by Jasper Bark
She was better at hiding his secrets too. With lots of neat little compartments in the forward storage bin where he could stow his wares so customs wouldn’t see ’em. He was so busy doing this he didn’t notice Consuela till she spoke.
“Headed back to the states?”
Ricardo took his head out the trunk to look her up and down. His first impression was not flattering. She was quite short and passing pretty, with jet black hair and tanned skin. Her T-shirt was coming apart at one seam and her cut-off jeans were faded near to white with constant wear. She didn’t have a great rack but her body was okay. She was most likely in her mid-twenties but she already had the beginnings of crow’s feet around her eyes and lines about her mouth.
He took all this in as he regarded her. “Why do you ask?” he said, giving nothing away.
“Thought maybe you could give me a ride?” she said with a smile and more than a hint of suggestion.
“Why would I want to do that?” he replied.
“To help a gal in her hour of need.”
“And what’s in it for me?”
“Maybe you could use the company. It can get pretty lonesome on those long old roads.”
“And how would you keep me from getting lonesome?”
“I might know a trick or two?”
“Listen, I’m not looking to pick up a hooker, so maybe you should try someone else.”
The girl’s eyes flashed at this. Her shoulders went back and her chest rose with indignation. “A hooker? A hooker? Where do you get off calling me a hooker! Who do you think you are?”
Her sudden anger surprised Ricardo. He also found it exciting. He raised his hands by way of apology. “Look I’m sorry okay. I made a mistake. I thought that’s why you asked me for a ride.”
“I need to cross the border, that’s why I asked you for a ride.”
“What makes you think I’m headed back across the border?”
“You have a fancy American car. You don’t have any suitcases and you’re hiding things in your trunk.”
Ricardo smiled. “Okay, you got me. But what about you? Why’d you need a ride so bad?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m just being careful. No offence, but I don’t know you and I don’t let just anyone inside my jeep. That’s leather trimmed upholstery right there, you gotta show it some respect.”
“And I don’t get inside just anyone’s jeep. If I choose to sit on your leather upholstery that’s a sign of respect.”
“It’s leather trimmed and you didn’t answer my question. Why’d you want a ride?”
Consuela patted her stomach. “I have something to deliver.”
“You’re pregnant?”
Consuela rolled her eyes at him, paused for a moment and pursed her lips as she considered her words. “There are things your government won’t allow in your country, so people pay a lot of money for them. The people selling these things pay me a lot of money to get them there. If you give me a ride, with your leather trimmed upholstery and your US plates, customs won’t bother me and I will be very grateful.”
“How grateful?”
“You’ll have to give me a ride to find out.”
So that was it. She was a mule. Ricardo knew right then that he was going to give her a lift. The wise thing would be to turn her down flat. To get the hell out of that parking lot and not look back. But where was the fun in that?
Ricardo heard tales all the time about shoot outs on Mexican city streets. About the gangs who smuggled drugs and people over the borders. About how dangerous this lawless country was becoming. The truth was that he’d never seen so much as an argument on any of his numerous trips. He found the place dull and depressingly run down.
This was the first bit of excitement he’d ever encountered here. It also turned him on to think that he’d have power over the girl. She’d need to keep him sweet if he was her ride to Arizona. Ricardo walked around to the side of the car and opened the passenger door. “Hop in,” he said.
As he climbed behind the wheel and headed back out onto the road Ricardo was palpably aware of her presence. The bare flesh of her shoulder, where her T-shirt had fallen, kept catching his eye. She crossed her legs and the denim rode up her thigh. The upholstery creaked in what sounded like appreciation as she shifted her weight.
Then there was her scent. It filled the cabin and hung in the air. Cheap soap and fresh sweat. Ricardo breathed it in as he drove. He closed the windows and turned down the climate control so he could enjoy it better. She caught him glancing over at her and smiled, savoring his attention.
“My name is Consuela,” she said. “What is yours?”
“Miguel.” He wasn’t going to give her his real name. That would shift the balance of power in her favor. He didn’t want her turning up later at his crib. A false name gave him distance from the situation, made it more of a game.
Ricardo pulled into one of the two lanes open at the border. The crossing was pretty quiet this time of day and there wasn’t much traffic. He wound down his window as the customs official by the side of the road signaled for him to pull over. The man was tall and broad with a beer gut to match. He looked like he was used to intimidating people with his size. “Anything to declare?” he said checking their passports.
“Just a few souvenirs,” Ricardo pointed to the leather art, hand-made flowers and Day of the Dead pottery he’d left in plain view on the back seat. The custom’s official scanned it. “Anything worth more than $400?”
“Nope,” Ricardo lied, he wasn’t going to pay the tax. The customs official pointed to Consuela. “Is this lady in your employ, sir? A maid or something?” Ricardo didn’t know what to say. He glanced at Consuela and saw the anger flash in her eyes again. “I am not a maid,” she said leaning forward to look the customs official in the eye. She reached out and put her hand over Ricardo’s crotch, grabbing his cock and balls. “This is my sex slave bitch!”
Ricardo sat bolt upright as Consuela’s fingers closed around his groin. The customs official looked down at Consuela’s hand. He could see Ricardo hardening beneath it. “Good luck with that one,” he said and waved them on.
“Way to go not drawing any attention to us,” Ricardo said.
“You know how many white guys want to be dominated by a hot Mexican tamale? I gave him a little fantasy to take home and jerk off to. You think he’s going to spoil that by pulling us over.” Consuela removed her hand as they drove off, but Ricardo remained hard for miles.
CHAPTER 6
Ricardo came round to the sound of snuffling and chewing. He was groggy, disoriented and wracked with pain. He didn’t know where he was or why he was on his back.
His vision came slowly into focus. The snuffling noise got louder, punctuated by smacking lips. Ricardo smelled the hot, musky scent of a large animal and saw black fur.
There was a huge grizzly standing over him. No, it couldn’t be a grizzly. There were no grizzlies in the forest, they were chased out centuries ago along with the wolves and the jaguars. It must be a black bear, but it was the biggest damn black bear Ricardo had ever seen. It had to be over 800 pounds and seven feet long. It could have taken his face off with one swipe of its paw.
The bear’s muzzle was inches from his face. He could smell the animal’s breath and see its huge teeth. It was licking the vomit from Consuela’s face. It must have been attracted by the smell.
The huge beast shuffled closer and the claws of one paw grazed his shoulder. Ricardo winced with the pain. Consuela shook and the bear stopped licking her. It lifted its muzzle and sniffed the air, checking for movement. Ricardo fought back his panic, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding.
His every instinct told him to flee but he was trapped beneath Consuela. Stuck inside her. He couldn’t even stand, let alone run. Ricardo’s only hope for survival was to lie as still as possible and hope the bear didn’t notice him.
His blackened coccyx stung like crazy with the stones and the twig
s digging into it, but he didn’t dare shift his position or do anything to alleviate the pain. He couldn’t risk drawing the bear’s attention.
The bear’s long pink tongue cleaned all the puke from one side of Consuela’s face. It sniffed at her cheek, still hungry. The color was gone from Consuela’s face but it must have looked good to the bear. It gave her cheek a few exploratory nips then drew back its lips and sunk its long yellow teeth into the side of her face.
Ricardo bit his own lip as the bear shook its muzzle and tore off a ragged chunk of flesh. A huge gobbet of blood and saliva dripped from its jaws and hit Ricardo in the face.
‘Please, God, please let me black out again, please.’ Ricardo’s silent prayer went unanswered. All he could do was lie motionless beneath Consuela as the dirt of the forest floor dug into the blackened wound on his butt and the bear fed on his former lover.
He screwed his eyes shut and tried to block out the sound of the bear’s jaws crunching through Consuela’s cheek bone. He tried to disconnect himself from the situation. It had a strange familiarity about it. Like déjà vu or a story he’d heard before.
Then he remembered the urban myth. That had a bear in it too. Why was he living out some crummy campfire tale people told to gross each other out? Was that even possible?
He remembered a movie he saw once in a film studies class. Not one of the good ones with explosions and proper CGI effects, an old French movie with Orson Welles in it. The Immortal Story it was called. It was about a rich old creep who gets fixated on an urban legend about a sailor who’s paid to knock some old guy’s trophy wife up. He gets so obsessed with this story, that’s told in ports all over the world, that he ends up employing some babe to pose as his wife and paying a real sailor to impregnate her. All because he wants the story to have actually happened, at least once, somewhere in the world.
Is that what was happening to Ricardo? Was this whole thing a set up to bring an urban myth to life? Or does every urban myth have to happen to someone, at least once, somewhere in the world?
Ricardo cast his mind back to the events that led him here, in an attempt to find some answers.
CHAPTER 7
“Where you headed?” he asked as they pulled out onto the highway.
“The Coronado Forest,” Consuela said. “Do you know it?”
“Sure, land of the Sky Islands, went hiking there as kid. I can drop you off pretty near.”
“Pretty near? You mean you’re going to desert a gal in her hour of need? What kind of man are you?”
“A man with a schedule to keep.”
“A man who’s going to miss out on all the fun.”
“Sorry, but I gave up hiking when I was a kid.”
“Not my kind of hiking you didn’t.”
“And what kind of hiking is that?”
“As I said before, you’ll have to give me a ride to find out.”
She placed her hand on his knee and ran her fingers up the inside of his thigh. Her scent was stronger as she leaned into him, sharp and musky. Her fingers skirted the erection that was pressing against the top of his thigh. He felt the warmth from her palm and he throbbed against the tight denim of his jeans.
That was it. He was sold. He shot her a stupid grin and she knew she had him. She settled back into her seat and he ached with the sudden loss of her touch. The smell of her fresh sweat and cheap cosmetics hung in the air between them.
He lost interest in the traffic, snatching glances at her thighs and the faint outline of a nipple through her T-shirt. He started to imagine how she might look without any clothes. How her skin might feel against his. She saw him looking and pushed out her chest, inviting more attention, draping her arm over the back of the seat so that her fingers almost brushed his shoulder.
He began to run logistics. Ellen was expecting him that evening with the goods he’d bought. They were going to have dinner. He couldn’t make it back from the forest before midnight. Might be risky driving some of the back-roads that time of night. Not to mention the people Consuela was going to meet. So long as he kept his nerve and his head down he should be fine though. Truth be told he was looking forward to the excitement.
He’d call Ellen later and feed her some line. Ricardo felt a sudden pang of guilt when he thought of Ellen. She could be a real pain in the butt sometimes but she’d been good to him. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all.
Ricardo wondered how he might pull out of the deal now. He doubted Consuela would be easy to ditch. He remembered the customs official waving them through: “Good luck with that one.”
Consuela reached up and stroked his cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, as if she sensed he was wavering. She stroked the back of his neck with her nails and sent static charges right across his shoulders. The follicles on the back of his neck tightened and his hair rose.
Perhaps he was allowed the odd indiscretion. So long as he was careful and didn’t hurt Ellen by letting her find out. Ricardo didn’t mind lying. It was secrets he couldn’t take. They had a way of eating you up inside. He’d just have to keep these secrets deep inside him. Swallow them like the drugs Consuela had sitting in her stomach.
His thoughts were broken by a tinny text tone. Consuela pulled a disposable cellphone from her pocket and glanced at the screen. “Do you know the Mount Wrightson Wilderness off of Highway 19?” she said.
“Sure,” Ricardo replied punching it into his sat nav. “Don’t s’pose you got a zip code?”
Consuela shot him a wry look. “I don’t know where the meet is yet. As we get closer they’ll text me. That’s how it works.”
Ricardo was fascinated. This was totally outside his experience. The closer they got to ‘the meet’ the more his heart started to beat. He wasn’t sure what excited him more, the promise of Consuela or his involvement in an illegal drugs deal. He was trying to play it cool but his curiosity was becoming hard to suppress.
“So how do you, y’know, deliver the stuff?” he said. “Do you have to drink castor oil or something? Do they give you a bowl?”
Consuela regarded him with amusement. She opened her mouth and reached in with her index finger. She hooked it under a thin piece of twine tied around her back tooth and lifted it for him to see.
“I just pull it out,” she told him.
“Was it hard to swallow?”
“No, I just relax and let it slip down. No different to deep throat.”
Ricardo felt the sweat break on the back of his neck. Deep throat was the Holy Grail of sex for him. He’d never met a girl who could actually do it. A couple of his lovers had tried, but the results had been pretty ugly. Consuela saw his arousal and shot him a satisfied smile.
She got another text and directed him to the next turning. It was apparent that she’d done this many times before. It was unlikely that he was the first guy she’d taken up into the woods. That didn’t bother him too much. It just meant there were no complications. They both understood what this was. He could get in and out without any problems.
The worst type of girls were the limpets. The ones who clung on afterwards and wouldn’t let go. Who kept texting him saying they ‘had to talk’ then turned up at his crib unannounced. Consuela wasn’t going to be anything like that. There’d be no problems separating from her afterwards.
CHAPTER 8
Eventually they pulled up at the side of a dirt road near a wilderness trail. “What now?” Ricardo said. Consuela put her phone on the dashboard.
“Now we have to wait till they set a location.”
“How long will that be?”
“I don’t know yet, they’ve been held up. They’re a couple of hours away.”
“A couple of hours! I can’t wait that long. I’ve got to be somewhere tonight.”
“Oh come on, it’s not all bad. I’m sure we can think of something to do to kill the time.”
Ricardo let go of the steering wheel and turned to Consuela. A cold burst of anticipation filled his stomach. He saw the
fine sheen of sweat on Consuela’s chest. His breath quickened. Consuela raised an eyebrow, full of suggestion. He could hear his heart in his chest as he leaned in to kiss her.
Consuela placed her finger on his lips. It tasted of salt. “Not so fast,” she said. “You don’t think it’s going to be that easy do you?”
“But I thought ... you said ...”
“Oh I say a lot of things.”
Ricardo was confused. “What did I do wrong?” Consuela opened the passenger door and slipped out. She sashayed into the trees.
“You didn’t try hard enough,” she called out over her shoulder. Ricardo frowned, staring after her as she went further into the forest. She turned for a moment and placed her hands on her hips. “Well what are you waiting for—an invitation?”
He smiled, understanding the game now, then jumped out of the car and went after her. Consuela began to run, darting in and out of the tall evergreens and laughing as Ricardo closed in on her. Twice he nearly had her, but each time she gave him the slip.
Finally he pressed her up against a tall oak, his hands either side of her shoulders to block her escape. “Thought you could get away from me huh?”
Consuela placed her hands on his chest. Ricardo was warm from running, but her palms were hotter.
“Thought you could catch me huh?” she countered.
He made to kiss her again and she tilted her head to evade him. She ran her hands down his chest and stomach, letting them settle on his crotch. He let out a quick breath as she cupped his balls with one hand while the other stroked his erection through the denim of his jeans.
Ricardo closed his eyes and pushed his crotch towards her, lost in the sensation of her fingers on his cock. This gave Consuela the perfect opening and she ducked under his arm and was off again into the forest before he realized what had happened. “Hey, no fair,” he called and chased after her.