American Honey

by Heidi McLaughlin

  When I have his belt undone, my fingers work toward the edges of his black boxers. My stare catches his, still no emotion is offered for me, only that fire lit stare from the bonfire he gives me. He squints a little, his head tipped to one side but says nothing.

  Just as I get one hand inside his boxers, his hands are on mine. “How old are you?” He’s looking for the truth, the blue stones capturing me inside their spark.

  “Eighteen…” It’s a lie but it’s close enough. What’s a few days?

  “Are you lyin’?” his brow arches.

  “No.”

  I think he knows I am, but I don’t think the whiskey in him cares enough to make him stop. He gives up caring and helps me out by pushing his jeans and boxers down around his ankles. He tips his hat up slightly but not enough that I can see his eyes, just shadows and his lips, but it’s enough. I’m not going to be looking at him anyway.

  My hands run over him, he’s hard, bigger than I expected from his size but enough that I know I’m not getting him all in my mouth without gagging. When my lips touch him, he’s quiet but I feel his legs tense under my right hand that’s resting on his thigh.

  I hear his head hit the back window when I go all the way down, my lips at the base of him and then sliding back up slowly. I twist my head to the left to get a peek at him. His head is bent forward now, still shadowed by the hat but it’s the tiny flickers from the bonfire that gives me what I’m looking for. His eyes are on me and judging on his hooded expression, he’s enjoying what I’m doing.

  He’s all heavy breathing and white knuckle gripping, barely able to stay still until he’s shaking and pushing my head down harder. I let him, it’s sexy and give him what he wants. I like it when they don’t say anything. I don’t need that shit where they’re talking and telling me how sweet my mouth is or how wet my pussy is for them. I prefer this right here. I’m not here to talk, I’m here for pleasure, his and mine.

  He doesn’t last long, maybe five minutes, he stops me once, trying to make it last I assume and then pushes my head back down. Again, it’s sexy and not forceful. It’s just enough that I know he doesn’t want this to end.

  I feel his legs start to tense, a soft groan leaving his parted lips. Angling my face, I watch him come, his body hunched forward as he cradles my head in his lap, eyes closed and face contorted in pleasure. When I feel him start to pulse, he makes another throaty noise that’s sexy as hell. I let him come in my mouth and I kind of like that he didn’t ask. He didn’t need to.

  Sitting up and licking my lips, I give him one more look. He’s still hard, his jeans around his ankles as I reach for the door handle.

  He’s waiting on my reaction. Just as I turn away, long calloused fingers wrap around my wrist. “Thanks, darlin’.”

  I smile but say nothing throwing my shirt over my shoulder, not even bothering to put it on as I get out.

  I don’t feel guilty. Not in the slightest. I am who I say I am. Say what you will. There’s no one here to judge me because they’ve all but given up. I’m not their town princess. I’m not the preacher’s daughter. I’m not a lover and I’m not a girl they’ll bring home to mama. I’m loud-laughing, fast living, stubborn, too mean, too much of anything most can handle.

  What I am is wild at heart, hazy thinking and a sinning soul. Yeah, this is me, it may not have always been me but it’s who I am now, take it or leave it.

  Chapter Three

  Temptations

  Some may call me a slut. That’s okay. I don’t care what they say or think. I don’t live by their rules, or my dad’s. I’m living for this moment, this day, because who knows what we are promised tomorrow. I should know. I do know.

  When I get downstairs that morning, dad’s staring at me, giving me that fatherly disapproving stare he always has. Just one morning I’d like to not get that stare.

  “I got a new guy coming over to help out this week.” He says digging into his breakfast sitting before him. “I’d like you to be nice to him, but, stay away from him. He’s just payin’ off some debt Red James owed me. Fixin’ the barn and what not.”

  I give him a nod looking down at his breakfast. It’s biscuits and gravy, same thing he has every Saturday morning. It’s repulsive to watch him eat that slop so I grab an apple and sit down, not because I want to talk to him, but because Jessie isn’t here yet and I am hungry.

  “Where were you last night?” his jaded green eyes never move from his plate.

  I didn’t respond but then I feel his stare on me when mom returns to the table with eggs and bacon on a plate.

  “I was at Harrison’s house.” I finally answer reaching for the bacon and setting my apple down.

  Dad nods, his rough demeanor never breaking. My dad is never soft. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anything nice said by him to me and I’m his only daughter. You’d think he would. He’s a hard-working man though and provides for his family.

  “Who was there? Was that Peterson boy there?”

  It’s like this every time I go out. He’s constantly wanting to know who I’m with and what I’m doing. He’s a parent. I get that. I should be happy that he cares enough to question me. Jessie’s mom never asks.

  My dad has no clue. He thinks I’m good but he doesn’t understand. I’ve spread my legs for probably a dozen boys but if he knew that, I’d be locked away. So he’s kept in the dark for his sanity and my safety.

  “Leave her alone, Adam.” Mom says running her hands down my back as she pours me a glass of milk. Her hand twists gently in my long blonde locks and then leans down to kiss the top of my head gently. “Remember to wear sunscreen at the lake.”

  “Answer me, Alanna.” Dad says, his voice stern paying no mind to mom.

  “No, he wasn’t there.”

  Yeah, I’m lying but he’d have a heart attack if he knew I was fucking Kasey every Sunday for the last few months. He doesn’t trust Kasey and he shouldn’t. No one should.

  Ten minutes later I’m on the porch waiting for Jessie when I remember that I forgot my phone upstairs. When I’m up there, I hear a truck coming down our long gravel driveway and immediately I recognize who that truck belongs to.

  Holy shit!

  My shaking hands frantically grab at my blinds for a better look. I watch the dust cloud as he comes down the driveway. It takes me a minute then he’s getting out and I know it’s him for sure.

  I can’t see his face but I know that hat and walk. It’s Callan James.

  The sight sends a spark through my veins, a reminder in the pit of my stomach of what I did to him in that very truck behind him less than twelve hours ago. I’m. So. Fucked.

  He’s wearing that black cowboy hat, the one that kept shadowing his eyes last night and a dark gray t-shirt that meets a worn pair of jeans. One look at him and it’s obvious he’s a hard-working man. There’s probably dirt on those calloused hands that’ll never come off. And I want those calloused dirt-stained hands on me in any way I can have them.

  His head is down when he approaches my dad standing near the porch. When he gets near him, his head comes up and reaches out to shake dad’s hand while removing his hat with the other one.

  He’s polite, I knew that from last night.

  I see Jessie’s truck coming down the driveway next, same dust cloud following behind her. She parks next to Callan’s truck wearing nothing but her bikini and her red cowboy boots. Never glancing at Callan and my dad, at least not noticeably, she comes inside the house.

  I watch Callan to see if he looks, but he doesn’t. His attention is on my dad as they talk.

  Jessie comes in my room. “Are you ready and do you know him?”

  “Yeah…well…kinda.” I’m still staring out my window, watching them talk unable to turn away.

  “You know he’s a champion bull rider, right?”

  “I know he’s a bull rider based off the belt buckle I took off him last night but I didn’t know he’s a champion bull rider.”

  Jessie’s qui
et for a moment, looking out my window with me. Then it hits her that I’ve seen his buckle. “How do you know what his belt buckle looks like and exactly why were you taking it off last night?”

  “Gave him a blow job in his truck last night.” I admit, still watching. They’re walking toward the barn now, our vision cut off when they disappear inside the stables.

  “Nice…did he return the favor?”

  I shrug reaching for my bag. “Nah…it was pretty sexy just doing that.”

  We’re walking downstairs when I hear dad come inside and that crackling voice Callan has. He talks slow and with a thick southern accent that rattles me even from twenty feet away.

  Jessie and I practically run right into him when we come around the corner. It takes him all of a half second for the grin to appear when he looks at me, remembering who I am.

  “This is my daughter, Alanna and her friend Jessie.” My dad says, gesturing to us.

  Callan only looks at me, his brow scrunched as if he’s trying to decide what he’s going to say when he sees this is my dad.

  I reach out and offer my hand. “Nice to me you…” I wait for him to offer his name, though I already know it.

  “Callan James.” He says, shaking my hand. His thumb moves softly over my skin once and then back again, as if he’s not wanting to let go right away. Pieces of the night flash in my head and I know they’re doing the same to him. I feel it in that touch. He grins and I see those eyes for the first time up close and not shadowed by his hat that’s being held in his left hand against his side. “Nice to meet you.”

  My dad clears his throat as Callan lets go of my hand running it over his slightly shaggy golden brown hair that’s a tad matted on one side from the hat.

  Jessie shoves her hand at him. “I’m Jessie.”

  “Nice to meet you too, Jessie.” Callan says, giving her a smile too. I look over at her and see he has the same effect on her too. I want to laugh but I don’t.

  And then as if he’s trying to ruin my life, dad says, “She’s seventeen so don’t even think about it.” And then walks into the kitchen expecting Callan to follow.

  Callan isn’t moving though, his eyes scanning my face, shocked, and then those blue diamond eyes turn cold, bitter, resentful even and disappear with a heavy sigh. He remembers me alright but he also knows I lied to him last night. I’m. So. Fucked.

  I glare at my dad, flip him off behind his back and grab Jessie by the hand heading out the door.

  “I can’t believe you gave that guy head last night. I’m totally jealous of your mouth.”

  I feel bad that I lied to him and even worse at the look he gave me as we were driving away that I don’t even bother with a response to Jessie’s remarks.

  It’s a short drive to the lake, I’m quiet the entire way when we’re laying on the dock and Jessie hands me a beer. The dock is steaming as I dip my hand in the water to splash some water on my burning face. My skin tingles with each passing minute but I’m too lazy to get up and jump off the end of the dock. Jessie is too and at one point, she just rolls to her left and falls off the side of the dock into the water. We have that kind of easygoing relationship with each other. Sloth-like and barely able to muster the energy to roll sideways off the dock to cool our sun-kissed bodies. Oh yeah, we are rocking it today.

  My mind keeps going back to that look he gave me and I feel horrible. I know why I lied to him but he didn’t. Why do I care? It’s not the fact that he’s a bull rider that turns me on. There’s something about the way he looks at me that gets me. It’s as if he’s looking at me like I’m not just a girl with a pussy he wants to fuck. Yeah, crass I know but those are the looks I get most of the time. When a guy looks at you a little different, you know the look.

  “Did you Google him last night?” Jessie asks wiping drops of water from her freckled up fair skin as she climbs the ladder to lay back down.

  “No…” But damn if I won’t be doing that right now. Thank you very much technology.

  I’m intrigued. I can’t help myself so reach for my phone in my bag beside me. Immediately the name Callan James loads hundreds of hits. I look him up on the PBR.com website. Big mistake because it only makes my obsession worse when I see pictures of him on a bull with chaps and that hat he always wears.

  The first link I click on is a YouTube video of a ride last year at the World Championship in Vegas.

  It’s not the cowboy hat and chaps that get me, though they’re hot. It’s the confident nod right before the buzzer that sends my heart for a thrill. It’s because I recognized it. I saw it last night as I was getting out of the truck. I’ll never ever forget that nod now.

  Jessie gets up on her knees, because she’s inappropriate and makes a motion with her hand in the air as if a guys doing someone doggie style. She throws her left arm up in the air and mimics Callan’s ride. “Do you think he’d throw his hand up like this during sex?”

  Naturally I start imagining it, as if my mind hadn’t already went there. There’s a good part of me that wishes I wouldn’t have given him a blow job. I’m wishing I would have taken him for a ride.

  He’s in the chute when the video begins, mounting a bull that’s raging pissed, and messing with the rope that’s around the bull. Two guys are beside him helping him get on the bull and make sure he’s adjusted when he keeps his eyes down and his left hand behind his body. That’s when he gives a nod, a sexy fucking nod and the chute opens and out comes two wild animals, one with four legs that’s so out of control that a mere mortal isn’t going to tame him…and another wild animal with two legs that is hell bent on taming the beast between his legs. Yeah, that’s fucking hot. Most intense thing I’ve ever seen. The bull he’s on would scare the shit out of most but not Callan. He looks confident and focused right up until the buzzer sounds.

  I didn’t know a damn thing about bull riding other than they have to stay on for eight seconds. Both the bull and the rider are scored on the ride but the goal was to stay on the bull for eight seconds, with only one hand, without touching the bull with the other. All this while that bull is bucking, rearing, kicking and spinning underneath them.

  “Oh look, there’s sexy as hell terms that bull riders use!” Jessie and I both get excited about that and immediately start reading down the list.

  As we read through it, Jessie is impressed with the terms. “Oh God, I’d love to be covered by a bull rider for sure!” And then say things like, “Flank strap? Think he keeps one in his truck? Oh…and what about seeded.”

  She looks at me and we both burst out laughing, my body shaking. I point to the screen. “And spinner.”

  We’re having way too much fun with this.

  After that, for some reason I want to know everything about the sport.

  We find the biography of him next. The picture beside it is one of him in that black hat and eyes so determined you know his confidence never wavers.

  Callan James is an Amarillo native following in his older brother, Reed James, footsteps. Callan entered bull riding at the age of fourteen. Since he went pro at eighteen, he’s won over twenty events in his two year professional career and had sixty-one rides so far. In 2012 he became the first rider in history to stay on all six bulls he rode for the required eight seconds and won his first World Championship.

  We click on the video of his last ride at the World Finals and it’s much like the first one we watched, confident and secure in what he’s doing, riding a beast. Yet almost knowing that he’s a force to be reckoned with. You can see it in his posture, his grip, the fluidity of his muscle movement as he tames the untamable. He knows he’s the man to beat yet refuses to allow anyone to trample on his turf. He walks away with the championship, cocky and self-assured almost taunting those he was up against. That swagger, that smirk, and damn that black hat. Yes, this is a man I need in my life and not just for an eight second ride.

  “I need a cigarette.” Jessie says, her cheeks flushed after that video.

  Laughing,
I hand her another beer from the cooler and drop a few ice cubes on her to cool her down.

  I need the same. Believe me.

  Jessie and I didn’t stay at the lake long since there’s a party out at Kasey’s house tonight we’re heading to which is on the other side of this lake. I don’t wanna go but there’s nothing better to do in this town.

  Callan’s truck is still in the driveway when we get back. Jessie grins. “I’ll pick you up at eight. Meet me by the road. I’m washing my truck and I don’t wanna get it dirty.”

  That truck is the only possession Jessie has that’s hers and her mama can’t sell out from under her. Her mama works at the diner downtown and makes just enough that they live in a double-wide but can barely afford to keep the electricity on.

  All I’ve ever done is work on this farm. All Jessie’s ever done is fight from each day to the next just to make it through life. We both have shit we’re running from and it seems that staying in this hell hole isn’t going to make it any easier.

  If we don’t leave, we’ll be here forever.

  When we get up to the house, Jessie’s eyes are on the barn as she gawks at my rusted Lincoln Continental painted, and I say that loosely, primer black. It’s covered in a thick layer of dirt and grass growing up over the wheels, untouched by anyone in the last four years. The car was given to me as a gift, but I don’t want it and will probably never want it. I don’t even have my driver’s license so what the hell would I do with it? Who knows if it even runs any more. Let’s face it, my dad is thrilled, I’m sure, that I don’t drive because he knows he’d never see me again if I had a way out.

  My parents are inside so I sneak through the corn field and into the barn hoping Callan’s in there. He is.

  No shirt, shuffling hay. At this point, when I see him in that barn, the sun filtering through the cracks in the wood I know one thing. There’s nothing to keep me from wanting him and having him again and certainly my dad and his backwoods way of thinking isn’t going to stop me.

  My boots hitting the wood floor announce my presence.