by Susanne Beck
"God, I love you."
I don’t know if those whispered words were meant to reach my ears or not, but reach them they did and caused a smile to break over my face. I opened my eyes to see hers, brilliant with unshed tears. Reaching up, I cupped her face and ran a tender thumb across her cheek, catching a single tear as it escaped beyond her lashes. "And I love you. More than the air I breathe."
Smiling through her tears, she lowered her head and kissed me. It was a kiss of promise and of unbounded love, delivered from her heart to mine in the sweetest of ways.
Though there was nothing passionate in this sharing of breath, incredibly, my body began to respond again just from her nearness and warmth. "Please," I whispered with the last of my breath. "I need to feel you inside me." It was a need which had become all-encompassing, a last act of completion to put my heart and soul fully at rest.
Still kissing me tenderly, almost reverently, she shifted most of her weight off of me and ran her hands slowly down my body, the tips of her fingers caressing peaks and valleys and everywhere in between with a grace that was, to me, beauty incarnate.
Her hand finally nestled between my legs, preparing me for her entrance into me. I was well past ready, and she smiled when she felt the evidence presented her. Gentle hands spread my legs as she continued to press kisses deep into my mouth, our tongues dancing a slow, sensual ballet.
Then she was covering me with her body once more, resting her weight on her arms as she looked down at me, an unasked question clear in the smoky depths of her eyes.
"Yes," I whispered, wanting nothing more than what she so silently, so lovingly offered. "Please, yes."
One hand disappeared from my sight, and I soon felt the smooth, rounded tip of the phallus being drawn through my heated wetness. A brief moment later, it was poised at the entrance to my body. Leaning down, her hair forming a curtain around our faces, she kissed me deeply and slid smoothly within, filling me more completely, more wonderfully, than I’d ever before felt.
Fully sheathed, she hovered there, waiting for my body to adjust, her deep and passionate kisses taking my mind from muscles strained to their limit and onto something infinitely more pleasurable.
She fit into me perfectly, like a puzzle piece, and my body adjusted quickly to this new sensation, quickly demanding more. I trailed my fingers down her muscled back until I had her hips in my hands. Grasping those hips, I pulled her to me. "Now," I growled into her ear.
Groaning, she did as I asked, pulling smoothly out before thrusting in once again. The pleasure was indescribable, and I nearly cried with the joy of feeling it.
Together, we set up a perfect rhythm. We kissed passionately until neither of us had the breath for it and were forced to pull away. Ice’s head rested next to mine as she thrust into my willing body, her sweat-soaked hair gliding wetly over my cheeks and lips, its fragrance as intoxicating as the scent of our loving which hovered in the air surrounding us.
I pulled her to me, quick and forcefully, needing everything she could give to me, and more besides. She responded as if born to do this very thing, surging into me with unbridled desire, unleashing the darkness and lightness inside of her, the passion and the tenderness, the power and the strength. All of this she delivered to me as her soft grunts and low moans filled my hearing like a symphony.
She crested first, her back arching, her neck thrown back to expose her throat to me, her hips thrusting blindly, forcefully, without thought or intent. Sweat poured down from her and dripped onto me, a baptism of fire and passion.
A bare second later, I too was drawn into the whirling vortex where life as I’d come to know it ceased to exist, and only pleasure resided.
I think I must have passed out for a moment, because when I came back into my body again, it was to find her full weight atop me, her chest heaving in time to her exhausted gasps for air. When she felt me move, she attempted to roll from me, but I was having none of it, and wrapped my arms around her, my body still throbbing around the phallus as it rested, still, deep within me.
"No. Stay. Please," I gasped, badly out of breath myself. "Need this. Need you."
She settled back over me, a living blanket of love, warmth and safety, and from that moment on, I knew no more until the sun rose once again.
* * *
The next morning, I woke up to something unexpected and very, very much welcomed. As my fuzzy thoughts came to sharper awareness, I realized that the gentle thumping beneath my ear was the sound of Ice’s heart beating. The tickle on my back was the feel of her hand as she gently rubbed aimless circles across my flesh. Though we’d been together for nearly eight years by that time, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d woken up in her arms, and probably still have a finger or two left over.
Her fingers hesitated briefly as she became aware of my awakened state, then resumed their gentle caress of my skin. "Morning, sweet Angel." The deep tenor of her voice rumbled up from her chest, filling me with a most comfortable warmth.
"Mmm. Morning yourself, my love."
"Sleep well?"
"Like a baby. You?"
"Very well, thanks."
Her touch tickled slightly, and I shivered, then stretched, wincing slightly at the twinge of soreness I felt.
She stiffened beneath me, as always, zoning in on my emotions with uncanny accuracy. "Are you alright?"
Cocking my head, I smiled up at her reassuringly. "I’m great. Just a little sore."
Her face immediately froze as her eyes darted away from mine. "I’m... ."
"Don’t," I warned, laying two fingers across her full lips. "Don’t say it. Don’t even think it." Shifting a bit so I could see her more easily, I slid my fingers beneath her chin to direct her gaze back to me. "Ice, last night was one of the most wonderful in my life. Please don’t say you’re sorry for making it that way."
She finally met my gaze, but the look of shadowed guilt still haunted the pristine blue depths of her eyes.
Smiling, I gently squeezed her jaw between my fingers. "C’mon, Ice. Wasn’t it you who said that there are two kinds of sore? The good kind and the bad kind?"
The guilt in her eyes faded a little. I stretched again, my grin broadening at the telltale signs of a body well loved. "This is most definitely," I added, yawning, "the good kind."
That got the smile I was looking for, and I reached up to capture it with my lips, savoring the warm contact for a long, wonderful moment, before pulling away and resting my head on her chest once again. "So," I began, trying hard to sound nonchalant, "what are our plans for today?"
She laughed softly. "Your plans, Angel, are to get some more sleep. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us."
I lifted my head to stare at her, sure that my fear could be easily read, and not caring. "Not back to the border... ."
Her eyes were gentle, her hand tender as it stroked my hair. "No. Not back to the border."
"Thank God," I replied on a sigh of relief as I rested my head back down on her warm skin.
I held up a hand. "And before you say anything, I know that it’s dangerous. And I know I’d probably be safer with Montana on the other side of the border. But that doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Not as long as I don’t become a distraction or a danger to you by remaining here." I looked up at her again, meeting her eyes dead on. "Will I?"
She returned my look measure for measure, her eyes showing no deceit or guile. "I’ll always worry, Angel. As I have from the first day you set foot outside of the Bog and decided to make your life with me. I’ll always bear the guilt of having you live through the mistakes of my past."
"You never forced me into this, Ice," I replied with some heat. "It was my own decision from the word ‘go’."
"I know." Her words were barely above a whisper. "And part of me will always damn myself for not taking that decision out of your hands when I could have. But now... ." Her hand lifted, then dropped back to rest on my shoulder. "...now...I wouldn’t trade one second
with you, in danger or out, for anything in the world."
I knew I was beaming, but I couldn’t stop myself. For a woman of so few words, she had the ability to make my heart overflow with love and joy with the simplest of phrases. "So, we’re in this together, then?"
After a moment, she nodded. "Together."
Lifting my head, I sealed the vow with a kiss, which led quickly into another kiss, and then another, and still another, until my twinges of soreness were replaced with twinges of a far more pleasurable kind. We made long, slow love by the increasing light of the rising sun, and afterwards, Ice’s plans for me were realized.
I slept.
* * *
"I’ll get you, my pretty! And your little dog too!! Ahahahahaha!"
I shot a scathing look to my left, then glanced back into the mirror held before me, realizing that Critter was correct in her assessment. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the Wicked Witch of the West was the goddess Aphrodite compared to how I looked with that particular wig on my head.
"At least I don’t look like a family of rats set up condos in my hair," I replied, just to lob my own truth back at her.
She didn’t even try to volley, knowing I was right. Instead, she grinned sheepishly, and shrugged. "They looked better on the mannequins we stole them from."
I turned to her, eyes wide. "You stole these?" I wasn’t sure which shocked me more. That she stole, or what she stole.
"Well...not in the traditional sense, no."
"I think you’re gonna have to explain that one to me... ."
Before she could answer, the door to the bathroom burst open and Pony strode in. "What the hell are you two...oh Jesus, give me that!" Snatching the wig from Critter’s head with one hand, she grabbed a brush with the other and began combing out the tangled mess that might once have borne a faint resemblance to actual hair.
In mere moments, she transformed it from rat’s nest to work of art.
Critter and I stared on, dumbfounded.
"You’re scaring me, Pon," Critter said, looking very scared indeed. As if her lover had vanished into thin air and a rather butch Martha Stewart had appeared in her place.
She shot us a look that was the epitome of the word ‘withering’, and put some final touches on her masterpiece. "My father was a barber and my mother owned a beauty shop. I can’t help it if some of the shit they tried to teach me actually sunk in."
Finishing her masterful transformation of the first wig, she held out her hand for the second. "Gimme."
"With pleasure," I replied, pulling the wig off of my head and handing it to her, watching as she applied her talents to that one as well.
The wigs were Ice’s idea. And it was a good one, to be sure.
From what I was told, the area called the Scorpion’s Nest was a rather large, and mostly empty, part of the desert, dotted here and there with tiny towns. Trying to find one man in such a place was akin, I was told, to searching for crystal of sugar on a white sand beach.
To find him, we’d need the help of the townspeople. We’d also need to remain as anonymous as possible so as not to arouse undue suspicion. Suspicion which could get back to Cavallo and cause him to either go deeper to ground, or come out, full force, against us.
Suspicion which would be raised if a couple of blonde-haired, light-eyed women just suddenly showed up in the middle of nowhere and started asking questions.
Of course, the wigs wouldn’t cure all of the difficulties inherent in such a task. Such as the fact that neither Critter nor I could speak more than a couple words of Spanish.
Still, Rio, Pony and Nia were all brunettes, like Ice, though unlike my lover, their eyes were brown or a dark hazel. All of them also spoke fluent Spanish. Since Critter and I would be with them like bees on honey, it was my hope that we’d go unnoticed in that particular crowd. Unless, of course, we came off looking like a couple of cast extras in a grade B horror flick.
Beckoning me to her, Pony replaced the wig on my head just as the door opened and Nia stepped through, her arms full of clothing. "Cool!" she remarked, grinning at me. "Cher-ette on an acid trip!"
Pony and I scowled at her, which, of course, did absolutely no good whatsoever. In fact, the twin scowls only caused her to launch into a particularly horrid rendition of "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" that nearly cracked the mirror in my hands.
All of my life, I was sure that there was no one more tone deaf than my own dearly departed father. Pretty crappy time to find out just exactly how wrong I was on that particular subject.
Mournful pleas for silence only spurred her on until finally Pony had had enough and shoved her bodily out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, and locking it tight against further intrusion. Nia’s laughter echoed in the hallway, but that soon faded away, leaving only blessed silence in its wake.
"That woman is in serious need of a shrink," Pony groused as she turned Critter away from her and replaced her wig over her lover’s blonde hair. After fussing with it, she stepped back and appraised her lover, a wide grin curving her lips. "The gypsy fortune-teller look. I like. I like!"
"Down, Fido," she joked, turning to me. "Well? What do you think?"
I grinned as she faced me. In actuality, Pony wasn’t all that far off in her assessment. "Would you read my palm, Madame Fifi?"
Slapping my hand away, she grabbed for my mirror instead. "Hopeless, the lot of you. Just hopeless." Looking in the mirror, she scowled as she straightened her bangs. "I look like an idiot."
"No, that would be me," I assured her, remembering my own image in the mirror.
"You don’t look like an idiot, Angel. You look...um... ."
"Freakish? Demented? Insane?"
"Groovy!" she shouted, grinning. "Nia was right, now that I think about it."
My hands went to my hips. "Sing one word of one Cher song and I’ll tie your lips in a knot."
Pony snickered, which earned her a growl from Critter. No fool, Pony, she shut up mid-smirk. Clearing her throat, she offered up the pile of clothes Nia had left behind after her unceremonious eviction. "Try these on and come outside after you’re done," she stated, obviously trying to regain some sort of control over the situation. "We’ll be leaving as soon as Ice and Rio get back."
"Where’d they go, anyway?" Critter asked as she picked out a garish purple wannabe silk top and held it up against her chest, eyeing me with eyebrows raised.
I shook my head in a very definite and vigorous negative. Sighing, she threw the shirt back into the pile, and rooted for another one.
"To pick up another car, since the other one got trashed to shit yesterday."
Shaking her head in mock disgust, Critter grabbed another shirt, this one a teal number that was slightly better than the purple one. Slightly. As in the width of a hair. "Sometimes, Pon, I wish I was your mother. I’d have you over my knee for that mouth of yours."
"You can have me over your knee any time you like, babe," Pony replied, waggling her eyebrows and leering. "You bring the paddle, I’ll bring the edible soap."
Snorting, I turned and rooted through the pile of clothes for something to wear while Critter pushed her leering lover out of the cramped bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her and ignoring the indignant pounding that issued forth soon thereafter.
"Why I put up with that woman, I’ll never know."
"Cause you love her."
She grinned. "Yeah. I do."
* * *
"I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name. It felt good to get out of the rain. In the desert... ."
"Nia... ."
"...you can remember your name, cause... ."
"Nia!"
"...la la la la la la la, la la la, la, la..."
"Nia!!"
The discordant voice trailed off and I was shot a sullen look through the rearview mirror. Under other circumstances, being the cause of a friend’s upset would have concerned me.
These weren’t those circ
umstances.
Four hours into our trip through a featureless, monotonous desert, and the little men with jackhammers were just about to break out of my skull through my temples.
It wasn’t so much the absolute and utter boredom of the trip thus far. It wasn’t the "hair-trigger" shock absorbers that did everything but absorb the shock of the rutted and broken road. It wasn’t even the blinding sun which insisted on glaring at me through the window, forcing me to squint so hard that my cheek and eye muscles threatened to freeze that way permanently.
No, it was something worse than all of those things put together.
It was the grating sound of Nia’s voice as she ran through her rather extensive mental and vocal catalogue of what she called "traveling songs". I rather thought that "songs to commit suicide by" was a more apt title, since that is certainly what I was contemplating doing after the third encore of "Send in the Clowns" assaulted my eardrums.
When that was swiftly followed up by "Don’t Cry Out Loud", thoughts of merciful suicide gave way to thoughts of vengeful homicide, complete with vivid (and curiously satisfying) mental pictures.
Ice seemed totally unaffected, but I really expected nothing less. Her focus on the task at hand was the stuff of which legends are made, and this task was no different than the rest.
As blessed silence descended, I leaned my throbbing head back against the cracked vinyl of the bench seat and closed my eyes against the harsh desert sun, willing my headache away.
With only the sounds of the humming motor for company, I felt myself begin to drift into a light sleep, the pain behind my eyes dimming as my breathing evened out.
Just before sleep could fully claim me, however, I felt a not so gentle prod to my kidney area. Thinking that Nia was just shifting her legs, I ignored it.
Until the prod came again, and then again, becoming less gentle with each repetition. Then the humming started, softly at first, though discordant and grating in my ears. As my eyes opened, I could feel my fists curl tightly of their own volition to match the clenching of my jaw. Anger welled within me, deep and strong, banishing the last of my sleepiness with its searing heat.
