by B. B. Hamel
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Couple brothers in town love this spot. They come out at least once or twice a week, drive around, and clean it up. Otherwise there’d be huge, deep tire tracks all over the place.”
“Huh. I didn’t know driving a truck in the mud was a thing people did.”
“They do around here these days,” he says. “Not much else.”
“Really? That can’t be true.”
“You’ve been in town,” he says with a shrug. “You’ve seen it. Most of the stores are closed, most of the bars and restaurants are gone. The warehouses are all empty and lots of people are out of jobs. Life isn’t all that great in Loftville.”
I look away. I know he’s right, but I don’t need the reminder. My family has been the patron of this town for a very long time and we basically own it all, so if people are struggling, it almost feels like that’s our fault. Even though we stay out of politics, and we don’t have much to do with the warehouses.
“Do you still plan on leaving here one day?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I doubt it,” he admits. “Unless my dad opens up a new dealership in Texas.”
I laugh. “Right, I still think it’s a good idea.”
“Well, it’s probably not going to happen. I mean, I don’t hate it here. Just a small town, you know?”
“Sure. Small town.”
He grins at me. “I know you don’t spend too much time in town, Lora. It’s okay, I don’t blame you.”
“Oh, come on. I totally do. I mean… I guess…”
He laughs. “Right. Exactly.”
“Shut up. I’m not just some rich, spoiled girl.”
“I know that.” He gets serious for a second. “I’m happy I ran into you.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. Even if you are a spoiled rich girl, you’re not bad.”
“Asshole.”
He laughs and puts an arm around me. It’s so natural and I lean against him almost without thinking. He feels so good, so warm and strong. I tilt my chin up toward him and our gazes meet for a long moment.
My lips part and my heart starts beating fast. I don’t know how I ended up here, but now that I’m so close to him, I know I want this. When he leans down and kisses me, it’s like the kiss I’ve always been waiting for.
I return his kiss with a hunger I didn’t even know I had inside of me. I press tight against him and drop my beer. It hits the bed and spills everywhere.
“Shit,” I say, pulling back. “I’m sorry.”
He smiles and shrugs. He picks up the can and dumps the rest out. “Don’t worry about it,” he says and tosses the empty in the back of the bed. “I’m hosing it down later anyway.”
“Right. Mud.”
He nods and stares at me for a long moment. I can tell he’s looking at my body, maybe thinking about me touching him, and I like that idea. I love it, in fact. I love the idea of kissing him slow and letting his hands touch my body, every inch of my body, moving down my skin, touching me the way I’ve always wanted.
But the spell is broken. He hops down from the bed. “We should head back,” he says. “Before the owners of this place come out and shoot us.”
“Don’t think they won’t,” I say. “Our security’s been very tight lately.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“It’s been nuts.” We get back in the truck and he turns it around. I tell him a little bit about what happened with my brother Brent and his wife, about her crazy dad and all that. He barely believes me, and I can’t blame him.
All my brothers have been through crazy relationships. Even Delia had something nuts happen to her. I know it’s going to be my turn sooner or later, but right now, I’m happy sitting in a truck with a handsome boy.
“You ever miss it?” he asks as we get back on the main road.
“Miss what?”
“West.”
I shrug. “Sometimes.” I want to say, I missed you, not the school, but I can’t bring myself to admit that.
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.” He goes quiet. “How come you never called me back?”
I wince. I was waiting for this.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You don’t have to apologize. I was mad for a while, but I got over it.” He looks at me. “What happened?”
I stare out the window and can’t answer right away. Truth is, I don’t know what happened.
We were really, really close. But then I went to college out in California and he stayed behind in Loftville. We were in different time zones, leading different lives, and it started to get hard. We started missing each other, texting less, talking less, and then one day I just…
I just didn’t call back.
I don’t know why. I hated myself for it. I wanted to call him so badly.
But it was like ripping off a Band-Aid.
I had to do it fast and quick, or else it would just keep hurting longer and longer.
“Things just got hard,” I say finally.
He accepts that without a word. I know it’s not a good explanation, but I’m not ready to tell him just how bad it hurt trying to maintain a friendship with him when all I really wanted was so much more.
He pulls up out front of the manor. I turn to him and tilt my head. “That was fun,” I say.
“Yeah, it was.” He looks at me for a long second. “Hey, look, I’ve got this thing to do tomorrow. But do you want to come along?”
“Depends,” I say. “Are you murdering a bunch of children? Because I’m not super into that.”
“Oh, no, I do my children murdering on Mondays. Tomorrow I’m checking out this car wash my dad just put me in charge of.”
“Really?” I ask,
“Yeah, I mean, we’re building it. And when it’s done, I’ll be part owner, I guess, and I’ll run it.”
“Wow, that’s actually kind of cool, isn’t it?”
He shrugs. “It’s a car wash.”
“But it’s a start.”
He laughs and leans toward me. He reaches out and takes me by the hair, pulling me toward him. It surprises me but I lean into it. “That’s right,” he says. “Building my empire one car wash at a time.”
He kisses me again, gentle and sweet. We linger there for a moment before he pulls away. I turn and slip out of the truck. “See you tomorrow,” I say.
He nods and drives off. I watch him go before turning to the manor.
The speaker crackles to life. “Where were you?”
I flinch. It’s Archie’s voice.
“None of your business, Arch,” I say. “Now open the gate so I don’t have to squeeze through.”
“Yes, Miss Lora,” he says, his tone pompous.
“Don’t be a jerk,” I grumble.
The gate jerks open and I head back toward home with a smile on my face.
4
Dean
The next day, I pick her up in my normal truck. She smiles as she climbs in wearing these tight jeans and this little gray t-shirt that clings to her breasts so fucking perfectly. “This better?” I ask her.
“I miss the mud,” she says.
I laugh and pull out. We chat about her family a little bit before we pull up in front of the car wash. It’s really a half-built building, but it’s bigger than I thought it’d be. “Not much yet,” I admit.
“But it’ll be yours.”
“That’s true.” We sit there idling for a long moment and I steal at glance at her body. God, she’s gorgeous. I’ve been thinking about her for years, wondering why she suddenly stopped calling, wondering why I never kissed her when I had the chance before she left for California.
I had my reasons. I thought it would be stupid to get involved when she was leaving across the country for another life. I thought we’d never work. She was rich and I was poor, and that’s just the way things were.
Except now, looking back on it, I was a fucking idiot.
That kiss yesterday woke me up. It was like coming up for air after staying und
er water for years.
I’ve been existing for a while now. Just existing, just breathing, just going through the motions. I’ve had girls, sure, one-night stands mostly. But after a while, even that got tiresome. My days have been the same thing over and over again. Work, home, sleep, repeat.
Now though, I feel alive for the first time in so long. Lora’s doing that to me, and I don’t know how.
“Come on,” I say, hopping out. She climbs down and follows me. We cross the street and linger behind the chain-link fence before I find an opening we can squeeze through.
“Are we trespassing?” she asks.
“Sort of. I mean, not really, but sort of.”
She laughs. “I like it. You’re so dangerous.”
I grin and nod. “Damn right. I’m always breaking into half-built car washes to steal… I don’t know. What do you steal from a car wash?”
“Suds,” she says.
“How do you steal suds?”
“Who knows. But you’ll manage to do it.”
I laugh as we walk around the building. It’s really not much, and it almost makes me more anxious to see it like this, half-built and in disrepair.
“When will it be open?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “There’s an issue with the permit I need to get straightened out. After that, I think it’ll be another few weeks.”
“When it’s done, I’ll have all our cars cleaned here every day.”
“You do that and this’ll be the most successful car wash ever.”
“Then consider it done.”
I walk a little closer, ducking through a door. We step into the building and it’s really not much more than a wooden frame.
“Okay, picture this,” she says. “Right over here, you’ll have a desk. You’ll sit behind that desk and watch your workers. You can say things like, Use some elbow grease! Scrub a little harder!”
“Why am I an asshole boss in your imagination? Can’t I just be chill and cool?”
“You’re an asshole with a heart of gold,” she says, nodding.
“Okay, I mean, that sounds decent then.”
“Right. And maybe I can work here too. I’ll be the scrubber girl.”
“I don’t think that’s a real position.”
“Sure it is. I wear a white t-shirt with a bikini underneath and all I do is towel dry the cars for tips.”
I frown and stroke my chin. “That’s a great idea actually,” he says.
“I’m not really doing that, you know.”
“No, I know, but maybe I can hire some bored girls to do it.”
“Don’t be a perv.” She flashes me a look.
“Please, it was your idea. You’re the one thinking about using your body for tips.” I tilt my head. “And I suspect you’d do very, very well.”
She blushes a little. I love the way her cheeks turn pink and she looks away. “Okay, enough of that,” she says.
“In my car wash fantasy, I’m the boss, you’re the scrubber girl, but we spend most of our time locked away in my office.”
“What are we doing in your office, Mr. Ashman?”
I grin at her and step closer. She bites her lip and backs into a wooden support beam. She presses up against it as I reach out and take her hair again, her thick dark hair. She tilts her chin toward me.
“Mostly I’m stripping you down,” I whisper, leaning toward her. I bypass her lips and kiss her neck. She lets out a little sigh of pleasure. “I’ll leave your bikini top on, but slide your bottoms off until you’re bare. From there, I’ll kiss every inch of you until you’re dripping wet and begging me to keep going.”
“Keep going… and do what?” she whispers.
I kiss her, pulling her hair tight. She gasps and moans into the kiss. She presses her body against mine and I hold her there, the kiss turning fierce, hungry, almost desperate.
I pull her hair back and she groans. “I’ll show you,” I croon, “but only if you ask nicely.”
“Show me,” she whispers. “Please.”
I release her hair and reach down to her jeans. I unbutton them as I kiss her. I tug them down around her hips and slide my right hand down the front of her panties. Her pussy is dripping wet, just like I knew it would be. I tease her, fingers sliding along her slick skin, before finding her clit and slowly rolling along it.
I bite her lip and kiss her neck as she moans. “I’ll take care of you,” I whisper in her ear. “If you let me be your boss. My little Lora. I should’ve done this a long time ago.”
“Yes,” she gasps.
I tug her jeans down further before dropping to my knees. She stares at me, mouth hanging open, as I kiss her stomach, moving down to the top of her pussy. I slide off her panties and push her legs wider before my tongue slowly licks her top to bottom, tasting her sweetness, loving every drop of it. She moans and grabs my hair as I lick and suck her, rolling my tongue along her clit.
“Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god. We can’t do this… we can’t do this right here. Someone could, oh, fuck, someone could see.”
“Good.” I smirk at her and tease her with my fingers. “I want them to see.”
“Dean,” she moans.
I slide my fingers inside of her. She pushes her hips toward me, leaning back against the beam. I spread her legs wider and lick her faster, sucking and rolling my tongue. She gasps and moans louder. I can feel her body tense and tighten as she rolls her hips. I lick her harder, sucking her clit, moving my tongue all around as I grab her ass and hold her tight against my mouth.
I keep going, licking, sucking, faster and faster, making her gasp and moan. Fuck, I want this, I need this, I need her taste on my tongue, her moans on my lips. I’ve been dreaming about tasting her this way for so long and now I finally have what I want.
It’s better than I could’ve dreamed.
I keep going, licking, sucking. She pants and moans my name, whispers it over and over again. I know she’s close and I keep going, licking her, tonguing her faster and faster. “Come for me,” I growl. “Let me taste you come.”
“Oh, fuck, Dean,” she gasps, her back arching. Her body tenses as she throws her head back and moans.
I can feel and taste her come. I love the way she gasps, her body shaking, moaning. I keep going, making her come harder, tasting her, lapping her up, loving every second of it. She drives me wild, my body pulsing with need for her, and slowly her orgasm crests and slows.
I stand up and lick my fingers clean before kissing her. She throws herself at me, kissing me back. I love that way she doesn’t shy away from her own taste.
I pull back and look at her. “That was good,” I say. “Really, really good.”
“For me, yeah,” she says and laughs. She’s flushes and seems a little dizzy with orgasm. “God, that was… amazing. Unexpected and amazing.”
“Good.” I bite her lip and grab her hair. “I’m glad you came with me today.”
“I bet. I mean, I am too.”
I step back and watch her pull her panties on and shimmy into her jeans. I tilt my head and smirk. “I like watching you dress. But I like it better when you undress.”
“Yeah?” She bites her lip. “Maybe… maybe you can watch next time.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Next time?”
“I mean, uh, you know. Whatever.”
I laugh and kiss her again. “Relax.” I take her hand. “Come here.”
She follows me, blushing crimson. I lead her through some framed-out rooms and into a wider section. The tracks are already in the ground, the concrete poured around them.
“This is where the cars will come through,” I say. “Big rollers here and here. Lots of water and suds.”
“Sounds like fun.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I guess. Typical car wash.”
“Is there another car wash in town?”
“No,” he says. “There isn’t, which is why we’re opening this big one with two lanes.”
“Huh.
How come Loftville is just getting its first car wash?”
I tilt my head at her. “Because nobody’s wanted to risk opening one here.”
“Risk?” She frowns.
“Not a lot of disposable income around these parts. But I’ll make it work.”
“I’m sure you will.”
We do another lap around the half-built building before we step back out and head down to the fence. We squeeze through and head back to my truck. I help her inside then walk around and get behind the wheel.
“Thanks for coming with me,” I say. “And coming for me.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Just don’t expect me to keep coming back to this dump.”
“I promise I won’t make you see it again until it’s finished,” I say, laughing. I start the engine and pull out into traffic.
There’s a lot I want to say to her. There are years and years of history between us. But at the moment, all of that escapes me. It’s like none of it matters now that I’ve had a taste of her.
We’re different people, different from who we used to be. Now she’s what I want… and I can’t back off. Even if she’s the rich girl and I’m the poor boy from the wrong family, I don’t care about that. She tastes delicious, and she comes in beautiful shuddering gasps.
I want to hear my name moaned on her lips over and over.
I drop her off at home and watch her walk up the driveway for a moment before pulling away with a smile on my lips.
5
Lora
I spend the next couple of days texting with Dean in a fog of giddy joy. I can barely believe that he went down on me basically in public. I mean, we were sort of inside, but there weren’t any walls. So I don’t know if that actually counts as inside or not.
Doesn’t matter. It felt good, that’s all I know, and now I can’t stop thinking about his tongue between my legs, his kiss on my lips. I could just taste a hint of my cum on his tongue and it made me want even more.
Maybe I’m dumb, getting involved with Dean after so long. We’re different people. There’s a big, long history between us. Maybe it would be better if we just went our separate ways.