by Wendy Silk
The young man who had tipped off Billy that I needed help was standing back, as if he wanted to make sure that nobody included him in any part of this scene. He managed to look both zoned out and shifty eyed at the same time. He gulped, stared at me, then turned and ran. It was only a matter of a few feet, but by the time he got to his truck, he looked as skittish as a laboratory rat. He climbed in, slammed his door, then peeled out of the parking lot.
“Shit, there goes my truck,” said the man who had just thrown a punch on my behalf. He was leaning over, resting his hands on his thighs and breathing heavily.
“You all right, bud?” Billy looked at him.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered, rubbing one hand against the knuckles of the other. “That just brought back some bad memories, that’s all.” He peered up at me. “And you?”
Billy moved between me and the man who had helped me. He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me toward my car. As we left, he said over his shoulder, not unkindly, “She’s fine. She needs to get home and rest. Now if you turn in the direction of home too and walk it off, I’ll find it in my heart not to ban you from my bar like I did those guys. You did a good thing.”
Billy stood outside the door of my car as I fastened my seatbelt and started the engine. He looked like a tree trunk, and was probably just as unmovable. He rapped on the window and gave me a thumbs-up, then I drove away.
When I got to the exit of the parking lot, though, I stopped the car to consider the man who had helped me. He was now walking slowly down the side street that would eventually wind around to the rest of our tiny town. He looked tired. I checked to see that Billy had gone inside and was no longer watching me.
Seized by an impulse I couldn’t explain, I stopped my car next to the man and rolled down the passenger side window. “Hey, do you want a ride home?”
I shook my head at myself, inviting a stranger into my car after what had just happened. But he hadn’t been the problem; he was the good guy in the scenario. His face registered surprise, but he nodded and sat down next to me.
Something about him made me feel like I was sitting next to an old friend. “Hey, thanks for what you did back there. It took a lot of guts to throw a punch when there were two of them and only one of you.”
He grinned ruefully. “Well, actually there were two of us if you count my friend. I’m not happy with him right now, but I have to say, he saved my ass in the end by calling your boss over to help.”
“Yeah, your friend didn’t look like he would be much use in a fight,” I said. Unexpected mirth gripped me, and I laughed out loud. “What did his truck say? ‘T&A Construction?’ Is that supposed to be a real company name?”
He brought his hands up to his eyes and rubbed them tiredly. “That’s a good point. Yep, it’s my truck, and it’s my company. Although you’ll notice that he just drove off and left me.”
I stopped the car at a stop sign and looked at him sympathetically. “Sorry about that. Let’s start over. I’m Cici.” I held out a hand to shake.
He reached out and took it in his firm grasp. “Hi, I’m Tim.” As he made sustained eye contact with me, his blue eyes sparkled with humor. “It’s nice to meet you properly, Cici.” After a moment, he looked down at our hands, still touching, and he realized that he’d held mine too long. He let go and sat back in his seat. When he stopped holding my hand, I felt a sense of loss that sent a shiver along my back.
“I can’t believe how long this day has been,” I muttered. “Tell me where you live, and I’ll drop you off. No, it’s not a problem,” I forestalled his objections. “It’s the least I can do, after what you did to your hand hitting him.” As I drove, I peeked to my right, and I saw him cradling his swelling hand in his lap. I had a second thought, then a third. “Listen, Tim. I do a pretty good job bandaging people up. It’s kind of my thing; I used to want to be a pediatrician when I was a kid. Why don’t you swing by my place and I’ll wrap that for you?”
He shifted in his seat, and I saw that he was a bigger, more athletic man than I had realized before. When he’d been sitting with those two assholes in the bar, I had noticed his eyes and his hands. Now, I noticed the broad strength of his chest and his firm ass as it settled into the passenger seat of my car. He was worth taking a second look at. In fact, he was smoking hot.
His dark hair was a little too long, curling where it met his ears. His chambray shirt was so crisp and clean after what we’d just been through that it must have been unequivocally pristine earlier this evening. He’d rolled his shirt sleeves back to the elbows back when he’d been fidgeting with his beer mug at the table, rather than drinking it. I remember making a mental note of that a couple of hours ago. Those strong forearms were enough to make me weak in the knees, so I was glad I was still sitting in my car. Although if I tripped in front of a nice guy like this, he’d probably just catch me with a smile.
After a night like we’d just had, I was no longer interested in hiding my feelings. That particular life system wasn’t serving me terribly well, if it had led to the assault I’d just experienced. I was going to become the kind of person who reached out for what she wanted. That was what I was working toward with my business plan, after all. I could be doing that in my personal life as well. Just as I was about to ask him again if he wanted to come upstairs to the apartment I shared with Kelly, he answered.
“I’d love to come up. Thanks.” His words were simple, but the respect in his voice was unmistakable. This wasn’t one of those yahoos who wore their hats in the restaurant. This was a man who knew what it meant to have good manners.
I pulled into my parking space at the shoddy little apartment complex where Kelly had lived for two years before she had taken me in as her roommate. She’d had a boyfriend to share the rent with at one time, but after he left, she made it work by taking on as many extra shifts as she could. Now it was the two of us, relying on each other and making a pretty good team.
When I placed my hand on my door handle to open it, I found that Tim was already there. He’d left his seat and circled around to my door, materializing there to open it for me before I even knew he’d left the car.
“Thanks,” I smiled up at him. As I brushed past him, I could feel my body responding to his closeness. I hadn’t been with anybody in a long time. Truth be told, I didn’t think I’d ever been with a man who opened the car door for me. That was a first. Even back in high school, when I’d dated boys who came from so-called ‘good’ families, they never took the time to do that.
Upstairs, I struggled briefly with the trick key, pulling the door toward me as I jiggled the handle, creating the magic combination of actions that would allow the persnickety door to open. I did this every time I came home, but it was embarrassing to do it in front of somebody else. We stepped into the tiny entryway, whose walls were all painted brown. In two long strides, we were in my kitchen. It looked even dingier than when I’d left it this morning. I tried not to look at the greying vinyl floor and the ancient refrigerator whose freezer we had to manually defrost by stabbing the ice with a screwdriver. I hoped Tim didn’t see any of the things I did.
He was still keeping his hand still, holding it awkwardly in front of him. When I noticed that, I hurried to the cupboard to get a bag to fill with ice. I offered it to him, with a clean tea towel, and I watched him put the cold pack against his knuckles.
“I don’t know if I should offer you a seat,” I said. “Or a snack? I’m sorry, I know I sound like a goof. I guess it’s been a long time since I invited anybody back home with me.” I lifted my chin and used it to gesture to the room. “And this is it. Home, I mean. I don’t mind admitting that this is where I live.”
Tim chuckled ruefully. “This is a great place. You should see where I live, and where I’ve lived in harder times. I believe it’s important to be proud of being a hard worker. I like to think I am.” He reached out to touch my arm gently. “I know you are. I was watching you at the bar tonight. I saw what you�
��re capable of doing. Don’t let those guys take that away from you.”
Without meaning to, I swayed slightly. My eyes were already filling with tears when Tim opened his arms and caught me. He held me gently and rubbed my back in wide circles. “It’s ok,” he murmured. “It’s ok. What happened wasn’t about you; it was about them.”
I let the tears swim in my eyes for just a few moments, then I pulled myself back together. “How did you know what to say?” I looked up into his eyes, but I didn’t pull away from his arms.
Tim twisted the corner of his mouth at me sorrowfully. “I’ve seen it before, unfortunately.” Then a light of appreciation reached his eyes as he gazed at me. “But I’ve never seen somebody like you before.” He carefully moved a strand of my long hair that had fallen across my cheek. “Now, I’d better go. I know you said you could wrap this hand, but really, it’s feeling fine. No need for that. I do think you should get to bed, though.”
I couldn’t bring myself to leave the circle of his strong arms. Instead of answering, I wriggled against him ever so slightly, moving my hips against his. His body responded, as I had hoped it would. I drew in a ragged breath and tried to put something into words.
“Tim, I’d really like it if you stayed with me tonight.”
“Um, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do just now,” he said hesitantly. “We just met, and I know you’ve had a scare tonight. Let’s have dinner together another night, but maybe not jump the gun just yet, huh?”
I heard his words. I appreciated the logic behind them. But all I could think of as I leaned against him and listened to him talk was the curvy fullness of his lips. I wanted those lips on mine, and then on several other parts of my body. I raised my face, lifting myself onto my toes so that I could press my mouth against his. The kiss was a feather touch that gave me time to savor the sweet, minty taste of him. I pressed against him along my entire length, so my breasts were rubbing into his chest and my legs were well on their way to being wrapped around him.
Then I stopped moving. My breath had halted in my chest. Everything in the room had stopped for me, except for the heat that was rising from our two bodies as we made contact.
“Tim, stay. I want you.” I repeated my invitation.
A slow smile spread across his face and his broad shoulders relaxed. I felt his hand come down to my lower back and then move across my ass, pressing me against him.
“Well, Cici, I’ll tell you,” he whispered. “I can say no to you once, but any more than that is beyond me. I’ve been wanting you since I first saw you walking up to our table tonight. Let me show you how much.”
He took my hand in his and guided it to his crotch, where I could feel his rock hard cock in his blue jeans. Then our mouths came together with a new sense of urgency. No longer were our kisses sweet or fluttery. Instead, his lips were hot and hard on mine. “Let me show you,” he repeated.
I took his hand and led him down the narrow, brown hallway to my room. I locked the door behind us, and he showed me everything.
Chapter 4: Tim
When the sunlight slanted into the room, it hit me right in the eyes. I wasn’t used to that. My own apartment was a dark and gloomy place, full of heavy shades that smelled like mildew. Even the incense that Aaron kept constantly burning couldn’t combat the dank smell. But here I was, waking up somewhere else entirely.
I opened my eyes slowly, allowing them to get used to the light. I wanted to rub them, but I was afraid to move my arm. Somebody was lying on top of it. I turned my head to the side and saw the long, glorious, caramel colored hair that made it all click into place for me. Cici. From last night.
All at once, I knew how I’d met her last night, and I remembered what we’d been up together through all the hours of darkness. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. No longer trying to keep still, I stretched my arm out, awakening the muscles. She stayed on top of it, but the motion made her eyes open wide. When she looked at me, I watched her closely. I wanted to see the look on her face when she registered my presence.
Her pretty pink lips broke out into a grin, and her eyes twinkled at me wickedly. That was what I’d been hoping for. No sense of questioning the wisdom of what we’d done, or worse, who exactly I was. She was stretching languorously, like a cat. She pushed the hair out of her eyes, then rubbed her neck.
“That was pretty impressive last night,” she said. “I thought you were going to let me get a little sleep, maybe. But I was wrong about that.” Everything about her looked more relaxed than she had last night. The tension that she’d held in her back when I patted her comfortingly in the kitchen had gone.
I softly ran my hand up to the back of her neck. The tiny hairs that curled there were as soft as silk. I felt my own face open up into a grin to match hers. “Sleep? I don’t think that was very high on our list of priorities last night. So many better things to do.”
“And now?” Cici curled into me, surprising me by licking the place on my collarbone where my t-shirt tan gave way to paler skin. “Do you have anything better to do now?” She sent a gleaming look of mischief my way, then moved lower to playfully nibble on my nipple.
I groaned. “There’s nothing else I can even think of doing but this.” It sounded like a line, but it was the pure, unvarnished truth. Her body, and her sweet, hopeful smile, filled my mind. She had taken up residence in a part of my soul that I had thought was going to be empty for the rest of my life. I rolled over, away from her, to check my wallet for another condom. “Hold on, let me just…”
She laughed out loud. “Tim, how many of those things do you carry on you? I mean, after last night, I wouldn’t think you’d have another one. You’re the man.” She snickered at me as I located my last condom. Then I leaned over her and kissed her until she had nothing more to say except what her naked body told mine. I rolled the condom onto my cock and knew I could wait no longer to be inside her. It didn’t matter how many times we’d fucked the night before, all I wanted was to be in her sweet warmth, ramming into her as she gasped with the rhythm of my thrusts.
When I entered her, she looked up at me with a serious expression. The lightheartedness we’d shared wasn’t quite gone, but it was now overlaid with something else. “Tim,” she whispered, “this is something special between us, isn’t it?”
I held myself above her, watching the sunlight trace the curve of her chin. I lowered my lips to leave a line of kisses down her neck. Then as I moved my rigid cock deep within her, I answered her. “It is. Cici, I think you and I are meant to be.”
It should have made a difference to my abilities that we’d had such a long night together, but I could have spent all day in bed satisfying her. I filled her with my flesh, feeling the tight embrace of her pussy with such a high level of sensation that it was almost too much for me to process. It was the best sex I’d ever had, by about a million miles.
It wasn’t just that she had the sexiest body I’d ever touched. She had those high breasts, and her ass that had that perfect roundness, so you just wanted to cup it in your hand all night long. The thing was, she didn’t seem to have any idea of how she looked, or how much attention she commanded from men. Her appearance wasn’t something she spent a lot of time contemplating, clearly. So although I appreciated how sexy she was, and my cock rose to the occasion, the way she looked wasn’t the most important thing about her to me.
She was the most honest, sweetest woman I’d ever met in my life.
I didn’t know how I was going to break it to her that I wasn’t good news. There was not a damn thing about me that was prosperous, or good boyfriend material. But maybe she already knew that, and she was choosing me anyway.
After we’d gone through all the condoms I had, we slept some more. By the time the sun was high in the sky, I drifted awake again to see her standing at her dresser, pulling out clothes. She was still naked, so of course I opened my eyes all the way to admire the view. I pulled myself up on one arm and watched her silently.
More than anything, I didn’t want this to be over.
“Cici, are you getting up?” I finally had to ask.
“Yep, I have to think about getting to work. My shift is in about an hour, and I need to get myself together.” She turned her head around to beam a big smile at me. I’d thought that when I spoke, she’d cover herself automatically, but she stood there naked, letting me look at her.
“I hear you,” I answered. “I have to go too.” I didn’t, not really, but saying anything else would have been creepy. I got up from the bed and took her in my arms. “Cici, do you mind if I come in to the bar and see you tonight? I promise I won’t be a distraction.”
“Sure, why not? Billy specifically said that he’d let you back in.” The twinkle in her eye let me know that she was joking, but her reference to the scare she’d had last night made us both feel more solemn. Without meaning to, we’d come to the end of our time of easy togetherness.
She pulled on some underclothes, and then her work outfit. As she began brushing her long hair with energetic speed, she spoke so softly that I could hardly hear her. “Tim, I’d like that. I’ll count on seeing you, and it will make the evening go faster.” In a brisker tone, she added, “Let me drop you off at your place. It can’t be far away, if it’s in town.”
“I’d appreciate it--thanks.”
As we crept down the narrow hallway to leave her apartment, I noticed that the other bedroom now had its door tightly closed. Realizing that was her roommate’s domain, I made a questioning face, wondering if we needed to tiptoe.
“Nope,” Cici answered at full volume. “Kelly sleeps like a log. She closed last night, so she’ll have got in late. There’s nothing in the world that we could do that would wake her up.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Is that a challenge?” She laughed, and I went on, just wanting to hear the sound again. “So you’re saying we could get down here on the carpet outside her room and have at it, and that would be no problem?”