Bonkers

by Michelle Holman

  Lisa cracked open an eye. Surely that wasn’t all him?

  She never found out because he suddenly stopped, swore and erupted out of the bed as if he were on fire. ‘Keep on your damned side of the bed!’ he yelled and stormed into the bathroom.

  When Lisa tried to go back to her own bed that night, Dan wouldn’t allow it. ‘I’m not scraping you off the bottom of the cliffs tomorrow morning.’

  They spent another tense, restless night on opposite sides of the bed.

  It was a block of butter that finally brought everything to a head at breakfast on Saturday morning. Lisa dropped one on the floor and Dan stepped on it and skidded across the kitchen and crashed into the sink.

  ‘Dan! Are you alright?’ She rushed towards him where he lay sprawled on the tiled floor.

  Dan boiled over. He raved and ranted and generally made a complete ass of himself.

  Lisa stared at him for several long moments until he finally ran out of steam, her lower lip trembling. ‘Arsehole!’ she cried and marched out of the kitchen.

  Dan looked at the spot where she’d been standing, feeling sickened by his show of temper and the stricken look on Lisa’s face. When he went to find her, she wasn’t in the house. He slammed the laundry door and ran out of the garage in time to see her disappearing up the street as fast as she could limp. Dan ran after her, his long legs making short work of catching up with her.

  ‘Lisa!’

  She put her head down and broke into an awkward trot. ‘Go away and leave me alone!’

  Dan easily kept pace with her. ‘I’m sorry, Lisa. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I know I’ve been an asshole this past week.’ He tried to catch her wrist.

  Lisa snatched her hand away and stopped to kick him in the shin for good measure.

  ‘Ow! Shit!’ Dan muttered, more surprised than hurt. ‘Guess I deserved that.’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘Oh, do you? What about this then?’ She made a fist and punched him in the arm.

  It had about as much impact as a fly landing on a horse, irritating but hardly worth noticing—however, Dan felt he owed it to Lisa to at least pretend it hurt. ‘Ouch,’ he said, about two seconds too late.

  Lisa wasn’t fooled. She was furious. Jabbing her hands into his chest she shoved him as hard as she could.

  Dan obligingly shuffled a few steps backwards.

  ‘You bastard!’ she shouted. ‘How dare you make fun of me?’

  When it appeared she was about to kick him in the shin again, Dan caught her wrists, jerked her against him and kissed her until she went limp. When he lifted his head, Lisa blinked up at him with her deer-caught-in-the-headlights look, her laboured breathing making her breasts heave against his chest.

  She gulped. ‘If you don’t have sex with me, I swear it will be you they’ll be scraping off the cliffs in the morning!’

  A grey head suddenly popped up from behind the white block wall beside them. An elderly man wielding garden shears whom Dan vaguely recognized as one of his plant-toting neighbours gazed curiously at them.

  ‘Hello, Mr Benns,’ Lisa said in a strangled tone.

  ‘’Lo Lisa,’ Mr Benns replied, his eyes shifting between her and Dan.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to call you to say you can pick your gardenia up,’ she continued brightly, trying to discreetly remove Dan’s hand from her bum.

  He refused to let go.

  ‘That’s OK, Lisa; it sounds like you have more pressing matters needing your attention at the moment,’ Mr Benns said dryly.

  Lisa squirmed.

  Dan growled something unintelligible, yanked her into his arms and marched back to the house, only to discover he had managed to lock them both out.

  ‘Oh no…oh no, no, no, no…’ Lisa moaned, burying her face in his chest. ‘What are you trying to do to me, Dan?’

  ‘Sssh! I’m thinking!’

  ‘Think faster!’

  Dropping her onto the hood of his car, Dan depressed the switch to lower the garage door and wondered why he’d never noticed before how long it took to close. Returning to the front of the car he looked down at Lisa sprawled across the metallic silver surface. ‘Take your clothes off.’

  ‘Here?’ she squeaked. ‘Now?’

  Hooking his fingers beneath her coral-red sweater, Dan tugged it over her head. ‘I have one thing to say to you, Lisa,’ he said firmly. ‘Cliffs.’

  ‘But it’s freezing in here.’ Her nipples were sticking out, but not from cold.

  Dan stared hotly at her breasts. ‘I’ll warm you up.’ Raising his arms he yanked his sweatshirt over his head.

  Lisa sucked in a breath. He was naked beneath it, his wide shoulders and sculptured chest hers for the licking. Within seconds, Lisa’s clothes were flying about the garage like they were inside a tumble dryer. When she was finally naked on the car, Dan’s face contorted with an almost pained expression. God, she was beautiful.

  Lisa watched him and shivered.

  Dan gathered her into his arms and slid her beneath him on the metal hood of the car. To accommodate his height, he braced a knee on the front bumper. Bending his head he stroked her breasts with his tongue and smoothed his palms down the chilled flesh of her outer thighs. His penis was hammering at his fly like a Labrador panting to be let out to play, and he wondered how long he’d be able to devote to foreplay before he came in his underwear. It was a relief to see that Lisa seemed to be in no better state.

  ‘I can’t wait…I can’t…’ she panted, her pupils dilated with passion, her beautiful breasts rising and falling rapidly on her narrow ribcage.

  Dan hooked a thumb and forefinger around each of her ankles and began to push her knees upwards and apart.

  Lisa’s eyes widened. She tried to clamp her legs together, but Dan bent down and kissed her again, sliding his tongue into the warm cavern of her mouth and crushing her breasts against his bare chest. ‘Don’t go all shy on me,’ he whispered. ‘You’re beautiful down there.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, Lisa let him spread her ankles apart, watching his face apprehensively as he lowered his eyes. ‘Damn, you’re pretty, Mona Lisa,’ he murmured hoarsely as he looked at the hot, slick centre of her.

  Lisa watched him bemusedly, wondering, as so many women had before her, how anybody could call that beautiful. The fact she suddenly couldn’t wait to see his penis wasn’t the same. She watched as he unzipped his fly and reached into his underwear.

  Her eyes widened. Suddenly she was scampering backwards on her hands and feet towards the windscreen. ‘We can’t…we’ll never fit!’ she cried.

  Dan closed his eyes briefly. He tried to count to ten, but only made it to three. Why the hell did women get such a surprise when they saw him naked? He was six feet five inches tall. What did they expect? A weenie?

  He swallowed, struggling for patience. ‘Lisa, honey, I promise we’ll fit.’ He hesitated. ‘Our bodies have done this before.’

  She stared at his erection for several more moments before slowly sliding back down the car towards him.

  Dan took the time to arouse her to her earlier feverish state, even though he was certain he was going to disgrace himself on the hood of his car at any moment. Lisa purred, stroked and rubbed herself like a sensuous little cat all over him.

  Dan parted her knees and slowly began to push himself inside her.

  She tensed, staring up at him apprehensively.

  ‘I promise I’ll stop any time you want me to,’ he panted, hoping like hell she didn’t ask him more than once.

  It wasn’t an easy fit. He tilted her hips and rocked against her, easing home a little at a time, gritting his teeth against the overwhelming urge to drive into her and pound himself senseless. Gradually Lisa softened beneath him and began to sigh. She wrapped her legs about Dan’s waist, cupped his buttocks in her hands and began to slowly rotate her hips against him. When he finally slid home, she gasped and arched beneath him. As Dan picked up the tempo, Lisa unwound one of her legs from his wai
st, braced her foot on the metal hood and met him thrust for thrust. He felt her get hotter and hotter before she suddenly convulsed around him. Clenching his jaw, he emptied himself into her, his hips jerking against the cradle of hers.

  Lisa came back down to earth softly as a feather. She was vaguely aware when Dan withdrew from her body and she slowly slid a palm down the length of his arm as he stepped away from the car.

  ‘I didn’t use a condom.’

  ‘You didn’t use a condom,’ she repeated and looked blankly at his grim expression for several moments before her mouth and eyes rounded. ‘Oh! You didn’t use a condom!’ she cried, propping herself up on her elbows. ‘It never occurred to me to ask. I haven’t had sex in three years and my endometriosis always meant I had about as much chance of getting pregnant as climbing Mount Everest.’

  Dan zipped his fly, feeling the familiar pressure begin to build behind his eyes.

  ‘But I guess I can, can’t I?’ She gazed at him wonderingly. ‘Get pregnant, I mean?’

  His lips tightened as the irony of Lisa’s nonchalance and his terror at her being pregnant hit him between the eyes like a jackhammer as he recalled all the times he had broached the subject of having children with Linda and her horrified response to the idea. And now she lounged naked on the hood of his car looking sexually satiated and so damned desirable his dick was beginning to stand up and wave like a conductor’s baton all over again.

  ‘When did you last have a period?’ he asked in a tight voice.

  ‘Last week.’ She looked hurt. ‘It should be alright, shouldn’t it?’

  Dan raked a hand through his hair and demanded brusquely, ‘What? For you to be pregnant or not be pregnant?’ He propped his hands on his hips. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  Lisa sat up and hugged her arms around her bent knees. ‘Would it be so bad?’ she murmured, knowing he was being sensible but hurt just the same.

  Dan didn’t know what to say, so he changed the subject. ‘If you want to do this again I need to get some condoms.’

  ‘I want to do it again.’

  ‘Then I’d better hit the supermarket.’

  They scrambled around the garage finding Lisa’s clothes and Dan managed to find a spare set of keys he kept hidden in the car.

  ‘I can’t find my panties!’ Lisa cried, clutching her bra, long-sleeved T-shirt, denim skirt and coral sweater against her bare breasts and shivering.

  ‘Your knickers?’ Dan asked, helping her look. ‘Nope, can’t find ’em. Just put your skirt on—nobody will know you’re bare-assed beneath it.’

  Except him of course.

  As Dan accelerated away from the house, he spotted something white fluttering from the wing mirror on the driver’s side right before it flew off and sailed behind the car. ‘I think I just found your knickers,’ he remarked casually as they continued along the road.

  ‘You have? Where?’

  ‘They just flew off the wing mirror and into the road behind us.’

  ‘What?’ Lisa squawked. ‘Stop! I need to go back and get them!’

  Dan hit the brakes and pulled into the roadside. ‘You really want to go back there and pick your underwear up off the street?’

  She looked out the back window, her cheeks reddening. ‘Yes.’ She cringed. ‘No.’

  Dan blew out his breath on a long sigh. ‘Stay there. I’ll get ’em.’

  He found the panties on the road by the kerbside and had just scooped them up when he sensed he was being watched. It was karma that Mr Benns should be the one staring at him across the hedge he was clipping, the clippers frozen in space. He looked at Dan. And he looked at the white lacy underwear in Dan’s hand.

  Dan cleared his throat. ‘Flew off the wing mirror. Lucky I saw ’em.’

  Mr Benn nodded slowly. ‘Are they yours?’

  Dan frowned. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s something.’

  Dan refused to hand over the underwear to Lisa when he returned to the car. ‘Nuh uh.’ He stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans. ‘Finders keepers.’

  ‘But I want to put them on!’ she protested.

  ‘You owe me,’ Dan grumbled. ‘Boy, do you owe me.’

  He thought about her bare ass on the drive down to the supermarket, and he thought about it at the supermarket while he selected several kinds of condom, surprised at how comprehensive the selection was.

  ‘Don’t take everything!’ Lisa hissed from beside him, darting embarrassed looks up and down the aisle. ‘People will think we’re sex-starved!’

  ‘I am,’ he said, helping himself to two more kinds before strolling towards the checkouts at the front, his big hands overflowing with boxes of all colours. All Lisa could see was the word condoms. He might just as well have been carrying a placard.

  Dan smiled at the little checkout girl who blushed crimson and kept sneaking looks at Lisa as she passed the boxes across the electronic scanner and into plastic bags. Lisa did her best to disappear into Dan’s back while he took his time paying and collecting the two overflowing plastic bags. She was certain he was trying to embarrass her by buying so many at once.

  Lisa scuttled along behind him to the car. ‘That poor girl didn’t know where to look. She was only a student.’

  ‘It’s my contribution to adolescent sex education, letting them see that adults are practising safe sex,’ he replied, casually swinging one of the bags over his shoulder. A box of Ribbed Riders came tumbling out.

  Lisa snatched it from the asphalt and hissed, ‘Do you have to practise it so publicly?’

  He shrugged a shoulder. ‘Hey, I shut the garage door.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant!’

  He laughed down at her, looking rumpled and relaxed, the lines of tension gone from beside his mouth and beneath his eyes, and his dark hair standing on end where she’d dragged her fingers through it. Lisa felt an answering smile curve her lips. ‘You have no shame, Daniel Brogan.’

  ‘Not when it comes to sex,’ Dan agreed, stopping beside the silver Diamante. ‘Guess it’s a guy thing.’ He paused to give the hood of the car an affectionate stroke before unlocking the doors. On the way home, he glanced across at Lisa. ‘Slide your skirt up.’

  ‘W-what?’

  ‘I said…’ His voice lowered an octave. ‘Slide your skirt up your legs.’

  She swallowed and shook her head.

  Dan’s voice deepened. ‘Go on, I dare you. Please.’

  Hesitantly, Lisa slid her palms down her thighs, clutched a handful of skirt and slowly pulled it back over her knees.

  Dan glanced across at her bare knees and smiled. ‘Nice.’ Stopped at the traffic lights he looked at her from beneath his lashes and coaxed, ‘Higher.’

  Lisa blinked at him, fighting equal measures of excitement and embarrassment. Excitement won out. She slid the skirt to the middle of her thighs. Folds of material fell between them and her breath hitched as it touched the throbbing flesh between her legs.

  ‘Come on, Lisa,’ Dan chided softly, pulling away from the traffic lights. ‘You can do better than that. You know you want to.’

  She gulped, raised her hands and felt cool air against her heat.

  The car swerved. Lisa shrieked and would have pushed her skirt down if Dan hadn’t cried hoarsely, ‘No! Don’t…I mean…sorry! You’re safe, honey, I won’t lose control of the car, I promise.’

  He wasn’t so sure he could say the same about himself.

  Lisa slowly relaxed and began to enjoy herself. She rearranged her skirt and, watching Dan from beneath her lashes, slid her palms along her naked thighs.

  ‘Holy shit,’ he muttered.

  Encouraged by his response, she parted her thighs and trailed her fingers back up along the insides of them, stopping just short of the black curls at the top.

  ‘Go on,’ Dan urged in a low voice. ‘I dare you.’

  Lisa hesitated.

  He smirked. ‘Knew you wouldn’t do—holy shit!’

 
The moment the garage door closed behind the car, Dan grabbed a condom from one of the boxes, unzipped his fly and rolled it on. Reaching across, he helped Lisa scramble across the handbrake and onto his lap facing him. She gasped as she eased herself slowly downwards at the same time Dan thrust upwards into her.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked raggedly.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she panted, clutching his shoulders as she began to rise and fall against him. Her head fell backwards and her eyes closed. ‘Are you?’

  Dan’s eyes drifted shut. He smiled. ‘Oh yeah, you’re the nicest seatbelt I’ve ever had.’

  24

  The week that followed was one of the happiest of Lisa’s life.

  She and Dan were so engrossed in each other that they scarcely noticed the rest of the world. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other and spent each night twined together like a pair of eels, waking regularly to make love before tumbling back to sleep again. Dan kissed her awake each morning, sometimes pulling her into the shower with him to make love again. The boxes of condoms were emptying out fast.

  Thinking he might be too tired when he got home at night, Lisa had tried to exercise restraint and not dive on Dan the moment he stepped through the door, instead asking him about his day and telling him what was for dinner. Dan had different ideas about the kind of welcome home he wanted each night; he’d drop his briefcase where he was standing and back Lisa against the kitchen counter/wall/refrigerator, nuzzling her neck and saying, ‘Sounds great, but you taste better.’

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’ Lisa would ask, tugging his shirt from his trousers. ‘You hardly got any sleep last night.’

  Wrenching off his jacket, Dan would fling it across the kitchen, usually knocking over the fruit bowl/kitchen utensil caddy/sugar bowl in the process, and tell her, ‘If I’m tired, it’s due to a lack of sexual fitness. I need to work out more.’