Born to Ride

by Kasey Millstead

  He spins me around so my back is pressed into an alcove created by an empty storefront. “What do you want me to say, Ana? You broke this shit off, not me. So why do you give two fucks about who I’m buried inside?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Bullshit. You jealous? That it? ”

  “Oh completely,” I sneer, “because I’ve always wanted to be nailed to the wall of some dingy toilet that hasn’t been cleaned in over a century.”

  “I forgot you were such a purist.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Wish you would’ve.” He leans forward, pinning me against the glass with his massive frame, his eyes all molten chocolate, his voice pitched low and gravely. “It’d be the fuck of your life, darlin’.”

  “This is sick.” I attempt to move past him, but he places a meaty paw in the middle of my chest and gently pushes me back against the glass. “Let me go.”

  It’s only then that I realise just how drunk he is. He smells like whiskey and need and sex, and knowing the latter is because of someone other than me makes me want to throw up.

  He begins pressing sloppy kisses into my neck and, god help me, it’s been so long since he touched me that I find myself revelling in the feel of his hot mouth on my skin. So much so, that a small moan escapes my mouth before I can rein it in.

  “God, I miss that. I miss the sounds you make when you come. I miss the way you come alive beneath my hands.” He runs his hand up my dress, slides my knickers aside until his warm hand is cupping me. His finger glides into my wetness while his thumb strokes circles around my clit. Despite my better judgement, I feel myself leaning into his touch, and the more his fingers work against me, the more my thoughts flee and my body takes over until I’m panting and aching for more. “Yeah, just like that, baby girl. Fuck, I miss you.”

  That revelation brings my orgasm to a crashing halt and I press my hands into his chest and plead, “Stop.”

  He doesn’t. Instead, he doubles his efforts and acts as though he hasn’t heard me. Warmth travels up from my toes and floods the centre of my belly. I rock my hips into his hand.

  “Come for me, Ana,” he whispers.

  “No.” But even as I say it, I’m breathless with need. My legs are trembling beneath my weight and I’m shaking from head to toe, and it’s sure as hell not from fear. One more circle of his thumb and then I completely come apart in his hands, clawing and scratching and pulling him closer as wave after delicious wave of my orgasm sluices through me, even though I’m appalled and repelled by what he just did.

  He leans in and whispers, “I love you, baby.”

  I freeze against him. Finally hearing those words should make my heart soar. Instead, it shatters that last fragile shard of dignity I have left and I completely lose it. I shove him back with my hands against his chest and punch him right in the jaw with the fist of my fractured arm. I cry out, because it stings like a bitch. Clearly, I’ve just ruined whatever good progress I’d made with it these last few weeks because it hurts just as much as it did the night I first injured it.

  Elijah rubs his jaw and then turns angry dark eyes on me. “Fuck!”

  “Yeah, I can see that you love me, Elijah. What with the way you were fucking Nicole up against the wall. I can see you missed me real bad.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ana, she’s filler!” he roars, getting all up in my face again. “Fuck! That girl in there has nothing on you! And yeah, I fucked her. I fucked the shit outta her because I thought for one minute, just one single fucking minute, I might be able to bury myself in someone else and forget about you.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you have to screw other women to forget about me?”

  “Honestly, darlin’, I don’t care how it makes you feel. It’s the truth.”

  “Like you’re an expert on the truth.”

  “God, you’re so fucking self-righteous! You didn’t seem to give a shit about the truth when I was getting you off with my hand just now.”

  “I told you to stop!”

  “And I would have, if I thought for even one second that you really wanted me to.”

  I don’t have any response for that because it’s true, I didn’t want him to stop, not really. When it comes to the way Elijah touches me, I never want him to stop. But that was the kind of thinking that had led me into this cluster-fuck in the first place, so I simply shake my head and close my eyes, wishing I could walk away. Wishing I didn’t let him get to me. Wishing I didn’t still love him so much.

  “This shit between you and me isn’t over, Ana. No matter what you and I do it’s never gonna be over, you got that?”

  “You’re wrong. This shit between us was over the minute you decided to start lying about your past.”

  I wrench myself out of his grasp and walk away, and this time he lets me. I’m maybe fifteen feet away when he says, “Ask yourself why you care so much, Ana. When you lay your head down tonight, ask yourself why you’re so mad at me for fucking another girl, when you’re the one that let me go. Ask yourself if you still love me.”

  “Of course I still love you, arsehole.” I stomp back toward him and shove him again. This time he stumbles a little, but manages to trap my hand to his chest so I can feel the harried beating of his heart.

  “Then stop fucking torturing me, baby girl. Please ... Just stop torturing me.”

  Tears roll down my cheeks. He lifts his hand to wipe them away but I wrench out of his grasp and start running toward the house. He doesn’t follow me, and I’m both thankful and torn up about it. It doesn’t matter whether or not I still love him. Nothing matters but forgetting this whole mess ever happened, including hearing those three little words I’d waited so long to hear from him.

  Elijah

  I pull up outside her house. It’s near dark on a Sunday so I know exactly where to find her, though as I stare at the light coming from the back door of the shop it occurs to me that she might not be alone. I never thought to ask if she’d needed help baking her pies when her arm ended up in a cast—I think I just took it for granted that she was doing fine. Our argument last night proved that I don’t know shit.

  I think back again through the alcohol haze of last night and, to be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing here, other than that I miss her like I’d miss the fucking air to breathe if it was taken from me. I fucked up. Bad. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, doing Nicole. Sometimes you just need to fuck a woman, you know. To forget? To remember? Hell, if I knew, but there’s a base instinct to burrow yourself inside a woman when both your heart and head can’t take any more fucking misery. It’s a stupid as fuck excuse, but there it is.

  I walk over to the open door and lean against the jamb. Holly and Ana are inside, some hugely popular R&B band is blasting from the stereo, Mackerel More something or other, and Holly’s talking animatedly about getting lucky on the bar at the Sugartown Hotel after hours. I’m not darkening the door for long before Ana turns and sees me standing there. Her good mood falters, she frowns and she lets out a sigh. I shove down the hurt I feel, and smile, even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing.

  Holly stops midsentence and swivels toward me. “The fuck?”

  I ignore the tiny, scary redhead and speak only to Ana, “You got a minute?”

  “Are you fucking serious?” Holly demands, then stalks toward me and starts ranting and raving about how I should leave Ana alone and how I’m turning into the worst kind of stalker and that, if I’m not careful, I’ll find myself up shit creek without a paddle because there may suddenly be a witness emerge to give their story on the events of that night with my biker brothers. I let her go on, even as my heart hammers in my chest with fear because someone other than Ana and Kick has the ability to put me away for a very long time with a simple phone call. Even as I think about throwing the ranga midget over my shoulder and depositing her on her arse outside, I don’t, because I deserve everything she’s saying and more.

  “Holly,” An
a says, “it’s okay.”

  “Yeah? For how long, Ana? Til he runs his mouth again and you decide to lash out with your injured arm, forcing me to drive you to the hospital to have your cast refitted again?” I glance at Ana in confusion and see that she’s sporting a brand new fluoro pink cast. I’d known she’d hit me pretty hard last night, I was still wearing the evidence of that, but I hadn’t realised she’d done more damage to her arm. “Or maybe this time you’ll run your mouth and he’ll hit you—”

  “Now hold on just a goddamn minute,” I begin.

  At the same time Ana says, “Holly!”

  “You know what? Fine. Duke it out, scream and yell and blue until you tear one another apart and get this shit out of your system for good. You don’t belong together. And this may be hard to hear, Elijah, but Ana is way too good for you and you’re all kinds of wrong for her. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from one another, because this little thing between you is toxic and it’s going to tear both your lives apart.” Holly unties her apron and throws it down on the counter. She looks only at Ana when she says, “Call me when he’s gone and I’ll come back and help you finish up.”

  She doesn’t say a thing as she passes me. She doesn’t have to, because all the hatred she feels for me is as clear as day in her eyes.

  The squeaky screen door bangs back on its hinges and then closes with an audible slap. Outside, I hear the roar of an engine and breathe a sigh of relief once I hear it drive away.

  “You really hurt your arm?”

  “Yep. Another four to six weeks in this crappy cast. At least the last one was white and I didn’t have to worry about what the hell was going to clash with it, but this fluoro pink thing? Yuck!”

  “You’re rambling.”

  “Yep, I guess I do that when I’m nervous—”

  “I know,” I say, both because it’s a trait of hers that I’d always found adorable and because I want her to know that I know all of her idiosyncrasies, even the ones she wasn’t aware of. “I’m sorry I hurt your hand.”

  “Well, to be fair, I didn’t have to punch you in the face.”

  “Yeah, you did. I was a complete dickhead.”

  “Yeah, you were,” she whispers and then swallows hard before glancing out the shopfront window. “You broke my heart, Elijah.”

  Tears spill down her cheeks. I move to wipe one away with my thumb and she flinches and moves out of reach. I’ve never had a woman push me away before and I’m certainly-as-fuck not about to let it start now with the only woman who’s ever mattered. So I follow her to the other side of the kitchen and corner her until I’m close enough to be her shadow.

  I place my hands on her waist and she lets herself be lifted onto the bench, and then I ease myself between her legs and cradle her face in my hands. She closes her eyes. I don’t know whether she’s savouring the moment or wishing she wasn’t in it, but I hope to fuck it’s not that last one.

  “I fucked up, baby girl,” I whisper. She nods and more tears roll down her face. I smooth them from her skin with my thumbs. “Tell me how to fix it.”

  Ana gently shakes her head. “I don’t think you can.”

  “Yes I can. I can fix this,” I say resolutely. “I’ll put us back together with my bare hands, just don’t walk away. No more secrets, no more mistakes.”

  “Elijah.” She grasps my hand and gently pulls it from her cheek. “Holly was right. We can’t go five minutes without fighting or trying to tear one another’s clothes off.”

  “That’s normal—”

  “That’s not healthy. For either of us.”

  “Don’t do this, Ana,” I warn, but my words fall on deaf ears. It’s written all over her face; she has no intention of backing down this time. I shake my head and send her a pleading glance. I’m not above getting on my knees and begging her to give me another chance, but I can see in her eyes that the time for grovelling came and went, and I was buried balls-deep in another woman instead of falling to my knees in worship.

  “Ah, fuck!” I rub at my chest to ease the burn in my heart. “This is bullshit, baby girl. The way I feel about you, the way you feel about me, that shit doesn’t just up and go away. I know I’m not worthy of someone as fucking spectacular as you. I know it. This whole fucking town knows it. But I’ll be a better man. I’ll change. I’ll do fucking anything you ask of me, just don’t do this.”

  Ana presses her hand to the centre of my chest and I capture it with my own the way I did last night, only now I bring it to my lips and kiss it all over. I feel her defences melt a little so I decide to knock them over completely, until there’s nothing but the dust of her resolve left. I cup her face and force my lips down upon hers. I watch surprise flit across her face and then I close my eyes and throw myself into proving that she’s wrong, that though we’re not fine right now, one day soon, we will be.

  She kisses me back, tentatively at first, and then, as I fist my hands in her hair and push myself further into the space between us, her legs wrap around my hips and I pull her off the bench in order to feel her small body wrapped around me. She tastes of salt and need and damn, if I don’t want to fulfil every single one of hers. She lifts her t-shirt over her head and throws it to the floor, and then she claws at mine until I’m no longer wearing one either. I slam her up against the refrigerator and she arches into me, her big beautiful tits at the perfect height for sucking. I claim a nipple with my mouth and gently bite down until it peaks against my teeth and tongue. Ana cries out so I do it again, harder this time. The end result is a thing of beauty; she pushes herself against me and reclaims my mouth with her own. There’s nothing tender or tentative in this kiss; she’s a squirming, clawing wildcat, and I’m revelling in every second of her newfound confidence.

  “You’re so fucking perfect,” I say as I rock my hips into hers. My cock strains against my jeans as I push into the soft fabric of her yoga pants and I feel her lips part around me.

  Fuck me! I almost blow my load right there. She’s soft and soaking wet and so completely fucking all-woman that I feel like I could just melt into her warmth.

  I rock into her again, harder this time, until I’m certain she can feel just how fucking hard I am and how much I want her. The fabric barrier between us is driving me insane; I want to tear off her pants and push myself so deep inside that her pussy won’t ever forget how good we are together, even if her heart’s determined to.

  Ana moans. Her breath comes out in hot little pants against my cheek and I know that, just like me, she’s close to coming.

  “God, you feel so fucking good,” I mutter as I drive myself faster, pushing as deep as our clothes will allow, but she doesn’t react the way I expect her to. Instead, she’s completely frozen. And then tears spill down her cheeks, and I have no choice but to gently set her down on her feet.

  I don’t have the foggiest idea of what’s going on but something tells me, without even knowing what went wrong, I’ve fucked this up royally.

  “Hey, come here.” I cradle her head to my chest and wince as her tears spill onto my stomach because I don’t know what the hell they mean.

  We stand like that, with her head cradled to my chest and her arms flung around my waist for too long, and then, when not a sound can be heard but our breathing and the gentle hum of the fridge, Ana wrenches herself out of my arms, dries her eyes with the back of her hands and says, “Go home, Elijah.”

  “You’re my home, baby. Don’t take that away from me. Please?”

  “No. I’m not. If I were, you would have told me the truth. And you certainly wouldn’t have fucked another woman right before you told me you loved me.”

  “Ana—”

  She swipes at her eyes, turns to face the bench and goes back to awkwardly rolling out a lump of pastry with her left hand. “We can’t do this anymore. We need a clean break or we’ll just end up hurting one another.”

  Is she fucking kidding me?

  When it becomes apparent that she’s not and that she�
��s done beating a dead horse I press a kiss into her hair, taking one last chance to breathe in her sweet, vanilla scent.

  “We’re already hurting, baby girl,” I say and leave the kitchen a fucked up, heartbroken mess.

  Ana

  An entire month after my break up with Elijah, I’m still just as miserable as I was the minute he walked out of my kitchen for good. After he’d left that day I’d cried until Dad came home from a club meet and found me passed out on the floor. He’d picked me up, carried me to my room and that’s where I’d stayed for two days before Holly came a calling to kick my lazy, heartbroken arse out of bed.

  A month on and she’s still dragging me around to places I don’t want to go. Tonight, it’s a harvest hang-out. I don’t know how many of these things Holly and I have attended, but they always begin with a bunch of idiots gathering in a newly harvested cane field on the outskirts of town and end with a bunch of drunk idiots running from the cops before they get arrested for drinking in a dry zone and lighting bonfires during bush fire season.

  Tonight the crowd is mostly old enough to know better, and yet here we are: a bunch of high school leavers too afraid to admit we’re not ready for adulthood and more terrified still to leave our safe little town for the big, bad world.

  Before Elijah, I would have given anything to get out of this place. Afterwards, I’m thanking my lucky stars for the job security that comes with being the pie shop owner’s daughter, because it means I don’t have to face what all my school colleagues are going through; where they should study, where they should live, and that all-important period of self-discovery you go through after you’re given the weighty title of being an “adult”.

  Thanks to my mother and father’s dreaming, my future is securely mapped out for me. I’ll work in the diner until I’m too old to remember the recipes, I’ll more than likely still be cleaning up after my kid brother until he’s forty, and then I’ll die alone with a thousand cats who won’t hesitate to eat me once the kitty chow runs out, and all without ever having left Sugartown.