by Paula Cox
For a few more minutes, we kiss, but my hands do not stray further than his belt buckle, and soon I feel myself disconnecting from the situation, the physical sensations feeling as though they come from very far away. My inner voice of reason explains to me, in prissy yet reasonable tones, that this is a mistake. I do not know this man; we are outside. Somebody from work might see me, and then where will I be?
My hand moves up to his leather again, but this time instead of clawing I lay my palm flat against him and push softly. He keeps kissing, moaning through our lips, and for another moment I sink back into the kiss. But then I lean back and push his chest again. “No,” I say, pulling away. “I don’t—no.”
He pauses, watching me closely, but not stepping away just yet. His face is tinged slightly red, but nowhere near as red as mine feels. I get the sense that he’s looking at me to judge if I really mean it. Those black eyes are penetrating. I say: “I mean it, Rust. I’m going to call a cab.”
He watches me for another moment, and then shrugs. “Alright, sweetheart.” He steps away.
We stand apart in the alleyway. I glance around: overturned trash cans, spilling condoms and rotting banana peels and soda cans onto the concrete; grimy, graffiti-covered walls; a rat scurrying across the ground, tail whipping behind it. And I was about to have sex here—here, where, if you glance street-wise, you can see a few people walking to and fro at the mouth of the alleyway.
“I’m going now,” I say, looking into Rust’s face, waiting for him to protest.
That is what most men would do now, I’m sure. They’d try and persuade me to stay, try and reason me back into passion, not knowing that you can never use reason to make a woman feel that burning desire, even if she felt it moments before. But he doesn’t do that. He just watches me, that cocky smile on his lips, not appearing to care one way or the other.
“Alright,” he says, after a long pause. “Do you want a ride, or—”
“I’ll call a cab,” I say. I know that if I agree to a ride, I’ll be tempted to kiss him again, and in the confines of my car—or worse still, my apartment—I know where that kiss would lead. And even if it would be pleasurable, it would also be a mistake. I don’t know him, I’m not that sort of girl, I don’t owe him anything, it just doesn’t feel right…
I stop, realizing I’m trying to convince myself, and then make for the mouth of the alleyway. Rust follows me a moment later, waiting as I call for the cab, and then stuffs his hands in the pocket of his leather and turns away. “I’ll see you around, Allison,” he says, that same knowing smile on his face.
I nod, and then mutter, “See you around, Rust.”
I watch him go, hands in his pockets, swaggering, a man without a care in the world. I wonder for a second if I made a mistake, but I tell myself I’m doing the right thing, that I’m too tipsy to make that decision right this second anyhow.
Chapter Five
Rust
I turn around at the end of the street and watch as she climbs into the cab, still finding this experience a mixture of funny and blue-ball-inducing. There’s nothing quite like getting hot and heavy with a woman and then having her end it before it really gets going. Sure, that hasn’t happened to me since I was about fourteen, but I remember the feeling. The feeling like your balls are about to burst like overripe grapes. She climbs into the cab quickly, not glancing down the street, and so I turn away and head back toward my bike.
The walk does me good, cooling me off a little, and by the time I reach my bike, I’m able to view the afternoon as more funny than anything else. I climb onto the bike and start the engine, revving it loud, and then head toward the clubhouse. It was damn fun, I’ve got to admit, even if it didn’t go further. She felt incredible in my arms, her lips were soft, her body was tight and bouncy. Best of all was the way she moaned as we kissed, almost as though she didn’t want to be moaning but couldn’t help herself. I’m sure I’ll be hearing those moans for a long time to come.
Yeah, it was fun, but truth be told if she’s going to get my blood hot like that and then just take off, it’s probably for the best that we’re not going to see each other again. I like women, fuckin’ love them in fact, but I don’t like women who string men along. Malicious women. Women who try and do to men what my mother did to Dad, cheating on him, playing him, twisting him: killing him. Dammit. I push the thought far down, where it belongs. It’s odd, because I never normally think about it these days, having squashed it a long time ago. Maybe something about Allison …no, I kill that thought, too. Saving, talking, even getting close to a woman isn’t about to crack open my chest and spill all that shit out. No fuckin’ way.
I get to the clubhouse, which sits on the outskirts of the city, a squat wide one-story building split into two parts: the dormitory wing and the bar wing. I head into the bar, past the pinned-up leather of the first Damned member, long before my time, and past dozens of framed photographs of other Damned members, the latest including me and the others, kneeling in the sun smiling like fools. The place is empty apart from a pledge standing behind the bar, rag in one hand and glass in the other, and Zeke, who sits in the corner, sipping whisky. I take a glass from the pledge and go and join him.
Zeke is tall at six one, a couple of inches shorter than me, and he’s leaner. His face is open, welcoming, but it’s a chameleon face because it can change to vicious and terrifying or sincere and kind depending on his mood. His dusty blonde hair is tied in a ponytail, and his hands are covered in tribal tattoos. When I sit down next to him, he slides the bottle of whisky across the table.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, pouring myself a glass.
We sit in the corner, overlooking the bar, the pool table, the door which leads to Shackle’ office: the President’s office. And the long council table where we hold our meetings.
“Business,” Zeke says. “Or at home, or out drinking. You and me have been put on the unpatched, so we’re holding off on the regular running for a while.”
“Alright.”
I think back to the days when Mouse was in charge. Mouse—who was six seven, a giant compared even with me—became my father when my own father went to the grave. He was a cheerful, life-loving man, a man who didn’t take the business side as serious as the fun side. But then Mouse stepped down and Shackle took over, and Shackle definitely sees the business as just that—business.
“So our job is to fuck up the unpatched when we see them?”
“Yeah,” Zeke replies. “And to investigate, all that shit.” He glances at me, and then offers a small smile. I like Zeke, probably like Zeke more than any other man in The Damned; he’s my friend, my partner, and ’cause he’s smaller and younger than me, I sometimes see him as a little brother. “Something happened while you were out, man.”
“You a fuckin’ mind reader now?” I pour myself another whisky, and then drain it.
“Nah, but I’ve been around you enough to know when something’s up.”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man,” I reply. “Are you Oprah now or something?”
Zeke grins again, scratching the scar under his left eye: a triangular scar left by the heel of a mark’s boot a few years back. “I don’t give a shit one way or the other. I’m just saying.”
We sit in silence for a while, drinking the whisky until both of us are tipsy, which takes a whole lot of whisky; the bottle is almost empty. I turn to Zeke and mutter: “I met a girl whilst I was out, on my way back from the protection job.”
“No shit? Where’d you meet her? I thought that job was an old man and his wife …wait, you didn’t fuck the wife, did you?”
“Why don’t you listen when I talk if you want to learn so goddamn much?” I laugh. “I said I met her on the way back. I was cruising and saw the unpatched, Trent and those pricks, looking like they were ready to tool up this girl. So I stopped them.”
Zeke sits up. “You saw the unpatched?”
I nod.
“Well, fuck …how are they doing? T
hey tough?”
I shake my head. “I chased them off, no problem, and there were six of them. They’re green.”
Zeke sits back. “I thought as much. So this girl, I guess you did the normal Rust routine.”
“The fuck is the ‘Rust routine’?”
“You know what I’m saying. You did your fuck and chuck routine.”
Classic Zeke…he goes in for relationships, whereas I go in for quicker, hotter encounters. Zeke isn’t soft or anything like that. He just likes the longer experience of getting to know a woman and all that shit, something which has never appealed to me much.
“No,” I say, after a moment of reflection, ’cause I know exactly what he’s thinking: why am I still talking about her if we didn’t have sex, when I would never talk about another woman I didn’t have sex with?
Sure enough, he points that out. “I’ve never know you to talk about women much at all, really,” he adds. “There must be something special about this one.”
“Special.” We look at each other for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing.
“I’m serious, man,” Zeke says, holding his hand up for the pledge to bring another bottle of whisky over. He places it down, takes the empty bottle, and leaves us. As Zeke pours a drink, he says, “You have never, in all the too-long fuckin’ years I’ve known you, talked to me about a woman beyond nodding at her and saying you think she’s sexy. What the fuck?”
“You asked,” I snapped, taking the bottle and pouring myself a drink.
Zeke holds his hands up. “Calm down,” he says. “I don’t want to have to tool you up.”
“Ha, fucking, ha,” I reply. “I’d love to see that.”
We both drink in silence for another few minutes, and then Zeke says, “Are you still thinking about this girl, then?”
“I wish I’d never mentioned this,” I murmur.
“But you’ve mentioned it now,” Zeke says, and I can tell he’s just going on about it to twist the knife. “I really can’t believe that Rust Springfield, of all people, has fallen head over heels for a woman. I never thought I’d see the day when you got all doughy-eyed over a woman, and yet here you are. I guess you do have a soul after all. So, when’s the wedding, eh? When’s the big day? Look, I understand if you don’t want me as your best man; I guess I could give a speech which wouldn’t be too flattering in front of your blushing bride.”
“Such a prick,” I say, but I’m smiling at how stupid he’s being. The image is funny, I have to admit: sitting in my leather at a white table, this strange woman beside me, Zeke half-drunk blabbering about all the jobs we’ve been on together.
“The club is all the family I need,” I say. “I’ve got my brothers, I’ve got my work, I’ve got some sexy women now and then. That’s all I need. You’re the one who’s got a new girlfriend every New Year, like it’s your goddamned resolution or something.”
“Maybe I don’t see the club as the be all and end all of family and closeness and all that bullshit.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Zeke shrugs. “Maybe there’s more, like a proper family, like a wife and kids and all that stuff.”
I grunt out a laugh. “For us? For Damned enforcers? I don’t reckon I see that, truth be told.”
“Yeah, maybe I don’t, either,” Zeke says quietly, and then knocks back a slug of whisky straight from the bottle.
That adds an aspect of darkness into this otherwise cheery drinking session. We sit and drink for another hour or so before we’re called out on a job, but neither of us talk, just sit here listening to the pledge cleaning the bar, scrubbing the pipes, dusting the counter, vacuuming the offices. I sink into my thoughts, thinking first of my mother, the way she stared at me matter-of-factly, as though it was to be expected that she would move in and start a new family with the man she cheated on my father with; as though it was expected that I should just leave, find a new family. And then I find myself thinking of Allison, which Zeke is right about. I never do this. I never think about women like this. It never even occurs to me that I might. Is it because I didn’t fuck her? Is it because I want to feel those pert peach-like breasts, those long legs, that pussy, which I bet was wet for me earlier?
Or is it something else, something less plain than that? I tell myself that that’s ridiculous. I am not a man who thinks about women like this. I am not a man who sits around pining over women. I don’t give a shit, ever, when it comes to women. I like their bodies, their moans, but that’s about it.
But Allison …
Shit, man, I just don’t know.
Chapter Six
Allison
For the next few days, as I go about my regular work, I feel as though there are two women living inside of me. I remember when I was younger, in the days when I wanted to be a librarian but was convinced I would end up becoming an accountant, when I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the first time; I related to it immediately. Two parts of yourself, both pulling you in different directions. Only back then I thought that doing what my parents wanted made me a good person, and doing what I wanted made me a bad person. Now, I feel the same sensation, only about Rust. One part of me is sure that I did the right thing, that giving myself over to passion like that, in public, with a man I barely know, would have been a mistake. Another part of myself is furious: furious that, after all these years spent reading steamy romances, I didn’t give into my passion and let him fuck me right there. I think of it often, in the exhausted minutes before sleep takes me, or when I’m standing in the shower, water clinging to my nipples, trickling down between my legs. Hot water I can imagine is his hands.
I lie on my back after dinner, in bed, reading one of my romance novels. I skipped the billionaire romance, and grabbed a barbarian sacking a medieval village out of my to-be-read pile. He takes a village woman as his prize. At first, it’s just passion that pushes them together: wild, animal passion. As I read the description of the passion, I find myself reacting far more viscerally than I normally do, my clit aching, my nipples throbbing, and pretty soon I discover that I am not reading the barbarian’s name. My mind is superimposing the name ‘Rust’ over the barbarian’s; I am imagining that Rust is the one fucking this woman. Only he is not fucking this woman; he is fucking me. In these moments I am the angriest with myself. Why didn’t I just let him do it? Why didn’t I just throw myself into it? I’ve spent so long fantasizing about these alphas, and yet when a true-to-life alpha comes into my life, I push him away; I am unsure. Why?
Because at work, tomorrow’s appointments include helping a freshly sober guy understand how to build a life that has nothing to drugs, talking to a woman who just out of prison after drug charges that were really about her boyfriend, and talking to a young woman who was looking for alternatives to abortion. Plus whatever walk-ins needed our service over the course of the day. That’s why I need to be responsible and professional, all the time. People have to trust me, trust that I will help them. A professional social worker does not fuck a man in an alleyway. A college girl, sure—not that I ever had!—but definitely not a professional social worker. How could I come into work with my professionalism intact after that? How could I stand in front of the mirror every morning, secure in the knowledge that I am capable of what the day will bring?
Ah! I slump down on the couch after work, and the pendulum swings in the other direction; on one side there is passion, on the other, there is reason. Passion is furious with reason for being such a prude, and reason is furious with passion for being such a whore. I think I would be able to deal with this if I had my mind made up. If I could just say: okay, that was a mistake, I never should have kissed him like that. Or if I could just say: okay, that was a mistake, I never should have pushed him away like that. If I could say either of those, alone, without interruption from any other interfering feelings, I could return to my normal life without this tearing in my chest: tearing of two opposing emotions, using my mind, my body, my everything as a battleground. B
ut I cannot choose one position; the pendulum invariably swings back, and forth, and back…
I think about the way he could make me laugh without seeming to even try. That’s often the problem with other men. They try too hard. They’re too eager. They’re like schoolboys who have been dared to come and approach you, fumbling, nervous, all too keen to please. Perhaps that isn’t fair, but my body doesn’t care about fair. My body only cares about passion. And these men, fumbling, awkward, never produce any passion within me. But Rust—Rust—Rust—
Days go by, and I often wake up whispering his name into my pillow, my body feeling scorched and alive, truly alive, my fingers digging into the bed sheets so that bits of the fabric rip loose under my fingernails.
One day at work I’m eating my ham and cheese sandwich on my lunch break and reading a romance novel. This one’s a little tamer, without as much heat as my usual selections. After all, I don’t want to be squirming in my pants all afternoon. Says the girl who almost fucked a muscular, sexy, charming biker in a grimy alleyway. I’ve just got to a steamy scene when Marjorie, the head librarian, comes over with a crooked smile on her face. Marjorie is a tall, wide black woman with gorgeous, natural hair she wears in a twist out, and dark brown eyes. She is often smiling, even if she can turn into a tornado of rage if something in the library—more of a new-fangled modern-media center—goes wrong. Now, she grins at me as though she knows a secret, and at once I feel a pit in my belly. Have they cancelled the social work program? Am I in trouble? This job is my life; my work is the most important thing to me.