Extreme Passions

by Extreme Passions [Bold Strokes FF] (retail) (epub)

  “Um—that’s not really my department, Linda.”

  Not up there with classics in wit, but I heard a little chuckle before the line went clear. Getting Barbara Finnigan to deviate at all from her professional delivery was never easy, but I had been working on eliciting that husky chuckle ever since she replaced Jim Williams as KOIM’s go-to at Traffic Tab. Barbara was shy and hesitant then, and my early attempts to draw her out had sometimes confused rather than relaxed her. After some weeks on the job, she settled into a reserved, professional delivery, almost prim, even though she could never remove the dark, smoky undertones. I took it on as a challenge to tease a hint of personality into her velvety syllables.

  Don’t get me wrong, KOIM is a news station and I value professionalism as much as anyone, but I also get off on analyzing voices. Being in radio makes you sensitive to the great wonder and possibility of that tool. I, for example, use my lower-register alto to project an older-sister persona, someone with maybe a little bossiness but someone you can trust because she cares about you. Michael Merchant, who has the popular science segment after I sign off, has a tweedy professor’s voice. We both work at honing our personas, but Barbara Finnigan is a natural. She could take her languid, gold and amber, slow-dripping honey voice to the bank. Especially if she loosened up a bit.

  “Hey, Linda.” Marilyn from reception entered with the cup of strong coffee she always brings in for me. “Any special requests for Open House Day? Espresso? Brandy? Hemlock?”

  I checked that the network feed was in progress before answering with a groan. “Hemlock. Definitely hemlock.” The dreaded Open House that was scheduled for this week had slipped right out of my mind.

  “Don’t worry, Linda, it won’t be so bad. You could be MM.”

  I glanced at the network feed again before joining Marilyn in a giggle. Michael Merchant sounded smart, tweedy, and avuncular, but in person he was short, rabbity, and had very thick nerd’s glasses. I, on the other hand, also wore glasses but I cleaned up to a presentable brunette who looked good in business casual. The worst I’d ever been told was, “You don’t sound that tall.” Still, it’s always a challenge to meet people who think they have a relationship with you when, to you, they’re total strangers.

  “You’ll do fine as always, kiddo.” Marilyn smiled her best front-desk smile. “I almost forgot. This fax just came in for you.”

  The fax had big news: the mayor had fired his police chief in the wee hours after major news signed off the night before. Our city’s top limburgers had been dueling for months, but no one had thought His Honor could actually ambush the chief. I grabbed my Rolodex and started flipping. Pull off this scoop and I just might get a network pick-up with my name on it. But first I needed to take care of business. People care more about how to get to work than politics at this time of day.

  “Here’s Barbara Finnigan to turn your commute into a joyride.”

  “Not quite, Linda. There are delays on Route 10 and the other arteries are getting tight.”

  I smiled. She’d made a quick catch on that. I checked the clock. Still time to play. The early-morning people also appreciate a little deviation. The get-there-by-nine commuters, on the other hand, rely on everything being straight arrow.

  “. . . I’m Barbara Finnigan for Traffic Tab, keeping tabs for you.”

  “Thanks, Barbara. So can you come by for KOIM’s Open House on Thursday?”

  “I—my—I’ll do my best, Linda.”

  Gotcha! “Great. I’ll look forward to putting a face on that lovely voice.” I really did hope she’d make it.

  I got some good quotes about the mayor and the police chief even before I went off air. I’ve learned how to use the telephone like a heat-seeking missile, and I had a solid announcement when I retired to the office that the on-air staff shares. Once I got to my desk, I began collecting deep background from some of the mayor’s close advisers. They all said they were as surprised by the ambush as anyone else. I even put in a call to His Honor.

  I was surprised to hear the door open, since I usually have the office to myself for a couple hours every morning, and I had been counting on the privacy to work on follow-up re His Honor and the chief. The room really isn’t large enough to support much more than one person plus a chihuahua. When I turned around on my swivel chair, I was surprised to find that Marilyn had sent an intern without calling me first. I didn’t even know we had a new intern, although this one was quite fetching. She looked like a college student, standing there in the doorway with her backpack and low-cut blue jeans and burgundy T-shirt with the KOIM logo. She had spiky dark brown hair with lighter streaks added by a hairdresser.

  “I’m sorry, did you stop by the front desk?” Maybe she had slipped past Marilyn. Besides, I had to say something to stop myself from checking her out any further. I don’t usually stare at strange women, at least not at work when they’re looking back at me, but this one, as they say, was very easy on the eye.

  “I just thought you might want a late-morning traffic update?”

  Oh. My. God. A shiver sped along my spine. That voice with no mechanical interference—and it belonged to this woman? No doubt, though, about that smoky, lower-register timbre. I very frankly stared. Barbara Finnigan was nothing like I’d imagined. Not as young as I’d taken her at first, but college couldn’t be that far behind her. I’d thought of her as some after-midnight lounge singer, but she appeared more like a jock. I’d wager that she rode her bike to the studio. One hand held her pack strap while the other rested on a hip in a pose that invited me to look as long as I liked. The KOIM logo is a torch, and the flames rose between two breasts clearly not confined by a bra. When I raised my eyes to her face, I found her lips quirked in a knowing half-smile. She was checking me out just as frankly with dark brown eyes beneath arched eyebrows. Yes, at last, something I’d imagined, those were the eyes, wrong color perhaps, but still deep and shadowed as night.

  “You’re early. Open House is Thursday,” I managed, pleased that I didn’t stutter or squeak.

  “I wanted to surprise you for a change.” Emphasis was on the “you.” “Sometimes your little jokes make it hard to concentrate on traffic.” She was clearly enjoying my discomfort. “Are you surprised? Am I what you expected?”

  Much more. But I couldn’t say that. “N—yes! I mean—” Damn, she really had me going. I’m not used to being looked at so thoroughly. I’m on radio, you know.

  “Sometimes I get the feeling that you’ve been flirting with me.” It wasn’t quite a question. She moved a little closer and, in this closet-sized office, that put her about an arm’s length away.

  Had I thought of it as flirting? Maybe a little. Okay, a lot. I really liked hearing her voice. “Really?” Where had my wits gone?

  “Really.”

  Barbara Finnigan let the backpack slip off her shoulder and fall to the floor as if she were losing a layer of clothing. I had to tilt my head back to keep looking up into her face.

  “I brought a traffic update special for you.” She paused. I should have laughed to lessen the tension, but I was mesmerized. She tentatively touched my face while bending toward me.

  “Movement is light at the moment, but be ready for a few surprises on the inbound lanes.” Her voice—that voice!—was as slow and caressing as the hands that now held my head lightly between them. I could feel her breathing in the scent of my hair as she made an appreciative sound, and the KOIM torch lifted and fell scant inches from my face. I smelled a hint of cloves.

  “The door,” I squeaked.

  She stood up and started to back away.

  “Don’t—” I managed to clip off the sentence but I’d given myself away. I heard the chuckle that I had worked so hard to elicit so many mornings. She was walking to the door. I took a deep breath that felt like the first one in long minutes. An unexpected sigh of regret escaped my lips before I saw that she had left her backpack. Then I heard a distinct click. She hadn’t gone. She had locked the door.
r />   Barbara Finnigan was looking at me again with those dark, dark eyes and a half-smile and she was walking back toward me. I couldn’t breathe. Two steps and she was there; one more confident move and she was sitting on my lap, facing me, a leg to either side of mine, and holding my head between two very gentle, very capable hands.

  “Oh, yes, traffic has definitely picked up. Moving along quite nicely from what I’m seeing.” Her fingers were doing clever things to my ears as she bent forward and brushed her lips lightly over mine. She was covering my face with quick feathery kisses—my lips, my cheeks, my forehead, my closed eyes. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I couldn’t just let them hang there, could I? And they rested so naturally on her hips. Her lips were paying attention to mine again and I felt the barest tip of a tongue emerge.

  My mouth parted of its own accord. To be honest, my body was doing a lot without waiting for permission. Her tongue, the opportunist, slipped between my lips and, not to be rude, mine moved forward in greeting. After that I lost track of whose was whose. My hands were so close there was no reason not to move up above her hips and find skin. You forget how hungry all your senses can get; my hands were greedy to feel that smooth, cool skin. They slid up and over her ribs and along the knobs of her spine. My reward was a wordless moaning response in that amber-toned voice, and she pulled me closer, until my face was pressed aginst the flames of the torch. I breathed in the wonderful scent of her, a mix of coconut and cloves,

  She sighed and moved back, staring down at me with heavy-lidded, mouth-parted arousal that I knew was a mirror of my own. I didn’t want to quit. My hands kept moving up and down her back, caressing her spine, her ribs, her shoulders. She felt so good, I think I might have murmured something to that effect. Then I felt her hands take hold of my arms and I thought that perhaps this unexpected interlude had come to an end. Her eyes were locked on mine as she moved my hands from her back. But to my wonder, she wasn’t stopping, she was placing my hands on her breasts, and the catch of breath that escaped her as I followed her direction sent a shuddering response through me. If I had thought my hands were hungry before, they were ravenous as they cupped themselves around Barbara’s ample breasts, each with its hardening nipple. I could watch the effects on her as she drew a deep breath before catching her lower lip between her teeth so as not to moan out loud. Then she held my eyes locked in her own brown gaze while her hands searched for and found the top button of my blouse. Undid it. Undid the next. The next. Then her hands were on me and I was lost in a haze of sensation.

  “I’m getting reports of at least two areas of congestion,” she whispered into one ear. Her hands were under my bra and she was taking hold of each nipple. Her tongue found its way round the lobe and folds and into my ear. Very likely that’s how I missed just exactly when my bra joined the blouse on the floor.

  Velvet. Her voice was velvet and her touch was silk. She was so many kinds of softness. This wasn’t simply the most charged, erotic, sexy encounter of my life; it had another quality that, if I had imagined it ahead of time, I should have expected. She had taken charge, yes, and she was clearly enjoying the confident, authoritative moves that I could find no inclination to stop, but every move she made was slow, unrushed, allowing me to accept it completely. She was delicate and yielding at the same time she was sure and bold. She knew what she wanted; did I? It was the sweetness I had always heard in her husky voice, like the hint of honey in cinnamon. I saw it again as she slid out of the chair to kneel in front of me and lift her arms so that I could remove her T-shirt, such a disarming gesture of surrender, accompanied by an open, happy grin. Then she leaned forward to kiss the nipples she had so thoroughly sensitized. I pulled her closer, feeling her skin against mine as she tipped her head up for another meeting of our lips, and a new surge of intensity rushed through me.

  “I think all the southbound arteries are flowing well,” Barbara said.

  “No red lights?” I just might get the hang of this.

  “Not on the freeway. Though I did expect stop-and-go this morning. Maybe we can shift into a higher gear?”

  She stood, drawing me after her so that we were both standing, and her breasts touched mine. I pulled her to me and felt the full, amazing length of her body pressed against mine. She was almost as tall as I am, and not many women are. Barbara leaned back against the wall to make it easier for me to move my mouth down her neck while my still-hungry hands again found her round, soft breasts. When I took one of her taut nipples into my mouth and sucked, I heard a groan that was answered by a pulse in my groin. Somehow Barbara levered her thigh between my legs, and all my scattered points of pleasure dived toward an urgent focus.

  The phone rang. Habit made me hesitate and Barbara stopped moving, both of us breathing like runners after a race. “That could be the mayor,” I said. Or Marilyn wondering what the hell was going on.

  “Does he need a traffic report?” Barbara asked, her voice even huskier than I ever remembered. The words were muffled as she nuzzled my neck, nipping lightly. Then she slipped a hand between her thigh and my crotch and squeezed.

  “Let him get his own,” I muttered. If this was the freeway, there was no point in braking. I’d gone way past my exit.

  Barbara Finnigan’s mouth was over my ear, her tongue exploring the interior, her breath making mine shudder. I hardly realized that she had undone the zipper until I felt her hand on my stomach. Southbound.

  “I wasn’t told we were expecting localized precipitation.”

  God, that was one joke too many, but I couldn’t say so since the fingers that were exploring had turned me into a mass of desire, wanting nothing but to touch and be touched, and the sounds I could make were capable of communicating only that, not of making words. I wasn’t nearly as graceful as she had been as I unzipped her jeans and slid a hand inside. Amazing. The woman went without any underclothes. I found my way through her crisp curls.

  “Not so local,” I whispered. “Apparently there are wet conditions generally.”

  Barbara, who had paused to enjoy my entry into exploration, laughed a throaty chuckle. “Oh, yes, but be careful of slick spots. We don’t want any spinouts.”

  I started a mock groan to show my reaction to the awful punning but then I felt her go inside me and the moan became real. My hands went round her smooth, cool butt to crush her as close as possible, and her mouth was back against my ear. “Inbound. And outbound,” she whispered, matching moves to words. Again. Again. She was also doing something excruciating to my clit on each motion.

  Let’s just say I crested a rise, went into overdrive, and my engine blew out as I held my mouth against her neck so I wouldn’t make too much noise. Then she held me, weak and gasping, just held me and said sweet wonderful things. In that gorgeous, velvety voice.

  She started to move away, but I am nothing if not a responsible driver, so I gathered myself together and got behind the wheel. She leaned her head into my shoulder as I found my way inside her, and I felt her mouth open against me, using me to muffle the little sounds of pleasure that kept escaping. Did I say velvet? What I meant before was nothing compared to what waited for me inside. I wanted to just linger in her, stay forever in that warm connection, but she was moving against my hand. She was so willing, so ready that I filled again with desire, this time to take her where she had taken me. I whispered all this in her ear while I found a rhythm that I could tell pleased her. When I felt her arch and heard her come in that golden voice muffled against my shoulder while her hands grasped my back, I again found release.

  We leaned on each other, holding each other, both damp, catching our breath. I had emerged far enough from the haze of sex to wonder what on earth to do next when Barbara Finnigan took my hand, lifted it, and covered it with kisses.

  “That,” she said, “was a joyride.” She bent over to get my bra and blouse. After she slipped back into her own T-shirt, she helped me button up my blouse, and the sweetness of that gesture almost undid me again.


  “I like driving with you,” I said. “ Maybe we can go again sometime?”

  She grinned.

  We often ride to work together these days. You’d think that after all this time, I would have got used to that amber velvet voice, but I have to tell you that whenever I hear her say anything about “southbound traffic,” I am nearly undone. Good thing I work in radio.

  Last Chance Likker

  Annie Fuller

  The roadside signs flashed by at two-second intervals. There May Be Severe Sandstorms Next 15 Miles. Use Caution. Zero Visibility Possible.

  Well, shit. Like I can see anything anyway, Tyler thought, looking at her bug-smeared windshield.

  She’d been winding along Highway 160 buffeted by crosswinds for hours on the way to her last shoot. In the past four weeks, she had traveled through remote areas in Utah and Arizona on assignment for Southwest magazine to photograph Indian petroglyphs. Now she was in western New Mexico, feeling more and more lost as the minutes passed.

  The outside temperature gauge in her rented Pathfinder read 105 degrees. She had turned the air conditioner on full blast to keep the inside temperature below 80.

  All she had seen for miles were sand hills and dry grass dotted with piñon and scrub oak trees. The air shimmered in the heat, coating the distant tarmac with illusory pools of water. Clouds of sand swirled on the horizon. Spiraling dust devils spattered her vehicle with grit.

  Impatiently drumming her fingertips against the steering wheel, she imagined how glad she’d be to return to the Texas hill country around Austin. This is getting old, she thought. I want to see green grass again. She sighed wistfully. Too bad I don’t have anyone to go home to.

  According to her map, she had passed through a few towns, but they were little more than clusters of single and double-wides with randomly placed mini-marts. She’d tried to contact her boss numerous times; her cell was useless here. Though dubious, she followed his directions as she turned onto a side road that she hoped would lead her to Santa Lorenza.