All the bikes had stopped, the Dogs of Exile dismounting, when one lone bike chugged into the street. Emma looked down the street, and saw that the bike stopped just short of the others. The man wore a helmet, and at first all Emma could see was his body. He wore the leather jacket with the Dogs of Exile sigil on the back, boot-cut jeans, and cowboy-style boots that would have looked silly on anybody else; on him they looked pretty badass, Emma had to admit. Then he took his helmet off. His neck was covered in tattoos. So, Emma saw, were his knuckles. He had a thick black beard, but he was much younger than the others. He looked around twenty, or maybe a little older. Emma’s age.His face looked strong, his jaw square under the beard, his eyes brown or dark green (she couldn’t tell exactly from here). His hair was tied back in a top-knot. Emma loved top-knots. She always had. Maybe it was because it made the man look somehow artistic, or somehow savage, or . . . something. She sighed; she didn’t know exactly why. But she knew one thing: this man was handsome as fuck.
She was so caught up in watching him that it took her a moment to realize he was watching her. He held his helmet under his arm, and looked up at her. Emma met his eyes, and then she remembered that she was naked. She just had time to see him smirk before she pulled the curtains shut. Her breath came quick for some reason. Her nipples were hard, but she told herself that was because she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her pussy ached, as it rarely did.
She ran across the bedroom, out of the door, and into the bathroom. She jumped into the shower and blasted herself with cold water. When she was calmer, she left the shower, dried, and got dressed. She applied her makeup in front of the tiny vanity unit in the corner of her bedroom. She liked pale foundation, and she liked dark eyeliner. Sometimes she did little flicks with the eyeliner at the corners of her eyes, like a wannabe Egyptian pharaoh.
When her makeup was done, she left her apartment. She would go across the street to The Spoon. She didn’t think she’d have the nerve to talk to the man who had looked up at her. Somewhere between high school and the supermarket, she had lost her invincible confidence, the confidence that had allowed her to star in four plays regardless of the other girls’ mean (maybe jealous) comments. After graduation, something had been taken from her. The support structure of school gone, the watchful eyes of her teacher gone, and she had floundered.
Well, she thought, as she locked her apartment door, I won’t flounder today. Today – who knows? – something exciting might happen. This time she did not follow it up with yeah right. The young, rugged, bearded Dog of Exile had changed that.
*****
“Don’t suppose you want your old job back, Emma?” David Matthewson said.
He was balancing four plates. The cook, a boy a few years younger than Emma, was flipping burgers, bacon, pancakes, at an alarming rate. His headphones lay forgotten on the floor, and his spot-covered face beaded with sweat. Just as David asked the question, two of the local high school girls came in and threw on aprons. David forgot about her immediately. He turned away and began throwing plates to the Dogs of Exile.
Emma sipped her Coke and sat at the bar. The Dogs of Exile had taken almost all the booths. Emma thought there was about thirty of them in all. She risked a look back. There he was, at the back, sitting on his own. He leaned back in his chair and, as Emma was about to turn away, looked straight at her. A smirk touched his lips, and he raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. What’re you looking at?that look said.
Emma, blushing so fiercely she was surprised the whole place didn’t see and laugh, turned away. She looked down at her Coke like it was the most interesting thing in the world, and tried to think why she had thought coming in here was a good idea. She wasn’t good at this flirting thing. She wasn’t good with men. Maybe she lacked the part that was necessary to flutter her eyelids and smile sexily across a café at a man. She had seen Casey do it at clubs (when they journeyed to the city) and had always found it confusing.She had tried it a couple of times and always felt self-conscious, like she was watching herself instead of simply being herself.
She cursed quietly under her breath, finished her Coke, and rose to leave. She would return to her apartment across the street and forget that she had ever met eyes with the man. She would bury her head in a novel, forget all about the embarrassment of trying and failing to “be sexy” and go back to work tomorrow just as normal. She didn’t know what she had expected when coming out here, but whatever it was, she had failed. She was at her apartment door when somebody cleared their throat behind her.
She turned, and then started. The man with the black beard and the neck tattoos looked at her calmly. That smirk touched his lips, and he his eyes (green, she saw), were alight with amusement. He nodded his head in a casual greeting. “Are you running?” he said. His voice was calm, and of no fixed accent. There was some south in it, but also some east, and a smattering of west. It was the accent of a man who had been everywhere, done everything. “I see that you are. Why? Do I frighten you?”
“No,” Emma said, her voice like the ghost of her normal voice. She cleared her own throat, and forced her words to come out louder. “No,” she repeated. “Why would you?”
“Hmm.” He didn’t seem convinced. He reached out his hand, offering it to Emma. “Ride with me, miss.”
“What?” Emma said, laughing despite herself. “I don’t even know you.”
“I know.” The man shrugged. “But ride with me.”
Emma’s heart began to pound so loudly in her chest she was surprised the man opposite her didn’t hear it. Her palms sweated, beads of sweat pricked her neck, stood on her forehead. She sighed, trying to clear her head. It was hot; everything was hot. She could smell the man’s body, sweat and oil and man. That was the thing she smelt the most: the scent of man. She had never talked to a proper man before, she thought as she looked at him, grasping for words which didn’t seem to want to come. No, she had never talked to a real man. She had talked to boys.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said, her voice a soft wheeze. “You don’t even know mine.”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”
“My name is—”
“You can tell me your name later,” he said. He didn’t sound impatient, only matter-of-fact. He looked at her calmly, his hand still outstretched. She felt compelled to do what he said. His voice was so calm. It was a I-know-best voice, but not patronizing in the least. “Come on.”
Emma knew it was madness. The last thing she should do is take a ride with a complete stranger. She knew she should run inside and lock her door. She knew this was how crime documentaries often started. Emma Louise Harvey thought it was just a normal day. Little did she know that there was a dog on the loose, a dog . . . of exile!The narrator’s voice of this fake documentary, yes, she knew that. But what she knew and what she felt, in this moment, were far apart.
She felt, saw, her hand reach out. She felt her hand in his. And then his hand closed around hers, and together they were walking down the street to his motorbike. He took the helmet and gave it to her. “Wear this,” he said.
“What about you?” Emma muttered, but she was already putting it on.
He climbed onto the bike, and Emma felt herself climb on behind him. A voice screamed in her head: Stop this! Get off the bike! You’re a fool! But when she wrapped her arms around him, and felt the firmness of his body, and smelt the sweet manly scent of his body, she forgot about the voice, forgot about her reasonable thoughts. She gripped his torso, and he kicked the bike into life. It rumbled beneath her.
And then – and she was still not sure how it had happened – Emma and this nameless man were driving away from Axleton into the long stretches of dusty countryside that surrounded it. The bike rumbled beneath her as they drove, and soon the rumble began to make her clit ache, make her pussy hungry. Once, when she was a teenager, she had sat on the washing machine in the basement of her parents’ home, riding it. She felt the same sensation now.
She bi
t her lip to stop from screaming.
In the dimness of her mind, she thought: What the hell is happening to me?
*****
The nameless rider drove out of Axleton for ten miles until they came to a disused barn just off the road. He turned the bike and rode down the dirt path that led to the barn. The bike bumped beneath them, and Emma had to keep telling herself to calm down, that she needed to get a grip on herself, that what she was doing was crazy. Thankfully, the motorbike stopped. Emma climbed off. She was surprised by herself. She genuinely believed that, if the motorbike had kept going, she might’ve orgasmed. She forced her breathing to a normal speed, and then pulled the helmet off her head. She breathed in fresh, country air.
She should have been afraid. This had all the makings of a nasty situation. This had all the makings of something that would be on the news in a few days’ time. And yet she wasn’t afraid. The nameless rider walked from his motorbike to where Emma stood. He looked down at her, and then reached out and trailed his fingertips along her body, up to her face. “I saw you,” he said, his dark green eyes staring intently at her. “I saw you,” he repeated, and then moved his hand from her chin to her breasts, rubbing them over her t-shirt.
She should’ve pushed him away, she should’ve said she wasn’t this sort of girl, but right now with his hands on her and the scent of him thick around her she didn’t know what type of girl she was. Her nipples went hard. He felt this, responded to it, twisting them lightly between his fingers. Emma looked up at him, this nameless bearded man, and suddenly did not care what his name was. All that mattered, she decided, was this moment.
“What are you going to do to me?” she said.
She had never felt more vulnerable, but the amazing thing was that that actually excited her. She liked the feeling of vulnerability in the shadow of this man. In one swift movement, he reached down and pulled her shirt over her head; and then reached around and undid her bra in a quick expert movement. Her breasts were open to the air, and she loved it. She fucking loved it. She grabbed them, skin on skin. His hands were rough, callused, but she didn’t care.
He looked straight into her eyes. The smirk was gone. He looked serious, determined. “I’m going to fuck you,” he said.
A shiver ran down Emma’s spine, around her legs, into her pussy, rubbing her clit. Her bum went tight and she bit her lip so hard she thought it might bleed. He tilted his head at her. “You want me to fuck you,” he said. He took her hand and led her toward the barn. Emma’s body was alive with tingles, like electricity coursing through her.
He kicked the barn door open, and led her inside. It was dark, and only lit by the sliver of sunlight that came in through the door he had just kicked open. He turned to her, his eyes hard, his body huge and muscular, his will implacable. Then he bent down and grabbed her breasts, and then sucked them, one at a time, trailing his teeth down them and biting her nipples softly. Emma had never felt pleasure like it. She heard herself moaning, and tried once again to convince herself this was real. She failed. This couldn’t be real. Emma Harvey didn’t do things like this.
He sucked her nipples and then reached down and clamped his hand on her pussy through her jeans. She moaned louder, pleasure pushing up her throat and out of her mouth. He rubbed her pussy hard, and then lifted her with one arm, like she weighed nothing. With his free hand he undid her jeans button and yanked them off her, moving her like a rag doll as he pulled them over her feet. She kicked her legs to help him, and then he pulled her underwear away.
He set her down, just in her socks. His eyes widened when he looked down at her body. “Tell me what you want to be fucked,” he said, in that matter-of-fact voice. “Tell me. Now.”
Emma opened her mouth. Her lips were dry. She licked them. “I want—” Her voice had never sounded so timid. “I want to be fucked,” she whispered. And she did, she realized. All her life, all through her teenage years when she could’ve lost her virginity hundreds of times, she was waiting for this moment, this moment in a nameless barn with a nameless rider, a nameless man who was really a man and not a boy.
She reached down and touched her clit, sliding his finger between her lips. Hot pleasure burnt at the touch of him, and Emma found herself writhing, pleasure moving through her in white-hot tendrils. She closed her eyes. The orgasm hit her like a truck, unexpected and violent. Her body was wracked with spasms, and she found her face buried in the rider’s neck, biting the skin. She grabbed her hair and yanked it.
“Bad slut,” he said, calmly, his hand still on her clit. “That’s what you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Emma breathed. She would have said anything, the pleasure was so intense. “I’m a bad slut.”
He let go of her hair and grabbed her hand. He guided it to his cock, and she began to rub. It was huge and rock-hard. Even through his jeans, she could feel that. She rubbed up and down the length of it, grabbing its thickness, and could hardly believe that that would be inside of her soon.
He took her from behind, her hands propped on the railings of the barn, her pussy burning and her mind spinning with the craziness of it all.
*****
She stood outside of her apartment building as the nameless rider drove out of the town. She was sore, lightheaded, and happier than she had been in years. It was a strange, almost sickening happiness. She felt drunk. The Dogs of Exile drove out of the town as the sun set, on their way to the city, and her nameless rider, the man who had taken her virginity, the man who had fucked her hard, grabbed her hair, slapped her ass cheeks, and licked her fingered her asshole as he fucked her was driving away. She didn’t know his name; he didn’t know hers.
When they had left, Emma went upstairs into her apartment and lay on her bed. She stared at the ceiling, going over the events of the day. Distantly, like faraway thunder, motorbikes rumbled, the sound dwindling until it disappeared completely. She had woken up, gone to The Spoon, and then gone out into the country and fucked a man whose name she did not know.
It was crazy. She should have felt dirty, or guilty. But she didn’t. More than anything, she was horny. She wanted to do it again.
Why didn’t I get him goddam name?she thought, as she tossed and turned in bed. Or his goddam phone number. Oh, well, I’m sure he’ll come through here again soon.
*****
About a month and half after her meeting with the nameless rider, Emma realized that she hadn’t had a period in a while. This had never happened to her. Ever since the age of eleven, it had been like clockwork. She took a bus into the city to buy the test, because everybody in Axleton knew everybody else and if she bought it at the local store (where she worked) everybody would know.
Now, she stood in front of the mirror, staring at herself. Her eyes had a wide, panicked look. Her heart was thumping like a drum beat. She had bought three tests. Her body ached from the uncomfortable bus seats, or maybe her body ached from worry, her emotions infecting even her bones. She sat on the toilet, did the deed on all three tests, and then waited the ninety seconds it took for these tests to tell her fate. She paced up and down the apartment, her hands bunched into fists, kicking the floor. She thought at least an hour had passed; it had been ten seconds.
They must make these things purposefully to cause worry, she thought, wishing her apartment was bigger. She couldn’t pace in these conditions. Finally, the time passed. She ran into the bathroom and looked down at the sink, where she had placed the tests. Positive, positive, positive. The nameless rider’s child was inside of her. And the most terrifying part about it was that she knew she would keep the child. She would not get rid of it. Even now, in the midst of the shock and the horror of the discovery, she knew that. She felt the life within her. It was made real.
She sighed, and went to bed. It was time to go to the doctor, then.
Two days later found her in the doctor’s office. He confirmed everything, took some readings, gave her some advice, issued some medication, and then sent her on her merry
way, right into the turmoil of pregnancy with no help at all apart from Casey. That night, they sat in Emma apartment, Casey sipping wine, Emma sipping orange juice. “When did it happen?” Casey said. Her kept squinting at Emma, as though re-evaluating her lifelong friend, like she didn’t recognize her anymore. Emma couldn’t blame her. After what had happened, she hardly recognized herself.
She told Casey everything, from seeing the rider from her window to the sex in the barn. Casey’s eyes widened as the story went on, and afterward she laughed so hard wine exploded from her mouth and showered the carpet. She was on her feet in an instance, wiping the wine. Emma laughed with her. It was good to laugh about it. The last three days had been so serious.
“I can’t believe it,” Casey said, unrolling the kitchen towel and mopping the carpet with it. “I just—I can’t believe it! I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Neither did I,” Emma said. “I don’t know how it happened. It was crazy. One minute he was asking me to ride with him, and then I was naked and—” Emma blushed. She wasn’t used to talking about things like this. She wasn’t used to doing things like this, either. But with the rider – somehow – it had felt right. It had felt amazing, in fact. Talking about it seemed to diminish it, to make it lesser. Perhaps that didn’t make sense, but it was how she felt.
“Do you think you’ll ever see him again?” Casey said, the smile slipping from her lips. She finished with the floor and sat beside her friend. “I mean, do you know anything about him? Do you have his details?”
“Not even his first name,” Emma said. If she had had to share this with anybody else – one of her old high school friends – she would have been ashamed. But Casey had done similar things before, and Emma trusted and loved her friend. Once, she had fucked two guys in the same night, at the same time. And she hadn’t been ashamed about it at all. I wanted it, she said, shrugging. Why shouldn’t I take what I want? Men do it all the time.Emma had respected her for that.
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