by Tia Siren
“What are you doing up so early?” Jennifer asked the little boy. His name was Jaxson, and he had the same blond hair his mother did, though his green eyes were his father's. That man was long gone, out of the picture and out of the state. It was just Jen and Jaxson, together in Arizona, in a small town named Harrisburg. It was dusty and hot, and Jennifer owned a small bar right at the end of the main drag, a place called Chuck’s, named for the man she had bought it from. Chuck’s was the local biker hangout, and there were plenty of bikers in and around Harrisburg.
“It’s not early, is it?”
“Six twenty is pretty early,” Jennifer groaned. “Go back to bed.”
“I don’t want to. I’m too excited about school.”
Jaxson was in first grade, and he loved it. He was bright and was already reading far beyond his level.
“Why? You go five times a week. How could you be excited?”
“Today is Chris’s birthday, and he’s bringing in cupcakes,” the little boy said with a huge grin.
“You got me up so early because you’re excited about cupcakes?”
“I guess so,” Jaxson said.
“Do you know how late I worked?”
“Yeah. You didn't pick me up until two in the morning. I woke up as we were driving home.”
On nights that Jennifer worked, which was most of them, an older woman named Barbara, who lived down the street, watched Jaxson. After leaving the bar, Jennifer would swing by and pick him up. Being a single mother was tough, but Jennifer wouldn’t have had her life any other way. Jaxson’s dad had been an asshole, one of those tough guys Jen always found herself chasing after, and when she had gotten pregnant, he had disappeared. She was better off without him.
Jennifer’s mother lived across the country and wasn’t able to visit much, and she’d had no money to send when Jennifer had needed help.
Buying Chuck’s had been a big gamble, but it had paid off. Jennifer hadn’t gone to college. She had worked in the dingy bar for a couple of years. And then, when she was twenty-three, Chuck retired and offered the bar to the few employees he had. Jennifer was the only one who had expressed interest in buying it. She got a loan and did so. She wanted to make a better life for herself and for her son.
Twenty-three turned into twenty-four, and that gave way to twenty-five, and the bar stayed afloat, finally giving her a monetary cushion. She wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck anymore.
But she did stay up late, and she was tired, and she felt as though she was missing out on Jaxson, particularly since he was in school until three and she went to the bar at five, six times a week.
“Turn on the TV, but keep it low,” Jennifer groaned as her son cuddled up beside her. He searched for the remote, tossed among the blankets on the bed, found it, and turned on the TV that sat on a long dresser against one wall of the bedroom. Blue light flooded the dim room, and Jennifer groaned once more for good measure before pulling her pillow over her head and going back to sleep.
When she awoke again, it was because her alarm was going off. Seven twenty, time to get her son ready for school. Cartoons were on the TV, but Jaxson was sleeping beside her.
“Get up,” she said, nudging her son.
“I’m tired now.”
“Moms are allowed to sell kids, you know.”
After they climbed out of bed, she made breakfast and got him dressed. He was at school by eight, and she was back home ten minutes later. She collapsed into bed and went back to sleep.
Jennifer rose again just after noon. Her cell was ringing. She searched for her shorts; her phone was still in the pocket, and she had taken them off just before getting back in bed. She found her phone and looked at the screen. A name was there across it: Ryan.
Ryan was a nice guy. Maybe that was why she didn’t like him. He came into the bar sometimes, completely out of place among the blue jeans and leather. He always looked nice. He was a fit guy, a bit on the thinner side, and he wore khakis and polo shirts. His shoes were nice and shiny, and his arms were bare of tattoos or scars. He was wholesome. He had a good job—he was an accountant at a company twenty miles to the east, in a much bigger town called Grove.
And he was interested in Jennifer. He hit on her whenever he came into the bar. In fact, she was pretty sure he only came in to see her. She wasn’t sure how he had come to find his way into Chuck’s the first time, but he had seen her behind the bar and kept coming in. And he kept asking her out. For over a year now. She flirted with him, teased him; she found it fun. She was stringing him along, and she knew it. He was handsome, tall, and dark, his skin tanned, his smile dazzling. It was just those khakis. She didn’t like those kind of guys. Something was wrong with her. She needed a good guy. She knew it. So maybe she would give one a chance.
She answered her phone.
“Hello?”
“Oh, hey. It’s Ryan.” The man sounded surprised, as if he hadn’t expected her to answer. Probably because she usually never did.
“I know. What’s up?” the young woman asked. She lay back against her pillows, holding the phone to her ear.
“What are you doing?” Ryan asked. Jennifer smiled to herself.
“Lying in bed. I’m not wearing pants.”
She giggled. She knew that would drive Ryan crazy, and she knew that was rude, but she liked messing with the man too much. She heard him gulp, and she found herself thinking that it was cute how intimidated he was by her.
“Oh, I can let you go,” Ryan said.
“Why did you call?” she asked.
“I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me on Saturday. I have a work thing, down in Tempe. I know it’s a bit of a drive, but it’s a dinner. I’m, uh, getting an award, and it’s a get-dressed-up sort of thing and go have a free meal, listen to boring people talk about boring accounting things, and I don’t know why I’m even bothering to ask you, because it’s starting to bore me just talking about it.”
“You’re getting an award?” Jennifer asked him.
“Yes.”
“Wow. I’ve never known anyone who got an award. What’s it for?”
“I’m the Arizona accountant of the year,” the nervous young man said.
“Ryan,” Jennifer said, “I will go with you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I can pick you up, uh, at three? We’ll be there by six then, and it starts at seven, but we can mingle, grab a drink or whatever.”
“Sounds great,” Jennifer said, and she hung up. She bit her lip as she stared at her ceiling. She wondered what she was doing. She needed a good man, a good guy. Someone who had a good job and had to wear a tie to the office. That was who Ryan was. She found herself feeling nervous suddenly, her stomach in a knot.
She stood up and took her T-shirt off. Then she unclipped her bra and let it fall to the floor before sliding her panties down to her feet and stepping out of them. She padded into her bathroom on bare feet and stopped in front of the sink. If she backed up far enough, she could see most of her body: her face, her chest, her flat stomach. She was attractive. She always had been. She’d been the first girl in school to develop, and now, at twenty-five, her breasts were round and heavy. Her pubic hair was trimmed, a small strip above her pink slit. Her hair was blond and long, loose and framing her shoulders. Her lips were plump, and she had a small beauty mark above her lip on the right side. When she smiled, there was a dimple in just her left cheek.
She was hot. Beautiful. And she had never been with a good man. Ever. Ryan was a good man. She was excited to go with him to Tempe that weekend; she was excited to go on a real date with a good man. The last man she had gone on a date with was Michael. He was an asshole, to put it simply. He never took her out; he just expected sex, and even then he never made love to her. It was just hard fucking, hair pulling, ass grabbing.
Looking in the mirror, she wondered what kind of lover Ryan was. Would he pull her hair? Would he grab her breasts so hard th
at it hurt her? Would he smile when she yelled out in discomfort, or would he let up? Jennifer found herself wanting to know. She took a hot shower, thinking of Ryan. She let her hand fall between her legs, her fingers sliding over her slit. She came, and then she washed, and then she got out and dressed.
She spent a couple of hours cleaning the house, and then she went and collected Jaxson from school. They hung out for a while at home, but soon it was time for Jennifer to go to work. She dropped Jaxson off with Barbara and then hurried to her bar.
She employed two other night bartenders, a guy in his thirties named Steven and a girl younger than her, with bigger tits and a more vacant expression, named Brittany. It was Thursday, and Steven was working. One guy manned the bar during the day, seven days a week, an old man named Bert. He only had to come in from two in the afternoon, when the bar opened, to five, when the night tenders took over. Jennifer liked all of her employees, even if Brittany was rather vapid and air-headed. She also had two cooks in the kitchen who worked part time, alternating days. On that Thursday, the cook was Andre, a tall black man who had once been headed to the NBA before an injured knee brought him to the world of cooking. He was smoking a cigarette at the rear of the building when Jennifer pulled into the employee lot.
“Hey, boss,” Andre said, and he smiled. He was always smiling; Jennifer wasn’t sure she had ever met a friendlier person.
“Hey,” Jennifer said. “How’s the wife?”
Andre was married to a petite white woman four years younger than him. She was eight months pregnant and looked as though she was ready to pop at any moment.
“Sherry is fine,” Andre said.
“I thought you were kicking the cigarettes,” Jennifer said.
“Before the baby comes,” Andre said with another grin. “He ain’t here yet, is he?”
“Not yet,” Jennifer agreed, and she went inside. She got to the bar just as Bert was leaving. Steven was already there, filling a beer for the only customer in the place, an older woman with a tattoo of a rose on her throat. Everyone called her Rose, and she was a regular. She came in every day at two, shot the shit with Bernie, and then left half an hour after he did, drunk as a skunk. Jennifer liked her, though she was pretty sure her name wasn’t really Rose. She was also pretty sure Rose didn’t have a job and was getting disability due to the fact that she hobbled everywhere on a cane and could afford to do nothing but drink all day.
“Hey, kid,” Rose said.
“Hey, Rose,” Jennifer replied. The old woman always called her kid. Rose was a tough woman, a biker chick, clad in jeans and a black T-shirt with a Harley on the front, but she was warm and nice with Jennifer, taking on an almost motherly role.
The day wore on and the night came fast, the burning Arizona sun dropping quickly from the sky. As it grew darker, the place filled up.
If there wasn’t at least one fight that spilled out into the parking lot, it just wasn’t Chuck’s. That night the fight came early, just past eight, when two men started screaming at each other over a game of pool. Punches flew, Jennifer screamed at them to take it outside, and they did so, with three-fourths of the other patrons slipping out behind them to watch. Jennifer took advantage of the sudden slowdown and did some cleaning behind the bar. When she spun around, she was greeted by Rocky.
That wasn’t his real name of course, but then Jennifer didn’t know his real name. Rocky was close to her in age, if not a couple of years older. He was the definition of a bad boy. He was a member of one of the local motorcycle clubs, a rowdy group of men who called themselves the Reapers. They all wore black leather vests or jackets, and on the back they had sewn large patches of a skull-faced grim reaper in tattered black robes, holding a long scythe.
Rocky was handsome, with a square chin and dark brown hair grown a bit long. He had a scar just below his lip, and he drank too much. Jennifer knew she shouldn’t be interested in him, but she couldn’t deny the attraction. She had fantasized about the man so often, though she had never acted on it. He, of course, had tried. He kept trying with her, and Jennifer knew he wasn’t used to being turned down, judging by how many different women she had seen sitting on his lap in the bar.
“Hey,” Rocky said. “Can I get another beer?”
“All right,” Jennifer said. She turned and grabbed a bottle of the brand she knew he drank and placed it in front of him. He grabbed it and took a swig. She expected him to turn and go outside to watch the fight, but he didn’t. He pulled the bottle from his lips and looked at her. She giggled. “What do you want?”
“I want you to come back to my place so I can fuck you all night,” Rocky said.
Jennifer laughed, and though she felt a stirring between her legs, she shook her head. “You’re bad news,” she said.
Rocky laughed. “That’s true,” he said, and then he turned and walked away. Jennifer watched his ass as he did so.
2
Saturday came around, and Jennifer found herself in Tempe with Ryan. The drive was nice; they made idle chit chat, and she learned about his childhood. He had grown up in Ohio and gotten a job there. The company had sent him to Arizona three years previously. He liked it, but he missed his family.
Jennifer didn’t tell him much about her childhood. She had been born and raised in Maryland, where her father drank too much and her mother cheated on him constantly. They divorced when Jen was fifteen, and she got into her car and left the day after she graduated from high school. Her car broke down in Arizona, and that was where she had stayed. It wasn’t as nice or quaint a story as Ryan’s. He wouldn’t want to know about her asshole father or stepmother.
The dinner was actually nice, and Jennifer felt a strange sense of pride when Ryan was given his award. He went up to the stage to accept it and give a small speech. Jennifer found herself feeling a little sad for the man as well. He would have much rather shared the moment with those he cared about back in Ohio. When he got back to the table and they finished dinner, Jennifer brought up old girlfriends.
“I’ve dated a few women out here,” Ryan said with a shrug. “It never works out.”
“You’re cute,” Jennifer said. “You have a good job. What’s the problem?”
“They aren’t you,” Ryan said truthfully, bolstered by the three glasses of wine he had drunk.
The dinner wasn’t over until nearly ten, and Ryan’s business had comped him a room at a nearby hotel, but he insisted he could drive her home that night.
“I’m sure you want to get back home to your son,” he said.
“He’s fine, and you can’t drive,” Jennifer countered. “And neither can I. We can sleep it off and head home in the morning. The sitter won't mind.”
And that much was true. Barbara adored Jaxson, and it only took a phone call to make sure the older woman was okay with having him through the night. They were close enough to the hotel to walk—it was only a few blocks—and Jennifer and Ryan did just that.
Jennifer stood with him in the hotel lobby, waiting as he checked in. She was feeling frisky, a bit lightheaded, and she felt like playing once more with the man who had such a massive crush on her. She pinched his ass and slid her hand into his pocket, brushing along his hardening member with the tips of her fingers through the material of his pocket, playing it off like an accident.
“Looking for gum,” she said with a grin when he gasped and looked at her. Ryan got a keycard to the room and they rode in the elevator to the fifth floor. Ryan led the way down the hall and opened the door to the room.
It was a nice room, spacious and with one bed. Ryan saw it and his face fell. “Oh, I didn’t even think,” he said. “I can sleep on the love-seat.”
Jennifer laughed and slapped his arm playfully. “That’s a big bed. I’m sure we’ll both be fine in it,” she said, and she went in and kicked off her heels. She had dressed up for the dinner, a tight black dress that was low cut enough to show off her massive breasts, but not so much as to make her look trashy. It was short as well,
but she had the body to make it work. She wore dark hose, stockings only, and when she sat on the end of the bed to take her earrings out, she crossed her leg and hem of the dress came up, her creamy, milky thigh showing above the material of the stocking.
She saw Ryan looking and grinned. She kept her earring in, instead reaching down to her leg with one hand, running her fingers up the material of the stocking. “I love thigh highs,” she said in a soft voice, practically purring. “Don’t you?”
Ryan was near the door. He nodded. She looked him over, smiling to herself when she noticed the bulge in his pants. The man might be a bit nerdier than most men she had been with, but it looked as though his cock was large.
“Come touch them,” Jennifer said. She was telling him to do it. It was an invitation she didn’t expect him to turn down. She ran her index finger up her own thigh, catching the hem of her dress and hiking it up even farther. Ryan went forward. He stopped in front of her and reached down, but she slapped his hand away. The men she was usually with, they were in charge. Always. But with Ryan, Jennifer knew she could be in charge.
“Kneel down,” she said. Ryan nodded again and did so. She wondered if he would be able to speak.
He reached out for her again, but she slapped his hand once more. She stood up.
“Do you think about me when you jerk off?” Jennifer asked the man. She felt her pussy growing hot, her juices beginning to flow.
“Yes,” Ryan breathed.
“You hold your cock, you milk it, you make yourself come, thinking about me?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think about?”
“Let me touch your stockings,” Ryan said.
“Tell me what you think about first, and then you can,” Jennifer said.
“I think about fucking you.”
“How?”
“Every way. Bent over the back of my couch.”
“Did you jerk off while you thought of me last night? Knowing you were bringing me here?”