“Don’t blow your nose at me. Fuck me with it,” she said. “Pinocchio,” she said. “Liar, liar,” she said. And relaxed her body in the most comfortable nose-fucking position she could assume, laughter still flitting inside her stomach like butterflies. Cob couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Such a beautiful pussy but such languor — expecting him to do all the work, waiting for his nose to enter her and do what? Breathe? Squish around? All while she laughed and enjoyed herself at his expense. It was demeaning, a blow against his manhood. Cob Augo was not a kept boy. He was not a toy. He was a nose-fucker once and by accident. To be the same twice, and by a woman’s choice….
He lifted the stone gently from her dress.
If she wanted something put in her, he’d give her something. Strange for stranger, unexpected for unusual — a substitution. He chuckled at his own ingenuity. But somewhere deeper and more honest, he marvelled at how playful she was making him feel, at how little he knew about her, how little time they’d spent together, yet how at-ease they were together.
Her hips bobbed, inviting company. Her empty pussy called for an occupier.
He let the stone travel from finger to finger as he imagined reaction after reaction: shock followed by humiliation followed by humility, and he would be the one laughing, but then he would also be the one to kiss her and tell her that she was the most wonderful woman he’d ever known and she would confess that she’d never had a stone in her before and she would say it felt odd but enjoyable and he would feel special for being her first. He even invented the corny phrase he would use. “Am I the first man you’ve ever been stoned with?”
“What,” Winnie moaned.
He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. He positioned the stone at the entrance to her pussy. A few hairs scratched its stony surface. Water, the river’s perhaps, had polished it to near perfect smoothness. His hand started to shake. He was rushing. Why was he so nervous?
“Cob?”
The edge of the stone disappeared between Winnie’s inner labia, her excitement coating it, making it sticky and dark. He’d pushed it in with his forefingers. Now he fanned his fingers out on her thighs and belly and put his thumbs against the stone.
“What on earth….”
His thumbs pushed, the stone slid, Winnie’s pussy swallowed it up, but of all the possible reactions that his imagination had devised, none were:
Winnie leapt to her feet!
Her knees barely avoided making violent impact with Cob’s head as he bobbed out of the way. Before he could right himself, Winnie was already wearing one boot and lacing up the other. Cob was still wearing his shoes. They were fine shoes, but squelchy. “Winnie,” he said without knowing what to say next and ended up saying nothing. He picked up his guitar instead, slung it over his shoulder and took a few squelchy steps toward her, but she turned before he could look at her face, so he followed — squelch, squeak, squish. The sounds, indecent in their suction, turned him on. He realised he had an erection. The wet shoes and the erection made walking difficult. He couldn’t keep up. “Winnie,” he called after her again. He’d left his flannel shirt behind but there wasn’t time to go back for it now. Winnie disappeared into the forest.
Cob disappeared after her, waddling like a duck. The buzz of the river faded. The trees cast their shadows. Catching up to her to say he was sorry was one thing — and, truth be told, he didn’t quite know how to do that yet. He’d burn up from shame, but right now he also needed a guide. He didn’t know where he was. He needed to eventually get back to Black Bear Portage. “Slow down, please,” he yelled. But, if she heard him, she didn’t let it show.
The ground sloped upwards. Cob tripped over a root and covered a dozen feet at a crawl before becoming a biped again. But even bipeds are primitive, he knew, because all he could think about was whether the stone was still in Winnie’s pussy. “I’m sorry,” his conscience and manners wanted to tell her while his cock was telling him that his neck needed to bend-and-peek and his legs should learn to manoeuvre more efficiently. “You threw her panties into the river,” his cock reasoned. “Therefore, she is not wearing panties. Therefore, her pussy is unprotected. Capture her. Position her. Enter her.”
“Winnie!”
But Winnie passed behind a tree and vanished into the shadows.
♦♦♦♦
Half an hour later, Cob, out-of-breath, conquered the crest of a hill and cast his forlorn and horny gaze upon a clearing. In the middle of the clearing stood a house — small, white. Attached to the front of the house, a porch. On the porch, sitting on the railing, legs dangling, black hair flowing, was Winnie. She wasn’t wearing the pink dress anymore.
Cob fell to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he pleaded. His lungs wheezed rust. “It was wrong of me.”
Winnie slid off the railing and went inside.
Cob hobbled up to the front door. It was locked, but at least his erection was almost gone. He knocked. “Yes,” came the voice from inside.
“Oh, for the sake of all that’s good, open up. I don’t have any more stones.” Silence was followed by the subtle creaking of floorboards.
“Who is it? I’m a woman alone and I’ve just been chased by a pervert.”
Cob sat back on his heels on the porch. He finger-picked a melody from the strings of his guitar.
A minute later, the lock clicked and the door swung open. “Hello, stranger,” Winnie said. “You play beautifully.” Her lips twitched, before opening and smiling at the same time, and she added, “for such a pervert.”
Cob felt relief, immense and sudden relief. He wouldn’t die in the wild after all. Mostly, though, he just wanted to see Winnie again. He took a step toward the door — but found the way barred unexpectedly by a slender brown arm.
“Excuse me,” Winnie said. “But you are soaking wet and I will not have you dripping water all over my house.” Cob blinked — three times. “What I mean is, take off your clothes, musician.”
Cob removed both shoes, unbuckled his belt and let his pants drop to the porch floor. He then pulled his t-shirt over his head in such haste that the collar caught and dishevelled his hair, before tossing the whole collection into an unfolded pile by the door. Winnie left the shoes, but picked up the rest. She remained barring the doorway.
“May I come in now?” Cob asked.
“Your undergarment is still wet, musician,” she said.
He became aware of the burgeoning erection faintly visibly through his wet boxer shorts. The word “undergarment” had stirred up ideas. Winnie was wearing a blue dress of the same cut as her pink one, but her boots were off and feet bare. As she squeezed her unpainted toes, Cob wondered what else was bare. Had she put on a fresh pair of panties, a dry bra? She hadn’t been wearing a bra before. If he squinted, he could almost make out the faint outlines of nipples —
Winnie cleared her throat.
“Turn around,” Cob attempted to command.
But the attempt failed. Winnie placed a hand on her hip. Cob’s wet clothes looked like a ball of colours lodged into the three-sided space between her forearm, bicep and side. “You put a stone inside my vagina,” she said, emphasising each word. “Now strip.”
Cob dug his thumbs under the elastic band at the top of his boxers, stretched, and stepped out of them into complete nakedness. Winnie added the boxers to her ball of Cob’s other clothing.
“I’ll make sure they dry,” she said, looking at his not-quite-flaccid penis. She was straining to suppress a smirk. He was trying not to flush. As far as he could remember, he’d never been naked with a woman in the middle of a forest before. “You may step into the living room — it’s the one with the fireplace, to your immediate left — and wait for me. I’ll be with you shortly.” She started, then stopped. “And don’t touch anything.”
♦♦♦♦
The living room was small and cosy. It smelled of sugar and be
rries, leather, kerosene and wood. Shelves overflowing with old photographs, papers, crafts, tools and knives, and other, sometimes unascertainable, bric-a-brac lined the walls. Several tall windows let in blocks of dull sunlight through foggy, opaque panes. The overriding atmosphere was one of stillness, broken only by the many, slowly gliding particles of dust.
There was also the fireplace. It was imposingly solid even when cold. But the fireplace was hardly the room’s dominant feature. What first caught Cob’s attention as he crossed the threshold — what made him pause, made his heart beat twice — was another object, a once-living one: a large black bearskin rug that covered a sizable portion of the wooden floor. The dead bear’s massive head, maw open, teeth sharp, stared blankly ahead at nothing.
Cob took a seat on a cushion on the floor, making sure to keep his feet away, just in case.
After rubbing some warmth into his nude body, he started to glance around. Masculine faces reflected his gaze from several of the photographs. Perhaps Winnie was married — a thought that made the presence of the knives slightly disconcerting. He held his breath and listened for a suggestion either way, but the only sound was silence, no marital conversation, no man’s heavy stomp — broken finally by the shriek of a whistling kettle.
He was eyeing a raccoon-tailed hat sitting atop a stack of books when Winnie walked in, carrying two steaming cups.
“I made coffee,” she said.
He held out his hand and waited for her to pass him one of the cups. She raised an eyebrow. “Do you think I’ll drink it for you, too? Stand up.”
“I’m naked,” he said.
“I’ll get you something to wear in a second. Just take the coffee.” Impatience dripped from her voice.
He stood without covering up and took from her the heavy, oversized mug. It felt pleasantly warm in his hands. She sipped from hers and pointed with her chin toward one of the shelves. “There,” she said. “I saw you looking at it.” He didn’t understand. “You wanted clothing, didn’t you?” He followed with his eyes and realised her chin was pointing in the direction of the raccoon hat. “What?” But, instead of answering, she took three strides, perched briefly on a wicker chair, retrieved the hat from its shelf, and put it crookedly on Cob’s head.
“There. You’re not naked anymore.”
Unclothed and in a Davy Crockett cap, it was a new low. Cob lifted his cup to his lips and took a long drink of coffee. At least the coffee wouldn’t make fun of him.
Something in the cup rattled.
He looked down. The liquid looked up, dark and opaque. It had tasted like coffee, but…. He shook the cup again.
Another rattle.
“Why don’t you play me one of your songs,” Winnie said.
“What’s in the coffee?” Cob said back.
“You know what’s in the coffee.”
Even the raccoon’s tail seemed to bristle. “How would I know?” he barked, but was immediately aware that the question was autonomic. He did know. He’d known from the very first rattle.
“Because we’re crazy in the same ways, Cob Augo.”
He felt his erection returning.
“Did you…inside…?” He nearly choked, swallowing an excess of saliva and a few unimportant words. “All this time?”
“Do you need to ask to know?”
He took another drink.
“When I was reaching for your hat, you tried to look up my dress,” she said.
That wasn’t quite true. He’d been staring through her dress, at her ass, though that defence was hardly noble. Plus, he did want to know if she was still wearing panties. And he would have gladly looked up her dress had there been more time. And, really, how much more embarrassed could he possibly be. “I tried,” he admitted. “Unsuccessfully.”
“Do you want another chance?”
His mind was stunned. His cock nodded feverishly.
“I’ll make you a deal. I will let you look up my dress if you play a song for me. My only condition is that the song is new — a song that no one’s heard before.”
“Agreed,” he said, and tried lowering himself, cross-legged, onto the cushion on the floor.
Winnie tut-tutted him into an awkward semi-crouch instead. “That’s my spot. You can sit on Edward.” Her arm pointed at the bearskin rug. “He’s fluffy and warm and he doesn’t bite — anymore.” Neither Winnie’s voice nor the bear’s facial expression suggested a desire to be disobeyed. Cob did as instructed.
The bear’s fur was long and softer than anything he’d experienced. Sitting on it was like melting into a layer of warm butter as hundreds-of-thousands of individual hairs, the same midnight colour as Winnie’s, rose against his skin and tickled the much coarser hairs covering his own body.
“I’ll bring your guitar,” she said.
But Cob understood that, for once, he wouldn’t need his guitar. It was as obvious as the rattle of the stone in his coffee cup. In the Tasty Totem, Winnie had made him feel joy because he’d felt a common creation with her. This was the next step. If it was too literal, so be it. He had no pride or pretence left to lose. She’d stripped him of those as easily as of his clothes. “I don’t need my guitar,” he said.
He anticipated her imminent protests. “I promised you a song. I’ll give you a song.” Finally he’d caught her off guard with something! Watching her struggle to understand was a happy novelty. Maybe he wasn’t quite the fool in the coonskin hat that, inevitably, he looked. He went on, “But one condition deserves another, and my condition is that a new song deserves a new guitar, and as my guitar, I choose you, Winnie Youngblood.”
She downed the rest of her coffee in one gulp.
He set his aside.
“And how exactly does one become a guitar?” she asked.
“One pictures it — clearly, with details. Then one attempts to create the picture with reality.”
She scoffed. “I can’t do that. I can’t picture myself as a guitar. It’s absurd.”
“Have you seen a guitar?”
“Of course.” Cob’s cock licked its lips.
“Then picture it.”
Winnie leaned against the wall. The blue material between her breasts tightened. “When I make a marmalade or a sauce, there’s a recipe I follow. Instructions. Can’t you picture it for me and tell me the instructions?”
“We’re creating,” Cob said, “not recreating. The first marmalade wasn’t made from a recipe.”
When Winnie didn’t react, Cob grabbed his cup and lifted it to the heavens. “Cheers!”
“And what are you toasting?”
“The Dead Horse River. The ridiculous, the dreamers, and the losing of self-restraint.” He smiled so wide the corners of his mouth hurt. “I’m naked, save for a raccoon on my head. I have an erection I can’t get rid of, and I’m sitting on a bear named Edward. For the last few minutes, I’ve been drinking coffee that tastes vaguely like your pussy. Spare me if you feel a little self-conscious.”
She dropped her shoulders and came toward him like a puppy-done-wrong.
She sat beside him on Edward’s soft black fur, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “If you’re sorry for putting a stone in me, I’m sorry for making you get naked and wear a coonskin headpiece.” She scratched her forehead. “But I think the truth is that neither of us truly wants to apologise. Thank God for that.” And she dropped her head onto his knees, then pulled herself forward and rotated her body until her back was across his thighs and both her head and legs were dangling off his crossed knees.
Cob responded by slipping his left forearm under her head, propping up her neck, and rubbing her stomach with his other hand, before moving it cautiously beneath her dress and realising — much later than he would have liked — that she wasn’t wearing panties after all.
“I picture myself as a slide guitar,” she said.
/>
He put two fingers in her mouth to shut her up. “And when you picture this slide guitar, does it talk?” She answered by sucking his fingers.
He enjoyed the sensation for a few seconds before removing his fingers from her mouth and threading them into as much of her hair as possible. She let him. He brought the hair over her face until she was faceless and the strands were solid black and reaching to the bottoms of her ribs. “One,” he counted, separating one-sixth of the strands into a band. “Two,” and another sixth became another band, and all the way until “Six,” when all of Winnie’s hair was divided, and the strings of Cob’s guitar were complete.
Wedges of skin and two quiet eyes peeked out from in between.
Cob bent his body low and wrapped his left arm under Winnie’s neck as far as it would go, until his nimble fingers were able to touch all six bands of hair. Carefully, his breath held, he pressed one finger on each of the second-and third-closest strings, as his right hand slid between Winnie’s unsteady thighs. “E minor,” he said. Winnie moaned. He immediately shifted to a different chord. “D minor. This one sounds brighter.” Winnie moaned more brightly. “And —” His fingers crawled up her torso, deft and gentle. “G major.” Winnie’s moan became a deep kitten’s purr. Cob squeezed flesh. His fingers returned to Em. The resulting grunt warmed his cheeks. “That’s not how you play a slide guitar, of course. But this is my first time, so you’ll have to excuse me.” She offered no reaction. She had become the instrument.
Cob played a simple blues progression, followed by a traditional Appalachian ballad. Winnie purred and twisted, squirmed, hummed and, gutturally groaning, liquefied into the appropriate sounds. He played a pop song and she puffed. He played a song for lovers and she sighed.
On Highway 17 Page 3
