by Jessica Lake
"So what is it? What's the big flaw? You must have one. If you're not a spy – perhaps you're a psychopath? Is that it? Am I about to get murdered and buried in the desert? Are you going to harvest my kidneys and sell them on the black market? Come on, just tell me – I can't even say it won't have been worth it."
She giggles. "No, I'm not a psychopath. Not that I know of, anyway. And I'm not going to harvest your kidneys. You don't have to worry about me. If anyone needs to be worried right now, it's probably me."
I look up at that comment, sensing the seriousness underlying the playful tone. "Oh?" I ask. "And why's that?"
But she's not going to tell me. Instead, she asks if I want more coffee and I ask if she's going to work later today. There's a brief, fraught pause in the conversation before she replies.
"Uh – work? I, um – I don't know. I – I'm not –"
And then I remember. She left work in the middle of her shift. She just walked right out.
"Shit," I say, getting up and following her. "You left in the middle of it didn't you? Are you – do you think you're in trouble? Do you think –"
Lila hands me another cup of steaming coffee and plasters a grin that even I can tell is fake across her face. "Oh I'm fine. Don't worry about me. Today's actually my day off this week."
She turns away quickly after she says that, and I immediately know why. Irish, French, Russian, American – women are always so worried about letting you see that they want to spend time with you. Even the beautiful ones. Hell, especially the beautiful ones.
"And what are you doing on your day off?" I ask. "Because if you have the time, there's something I wouldn't mind doing."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"Well," I tell her, sliding my hands up under the hem of her robe and running them over her warm, smooth belly. "I wanted to see the desert. I can rent a car, if you don't have one. The boys won't begrudge me a little trip. What do you say? Do you want to help me take selfies in front of cactuses?"
"Cacti."
I laugh. "Yes. Cacti."
11
Lila
Less than an hour later and we're heading out of town in a bright red Lamborghini Aventador Roadster – a car I didn't even know existed until – well, until about twenty minutes ago. The engine roars when we get out of the city and Declan opens it up on the highway. I shriek as we pick up speed so quickly I feel my body being pressed back into the seat, but I'm laughing at the same time. He's driven a car like this before, I can tell from the confident way he handles it.
We are very quickly out in the desert, pulling over after driving down a random, unpaved road for about 20 minutes. When we open the doors, a wave of heat hits us immediately.
"Damn," Declan says, rushing around to my side of the car to help me out – a surprisingly gentlemanly gesture from a man who doesn't even know my last name. "It's hot as hell out here."
We walk a little further down the dusty, sandy track in the heat of the day and I realize as we go that I like standing next to him. I like just being near him – even if we have our clothes on. There's just something about his presence that makes me feel safe.
Are we going to hold hands? I can feel his hand there, inches from mine. And just as I'm seriously considering reaching for it he makes the first move and takes my hand in his. I turn my head and look out across the desert, smiling into the breeze.
"I like it when men do that," I say, a few moments later.
"Do what? Hold your hand? I thought you said you were a virgin."
He's joking, but I play along. "I was a virgin! That doesn't mean I haven't held hands with a man before."
Declan eyes me. "Really? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, because it's not a comment on your character – which I know nothing about – it's more a comment on – well, on what you look like."
"You don't believe a pretty girl could be a virgin? You don't believe a pretty girl could have worries or insecurities or –"
The Irishman, whose blue eyes look even more striking than usual under the bright sun, shakes his head. "No. No, I do not think – well, actually. I don't know. I was about to say right then that of course I know a hot girl can have insecurities or problems but maybe, I mean, maybe –"
"Maybe you thought they couldn't?" I ask, chuckling. "It's OK, it's not like I'm not used to it. Everyone I meet just seems to assume I've lived a life of ease and luxury. Which I totally haven't, by the way."
The conversation pauses briefly and we keep walking, hand in hand. The only sounds are the lonely desert wind and our own footsteps in the sand that has been blown into drifts across parts of the track.
"Haven't you?" Declan asks a short while later. "Lived a life of ease and luxury?"
He's still joking. But he's also not joking.
Once again I avoid his gaze. "My dad left when I was 4," I tell him, hearing a flatness in my own voice even as I can't believe I'm telling this near-stranger the things I never tell anyone. "And my mom's health has never been very good. She's, um – to tell you the truth, I think she's dying."
On the last word – 'dying' – my voice swoops up a note and then disappears altogether as a short, unexpected sob erupts out of me.
I immediately burst into awkward laughter and stop, stumbling to my knees and covering my face with my hands, burning with self-consciousness. Get it together, Lila. Get it the fuck together.
"I'm sorry," I whisper eventually. "I shouldn't have said anything – I don't even know why I did. I just – I feel – well, whatever. Now you really do think I'm a psycho, huh?"
My cheeks are stinging with heat when Declan helps me to my feet. I've managed to stop crying although I can still feel the tears there, lurking just below the surface, ready to spring up again. God, I hope they do not spring up again.
"What are you sorry about?"
I swallow, hard, and continue walking. "What? Oh, sorry – yeah, I don't know why I said that. You should forget I did – it's my problem. Do you want to take any photos? Of the desert, I mean?"
Declan ignores my questions and stops, pulling me back towards him when I try to keep going. "No," he says, and there is real concern in his voice. "Lila, wait. Hold on. Tell me what you're sorry for?"
I look down at the ground as my eyes threaten to well up again, desperate to avoid another scene. "Please," I say quietly. "Please don't ask me that. I shouldn't have said anything. We don't know each other. I don't know why I thought you'd want to hear about – uh, about my life."
"You're sorry for getting upset," he says, his voice steady and determined.
But I don't want him to talk about it. I really, really don't. "Please," I say again, but the lump in my throat is too big to keep going.
"But you don't have to be," Declan continues. "You say your mother is ill? That she might be dying? Who wouldn't be upset over –"
"Please!" I say again, and now I'm begging and angrily swiping a tear out of my eye before it can spill down my cheek. "Please! I do not want to talk about this!"
He grabs my hand again and we keep walking. In the distance, a range of low, rocky hills beckons. We don't even have water bottles, let alone adequate gear to be wandering the desert. And Declan, who is of a decidedly pale hue, isn't wearing sunscreen.
"We probably shouldn't go too much further," I say. "We're not dressed for it. And you're going to get a sunburn."
He laughs. "It Irish tradition to turn the shade of a lobster when we go on holidays to sunny places. No, let's keep going. I won't be satisfied until I have third degree burns!"
He's joking again, though, and we turn around to head back to the car, which is glittering red in the distance like some kind of large, exotic insect.
By the time we're about halfway back to it, I feel better. No longer on the verge of tears, still pleased to just be with Declan. He's sexy – hell, he's so sexy even my uptight ass couldn't say no to him – but apart from being sexy he's just easy to be with. Even after my mini-breakdown I feel at ease.
"My mum died when I was 14,' he says a few seconds later, out of the blue. He keeps going, too, even as I avert my eyes as the emotions well up in my heart again. "It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I can see you don't want to talk about your mother, Lila – although I don't mind if you change your mind – but I just want you to know that you're not alone. I know how it feels."
I turn away, almost physically flailing, because the tears are coming now and there's nothing I can do to stop them. It always happens like this – it's always the kindness of others that really gets me. But before I can get far, Declan is pulling me back, wrapping his arms around me and holding my head against his shoulder as the sobs burst out of me.
"It's OK," he whispers as I weep – and I weep for a very long time, to the extent that at one point I genuinely wonder if I'll ever stop. Perhaps the rest of my life will just consist of me crying in the desert in an Irishman's strong arms? "It's OK. Don't be embarrassed. I cried and cried when I lost my mum. Imagine, a 14 year old boy just bursting into tears in the middle of class, or when I was trying to talk to a pretty girl."
Still the tears come. They come and come, until I can barely breathe through my nose and I only remain standing because Declan is holding me up. And when, finally, they begin to fade, and the little gulping breaths start to die away, he simply kisses the top of my head, takes my hand, and continues to walk back to the car. Like it's no big deal. Like me breaking down like a crazy person is not a thing.
"OW! Christ!"
Declan isn't expecting the leather interiors of the Lamborghini to be quite as scorchingly hot as they are, and he leaps back up as soon as he tries to sit. "Jesus Murphy!"
Maybe it's the fact that he looks like a cartoon character when he jumps up. Maybe it's the 'Jesus Murphy' – a phrase I have not heard before, but one that strikes me as hilarious. Maybe it's the strange calm after the emotional storm that's perfect to fill with humor? I don't know precisely what it is, but I find myself giggling at first. And then, a few moments later, bending over to put my hands on my knees because I'm laughing so hard.
"Oh this is funny to you is it?" Declan asks, grinning. "You think it's funny I just about burned my balls off on that seat?"
I shake my head, hardly able to speak, and wipe tears – of mirth, this time – off my cheeks. "No," I splutter. "N – no! It's – it's –"
"Well I'm happy my suffering seems to amuse you so much. Maybe I was right about you being –"
"Jesus Murphy," I repeat, practically choking on laughter, which only intensified when I hear the words come out of my own mouth. "Jesus – Jesus Murphy? Jesus Murphy? What does that even –"
"Yes," Declan grins, affecting a serious tone. "Jesus Murphy. He's a well known man in Ireland, Lila. I don't see what's so funny about it."
But his repetition of the phrase that seems to have struck my funny-bone in just the right way makes it even worse and I crack up harder, laughing until my stomach starts to ache.
"Do you feel better?" He asks, cocking a single eyebrow at me when I finally begin to calm down. And then, before waiting for me to respond, he pulls me into his arms again and gives me one of those hugs that I am definitely not used to getting from men I've known for less than 24 hours.
12
Declan
There's something about this girl. And no, it isn't just that she's smoking hot. There's something vulnerable about her, some soft part of herself she's trying to hide. And I understand why she's trying to hide it, too. I remember that feeling. The fear that you were going to start sobbing or screaming in a public place and make everyone around you feel awkward.
I glance at her in the passenger seat, out of the corner of my eye. She's wearing cut-off denim shorts and a tight tank top with the letters 'LBD' written across the chest in swirly, girly pink letters. The tears in the desert have changed the atmosphere between us. Before, it was that false feeling of intimacy that comes with having sex with a near-stranger. Your bodies have been joined, and so your minds invent a sensation of closeness that isn't real. But it's different now. She's not just a gorgeous babe with the kind of body that could make a grown man cry. Now she's a gorgeous babe with the kind of body that would make a grown man cry and she's a real person, with a very sick mother and an impending grief she hasn't quite learned to handle yet.
Lila feels it too, I think. When she reaches for my hand as I come to a stop at a red light, there's something sweet there, bumping right up next to the obvious sexual tension that electrifies the air in the ridiculous supercar I've rented.
I want to help. I know she's not wealthy, because no one with money lives in an apartment as small or as run-down as hers. It was tidy inside, but the building itself looked just about ready to crumble. But she's proud, I can tell. I've heard about people in America not being able to afford healthcare. Is her mother one of those people? Is that why Lila doesn't live in the kind of place that a girl who must make hundreds of dollars a night in tips would be expected to live? And how can I ask her about any of this without seeming like some kind of –
Her little hand finds its way to my crotch before I can finish the thought. I glance down, just for a second, and suck my breath in as she rubs me through my trousers.
"I'm driving," I laugh, but I don't really want her to stop.
"I know."
God, her giggle is better – fizzier, more thrilling – than champagne on New Year's Eve. And her hand – well, her hand is still between my legs. My cock is fully stiff within seconds, my mind already trying to turn away from the main task at hand, which is not crashing the car.
"Lila," I say, a tone of mock-warning in my voice. She responds by unbuckling my belt. Why is it so fucking arousing to watch her unbuckling my belt? To hear the buckle jingling as she pulls it open? And then she wraps her hand around me and I groan as a flame of pleasure licks its way up my full length.
Two minutes later we're parked on another random track leading into the desert, but Lila's soft hand is somewhere else now. I watch, entranced, as she wiggles out of her shorts in the passenger seat. I keep watching as her panties – oh Jesus – follow, slipping down her smooth, tanned legs and off. My cock is standing straight up, oozing pre-cum already, anticipating her touch. But she stays where she is, in her seat, and leans back against the door. And then she spreads her legs open and shows herself to me, her sweet, pink pussy almost entirely bare except for a small triangle of neatly trimmed hair just above her clit. I reach out to pull her onto me, aching to feel her wetness sliding down every sensitive inch, but she just smiles and shakes her head.
"No," she whispers. "Not yet, Declan."
My cock throbs as she pulls her tank top up over her breasts along with the flimsy little cotton bra she has on underneath. Her breasts are perfect – full, round, so perky the nipples actually point upwards. And then, just as I'm about to reach out and put my hands on those beautiful tits, Lila does it herself. She brings her own hands up underneath them pushing them up as if offering them to me, and then pinches her nipples between her thumbs and her forefingers until her eyes close and her head lolls back against the window.
It occurs to me that I might come if she continues like that. Even if I don't touch myself. I might just blow my load without any physical stimulation at all, like some kind of teenage boy watching his first porno.
"You're gorgeous," I tell her as she rolls her nipples between her fingers until they're small and tight and stiff. I want to come on those tits. I want to come on her pretty mouth. I want to come in her asshole again, and her pussy, and all over her soft lips. And then I want to make her walk around like that, marked with my cum, so every other man she ever meets knows she's mine.
I smile as the feeling of needing release builds in my balls, and tell Lila she wouldn't believe the thoughts I'm having.
"Oh yeah?" She asks, suddenly slipping one hand – just one – down her belly, and pushing a finger between her pussy-lips.
"Fuuuuck," I say, my voi
ce thick with desire, as she shows me the finger, glistening now with her wetness, before drawing a little circle around her clit with it. "Lila, you're gonna kill me. I swear you're gonna kill me if –"
"If what?"
Her voice is different, too. High-pitched. Needy. I feel like she might actually be driving me crazy.
"If you keep touching yourself like that. If you keep –"
Before I can finish, she spreads her legs a little wider, and starts to touch her clit a little more firmly. Christ, is this girl going to make herself come in front of me? And if she is, what is it I've done to deserve to be witness to such sweetness, such utter perfection, as what my eyes are indulging in at this very moment?
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter why she's letting me watch her do this to herself. It just matters that she is. I shift in my seat as her breathing quickens, as I sense she's getting close, my cock screaming for her now.
"Do you –" she pants, pausing to dip her fingers back in her pussy one more time before bringing them up to her clit again. "Do you want to see me come, Declan? Do you want to see me make myself –"
"Yes," I reply, my heart pounding in my chest. "Yes, Lila. You're so fucking beautiful, baby. Yes I want to see you make yourself come. And after you do, I'm going to –"
"What?" She cries, squeezing her eyes shut. She's there – almost there.
"I'm going to come all over your pretty tits, baby," I growl, because there is no more room for sweetness in my heart. "I am going to fucking come all over your –"
Her body stiffens then, her back arches and her fingers slow on her clit as she reaches her peak and draws the pleasure out of herself. I am definitely going to lose my fucking mind now. I have to be inside her. I have to be inside every hole she has.
And thankfully she's no longer in the mood to torment , because she doesn't push my hands away when I crawl over the divider and slip two fingers into her slick warmth.
