by Penny Reid
My eyes travel the length of her and enjoy her form. The shade and shape of her legs, heightened by shadows cast from the single light source. She’s reclining on the couch, eReader propped on her stomach.
Desires war. As such, I can only watch her in stillness.
I need her.
When I write, speaking is an obstacle. I struggle to abdicate thoughts that are shadows of my feelings and passions. Giving words to these feral impulses never does them justice because they are not my will; their course leads to no action, and expressing them is an exercise in unceasing frustration. But withholding them from the page is a path to insanity.
I once tried to burn the words, thinking passage through fire would release me. I was wrong. I mourned the loss, and rejoiced when I found the book had been saved.
“Drew, will you read it to me?” Her eyes remind me of the ocean.
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
Her smile widens. She peers at me as though she knows me. She does. She knows me.
“We’ve been together, what? Almost a year now? And I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve read your poetry to me out loud. Besides, you’re giving me that look.”
“What look?”
“Like I’m cake, so I know it’s a good one.” Her eyebrows move up and down.
I continue to smile, but I say nothing.
Words are clumsy things. Raw, wild, hunger, need, desperation, fascination do not adequately define how I long for her complete capitulation. I want her to weep. I want to quietly tear her apart and lovingly watch her bleed. I crave knowing that I can inspire one tenth of the torment she inspires in me. How can I speak such things out loud?
I need her.
Her surrender, mine to possess and exploit. This ambition remains intangible because, though I feel it, I do not wish it. I communicate this greed only through poetry, and poetry serves as an imperfect allegory.
Ashley huffs. Her eyes narrow. I know the workings of her mind; she is contemplating trickery. She sets her eReader to the floor and comes to me on her knees, her arms around my neck, her breasts pressing against my shoulder. I lament the invention of clothes.
“Drew, if you won’t read to me, maybe you’ll sing for me?” Her lips are close to mine and I need to taste her.
I shake my head, keeping my words soft so as not to betray the ferocity of my need. “No, Sugar. Not tonight.”
“Are you going to the jam session with me tomorrow? Cletus is back in town, and I’m bringing coleslaw for the twins.”
“Yes. We should go.” I’m coming out of the tunnel and speaking, communicating is less cumbersome.
“And you will sing for me then?”
“Yes, if you’ll sing with me.”
“It’s a deal.” She seals it with a kiss and I don’t let her go. I take her sweet mouth until I feel her grow restless. I close my book and turn away from it. I remove the veil of her clothes and I settle for being the implement by which she loses control.
I would never hurt her, not through action, deed, or word. I long to soothe her, pet her, hold her fears, burden her sorrows, be the instrument of her ecstasy. I am her safe place and she is mine.
I need her.
Being the method of her madness fuels me. I watch her pant, feeling her uncontainable hot breath spill against my skin, and it is like water to the thick weeds that tangle and choke my ignoble instincts.
I should not always like to write poetry. I should like to live it.
But if I could pick and choose the poems I live, I would not always be joy, nor would I want inert contentment. Sorrow and struggle bring gravity to the soul and to the mind, a gravity that cannot be achieved through mere happiness. We are most awake to the world and to our own longings and desires when we suffer.
Ashley stretches, arching her back, and the lithe movement demonstrates how powerless my body is to the promise of her body, and with it, the promise of pleasure, of vulnerability, of communal closeness. Her hands are above her head, and her obsidian hair tangles with pale arms. I hold her wrists.
If sorrow as a force is gravity, and mere happiness is inertia, then love and being in love is momentum. A force built upon actions of the past, moving us.
We move.
I see her. She is beneath me. Her body is slick, yielding softness, sweetness replete. I want to worship, yet need to possess. I suffer because she is forever anticipation, even when I hold her, fill her, taste her, dominate her, consume her.
I need her.
~The End~
About the Author
Penny Reid lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband, three kids, and an inordinate amount of yarn. She used to spend her days writing federal grant proposals as a biomedical researcher, but now she just writes books.
As of 2016, Penny has published 11 novels.
Come find me-
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Read on for:
Penny Reid Book List
Sneak Peek: First chapter of Truth or Beard (book #1 in the Winston Brothers series)
Sneak Peek: First chapter of Ninja at First Sight (book #4.75 in the Knitting in the City series)
Sneak Peek: First Chapter of Dating-ish (book #6 in the Knitting in the City series)
Sneak Peek: First Chapter of Beard in Mind (book #4 in the Winston Brothers series)
Other books by Penny Reid
Knitting in the City Series
(Contemporary Romantic Comedy)
Neanderthal Seeks Human: A Smart Romance (#1)
Neanderthal Marries Human: A Smarter Romance (#1.5)
Friends without Benefits: An Unrequited Romance (#2)
Love Hacked: A Reluctant Romance (#3)
Beauty and the Mustache: A Philosophical Romance (#4)
Ninja at First Sight (#4.75)
Happily Ever Ninja: A Married Romance (#5)
Dating-ish: A Humanoid Romance (#6)
Marriage of Inconvenience (#7, coming 2017)
Winston Brothers Series
(Contemporary Romantic Comedy, spinoff of Beauty and the Mustache)
Truth or Beard (#1)
Grin and Beard It (#2)
Beard Science (#3)
Beard in Mind (#4, coming August 1 2017)
Dr. Strange Beard (#5, coming 2018)
Beard Necessities (#6, coming 2018)
Hypothesis Series
(New Adult Romantic Comedy)
Elements of Chemistry: ATTRACTION, HEAT, and CAPTURE (#1)
Laws of Physics: MOTION, SPACE, and TIME (#2, coming 2018)
Fundamentals of Biology: STRUCTURE, EVOLUTION, and GROWTH (#3, coming 2019)
Irish Players (Rugby) Series – by L.H. Cosway and Penny Reid
(Contemporary Sports Romance)
The Hooker and the Hermit (#1)
The Pixie and the Player (#2)
The Cad and the Co-ed (#3)
Sneak Peek: Truth or Beard (Available Now!)
Book #1 in the Winston Brothers series
~Jessica~
I pulled into the Green Valley Community Center parking lot and scared the crap out
of five senior citizens.
Even though it was Halloween, inducing heart attacks in the geriatric population was not on my agenda. Unfortunately for everyone within earshot, while I’d dutifully stopped as they crossed in front of my vehicle, my truck made a ghastly, high-pitched whining sound. This happened whenever it idled.
The five of them jumped, obviously startled, and glared at me as though I’d commanded the truck to make the screech on purpose. Soon their glares morphed into wrinkled squints of befuddlement, their eyes moving over my appearance from my perch. It took them a few minutes, but they recognized me.
Everyone in Green Valley Tennessee knew who I was.
Nevertheless, I imagined they were not expecting to see Jessica James, the twenty-one year old daughter of Sheriff Jeffrey James and sister of Sheriff’s Deputy Jackson James, dressed in a long white beard sitting behind the wheel of an ancient Ford Super Duty F-350 XL.
In my defense, it wasn’t my monster truck. It was my mother’s. I was currently between automobiles, and she’d just upgraded to a newer, bigger, more intimidating model. Something she could plaster with bumper stickers that said,
Have You Kissed Your Sheriff Today? and
Don’t Drink and DERIVE, Alcohol and Calculus Don’t Mix, and
Eat Steak!! The West Wasn’t Won With Salad.
As the local sheriff’s wife, mother to a police officer (my brother) and math teacher (me), and the daughter of a cattle rancher, I think she felt it was her duty to use the wide canvas of her truck as a mobile pro-police, mathematics, and beef billboard.
I waited patiently for them to look their fill, giving them a small smile which they wouldn’t see behind my beard. Being stared at didn’t bother me much. After a few more minutes of confused gawking, the gang of seniors shuffled off toward the entrance to the community center, casting cautiously confused glances over their shoulders.
As quickly as I could, I maneuvered the beast into a space at the edge of the lot. Since inheriting the truck I usually parked on the edge of parking lots so as not to be that jerk who drives an oversized vehicle and takes up two spaces.
I adjusted my beard, tossing the three-foot, white length over my shoulder, and grabbed my gray cape and wizard hat. Then I tried not to fall out of the truck or flash anyone on my hike down from the driver’s seat. Luckily, my costume also called for a long staff, and I leveraged the polished wood to aid my descent; the rest of my costume was negligible—a one-piece mini-skirt sheath dress with a low cut front—and made stretching and moving simple.
I was halfway across the lot, lost in delighted mental preparation for my father and brother’s scowls of disapproval, when I heard my name.
“Jessica, wait up.” I turned, found my coworker and friend Claire jogging toward me. I set my wizard hat—which had a built-in wig—on my head and waved.
“I thought that was you. I saw the beard and the staff.” She slowed as she neared, her eyes moving over the rest of my costume. “You’ve made some… modifications.”
“Yes.” I nodded proudly, grinning at her warily amused expression. I noted that Claire hadn’t changed since work; she was still wearing an adorable Raggedy Ann costume. Lucky for her, she already had bright red hair and freckles. All she had to do was put her long locks in pig tails, add the overalls and white cap.
“Do you like what I’ve done?” I twisted to one side then the other to show off my new garment and the high-heeled strappy sandals.
“Are you still Gandalf? Or what are you supposed to be?”
“Yeah, I’m still Gandalf. But now I’m sexy Gandalf.” I wagged my eyebrows.
Claire covered her mouth with a white-gloved hand then snorted. “Oh my God! You are a nut!”
A sinister giggle escaped my lips. I’m not much of a giggler unless I’ve done something sinister. “Well, I couldn’t wear it to work. But I love the irony of it, you know? All those stupid Halloween costumes that women are expected to wear, like sexy nurse and sexy witch and sexy bee. I’ve actually seen a ‘sexy bee’ costume. Am I missing something? Is there a subset of men who get off thinking about pollinators?”
“I agree. You can’t wear the sexy Gandalf costume to work. In addition to being against the dress code, you’re already starring in the sex fantasies of all your male students as their hot calculus teacher. If you’d worn sexy Gandalf at school instead of regular Gandalf, I think they’d go home feeling confused about their sexuality.”
I laughed and shook my head, thinking how odd the last three months had been.
Like me, Claire was a native of Green Valley; also like me, she’d moved back to town after college. However, where I was here only temporarily—just for the few years until I paid off my student debt—Claire was here to stay. She’d become the drama and band teacher during my senior year of high school. Now we were coworkers. With her gorgeous red hair, light blue eyes, and a strikingly beautiful face, during my senior year as well as now, she was labeled the hot drama teacher.
She even had those awesome high cheekbones that magazines talk about, with the little hollow above the jaw. Add to her stunning good looks the most laid-back, kind, generous, and all-around talented person I’d ever met, she should have been in New York or Milan living the life of a muse or a model or a concert pianist.
But she had sad eyes.
Claire had married her childhood sweetheart. Her husband, Ben McClure, had been a marine; he’d died overseas two years ago. Having no other family to speak of, I surmised that Claire was still living in Green Valley because she wanted to stay near his family.
Meanwhile, I’d been in the thespians my sophomore through senior year of high school and was a therefore labeled as one of those drama kids—so, for my school, that basically meant weird and funny.
I didn’t marry my childhood sweetheart because I didn’t have one, though I kissed lots of boys because I liked kissing boys. Kissing boys also had the delightful byproduct of aggravating my sheriff father and overprotective brother. Essentially, I’d left home for college an angsty, but well-mannered good girl. So, a typical teenager.
But upon my return to Green Valley High School (just a short four years later), same school with the same social order and subsets, I’d now become a new stereotype.
I was the hot math teacher.
I’d never thought of myself as the hot anything. Don’t get me wrong, I had a perfectly fine self-image. But I guess in comparison to Mr. Trantem—the previous and now recently retired math teacher—the fact that I had boobs and was under eighty-five meant I might as well have been Charlize Theron.
I shivered as a gust of late autumn wind met my excess of bare skin.
“Come on,” Claire looped her arm through mine. “Let’s get inside before you freeze your beard off.”
I followed her into the old school building. As we neared I heard the telltale sounds of folk music drifting out of the open double doors.
It was Friday night, and that meant nearly every able-bodied person in a thirty-mile radius was gathering for the jam session at the Green Valley Community Center. As it was Halloween I noted the place had been decorated with paper skeletons, carved pumpkins, and orange and black streamers. The old school had been converted only seven years earlier, and the jam sessions started shortly thereafter.
Everyone in Green Valley would start their evening here. Even if it hadn’t been Halloween, married folks with kids would leave first, followed by the elderly. Then the older teenagers would go off, likely to Cooper’s field for a drunken bonfire. Those that were adult, unmarried, and childless would leave next.
I was clumsily and hesitantly trying to find my way in this new single adult subgroup.
Before I left for college, I was part of the Cooper’s field, teenager, drunken bonfire subset, even though I usually didn’t stay long and never got drunk. But I always managed to find a boy to kiss before I left.
Whereas, where each individual from the unattached adult cluster (to which I now belonged) ended the
evening would depend heavily on that person’s personal goals. If the goal was to have good, clean fun, then you typically went to Genie’s Country Western bar for dancing and darts. If the goal was to get laid, then you typically went to The Wooden Plank, a biker bar just on the edge of town. If the goal was to get laid and cause trouble, then maybe get laid again, then you went to The Dragon Biker bar, several miles outside of town and home of a biker club named The Iron Order.
Or, if you were like me—no longer an angst-filled, rebellious adolescent looking for boys to kiss—and the goal was to relax and grade a week’s worth of calculus assignments, then you went home, put on flannel PJs, and turned on The Travel Channel for background noise and inspiration.
I spotted my father before he spotted me as a crowd had gathered; he was speaking animatedly to someone I could not see. My daddy was standing at the table just inside the entrance where a big glass bowl had been placed to collect donations. He was, as always, wearing his uniform.
Claire stood on her tiptoes then tried leaning to the side to gauge the cause of the crowd. “Looks like they’re doing trick-or-treating. I see a bunch of kids in costume, and there’s a bucket of candy at the table.”
I nodded, glancing down one of the short hallways then the other. Music came from only one of the room, but there was a mass of kids going in and out of the five classrooms, each with either a decorated pillow case or an orange plastic Jack O'Lantern bucket to hold their treats.
I leaned close to Claire to suggest we skip the line and make our donations later when my eyes snagged on a red-haired and bearded man coming out of one of the classrooms, holding the hand of a blonde little girl—not more than seven—dressed like Tinker Bell.
I felt a shock, a jolt from my throat travel down my collarbone to my fingertips, weave through my chest and belly and hips and thighs. I lost my breath on a startled gasp. The shock was followed by a suffusion of spreading warmth and levels of intense self-consciousness—the magnitude of which I hadn’t experienced in years.
