Learner Driver and Other Stories

by Leigh Clark

  So, for ten years, I did what I’d planned to do. I learnt my craft as a healer. I was as bad-tempered as any teacher in the Maidens’ House, and old before my time, and soon people forgot to keep an eye on me and let me do as I pleased and go wherever I chose. For a few months I stayed away from the pool, but then, as soon as I was sure that I was no longer observed, I began to travel closer and closer to the pool. The place fascinated and terrified me equally. It was the last placed I’d seen Lehera and so it drew me, but I feared that once there, I’d pick up the heaviest rock I could find, bind it to my wrist, and dive down to join her forever.

  Then I heard that a hotel company wanted to build a honeymoon spa on the site of my … our, waterfall. Don’t worry, little love-birds, don’t huddle together in your newly-legalised couples—the spa wasn’t built there. You aren’t sleeping where Lehera and I slept, and laughed and loved. I made sure of that.

  But to prevent the desecration of the pool, I had to go into local politics. I fought to convince Honeymoon Islanders to preserve our beautiful home from rapacious developers, to demand a say in all the tourist proposals, to insist on a fair wage for those working in the honeymoon industry. And the day I won, after years of battle, I went up to the pool for the first time since I’d lost my love. The sun was setting and the sky turned from gold, to bronze, to purple. The waterfall splashed into the black pool and I lay on my back and watched the moon cross the sky. If Lehera wanted me to join her in the watery darkness, I was ready now.

  I’d fallen asleep at the pool once before, but I was wide awake when she came to me. I felt her hands cover my eyes and lay still, smelling the fragrance of the Tahitian gardenia flowers I’d made into a garland for her, even though it was long past their season to bloom.

  “I missed you,” she said. “Why did you stay away so long?”

  I took her wrists in my hands and wrenched them from my eyes. Lehera knelt behind me, laughing. She was as real as the moon and the only sign she wasn’t just like me was that her hair was wet, dripping silver beads onto her breasts and thighs.

  I leaned forward and touched my lips to her forehead. Her skin was as warm and fresh as the day she’d died. I moved lower, kissing the water droplets from her body, and she arched her back and murmured in pleasure.

  Before I pushed her onto her back, I asked one question. Why?

  “I couldn’t bear to be separated from you, Marania. Not for a single night. So I asked the moon to let me join her and she took me.”

  I began to cry. All those wasted nights when Lehera and I could have been together!

  Now it was her turn to kiss the moisture from my face. “Don’t cry, my love. Don’t regret. We will always spend our nights together now.”

  Then I did ease her backwards, and held her down while my mouth devoured her body like a starving woman finding a perfect, ripe fruit on the forest floor.

  Her hair never dries. We spend each night together, on the moss by the pool or in the hammock I’ve swung between two trees, and every morning I awake alone, but my body is scented with the Tahitian gardenia’s heady perfume.

  Your honeymoon apartments are close to Lehera’s home, but it is one of the places considered sacred on Honeymoon Island and no guide will lead you there. Lehera and I will share one thing with you though. The garlands around your necks are Tahitian gardenia. At night, when we have loved and laughed enough, we weave them for you, so you will remember that no matter how long you are parted, your reunions will be like honeymoons – and to remind you also to always thank whatever gods you believe in, for giving you each other.

  Say it with Aloes

  Vince saw the problem as he locked up for the night. A red light on the temperature control panel. He moved to the unit and laid his hand on the earth. It was chilly, so he pushed his forefinger gently between two of the tiny aloe vera plants. The soil was damp and cold. He twisted the thermostat but the heating coil didn’t respond. With a sigh, he grabbed his cell-phone, “Janice, I need you back here right now. The under-soil heater on the aloes cuttings has failed. It’s going to be below zero tonight and they’ll chill down really fast so you’ll have to come and move the trays while I try to solve the problem.”

  “Uh …,”

  “No excuses, Janice, you said you wanted to help raise plants for the burns unit, so I gave you a chance.” As he spoke Vince unplugged the unit with his free hand, juggling connections, trying to see what was wrong. The aloe plants were tiny stubs in the cold soil. Soon, each one would produce enough sap to heal the third degree burns of a child, or help reduce the inflammation and swelling around the sight of a major surgical wound, but only if the plantlets survived this cold night, which they wouldn’t without heat. “I mean it, Janice, whatever you had planned tonight, you’d better cancel and get your ass over here now, or plan to find yourself back working as a docent on the hospital desk.”

  She turned up exactly seventeen minutes later – he knew because he’d set the timer to see how long the aloes had gone without heat.. Vince was impressed at her speed, and that she’d had the foresight to pack a bag with a flashlight, flask of coffee, fruit and cookies. He didn’t let it show though. Janice had turned out to be a problem for him and he wasn’t sure how to solve it.

  It wasn’t that she was a bad worker—in fact she was tireless and smart. It wasn’t that they didn’t have a lot in common—like him, she was getting over a relationship gone bad, and they both loved plants and the challenge of greenhouse cultivation. It was that every time she walked down the garden he couldn’t stop himself focusing on the tight muscles of her ass. She didn’t sway, she strode, and those small globes rotated above her slim legs in a way that made him hard. He’d taken to wearing his pruning apron on the days she worked, just to hide his erection. And yet she didn’t seem the kind of woman who would notice anyway.

  They’d been working together for three months now, since she’d answered his advertisement for an employee who had experience in horticulture and medicine. He hadn’t expected to get many qualified replies and he’d been right to be pessimistic. The only candidate who had the necessary experience and intelligence was Janice, with her degree in herbal remedies. She’d recently moved to the area to get over her broken relationship, and was still looking around for a job to suit her. He’d hired her on the spot, but now he was beginning to regret it. There was something a bit chilly about her, he’d decided, just as there was about this damned bed of aloes.

  He stood back and watched her beginning to lift the smaller seed trays out of the broken unit. “Set them in the marigold raiser,” he said. “Swap them over. Marigolds are tough babies, they’ll cope with a hard night.”

  As he said ‘hard’ she bent over the unit, stretching forwards to reach the furthest tray of plants, which displayed her rear to him, accidentally revealing her panty-line cutting across her small buttocks. That, and the double meaning of hard, did it. His cock sprang up, and he couldn’t suppress a groan as his balls tightened pleasurably. Janice glanced over her shoulder. Even in the blue greenhouse lights, she couldn’t miss the curve of his shaft in his jeans. She brushed long black hair out of her eyes as if that might change what she was seeing.

  Vince shrugged. “What can I say? Anyway, this isn’t the time for social niceties… let’s get this job done.” He was damned if he’d apologize to her for a natural reaction. She should be glad he was ethical enough not to have grabbed her before now, but in any case the idea of boss/worker relationships made him antsy. How could he be sure she didn’t feel coerced, or simply want him for his money? Since he’d retired as a futures trader, to concentrate on horticulture and its medical implications, women had been around him like slugs scenting lettuce, but what they could scent was a millionaire in his forties.

  Well, it wasn’t exactly a millionaire moment right now, he thought, watching ice already beginning to form on the outside of the greenhouse
windows. The sky was dark, with pinprick stars, showing that a heavy frost could be expected. What a night for one of his brand new heating units to stop working.

  He crawled under the unit, taking the flashlight with him. Once he was on his back he began to check the connectors and cables in case something had broken or shorted out. It was fiddly work, in the blue gloom, and it didn’t help that from there he had a superb view of Janice as she lifted trays, her small breasts jiggling above the spiky plantlets and her tight ass rolling as she moved away. The concrete floor was icy and his ass, pressed against it with nothing but the thin cotton of his underwear to protect him, was fast becoming an arctic zone. Maybe that would help get rid of his erection, although it didn’t seem to be working, because each time Janice came back to the table, he felt his shaft throb as she stood over him, her legs apart as she braced herself to lift the heavy trays. He sighed.

  Janice must have heard him, because when she came back, she crouched down, her hands resting on the bench above her head. It looked to him like she was cuffed, arms straight, breasts pushed forward and the image made him even harder. It made him furious to be so out of control and he knew too, that his hard-on was more obvious than ever. Janice seemed to be oblivious to the situation, as one of her hands descended with a cup of coffee. What an ice maiden. He hoped she hadn’t got too close to any of the aloe plants, she was so damn cold she could probably freeze them just by touching them.

  “Here,” she said. “You look cold.” He realized it was the first time she’d spoken since she arrived. Despite his irritation with himself and her, he had to admit it was another thing they had in common—they could work in companionable silence. In fact one of the great pleasures of having her as an assistant the past few months had been the discovery that, unlike almost every other women he’d met, she didn’t see the need to talk for the sake of it.

  He decided that it was time he showed some appreciation, after all, she’d given up her evening to come and rescue the aloe project, so he smiled at her as reached for the coffee, scooting forward his heels and behind, and as she swayed towards him, her hand jolted, spilling hot coffee on his thigh. “Shit!” he yelled.

  Janice grabbed a watering can and launched the contents at him, cooling the scalding coffee but leaving his jeans soaked with frigid water.

  He scrambled out from under the table, all friendly thoughts forgotten. “What the hell is wrong with you tonight? Are you crazy? Jesus woman, you could have scalded me!”

  Janice simply shook her head, as though denying the charge, or telling him he was out of line. “You’d better take those off,” she said, “while I move the rest of the plants.” He looked at her but her face was straight. “Honestly, I don’t mind.” she said. “After all, I’m a grown woman, I’ve seen enough men in their underwear.”

  He shucked the jeans, glad he had substantial cotton boxers underneath. He thought about going back to the house for dry pants but decided he’d finish checking the connections first. It was a long way from the greenhouse, at the very bottom of his two acre garden, to his bedroom on the second floor of his split level ranch house. If he needed a new transformer from the store cupboard he could get it when he went back indoors.

  Janice tapped him on the shoulder and he turned, to find her holding out a single aloe vera leaf, about as long as his little finger, and mottled light and dark green. He blinked. “In case I did scald you,” she said. “That’s what we’re growing the plant for, after all.”

  He frowned, feeling stupid. She was right, he should have thought of the aloe’s healing power himself. As she watched, he squeezed the plant, seeing the clear aloe sap rise to the surface like pre-come and the phallic imagery made him hard again. He turned his back on Janice to rub the juice into his thigh. He didn’t see why he should expose his body’s lack of control to her. The skin was slightly pink where the coffee had landed, but the aloe sap immediately made it feel cooler and calmer. When he turned back, Janice took the empty leaf from him, and he watched her cross the greenhouse to dispose of it in a lidded bin. It must have been his imagination, but she seemed to strut at little, as though she was showing off her body. He rubbed his face hard with both hands. The woman was frigid, and clumsy too. He must be fatigued or something to be watching her this way when he’d already decided that he was going to have nothing to do with her.

  He crawled back under the table and continued to check the soil heating system. He was reaching for the last set of cables when he felt Janice’s warm hand on his cock through the boxers. But when he looked, it wasn’t her hand, it was her foot.

  She’d slipped out of her boot and sock and her slim toes were curling around his shaft like little fingers. Even as he watched, her big toe slipped into the boxer fly and the head of his shaft jumped up to meet it. Janice’s sole was warm and soft and he hardly dared to move. The woman couldn’t be unconscious of what she was doing, surely, but hell, it was too good to draw attention to in case she stopped. He squirmed a little, to get the whole length of his cock under her foot. For a while he was content to stay there, feeling the gentle movement of his foreskin as her foot pressed slightly backwards and forwards. He still wasn’t sure what was going on here, but it was obvious that he was going to reconsider his ideas about Janice. Soon though, the experience began to pall, it wasn’t that the massage wasn’t good, but flat on his back under a broken heating unit was not a romantic, or warm, place to be, so he began to push himself slowly back out. As he slid forwards, he saw a ball of tree twine that had rolled under the table and grabbed it.

  Sitting up, he took hold of Janice’s foot and began to caress it, running his nails up her sole until she giggled and tried to pull away. She was still pretending to be focused on the plants—her eyes on the marigolds she was arranging in the broken unit. He grinned, sure now that this was some kind of pose that she was adopting, so he continued to massage the foot, gently placing it on the ground to explore her instep and calf, pushing up her jeans to see her soft, biscuit-colored flesh, pressing his thumbs into the hollows on either side of her ankle before making a bracelet of his fingers and locking it around her calf. Then he bit through a good length of twine and swiftly lashed her ankle to the table.

  Janice shrieked and pushed away from him, but as she bent down to try and untie the twine, he grabbed her and pressed her spine against the unit. She shook her head but she was grinning too. Her long hair whipped from side to side, but she lifted her chin and tried to stare him down – making it obvious that she was equal to whatever he had in mind.

  Vince took the opportunity to survey her. He felt as if he’d never looked at her properly since her interview. He was forever grabbing sidelong glances, but it had been weeks since he’d allowed himself to really observe her. Her eyes met his, dark and defiant. She was breathing fast and he could see her nipples through the soft denim of her work shirt. Her shoulders and hips were both narrow, she had the slim build of a distance runner, which he knew she was, which only heightened the sensuality of her small, widely-spaced breasts. He grabbed a handful of potting soil from the nearest sack, tugged the waistband of her jeans out, and thrust the rich black compost inside. “Whoops,” he said, still gazing into her eyes, “it looks like your jeans need to come off too.”

  Janice shrugged and folded her arms. The challenge spoke for itself.

  Vince cocked his head, raising his eyebrows. “A dare?” he asked. Where this was going he wasn’t sure, but something, some weird relationship, was being created in the warm, damp air of the greenhouse and he felt prepared to trust his instincts with Janice in the way he did with his plants, judging purely on gut feeling what to do and when to do it. It was like bringing on some rare orchid to flower, watching the bud, turning it to the light, guessing water and warmth until finally the blossom opened to its full exotic glory.

  She shrugged again, but couldn’t keep a straight face this time. He unbuttoned the jeans
and eased down the zip, feeling the soft, dark compost as it spilled from her clothing. He reached for another handful and trickled it inside her shirt, moving his hand over her shoulders, and down to the front of her red panties, which he hooked forward with one finger, taking a good long look at the narrow band of pubic hair and ripe labia that lay inside, before anointing her sex with the earthy blend. Janice gasped and lifted her head, swallowing hard, and he admired the long column of her throat, almost olive-colored in the azure glow of the lamps. He pressed his lips against the pulse in her neck, feeling the thready heat of her arousal.

  He began to unbutton her shirt, seeing earth fall from her red brassiere. The black compost lay on her breasts like snow in reverse. He bent his head and blew gently to remove the soil, watching her nipples crinkle like hazelnuts—then he took one small breast as far into his mouth as he could, feeling the earthy grains like black sugar, and let his tongue coat her in slippery moisture. Her hands slipped into his hair and then her nails ran gently down his back, making him shudder. He felt her pinch his ass, light, sharp movements that just aroused him further and he let his teeth test her nipple, elongating it gently before letting it slip from his mouth. Her back arched, offering the breast to him again and he sucked hard on her flesh, leaving a ripe strawberry mark on its curve. She grabbed his head with surprising force and pushed it down further, so he let himself drop to his knees and slide the panties down. He was ready to eat her, more than ready, but she made it clear that wasn’t her interest.

  Instead—as soon as the panties and jeans cleared her free ankle, and were piled around her bound foot—she used her hands to open herself. He stood back to watch as she began to roll her clitoris between her thumb and forefinger, holding her outer lips wide so he could see deep inside her. She was as dark in her hidden depths as her coal-colored hair had suggested, but the sheen of juice over her inner labia caught the light like tinsel, gleaming violet and mauve. She tried to spread her legs, but was pinioned by the tied ankle, so he stepped forward again to help her, lifting her free leg onto the bench so she was wide-spread in front of him. Without taking his eyes from the view, he reached for his cock and began to stroke himself in time with her hand, seeing her face with his peripheral vision, watching as her mouth opened and she smiled into his eyes, her teeth gleaming in the blue light, her tongue licking her glistening lips. It still wasn’t clear to him if this was an invitation to sex or simply a mad moment, brought on by the novelty of being alone together at night, and he was determined to let her set the pace. Janice began to shudder, her breasts jiggling and her other hand traveling down to press two fingers deep into her slit.