by Anne Conley
“I’m honest with myself. That’s the first thing. And I’m honest with other people. Life’s too short to waste energy on dishonesty. And I’m not ashamed of how I feel.” He squeezed her hand, and the warmth he imparted in the simple gesture gave her hope.
It was selfish to hope, she knew this. But the greedy part of her wanted this. Needed it with a force so deep she didn’t want to explore it for fear of finding herself lacking.
“You probably have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said quietly.
“Oh, sure I do. Everybody does. I just know that I can’t change what’s happened in the past, and I need to move on from it. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, absolutely. But I’ve apologized and moved on.”
She ate in silence, gulping her wine between bites. Les continued refilling her cup each time it was emptied. When he was finished eating, he squeezed her hand one last time before letting it go, and Charlie felt a distinct emptiness as he got up and picked up his guitar from the corner before returning to his chair.
He softly strummed the strings, like a lover’s caress, as Charlie finished eating. When she was done, she leaned back and closed her eyes, letting Les’s music flow over her.
His style was classical—a mix of strumming and picking, with occasional taps on the body of the instrument. It had a full sound, a quality that juxtaposed with the wine flowing through her veins and made her want to move. The melody filled the air in the room, giving it a distinct quality, a warmth she felt cocooned in.
Her legs were twitching to the music, a tune she didn’t recognize, as Les hummed to himself while he played. His bare feet tapping his rhythm.
Charlie had decided this was her favorite time of the day, after they’d eaten and were winding down from their drive, and Les got out his guitar to play. He seemed to lose himself in the music strumming from his fingers, and he exuded this air of confidence. Sure he seemed confident other times, but it seemed like a bit of a façade, as if he was playing a part. But when he played, he was all Les.
His eyes were closed as he played, whatever was happening inside his head was all his. So Charlie stood and strode to the center of the room, feeling emboldened by alcohol. Closing her eyes, she swayed to the music, letting it wash over her as she danced. Unsure if she was doing it for Les or herself, Charlie let go of her inhibitions and writhed and stretched, feeling the beat of the music in her bones.
Her eyes opened to see Les staring at her, a vague smile on his face. His eyes had filled with desire as he watched her, and when she closed her eyes again, he deepened the song.
He switched to a grinding beat, thumping the body with his hands between deep primal cords. Charlie’s hips gyrated in time with the music and her hands roamed her waist, down her hips as she swayed to the music.
It was no longer a light, upbeat song; it was driving and punishing her. The music was coursing through her body, pulsing in her veins, her core clenching with need. Les was making her horny with his music, and the wine was taking away all pretense of decorum. She stood in front of him, telling him what she wanted with her body as she danced for him, touching her body, pretending it was his hands on her skin: running over her hips, up her waist, down her thighs, across her breasts.
With a twanging thud, the music stopped and before Charlie could open her eyes, Les’s mouth was on hers, his tongue sliding against it in an erotic dance of two primal beings.
She entwined her hands in his hair, pulling him closer, opening herself up to him, while his hands did what her own had been doing earlier, roaming across her body, as if having no idea where to settle. His heat crashed into her, inflaming her. Charlie moaned into his mouth, eager for his touch, to feel him. They’d had sex the night before, but she wanted more, she wanted to remember, to know what he felt like. To know how he made her feel.
Les pushed her toward the bed, landing on top of her in a tangle of limbs, never breaking their kiss. His mouth on hers was hungry, desperate, and she reciprocated eagerly—letting go for Les, because this was a relationship. A real one.
Kissing Les opened a fount of emotion for Charlie, emotions she hadn’t felt in over a decade, emotions she’d locked away, and only now was allowing loose. She relished the feel of his hot mouth as it worked over hers, nibbling, sucking. She tugged his bottom lip into her mouth, biting it to feel his hiss of air across her lips.
One hand crept across her stomach, while the other crawled up her thigh, the calluses setting her nerve endings on fire. His mouth trailed kisses to her jaw and over to her ear, his hot breath sending tingling sensations straight to her core.
Tugging at his shirt, she tried to lift it over his head, but he stopped her, pinning his body on top of hers so she couldn’t move.
“Wait.” He breathed raggedly into her neck, his back heaving with the effort to regain control.
“Why?” It was obvious he wanted to do this; his hard-on was pulsing into her thigh.
He didn’t answer her at first, and she thought he might capitulate and give in, but she was disappointed.
“It’s too fast.”
Too fast? Sex was next, wasn’t it? They were adults, consenting adults, needing release. At least, she was needing it. Besides, they’d already done it once, maybe now he was sober, he didn’t want it? Had something happened while they did it last night? What the hell had she done?
She pushed him off her and sat up, embarrassed, straightening her clothes. “Okay,” she mumbled, shame firing her face.
His arms came around her and she resisted the impulse to melt into his embrace. “Hey, what’s wrong? Did I do something?”
Back to his self-doubt tendencies. Ugh.
“No, apparently I did. Sorry.” She strode to the bathroom, ignoring his protests and locked the door behind her. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, taking her time getting ready for bed. She didn’t want to go back out there with him.
Fuck. Les muttered curses as he stalked back and forth across the tiny motel room, clutching snatches of his hair, wanting to break down the bathroom door and bury himself inside Charlie. What the fuck was he thinking? He’d turned her down, and she’d taken it personally. It’s just that everything with her was raw, and he didn’t want to fuck it up by blasting through everything willy-nilly, giving into base impulses.
But now that she’d locked herself in the bathroom, not giving him a chance to explain, he regretted the decision to take things slow. He wanted her, needed her. But he’d wanted to build up to it, not rush into it. He wanted to take his time, show her she was special. She’d only just agreed to try something with him, did sex have to be the first thing they did together? His own insecurities rushed through his head. What if he didn’t satisfy her needs in bed? Usually, he felt pretty confident about that, but Charlie was so different, he wasn’t really sure what her needs would be, besides the obvious.
He threw himself onto one of the beds, crossing his elbow over his face, exhaling loudly. How many times could he fuck up?
When she opened the bathroom door, she didn’t say anything, just stalked over to her suitcase and pulled out some pajamas. Finally, she turned to him.
“I don’t want to talk about this, Les.” She reached around under her shirt behind her and unclasped her bra. It was a mechanical movement, nothing seductive about it, but Les watched raptly nonetheless. When her hand crawled up her sleeve to pull down her bra strap, then up the other to pull the entire thing out the other sleeve before tossing a blur of black lace into her suitcase, Les was hard again. He crossed his legs to hide it, swallowing thickly before he spoke again.
“You can’t keep doing that.”
“Doing what?” She pulled an oversized tee shirt over her head, tugging it down over her torso and moved around underneath everything. Les realized she was changing clothes in front of him, without showing anything at all.
Fuck.
“Not talking about stuff. Shit happens, people talk about it. That’s how they get past it.” His voice sound
ed funny.
“You sound like my shrinkage. No. I don’t talk about stuff, I bury it.” She pulled her undershirt up over her head, leaving the sleep shirt in place, before unsnapping her jeans.
Les sat up in the bed. “Look. I don’t want to rush into sex with you while whatever this is is so new. I want our first time to be special.” He mentally high-fived himself at his ability to form coherent sentences while she stripped off her jeans and panties in front of him and put on a clean pair.
“Second.”
“What?”
“Our second time, or were you too drunk to remember last night, too?”
He ran a hand through his hair in confusion. She thought they’d had sex last night. Suddenly, so many things from today made sense. “We didn’t have sex last night.” He watched the confusion flit across her face. “Did you think we did?” She nodded, chewing the inside of her mouth crossing her hands over her chest in a gesture of self-preservation. “Will you come here?” Charlie chewing on her cheek gave her face the look of a prudish librarian.
“No. If you want to talk, talk. I’ll…listen from over here.” She leaned on the built-in behind her, arms still crossed across her chest.
“Okay, first of all, you were blitzed last night. I make love with conscious women, thank you very much. And second of all, I want you so bad I can hardly see straight. I don’t want you to think that’s not the case.” He sighed in frustration at the look of disbelief on her face. “Did you honestly think we did it last night? Don’t you remember anything?”
She shook her head. “Not after realizing we were at a sex club. I don’t remember much of anything after that. Yesterday was bad for me.”
He held his arms out for her. He wanted to go get her and bring her back, but his self-esteem wanted her to want to come to him. He prayed she would, and his heart sank as he watched her shake her head at him.
“You remind me so much of someone.” She clutched her arms tighter around her chest, and seemed to shrink inside herself. He longed to open her up. “Someone from a long time ago.”
Okay, an ex-boyfriend. This he could handle. Maybe. “Can you tell me about him?”
Charlie sighed before walking over to get her blanket and going to the chair Les had sat in earlier. It was as far away from him as she could get, physically. He thought he’d lost her. He leaned back with a frustrated sigh, getting ready to throw in the towel.
Then she started talking.
“Adam saved me. He rescued me from a sick situation, and exposed me to a side of life I’d never known before. He showed me what a family was supposed to be like, and tried to be what he thought I needed. But I was young and didn’t understand anything but the life I’d already lived, and I shit all over him and his attention.” She hugged her knees to her chest and withdrew further into her own mind, silently weeping. Through her tears, she continued. “I’ll just do the same to you. Run now, while you can.”
Feeling completely impotent, Les did the only thing he could. He got out of bed and walked over to Charlie, scooping her up in his arms and carried her back to bed with him. He lay down beside her and pulled her into his arms, feeling her stiffen at first, then relax into him.
“I’ve been shit on before, Sweetness.” That got a small snort from her, and he chose to think it might have been a laugh, but he couldn’t see her face to know for sure. He inhaled her scent deeply, treasuring the feel of her in his arms. “What makes you think you’d do the same thing with me? Just because I remind you of him, doesn’t mean things will turn out the same.”
She spoke into his chest; he could feel the warmth of her words. “Because you’re a flowers and chocolates sort of guy, like Adam. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Mix-tapes.”
“What?” She pulled back and looked at his face to see if he was joking. He rewarded her with a wry smile.
“Girls eat chocolate and hate themselves afterward, the flowers die. I do mixtapes. That way, after they dump me, they will always have something to remind them of what stellar taste I have in music.”
“Oh,” she sniffed.
“I’ll make you one when we get back.”
She chuckled at him. “I don’t have a cassette player.”
Shrugging, he replied, “I’ve gotten into the twenty-first century. I’ll make you a flash-drive, Sweetness.”
She smiled a watery smile at him, and he felt something inside him lurch. “I’d like that.”
Les pulled her closer, enjoying the warmth of her body next to his. “Go to sleep, Charlie. I’ve got you.”
Chapter 14
From prepared Congressional report entitled: “Sex Trafficking of Children in the United States: Overview and Issues for Congress”
“…it has been suggested that minor victims of sex trafficking—while too young to consent to sexual activity with adults—may at times be labeled as prostitutes or juvenile delinquents and treated as criminals rather than being identified and treated as trafficking victims.”
A couple of hours later, Charlie woke up thinking she was about to die. Her head pounded, she was feverish, and she felt like if she moved, her guts would come out through her mouth. She made a mad dash to the bathroom, to find Les already crouched over the toilet, heaving out his insides. Pushing past him, she hurled herself at the shower.
It wasn’t ideal, but with the toilet occupied, it was either that or the sink. She vomited on the floor of the bathtub, then covered it with a towel before sinking into the corner of the bath, too weak to move.
“Shit…” Les croaked when she’d finished, but she sank into the oblivion of sleep soon afterward, not caring she was in a pool of her own vomit.
Les hadn’t been this sick in his life, ever. Some part of him wanted to call his mom, just to hear her voice, see if she had anything he could do. But another part of him was aware that Charlie was sick too, and since he’d been hogging the toilet, she was slumped in the bathtub.
After resting awhile, he managed to get himself to his feet. When he looked into the shower, he saw Charlie sleeping almost peacefully in the corner of the shower stall, curled up, not touching her mess. He lifted Charlie up under her arms.
They stumbled to the bed, collapsing on top of the covers. Les had the presence of mind to get the waste baskets in the room and put them on either side of the bed before he collapsed next to Charlie, exhausted by his efforts.
Charlie was aware she’d been moved, but didn’t care. She just wanted to die. Every pore hurt. In the small bed, each time her fevered skin brushed against Les’s she flinched, unable to bear the sensation of touch. At one point, she leaned over the bed to wretch, not having the energy to go back into the bathroom, and found a trash can there. She clutched it greedily in her hands, tugging it into the bed with her. It was her security the rest of the night and into the morning.
Later, with sunlight streaming into her eyes and drenched in sweat, she realized her fever had broken, and her stomach, though still upset, didn’t feel like it was completely revolting anymore. Her eyes were slits against the offending light as her eyes tried desperately to adjust. Les’s legs against hers weren’t unpleasant anymore. In fact, as she ran her foot up and down the hairy appendage resting against hers, she thought they actually felt nice.
“Mom said Ginger Ale would help a little, so I got you some.” His gentle voice spoke in her ear.
“You called your mom?” She turned to see he’d not only called his mom, but he’d showered and dressed. He was lying next to her fully dressed in shorts and a tee shirt. Next to that, she felt like a pile of what she’d been spewing out all night long.
He had the grace to look sheepish. “Yeah. I’ve never been so sick in my life. I had to, you were indisposed.”
She reached over for the can on her bedside table and opened it, taking a ginger sip of the sweet carbonation. It flowed down her raw throat and a spurt of energy flowed through her instantly.
“I’ve already booked the room for ano
ther night. I figured we’re making good time, we can take a day off to recuperate from whatever happened last night.” He sounded sleepy, and he snuggled into her back.
“I need to shower.” As soon as she had the energy to get out of bed, that was. Although the soda was actually helping.
“I cleaned it out, so it’s all ready for you.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s not like you had a choice. I was being selfish with the toilet.” His hand grazed up her arm. “Are you feeling better?”
“I don’t feel like putting a bullet in my brain anymore, but I could sleep another year,” she yawned. “What time is it?”
“Two-thirty.”
She lurched out of bed, still weak on her feet, and carefully stepped to the bathroom. A shower made her marginally better, and after putting on clean clothes, she slid back between the sheets next to Les, who turned to her in his sleep. She allowed him to envelop her in his warm scent and succumbed to sleep.
Charlie couldn’t remember when she’d slept so soundly. She could always attribute it to the cleansing effects of illness and exhaustion, but something told her that Les’s arms wrapped around her all night might have had something to do with it, too. As she awoke, his soft snores in her ear were soothing in a way she’d never realized was possible. His breath on her neck and the weight of his arm were comforting presences. And his foot resting on top of her ankle was doing strange things to her insides.
Before Les, the last man she’d actually spent the night with was Adam, when they’d been married. Again, she was struck by the similarities between the two men, although Adam hadn’t been much more than a boy when they’d been together. And she had been a mere child.
Was a relationship with Les doomed to the same fate as Adam’s? Or was he right? Had she matured enough to do it right this time? She had no idea how to do what was necessary to hold up her part of the ‘bargain’ known as a relationship. But feeling the strong presence of Les in her bed, she realized she wanted to try.
