With his other hand, Russ unbuttoned the dozen small buttons that closed the bodice of my dress, all the while kissing me tenderly. When they were all undone, he sat me up and pushed the shoulders and sleeves down, trapping my arms and revealing the white bra.
I waited, holding my breath, for his next move, wanting him to look into my eyes, but entranced by the rapt gaze he held as he pushed the cups down, exposing my breasts. I’d had boys look at me with my breasts bared before, and all of them gave clear evidence that the sight was arousing, but this was different. I felt exposed, not just my bare flesh, but my soul. Trembling, I waited for this man’s touch, unable to move my arms that were trapped in the sleeves of the hideous dress. Now I know how a rabbit feels in a trap, I thought.
Russ lifted a hand to lightly heft my left breast, drawing his finger across the nipple and over to the other. Staring alternately into my eyes and at the creamy globes he toyed with, he licked his lips slowly. God, I wanted that tongue on the taut beads that tipped my nipples now. Moisture was gathering between my legs, unheeded. Vulnerable, trussed like a turkey ready for roasting, I did the only thing I could to break the spell and make him take me. I heaved my chest with a deep breath, thrusting my breasts forward.
His eyes lit with desire, but with what must have cost him an effort of iron discipline, Russ stayed the course, flicking each nipple in turn until both were standing at full attention, begging for the touch of his lips and tongue. Shaking with anticipation, a low moan escaped me, and his lips parted.
Slowly and with what felt to me like reverence, Russ leaned forward to kiss each nipple, before gathering my body into his arms and kissing me deeply, his tongue jousting with mine until I thought I would melt into his body and be consumed. His mood seemed to have changed, from the directive, almost dangerous whim that made him virtually tie me up in my dress, to a much slower, gentler mood that was communicated to me by the lightness of his touch and the tender heat of his gaze.
Keeping his incredible eyes on mine, Russ helped me free myself from the confining dress, and then pulled his thermal shirt off over his head, releasing that intoxicating scent again. Gently, he laid me down on my side and joined me there, holding me close, bare breast to bare chest. Something that I couldn’t define was happening, but it wasn’t the type of lust that I knew from previous experience. My head was buzzing, and warmth flooded me, bringing with it a rush of moisture between my legs and a sense of suspended time.
I would have been content to lie there with his arms around me forever, as his warmth soothed me and swept away my worries. I could feel his lips moving at my temple, planting tender kisses there. Then his hand began to stroke me from my back, down to my ass, where he lingered, circling, soothing the sting and then slowly back up. My arm was trapped by his, curled around his waist, where all I could do was stroke him as far as my hand would turn.
“Kitten,” Russ whispered. “I want to make love to you.”
Confused, I simply nodded. I would have thought it was obvious I wanted sex too, and that we were on the way, with this strange foreplay lulling me into something resembling hypnosis. He tilted my chin up and kissed me again, leaning into me so that I could feel the bulge between us. My hand was now free, and I reached between us to undo the button on his jeans.
He rolled back to give me access, and now I used both hands to unzip and push them and his underwear down over his hips as he lifted them off the bed. When his cock sprang free, I couldn’t suppress the moan of desire that escaped me. I put both my hands around him and squeezed, brushing my thumb across the slit at the top and spreading the moisture I found there around the crown.
“Kitten, you set me on fire,” he moaned.
His words had a similar effect on me, and my eyes flashed to his to judge his mood. Rolling over, he pressed me to the bed and then captured my hands in his, pulling them over my head and pinning them. With exquisite care, he kissed my eyelids, then nuzzled down to my neck and just behind my ear, where he kissed and sucked until I was tingling all over.
The urge to touch him was overwhelming, but he held my wrists firmly with one hand as he rolled off me slightly and reached between us with the other to fondle my breasts. Twisting so that he could continue to pin my arms while he kissed and suckled my nipples, his free hand drifted lower, tangling his fingers into the hair that covered me below. He tugged, drawing a sharp gasp from me, and then nipped me on a sensitive, erect nipple. The sensual assault was almost more than I could bear. I moaned and writhed with the need to touch him and to be touched where I throbbed.
“Please,” I murmured.
“Anything you want, Kitten. Tell me what you want.”
“I want you,” I sobbed. “I want you inside me, but I want you in my mouth, too.”
“My greedy little Kitten,” he soothed. “You shall have all you want and more.” With that, he at last released my hands, and turning quickly, mounted me with his head at the cleft between my torso and legs. Placing his face between my legs to suck deliciously at my clit, his cock dangled enticingly above my face, where I wasted no time seizing it in both hands and guiding it into my mouth. He moaned and ground into me as I licked and sucked, taking as much of the length as I could into my eager mouth and flattening my tongue across the head as it passed on the way down my throat, the better to taste him.
With his balls covering my nose, I couldn’t breathe, so I lifted them away from me and fondled them, remembering to tickle them with my fingernails from time to time. Russ’s loud moans were accompanied by thrusts that plunged deeper than I could handle, but I loved it. What was happening between my legs was incredible, made more so by the fucking my mouth was receiving from his steady pumping. As he licked and sucked my clit, the pleasure built and I wildly sucked all the harder at his shaft, clutching his ass with both hands as if he might escape. With a flick of his tongue accompanied by a plunge of his fingers into me, I came without warning, thrashing and digging my fingers into his muscular backside, crying aloud around his manhood, which he stilled until I turned my face away, desperate for the air that I couldn’t find during my cataclysmic orgasm.
Now he pulled away from my mouth and turned again. Before I could protest, he was on his knees between my legs, guiding his beautiful manhood into my entrance. With just the head of his cock inside my channel, I was frantic to be filled completely, begging him to put it all the way in. Even though I was prepared for it, I cried out when he placed both his arms under my knees and pulled me into him and himself into me, spearing me on that fearsome weapon, driving it so deeply into me that he touched virgin territory, where no man had gone before.
What flooded through me was intense sensation, bordering on relief, followed quickly by a building fervor with each thrust of his inexhaustible shaft. Never had I felt such satisfaction and pleasure with every plunge, my eyes rolling back in my head as I wrung the last iota of sensation from each one. Before he came with a shout and one last massive thrust, I was shrieking my pleasure every time he pounded into me. He held nothing back, sending me into orgasmic delirium long before his climax. When he had given the last, grinding thrust, he slumped onto me, covering me with his weight, lying heavily on my chest as if unable to even roll over, though at last, he did.
Spent, we eventually stopped gasping for air and lay in post-coital bliss, me with my head on his chest, nuzzling into his spice-and –woodsmoke scented skin; he holding me closely with one arm while his other hand stroked my hair lazily. A lethargy stole over me that had nothing to do with my weakened condition and everything to do with the feeling that I could be happy to lie here like this with Russ forever. As sleep overtook me, I was so far gone that I didn’t notice whether he had used a condom.
Later, suddenly awake for no reason that I could determine, I was entranced to find that I was still enfolded in his arms, still naked beside him, skin to skin, warmed by more than his warm body. The warmth came from inside, where I still tingled from the sex we’d shared, and even deepe
r. This, I thought, was simple, genuine happiness. I lay in the glow of it, his quiet breathing steady unless I shifted, and then he’d give a little gasp and clutch me closer. What did this mean? Did he feel the same way I did? Or was that just crazy? As my thoughts drifted lazily, I slowly realized that the howling outside had stopped.
“Russ? What happened to the wind?”
“Hmm?” I realized then that he had been nearly asleep. Russ got up, wrapped the quilt around me and tucked it in, then went naked to one of the quilt-covered windows to look outside.
“I’ll be damned, the sun’s trying to come out.”
“Does that mean it’s over?” I asked eagerly.
“Could be. We should get ready to make a run for it while it’s stopped. Hang on, I’ll get you some warm water to clean up.”
My excitement over being able to get out of this claustrophobic cabin was matched only by my disappointment that my sexual interlude with Russ was about to come to an end. I wanted to explore the many facets of his personality, and I couldn’t imagine any man being able to satisfy me like he did, fill me like he did, ever again. The thought devastated me.
Suddenly, I couldn’t imagine my life without him. It’s just post-traumatic stress, I told myself, using the phrase I’d read somewhere. But, being pathologically truthful, even with myself, I knew that was a lie. Impossibly, in the past couple of days, I had fallen for this stranger. Was it just because the sex was amazing? I didn’t think so, but what did I know, a girl whose life’s richest experiences had been those of the heroines of books from the bookmobile’s monthly visits? Nor did the books that were approved for my reading have any sex in them, not since I sneaked my mother’s trashy novels when I had been with her. This was truly new ground I was breaking.
Russ brought the basin of warm water over, and gently cleaned me, then helped me dress. Doing the same for himself, he put on his coat and gloves and told me to stay under the quilt while he cleaned the snow off the pickup. As I huddled there, my thoughts circled between my fear of the Prophet’s pursuers, the arrest warrant for auto theft that I was sure awaited me in Arizona, and a piercing grief that I would soon have to leave Russ and face my future, whatever it held. By the time he came back into the cabin, I had dissolved into tears and was sobbing into the blanket.
“Here, what’s this, Kitten? What’s wrong?” His face held nothing but tender concern, and his voice was soft, but I only cried harder, until he climbed into the bed with me and gathered me into his lap. Rocking me gently, he dried my tears on a corner of the quilt and held me until I could stop crying. Then he asked again, this time with a voice of command, though it was kind.
“Kitten, tell me why you were crying.”
I felt so foolish! What would he say to me if I told him I’d fallen in love with him? He’d think I was ridiculous. Even I thought I was ridiculous. So, instead I told him I was afraid of being arrested, or being captured by a posse from the RALDS. I ventured a look at his face to see if he’d bought my partial truth, only to be confused once again by his stormy eyes and angry expression. Then he pressed me even closer to me and said words that flooded me with relief and hope.
“I won’t let them take you. We’ll figure out the stolen car problem, but those sons-of-bitches will never get you.” The emphasis on ‘you’ puzzled me, but I was so grateful that I ignored it and turned my face up for a kiss. Russ kissed me ardently, and then said, “Come on, let’s get outta here while the gettin’s good.”
Wrapping me tightly in the quilt, he carried me to the pickup that was warm from idling. It didn’t occur to me then to ask for my shoes, and I would learn later that he had lost one getting me out of the SUV, but I felt safe and at home in his arms as he carried me.
Chapter 7
As far as I could see in any direction, the world was white and flat, but I knew that somewhere in the misty horizon were occasional mountain peaks. Drifts of what looked like white dust crossed the road and swirled in front of us and in our wake, as Russ sped down a narrow strip of gray tracks in the wasteland. Weak sunlight against a dark gray sky made the ice crystals in the air sparkle and dance. We traveled for what seemed like hours, first down a snow-packed road that led from the cabin to what Russ assured me was a major highway, then down the almost-deserted highway for miles, then off to the right on a ranch road that seemed to have no end.
From time to time, Russ peered out to the west through my window, watching the darker clouds build on the horizon. It seemed that this storm was coming in waves from the north, but another was brewing in the west. Weather from the west wasn’t unusual for Utah, I knew, or for Arizona. But Wyoming was prone to getting storms from both directions. In any case, it seemed that Russ was anxious about outrunning the next wave. I wondered aloud how much further it was.
“Not more than twenty minutes, now. It’s gonna be touch and go, though,” he said, a hint of worry in his voice. “We need to get there before it starts blowin’ again, or we could lose the road.”
I sat back and stayed silent, the only contribution I could make to our race, so that he could concentrate on the road and wring out every bit of speed possible on the icy track. My mind was busy trying to sort out today’s drive in the light of the story he had told me about seeing my crash, riding on horseback all this way and returning with the pickup in only a couple of hours. It didn’t seem possible.
Outside the four walls of the cabin, the past two days took on the semblance of a dream, and my life before the cabin seemed unreal as well. Had I really spent three years as an unwilling member of a church run by dirty old men? I puzzled over the reasons I hadn’t run before, when I turned eighteen, maybe, or at any time since then when I was terribly unhappy over my lot. I examined my feelings for my father, and could find none but the loathing that filled me when I thought of the sweet fifteen-year-old child who thought he was god’s personal gift to her.
It occurred to me then that these girls must be brainwashed from an early age, since I had known none who wanted to escape the life as much as I did. And even I had a sort of lethargy about it. I had seen older women run, though. When they were brought back, their hair covering desperate, tear-stained faces, they’d disappear into the Prophet’s compound. Having their hair loosened from its married-woman’s top-knot and bun was a show of disrespect, tantamount to declaring them harlots or worse. But, after a few weeks, they would return to the community, forgiven or punished, I never knew which, because none of them would ever talk about their ordeal.
Young men sometimes disappeared from the community, too. Driven out, like Johnny, or escaped, it didn’t matter. They weren’t welcome to return. That left more young women for the older men, as far as I could tell. My mind drifted over that day of headlong flight in the Prophet’s stolen SUV, stopping only for gas and a restroom, maybe a candy bar to keep my energy up.
And then the black ice. They called it that, I knew, because you couldn’t see it. Clear as water and lying under drifting snow, it was deadly. My front tires had hit a patch and I was in the ditch before I could react. Trapped there, dying, until Russ rescued me. Russ, who warmed me, fed me and cared for my hypothermia. Russ, who somehow got under my guard and made me want him. Russ, who awakened passion I didn’t know lurked within me, wild child and wanton woman that I was. Russ, who was soon to turn me out into the world, with no one, no money, no experience, and no hope. And whose story of my rescue just didn’t add up.
This thinking, as he reminded me, was getting me in big trouble, for there was nothing to do but cry over my plight, and then he would force me to tell him why. I held back my tears fiercely.
Finally, appearing out of the fog and mist, a huge gate with an ironwork sign at the top. Rocking W Ranch, it proclaimed. Not very original, in my opinion, but whoever had commissioned that sign was proud of it. Incorporated into its ornate scrolls were not only the name, but an elk, a mountain, a stream and a herd of cattle. I gaped at it like a country girl in a street full of skyscrapers.
“Welcome to the Rockin’ Dub-ya,” Russ said.
I had nothing to say, because whatever I said would either come out sarcastic, like, ‘nice sign’, or would be a plaintive question about what happened next. I didn’t want to think about that. Russ had a plan, or so I thought, and I would just go along with it until I found myself somewhere else, without him to lean on. But, before I left, I was going to ask my burning question. If it took us nearly three hours to get to the ranch from the cabin by road, how the hell had he done it in two on a horse?
Russ drove the pickup around to the back of a very large house that I couldn’t see well because it was too close and I was on the wrong side of the pickup. He left the truck running while he went into a door that looked like it split in half like an old-fashioned farmhouse door. In a moment, back he came, with another blanket and a big-bodied older woman on his heels, apparently giving him an earful. I waited with trepidation for whatever was to happen.
§
“…I swear you’re gonna be the death of me, we didn’t know whether you were dead or alive.” The woman’s tirade must have been about Russ’s disappearance, but as soon as she saw me, her demeanor changed completely. “You dear, sweet girl, Russ says you almost died out there. He’s gonna carry you into the kitchen there, and I’ll keep you warm while we figure out what to do with you. Are you hungry?”
It was too much to process all at once, especially when Russ swept me up into strong arms that carried me with ease, as he had from the cabin to the pickup. I had confirmation now that he could do it. It was one more thing that split my opinion neatly into two opposing sides. On the one hand, being carried by Russ was a little slice of heaven, and I would gladly have let him carry me to the ends of the earth. On the other hand, how did it fit his rescue story? I wasn’t too clear on it, now. Maybe he would tell me again. Or tell this woman, whatever her name was.
“Kitten, this is Janet, our cook. She’ll take care of you for awhile.” He gave no explanation of where he was going, what he would be doing or when he would be back. And, with Janet looking on, I was too shy to ask. What if she guessed that he and I had been far too familiar during our ordeal?
Rustled Page 6
