Rumours

by Alison Tyler

  Afterwards, we fucked in Johnny’s car, unable to wait to get back home to his apartment or mine. I don’t know what made the situation so intense. Maybe Johnny liked watching another man behaving in such an intimate manner with me, Chester’s large hands firm on my body, his warm breath tickling my naked skin. Or maybe Johnny liked seeing me in the role of a submissive when someone else was doing the dominating. I couldn’t move. Not if I wanted the tattoo to come out right. I had to stay so still that even my breathing was done in the quietest manner possible.

  Whatever the reason, we’d been almost violently pulled together afterwards, making good use of the extra-large rear seat in his mint-condition Mustang. We could have been arrested for indecent exposure, but we didn’t care. Johnny took me from behind, with me on my hands and knees on his rear bench seat, my jeans down, my face forwards, so that I was staring out the window and into the bright lights of Hollywood’s club scene.

  A few days later, when I was finally able to remove the white protective bandage, we’d fucked just as ferociously, with Johnny ultimately coming on to my scarlet tattoo and then rubbing his creamy sex juices deep into my skin like lotion.

  Now, I sighed again, and I slipped one hand along my body, desperate to touch myself. As soon as I did, the line went dead.

  ‘Nooo!’ Focusing on staying in one place, I quickly dialled Johnny’s number.

  The LED screen read: No service available.

  This wasn’t surprising in the least, but that didn’t make the disappointment any less severe. I moved a little bit to the left and tried again. No success. Where was the pocket? I’d overheard a woman in the Cowpie saying that she only got cell phone service when she stood under her sunflower clock on the western wall of her kitchen. Another’s phone worked only in the attic, and solely on days that weren’t too windy. But I knew now that there was definitely a pocket in my kitchen, somewhere near my sparkly pink formica table. Frantically, I tried again, to no avail. I felt as if I were searching for the Bermuda triangle – but in this case it was the Bermuda sex triangle and, if I didn’t get Johnny back, I’d be left in that horrible wanting mode. Close to climax, but unfulfilled. Yeah, I could take care of myself, but that concept felt pathetic when Johnny wanted to take care of me.

  What to do?

  I grabbed my car keys off the counter, then headed out the door. I tried the phone from outside on the old wood porch. Nothing. I got in my car and drove around the block, stopping beneath a large redwood tree. Nope. After debating my choices, I headed down the hill and drove the four miles on the two-lane road to the one payphone in town. I kept shifting in the seat, my panties clinging to me beneath my cut-off shorts. I parked the car on the nearly empty street and hurried into the small phone booth. Ten minutes had passed since we’d been disconnected. Would Johnny think that I had ended the call intentionally? Would he even answer?

  I dialled Johnny’s number with shaky fingers, charged the call to my calling card number and waited with my heart in my throat until he picked up.

  ‘You moved,’ he said, his voice stem.

  ‘I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘So we start over.’ He wasn’t asking a question.

  ‘I’m not at home any more, Johnny. I’m at a payphone.’

  ‘Phone sex in a phone booth. I’ve never done that before. God, I’ve never even heard of that before. You have the kinkiest ideas, Charlie.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You’re all wet, though. Aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s why I moved. I was trying to get my hand down my jeans.’

  ‘Greedy girl. You should have let me talk you there. I would have made you come without a single stroke of your impatient little fingers on your clit.’

  I looked out at the dark street. There were only three street lights in town and none was close to where I stood. Long, grey shadows shrouded the phone booth. From my position, I could easily see The Saloon a block away. Several smokers stood out front, their cigarette embers glowing crimson in the darkness, but none of the patrons looked my way. After nine, the main drag is almost entirely deserted. Could I have phone sex in a phone booth? Was that too far out?

  ‘OK,’ I said softly.

  ‘OK what?’

  ‘Keep talking.’

  ‘Take off your clothes.’

  ‘Johnny, no –’

  ‘You don’t get to tell me “no”. That’s the first rule of this game.’

  ‘I can’t get naked.’

  ‘You have to do something to prove that you want this.’

  ‘Oh, I want this, Johnny.’

  ‘Then tell me what you’ll do for me.’

  How could I let him know how aroused I was, how much I missed his body, how hungry I was for him –

  ‘Describe the location of the booth,’ Johnny said, interrupting my whirling thoughts.

  ‘The booth is next to the Castle grocery store, partially surrounded by tall green bushes. Lou’s hardware store is to the right, and then the post office, the feedbarn and the Daisy Diner. Across the street to the left is a Mexican cantina, which closes at six, a gift store, the one garage in town, a barber shop and The Saloon. To the right is The Crazy Horse –’

  ‘A strip club?’ He sounded appreciative at the thought.

  ‘No, an actual horse shop. They sell saddles and bridles and that sort of thing. Then there’s the Cowpie, and a 6os-style tie-dye store called “All Tied Up”. Tucked behind the creamery building is a second-run movie theatre called DeJa Vu. And on the corner on my side of the street is the bank.’

  ‘You mean a bank?’

  ‘No, Johnny. The bank.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Johnny laughed. ‘You really are in Hicksville.’

  ‘Raysville.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’m not getting naked, Johnny.’

  ‘Then do what you were doing. Slide that greedy paw of yours down your panties and tell me exactly how wet you are. I want details, baby. Make me feel as if I were right there in the booth with you. Because that’s where I’d most like to be –’

  I looked around again. The smokers were heading back inside the bar. Everything was dark on my side of the street. I wondered if I should feel frightened about being alone at this hour, but then I recalled the sort of ‘crimes’ listed in the most recent edition of the Levee Road News. The extremely brief sheriff’s log featured stories about wayward cows standing dumbfounded in the middle of the street that needed to be herded back to pasture, teenagers partying at the beach deemed too rowdy by uptight neighbours, and nude couples engaged in late-afternoon sex by the lagoon. Nothing to worry about.

  ‘Tell me, Charlie.’

  I turned my back to the road, popped the first two buttons of my cut-offs and slid one hand into my panties. ‘I’m wet,’ I told him, ‘just like you said.’ My fingertips hit that juicy succulence from the start. I had been wet when Johnny was talking to me at home. The anticipation on the ride over had made me even more excited. My juices created the perfect lubrication for touching myself, and I easily slipped two fingers between my nether lips and lightly grazed my clit in a gentle figure of eight. I leaned my back against the wall of the phone booth for support.

  ‘Oh, baby. If I were there, I’d go down on the ground in front of you, pull your shorts and panties all the way to your ankles and press my face to your pussy.’ I sighed hard. I love when Johnny talks dirty to me. ‘I’d lick in tiny little circles, right around your clit, until your legs buckled, but I wouldn’t let you move. I’d press you right up against the glass of the phone booth, forcing you to stay upright, and I’d keep going until you came. My mouth hard against you, my tongue swirling inside of you –’

  ‘God, Johnny,’ I hissed. ‘Don’t stop –’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t stop. As soon as you came, I’d back off, just a little bit, still making those sexy spirals with the very tip of my tongue. The way you like it, Charlie. The way you need it. I’d give you a lighter touch, but I wouldn’t
stop. I’d make you come again in seconds, come until you felt like you were always coming, as if you’d never stop.’

  ‘Oh, Johnny –’

  ‘Then, when you were quivering all over, I’d stand up and flip you around, so that your palms were flat on the glass, and I’d let you feel just how hard I am. Because I’m rock hard, Charlie. I’m so fucking hard for you.’

  The background music stopped, and I could picture him stroking himself instead of his guitar as he talked to me. I liked that image: Johnny on his soft black bedspread, his blue jeans on but open, his fist pumping flesh in even strokes, making that sensual sound of skin on skin. Watching Johnny touch himself has always turned me on. Sometimes, we’ve played a game where we’ve watched each other without touching, trying to see how long we could last. That’s how I felt right now. With him, but far removed. My breath started to steam the glass. My fingers tapped out a crazy rhythm on my clit as Johnny continued his erotic monologue.

  ‘I’d take you from behind, Charlie. My hand wrapped in your long hair, holding you tight. My body right up against yours, pushing you into the glass. I’d want people to see you, girl. As if you were on display for them. Right up against the glass of the phone booth, like an exhibit in an X-rated museum.’

  I sighed darkly, and Johnny laughed.

  ‘You like that thought. I know you do. You always want people to see you.’

  He was right. My number-one fantasy is to be exposed. For someone as shy as I am, I suppose it’s an odd desire to have. Or maybe it makes perfect sense that my fantasy world strays so far from my reality. Sexually, we all want to be the way we aren’t in real life. That’s what Mia says, anyway, and she’s such a sex fiend that I guess she knows what she’s talking about. But for now all that mattered was that Johnny keep fucking me with his words. The fact that I was out in the open only made me more excited.

  ‘You ready for me, Charlie?’

  ‘So ready.’

  ‘Then prove it, baby. Make me believe.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ My voice was barely audible. I didn’t sound like myself at all.

  ‘Take off your clothes, Charlie.’

  I couldn’t. Not even with nobody else around. Not even all by myself in the dark. The thought of being spotted by one of the locals while naked in the phone booth was more than I could imagine. I’d be instant fodder for the gossip mill at the Cowpie, and I’d never live it down.

  Did you hear about the bare-assed redhead out on Main Street?

  Oh, yes. She was fondling herself in the phone booth.

  The way people from LA behave!

  ‘Baby?’

  ‘I can’t.’ I trembled near climax as I spoke, almost in tears because I wished somehow that I could fulfil his request, but I knew in my heart that I couldn’t.

  ‘Then do something else for me.’

  ‘What, Johnny?’ I was desperate. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Come for me, baby. Come hard for me.’

  That I could do. I pressed my slippery-wet fingertips around my clit, then thrust two fingers deep inside my pussy, fucking myself. My inner muscles immediately tightened, and I drove my fingers in further, then pulled them out and thrust them in again, mimicking how Johnny would take me if he were here. I knew exactly how he’d do it: in and out and hard.

  ‘I want you to use your other hand to touch your breasts. Slide your hand under your top and pinch your nipples for me. Pinch them the way I would.’

  I gripped the phone tightly between my ear and my shoulder, and I immediately followed his order, remembering as I did the last time Johnny fondled my breasts. My pussy spasmed in response to this brand-new sensation. I love the way Johnny touches me, and I imagined his big hands on me instead of my own. He was the one sweetly torturing me. He was here in the booth with me.

  ‘No, baby, pinch them harder than that.’ He chuckled. ‘Because I know you didn’t follow my command precisely. I know you didn’t pinch them the way I would. The way you need.’

  I swallowed over a lump in my throat, but did what he said. Pain-sparked pleasure flooded through my body and I closed my eyes tightly.

  ‘You’re going to come for me, Charlie, aren’t you? Any minute, any second, you’re going to come.’

  ‘Yes, Johnny.’

  ‘Let me hear you when you come.’

  ‘Yes, Johnny.’ My voice was a husky whisper. My body was tense and ready. All I wanted was to reach the finish line. All I needed was for Johnny to take me there. I felt my cut-offs slip lower down my thighs, but I didn’t bother to grab for them. I couldn’t. Not with my right hand lost in my panties and my left pinching one nipple and then the other.

  ‘And here’s my secret,’ he said. I felt myself leaning into the phone, listening to him as intensely as I could. My cut-offs slid down a little bit lower, and I could feel the cool night air whisper-soft on my bare skin. ‘As soon as you come, I’m gonna spank you,’ he continued, and I made a rough little cry of helpless desire. I couldn’t help myself. ‘Because only a naughty girl like you could come in a public phone booth. You know it, don’t you, Charlie?’

  I bit my bottom lip hard and squeezed my eyes closed even tighter, seeing explosive patterns of vibrant blue-purple and black on the back of my eyelids. I tried to hike my jeans shorts up by arching my hips against the chilled glass wall of the phone booth, but the move didn’t work. The cold glass iced my back.

  ‘So I’m going to have to put you over my knee and pull those cut-offs all the way down your sweet thighs …’

  ‘Oh, God –’ The shudders started then, shaking me all over.

  ‘And then I’m going to pull your cute white panties down, and spank you, Charlie. Spank you hard. Spank you the way you need it.’ I heard him breathe in deep. ‘Jesus, Red, I can’t wait to heat that adorable little ass up for you. That’s one of my favourite things in the world, you know it? Spanking you until you’re all warmed up, and then fucking you when you’re so wet you can’t stand another goddamn second of waiting –’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Johnny –’ I was coming now, my body vibrating continuously as the pleasure worked through me. As I climaxed, my cut-offs slid all the way down to my ankles. My fingers continued to make those delicious circles around my clit, and I could suddenly feel the glass behind me against my naked ass. My movements had pulled my panties all the way down to my thighs nearly to my knees. I was mooning the empty street, but for that one moment in time I didn’t care.

  ‘That’s right, girl,’ he said, ‘that’s what always makes my baby come. A good, hard spanking.’ He paused, and then amended the thought: ‘Or at least, the honest threat of one.’

  I heard the sound of footsteps then, and I jerked my head up to see two slim women walking down the opposite sidewalk towards The Saloon. Quickly, I got my hand out of my shirt and yanked up my panties and shorts, doing my best to cover my nakedness. I was certain that I’d been spotted but, as I peered into the darkness, the duo continued on their way without a moment of hesitation. They didn’t look back over their shoulders to check me out, didn’t appear to have seen me, or think I was doing anything odd if they had. I listened as their boots made loud clacking noises on the pavement. Then I watched as the brunette put her arm around the blonde’s waist, stopping her for a sultry kiss before they entered the bar.

  ‘You still there, Charlie?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I sighed.

  ‘Wish I was, too,’ Johnny said, and this time he was the one to disconnect the call.

  I stood in the phone booth for several minutes, trying to figure out what to do next. Go back home? I didn’t want to. It didn’t feel like home yet. Go back to LA? I didn’t want to do that either. After watching yet another gaggle of smokers chattering on the steps of The Saloon, I decided what I really wanted was a drink.

  Chapter Six

  ‘So you found us, did you? Not enough cowboy bars for you in LA?’ The man’s laconic style made Clint Eastwood appear to be on speed. Or at least a double
espresso. (Not that he would have been able to buy one in Raysville.) It was as if the term ‘laid-back’ had been coined specifically for this man. He slowly looked me up and down as I walked into the bar, then gave me an easy, slow-spreading grin.

  The room was so dim that from the outside it looked as if there were no lights on at all, aside from the bevy of neon beer signs. Still, I recognised his face even in the poor light, the lines around his eyes from years spent squinting in the sun. And I could tell from both his question and his expression that he remembered me from our one previous encounter.

  I was glad I’d gone home to change before entering the bar. I couldn’t imagine being in here with my cut-offs and cami, my panties still slick from my phone-sex session with Johnny. I’d chosen a soft kid-leather vest, a black velvet skirt and knee-high boots – casual dressing for an LA bar, but upscale for this small town. Although I was clearly overdressed, the cowboy’s eyes let me know that he appreciated my attire.

  I’d only seen him the one time, out at the bar in Dogtown on my first drive through town. Even though I’d been halfway looking for him ever since I’d moved to Raysville, I hadn’t spotted him once, aside from the mural on the side of the feedbarn. Now, as I walked into The Saloon, he patted his hand on the maroon leather barstool next to him, offering me a choice spot at the bar.

  ‘Small-town living got under your skin?’ he asked next.

  The old-fashioned jukebox was playing in the second room, where the faded green pool tables were, but I could hear him fine. I took a step closer and he motioned for the brunette Betty Paige-looking bartender to come our way. She was wearing a leopard-print peasant top that laced up over her considerable breasts, and her full red lips rivalled the crimson of the neon signs dangling over the mirror.

  ‘Buy you a drink?’ he asked me. ‘Since you couldn’t stay away.’

  ‘Nobody can stay away from you, Cody,’ the bartender said, flirtatiously. She had a sexy British accent that I was surprised to hear out in the middle of nowhere. I wondered what her story was. At least, the fact that she was transplanted from abroad explained her sense of style, unique for a cowboy bar. Her radiant black hair was done in braids that fell over her shoulders like Dorothy of Oz, with bright blue bows capturing the ends of the plaits. She appeared funky yet alluring and, from the way she held herself, I could tell that she knew it.