Safe Without You

by Ward, H.

  Slowly, Amber unzipped his pants, and his kisses grew more feverish. He pulled of her t-shirt and then his own. Sliding a finger under one bra strap, he pulled it down her shoulder as he whispered, “Tell me what you want, it turns me on.”

  “I think you are already pretty damn turned on,” Amber said in a throaty voice, as her hand closed around his velvety cock.

  Cal looked at her through half-closed eyes as he pulled at her bra. Amber’s breasts spilled out, and he teased her by brushing the tips of both nipples with his thumbs. Amber gasped, her clit throbbing in response. He kissed her, hard, and then his mouth started working down her body. He whispered against her breasts, “You’re beautiful…now tell me what you want me to do.” Clutching at Cal’s arms, she found herself wordless, and he pressed her again, his breath whispering across her throbbing nipples. “Tell me Amber. I want you to tell me what you want me to do.”

  Finally, she whispered breathily, “Everything you’ve been doing, I want that. And I want you.”

  Cal’s loosened the tie on her shorts, his hand slipping in to cup her aching crotch. “I’m— I’m clean, it’s been a long time since I’ve been with anyone. We need a rubber—or are you on the pill?”

  Amber broke her rule about condoms for the first time since her original lover, “Yeah, it’s okay, I have an IUD.” The fact that he was even concerned about protection made Amber even more turned on. Her fingers stroked across the swell of his pecs, and she could feel her heart beating like a jackhammer.

  Cal tugged at her shorts, “Oh god Amber, get’em off. I can’t possibly manage.”

  Amber shimmied out of her shorts as Cal pushed his jeans down on his hips, his cock hard and erect. Pulling Amber astride him, Cal drew in his breath as Amber settled over his shaft. “Damn Amber, you are tight.” Pushing Amber’s straight brown hair back, he tried to focus on her face. “I want to know you inside and out—and not just because you have an amazingly tight pussy.” Amber laughed softly.

  Cal thrust up to meet Amber as she moved above him, their eyes locked together. He could feel Amber’s entire body tightening as her pleasure built, and pushed up into her as hard as he could. An instant later, she exploded into rippling waves of pleasure and then, so did Cal.

  Amber felt limp as Cal wrapped his arms tightly around her, his head against her breasts. She ran her hands through his short, soft hair, and then down the center of his back, feeling for the first time the ridges of scar tissue that crisscrossed his back. What had caused such terrible wounds? Amber wondered, as her fingers shyly explored the knotty scars. She stroked his head, as she felt his breath quick and warm against her skin. Cal might be beat, but he wasn’t broken.

  Journal Reflection 2

  The first time that I ever had sex, I was fifteen. The man who got my virginity was a thirty- year old Italian guy, and it happened when we were stationed at the Aviano Air Base. Like every other family with kids, we had to live off base, and that meant in one of the nearby villages. I’d desperately wanted to go to Italian school, but the rules said I was too old to enroll as a foreigner. So Italian school was wasted on the babies, and I had to start high school with a bunch of American creeps, and take Italian classes on the side. Paulo was my tutor.

  I remember my mom saying he had excellent references, and she’d gotten his name from some other Air Force mom. My mom worked as a civilian employee in the base’s human resources office, so someone always hooked her up with whatever she wanted. Anyway, school was out at three o’clock, and mom didn’t get home from work until almost six. Paulo was supposed to tutor me on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 3:30 to 5:00. I guess it never occurred to my mother that Paulo might want to teach me verb tenses with his hand in my panties.

  The problem with Paulo, other than his unusual teaching methods, was that he was charming. He was very, very, handsome, and cultured, and funny. He dressed well, and he had good teeth. There was nothing about Paulo that screamed “skank” or “child molester.” In fact, he was the opposite. Paulo was the man you wanted to take your virginity.

  The first few tutoring sessions we had were as one might expect: vocabulary lists, the conjugation of verbs, beginning conversation. Things didn’t start careening off course until we got to a vocabulary list with parts of the body. Somehow along with “elbow” and “chin,” Paulo taught me baciare con la lingua, tongue kissing, and pisello, penis, and ditalino, female masturbation. I made him arrapato, horny, and I had a magnificent culo, ass, and couldn’t we have a cosina veloce, a quickie, before my mom got home from work. If you’re planning on seeing an X-rated Italian movie without subtitles, I’m the person you want to have along to translate.

  Before Paulo, I had barely held hands with a boy. And the only kiss I had ever experienced was from a fourteen year old Turkish boy I had a terrible crush on. Most of our relationship was spent mooning at each other from a safe distance, and hiding notes for each other to read, since of course it was unseemly for a Muslim boy and an infidel girl to be lollygagging about. We thought of ourselves as Romeo and Juliet, just without the death and suicide. When I told him my family was moving to Italy, he dared press his lips to mine for a fraction of a second before running away. And that was the last I ever saw of Ahmet.

  Paulo started his seduction with the sexy talk, and then gradually, he began touching me. By the time we got to the past perfect tense, I was touching him, and things went rapidly downhill from there. He told me I was beautiful and sexy and smart and fantastic, and I thought that meant we were in love. It’s amazing how stupid you can be when you’re fifteen.

  It’s a miracle I didn’t end up pregnant. Paulo refused to wear a condom because it offended his manhood, and I couldn’t get birth control without my mom. Paulo certainly wasn’t going to be seen taking me to a clinic, and well, Paulo wasn’t going to be seen anywhere with me. My only outings with Paulo involved moving from our kitchen table to my bedroom, so he could screw me more comfortably. After a while, I basically got fed up with feeling like his on-demand sex slave. I knew from movies that he should be bringing me presents, and taking me places, and standing up to my parents. Finally I had to admit that despite giving me my first orgasm, Paulo was a craptastic lover in every other way, a real bastardo. One day I blurted out to my mother that Paulo had tried ‘touching me between my legs’ and that was the end of my language lessons. I left out the part about learning how to give the little testa di merda—shithead—un pompino, a blowjob, something I file under the “Past Imperfect.”

  Chapter 2

  Amber and Cal wriggled back into their clothes with expressions worthy of the Cheshire Cat. Cal kept looking at Amber out of the corner of his eye. She was beautiful, but in an unpretentious and very natural way. She wore no make-up from what he could tell, but somehow she had these thick, luscious eyelashes, and deep colored lips. She had a golden tan, and her straight brown hair had highlights in it from being out in the sun. Her eyes were a green that seemed almost transparent, and her nose was aquiline, her cheekbones arched. Together with her shapely breasts and hips, and sculpted limbs, he thought she could have been the model for a Roman goddess.

  He turned the key and the jeep sprang to life.

  “We better get a move on, if we want to make it up to Boquete in time for dinner.” Amber mentioned nonchalantly.

  “I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve already had dessert.” Cal gave her a sly look.

  “Let’s not make a big deal about this,” Amber said, as she fastened her seat belt. “You want some water?” She passed a big plastic bottle over to Cal.

  He took a swig, then handed it back and put the jeep in gear, “Yeah, I guess now you’re finally telling me what to do.” He smirked at her.

  The rest of the drive was beautiful but uneventful, Amber directed them to drive through Boquete, and the further they went once they left the other side of the town, the worse the road got. Eventually they pulled up to an encampment with small wooden cottages.


  “So what did you leave up here anyway?” Cal asked as they got out.

  “My backpack and sleeping bag, all my camping gear, stuff I’m going to need.”

  Cal followed Amber to one of the cottages; she pushed the door open. There were two twin beds, and on one was a sleeping bag. A backpack rested against the foot of the bed. Amber scanned the room, then started rummaging through the backpack, taking out items: a small backpackers stove with fuel bottle, a knife, cooking pots, some clothes, hiking boots and socks.

  “Damn it.” Amber pushed the bag away from her. “Those assholes.”

  “I take it something is missing?”

  “All my water purification tabs, my GPS, and my headlamp.” Amber sighed. “At least I took my journal, my good sunglasses and my camera with me, but you know, I thought I was going to be back in twenty-four hours.” She sat back on her heels. I’m starving. Let’s go find something to eat in town.”

  “Pick some place nice, my treat.”

  Amber looked at Cal almost suspiciously, “Just because we got it on doesn’t mean that you owe me some kind of date.”

  “Wow. You are cynical. Forgive me for trying to do something nice.”

  Amber felt bad. Cal was right, he hadn’t done anything to deserve her acting like a jerk. “I’m…sorry. I guess I’m pissed off about my stuff getting stolen.”

  Cal put a friendly arm around Amber’s shoulders, “Come on, let’s blow this pop stand.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  A short time later they were digging into rice and fried plantains. “So what’s next for you?” Cal asked.

  “There you go with the questions,” but this time Amber smiled. “I’m thinking about heading south.”

  “You mean south as in southern Panama, or south like in South America?”

  “Maybe both. I want to go to Darien National Park.”

  “Down on the Colombian border?” Cal knotted his brow a little.

  “Yeah, the bridge between the north and the south. What’s not to love about a place with giant anteaters and spider monkeys and the world’s largest rodent, the capybara? It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and I want to go see why.” She took a big bite of plantains.

  “You know FARC is down there right? That they’re coming across the border from Colombia?” Cal’s voice had gotten serious.

  “FARC? What’s a FARC?”

  “The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—they’re classified as a terrorist organization by the US and a lot of other countries.”

  “People blow all that stuff up out of proportion. I don’t think there are guys with machine guns running through the Darien National Park.”

  “They’re not a joke Amber. There are thousands of them, and they fuel their activities by kidnapping people and selling drugs. They force teenagers to join against their will, and they’ve killed and hurt a lot of people.”

  Amber put her fork down, “Well you seem to know an awful lot about it. Why’s that?”

  Cal rubbed his jaw, “I just pay attention to the news and stuff.”

  “To the news and stuff? God, the media sensationalizes everything! You can’t believe the news.” She shook her head dismissively. “I want to see some giant anteaters, and peccaries and agoutis, and I plan to go backpacking in Darien.”

  Cal dropped the subject. “So are we going to try to drive back to the beach tonight, or what?”

  Amber rested her chin in her hand. “I don’t know, I guess I hadn’t really thought it out. What do you want to do? I know I just don’t want to go back to the camp. Something about that place was giving me the creeps.”

  “Yeah, let’s get out of here. Did you check out of Casita del Mer?”

  “Yeah, I—I need to conserve funds.”

  “If you promise not to yell at me for offering, you’re welcome to crash with me at my place. It’s nothing fancy, just a one-roomed bungalow on the beach. No air-conditioning, but you get the breeze off the water, so you don’t really need it.”

  Amber rolled Cal’s proposition over in her mind, their ‘afternoon delight’ had been intriguing, and she couldn’t find any reason to say no, “Okay, thanks, if it’s no trouble.”

  “No trouble,” Cal said.

  ###

  It was late when Cal pulled up to his place, and Amber was dozing. He gently roused her. “Hey, we’re here.”

  Amber stirred and stretched, “Oh, man I’m sorry, I’ve been a terrible shotgun.”

  “It’s okay, you must have been tired.”

  Cal helped Amber gather her stuff, and then he unlocked the door. As promised, it was a simple place—one double bed, not a queen or king, a dumpy dresser, a beat nightstand and a sitting chair. It did, however, look immaculately clean and that put Amber at ease. The sheets might be a little thin, but they had been bleached and starched to death. She dumped her stuff in one corner and plopped down on the bed, pulling off her sandals.

  “Do you mind if I just go straight to bed?” Amber yawned, “I think this whole employment collapse situation has taken more out of me than I thought.”

  “Whatever you want, I might sit up and read a little, have a beer, if that’s okay.”

  “The light won’t bother me, the way I feel, I could sleep through a hurricane right now.”

  She unfastened her bra and pulled it off from under her t-shirt, then shucked her shorts, crawling into bed with her t-shirt and panties on. She doubled the skinny, flat, pillow over, and pulled up the sheet. “Thanks for driving, Cal, and thanks for dinner, and thanks for an especially nice afternoon.” She smiled sleepily.

  Cal walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, and smoothed her hair with his hand. “You’re welcome.” He kissed the top of her head, and then angled the table lamp away from her. “Sleep tight.”

  In moments, Cal could tell by Amber’s soft breathing that she was asleep, and then he went to his bags. He got out a large manila envelope, and began thumbing through its contents. He pulled out a faded photo of three American men in fatigues chained together, and guarded by masked men holding guns. He gazed at it for a very long time before sliding it back into the envelope, and pulling out a topographical map. He spread out the map on the floor and studied it for a very long time. After a while he got a pencil and made circle marks in various places. He measured some distances and jotted a few notes before finally folding up the map.

  Amber woke to the sound of running water, and realized that it must be Cal in the shower. She glanced at the small bedside clock, the hands of which said that it was 2:30. It seemed like an odd time to be taking a shower, but maybe he couldn’t sleep. She realized though, that she needed to pee.

  She padded into the tiny bathroom, calling to Cal to announce her presence. As she flipped up the commode lid and sat down, he stuck his head out from the curtain. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I was going to ask you the same. I just need to pee, but why are you taking a shower at 2:30?”

  He looked at her puzzled, “It’s not 2:30.”

  “That’s what the clock said.”

  “It’s 12:30. You’ve only been asleep for an hour.”

  Amber stood up and flushed, pulling up her panties. “ I guess the clock is broken.”

  “Probably.” Cal reached out and caught her arm, “Why don’t you get in here with me? It’s a good way to relax.”

  “You mean the hot water, or what you’re going to do?” Amber pulled off her t-shirt and panties and stepped in.

  Cal stepped away from the spray of water so Amber could stand under it. She closed her eyes and let the water cascade over her head. She felt hands soaping her body and let her body go limp. Cal’s hands skimmed over her, but his touch was more soothing than sexual. He massaged her shoulders, and rubbed at the knots in her neck with his thumbs. She rubbed her eyes, and then opened them as she pushed her breasts against Cal’s chest, letting him support her body weight. His hands slipped down her back and began to knead the top of her butt.

  �
��Mmmm.” Amber murmured, “It’s like my own private spa. Are you always so friendly to strangers?”

  “No, not at all. I told you, I haven’t been with anyone in a very long time.”

  “Define very long time,” she nuzzled her face against his chest.

  “More than two years,” his voice was suddenly emotionless. “I—I’ve been dealing with some family trauma.”

  Amber’s slipped her arms around Cal and touched a ridge of scar. “Does it have anything to do with this?” She felt him flinch at her question—or was it her touch?

  “Yeah, sort of, it’s complicated. We don’t need to get into all that tonight. Remember, we’re supposed to be trying to relax.”

  “Relax, yeah.” She playfully grabbed a handful of his butt cheek. “You’ve got a nice booty, did you know that?”

  Cal laughed and returned the favor, “Yeah, so do you.” Cal rinsed them both off, then turned off the faucet. Grabbing a fresh towel, he began drying Amber off. “Amber,” he said, then hesitated, “I don’t want you to go to Darien.”

  “What did you have in mind instead?” She took the towel from his hand and began drying her hair.

  “I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling about Darien.”

  “So now your reasons have shifted from sensational media reports to ‘I’ve got a weird feeling?’ If you want me to stick around, you need to do better than that. I need to get out in nature for a while and just get my head on straight.”

  Cal sighed. He didn’t want to argue. “Yeah okay, Amber, let’s get some shuteye and talk about plans tomorrow.”

  They slid under the sheet, and a fresh breeze fanned the bed. Amber’s voice was sleepy again as she mumbled, “Yeah, who needs a stinking air conditioner?”

  But Cal folded his hands under his head, and stared at the ceiling fan going round and round in the dark.