by Lane Pierce
Danielle had never had a guardian angel. Even though she didn’t think she’d sleep a wink, she took comfort in having this particular stranger just two panels of sheetrock away.
“I’m going to give you something to take your mind off this place.” He stepped to his bike and opened one of the hard shell saddlebags on its rear end. He handed her a clipped stack of papers a half-inch thick—a manuscript.
“Well, thanks.”
“Don’t feel obligated. Just something guaranteed to knock you right out. Maybe we can rustle up some grub in the morning while they mount a new tire before we’re on our way.”
“Sounds good.” Danielle didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t suppress a yawn.
“I think that’s my cue.”
“I’m sorry you had to change your plans because of my flat.”
“You’re anything but that.”
“You’re something else,” she said.
“What else am I?”
“You stood up to that intimidating moose.”
“Sometimes you have to stand your ground.” His denim jeans were soft and worn. The thighs inside them looked hard and masculine.
“You’re tough.”
“I cry at sad movies.”
“Do you now,” Danielle replied, with tired sarcasm.
Luke took Danielle’s arms in his hands and kissed her cheek. “Glad you’re just next door. Adios, muchacha. See you manana.” He turned and walked to the door of 102.
“Thanks for your help,” she called out, but his door closed and he was gone. For a moment, she stared at the spot in front of his door. She wondered if he was a little frightened, too, but knew he’d never admit it. Then she looked around quickly, making sure no unsavory characters were lurking in the shadows.
She locked herself inside and looked at the printed manuscript in her hand. It was titled Illusions. Beneath the title was the name Lucas J. McCall. That was a nice name, she thought. And beneath his name was another line—A Tale of the Paranormal.
Then came a sound that gave her a momentary start. Luke was tapping on their communal wall. He was giving her the wall-thump. Dum-da-da-dum-dum. She walked to the wall and knocked back, dum-dum.
Too exhausted to clean up again, Danielle at least felt safe; just a quick face-scrubbing and tooth-brushing in the lavatory, and then into a clean T-shirt. She kicked off the flip-flops but kept on her shorts. She threw the ugly comforter on the floor and lay on the sheets.
The manuscript rested on her lap. She ran her hand over the cover and then flipped to page one. She wasn’t much of a reader, but the story sucked her in immediately. Too keyed up to sleep, she probably would have read all night if it hadn’t been for the scratching sound she heard on the small screened window in the bathroom. It could have been a varmint, but she wasn’t hanging around to find out.
She’d been bitten by a raccoon as a child and something of that traumatic experience still lingered, but considering current events, she feared something much larger might be afoot. She jumped from the bed, made a beeline for the door, and was knocking on Luke’s in a matter of seconds.
When Luke opened up, Danielle flew into his arms. “Something at the bathroom window,” she said without crying or whimpering, but she held on tightly.
“Like what?” Luke was groggy.
“Like scratching.” Then she heard the same sound at Luke’s bathroom window. “There it is.”
“A windstorm has kicked up. That’s just sand and gravel blowing against the screen,” he told her. “That’s all it is.”
Feeling foolish, Danielle let go of him. Stepping back, she looked at him the way a woman might look at a new lover. He was wearing briefs and looked damned good in them.
Beginning to get his bearings, he consoled her. “Anyone who’s had the day you have would feel jumpy. Have you slept at all?”
She looked at the clock next to his bed, which read three o’clock. “God, I’m so sorry, Luke. No, I’ve been reading your story. It’s great, but it’s also creepy.”
“Something scary probably was not the best thing to have given you.”
“No, I love it. Really.”
Luke placed his hands on her shoulders. “You’re wound as tight as a metal spring. Maybe I can do something besides give you the creeps. Come sit down for a minute.”
She sat on his bed while he went next door in his skivvies and made sure no one had sneaked in. He pulled her door shut and returned to his room where Danielle waited.
He laid his hands on her shoulder blades near her neck and massaged with medium pressure. The tension began to release from her muscles. Her heartbeat became less like the pounding of a jackhammer. Her body calmed and became affected by pleasure rather than fear.
While Luke worked her neck and shoulders, her mind wandered. She absentmindedly noted his room’s decorator had been the same imp from hell who’d picked out the colors in her sanctuary.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much.” She waited, not wanting him to stop touching her. She wanted to feel his lips on her neck and back, displacing the firmness of his hand with the gentleness of his mouth. They’d both been through a lot in the last half dozen hours, and she wanted his strength and his warmth.
“Want me to stop?”
“No, Luke. I don’t want you to stop.” Danielle had been on her own a long while, and now she wanted to feel safe and cherished. Her need for protection and companionship had never been stronger.
He moved his hands to her lower back and kneaded her tailbone with his thumb, reviving tired muscles.
“That feels so good.” It awakened a deep craving. She turned her face toward him.
“Would you rather stay here?” he asked. “It won’t be long before we have to get up anyway.”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
He reached around her waist, and he held her. That was all he did, and that was nice too. She had been celibate for almost two years. It almost seemed stupid now—two prime years without the comfort of a man—and she told him as much.
“Two years without any TLC?”
“Well, I’ve got my cat, but she’s still in Oklahoma,” she confided.
They both laughed, and then he kissed her lips. After his comforter was stripped away as well, she reclined on his bed.
“I’m sorry this isn’t the Honeymoon Hotel,” he said in a gentle voice.
“We’ll just pretend,” she answered.
They were both hungry for more than burgers. He kissed her deeply, and she opened her mouth and greedily drew him in. Her leg rubbed against his thigh, and she tangled her fingertips in his thick hair. Her hip brushed against his hardening length.
Danielle felt a bit like an inexperienced girl, knowing she was facing another crossroads in her life, giving in to a virtual stranger. But it felt so right, and she needn’t have worried. Sex was like riding a bicycle, impossible to unlearn.
When he entered her, she welcomed him without the least bit of modesty. As he slid deeper, they fell into a rhythm and tempo she instinctively understood. Her spine arched to meet each demanding thrust.
They seemed a perfect fit. She had wanted him from the time he’d sat in the adjoining booth that morning. As his erection penetrated the depths of her, she let her hands travel over his body along his lean flanks. As he began the age-old rhythm of love, they explored each other’s delicious surfaces.
Her passion released itself with an urgency that shocked her. She wrapped her legs tightly around Luke’s waist as he pushed himself inside her. She screamed and shuddered with joy, melting from the inside out with the first climax, and then again when she felt him having one inside of her.
Maybe it was the result of such an adventurous and hectic day. She didn’t know for sure, but the intensity remained, as their lovemaking brought forth effortless orgasms which got bigger and bigger as they reached the hell-bent-for-leather stage.
Afterward, when they were sated from the release of physical desire, wrapp
ed in each other’s arms, she listened to their hearts beat in rhythm.
For the first time, Danielle noticed a tattoo on Luke’s left arm. It was a picture of a girl with the inscription, Hot Rod Baby. Maybe I will become his motorcycle baby, she mused.
“This isn’t going to end when you leave the dust of Crosshairs in your wake, is it?” Danielle asked.
“Not if you don’t want it to. I’ll lead the way home if you’d like. Just don’t hit the accelerator and run me off the road, at least not until you’ve finished reading my story.”
“That’s a deal, cowboy. Are you up to one more ride for the road before we vacate the Bates Motel? Or you could unfold me like a map.”
“Does a fat tow-truck driver fart?” Luke said with a laugh. “The gas station isn’t going anywhere. How do you want me?”
“Any way, and every way, Luke.”
****
In the early morning hours, they had fallen asleep holding each other close, safe and warm in one another’s arms. It had begun as simply and as sensuously as that. They had quickly become more than two strangers finding refuge in a strange place, but the speed in which Luke and Danielle had become inseparable surprised both of them.
Luke’s life force had been injected into Danielle, like some kind of feel-good serum. For the rest of her life, she knew all that transpired between her and other persons would be measured by this man. He embodied the outrageousness she had always wished for. She saw in him a nice mixture of intelligence and adventure, a good formula with which to attack the game of life.
“Life is the biggest romantic adventure of all,” he told her. “If you’re open to it, the most marvelous things are waiting to be discovered.”
****
Danielle’s first few days with Luke were both fairy tale and nightmare, the beauty in exploration of one another’s bodies offset by the harrowing visit to the psycho eatery. That should have been the end of troubles and the beginning of a new start on the Southern California coast. But now, another crossroads confronted this intriguing relationship.
Life was not always fair as Danielle knew. Within two months of their arrival, on a cloudless afternoon fit for a postcard along the Ventura Highway, an SUV driver with a hard-on for cyclists sideswiped the couple who were riding double on Luke’s bike.
Two days later, Luke still lay motionless on a hospital bed. Ironic how this accident had blotted their lives so soon after settling in L.A. He had joked about being run off the road after that frightening night in New Mexico. And now, here he lay in a coma.
The impact of his skull against the pavement hadn’t diminished him physically in any way. Only a few cuts and bruises, the same as she. His head had taken the punishment, even with a helmet. He was a safe driver, but that didn’t help when someone bumped your wheels out from under you.
She reached in her bag and took out the fifty pages of Down and Out in Crosshairs, New Mexico. Luke had turned their episode into a hardcore suspense thriller with a bunch of people held captive by a rogue patrolman. The tale was complete with scary chases through old farm houses and dark woods. It was written for her, and he hadn’t finished it. Will he ever finish it?
She sat at his bedside, but it wasn’t enough. Even though he was unconscious, she wanted to touch him, to let him know she was there. She leaned next to him and placed her lips to his ear.
“Luke, baby. Please come back to me.” She hadn’t expected a response but was still saddened she couldn’t wake him like Prince Charming had done to Sleeping Beauty.
No one really knew what an unconscious person could hear or feel, so she kissed him on the ear and continued her mantra. “Come back, Luke. Come back to me.”
A vital and earthy rerun of her and Luke’s time together played in her head, snapshots of moments they were in the throes of passion. The exquisite variety of their actions, from pile-driving intercourse like two animals in heat, to the lazy moments when she would place a small white foot against his broad chest so he could paint her toenails.
Life was composed of moments; the present being the only one they had for sure, an opportunity to share a laugh, a tear, a joy, a hug, a kiss, their bodies, a thought. Even now, Danielle wanted to share.
She stroked his ear and continued to whisper, thankful for the flat tire that had brought them together. More memories flooded in, a kaleidoscope of images. Luke’s hungry mouth on her breasts, her hands threading through his thick hair, all the physical delights of their still-new relationship, his joining with her.
Danielle noticed a stir from beneath the sheet. Where there was life, there was hope. An erection surely meant her motorbike adventurer was responding to her voice.
Danielle ached for him. She believed she cared for him even more in this helpless state, if that was possible. “Come all the way back to me, my motorcycle man,” she whispered.
She contemplated trying to climb into the bed with him. “My poor superhero,” she cried as she slid her hand underneath the bed sheet and across his thighs.
A hand touched her shoulder.
She turned toward Luke’s face. His blue eyes were open, and he was looking at her. She threw her arms around his neck and hollered for the nurse until one appeared. The nurse got close to Luke and studied his eyes. He whispered something.
“He’s back,” she said to Danielle, and then looked at the location of Danielle’s hand. “Well, honey,” the nurse proclaimed with a conspiratorial smile, “looks like you have stronger medicine than we do. I need to call the doctor in.”
The nurse left. They would be alone for only a moment, and it would have to be enough. She whispered hurriedly into his ear, “Wait until you recover, my darling. I think it’s time you start writing insatiable erotica, and I’m going to give you all the material you need.”
Danielle stepped out of the way so the doctors and nurses could run their tests, but she knew Luke had returned to her, and that the unwritten pages of their adventure had more time to unfold.
In the big city of L.A., or in the little bumbly-fuck towns of the world like Crosshairs, it didn’t matter, as long as they could share the journey.
****
Luke walked into his apartment after six days on the road, set down his duffle, and then punched the play button on his answering machine as he sorted through his mail. One of the calls was from a new publishing company. They were anxious to publish the Crosshairs story, now renamed, of course, to protect the guilty. “Something good?” Danielle asked as she dropped her duffel by the door and entered the living room.
“Something very good. Something insatiably good, sweet cheeks.”
She peeled off her clothes on the spot and took his hand. “If it’s that good, tell me while we shower.”
The most recent break from their jobs and eventual goals had included chilled Coronas, dazzling orange sunsets, and spine-rattling sex that could serve as a model for the rest of their lives. And without a state trooper in sight.
Luke left the pile of bills and ads on the counter and followed Danielle.
It had been a year since they first exchanged looks at the roadside café. Danielle was now waiting tables while going to casting calls around L.A. and hoping for a break. Luke worked days while pursuing his writing in the evenings. Their jobs made their schedules flexible, and they now sought their fame and fortune together, along with their adventures.
After the accident, Luke had made a complete recovery. He didn’t give up his bike, but they both wore helmets while they explored the roads less taken up and down the coastline.
They truly appreciated a second chance at life and love. The incredible power of touch had been proven to Danielle’s satisfaction, and she never wanted to go long without feeling Luke’s healing hands, and his other parts.
Another crossroads might arise should she land an acting job, or Luke’s work become recognized and sought after. But for now, she was his Motorcycle Girl, and when it came time to share their thoughts and their bodies, they were b
oth, well, insatiable.
A word about the author…
Winner of Horror Novel Review’s 2013 Best Short Fiction Award, Lane writes everything from humor to the erotic to the macabre, and is especially keen on transcending genre pigeonholing. Over two hundred of Lane’s stories appear in magazines, anthologies, and webzines. See longer works at www.melange-books.com and www.bookswelove.net/authors/seate-troy for those who like tales intertwined with the paranormal.
http://www.troyseateauthor.webs.com
Thank you for purchasing
this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
