’ve got someone perfect to feel like this with.”
“I found it!” Dora cried from inside.
The two desperate lovers made almost exactly the same crooked smile, and Lexie finally let go of her ankle-bound deathgrip. “I guess we better save this a little longer, huh?”
“Guess so,” he said. “So now give me the can.” Neither of them broke the gaze as she handed him the lubricant. He held her hand, like he didn’t want to let her go for even a second, but then Dora opened the door and she, too, had a giggle attack.
“Well hot damn,” she said. “I thought I was just sending her out to get you to come mess with our doors. I didn’t think she’d go out and start messing with... well...”
The three of them broke out with booming, honest laughter. “Let me fix this real quick,” Blake said, turning to the door and bending over again from the waist.
Dora jabbed an elbow into Lexie’s side. “See? What’d I tell you? I could stare at this thing all day long.”
“Oh hell,” Blake said, laughing, “you’re making me blush. And trust me, making a bear like me blush isn’t anything to take lightly. All right, this one’s good.” He twisted the deadbolt’s knob, testing the works.
“Yeah,” Dora said, “I’d say it’s better than good.”
Lexie looked over at her, and found that Dora was smiling. “I’d say it’s way better than good,” Dora said. “And I’ll also say that I’m happy this is working as well as Eve thought it would. Sometimes I have my doubts, but this time? There ain’t a cloud of one.”
“Be back in a sec. Other one just through here?” he asked as he held the door open. “Shouldn’t be any harder than this one. And don’t make any jokes about me saying how hard something is. I can hear like a bear, you know?”
Dora gave him a smile. “Yeah, just through there, at the back of the room.”
He was gone, and as soon as he was inside, Dora grabbed Lexie’s hand. “Look,” she said, “I know I’m not the mating matron or anything, but I can see things when they’re this obvious and this in my face. You two have something special, you better not let it go. I know how it is to be scared, and I know how it is to run from love, but... honey, you gotta trust me on this one.”
Lexie was staring through the window at Blake. “We watched Star Trek for two hours,” she said. “That’s it, just watched. And then when I finally went to get up, I realized we’d been holding hands the entire time.”
“Sweaty palms make perfect lovers,” Dora said. “But I don’t think I need to tell you that, do I?”
“No ma’am, you certainly don’t,” Blake said from inside. “Right now I feel like just about the luckiest bear in the woods. I can’t possibly thank you enough.”
His voice boomed from the back of the office, and the two girls looked at each other again. “He can hear that well?” Dora asked. “You better make sure you turn the vibrator down when you’re in the shower, or you’re never gonna get any alone time.” She spoke softly, out the side of her mouth, and as soon as the words were out, Lexie blew up in another laughing fit.
“I hadn’t really thought of that,” she said, “but yeah, I think you’re probably right.”
Blake reappeared from the back, a grin on his face, and just a little grease on his hands. “But seriously,” he said as he reached over the top of the truck’s bed, and fished a rag out of the box. “I appreciate what you did. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I do.”
“You don’t need to say anything,” Dora said. “The way you two are looking at each other like a pair of googly eyed puppies is good enough for me. You two kids go have fun. But let me give you this warning—Eve is a really bad sport. If you beat her at foosball, or air hockey, or,” she feigned a shudder, “God forbid mini-golf, she’s never going to let you live it down. She’ll just keep at you until she finally wins. So if you two want to ever get home, and judging from what I found you doing on my front stoop, you should probably throw the game.”
A look of dangerous mischief flashed across Blake’s face. “That’s just not something I can do. If I’m gonna do something, I do it as hard as I possibly can.” He had the same flat, deadpan look he had when they were joking about ass licking. Lexie was cracking up under her breath, but wasn’t about to ruin the moment. Dora, for her part, was starting to turn purple.
“I go hard, I go fast, and I go as deep as I possibly can. Anything less would be... well, it wouldn’t be right. Just wouldn’t be right.”
“And now, I’m sweating,” Dora said, exhaling a trail of laughs. “But seriously, you do not want to piss her off about dumb time-killing games.”
“Ma’am,” Blake looked at her as gravely as anyone had ever looked. “Foosball and mini-golf, I’ll allow you to say that about. But air hockey? Air hockey is serious, serious business. I’ll be damned if I let you defame the great sport of air hockey like that.”
That was all it took. Dora exploded with laughter, Lexie finally gave up trying to contain hers, and Blake broke the deadpan and cracked a grin. He took Lexie’s hand and led her to the side of the truck, opened the door and let her in before going back around the front on the way to the driver’s side.
“And also,” he said under his breath, whispering to Dora, “I heard the thing about the vibrator. Don’t tell her, but you’re as right as could be.”
As the truck started, and the unlikely pair backed out of Mating Call’s front lot, Dora had to sit down on the step to keep from falling over.
8
Ralph’s Fun Pit was every bit the semi-creepy entertainment center the name would have you believe.
Blake and Lexie had been laughing for the entire twelve-and-a-half minute ride out of town, and so by the time they showed up, they were both dying of thirst, and both so starving that even the greased cardboard of Fun Pit pizza seemed like a really, really good thing to eat.
But, when they stepped out of the truck, still inseparably hand in hand, they realized at the exact same moment that something was very strange about this place. Aside from a pealing giggle they heard from out back of the joint, there wasn’t a soul around. The parking lot had only three cars and a motorcycle to fill it, which wouldn’t have been strange on a weeknight, but this was a Friday, and it was only half-past nine. This should have been prime time for obnoxious high schoolers to be doing their mating dances and inconveniencing everyone with kids.
“Shouldn’t there be more, I dunno, people here?” Blake got a look on his face that would have been more at home approaching an enemy checkpoint. “We’re about to be ambushed by something horrible aren’t we?”
“Like what?” Lexie asked, getting a chill as he spoke.
Blake shuddered audibly. “A surprise birthday party, or something somehow worse? Or maybe Jason Voorhees is about to walk out the front door and greet me with a machete in the gut.”
“He hasn’t used a machete in a while,” Lexie said. “And anyway, this would be more of a Freddy Krueg
er sort of ambush.”
“Hm,” he considered, scratching at his chin but still not moving any closer to the door. “I guess you’re probably right. Don’t fall asleep.”
Lexie giggled again. “Oh damn it, I forgot that box.”
Blake beeped his key fob, and she fished the thing out of the front seat. When she turned back, she caught him staring right at her. “Getting a little comfortable with the ass-looking, aren’t we?”
“As long as it’s not licking,” he said. “Remember the rules.”
She smiled again and looped her arm around her bear’s muscled waist. He draped a heavy arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head, which he could easily do, standing a head and a half taller than she did. “Well, whatever happens,” he intoned, “we need to be careful and we need to make sure no one’s waiting in the shadows.”
“I doubt any crazed serial killers are hiding out here, although it does look sort of like a place they’d like.”
“I’m not scared of serial killers,” he said offhandedly, “I can handle them. But loud singing and party hats? I’ll have a goddamn panic attack.” He took a deep breath, and for a second, Lexie was almost sold on his intensity until he looked down at her with a grin. “I guess we’ve gotta face the music,” he said. “Let’s see what kind of hell awaits us within the doom box.”
“Okay, you finally overdid it,” she said. “It took until the doom box part, but you finally went a step too far into soap opera land.”
“Damn!” he said, laughing. “I guess I’ll never make it in Vaudeville.”
The nearer they got to the entrance, the more it was obvious that there were only four people here, employees notwithstanding. Lexie looked inside to find Eve and Morales hunched over opposite ends of an air hockey table, and true to Dora’s word, Eve was sweating, and looked very intense.
“That bear doesn’t look as scared as he should be,” Blake observed.
“How do you know he’s a bear?”
“We can smell our own,” Blake said.
