by Kerri Sharpe
‘Take me for a ride in it sometime, OK?’ I say as I smile and give his arm the lightest of squeezes. Then I walk away as if the whole conversation was just my attempt at being polite. As if I didn’t really care. Oh, but I saw his face as I released his arm. Blazing red.
He comes to find me when the afternoon shadows lie in charcoal chunks and squares like giant tyre treads over my desk. He stands in the doorway and looks me over, weighing the plus-deltas. Doesn’t he know that just by being there he’s already sealed his fate?
Might be tonight, or next week, or six months from now. But he’s as good as roped and hog-tied. He asks how my last meeting went. And I tell him ‘great’ and ask what’s up. Why is he here? He tries to make up an answer, fumbles over it and gives in. Shrugs. He just came by to say hello.
I throw my head back and laugh and he stares at me, silent and smiling a secret smile as if to suggest he knows something I don’t.
Oh, sweetheart, you don’t know a thing. Pretend all you want that this is not what it seems. You came to me. You’re already mine.
We have a trip to a remote office. It’s no coincidence that we elect to sync up responsibilities at that site on the same week. But he stops in twice at my office to mention that it ‘really is a neat coincidence how that worked out’. Well. If it makes him feel better. I’ve got time for as long as he wants to play this game.
Oh, sweetheart, don’t you know the waiting makes it hotter – so much hotter?
Goddamned hot. Desert heat the moment we step through the airport sliding glass doors onto baking-stone concrete and steaming blacktop. Heat that shimmers and moves on the executive taxis and stretch limos and beat-up four-doors crowding the concourse like a living, liquid thing. And the rental car doesn’t fit either of us.
Yeah, there’s plenty of room. But, by getting into that mulberry-coloured full-size sedan, we leave something else outside. We fit the image suddenly, and in those moments where we’re reminded of who we ought to be, how we ought to behave, we don’t know what to do.
I look out the window and fiddle with the air vent and my billfold while he adjusts the seat, the steering, turns up the air to an icy blast. And then I bless my carry-on bag as it falls over in the back seat. I lean back to shove it into place and my skirt slides up over the edges of my stockings.
I’m wearing stay-ups. Forget the garters. That strip of perfectly bare skin between French lace and cotton polyester promises that there’s nothing else. No impediment of buttons or cloth to make fingers pause and fumble. Nothing to slow his speed.
He’s turned to look at me, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the gear shift. His lips are parted. Only when he realises a full three slow seconds have gone by and I’m doing nothing but looking at him with my eyebrows raised does he clamp them shut firmly. Refusal.
‘Everything OK?’ he asks.
I smile. Such control, my gorgeous Nate.
‘Just peachy,’ I say.
I wriggle back into place and make a token effort at pulling my skirt back down. It’s not my fault if I can’t get the hem quite back down to my knee – I’ve got my seatbelt on. I mean, really, how much squirming around can I possibly do in the interests of modesty? But he’s got all his attention fixed on the road, not even sparing a glance my way. Iron-clad control. And by the time we hit the freeway he’s doing nearly eighty.
I don’t know how we get lost. But at some point I look out at the miles of sand and wind-stripped rock stretching out behind the telephone poles on either side of the road and realise we’re nowhere near civilisation. I see him glance at the GPS console that confidently lets us know we’re fifty miles north of the city. Never mind that we took the southbound freeway from the airport.
With an irritated grumble, he turns the console off.
‘Well, this is fun.’
‘Is it?’ I put my notebook down and turn to him. I stick the end of my pen between my teeth and give him a considering look. ‘I don’t know about you but I could think of a lot more fun things than being lost in the back of nowhere.’
I tap the pen on my lips in mock thoughtful fashion until he gives in and laughs.
‘I wonder what you’d consider fun.’ He glances at me from the corner of his eyes and I pretend the question is as innocent as the tone it’s delivered in.
‘Right about now, a drink. Preferably with alcohol, but we’ll take what we can get.’
I point ahead with the pen. The two lanes of the road have narrowed, with packed dust replacing what was paved shoulder ten miles back. Dust billows across the road and the distance shimmers behind a quicksilver curtain of heat, but out of the haze before us rise the ubiquitous white numerals of a gas-station sign.
‘And maybe you can ask for directions.’
He gives me a look that could shred leather and I dissolve in laughter. The upholstery of the car seat is rough against the skin of my thighs where my skirt is well above my stockings, and, even on full blast, the air conditioning suddenly seems inadequate. First I think it’s a blessing this material doesn’t wrinkle much because my skirt is a hopeless crumple. And, second, that if I had my way it would be getting a helluva lot more crumpled right now. The sound of his voice at that moment feels like a hand sliding deftly between skin and cloth.
‘Might as well get gas too since . . .’
It’s hard as hell to keep up a façade of nonchalance right then, to manage a cool, smart-ass remark. But somehow I do, interrupting him midsentence.
‘Since you might not be able to find the way back ever?’
We’re parked at the single pump in what passes for a paved lot, although the desert is doing its best to reclaim the spot with the relentless scrubbing of sand and wind. A handwritten cardboard sign on the pump proclaims ‘CASH/CHECK PAY INSIDE STORE FIRST!’ I guess by that that it means the formerly whitewashed building sitting another thirty feet back from the pump and guarded by an ice freezer and a warped-iron bench outside. There’s not a soul in sight.
He pauses in the act of getting out of the car and looks back. The pale-blue and white linen of his shirt is pulled tight across his shoulder. I should reach out and stroke the hard curve of muscle underneath, run my fingers up the back of his neck.
‘You’re asking for it,’ he says, with a smile.
‘Asking for what?’ I want to goad him over that line, make him abandon propriety first.
‘It.’
He’s already out of the car.
Now it’s my turn to feel my face burn. OK, sweetheart, so I underestimated you. You’re playing with me too.
But I’ve got no problem throwing my hand.
Feeling silly, I grin anyway as I exit the car and walk towards the neon lottery sign struggling to make itself seen through a grimy windowpane. It doesn’t matter how this plays out. Either way, I still win.
The ‘store’ is scarcely more than four sagging walls and a roof held together with a wish and a prayer. A rusty bell wrapped around the door handle with a length of wire jangles in fabulous discordance as I enter. At least the inside has the decency to boast a single humming refrigerator crammed into one corner. I head towards it with a nod to the ancient clerk sitting at the counter and half-snoozing over his porno mag.
There are plenty more where his came from under the dirty glass counter top. As I set bottles of wonderfully cold soda down on the counter I look the magazines over and contemplate getting one. Take it back to the car and tell Nate it’s reading material for when I’m at the hotel.
I laugh aloud and the clerk wakes up abruptly, sending the magazine slithering off his lap.
It lands on the floor and flips open to reveal a blonde vixen in a fascinating pose involving two pillows, a table and an amazing sense of balance. I wonder if Nate would enjoy me like that, all pink and white lace and diamond-shimmer glossy lips. I can almost feel the pillows yielding to my weight, feel Nate’s hands . . .
The clerk grunts and gives me a contemptuous look, then bends to pick u
p the magazine with a mumbled apology. Evidently, he’s mistaken my riveted fascination with the picture for embarrassment or outrage.
‘No. It’s OK really,’ I mumble back, handing over my credit card. I’m amazed they even have a credit card machine in this place. As I wait the interminable age for the clerk to punch in the numbers with silver-ringed, wrinkled brown fingers, and then another aeon for the charge to authorise, my mind races.
I could ask for directions, but I don’t want to know where we are. I don’t want a set of clearly defined, helpful instructions on how to get to civilisation at eighty miles an hour. I’m right where I wanted to be: in the middle of nowhere, with him and only a couple thousand pounds of sheet metal and an engine to return us to sanity. When we want to return. If we want to.
I scribble my name on the credit-card slip and pick up the bottles with an absent-minded word of thanks to the clerk. He nods and shuffles away to disappear behind a bead curtain at the back of the store. It’s like he’s gone offstage intentionally, left me with free reign to do what I will.
Hot air rises up in a wave as I push the door open and, bottles in one hand, clumsily, nervously unbutton the top of my shirt. Two buttons only, just enough and not too much. I shake my hair back out of the way and head for the car – no, I stalk my way back to the car.
I’ve made up my mind. Here. And now.
The nozzle is still in the gas tank and he’s leaning against the car looking at the map from the rental company.
He looks up and meets my gaze full on, and his eyebrows lift ever so slightly.
‘So I think I know where we are now,’ he says.
‘Yeah? Well, good,’ I reply in a tone that says I don’t give a shit.
I step over the pump hose slowly, pausing an extra half-heartbeat with one leg on either side, straddling the hose. Then I swing the other leg over. The movement puts me less than a foot from his chest. He breathes out slowly, steadily, looking at me with those marvellous eyes.
Dark eyes, dark hair. I notice his shirt sleeves are folded back once, baring his arms almost to the elbows. Damn. Give him a couple days in this desert sun and that golden-toned skin will darken to copper. I picture him: no shirt, jeans, headband, leaning against that cowboy truck of his and watching me just like he’s watching me now. Willing me to come hither.
I’ve opened my own drink on the way to the car and I take a long sip from it now, tilting my head back and letting the condensation drip from the bottle on to the front of my white linen shirt. He makes a soft sound and reaches for the unopened bottle in my left hand. But, before his fingers can touch it, I whisk it from his grasp.
I swallow my own sip and smile, and then lean into him, chest to chest. Reaching behind him, I balance the second bottle on the top of the car, and then inch closer so that this time my legs straddle his. With one hand braced on the car doorframe and my Mary Jane pumps on either side of his loafers, I hold him captive. I bring my bottle to his mouth and brush the plastic edge along his lips.
‘Uh-uh.’ I pull the bottle back a little. ‘Work for it.’
He looks at me and shakes his head, as if to say ‘no way is she really doing this’. But his cheeks are flushed with more than the heat, and he obeys. And I get to see just what kind of knowledge prissy, perfect, good-boy Nate really has.
His tongue circles the rim of the bottle where my lips have been just a minute before. He licks each ridge where the cap screws on with the tip. His tongue darts into the mouth of the bottle and moves in sinuous, twisted precision. When he closes his eyes I feel the vibration of his chest-deep moan all the way through the bottle and into my hand. All the way into my skin. I stare in amazed, confused desire at the motion of his lips and his tongue on the clear plastic, and my pulse beats in matching harmony.
I’m still mesmerised, helpless like a charmed snake, when he lifts his mouth from the bottle and turns. When he proceeds to do to my mouth what he’s just finished showing me he can. But there’s so much more you can do with hot, resilient flesh than with plastic. And I’m a quick learner.
Be careful when you charm a snake. After the spell’s over, she’s a thousand times more vicious.
When we end that kiss I’m surprised we haven’t created enough static electricity to set the pump on fire. But his pretty lips are bruised now, and I know for a fact that the truck wasn’t compensating for anything.
Somehow I’ve managed not to drop the soda bottle through all this. I remember it when his hand closes over mine and he raises the bottle. My fingers slide through his and I let him have it. I’ve got better things to do with my hands while he’s occupied. There’s a certain fantasy I’ve wanted to fulfil for a long, long time.
I unbuckle his belt, and then the buttons on his no-longer perfectly pressed khakis. Smiling, I run my hands along his legs as I sink downwards.
‘Oh hell!’ he says, half laughing.
‘Oh hell, yeah,’ I correct him. He’s still got the map in his other hand and I grab it, neatly sliding it into place beneath my knees and the rough concrete. It’s far from an ideal solution, but then I pull down his khakis and boxers, and I’m totally distracted again. I think I’ve never seen a man look so utterly at ease with his pants and underwear around his ankles. He sips his soda pop and smiles.
‘Don’t tell me you’re intimidated.’
I snort. ‘Intimidated my ass.’
My voice gets softer and my fingers circle his cock, teasing. ‘Impressed is more like it. But . . .’ I let my tongue flicker along the underside of his length and just over the tip. He sucks in his breath.
‘I can more than handle you . . .’
I spiral my tongue down his cock, almost enclosing him with my mouth – but not quite – and I feel his posture change, his body stiffen. I draw back and look up. At the naked, waiting lust in his face, my heart does a double flip. I love seeing that look, knowing it’s all me. I close my teeth on the inner muscle at the top of his thigh, slowly, slowly add pressure until he groans aloud – a breathy, pleading, bite-me-harder-babe groan.
‘. . . cowboy.’
I love the taste of him, the smell of him, the feel of him all the way into the back of my throat. There’s nothing sexier than sucking a gorgeous guy off. The thought that it’s nothing you should be doing anyway, that if Grandma saw you she’d faint, that it’s damn hard to do on top of everything else, make it the hottest sexual act in the book. In any book.
And here on my knees at a gas-station pump in full view of the road and the whole damned world. With the smell of road dust and gasoline and engine oil in my nose; the hot metal of the car under my palms. With Nate – repressed, corporate, closet-cowboy Nate – moaning my name and fucking my mouth like it’s the hottest piece of ass he’s ever had. Yeah, this definitely counts as a Category 5 on the F-scale.
I’m torn between wanting to suck him until he comes and the slippery, aching friction between my legs. He makes the decision for me: his fingers tighten in my hair and he pushes me back. I lick my lips and stare at him hungrily, half displeased at having my pleasure taken away, half wild with lust.
‘Up.’
I stand and he moves around behind me, sandwiching my body between his and the car. He lifts my arms and begins to unbutton the rest of my shirt. His breath is like the touch of a brand on my neck, but his hands are unhurried, confident, sensual. He unhooks my bra. I hold my breath. He slides bra and shirt off my shoulders, halfway down my arms. I release my breath and gasp for another as his palms retrace their path up over my skin. By the time his knuckles graze my nipples I’m dizzy.
And still his hands don’t stop. Now their path travels down to my long-suffering skirt, raising it, crumpling it delightfully over my hips as he nudges me forward. My breasts brush hot maroon chrome and steel and I gasp and arch, pushing my bare ass right up against his cock.
He stills and I glance over my shoulder, meet eyes full of concern.
‘You OK?’
I can’t answer, I just n
od and plead with my gaze for him to keep going. Impulsively, he kisses my mouth again, softer than before, so soft you’d think we were making love instead of fucking. He circles his left arm around me and pulls my back into the curve of his torso, holding me where he can kiss me to his heart’s content. But his other hand is busy between my spread legs. And he kisses me like a lover all the while he fingers me like a whore.
But, when the first sweet, intense bubble of pleasure rises in my clit and courses through every muscle from my hips right down to my toes, I have to tear my mouth away for air. His fingers never stop. And, bereft of my lips, he turns his passion to my neck and my shoulder, his teeth nipping the naked skin. Each bite a tiny, incredible torture.
But it’s still not enough. I like big trucks and the bad boys that drive them. Fast and hard. I want all of him, in every way. I want his cock fucking my pussy. Fucking my ass. And damn it that I don’t have lube here and now, but two out of three is good enough.
I reach back, struggling to keep my balance with one hand and to move my arm since my shirt is wrapped tight around my elbow. But I find him. I tug the head of his cock forward. And, after a moment’s hesitation, a moment where I know prudent, anal-retentive Nate worries about whether this is a good idea or not, he follows my lead. And I know why we’re here now, a thousand miles away from the safe confines of our world. He trusts me.
Ready as I am for him, he has to coax me, open me up bit by bit. And, oh hell, no, he wasn’t compensating for a goddamned thing. But then he’s inside of me, every last inch, and his fingers are tight on my hips as he fucks me. He sighs my name. He snarls it. Harder. And I’m coming again even though my mind is telling me this is insane and I should be far, far past the point of satiation. It tells me I’m going to be sore as hell tomorrow, but I don’t fucking care. And then with a final thrust he stills, and I feel his heart pounding like a trip hammer against my shoulder blade.
Once again I can hear the sounds of the wind and the desert, the drone of a prop plane far overhead, the faint whirr of the ice freezer out in front of the store. The sound of his breathing as his head rests on mine. When it steadies at last, he raises himself on his arms, still bracing against the car for support, and I lever myself upright.
