by Melinda Minx
As the sun begins to set, I get ready for my date with Sophie.
I’d toyed with the idea of still not going all the way with Sophie tonight. Maybe I’d go down on her again, let her get me off, and stop her there. But no, my balls hurt bad enough last time I did that. Denying Sophie what I know she wants is a fun game, but it costs me something, too. Because I want to fuck her tonight just as bad as she wants to fuck me.
I’ll give it all to her tonight, and I’ll give it to her so good that she won’t leave me. Sure, she can take that job in Boston, but she’ll beg me to go with her.
I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, what I want to do with my life, and Boston is as good a place as any to start a business.
I drive up to her place and knock on the door. I’ve got a new jacket and an actual shirt that isn’t flannel. Not a tie, though, that’s going a bit too far for a dinner date at a Greek place. It’s a nice Greek place, but not tie nice. There’s very few places around here where a tie wouldn’t be complete overkill.
Hank opens the door. He nods to me. “She’s still getting ready, come in and have a beer with me?”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’m driving though.”
“Ah, right,” he says. “You don’t mind if I keep drinking this?” he says, holding up the bottle.
“Go ahead.”
We sit down across from each other, him on the recliner, me on the sofa.
“You hear Sophie is interviewing for Pfizer?”
I smile. “Yep, looks like your plan worked out.”
He grins. “I feel a lot more sad than I thought I would, to be honest with you. I’m so happy for her, but I’ll be here all alone again.”
“Boston isn’t too far,” I say. “She’ll miss you, and I’m sure she’ll visit often.”
“She gets pretty buried in her work,” Hank says, sipping his beer. “It’s hard to get her to come up for air when she’s working on a new paper or new experiment. You wanna help keep her balanced, Mason.”
“Me?” I say, pointing to my chest. “What makes you think—?”
“You know,” he says. “Don’t act so cocky, then suddenly be modest. You know you’ve got her, don’t you?”
I let out a dry laugh. “I hope I do, Mr. Sinclaire.”
He points to me, with the bottle still in his hand. “I like you, Mason, I always have. I still like you, for whatever reason, and I think you’re good for my daughter. Don’t prove me wrong.”
“I’ll be good for her,” I say. “Um, I mean I’ll be good to her, too, Mr.—”
“Hank,” he says. “Call me Hank, son.”
I nod.
I wait there with him until Sophie comes downstairs. She’s got on another dress, this one’s red.
I stand up when she enters the room, as if seeing her forces my body to its feet. “Damn, Sophie…”
She grins. “So I look good?”
“Sure as hell do,” I say, eyeing her up and down. This dress is even tighter than the last one, with a lot less frills. It’s more straightforward, and it leaves little to the imagination. Not that I have to imagine much, I can just remember what she looked like when I peeled that last dress off her.
“You bought some new clothes,” she says, taking my white collar in her hands and smiling.
“Yep,” I say. “I got a couch, too.”
Hank stands up now. “I thought you two went out?”
Sophie laughs. “Dad, I’m thirty-three years old.”
“Ah,” he says. “Right.”
“She looks a lot younger,” I say, smiling and taking her hand. “Ready to go?”
We shrug on our coats on and step outside.
“You mind if we take my car?” Sophie asks.
“What’s wrong with mine?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “But my car has trouble starting in the cold, I want to make sure the battery doesn’t die. I try to drive it every night to keep it going.”
I frown. “If the car has trouble starting…”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “There are jumper cables in the trunk.”
It strikes me as a bad idea, but I don’t want to argue with her, I just want to get to the restaurant, eat, and then get her home with me.
“Keys?”
She hands them to me, and I start the car up without issue. “Seems fine to me.”
“As long as it stays warm,” she says.
Stockton is a good 45-minute drive away, and after ten minutes, there are snow flurries falling.
“I hope when we get out of the restaurant,” Sophie says, “that it’s suddenly all covered in puffy white snow. That’s one of my favorite things in the world, when you go inside somewhere in the evening, like a bar or a restaurant, and when you come out around midnight, everything is covered in pure white snow. Not a footprint to be seen…”
I smile. “You might just get your wish.”
Ten more minutes, and the car is stuck. I hit the accelerator, but the tires just spin in the slush.
“Shit,” she says. “I jinxed it, didn’t I?”
It’s a snow storm, it hit suddenly and fierce. There is howling wind rocking the car, and the heater from the running car is the only thing keeping us warm. There’s almost no visibility. These back roads will not be at the top of the list to get plowed, so we’ll be stuck here for a long time if I don’t get out and push.
“Stay here,” I say. “When I tap on the windshield, hit the gas a bit.”
I open the door and step out into the howling gale.
The cold hits me hard, and I trudge through the snow to the back of the car. I get a grip on the back bumper, then I thump the windshield.
The wheels spin, throwing up muddy snow on both sides of me, splashing onto the sides of my coat. I push.
My feet slip, but my boots get traction, and after a few good shoves, the tires catch, too, and the car lurches forward.
I sigh in relief; that was easier than I expected. I just had to get a little bit dirty.
I open the door and get back into the car.
Sophie laughs, then covers her mouth in embarrassment. “God, I hit the gas too much and got muddy slush all over you. I’m so sorry.”
I smile. “You’re good, any less and we might not have gotten the car out.”
I start to drive again, trying to stay closer to the center of the road, away from the muddy runoff.
“You smell that?” Sophie asks.
I sniff. I don’t smell anything at first, but then an acrid burning smell hits my nostrils.
There’s a beep, and the battery light goes on.
“That normally happen?” I ask.
“The battery light, yeah, but not the smell.”
“Shit, Sophie, I think—”
The engine whines, the sound turning high-pitched, and then all sounds cut off. The car shuts off.
We coast forward a bit, and I pull over to the side of the road, as we lose all momentum.
I turn the key, but there’s no sound.
“I think your alternator is bad,” I say.
We sit there in silence for a long moment. As if both of us respecting the engine’s death will somehow bring it back to life.
“Can we...jump it?” Sophie asks.
I shake my head. “No, the battery is drained and won’t charge now. It’s not an issue of jumping.”
“Shit,” she whispers.
“I’m going to call a tow truck.”
I grab my phone and start to search for a number. There’s luckily still reception out here. It could be that the alternator belts are just off, and I could fix them, but even that wouldn’t help us now. Not with a dead battery.
“Sal’s Towing. This is Sal.” I put the phone on speaker so Sophie can hear.
“We’re trapped out on the road between Tuckett Bay and Stockton,” I continue giving him more details describing exactly where we are. “Can you get out to us soon? Our car is dead and we have no heat.”
“Ehh,” Sal s
ays. “You gotta wait a few hours. A lotta’ other dumbasses getting caught in the snow tonight—”
“Dumbasses?” Sophie snaps. “Is that how you treat your customers? By insulting them?”
Sal laughs. “Listen, lady, ain’t no other towing company around here got more trucks than me. You need me, so I can call you whatever I want. You want me to add you to the list or not?”
I put a hand over Sophie’s mouth. “Yes, add us.”
“Alright,” he says. “You’re on. Probably it’s gonna’ be like two hours. The driver will call you when he’s close by.”
I hang up the phone.
“That asshole!” Sophie says, as I remove my hand from her mouth.
I shrug. “Look, we don’t want to freeze out here. You wait in the car, I’m going to go out onto the road and try to flag down anyone driving by. They can take us into town and we can wait somewhere warm until your car gets towed.
“We could just call my dad,” she says.
“In this storm, it will take him close to two hours just to get out here. And he’d risk getting stuck himself. Let’s just wait it out.”
Sophie starts to zip up her coat. “I’ll go out there with you. Cars are more likely to stop for a woman.”
I grin. “You don’t think anyone would stop for me?”
“You look kind of scary, Mason.”
“Bundle up real good, then,” I say. “It’s cold.”
17
Sophie
I instantly regret offering to go with him. The moment I step out into the storm, the freezing wind numbs my face. What is falling is more like little chunks of ice than soft fluffy snow, and it hits my cheeks in huge, needly gusts.
Mason reaches over and tightens my hood, then he takes off his scarf and wraps it around my neck, covering most of my face.
“You look vacuum-packed now,” he says. “Maybe they won’t even be able to see that you’re a woman.”
I punch his chest. “They can tell by my size.”
“Maybe you’re a young boy?”
I hope he’s just teasing me. “You really think I look like a boy?”
He flashes an insufferable smirk down at me, then turns away from me to approach the roadside.
I grab him by the arm as we wait. Having him close to me helps to keep me warm. I take another step toward the road, and I start to slip. It’s iced over.
I slide and completely lose traction, but Mason somehow stays anchored, and he pulls me back up against his body.
“Don’t go wandering off,” he says.
We wait for a long time, but no cars pass by.
“It’s been over thirty minutes,” I say, my teeth chattering. “And no cars.”
Mason looks at his phone. “It’s been eight minutes, Sophie, not thirty.”
My eyes widen, which lets more cold wind hit them. I instantly regret it. They start tearing up.
“Eight minutes?” I ask, hoping he’s teasing me again. “You’re joking, right?”
“Let’s play a game to make the time pass faster,” he says. “I spy something white.”
I elbow him. “Not funny. Tell me something that happened in the last sixteen years. Anything to pass the time. To help me forget the cold.”
“I was in Iraq for a while,” he says. “I forgot the cold then. We cooked eggs on rocks. You had to keep drinking water or you’d run out of sweat.”
I feel so cold now that it sounds as if he’s describing some form of alternate reality. A place where the laws of physics are different.
“How long were you there?” I ask.
“Only a few years,” he says.
Only a few years? He talks about it like he was in Denver building houses, not in Iraq fighting a war.
“I was in Afghanistan for most of the time. They only sent me to Iraq during the initial invasion, fighting holdovers still loyal to Hussein. I got really good at fighting insurgents, which served me well when they shipped me to Afghanistan. The heat in Iraq was often worse than the insurgents. I’ll take this cold over it any day.”
I’m wearing his scarf, and he’s only got a beanie protecting part of his ears, but he doesn’t look that cold. It’s like he’s using his memory of the desert to keep himself warm.
I try to think of a vacation I took to Miami, but all it does is make me feel colder.
He talks more, but I start to lose focus. I want to hear what he’s saying, but my eyes are drooping, and I can’t focus.
“Sophie,” he says, shaking my shoulders gently.
I hear the door open, and I feel him moving me into the car. The door shuts behind me, and I feel immediately warmer. The temperature in the car isn’t much higher, but being shielded from the God awful icy wind does wonders.
I feel his hand on me; it’s so warm. I grab hold of it, deciding I’m not going to let go of it.
“Sophie,” he says, pulling at my hand.
“I don’t want to let go.”
“I need to get my jacket off.”
He breaks my hand away, peels off his jacket, and presses it over me like a blanket. He lays me down all along the back seat. The fairly cramped SUV seat feels spacious and luxurious after being frozen outside for so long.
My ankles are draped over his legs. I can’t reach his hand anymore.
“Your skin felt so warm,” I say.
He’s just wearing his button-up shirt now. I sit up and slide a hand beneath it. His hard abs feel even warmer than his hand.
He tenses up briefly, then laughs.
“What?” I ask.
“Your hand is cold as a frozen hamburger. I gotta warm you up, Sophie.”
He starts to unbutton his shirt.
Oh, I like where this is going.
He throws his shirt into the front seat, then he starts working on his belt. He struggles to get his pants off in the confined quarters, but he does it with surprising ease considering his size.
“You’re good at that,” I say.
“The rumors about me in high school were true,” he says. “If I can do this in an ‘89 Camaro, I sure as hell can do it in an SUV.”
I laugh, and he pulls his boxers off. His cock is semi-hard already, and my eyes lock onto it. It will be so good and warm—burning hot—inside of me. And yes, I will make sure he puts it into me this time.
I lift up the jacket, and he straddles me.
But I’m still completely bundled up, and even though I can feel the heat radiating off of him, I can’t feel him.
I start to unzip my jacket, but he stops me.
“You need to warm up more first,” he says.
“You’ll keep me warm, won’t you, Mason?”
He smirks. “Yeah, I guess I will.”
He lets go of my hand, and I peel the jacket away. And then he takes a good look at me in my red dress, drinking me in.
I don’t have Mason’s skill at getting my clothes off in the back seat of a car—even if it’s just a dress—so he helps me tear pull it up and over my head. It’s fucking cold when I get all my clothes off—I can feel my nipples getting hard and pointy as icicles.
But then Mason’s naked body presses down against me, and he pulls the jacket over both of us. His body is hot like a furnace, and I let out a low moan in response to his heat alone. But soon it’s not just his body heat getting me hot; I feel wetness between my legs, and a heat growing inside me.
“Don’t tease me this time,” I say, our eyes locking together.
He smiles. A warm and genuine smile rather than a cocky smirk. I decide to take that as his agreement not to tease me.
I reach down past his hard abs to his now stone hard cock. I squeeze it.
“Are my hands still cold?” I ask.
“A little bit,” he says, and he presses his lips against my neck.
I stroke his dick with my hand as he kisses and bites my neck.
I reach down and cup his balls, and I bring my other hand to his cock. I run my fingers along the bulging veins of his shaft
, and I slide my fingers gently along the head of his cock, until I feel a slick pool of precum.
His hand goes between my legs in response, and in just moments, I am gushing wet, and ready to feel him inside me.
“Mason,” I say. “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Fifteen years,” he says, “and you can’t wait ten minutes?”
“You said you wouldn’t tease me,” I say, my cheeks burning with anger.
He laughs. “I never said anything—”
And just as I’m about to go off on him, he slides the head of his cock up against my wetness.
I gasp, and he cups my breast with his right hand. I wrap my legs around him, and he presses inside me. It feels like it’s probably just an inch or so, but the warm head of his cock stretching me wide feels so fucking good that it feels like a lot more.
But then he thrusts his hips and slides in deeper. So that’s what “more” feels like, like more than I could possibly have imagined. My entire body, from the core to the tips of my toes and fingers, tremble and shudder as he splits me wide open.
My pussy squeezes tightly along his shaft, and wetness floods through me, drenching his cock in my juices.
“God!” I scream, as the shuddering stops.
“I’m still barely inside…” he says, his voice heavy.
Barely inside? Is he fucking—?
He slides in deeper, slowly and steadily. I feel his girth fill me up further and further, inch my inch, until I’m in total denial that a dick inside me can feel this good. I remember it feeling this good, but I also remember so many other things about being eighteen years old with thick, rose-tinted glasses. I figured that brief moment in time where Mason and I fucked nearly every day was like all of those other things—greatly exaggerated by memory and nostalgia.
I’ve slept with a number of other guys since Mason left, and each one of them was disappointing in different ways. None of them compared to Mason Steel, but over time, I’d convinced myself that it was the memory of Mason Steel they didn’t live up to. I’d sworn to myself that he’d become this childish little girl’s dream—the man who was perfect, solely because I knew I could never really have him. Surely, if he became real again and we somehow slept together once more, the real Mason Steel would shatter the memory of him.
