Big Sky Eyes

by Sawyer Belle

  She wore a skin-tight black dress that stopped just above her knees, had long sleeves and a revealingly low-cut V-neck. Her legs looked even longer and trim by the height of the heels she wore. Her hair fell thickly down her back and swished around the middle of her waist. She had made up her face and lined her hazel eyes so that they pierced the dimness of the restaurant. Despite his irritation, Brent looked her up and down appreciatively, and she smiled confidently as he did so.

  The drunk beside him watched in awe as she walked toward Brent, then shook his head apologetically.

  “She was worth waiting for!” he exclaimed and Brent smiled, proud that she was his date.

  “Hey, babe,” she purred as Brent stood to put an arm around her and give her a slight peck on the lips.

  “You’re late,” he said in a friendly tone.

  “Am I?” she pouted. “I guess it took a little longer to get ready than I thought. I hope you aren’t mad?”

  “Not mad,” a mild lie. “Just would have appreciated a call, that’s all.”

  “Sorry, Babe,” she cooed. “Is our table ready yet?”

  “Been ready for a half hour now.”

  Her features hardened into a determined fit as she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and huffed indignantly.

  “Well, you obviously are mad,” she spat as if she were unjustly convicted. “I guess I should just leave and not upset you with my bad manners anymore then!”

  She turned to do just that and Brent reached out a hand and clasped it around her elbow. When she turned her injured frown upon him he fought the urge to bend her over his knee and spank her for her tantrum. Instead, he leveled an apologetic look at her.

  “I didn’t say I wanted you to leave,” he said. “You just had me worried. That’s all.”

  Her frown eased into a demure smile, happy that he had been worrying about her.

  “Aren’t you just a sweet thing?” she asked rhetorically, running the tip of her finger promisingly down his cheek.

  Despite the physical cravings her touch awoke, he almost rolled his eyes at the thought of being deemed “sweet.” He led them to the hostess, who showed them to their table. Every eye was on Leann as she strode through the place with her chin high, her breasts prominent and her hips swaying. They had exchanged nothing more than a few goodnight kisses, but he had a feeling that she intended tonight to be “the night.”

  She had never dressed so scantily. She had never gazed so lustfully. Even the tip of her tongue darted out sensually to wet her bottom lip just when she knew he was looking. Her fingers brushed his often and lingered longer than usual. Her nipples strained against the fabric, just as he knew she had intended. Braless on a cold night had a purpose, and Brent was sucked in like every other male in sight.

  He hadn’t heard a single word of their conversation, but he would tell anyone that the dinner had been pleasurable indeed. The idea of seeing her naked, feasting upon that knockout body of hers, had kept him occupied in a way preferred to conversation. When they had finally finished eating, she offered what he’d been expecting: an invitation back to her place. He accepted gladly.

  As he followed behind her Subaru in his rusty old pickup, his groin hardened in hot anticipation. He hadn’t had sex in almost two years. The closest he had come had been with Mackenna almost a year ago. The thought wiped the drunken grin from his face as he thought back on that morning for the first time in nine months.

  The memory almost made the erection beating against his pants soften with guilt as he made his way to Leann’s place. He didn’t know why. Leann was his girlfriend, a position about to be even more solidified by the act he’d been dying to partake in with her. His eyes strayed to the time on the dashboard. It was time for his usual chat with Mackenna.

  He picked up the phone to dial her number but held off. They usually chatted for a good hour at the least and he would be at Leann’s within minutes. He couldn’t very well tell Mackenna to hold on while he had sex with his hot girlfriend. No, he would wait until later, when he was on his way home to call her. He put the phone back down.

  If time were measured in heartbeats, hours would have passed with the thrumming of his pulse as he entered Leann’s apartment. He didn’t quite know what to expect, but it wasn’t what happened. Almost before the door had been shut and locked, Leann pounced on him, tearing at his thick blonde hair with her claws. Her tongue dove into his mouth hungrily.

  At first, he was shocked immoveable. His mind was reeling from such an attack, but his body…his body was responding. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so hard. She shoved him against the wall and tore at his shirt, popping several of the buttons off before his chest was bare. His hands answered her roughness and reached around to clutch at her bottom. She groaned and pressed herself harder against him, removing more bits of his clothing as they made their way from the wall to the couch.

  Mackenna laid on the bed, her head resting in the crook of one arm while she stared down the minutes on the clock. Brent usually called at the same time every night. This night, he was thirty minutes late. She wondered if she should call the apartment, but decided against it. She did not want to wake Alora if she were asleep. She’d give him another five minutes, then give his cell phone a ring.

  Leann shoved him onto the floor, lapping at his nipples with her moist tongue while her fingers stroked wildly at his erection. Brent ran his hands up beneath her dress and pushed the fabric up over her hips. His eyes widened at what he discovered. Commando! Before he could indulge in his next sinful thought, the soft buzzing of his phone vibrated from his jacket pocket nearby.

  He jerked his gaze toward the sound, a distraction which irritated Leann. She grabbed his face and turned it back to the chaos of her kisses. He gently pulled his face away from hers, but she fought him to make contact again. He held her up and she huffed with impatience and anger.

  “I need to see if it’s my mom,” he explained and she relented and moved off of him.

  He rolled over and dug through the pocket until he found the phone. He held it up to the light and saw Mackenna’s name blinking back at him. Again, that shock of guilt swept through him and he couldn’t force himself to reject the call. He stared at her name long enough that Leann peered at the phone over his shoulder.

  “Who’s Mackenna?” she asked. “Is that your mom?”

  “No,” he answered, stamping out the irritation that she didn’t even know his mom’s name when he was sure he'd mentioned it before. “She’s a friend.”

  “Well, okay then,” she said and grabbed the phone from him, hit the reject button and tossed the gadget aside. Brent frowned only slightly before she set her hands and mouth to easing his troubles.

  Mackenna listened as the rings went to voicemail. She left a simple message for him to call her and let her know that he was okay, and then hung up the phone. Five minutes later, she called again with the same result. She gave it one more shot just before the turn of the hour and then she shut her phone off and climbed beneath the covers, sending up silent prayers that he was all right.

  Chapter 23

  “Well, she is certainly a persistent little thing, isn’t she?” Leann said an hour later, once their lust had been well and truly sated. They were lying on the floor with bits of clothing scattered about the room like the remnants of a windstorm.

  “Who?” Brent asked, barely conscious after his exertions.

  “Makayla,” she said. “She wouldn’t stop calling you.”

  “You mean Mackenna,” he corrected.

  “Whatever,” she answered. “She was calling you pretty late, don’t you think?”

  “Hmm…” he mused with his eyes closed heavily. “Not really. This is usually the time we talk to each other.”

  Leann looked at him lying beside her, wilted and satisfied, glowing in the aftereffects of good, hard sex. She shoved her elbow into his ribs and his eyes flew open in response.

  “What was that for?” he said, stunned.


  “I’m lying here, seething with jealousy and you’re drifting off to la-la land like it’s no big deal.”

  He smiled. “Why are you jealous? I told you Mackenna was just a friend.”

  “A friend you talk to late at night?”

  “Yep.”

  “Every night?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Hmph,” she said with a pout before she stood up and walked away from her. Brent admired her shapely behind as she did so. Then, he laughed.

  “What’s the big deal?” he asked.

  She threw on a robe and tied it around her waist as her features hardened.

  “I’m not stupid enough to buy that you talk to a girl who is just a friend every night. No one has friends like that.” She held her fingers up in makeshift quotation marks when she spat the word “friends.”

  “I don’t have friends like that,” he mimicked the gesture. “I have one friend like that, and she’s my best friend. So, stop worrying.”

  “I just don’t think it’s appropriate,” she said with a sneer. “How would you feel if I had some guy calling me while we were having sex? Would you feel like my mind was truly and wholly on you?”

  Brent thought for a moment, and the idea did not bother him, but he knew that was not the answer she was looking for, so he hedged.

  “Trust me, my mind was definitely on you.”

  He stood and went to her. She had turned her back on him and he wrapped his arms around her from behind. His shaft was already beginning to stir with the memories of the past hour. She felt it and began to soften like warm butter against him. As they picked up where they left off, all talk of Mackenna went out the window.

  Mackenna scrubbed her last table at the coffee shop and threw the dirty rag into a pile of more dirty rags. Her apron soon followed and she set about gathering her textbooks and notebooks. One of her co-workers, the only one who had worked there longer than she had, approached the table. She had bobbed black hair and painted her face with so much makeup that she looked like a pin-up girl. She wore glasses with thick, black frames and sported full-sleeve tattoos on each arm.

  “You should change your mind, Mackenna,” she said. “Come out with us. It’ll be fun.”

  “Thanks, Stacey,” Mackenna replied with a cheerful smile. “I really appreciate the offer, but I’ve already made plans. Let me know the next time, though, and I’m definitely there.”

  “That’s too bad,” Stacey said with a shake of her head. “I wasn't supposed to say anything, but Krista had a cake made for you. She was going to bring it to surprise you.”

  Guilt stabbed her and she looked down at her watch, trying to conjure more time. In the end, she shook her head again.

  “I feel horrible not going, but there’s not enough time for me to go and then be back at my place by ten. Tell everyone thank you for me, though. I really appreciate it.”

  “All righty, then,” Stacey quipped. “Happy birthday!”

  Mackenna thanked her again and then made her exit. Her nineteenth birthday was far warmer than her eighteenth. There was no snow this year and the spring had sprouted up quickly after a very mild winter. She’d had lunch with her parents in a restaurant on the Truckee River earlier that day, and was now anxious for the last bit that would make the day complete. She had a half hour before Brent was going to call and she didn’t want to risk missing it by being in a noisy club.

  Their phone calls had become more and more sporadic in the past two months, to the point where she never knew which days he would call, or if he did, what time. She knew their dwindling contact had to do with Leann. Ugh. Leann. She repeated the name aloud in a mocking, high-pitched voice. She was tired of hearing about her.

  The one good thing about talking to Brent less was that she had to hear less about Leann. By this point, Mackenna knew all about the long-haired brunette who worked as a full-time yoga instructor. She knew how they met at a bar on New Year’s Eve that Ty and Leslie had dragged Brent to. She could kill them for it. She knew how Leann loved Bruce Springstein and romantic comedies, how she couldn’t stand pets that shed so she had a goldfish named Archie. She knew that Leann was a vegetarian, a pisces and that she hated Montana. For God’s sake, Mackenna even knew how the woman’s occupation benefited their bedroom play. Every time she replayed hers and Brent’s conversations about that particular topic she nearly vomited.

  Each time Brent spoke of Leann, Mackenna had been on the verge of hanging up the phone. The tip of her tongue had been downright crowded with all of the venomous words she had for that woman and the man she’d stolen. But Mackenna never said a word. She was the very model of support and listened patiently as Brent rambled away, each word chipping away at her heart.

  It wouldn’t last. She kept telling herself that this sorry excuse for a relationship between Brent and Leann would die a natural death. They just didn’t seem suited. Clearly, the sex was good, a thought that made her cringe, but what other substance was there? Mackenna could not glean any from their conversations.

  The last time she spoke with Brent had been exactly a week ago. He had told her that he didn’t know if he would be available to call her before her birthday, but that he would definitely call her at ten o’clock on the actual day. She had teased him, saying he’d be too busy with Leann to think of her, but he repeated himself adamantly. He would call.

  She surfed through her three channels on the TV, knowing she’d find nothing of interest, but it passed the time quickly. She held her phone in one hand, the remote control in the other. The minutes ticked by like tedious drips from a faucet. When the designated hour finally came, the phone sat silently in her palm. She switched off the TV and stared at the cell. Nothing.

  Fifteen minutes passed, then another fifteen without a call. Her spirits sank lower until the ring finally cried out to her. She nearly dropped the phone from the start it gave her. She didn’t even look at the receiver, she just answered.

  “Hey!” It was Stacey. Mackenna sighed.

  “Hey, Stacey. What’s up?”

  “The whole gang is here and we wanted to try and convince you to come out with us.”

  She could hear loud music and muffled voices in the background. Suddenly the chorus of six friendly voices shouted through the phone.

  “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Mackenna! Happy birthday to you!”

  “Come out with us!” someone yelled.

  “We gotta cake and everything!” another said.

  Mackenna smiled in genuine appreciation and glanced once again at the clock. It had only been a half hour. Brent was probably just held up. It was calving season, after all. She was sure he was going to call.

  “Thanks, guys,” she answered the voices. “I really love you guys! We’ll go out some other time. I promise. You guys are the best.”

  She called out the last sentence over rising protests and then said her goodbyes and hung up. She watched the clock for another two minutes before she decided that it would not do to sit still and wait. She got up and cleaned up the small mess that had accumulated around the space. She made herself a cup of tea and browsed headlines on the Internet. She read a magazine, all the while ignoring the voice in the back of her head whispering that she’d been forgotten.

  Finally, at midnight, she shook her head woefully at the phone, as if it could convey the message of her hurt to Brent. She normally powered it down when she slept, but she decided to leave it on in case he called later. She switched off the light and curled up under the covers. She was able to fall asleep eventually, but only into that twilight stage where half of her conscious was resting while the other tuned into the world without. It was a restless night. He never called.

  The next day her phone rang in the middle of the afternoon. Despite her sorrow, despite her disappointment, her heart leapt to see his name on the caller ID. She answered it without hesitation.

  “Hey!” he said.

  “Well, hello there,” she answered b
ack.

  “Are you busy right now, or can you talk?”

  “I’ve got ten minutes ‘til I leave for my next class.”

  “Well, that’ll have to do then,” he said. “So, how was your night last night?”

  She wrinkled her brow, confused. Was this a trick question? “Well, to be honest, it was pretty freakin’ disappointing and miserable.”

  “Really?” he sounded surprised. “That’s not good. What happened?”

  “Nothing,” she said, irritation hardening her voice. “That’s the point.”

  “Well, you really shouldn’t work and study so hard,” was his reply. “You need to take some time to do stuff. Enjoy life.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, making a face at the phone. “Where is my friend Brent Thompson? What have you done to him?”

  “What are you talking about?” Irritation crept into his own voice.

  “I shouldn’t work so hard?” she repeated sarcastically. “Since when do you stare down your nose at hard work? Oh wait, I know. Ever since you started filling your days and nights with yoga!”

  “Whoa!” he shot back. “What’s going on with you?”

  “What were you doing last night, Brent?!” she shot back, reining in as much of her rage as she could.

  “Where do you think I was? I was with Leann.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Why are you asking me this?” he asked, feeling at once bristled and annoyed at her attitude.

  “We’re friends, aren’t we? You’ve never had a problem telling me all the details about your nights with Leann before. What’s the problem now?”

  She was baiting him, he knew. He just didn’t know why. He decided to just be honest…with a little bit of an edge.

  “Fine. We had dinner at her place, enjoyed that nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that you got me and then we spent the night having wild sex.”