by Cora Brent
I take a step back and yank my shirt over my head. “I’m not kissing you. I’ll never kiss you again, you cold-hearted bitch. Kissing means something and this don’t mean shit.”
“No, it doesn’t mean shit.”
I drop my pants and close her hand around my cock. She gasps slightly and squeezes her way along the hard flesh. This is what I’ve fantasized about. But there’s a crude, angry quality to it now. I let her stroke me for a few more beats before I swat her away and start pumping my junk myself.
“Get it all off.”
Her hands grasp the hem of her shirt but then she hesitates.
“Now, Ren. You wanted nasty and I’m going to give it to you nasty as all fuck, but that means I’m sure as hell not undressing you all gentle and sweet.”
“Fuck you,” she sneers, “if I wanted gentle and sweet I wouldn’t be here.”
“Glad we finally understand each other. So get all your shit off and get spread out.”
Her chest heaves as she gets rid of her shirt and her torn bra. “You’re despicable now. I really hate you.”
“You don’t hate me at all. But you will by the time I’m done tonight.”
I know there are some condoms in my bag but it takes me a minute of hunting around in the dark to find them. Ren still has her skirt on and she’s slow about sliding her underwear off. She hasn’t moved from the side of the truck. The tailgate creaks in protest when I tug it down.
For a second the insanity of the situation hits me and I’m almost ashamed. If I still had some shreds of decency to rub together I would drive her back to Atlantis, bid her a cordial farewell and then drive off forever. What’s about to happen isn’t going to do either of us any good but somehow I can’t stop it.
I don’t want to stop it.
I snap my fingers at her face. “Now get your spoiled little ass over here if you want to do this.”
Ren slides slowly around to the back and faces me with her tits bared and her skirt bunched up in her fists. My cock is pointed straight as a thick arrow and with my teeth I tear open the condom wrapper.
She’s staring at my cock and she’s still clutching the sides of her skirt around her thighs like she’s about to go wading in shallow water. That drives me slightly crazy and I grab the fabric, crudely yanking it over her hips until she’s forced to let it go and puddle on the ground.
Goddammit, why does she have to be so beautiful?
Her high gasp makes me think she might just be all talk here so I shove my hand between her legs to find out.
“Fuuuck,” I groan because she’s so open and ready I lose two fingers inside her without even trying.
“No!” She pushes my hand right out of her and spins around, bracing her hands on the flattened tailgate and rubbing her lush little ass against my extended cock. She knows what she’s doing, teasing with that ripe little cleft until I almost forget where I am and who I am because above all else there’s the big fat fucking need to get my shit buried in a tight spot.
“We’re doing it like this,” she whispers.
Ren’s long dark hair cascades over her bare back and there’s never been anything that screams SEX as loud as this goddamn woman bent naked over the truck and trying to swallow my cock with her ripe ass. She jerks her head suddenly, swinging her hair aside and looking back at me to bark out a terse order. “And Oz, you damn well better make it hurt!”
I could. I could bore straight into that sweet center like a fucking jackhammer and pound pound pound without mercy until she cries. Instead I get my hands around her hips, arch her body slightly and slide carefully into the tight, slippery entrance I had once been the first man to find a way into.
“Oz!” she gasps, then groans as I get into the rhythm.
Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. I loved you. Damn you.
She’s clenching, arching, doing everything she can to push back and work her body so that I’m reaching the sweet spot. I’m not gentle. I squeeze her tits, suck her skin and keep pumping until she’s so far gone into her moaning ecstasy she probably doesn’t remember her own name. That’s when I slide a hand underneath where we’re joined, find her swollen clit and press down with two fingers until I feel the shudder of a powerful orgasm start to claim her.
Then I abruptly stop. It’s kind of cruel but that’s the idea. I take my hand away, pull my cock out and grab a fistful of her thick hair, clawing my fingers close to her scalp and then tugging hard enough to make her yelp.
“You still want me to make it hurt, Ren?”
“Oh god, yes!” She grinds her lower body against the hard shell of the tailgate, desperate for release, bringing a perverse smile to my face. If I so much as fucking breathe on that needy little pussy right now she’ll come so hard she won’t be able to stand up afterwards.
But I’m not giving that to her.
She told me to make it hurt and I’m damn well going to make it hurt, just not the way she had in mind.
She’s light enough so that I can flip her over with ease. The moonlight pours over her tits and her belly and every cursed perfect inch of her. All I want to do is bend my head and use my mouth, my tongue, to worship all of her until the sun reclaims the sky. Instead I spread her legs wider, grip her hips and plunge inside, barely hanging on to my own reason when she arches her back, bends those pretty tits toward my face and lets out a low, throaty moan that I’m dead sure will give me mental jerkoff material until the day my cock stops working. She’s so close to the edge she’s shaking and I’m about ready to bust my load wide open but I pull out again anyway.
“Please,” she moans, shaking her head from side to side, “I need…”
I climb on top of her. “Look at me.”
She’s drunk with passion, can hardly hear me. “Wha-“
With a roar I grab her face in my palm, my fingers digging into her soft cheeks until she winces.
“Look at me, Loren Savage! You better open up and fucking see me!”
She opens her eyes and there must be something terrible about the look on my face because they widen with alarm. That’s when I plunge into her again. Hard. Deliberate. She responds with a wild buck of her hips and a scream of pleasure that’s swiftly drowned with my mouth.
I’d told her I wouldn’t kiss her and true to my word, this is no kiss. This is a ruthless invasion of tongue and force that doesn’t let up until we are both trembling from the spasms of our violent climax.
“Oscar,” she sighs softly when I finally let go of her.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
No, that’s not this night. That was another night, a long time ago. It happened to two utterly different people who are long gone. They won’t be coming back.
I don’t watch her as she pulls her clothes back on. I sit there on the edge of the tailgate, naked and hollow, saying nothing. Every ten seconds or so a flash of lightning burns the sky and shows the mountains hiding in the dark. The wind kicks up slightly, rustling the dry mesquite leaves and stirring the dust on the desert floor.
Ren is beside me now, waiting. Waiting for me to say a word, waiting for me to hop back in my truck and leave her out here to find her way back alone. Without acknowledging her at all I manage to locate my clothes in the dust.
The used condom has already been tossed somewhere into the darkness. Usually I’m scrupulous about such things but fuck it. The desert can keep that one little sordid piece of us.
Once I’m behind the wheel again, Ren climbs into the passenger seat beside me and folds her hands primly in her lap as I steer the truck back to Atlantis. There are lights on in the big house, not surprising since it isn’t really that late. It’s not even nine o’clock.
I brake to a stop about fifty yards away from the house, close to the sadly overgrown plot of what was once a fake cemetery in a dozen old west movies. On one side, the caretaker’s house squats behind the dark, silent brothel. On the other the white clapboard church stands sentinel. Last week when I ducked
inside there I noticed weeds poking through the floorboards and thought it was possible no one had walked the floor in years. I suppose that for Spencer the old church is simply not a caretaking priority. It’ll probably just fall over one of these days. In the distance, the faded letters on the broad Mercantile are visible if I squint. I allow myself to have a few seconds to take in what I can see of the place in the dark because I’ve already made up my mind.
This will be the last time I ever see Atlantis Star. This will be the last time I see Ren.
She already has her hand on the door but she pauses without opening it. If she’s waiting for some poignant last words she’s not going to get them. Even though my heart is full of chaos, confusion, even sorrow, it has to be this way. If I ever had any doubts that we’re an unhealthy mix, that frenzied fuck fest in the desert just answered everything.
I never really did want to hurt her. Not years ago when she kicked me out of her life, not when I landed back in Atlantis amid all the surreal camera craziness and not even tonight when she opened her legs and begged me to.
She was, and is, the owner of my heart.
She whispers my name. “Oz.”
I have to pretend I just don’t hear it because I’m aching to pull her against my chest and stubbornly keep her no matter what it might do to my sanity.
I just turn my head and face the open window. It’s as definite a refusal as I can muster without saying the words. If I try to say anything right now I know I won’t end up leaving. And at this point I’m leaving as much for her sake as for mine. Thanks to this circus the world would sniff out a ‘cousin fucks cousin’ scandal without a care about whether there’s any actual biology involved. They would harass her to the end of time. Funny how after everything I still care about how she feels.
So I wait in silence until she gives up and slowly opens the door. She’s probably combing her brain to figure out how to bid a final farewell to a hated ex-lover. I guess she can’t come up with anything because after a moment I hear her footsteps heading in the opposite direction, toward the big house. Only then do I look at her, just to catch one final glimpse of the swing of her hair and the straight line of her back before she melts into the darkness.
There’s nothing to do now but start the engine and head for the road. In two minutes I’m outside of Atlantis and I don’t look back.
Now that I’m out of there can I start to think straight again.
Really, I lost my grudge against the Savages a long time ago. Maybe it never existed in the first place. I was angry and hurting for a long time so whatever reasons there were for my exile seemed unimportant.
I do know one thing. No matter what she says these days, that girl loved me once. She loved me as much as I loved her. But the world is filled with a million sad stories, stories of what’s been lost and who has suffered. Ren and I, we’re just another of those stories.
And now I can finally say that the story has ended. Not happily, but ended just the same.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REN
Nothing seems real tonight. Not the ache between my legs or bruised sensation still on my lips or the fresh smell of the approaching rain. My steps are leaden as I leave Oscar and I don’t take a breath until I hear his truck roaring away into the night.
Spencer happens to be coming around the side of the house with a thick coil of rope around one shoulder when I reach the porch. I try to avoid being bathed in the yellow porch light, but it’s not enough to escape my brother’s scrutiny. He stops, staring. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Nothing. “ My voice sounds froggy so I clear it and try again. “I was just out for a walk.”
“You look pretty messed up for a walk.”
“Yeah, well. It got windy, okay?”
Spence glances in the direction where Oz’s truck disappeared. The sound of the engine lingers but the taillights are no longer visible. He must have already gone around the bend of the road that leads out of Atlantis. He’s gone. There will be no answer to the misery in my soul.
Could I have stopped him from leaving? No, there’s no use running after a man who finds you contemptible. Twice now I’ve watched him leave. At the moment I couldn’t say which occasion was more devastating. I’m not as raw as I was five years ago though.
Perhaps my transition is complete. I’m a ‘cold-hearted bitch’ who has finally turned to stone.
Spence shifts his weight around and seems like he wants to say something but Monty interrupts, flinging open the screen door like a cocksure king busting out of his castle. He steps onto the porch, still holding the same bottle as earlier, but in the glint of the moonlight I can see it’s not as full. Nonetheless, the look he gives me is sharp-eyed and suspicious, not dull and drunk. Montgomery could always hold his liquor. He crosses his arms and looks from side to side as if he’s searching for a hidden predator. He gives me a nod. “What’s going on, Ren?”
For a second I try to pat my wild hair down, then give up. I realize that the shoulder of my shirt is torn but there’s nothing I can do about that right now. I can’t make myself care much about appearances at the moment anyway. “Jesus, you guys,” I snap. “Nothing happened.”
“She went for a walk,” Spence pipes up with helpful sarcasm.
Monty leans against the knotty wood porch beam and looks me over. He evidently doesn’t like what he sees. “You fall down the side of a fucking mountain on your walk?”
God, I’m tired. I could sleep for a week. Perhaps when I wake up the dull pain will be gone. “I fell down something.”
“Did that something have a pickup truck and a shitty attitude?”
I lower my head. My hair falls across my vision like a dark veil. “So what if it did?”
Monty spits into the dirt. “Fuck him. I’m glad he’s gone.”
“Oz is gone?” asks Spence.
“He’d better be.”
Spence is looking at me. “I never really understood what he was doing here anyway. Doesn’t seem like the Hollywood type who would fit into all of this.”
Monty laughs. “What about you, fantasy cowboy? You’re not exactly the type either.”
“Shut up, you jailbird piece of shit.”
Monty lights another cigarette. He’s becoming a goddamn chain smoker. “Hey Ren, you let me know the minute that prick shows up here again and I’ll drop kick him to fucking Flagstaff.”
I raise my head and glare at him. “Really, Monty? I have my doubts that assault is encouraged during your parole.”
Monty grunts in response and takes a drag.
Spencer comes closer, really takes stock of my messy appearance and adopts an expression of supreme concern. For Spencer, that means his eyebrows are slightly furrowed. “Hey. He didn’t rough you up or nothing, did he?”
“Oz? Rough me up?” I throw my head back and laugh crazily. I’m laughing because the concept so far from the truth and yet so completely true. Yes, he roughed me up. He told me the truth about myself and treated me how I deserve to be treated.
While I keep cackling, my brothers assume identical macho glowers. They glower at me. The glower at each other. They glower at the darkness and the sky. I’m sick of both of them and their stupid fucking glowering maleness at this point. I stop laughing like a wild hyena.
“Whatever happened out there tonight is my business so let’s knock off the inquisition. Ninety nine percent of the time you don’t seem to give a damn about what I’m doing anyway. So let’s save the show of brotherly concern for the daylight hours when the production crew can get some useful footage out of it.”
On that tender note I slam my way into the house. Brigitte’s startled face is the first thing I see because she’s scooted a chair right next to the door, pretending to be immersed in her phone while discreetly listening to the conversation on the front porch.
She calls my name but I ignore her and head for the kitchen. My mouth feels like it’s layered with mesquite bark. I fill a glass with water from t
he sink even though the tap water tastes like warm sulfur out here. When I’m gulping it back, ignoring the awful taste, I catch sight of a camera that had been installed just above the sink. I’d stopped noticing it days ago but now the empty stare of the black lens infuriates me so I rip it right out of the wall. A few errant wires trail from its guts so I stuff the whole thing into the very back of the freezer, slamming the stainless steel door shut.
“Like that’ll do anything,” Brigitte snorts from the doorway. She wafts into the room, grabs an apple from a bowl in the center of the table and flashes me a bemused glance. “They’ll just put it back tomorrow. Besides, there are about a hundred and seventy five more of them sewn into the walls of the house. I’ll bet someone will still be picking hidden cameras out of the eaves fifty years after we’re dead. By the way, big sister, you look like the proverbial cat who ate the canary.”
I empty the glass and set it down in the sink. “So I guess you’re speaking to me again?”
She takes a bite of the apple, chews and looks thoughtfully wounded before opting to answer. “I’m choosing to overlook your occasionally aggressive nature. After all, I know this is a stressful environment. I also know that I have the capacity to be a terrible bitch.”
I sink down in one of the hardback chairs. “Cut out the theatrics. You know Bree, I have to wonder if you have to ability to stop acting even if you try.”
Another bite of the apple. “I’m not acting right now. I’m just being your sister.”
“Then just be my sister and stop trying to direct a script.”
She sighs, touches her left palm to her forehead. Bree suffers from frequent migraines, one of the few things we have in common.
“Loren,” she says quietly, “why are you in the habit of forgetting that I’m on your side?”
“Why are you in that habit of behaving as if you are starring in a vivid mini-series about your own life?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Yes you do. It means I have to watch my back lest I get broadsided by your ambitions.”
The hand holding the apple wilts at her side and the flash of genuine confusion in her eyes makes me wish I could take my own words back. I’ve been wishing that a lot lately. Someone really ought to muzzle me.