Rough and Tumble

by Crystal Green

As he tugged at her panties, destroying those, too, she dully noticed that the heavy drapes were parted, leaving only sheer curtains to hide them from anyone who might walk by.

  The threat of exposure pumped her until she was slippery, aching, and she jerked at the top of her bra until it was almost off—but not quite.

  He was a madman—but was it because of the idiotic stunt she’d pulled in the bar after he’d bitten off her head for calling him “Beau”? Or was it because she’d asked him about his past? Was he attempting to get her mind off the questions again with sex?

  Cash whispered in her ear, harsh, demanding. “Tell me what you want.”

  Her imagination ran buck wild. For so long, she’d been afraid to ask for anything from her partners, and here Cash was, giving her every chance.

  When she paused too long, he pressed her down to the table, and as she reached for the far edge, everything on it crashed to the floor. She hugged the surface, her breasts crushed, her cheek flush against the wood. Her lack of panties left her bare, her dress around her waist, his hand on her ass, caressing her.

  “You did a bad thing in that bar, Molly,” he said.

  His thumb strayed to her pussy as he kept his hand splayed over her cheek, almost like he was getting ready to . . .

  Spank, she thought, mentally adding another written word to her skin.

  But that hadn’t ever been one of her fantasies, and she reached back, swatting his hand away.

  He laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound.

  “Not your thing?” he asked.

  “No.” So this was another game to him. Forget what she’d seen in his gaze before they’d stumbled in here. There’d been a wish of some sort—to have her in more ways than physically? To . . .

  Not love her. What they were doing could never be about love.

  “If I punished you,” he said, “would that make you angry?”

  Her face was beating with a deep blush. “Are you trying to make me angry with that question?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I think you wanted to slap the shit out of me earlier, and I’m seeing if you’re still in the mood.”

  So this was about her getting hurt by the whole “Beau” thing. Okay, then, he was right. She’d wanted to strike back at him for stinging her, so she’d set out to flirt harmlessly with someone in the bar, anyone. Warped move, but it’d obviously worked.

  She smiled in spite of herself. She couldn’t help it.

  Cash leaned down to her, his hand on the back of her thigh now. He trailed it up and down, riding over her flesh.

  “You wanted to make me pay,” he said.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “Not enough.” He kept petting her. “Why don’t you take it out on me now?”

  What?

  She slid a glance up to him, pushing herself partway off the table. “Are you telling me to . . . spank you? That’s ridiculous.”

  “So was spilling that beer on that gorilla.”

  “I’m sorry I did that.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Without thinking, she twisted around and smacked his chest. Then she froze. She hadn’t meant to hit him.

  He bunched his hand in her hair, and she sucked in a breath as he brought her face close to his. It was almost as if he wanted her to be angry, wanted her to say enough was enough and walk out that door.

  That perverse part of herself she’d discovered on this trip made her surge toward him, pulling him to her and crushing her mouth to his. He didn’t seem to know what to do, and he loosened his grip on her hair as she slowed the kiss, fiercely savoring this last night she’d have with him.

  She didn’t think about what it’d be like tomorrow, when he pulled in front of her door to drop her off. She only wanted to feel the now.

  With infinite care, she eased her hands under his T-shirt, loving the new, clean scent of it. She drew it up until he had to raise his arms to get it off, but she stopped him before that. The who-is-this-Molly? part of her—or maybe the her she’d just discovered—was turned on by the sight of the hair under his arms.

  She smoothed her thumbs over the indentations of him, feeling rough silk, making him flinch. “So you’re ticklish,” she said. Even tough guys had their weak points.

  Once again, he didn’t seem to know how to react. It was as if no one had ever gone slowly enough with him to discover this one little thing, and she was overjoyed at the possibility that she might’ve been the first.

  After he slid off the shirt and discarded it, she sat back on the table, her legs dangling as she summoned him closer, his body between her thighs. She rubbed her cheek against his sleek, hard chest.

  “You’re smooth, just like a whippersnapper,” she said.

  He laughed quietly, and she skimmed her mouth to a nipple, coasting her lips over it until it nubbed. She circled her tongue around it as he dug his fingers into her skin.

  “I’m old enough to teach you a thing or two,” he said.

  Now she laughed, traveling his back with her hands, tracing muscle, taking as much of him in as she could. And when she came around to the front of his jeans to unbutton them, he gripped her harder.

  “You have to admit,” she said, “that what I’m about to do to you is much better than a spanking.”

  He was already semi-erect when she brought him out.

  “Much better,” he said, his voice taut.

  She looked up at him, moving a thumb around his moist tip. God, she loved how he felt. She’d never been all that impressed with male equipment before, but Cash fit her just right.

  And he didn’t only fit her in that way. She’d never been so comfortable riding in a car, sleeping in a bed, simply being around a man. Too bad they didn’t have more than one night left. . . .

  As she eased off the table, sitting in a chair and pulling his jeans down at the same time, she tried to shake the idea of staying with him out of her head. The interview was on Monday, and there was no way she would miss it.

  No way.

  She licked the dew off the head of his cock, and when he groaned, a spiral of power filled her so completely that she knew she’d never feel this way again. Bolstered by a confidence that only seemed to appear when she was around him, she stroked her tongue under him, then swirled over him, and he fisted her hair. Her mind went blank, shutting out everything else but this.

  Taking him into her mouth, she sucked at him, driven on by his stimulation as she brought him to rock hardness. More kisses, more laving and loving, but he was holding himself back from coming.

  In the next instant, he lifted her, spinning her around until he was sitting in the chair and she was straddling him, just as they’d done in the Thunderbird that first night.

  But, this time, he was watching her in a different way—with an inexplicable depth to his gaze that he couldn’t seem to hide as he opened a condom. She helped him slide it on, and he entered her, slick and easy.

  “Princess,” he said, pulling her to him, guiding her hips in slow circles.

  She ground against him, so full of him. Pure joy popped in her, coming out in a smile, a laugh, as they moved together.

  “A princess,” she breathed. “That’s the . . . last thing that . . . comes to mind right now. I’m more . . . like a . . . wench.”

  “You’re everything,” he said, smiling at her as if he was daring her to ask him where all the dirty words had gone.

  But his gaze told her he wasn’t kidding. . . .

  As he leaned back his head, ready to come, she couldn’t resist arching against him, urged on by his turn of attitude.

  He came into her with a force so powerful that she gasped with him, feeling like she was never going to be able to separate from him.

  He massaged her to completion, stoki
ng her, enflaming her, bringing her to a peak before she tumbled back down to him, clasping him to her in that chair.

  For a while, there was only the sound of a TV mumbling through the thin wall—something she hadn’t noticed earlier. Her skin stuck to his, her hair damp against her face and neck.

  He kissed her breast, talking against it. “Back at the Rough and Tumble, I didn’t think you were even gonna glance my way, Molly P.”

  “Why?”

  When he looked up at her, surprise shadowed his gaze. “Women like you never see guys like me.”

  He’d given her one of the answers she’d been asking for—how he felt about her. Maybe she’d never known what he was truly running from, but she knew this much now: he definitely thought she was too good for him.

  And as she ran her fingers over his stubble-rough face, she saw the raw emotion peeking out, saw that this trip wasn’t just a fantasy anymore.

  This was as real as real was, and maybe that’s why she and Cash got along so well—because realness tended to come out when they were together. He’d always lived on the fringes of society while she’d always lived in her books. He lived in the moment, teaching her to do the same. They both understood isolation of different kinds.

  But even in the thrall of this realization, she was still a woman who’d been hoping to find herself during this trip—and she was more lost than ever.

  Neither of them spoke for a while. Cash merely used his finger to skim a word he’d written on her upper stomach this morning: sin.

  “Did you get in touch with your friends?” he asked.

  Shit. Was it past suppertime? How long had they been in here?

  “No,” she said, glancing back at the old digital clock on the scarred nightstand, which told her that it was past six and Sofia and Arden would be expecting a message. They’d probably even left texts or voice mails by now. Why hadn’t she heard her phone, though?

  Shit!

  She reluctantly disentangled herself from Cash. Her dress was in shreds on her, but when he looked at her, she felt beautiful and even perfect.

  With a wistful smile, she said, “I can’t believe it’s almost over. I wish . . .”

  “Don’t say it.”

  She clamped her mouth shut, feeling like she’d been kicked in the gut. But she understood—he was relieved they were almost done. She’d served her purpose.

  Molly turned her back on him, walking away, trying to hold in her sadness.

  Before she knew what was happening, he pulled her back to him, his face against her chest. Surprised, she held on to him, too, realizing that she couldn’t leave—not if ten muscled men started pulling her away.

  “If you really knew me,” he said against her skin, “you’d be glad this is ending.”

  ***

  At a small sushi diner in suburban Green Valley, a hop, skip, and a jump away from Vegas, Sofia stirred wasabi into a dish of soy sauce with her chopsticks.

  Both her and Arden’s phones lay on the Formica table between them like a small bomb, both of them waiting for the cells to go off at any time.

  Arden had already pushed her California roll away from her, but when the waiter stopped by the table, she picked up her chopsticks like she was going to eat more.

  The chopsticks were back on her plate the next second, after the two of them were alone again.

  “Molly was so good about calling before,” Arden said.

  “She’s still got time to check in tonight.”

  “She usually calls before dinner.”

  “Her dinner or ours?”

  Sofia and Arden had been like two old hens these past couple of days, taking a swim in the motel pool in the mornings to get the blood flowing, doing something nongambly like visiting Lake Mead to hike or the Hoover Dam during the day, then coming back to eat and crash in bed, sleeping soundly with the knowledge that Molly was safe. Both of them still had vacation for the rest of the week, so that hadn’t been a big deal. What worried them was Molly, Molly, Molly.

  Arden stared out the tinted window to the dusky traffic outside, a minimall across the street. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  News to Sofia. “You mean you finally want to kill Molly, too?”

  “I didn’t want to before. It was all fun and games, but now . . . Maybe it’s still too early to get freaked out about her.”

  Once again, worst-case scenarios paraded in a surreal formation through Sofia’s mind: dead Molly, sex-slave Molly, Molly in trouble in some godforsaken corner of Nevada without a cell phone or any money, totally ridden wet and hung out to dry by Cash, who’d played a long con game on them, pretending he was a decent guy when he really was not.

  She and Arden had joked about those possibilities yesterday, laughing by the pool, taking guesses about what exactly was happening on Molly’s big adventure, even though Sofia had joked only reluctantly, trying to have fun while not worrying. But the two of them had been less jokey this morning at the hotel’s continental breakfast after Molly had left them a short text revealing her latest location on Highway 95, saying that she’d get in contact at dinner. By the time they’d gotten back from the Hoover Dam tour and come to this restaurant, Molly hadn’t made that call. They’d stopped joking altogether, phoning her and getting only voice mail.

  “At what point,” Sofia said, putting down her own chopsticks, “does unnecessary fear become I-told-you-so reality?”

  “When it’s too late.”

  They shared a long look. Arden’s gaze seemed bluer than ever, as if she’d started out this trip making one set of mistakes and ended it with those mistakes compounded. As if she was willing to do anything to make up for the fall of spastic dominos she’d put into motion by getting into that dang game at the Rough & Tumble.

  Arden spoke. “Do you think she’s still near that ghost town?”

  “Rhyolite?” The longer the phone stayed silent, the more nauseated Sofia got. “Cash has a fast car. He could’ve sped anywhere with her by now.”

  “If he decided to do something bad with her and . . .” Arden huffed out a tense sigh. “Do you think Cash is that bad of a guy? Seriously?”

  Sofia held back. Could you ever really know anyone? Even now, sitting here with Arden, there was that layer of slight hurt from not knowing the truth about her gambling problems. The same went for Molly and this decision she’d made to go with Cash.

  “I don’t think I know much of anything about anybody,” Sofia said.

  Arden took the clue, drawing into herself. Every time Sofia had started a conversation about the gambling, she’d clammed up.

  Finally, she gave Sofia a hangdog look. “I suppose everyone hides a part of themselves at some point. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad.”

  The Japanese pop music playing from the speakers buffered them, but Sofia couldn’t take the avoidance anymore. She reached into her purse and grabbed her keys, signaling to the waiter for the check.

  “We’ll talk about it in the car on the way to Rhyolite,” she said.

  “But we don’t even know if she’s there!”

  “I’m not about to sit around and do nothing!”

  Arden looked out the window once again, as if she didn’t want to overreact—or get into a car with Sofia for a long trip. But then she grabbed the phones, slipping out of the booth after Sofia, never meeting her gaze the whole time.

  20

  Bit by bit during the sex, Cash had started to break.

  The first piece had snapped off at the sight of Molly’s skin, tempting and perfect. Another piece had twisted away after she’d refused to play his spanking game, which would’ve kept the sex emotionless, empty. But the final break had happened when she’d walked away from him.

  All along, she’d been the one to champion this trip, and he’d only been here for the ride. But after hearing her actually say that i
t was ending, Cash had crashed. His chest had crumbled in on itself, and now he realized that he was the one who didn’t want this to come to a screeching halt.

  As he held her, his face pressed against her stomach, all the emotion he’d covered up, like a hood over an engine that was firing on all cylinders, ran out of control.

  He still hadn’t gotten her out of his system.

  Her voice shook. “How can you say I’ll be glad this is ending when—?”

  “Quiet, Molly. Just be quiet.” He meant it—she’d be relieved to be rid of him. Women like her weren’t meant for the Cash Campbells of the world anyway.

  Then, like she wanted to change his mind, she stroked his neck, making him close his eyes, peaceful for once. It was all so . . . well, a woman would’ve called it “intimate,” with Molly lowering herself to his bare lap without any panties, both of them still sweaty and buzzing from a sexual afterburn.

  When she spoke, her lips brushed his cheek. “Are you as lonely as I think you are?”

  The truth hurt. But so did all the lies he kept telling himself about how he’d been okay without any sort of companionship.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But you are, too.”

  “I know. And that’s why we get along so well.”

  Two different worlds, one bedroom. Nothing seemed to matter in here right now, in a bubble where he didn’t have to put on any acts, even though that’s exactly what he’d been doing earlier.

  “You already know that I’ve been alone for a while,” he said. “My so-called parents ditched me at the starting line. I got put in different foster homes after that.”

  “Because you were difficult?”

  Her touch was a balm to him, and when she turned her head to look into his eyes then kiss him softly, his heart came to life. Shit.

  She leaned her forehead to his, and he was so swamped by the foreign emotion in his gut that he went on without thinking about it.

  “‘Difficult’ is a good way of saying it.” Maybe he should write that word on his own skin someday. Difficult would probably even end up on his gravestone. “I wasn’t easy to take care of, acted out a lot, never trusted much of anyone or expected anything of them.”