Rumours

by Alison Tyler

  ‘Then why’d you disappear on me?’ he asked.

  I didn’t answer. Immediately, Alden tucked away the cuffs, stood and hoisted me over his shoulder. While I screamed with laughter and pounded futilely on his back, he carried me like a sack of laundry down the tiny hallway to my bedroom.

  ‘We have ways to make you talk,’ he hissed in his spy accent.

  ‘Oh you do, do you?’

  He set me down on the bed and gently pulled off my sweater, then my halter top, then went to work on my faded Levis. ‘Trust me,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. Your girlfriend was pretty convincing when she told me to keep my paws off you –’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Alden said again, a tone of finality in his voice.

  ‘She sure as hell thinks she is.’ I remembered the way his ex had glared at me, the way her ponytail had stung my cheeks.

  ‘How is that my fault? Do you think I’m so powerful that I can control how people think?’

  ‘Well, you are a firefighter –’ I said, biting my lower lip as I gazed up at him.

  ‘All right, so what do I want you to be thinking about right now? What images am I putting into your mind?’

  My cheeks flushed. Even if he didn’t have ‘the power’, it was plenty clear to me what X-rated images Alden was trying to slip in my head. While I waited, blushing, Alden clicked the cuffs into place as I held my hands out in front of myself.

  I was nearly naked now, down to a pair of panties that I wished were slightly more decorated, or at least more fashionable. These were simple pink cotton hipsters, and I hadn’t even bothered with a bra. But maybe it didn’t matter what my underwear looked like, because Alden pulled the panties off me without any ceremony. Then he stood back and stared at me, observing my naked body in almost awestruck silence.

  ‘What?’ I prompted.

  ‘I like what you’ve got going on down there,’ he said. ‘I should have said so before.’

  I ran my fingers over the short red curls between my thighs. The handcuff chains clinked as I moved my hands. I’m a true redhead, but the triangle patch of hair between my legs is softer, a lighter red. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I thought all you Southern California girls went in for those fancy jobs, those what do you call them? Peruvians?’

  ‘Brazilians.’ I giggled. ‘But not all of us. I’ve always liked to be unique.’

  ‘The thing is, if you want to be part of NUDE, you’re going to have to do something about that.’ He gripped my wrists and moved my hands out of the way, so that he could fully inspect me.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear about their latest campaign? They’re all shaving, and then they’re going to stage another photograph out at Sweet Field, spelling out NO MORE BUSH with their bodies. Geneva told me to mention the concept to you.’

  I didn’t believe this idea would fly. ‘Some of the women don’t even bother to shave their armpits,’ I told him, incredulous still at the concept. Although there was a famous photograph from the 90s of Julia Roberts sporting underarm hair, this style was unheard of in my part of the world, something you’d only see in National Geographic. And yet I’d witnessed women in Raysville who thought nothing about wearing a tank top and proudly showing off their hairy hippylike state.

  ‘I think you’d look sexy any way, shape or form,’ Alden said, cocking his head, ‘But if you were shaved totally bare, there wouldn’t be anything to get in the way of my tongue –’

  I brought my hands in front of me again, desperately shy all of a sudden, and I felt my cheeks turn even pinker, but now Alden was suddenly in action, unlocking one of the cuffs, threading the links through the old brass headboard on the bed, and then locking the cuff back into place.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to tell me sometime. Who were you really with in San Francisco?’

  ‘Are you honestly that jealous?’ I asked, thinking that he sounded an awful lot like Johnny. Had I left my handsome musician man down south only to hook up with his attractive firefighting counterpart in Northern California? Were the menfolk in the two halves of the state not so dissimilar after all?

  ‘You bet,’ he said, ‘as jealous of whoever you were with as Sheila is of you.’

  ‘I don’t get that at all,’ I said. ‘If you’re not seriously together, then why does she hate me so much?’

  ‘Before you moved to town, she was the only hot redhead in Raysville. That was her identity.’

  ‘Maybe she should have had it tattooed on her chest. “Raysville’s one hot redhead.” ’

  ‘I know it’s sort of pathetic, but it’s what she was known for. Ever since high school. The fact that she hangs out with a blonde and a brunette makes them feel as if they have some power. They’re a trio that doesn’t like to be trifled with. And now that you’re here, she doesn’t know how to deal.’

  ‘So it really has nothing to do with me?’

  ‘Well, the fact that you and I hit it off so well –’

  I nodded, thinking I understood. As Mia had said, we were back in college all over again, with everyone fishing from the same small pool. Or, as Joelle’s older sister, who went to Yale, explained it: some people were spokes and some were hubs. The hubs tended to sleep with as many spokes as possible. In essence, everyone shared everyone else’s bed. ‘It gave you something to compare to,’ she’d told the three of us once, looking at the positive side. ‘If you and your roommate have both slept with the same hub, then you can always compare future conquests by that similarly shared experience. Is he better or worse than Mick – you have a measuring point.’

  ‘Again,’ Alden said, ‘I need to know who you were with.’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ I said, ‘but I was all by myself. I like to be by myself. Haven’t you figured that out yet? I moved from LA to this tiny little hamlet in order to find some alone time.’

  He headed towards the door. ‘You want me to leave?’

  Quickly, I rattled the chains of the cuffs. ‘No. Alden, come back! I don’t mean right now. I’d be happy with some company right now.’

  He gave me his sly grin and came closer, and then climbed on to the bed between my legs. I sighed at the feel of his weight on the mattress. My body was instantly aroused, or rather more aroused. I had a sense of how sexy this scene was going to be, and I was right. He started at the foot of my bed, and his big hands slowly ran up and over my feet, giving me a gentle massage as he worked his way along my slender legs. He didn’t rush, even though I was ready for him to get right to the main event. Instead, he took his time, kissing the soles of my feet, then the tender skin at the backs of my knees, then nipping sweetly along the insides of my thighs, ever so slowly heading towards the region in the centre. I bucked my hips, letting him know with my body how ready I was to feel his tongue against me, but my actions did nothing to hurry him along. At his own pace, he spread my nether lips with his strong hands and kissed me between them.

  ‘Oh, fuck –’ I sighed, swept away.

  ‘You like that.’

  ‘Yeah, Alden. Oh, yeah –’

  At my response, he started to lick me more seriously, and I sighed and tossed my head back hard against the pillow. I could suddenly see why Sheila was so angry with me. If I were the one losing out on this sort of treatment, I’d be ready for serious battle, as well.

  ‘Now, tell me,’ he said, his voice slightly muffled against my skin. ‘Who were you with?’ Each word rumbled through me, creating the most delicious sort of vibrations. My entire body responded automatically, and I shifted on the firm mattress, raising my hips higher, hoping he’d keep talking just like that. If he would, that experience alone would make me come. When he didn’t continue to speak, I drove him on with a question of my own.

  ‘This is your way of torturing a confession out of me?’

  He paused and grinned at me, his full lips already glistening with my heady juices, but he remained silent.
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  ‘Then I’ll have to admit, I’m a total torture slut.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, and his soft dark hair tickled my most sensitive skin. ‘This is nothing, baby. I’m going to bring you right up to the edge, where you can taste it, but I’m not going to let you come until you tell all. That’s the plan.’

  I rattled the chains again, pulling tight on the cuffs to see if he’d really clicked shut the locks. He had. I was captured for good, captured until he decided to set me free. So I made the most of it, giving myself over to him. If he wanted to see how long I could hold out, I’d happily let him.

  ‘So you’re not going to tell?’ Alden asked softly.

  I shook my head. My hair was loose and it flipped back and forth at the motion.

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ The way he said the words made me wonder if he understood what I really wanted. Would he punish me for defying him? God, I hoped so. Especially because I didn’t think I’d ever have the nerve to tell him my fantasies outright. Johnny had somehow just understood. On our first night together, over dinner at the Rainbow on Sunset, he’d said, ‘I know why you wore that pretty little skirt for me.’

  I’d slid in closer to him in the slippery red leather booth and whispered, ‘Why is that, Johnny?’ dying to hear what he had to say.

  ‘Because you want me to put you over my lap, lift that frilly thing up in back, and spank your amazing ass until you come.’

  I don’t know how he knew. He just did. Maybe I was giving off signals but, if I was, I’d never done so before. Up until then, my fantasies had remained just that – private fantasies. No man had ever found them out. Once Johnny had discovered them, my heart felt as if it were pounding out of control and there’d been a rushing sound in my ears that accompanied the heat in my cheeks.

  ‘Aren’t I right?’ he’d continued, speaking nonchalantly, as if we were having a discussion about the food on the table in front of us, not about my ass being heated by his strong, hard palm. I nodded, and we hadn’t actually made it through the rest of our meal. Johnny had paid, taken me out back behind the classic old building, bent me over his lap and spanked me in public, then driven me up to a secluded spot in the Hollywood Hills and fucked me out in the open, as well. I’d never known how he’d understood what I wanted so quickly. He just had.

  Now I wondered whether Alden would be able to figure me out, as well. Would he turn me on the mattress, twisting the handcuff chains to expose my naked ass? Would he spank me for refusing to come clean with him about my visit to SF?

  No. I wasn’t transparent. He couldn’t see through me. But that didn’t stop him from giving me the most exquisite pleasure. Alden continued to lick and kiss me until I felt as if I were flying. The climax was so close that he was right, I could practically taste it. Christ, I could feel it. I knew precisely how I would respond when he finally brought me over the threshold and to the finish line. My body would throb, and I’d try to get my hands free to hold on to his strong shoulders, to meld him to me. But there was no way I could do that. My wrists were cuffed securely by the cold silver steel, and I wasn’t going anywhere, wasn’t able to help in any way at all. The only thing I could do was beg.

  ‘Please, Alden.’

  ‘Don’t work so hard, Charlie,’ he admonished me. ‘I’ll take care of you –’

  The concept sounded amazing, but in reality it was far easier said than done. Because letting him was the equivalent of letting go, and my mind wouldn’t allow me to do that. I stayed present, ready, in control, even as I worked to relax and give myself over to him. But I did my best. I closed my eyes, feeling the start of those delicious contractions beat through me. If he would only touch me right in the very centre, I would come. If his tongue would slip slowly up and over my clit, I would come.

  But Alden didn’t finish me off. As he promised at the start, he was teasing me, tormenting me by lifting me repeatedly to the edge without letting me go over, free-falling into bliss. Finally, I stopped fighting, and I did the only thing I could – I went with every motion, losing myself and my thoughts in the dreamy reality of Alden’s magical ministrations. He used the flat of his tongue to lap up to my button, and then he used the point of his tongue to trace around and around it as if creating a maze of pleasure. If he’d only follow the lines of the maze to the very centre, I would come. I knew it.

  Ultimately, he obeyed my silent demands, and he locked his sweet lips around my clit and fluttered his tongue against me, over and over, until the orgasm flared through me like brushfire and I came hard, shaking the bed with the power of my climax. Set ablaze by my own personal firefighter.

  ‘You are going to The Saloon tonight, right?’ Alden asked me afterwards. ‘You’re not going to let some stupid gossip keep you from having a good time.’

  When he put it that way, I wondered whether I’d made too much of the rumours I’d heard. Had I gone way overboard by bringing Mia into this? But then I remembered the way Sheila had flicked her ponytail in my face, and I was glad to at least have some reinforcements in town. Someone who was on my side from the start, no matter what. Sheila had her posse. I needed one, too.

  ‘You will, Charlie?’ Alden insisted when I didn’t immediately answer. ‘It won’t be any fun without you.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said, gazing at him, thoroughly enjoying the sight of his naked body in my hot tub. I hadn’t made much use of the outdoor whirlpool so far, but Alden seemed to think this was the main reason I’d rented the cabin. ‘I’d be in the tub every night,’ he told me when I showed it to him. ‘Watching the stars. Drinking a cold beer. Making love to you.’

  He was right that the experience was sexually alluring. In truth, it was a little bit of backyard heaven. Hedonistic, seventies-style heaven, but heaven nonetheless. The fact that the radio was now playing a trio of oldies by Cream simply added to the ambiance.

  ‘It’s Saturday,’ he reminded me. ‘The Sweet Band’s playing.’

  I nodded, my mind on Mia. I had to act well tonight. I couldn’t show any recognition of her. Suddenly, I was glad I hadn’t fully unpacked. If I had, there would have been photos of her all over the cabin by now. Photos of her and me and Joelle in all of our different looks and hairstyles from over the past ten years. Instead, I still had a bare-bones decor scheme going. I supposed I’d have to make that my permanent look. Or put up some photos of fake friends, the pictures of people that come in the frames when you buy them.

  ‘You want to go with me?’ he asked, and I felt as if I were back in high school. Was Alden asking me to go steady? And why did the thought of walking into the bar on his arm make me feel so strange inside? That was easy to answer. I knew the look Cody would give me. He’d chalk me up as one of the chicklets who was simply taking her turn with the handsome firefighter named Alden. In his mind, I’d probably move on to the three firefighters named Joe, and then drift over to the studly mechanics at the one garage in town. And why did I even care what Cody thought?

  ‘Won’t everybody talk?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re already talking.’

  ‘Doesn’t the gossip get under your skin?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve been through far worse.’ He was silent for a moment, and I wondered if the ‘far worse’ he’d been through had something to do with the criss-crossing scar tissue on his chest, but I didn’t dare ask, and he didn’t elaborate. ‘Look, this sort of thing always blows over after a while. You can’t let it bother you. In fact, the best thing to do is be seen in public. Not hide away like you did. That gives them more fuel for their fire. They start to wonder where you’ve got to, and they start to believe every word they hear because you’re not around to dispute it.’

  I thought about what he said, and realised he made sense.

  ‘So you wanna go with me tonight, Charlie?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, before my mind could give me an argument otherwise. ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Pick you up at rune-thirty,’ he said, as he stood and climbed out o
f the tub and on to the old redwood platform. I bit my lip as I stared at his naked body. He was so nicely built with his tight ass, flat stomach and hard muscular arms that looked as if they could break a man in two. Delighted with the private show, I watched him dry himself off using one of the old blue towels, and I thought again of how handsome he was. The fog had finally burned away, and Alden’s body gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. I stared at the scars again on his chest and ribs and shuddered. He’d come close to the edge, that was for sure. The fact that he wouldn’t tell me what they were from merely served to make me more curious. In that way, I supposed, I had a lot in common with the locals. I wanted to know information that was truly none of my god-damn business.

  ‘I’ve got drill tonight at the station, and I want to have time to get cleaned up and presentable.’

  Now I grinned. ‘So do I,’ I told him. ‘You caught me off-guard today, you know that, don’t you? In fact, you’re always catching me off guard. I’d never have let you see me like that if I were still in LA.’

  Alden looked surprised. ‘See you like what?’

  ‘All ratty and dishevelled.’

  He came over to the side of the hot tub and kissed me firmly on the lips. His kiss turned into a lingering French kiss, and my heart started to race all over again. I shifted, instantly rewarded by the move when the jets of the hot tub sprayed directly between my legs, caressing me exactly where Alden’s tongue had teased me an hour before. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said when we parted. ‘All the time. You’d look gorgeous draped in fig leaves, an old robe, or nothing at all. So leave that LA frame of mind where it belongs – in LA. When I saw you in your old comfortable clothes I couldn’t wait to strip you naked. You looked sexy as all hell. Don’t you get that?’

  I smiled back at him. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You need me to prove it to you?’

  I waited. When he set the blue terrycloth towel down on the lip of the tub, I could see that he was hard again. The sight of his arousal, combined with the pressure from the hot tub jets, made me ready in a second. ‘You want me to show you how much you turn me on?’