He actually paused to let her pass through the door first and then followed through the crowd to the railing along the edge of the deck. The searing heat of earlier in the day had fizzled from the air, leaving in its place a pleasant warmth that stroked all along her limbs. Their rooms faced the western sky, through which a stunner of an Oklahoma sunset was spilling, tinting the cottony cumulus clouds gathered low along the horizon a sizzling magenta. The sky just above was a brilliant, artificial-looking teal, and although a native and not much for abject admiration of anything, Bryce couldn’t help but sigh. The spilled jewels of sunset light almost erased the barren stretch of four-lane interstate, momentarily making the view a lovely one.
“That about says it all,” he added, leaning to brace his forearms on the railing. They had ended up slightly away from the noise and her friends seemed to have dispersed to parts unknown; she thought she could distinguish Trish’s voice from among those who had wandered to the pool, where several girls were screeching about not wanting to get thrown in. But it felt right; she couldn’t imagine being with anyone other than him right now. Or ever, but that was of course insane. Bryce leaned on her own arms beside him, her heart clubbing against her breastbone, feeling as though she were being pulled along much more quickly than she had intended; though, truthfully, she had woken this morning intending nothing much at all.
He was very close to her, his profile crisply defined against the darkening bowl of sky arching above the motel. Bryce locked her fingers together tightly around her beer can; his dark hair had fallen slightly over his forehead, and she had been this close to brushing it back. She was aware of him through every pore in her body, along every nerve ending to the interiors of her bones. Visions of herself straddling him kept flashing into her mind, her thighs tight around him while he clutched her hips in his big hands, grinning up at her…
She gulped a little and he moved his right elbow closer to her left, nudging her slightly without looking over at her; she was suddenly struck with the absurd notion that he had been witnessing the vision exactly like she had, as though it were projected into the air in front them, suspended about 12 feet above the blacktop of the motel parking lot. To break some of the intensity, she bent down and set her beer can on the concrete with a soft clink.
“So, what’s–”
“I’m–” she laughed, a little huffing release of tension, and he took control of the situation as she stood back to her full height.
“You first,” he said politely. He had utterly hypnotic long-lashed eyes that crinkled slightly at the corners as he smiled. She tried to place him chronologically. He seemed to be about 25. Goddamn. She was quite certain he had watched many, many pairs of lips parting to speak the word, “Yes.”
“Bryce,” she managed in a whisper. The noise of the party seemed far distant, as though they were making introductions on some other planet, someplace where sparks seemed to come from her lips and touch his.
“I am very pleased to meet you,” he responded quietly, seriously, and then he kissed her. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, leaning with just his face, catching her mouth softly, sweetly, taking her bottom lip between his and sucking it lightly as she felt her knees begin to shake even harder. Her left hand came up and clutched his right arm and it was as solid as she knew it would be. Suddenly he shifted with one fluid motion and his arms came around her tightly, almost fiercely, just as hers lifted way up around his neck. She clutched him, tilting her head to take him even deeper into her embrace, into her mouth, his lips warm and wide and more inviting than anything she had ever known.
She pulled away suddenly, as though waking from a dream, to find him staring down at her in amazement. He kept his arms around her waist, both hands splayed over her back, and he could feel the way her ribs were moving as she breathed fast. She stared up at him and knew a stronger, more urgent want than she ever had in her life.
“Come with me,” she whispered to him, because it was all she wanted to say, or do, all she cared about since the second she’d seen him just a few hours ago.
9 p.m.
The door to 214, his room, closed with a quiet, finalizing click. The shade was drawn and the streetlight from the parking lot cast a blue-white glow through it, silhouetting him as he pulled the t-shirt over his head. His shoulders were unbelievably wide and Bryce opened her arms with no words from where she knelt on the mattress of his solo queen bed.
He moved over her, catching her close, taking her mouth possessively, kissing her like tomorrow he would die, and she was his last reward on earth. She spread her hands over the muscles of his back, solid and hot beneath her fingers, carrying him with her back to the surface of the bed, where he braced himself above her on his forearms, studied her at close range in the dimness of the room, with her hair fanned out all around her head. He cupped her temples with his huge hands, brushed his thumbs over her cheeks again and again, tenderly, stirred implausibly to feel her pulse beating wildly against his palms. Her breath stroked his face, fast and sweet, and he was hard as a rock against her through his jeans and her panties, the only thing she was wearing other than her bra. He wished he had been the one to remove her clothes, but she had been a step ahead.
“I want you,” he told her, low and serious, no trace of a smile, while he nearly gritted his teeth to stop from impaling her on the spot.
“I want you, too,” she managed in a harsh whisper, and spread her thighs beneath him, no hint of a smile either. Her eyes were night-dark, huge and almost solemn in her delicate face. He moved so suddenly she gasped, feeling the heat from his hands as her panties flew from her body and his jeans came down with a ripping sound. His lips were on her neck, his mouth moving over her collarbone, her right shoulder, her left, then onto her nipples, which were small and tight in his mouth.
She moaned, threaded her fingers into the silky hair on his head, scraped her nails against his scalp, holding him hard against her breasts. He took her hips in his grasp and then moved one hand to cup her even lower, and she arched up against him, which only stirred him more. She was liquid heat inside and he moved gently down her body and breathed lightly against her sensitive skin.
“OhmyGod,” she gasped out, both hands in his hair, and he clutched her hips in both hands, bringing her up to meet his mouth, his tongue. “Don’t stop, don’t stop,” she was saying, deep in her throat, and he thought, I won’t, baby, I won’t.
He was too revved to last long, sliding deep minutes later with his first powerful stroke, bringing her almost to climax right there, she who hadn’t felt the urge to come in so long. She dug her nails into his shoulders, hanging on as he pounded into her, surging up to meet his cock with her head thrown back. He clamped his teeth on her right shoulder as he came, so hard he almost saw double, and she cried out loud enough to wake the dead, not to mention everyone next door. But music from the party was thrumming against the wall, muffling any sound they could have made.
11 p.m.
The lamp beside the bed was on and his tongue was moving low on her belly as he traced an invisible line along from navel to pelvis. Bryce lay again with her head arched back, eyes closed, arms wide in joy or supplication, or the median of both. Her heart was surging against her ribs and his hands were huge and strong around her parted thighs. No thoughts right now, none. He filled her senses the way the sun filled her eyes on a cloudless day, the way drugs did. The how and why didn’t matter right now.
Suddenly he was inside her again, slower this time, a waltz rather than a slam dance. She opened her eyes to see him above her, his torso gleaming golden in the soft light, his eyes so dark, a color with plummeting depth to it, like a nighttime well. His dark hair tap-tap-tapped the sides of his forehead as he moved within her, looking so seriously at her that she curled into him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders with a sense of fierce possession, pulling him to her, and as she did he grinned at her, dimples in both cheeks, and she came just seeing them.
“Yes,”
she murmured. His lips met hers again, her back arched and her belly pressed tight to his, slick with sweat.
“Yes,” he told her back, licking her throat in gentle strokes, tasting salt and sweet, not letting himself think about anything but that taste.
1 a.m.
His back was all muscle, his skin smooth and so very warm beneath her fingertips. She bent her head and licked him gently along his spine, the way a mama cat would. Her hair was thick and humid around her face, and she titled her head to the right and swept her hair over him, nape to tailbone, loving the way he groaned deep in his throat. She rolled her head, letting her hair glide over his body in tickling stokes, then her nipples, following the same path, up and down, desire building again between her legs, spilling onto him from where she straddled his hips.
She gasped when he moved suddenly, turning and flipping her neatly under him, then kissing her deeply. She dug her fingernails into his back as he caught her hips in both hands and tipped her up to take him again. She moaned against his neck as he pumped into her, then moved her lips back to his, where his tongue claimed her mouth with strokes that matched the movements below. The room around them was fluid black heat and when she closed her eyes colors flashed fire against the backs of her eyelids and then seemed to explode between them in the air in tiny ecstatic bursts. Guns‘N’Roses thumped against the wall from Amy’s party like an angry, hopped-up neighbor.
Bryce rolled back to the top again where she rode him, fast and churning, her hair a living mass that curtained them both in heat. He moaned, wrapping his wrists with thick strands of it. When he came it was like a volcano inside of her and she bent over him, exhausted, every inch of her glossy with sweat. He clutched her to his chest, impossibly still for a half minute before easing her to his right side, where he buried his face against her warm soft neck, pressing his lips and breathing deeply.
Not long after she was bonelessly asleep against his chest and he lay there for long minutes, thinking the words Jesus Christ and holy shit alternately over and over again. He was shaking a little, inside and out, his arms locked tight around a complete stranger who his body and soul, in that order, had responded to like no one he’d ever known. He was still partly inside of her, even as she slept, and he moved his hips slightly, holding himself deeper within her body.
No protection, the rational part of his brain screeched at him, but somehow, right then and there in the dark motel room, with the sounds of a kick-ass party beating against the southern wall, he didn’t care. He couldn’t make it matter, couldn’t think past holding her, breathing her scent. Tomorrow he would figure this out. Tomorrow he would ask her to marry him, to be his wife. The thought made his chest cave in and he thought, What have you done, Sternhagen? Jesus Christ in heaven.
He was almost asleep when somone tapped on the door to his room 15 minutes later, and he nearly came out of his skin. Bryce mumbled something that sounded like panda bear, but did not wake up, even as he eased his arm from beneath her and rasped at the door in a loud-soft whisper, “Hang on!”
He answered wearing only his jeans, expecting to see one of the people from next door, like the red-haired, sharp-eyed girl Bryce had arrived at the motel with only hours earlier. His playful smile and the excuse fell from his lips as he opened the door to a tall skinny guy wearing a motel uniform. The guy kept glancing between him and the party next door.
“You Matthew Sternhagen?” he asked. “There’s a phone call for you in the lobby.”
“What do you mean, in the goddamn lobby?” he practically growled in response. “No one knows I’m here.”
“Exactly what it sounds like, buddy. Apparently your room phone isn’t working,” he replied, attempting to peer over Matthew’s shoulder. Matthew immediately brought the door to his side and lowered his chin and eyebrows just slightly. The motel clerk swallowed visibly and eased backward. “Long distance,” he added unnecessarily over his shoulder as he hurried away.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Matthew muttered, hastily grabbing a shirt, pulling it over his head with one hand. He hurried back to the warmth of the bed, brushed Bryce’s hair away from her cheek and kissed her tenderly in the same spot. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart,” he whispered.
7 a.m.
The drawn shade had allowed enough murky light into the room to poke Bryce in the eye, and she blinked twice, disoriented, staring up at a water-stained ceiling. She was completely naked, sore inside. Her hair was an unGodly tangled mess. She was dying of thirst. And she was utterly alone in the room.
Chapter Two
Middleton, Oklahoma – Sunday, June 18, 1995
“Bryce, you are fucking kidding me. And he didn’t even say good-bye.”
They were crowded on one of the two beds in Amy’s room; Amy was snoring with total abandon from the other, one tanned bare leg hanging over the edge of the mattress. The shade was thrown wide, allowing harsh morning sunlight to illuminate the excesses of the previous night: smashed cans, leaking cans, dribbling bottles, abandoned swimsuits, two greasy pizza boxes, dried-out pizza crust and several torn condom wrappers. The warm smell of coffee drifted from the bathroom counter, where Stacy had a second complimenatry pot perking. The first was in two foam cups, one of which Bryce simply held to her nose, seeking refuge in the familiar smell. The crackly first sip of coffee and the joint Trish had produced from her purse made it now possible for her to talk.
She had just spent 20 minutes puking her guts out in the toilet in 214, sick at herself for being such a moron, such a complete slut. He was gone like a 50 dollar bill, a tiny used bottle of motel shampoo lying sadly on the counter the only testament that he had in fact been there hours before. The sheets were hurricane-scrambled, and Bryce had stared at the bed with both arms folded tight against her ribs, picturing them last night, her belly falling woozily again and again, as though she were on an endless mile-high roller coaster, as though she hadn’t just brought up every last thing in there moments ago. She had come all over him multiple times, had let him do things to her that no one, even Wade her boyfriend of five plus years, had ever done. And worst of all, she had loved it, insanely, jealously, madly loved every second of it, would go back in time and do it all over. How could she have fallen into such a classic trap? She was nobody’s fool, goddamn it. And she would have bet her last dollar last night that he wasn’t that guy…the kind of guy who would do that to a woman, who would hit and run like that. Something in his eyes that she felt at a bone-deep level told her that, and yet now here she was alone and second-guessing her intuition.
“I can’t believe I’m so stupid,” she said to Trish, her voice gravelly from vomiting.
“Honey, you are not stupid,” Stacy told her, breezing in from the bathroom with a hot pot of coffee, which she poured into Trish’s cup. “But you can’t tell me you thought that guy was here to stay, can you?”
“Yeah, but he could have had the decency to say good-bye, thanks, so long, you’re the best, maybe I’ll call,” Trish added, scooting carefully closer to Bryce, balancing her cup and a lit cigarette.
Bryce stared into the depths of her own cup and managed another tiny sip. Her insides had calmed thanks to the weed and she sighed, curling her legs up closer to her chest. “I didn’t exactly expect to marry him,” she said with an air of irony. “But…oh my God, you guys, this is so cliché I could puke all over again…I didn’t even get his name. We made love the entire night and I don’t even know what to call him.”
“Motel Man,” Stacy supplied, giggling around the filter in her lips as she lit her own smoke.
Bryce glared blackly at her.
“The Fremont Fucker,” Trish put in, getting into the spirit, and they laughed even harder. “That one is sort of a double entendre, get it?”
“God, Amy is going to be so jealous,” Stacy told Bryce, blowing smoke at their prostrate friend. “She was all ready to go and tap on his door in her drunk-ass state of mind, offer herself up like a side of expensive beef.”
> “What? Kevin was here,” Trish cried out, almost spilling her coffee she was laughing so hard. “At the party! What was she thinking?”
“You know how they are,” Stacy rolled her bright blue eyes affectionately, then turned her gaze pointedly at Bryce. “Speaking of that! What if, just by chance, Wade had showed his sorry ass last night?”
“Oh, Jesus,” Bryce groaned, clutching her forehead. “Okay, so it’s our secret, right?”
“Hey, I won’t lose any sleep over you messing around,” Trish said. “He deserves it.”
“Same for me, Bryster, you little slut,” Stacy teased, then wriggled her eyebrows. “So it was fucking amazing, right?”
Bryce felt her insides go weightless again and closed her eyes for a second. Trish set her cup on the bedside table and grabbed Bryce’s knee.
“You’re actually blushing, Bryce,” she observed. “It was the Special X, wasn’t it?”
“No!” she snapped, surprising everyone in the room. “It wasn’t the goddamn drugs. I was way down by then.”
“Shit, I knew it. I knew he was a stud horse from the second I saw him,” Trish said, raising her eyebrows at Stacy as Bryce sipped coffee obliviously.
“A stud horse with no morals, go figure,” Stacy said.
“This is a lesson, right?” Bryce asked rhetorically, doing her best to ignore the fact that the bed they were sitting upon was exactly like the one next door, down to the teal-blue and rust patterning on the spread. “A very strict lesson. I know better now.”
“Better than what? If I ever see him again, I’ll knee him in the nuts,” Trish said helpfully, tucking wayward bangs behind her left ear. Her dark mascara, like Bryce and Stacy’s, had journeyed down her cheeks during the night.
“I think we can rest assured we’ll never see him again,” Stacy said, as Amy muttered something that sounded like banana pancakes.
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