by Naomi West
"I should really thank her."
Fran shot a suspicious look at me as she entered carrying a crate of hooch. "When you say thank her ..."
"Just say thank you."
Joe hopped up to help Fran with the crate. "Where do you want it?"
Fran grinned. "When have I heard that question before? Stick it in the back."
"When have I heard that answer before?"
I stared in some little surprise during this exchange. Fran and Joe? The kid really was like me.
"He's twenty years younger than you," I hissed as Joe carried the crate out.
"Twenty-two," corrected Fran. "He reminds me of you, actually."
"So, you're trading me in for a younger model?"
Fran shook her head. "You know me, Archer. I'm not looking for anything long-term or serious. You, on the other hand ..."
"What?"
"Just tread carefully."
"She's just some girl."
Fran shook her head. "I'm starting to doubt that."
Joe came back in, and I handed him a piece of paper.
"Take this to Cassidy."
I wasn't sure if Fran was right or wrong, or if what I was doing was smart or dumb, but I was doing it one way or the other. It occurred to me that maybe there was a way to stay true to the spirit of my agreement with Dupont, while obviously breaking the specific content. Maybe.
# # #
About half a mile out from the Dupont house was a dry river gully, nothing spectacular, but deep enough to hide a bike. Cassidy was there when I arrived, wearing jeans that might have been painted on and a top that plunged between her breasts (which were looking a whole lot bigger today, thanks to some help from enhancing underwear).
"I wasn't sure you'd come," she said, as I pulled up.
"I sent the note."
"I half thought it was my dad setting a trap for me. Why did you ask me? No offense, but last time we spoke, you didn't seem that eager to see me again."
"I didn’t likebeing lied to and used as way to annoy your dad and dispose of a virginity that you no longer wanted. I wasn't eager for a relationship. And I'm still not. But you helped me get out of jail, and I'm grateful, and I wanted to say thank you in person." I wasn't sure how much of that was true.
She walked over and leaned in to kiss me, but I kept her at arm's length. "You want to go for a ride?"
"More than anything in the world."
"On the bike," I clarified.
Cassidy shrugged. "That'd be fun too."
"Climb on."
Cassidy swung up behind me and, to my annoyance, my heart quickened at the feel of her arms winding about me, and her body pressed against my back. Just the smell of her had my libido turning somersaults. I hadn’t reacted like that to a girl since I was going through puberty!
"Hold on tight."
"You know I do."
And we were off, whizzing through the night, dodging shrubs, bouncing over rocks, Cassidy clinging tightly to me. I took her on the wildest ride I knew and was rewarded with the sound her breath, short and fast in my ear. The girl had a taste for extremes.
After a half hour or so of riding, I pulled up.
"Where are we?" Cassidy asked.
"Listen."
Cassidy stood still a moment. "Is that water?"
"This way." I took a bag out from under the seat of the bike and led the way through the scrubby vegetation and up onto a ledge overlooking a waterfall.
Cassidy beamed. "I haven't been up here since I was a kid."
"It's my favorite place in the world." Why would I tell her something like that? I'd never told anyone that.
"I can see why."
I opened the bag. "I brought a picnic."
Cassidy gaped in astonishment. "Archer Cyprian, the bad-ass president of biker gang Battle Pride, has made a picnic?"
"Fran helped," I admitted.
We sat down to eat and drink under the stars.
"I knew there was another side to you," Cassidy said, smiling sweetly at me.
I began to wonder if this had been a bad idea. But I had already tried it Dupont's way; I had told her she meant nothing to me, and her response had been to put everything on the line to get me out of jail. She liked bad boys, so the worse I treated her, the more attractive I became (I had no idea why some women thought that way, but I did sometimes take advantage.). So, the logical thing was to treat her well and to leave the bad boy behind for a night. It had seemed like a good idea, but so far it did not seem to be paying off.
"Why did you help me?" I asked.
"You know why." She ran a hand up my thigh, and I brushed it off.
"Because you're a silly girl who doesn't know what's good for her from what's bad for her?"
"Trust me," said Cassidy, emphatically. "I know what's good for me. And the other night was extremely good."
"Why do you do that?" I asked.
"Do what?"
"The sexy bad girl act. Why do you do it? Do you think men like that? Do you think there are girls who actually talk like that? It makes you sound like a bad porn film." I shook my head. "You already told me you were a virgin until the other night. Just because you've lost your virginity doesn't mean you start talking like Mae West."
Cassidy blushed in embarrassment. It was perhaps the single most honest thing I'd seen her do. Unfortunately, it was also very attractive and I found myself fighting my desire for her.
"I thought ... I wanted you to think I was, I don’t know, more like other girls you've been with."
"You want to be like all the girls I've screwed and forgotten?"
"Well ... maybe not quite like ..."
"How about you try being yourself?" I suggested.
There was a long pause as Cassidy collected her thoughts. "I'm not sure I even know who that is."
"Do you want to know what I think?" I grabbed my moment.
"I do," said Cassidy, shuffling towards me on her knees. "I really do."
"I think the prissy little perfect girl who your dad would want you to be, the girl who never does anything wrong and sits at home nights with a book, I think that's who you are. And you're so scared of being her that you've spent your whole damn life trying to be something else."
Chapter Nine
Cassidy
His words fell like hot lead into my ears. How dare he! How dare this man who had met me only a few nights ago presume to know anything about me?!
I mastered my feeling and spoke calmly. "Well, thank you for that opinion, and may I say how completely full of horseshit you are."
Archer shrugged carelessly. "You asked."
"Two nights ago you made me a woman," I said hotly. "Now you want to turn me back into a little girl?"
Archer shook his head. "There's more to being a woman than what we did. Sad to say, there are little girls all over the world who've been subjected to that. And there are women having it daily who'll never grow up. People put too much stress on sex. It's a pretty meaningless thing."
"Not to me, it wasn't." Against my will, hot tears were rising in my eyes. It had to have meant something to him!
"Well, you started with the wrong person," admitted Archer. "There are plenty of nice, decent men out there who read all the meaning and emotion into sex that you do. Marrying types. I've been with too many women for it to mean something. If it meant something, then that would make me a horrible person."
"With the right person, it means something!" I insisted.
"And I hope you find him."
"You're telling me you felt nothing when we made love?"
Archer pulled a face. "We didn't make love. In all of history, those words have never been applied to sex in a storage closet."
He hadn't answered the question. Right or wrong, I grasped hold of that and believed in it—he hadn't answered because he wouldn't lie. It had meant something to him.
"Why did you ask me here?"
"To say thank you."
"You brought me to a waterfall
and made me a picnic," I pointed out. "Joe Henry helped you more than me; does he get a picnic?"
The flicker of indecision that crossed Archer's face gave me more hope.
"Look," I continued, "I don't know why you insist on denying what happened between us, but if you must, then go ahead. We both know that you'll keep finding stupid excuses to meet me, and sooner or later that's going to lead somewhere."
Archer tried to scoff but I could tell I'd touched a nerve.
"How about we put the question of who I really am to one side?" I went on. "And turn it back on you."
"What?"
"You think that, deep down, I'm a little goody two-shoes daddy's girl? Well, wouldn't that type of girl's dream date be a picnic by a waterfall?"
Archer looked trapped and I decided to let him off the hook.
"Stop trying to analyze me. You don't know what it was like growing up as the disappointment."
Archer shrugged. "Maybe I don't know you that well, but I doubt your dad thinks that."
"He wanted me to be a lawyer. Can you picture that?"
"What did you want to do?"
"Be an artist."
Archer nodded. "I bet Ben didn't like that. I bet he laid down the law and forbade you from taking classes, or studying art. I bet he wouldn't even let you have paints in the house."
If this conversation was becoming a little battle, scoring points off each other, then that was a point to Archer. Of course my dad hadn't done any of those things. He had paid for art supplies and classes, and he had dutifully 'appreciated' every painting I brought home as I strove to get better. He'd done everything a good parent was supposed to do, except wanting me to pursue it. I guess he worried.
"I know he loves me," I said, awkwardly. "But he loves me so much that he wants what's best for me all the time. And to him, 'best' means what he wants, what he thinks will make me safe and give me a good solid career. It's love that feels like a constant pressure pushing down on me. Do you have any idea what that's like?"
Archer shook his head. "No. I really don't. Sounds awful."
Something about the tone of his voice told me that in a 'who had the worst childhood competition,' I would lose.
"I love art." It was strange how easy it was talking to him. "But it was also my little act of rebellion. My chance to be something other than what Dad wanted. To be imperfect. So I ran off to the city to find my path. That's where it all went to hell. Repeatedly."
Archer absorbed this. "Let me take a guess: you met a lot of artistic rebels there, and you wanted to fit in with them. But you didn't. Because they really wanted to rebel (because that's something those pretentious assholes think matters), while you just wanted to be accepted as less than perfect."
That was irritatingly near to the truth. If I'd thrown myself into the scene—the wild parties, the all night drinking, the mind-expanding drugs and uninhibited sex— then I would have had people around me to help when things went wrong. But I didn't want that stuff, and so when I had nowhere to live, I had no friends to turn to.
"I'm very bad at being a rebel," I admitted.
"Then be yourself," Archer reiterated.
"I told you ..."
"You don't know who you are," nodded Archer. "Okay, try this: Think of one thing that has made you feel like yourself. One thing you've done that is totally Cassidy. Build from that. One thing. Name it."
"Loving you." I said it without thinking but it was absolutely true. Loving Archer was the only thing that felt real and right. Being with him was the only time I had felt like myself, even when I had been pretending to be someone else.
Archer accepted this with an unreadable expression. "Well," he said finally. "I guess it's a starting point."
"Sorry." I didn't know why I said it, but it seemed the thing to say.
Archer shook his head. "Don't be. I mean ..." He shook his head in frustration. "Dammit, if things were different—if your father wasn't trying to arrest me, if I wasn't ten different kinds of bad for you— maybe ..." He trailed off as he looked into my openly hopeful face. "You're like nothing I ever look for in a woman, and everything I wanted and never knew."
Like a lot of girls who struggle with men and relationships and sex, I read a lot of romance novels, but I had never heard or read or imagined anything more romantic than that.
"We could still make it work," I breathed, desperate to believe it. "I wanted to go back to the city anyway. If we went together, we could ..."
"You don't just walk away from Battle Pride," said Archer grimly, cutting me off. "And if they didn't follow me, then there are others who would. I've made enemies, and some of them wouldn't hesitate to target my loved ones. Which is one reason I don't have loved ones."
"But ..."
"No buts."
"We could start fresh."
This time he seemed to consider it, and I thoughtI could see in his eyes a dream of what might have been, if only his life had gone differently. But in the end he shook his head.
"It's not just what I've done, Cassidy. It's who I am. And you can't do the things I've done without becoming something very dark indeed. You're a good girl, try as you might to otherwise be. Pretending to be something you're not changes nothing. I'm a bad man. I could trade my leathers for a suit and tie, but sooner or later that stuff is going to come out, and I don't want you around when it does."
"I don't care!" I implored him.
"And that's what makes it worse. You'd let me drag you down to my level. And I won't let that happen. If I can do one good thing in my life then it'll be to keep you out of it." He stood. "This whole thing was a bad idea. I should have known better."
"Well, I'm still glad we did it," I said, still the quiet little rebel.
He gave me a half-smile. "I am too. But tonight is it."
I stood up to face him. "Then we'd better make it count."
I kissed him.
Chapter Ten
Archer
I'd tried my best throughout this conversation to ignore how good Cassidy looked. I'd also tried to ignore how much I enjoyed talking with her, even when we were having an argument. Or perhaps especially when we were having an argument—there was something oddly pleasurable about that snappy back and forth. I had also enjoyed getting to know her better, getting a privileged glimpse behind that bad girl façade at the vulnerable, though still strong, woman beneath. She was a quite a girl, and ignoring that fact was more than I could manage.
Still, I more or less succeeded in sticking to my guns and urging her to keep her distance from me. I said too much;I admit that. Telling her that she was everything I wanted in a woman was definitely an error. But when I stood up at the end of the conversation, it was with the intent of taking her back home and never seeing her again. Perhaps I never should have asked to meet her in the first place.
But then she kissed me.
I was a strong man, and there were a bunch of people who had tried to take me down who would have testifies to that (if they were the type of people who went around testifying to things). But a kiss from Cassidy found my weak spot and pummeled it into submission. There had been a smoldering within me throughout. That kiss stoked those embers into a raging fire that wouldn't be denied. I pulled her hard against me and kissed her back.
Perhaps it was what I had been hoping for all along. I could tell myself that I brought her here to say thank you, to say goodbye, to push her in the direction of the straight and narrow and urge her to obey her father, who only wanted what was best for her, but perhaps all that was just an excuse. This was what I wanted: Cassidy in my arms.
As if at some unspoken signal, we both sank back to the ground, our lips never parting, our hands never leaving each other's bodies. I felt Cassidy's hands on my belt and a moment later she had undone it, yanked it free, and tossed it away. I pulled off her top and admired her breasts, pushed up by her expensive bra. As I dipped my head to kiss what I had revealed, Cassidy tore open my pants and pulled me out into the moonlight. S
he stared at my swollen shaft in wide-eyed bemusement.
"It's even more than I remember."
I had planned to go slow this time, to be gentle with her, recalling that she was still so new to all of this, but neither of us was in the mood for that. In fact, I think neither of us would even have been capable of that. Cassidy squealed in excitement as I rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the ground beneath me. She shuddered as I drew my hands down her naked torso to reach her jeans. She whined as I peeled those tight pants down her slim legs, then giggled as I was forced to stop to awkwardly remove her sneakers before I could get the pants all the way off.