by Kasia Fox
Would you be surprised to learn that my husband was not, in fact, a handsome man? You see, I thought I was special because I was attracted to him. I thought I saw a quality that other, lesser, women couldn’t. On the surface, I suppose people might call me meek. Humble. I tried my best to be. Yet inside the privacy of my own skull my thoughts were as base as any other’s. Being drawn to an ugly man didn’t make me special at all; God showed me that many other women were also drawn to him and he to them. This revelation left my ego in critical condition. ‘But he is supposed to feel lucky to have me,’ I thought.
The prince, my dark parishioner – they were supposed to love us. We were young. We were pure. We were beautiful. They chose us for these very reasons. Why couldn’t they leave us be? But here’s a thought, buried deep as my ego: Would we have wanted to be left alone? Would we have wanted our worlds to remain fixed and small? Looking back on our lives would we say it was all worth it, to be swept off our feet, if only for a little while?
24.
Berkley! Yoo-hoo, banana bread, Berkley! Oh, Tessa and all her pie-cooling-on-the-windowsill innocence, pretending she wasn’t as big a whore as anybody else.
Long before she’d flipped her head back and seen the wide-eyed lamb bathed in the purple light of Her Special Place, Berkley had felt her watching. (Ten rosaries for being turned on by your daddy’s girlfriend, Tessa.)
After she’d scampered off, Berkley cooed a goodbye to Manny, her sultry smile dropping as quickly as their connection. She got out of bed and threw on her robe and paced the room. Usually an honest-to-goodness orgasm calmed Berkley down. Restless with excitement, she paced. Her Special Place was the only thing she’d miss when she left Vegas. Her go-bag was packed but she couldn’t go. Not yet. When it came to punishing Ronnie, her work wasn’t finished.
Last night felt like she’d had the dagger raised over Ronnie. She’d had Tessa primed. And then, somehow, Tessa tricked them into taking her right to him. What was more surprising was that the big brute millionaire boxer – a man who could have any woman in Vegas – was into her. (Frankly, Berkley didn’t get it.) Callum Quinn’s interest in Tessa made her plan far more challenging. How was she supposed to compete with hundreds of pounds of muscle and millions of dollars? Last night, coming home from the club alone, she figured her chances were blown.
Berkley sat at her vanity and ran the silky bristles of her biggest makeup brush over her coy smile. Tonight proved the plan could still work. Tessa had stayed and watched the whole show. But time was short. Two more days was all Berkley had before Tessa flew home.
Her break was over. Berkley rose from the vanity and clicked on her monitor. The more cash she made, the better before she split. No one living on the run ever complained of too much money. The second she was through with Ronnie’s new pride-and-joy, Berkley was out of here. She’d be lucky if Ronnie didn’t murder her. Wouldn’t be the first time, from what she’d heard.
25.
Ten minutes before the time Cal said he would pick her up, Tessa went outside and stood in front of the house holding a loaf of banana bread. The risk of looking overeager for their date outweighed the risk of him ringing the doorbell and Berkley answering in a thong or holding a dildo.
The evening was pleasant and warm. Gentle wind rustled the palm fronds on the trees towering about her. Because she didn’t know what they were doing tonight, Tessa had dressed in new white sneakers, snug jeans and a tight white tank top with a plaid shirt open over it. Hiding in her room to avoid Berkley, she’d spent more time than usual curling her hair into long, looping wavy curls and applying mascara.
A black half-ton truck came down the road from the direction of Cal’s house five minutes before he was supposed to pick her up. The truck eased to a stop in front of her. The driver’s window rolled down and there was Cal grinning at her.
“That outfit makes me want to buy a whole ranch in Montana just for you,” he said.
Laughing, she climbed in the passenger side and buckled her seat belt. “Don’t tell me you busted out the truck just to impress a North Dakota girl.”
“Nah, I was just out doing chores.” Cal laughed. He smelled and looked like he was fresh out of the shower. He wore jeans and a gray t-shirt that looked well-worn but probably had been purchased that way for a criminal sum.
“Mm,” Tessa smiled. “I’d like to see that.”
“I’m not sure if you’re complimenting me or insulting me.”
“It was a compliment.” Feeling a hardcore blush coming on, Tessa fell back on her natural instincts to be awkward. She thrust the loaf of plastic-wrapped banana bread at him. “For the record: I’m sorry about this morning. You sent your apology, and here’s mine.”
“What’s this?”
“Banana bread.”
“Thank you,” he said in a neutral tone.
Had he been expecting a bigger gesture? Tessa tried not to let it sting. It was hard to compete with a bouquet of flowers that probably cost the same about as a week’s worth of shifts at The Medicine Shoppe back home. Maybe he wasn’t a fan of banana bread? Impossible. Only a monster wouldn’t like banana bread. Cal drove for a full block holding the loaf in one hand before Tessa offered to put it on the back seat.
“So,” she said, as he pulled out of the community’s gate and waved at the security guard, “what are we doing tonight?”
“We’re going somewhere you can’t storm out on me.”
“That sounds… ominous.”
He turned to smile at her. “Nervous?”
“Only that you’re looking at me and not the road. You did almost rear-end someone yesterday.”
Cal gave his attention back to driving. “Just so you’re not disappointed: we’re not going to the strip.”
“I had my fill last night,” she replied.
“Most out-of-towners want to go every day.”
“Honestly, my favorite thing about Las Vegas is the weather. It was still cold back home when I left,” she said. “Having the sun on my face after such a long winter – you don’t know how I just crave it.”
“When I first moved here,” he said. “I used to miss winter. Thought I couldn’t do without snow. All the seasons really.”
“But?”
He shrugged. “I live here now. No use crying over snow.”
“I can’t decide if it’s the more things you lose the easier it is to let them go, or if the opposite is true.”
They drove east of the city as the sun set. Las Vegas Boulevard stretched out her window, a skyline lit up with golds and purples and greens. It was just dark enough to see the beam from the top of the Luxor pyramid shooting into the sky. As Cal drove them through the suburbs, they talked about their families. For her all that amounted to was her granddad and Ron, whereas Cal was the second-youngest of five boys and both his parents were still alive. She liked that he discussed his big Irish Catholic family and his business in the same proud but humble way.
Without her noticing, the city fell behind them. They drove by an old casino called Railroad Pass, its parking lot half-filled with semi-trailer trucks. Cal said just up ahead was a cute little town called Boulder City, created during the depression when the Hoover Dam was being built and workers needed a place to live.
“Is that where we’re going?” Tessa asked.
“No.”
Soon he turned off the main highway and onto a grid road. By this time, the sun had set and night had settled in. The road was dark.
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this but it’s not a great idea to drive a girl into the middle of the desert for a first date,” she joked when he turned the truck off the road. Tessa jostled in her seat as the they drove down into the ditch and up the other side. Beneath the beams of the headlights, the road was flat, its surface tan and crackled. “Seriously, where are we?”
“Eldorado Dry Lakebed,” Cal said, in what she now knew was his practice of under-explaining situations. “Hey.” He reached over and grabbed her hand.
“Don’t worry.” His thumb stroked the tender skin on the back of her hand. When they had reached a point placing them officially in the middle of nowhere, he parked. He cut the ignition and leaned over into the back seat. For a moment Tessa thought he was reaching for her banana bread. Instead he retrieved a thick blanket and got out. Tessa followed. The headlights had yet to blink off. She stood in front of one beam. Cal stood in the other. He looked her up and down.
“I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” he said. He was so serious. Tessa told herself that a compliment like that couldn’t be anything more than a line. She wanted to forget he said it because if she didn’t her only option was remembering this moment forever.
“I would be more flattered if I wasn’t scared you’re going to murder me,” she joked.
“Come on.” He beckoned her toward him. At the back of the truck, he let down the tailgate and spread out the blanket. Even though she could’ve managed fine on her own, Cal picked her up and set her on the tailgate. She scooted back and laid down. The engine ticked as it cooled. The headlights blinked off and suddenly they were alone, staring up at desert sky ablaze with stars. Cal laid down next to her and grabbed her hand as Tessa’s eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“I feel like right now I’m seeing Nevada and not just Las Vegas. In some ways they seem like separate things,” she said.
“I don’t like the strip. Too many people.”
“Do they recognize you?” She thought of their first kiss at the bar, his comment about people watching.
“Sometimes. And I don’t like it. I don’t like getting calls from my PR lady, telling me about something someone wrote about my personal life.” The topic made him prickly. He seemed to catch himself, he sighed and said, “But it’s a small price to pay for living your dreams.”
“I’m sorry to say, I’ve never actually watched a boxing match.”
“But you’re our target demographic.”
“Ha ha,” Tessa said, after she realized he was kidding.
“You’ll either love it or you won’t. The fighting – that’s what I love. I went as far as I could go with the sport as an athlete, I couldn’t leave it behind. I had to be in it. So I had to figure out a way to do that. I had this idea and I was lucky because boxing had put me in line with the right people.”
“The right people?”
“People with money. In almost all cases, people with a lot of money are not my kind of people. But if your dream is to found a franchise, well then…” He picked up a piece of her hair and played with it, twirling it around his finger, stroking it with his thumb. “What about you?”
“Hm.” Tessa flipped to her side and looked at him. “Do you really want to know? Because it’s probably boring. There’s no punching or girls in hot pants.”
“I don’t ask questions I don’t want answers to.”
“Okay. Well, my dream is that someday, I can open up a clinic that gives free therapy to kids with different speech and communications disorders. So many people don’t bring their kids in for assessment because they don’t have insurance or whatever. Then these poor kids – it sets them back their whole lives sometimes. Who knows what they could become?” She rolled from her side to her back and looked up at the sky. “For now that’s far away. First I have to get a regular job somewhere and figure out how to get there.”
“You’ll do it,” he said.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I will.” Her voice was quiet. Even though they were in the middle of an empty lakebed with no one else for miles, they’d been speaking in whispers. She put her hand to his shoulder and moved it down his arm. Underneath her touch, his muscles tensed. Tessa smiled.
“I’ve never been with someone with such big muscles.”
“No farm boys in North Dakota stacked from tossing hay bales?”
“Nope.” Their faces were very close together. She could smell his cinnamon gum. He was going to kiss her. It was too soon in the date to kiss! Maybe that’s why he brought her here. Maybe that was all he wanted. But that was fine, wasn’t it? Because didn’t she want him too?
“Tell me why I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “You’re like a song I can’t get out of my head.”
“That annoying, huh.”
“Shh,” he said. “Enough joking.” Then he kissed her. She tasted the sweet heat of his mouth. Their last kiss had left her craving him, and here he was, better than any alcohol-soaked memory. Her hands ran over the round muscles of his biceps. Kissing him gave her vertigo. One hand reached up, fingers raking back her hair. His palm grazing her ear made his skin tingle. She wanted more. His fingers inside her, his mouth on her. More. She wanted him in her mouth. She wanted all of this and she was afraid of it, afraid his touch on any sensitive part of her body would make her come instantly and she wanted this feeling to last and last.
Cal’s mouth moved along her bare neck, lips kissing behind her ear. Her breath quickened. She thrust her chin up as he kissed his way along her sternum. One of her hands snaked down his chest to his flat stomach, moving lower and lower. She cupped the crotch of his jeans, felt him getting thick under her hand. Cal groaned. Tessa sat up and let the plaid shirt fall to the truck bed. She raised her hands above her head and waited like a child wanting to be undressed for bed. Cal kissed the tops of her breasts. He pulled off the tank top. He wrapped both of his arms around her to undo her bra. The bra fell to the blanket. He sat back to look at her and she let him. No crossing her arms across her chest. No looking away shyly or laughing or making jokes. A cool desert breeze blew. Her breasts were round and taught and her nipples puckered in the night air.
“I don’t want to stop looking at you,” he said.
She lay back, stretching her arms above her – both a pose and an invitation. Do what you want to me. Cal cupped her breasts in his large hands. He pinched the nipples between his thumb and forefinger. The pleasure, the tiny bite of pain, caused Tessa to whimper. She squirmed with the expectation of him taking her nipples into his mouth and sucking. First he put his mouth to one and circled his tongue around it. He teased the other, flicking his tongue over it until Tessa couldn’t stand it. She grabbed the back of his head and pushed it to her breast. He sucked and she cried out, the first loud sharp noise. Coyotes sang in response, yipping somewhere in the darkness. Both of them were laughing as she pulled his shirt off.
Tessa kissed his bare chest as Cal opened her jeans. Her panties came off with them. As soon as she was naked his thick, strong fingers were inside of her. She rocked her hips with the gentle thrust of his hand.
“My god, you’re so wet,” he murmured.
“The night after we met I came home and touched myself wishing it was you doing this to me.”
He let out a low moan of desire. His fingers slid up and stroked her clit. She hadn’t had a sip of alcohol and yet she felt just as dizzy as she had last night. Cal moved from fingering her hot pussy and stroking her clit until she had to wrench his hand away for fear she was going to come too soon. She wanted to extend the small torture of waiting until he slid his cock inside her.
With both hands, she pulled off his pants and boxer briefs. Then they were naked next to each other. Her hands grazed his firm, round ass. He took her hand and drew it to his generous cock. She wanted its tantalizing hardness in her mouth and she told him so. Tessa pushed him to his back and straddled him.
“Let me taste you,” she whispered. She kissed down from his belly button along the trail of sandy hair. Licking his shaft, top to bottom, twice, three times, which was all the teasing she could manage before she wrapped her lips around his cock. Tessa’s whole body moved up and down as she worked her tongue, her slippery wet mouth, around him. Spilling over her shoulders, her hair fell over her face and he pushed it aside so he could watch. Cal’s breathing was heavy, gasping under her ministrations until his pushed her away.
“Please,” she gasped. “I want more.”
“Wait.”
With one
hand, he dug into the pocket of his jeans for a condom while his other hand other reached between her legs.
“Please,” she whispered as he tore the foil away with his teeth and worked the condom over his cock. “I want you inside me.”
“First I’m going to taste you,” he said. His mouth found her clit and licked once, twice, before she moved her hips away from him.
“Now,” she said, her voice low and hoarse. “Let me come with your cock in me.”
She pushed his shoulder until he was on his back. Then Tessa climbed on him and guided his hard shaft between her wet lips. He drove into her as far he could go, until it felt like he filled every millimeter inside her body. Again and again, she rose and fell, the bed of the truck digging into her knees. She threw her head back, her long hair grazing her ass crack. Cal shifted until he was sitting so that they faced each other as she rode him. His mouth seized her nipple and tenderly bit down. This exquisite pain set her over the edge. Her clit mashed against him and she squeezed her eyes shut, her body convulsing, shuddering. The cry she let out was breathy and high pitched in the night. She came, her chest pressed against him, her arms around his neck. As soon as it was over she knew she was going to come again. She bucked against him as Cal’s own breathing sped up. She moved up and down as fast as she could, but her body was spent and she couldn’t keep up with Cal’s pace. He grabbed her at the rib cage and raised her body up over his cock and brought it crashing down.
“I’m going to come,” he choked out.
Her hands were in his hair, her mouth biting his neck as he came. His body spasmed while his arms clutching Tessa to him. All fell still. A cool breeze blew across their sweaty bodies. She climbed off, reluctant to feel him leave her body. She rested her head on his chest as they lay, unraveled, next to each other.
For several minutes they were still as the surrounding night. When he didn’t speak, doubts crept in. He hadn’t enjoyed it as much as she had. No doubt he’d had many more partners than she did. She considered making a joke: about the coyotes, about being naked outside. Instead, she kissed his shoulder. She smelled his skin in the small, wet spot her kiss had made. Then he reached and turned her face to his, kissing her on the lips with careful gentleness.
