Stolen Virgin

by Viv Phoenix

  Sy

  I wanted to run when Callum Blake pulled his old, red Chevy truck into my path.

  It was too damned hot to run.

  Aside from his eyes gobbling me up the way they always did, he was courteous and kept his distance. I let him give me a lift. I had my phone in reach. His eager eyes, and the thought of how he and the inside of his truck might smell, almost kept me from saying yes. But it was too damned hot to walk.

  He acted like a gentleman, opening the door and standing back to let me climb up there.

  His muscles writhed all over his arms when he swung into the driver’s seat.

  Callum smelled okay, not as bad as I expected. Hell, he smelled good. He smelled like a man.

  With a shy smile, he handed me a bottle of iced water from his cooler. His fingers brushed mine, sparked through me like electricity and lit up my nipples. Wow. First time I felt anything like that. The water cooled me so good going down. It changed my view of Callum Blake from scary as hell to all kinds of hot, dangerous hot.

  My parents called the locals white trash. Mom warned me to stay away from the guys. She said not to even smile. ‘That kind of man takes a smile as an invitation for sex.’ I couldn’t help wondering if there was any truth to that. She made it sound like I was in danger of losing my virginity to a cave man. So why the hell did we move here? Dad seemed infected with an ideal of healthy country life, as long as we stayed on the estate and the locals stayed on the other side of the high wall with the electric fence on top. He got Great Danes and a security system, too. I hoped paranoia wasn’t hereditary.

  I wriggled on the seat. The sweat dripping between my breasts wasn’t just from the heat. He made me nervous. Callum was the biggest man I ever saw close up. He could play basketball. I couldn’t believe the size of his feet. Trish said feet and hands were a giveaway for dick size.

  The fingers on the steering wheel were inspiring. They weren’t sausage fingers, though. He had callouses and scars from working with his hands, but his hands looked, well, sensitive. I imagined his long fingers stroking me like he wanted to make music with my body. I blushed and made my hair fall across my face to hide.

  The man was a stranger, so by the dictum drilled into me for years, I was not supposed to be in his truck. I took another peek.

  Callum’s beard and mustache didn't hide his raunchy mouth. He kept trying not to look at me, like maybe he was raised not to stare, but like me, he couldn’t help himself. He made me nervous, but I kind of liked knowing he enjoyed my looks. Mom was on me again to lose weight.

  I focused my eyes at the side window. The endless woods going by got me down. It got to me, having nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no friends out here. If the parents wanted to torture me, they found the right place for it.

  I peeked at my neighbor’s tattoos. His arm muscles bulged so much, must have been tricky to ink him. I drove to a tattoo place across the state line when we first moved to this hellhole. Wild to watch the artist work, the needle prick-pricking at defenseless flesh, transforming it from plain to art, a bleeding rose. It beat anything going on around here.

  The artist, a skinny guy with long black hair and art all over him, teased me about liking to watch. Yeah, I liked to watch.

  I thought about it being done to me, the needle taking my skin for the first time, like cherry-popping my tender flesh over and over. So hot. I wanted it. But I had no doubt Dad would cut off my allowance, if not disown me, so I settled for watching, late into the night, with the city roaring around me like a beast.

  Besides, while the tattoo artist had dark, gleaming eyes like the undead, rock-star black hair, and magic hands, he was willow-thin. What turned me on was a strong-looking man. A man like Callum could pick me up like I weighed nothing. He could man-handle me with no effort at all. My size wouldn’t be any challenge to a man with big guns like those inked arms so close I could lick the nearest one. Might happen by accident, the way his truck jolted along the road.

  Callum had old-fashioned ink like you’d see on a sailor, not trendy tats. My greedy eyes searched him. The patterns on his body made thick murals, like he’d been getting tats for years, the designs building up like cave art that became richer and more varied over time. I found the first rose on his shoulder, the second one on his arm. Were there more, hidden by his clothes? I had to stop thinking about having a treasure hunt on his naked body. The man looked dangerous for real. For once in her life, my mother might have been right.

  He kept his eyes on the road as he took a curve. The truck rattled like an old washer about to die in the spin cycle. I grabbed the seat.

  He sighed, and I caught a whiff of beer. No wonder he drove so slow. That, and being distracted by eying me. He might be big and scary, but at least he wasn’t a reckless driver. I got a sense he was trying hard to make me comfortable. I liked that. Callum was probably only a few years older than me, under thirty for sure. Maybe twenty seven. It was hard to tell. He had a couple squint lines and a lean, determined face. Made me think of the line, hungry like the wolf.

  Damn if he didn’t look good enough to eat me up. Trish was right. I had a filthy mind. I couldn’t help it. Callum looked dangerous-hot, like he might be wanted for something, something real bad.

  I quivered where my cut-offs divided me.

  His light-colored eyes drilled right into me with every glance. From when I first caught him staring at me in town I got the feeling the man thought dirty, dirty things when he eyed me. Those were some slay-you-dead eyes, like a rock star or a vampire. Made me want to do bad things. So bad, I should never look into that man’s eyes or I might be lost. This could turn into one of those news stories where the girl is never found. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.

  He held the wheel steady, kept his eyes forward except for those sly glances that made me melt. I returned the favor through the curtain of my hair, hoping not to get caught.

  His worn jeans hugged lean hips, an amazing ass I’d seen full on when I watched him load his truck at the market—and an unbelievable bulge. Sitting next to him made me squirm. I could feel the sexual heat and masculinity coming off him in waves.

  Next to this big, tall, bulging specimen of manhood, the guys I knew in San Francisco were some other species. Contrary to my parents’ bigoted, classist theories, rich white people didn’t represent the pinnacle of evolution. In fact, based on the physical perfection sitting so close to me, privileged people, especially the guys my parents wanted me to date, were an inferior form of life. When the apocalypse came, I’d sure as hell rather have Callum at my back than my parents or any of their set. Without servants and electricity, they’d be helpless. They’d die off. Nothing could be better for the planet than all the over-consumers perishing, starting with the moron billionaires.

  I went hiking and camping as much as I could, all my life. It was my best escape from the over-sanitized, over-privileged, and narrow-minded world I lived in like a monkey captive in a cage.

  I couldn’t help comparing Callum and his old, well-loved, classic Chevy truck to that alien world. From the time I could read on my own, I used books to escape the strange people who called me theirs but did nothing but find fault with me. I was supposed to complete the family and be an attractive accessory in photographs. Instead, I was chubby from the beginning, and rebellious, and imaginative. I became a constant source of disappointment and embarrassment. They hated my scouting adventures, my art classes, my pulp fiction. If they ever found my secret stash of dark erotica, they might die on the spot. How those cold, repressed people managed to conceive me didn’t bear imagining.

  I brought myself back to the stranger driving me through The Hollow. We bounced over the worsening road. I understood his complaint that his truck wasn’t acting right. The steering had too much play, but he kept it steady with careful attention and skill. I had no doubt he’d fix it. The truck showed great care, from its polished chrome to a mended split in the seat. I leaned forward and set the empty water bott
le between my feet, sneaking a better view of my hot neighbor.

  His big hands gripped the steering wheel. Thick facial hair framed his mouth, not the douche bag scruff worn by most guys I knew. Grow it or don’t, but don’t give me sandpaper face. His eyes were sort of inset, like a caveman’s. He didn’t look bright, but the way his eyes shifted, always alert, he looked clever. It wouldn’t do to underestimate Callum. He might be crafty as a fox, as the old timers say in these parts.

  I told Dad from the beginning this was no place to build a mansion, out in the middle of squatters and dirt farmers. Never could reason with Dad. In some weird way, I think he enjoyed feeding his prejudices and feeling superior they same way racists did. I didn’t share my parents’ habit of denigrating other people, but I was at a loss for how I’d find friends in this place. The only people my age I’d seen worked menial jobs, or worse, had to scrape by to survive. Local men fed their families via poaching and, I heard, by picking up road kill. Women raised chickens, cleaned houses, waited tables at the dives in and around the speed bump town.

  That’s where I noticed Callum, sitting out front of the market with the old men, watching my legs, watching my everything.

  The truck swerved a tiny bit. I caught him checking out my thighs.

  Those pale eyes of his gave me a chill. It felt him thinking things when he looked at me. Dirty, dirty, things.

  I didn’t want to, but I felt excited by his hungry staring. He was the kind of man my mother warned me about. She would crap furs if she ever caught me with him. She went along with Dad moving us here, but I heard her arguing with him. Her biggest fear: ‘Sy will take up with white trash and give us white trash grandchildren. Is that what you want, Mister? Is it?’ Dad retreated behind his newspaper and didn’t say a word.

  That was a clue to why Dad wanted to live here. He was a nostalgia freak. He read a paper newspaper instead of subscribing on an ereader. A local boy brought it on a bicycle and tossed it over the wall to land on the porch with a thud. That made Dad insanely happy. He still grinned every time. I bought him an e-reader for Christmas, but I never saw him use it.

  Callum gave me a shy smile and I dared to smile back.

  I think Dad expected me to go out with the wimpy sons of his wimpy friends until I married a bank account big as his. Their fight about mom’s fear that I’d copulate with a local and produce white trash babies disturbed me. It was one of the few times I ever heard my reserved mother become shrill. She wasn’t affectionate, but she had a passion for appearances. I don’t think she cared much about what I did in life as long as I didn’t do anything that would reflect badly on her. She was my self-appointed fashion police and not much more. I envied Trish and most of my other friends their close relationships with their moms. Over the years, I’d been closer to some of the servants than I was to my parents.

  Callum was clearly the strong, silent type. I didn’t mind it. This was already the most exciting day I’d had in The Hollow. The mystery of him kind of thrilled me. Mom and Dad forever told me to shut up. Got to where I could entertain myself in my own thoughts. I had to, or I’d go crazy.

  I turned 19 after we moved here. The reason I lived at home instead of getting away from this tiny rural town they moved us to was Dad said he’d cut off my allowance. He meant it, too. His mouth clamped down when there was no wiggle room. I used to be able to get my way with Dad, but once I developed a few years ago, he seemed to have a policy of not looking at me, and I wasn’t allowed to sit on his lap anymore. I had no way to get my way. Maybe he didn’t like it that I developed so well.

  Model-thin Mom hated my body. I flaunted my breasts and ass. I had a big round ass like my favorite Latina singer, and I showed it off the way she did. Gave me a feeling of power. Men followed me with their eyes. They couldn’t help it. I had no power at all at home, and barely any attention, but when I walked into town, I commanded the place. Guys tripped over their own feet to do any little thing for me.

  My walks kept me sane. Other than texting my friends, who were mortified for me, walking around what my parents called White-Trash-Ville was all the fun I got in life. I sent my friends pictures of fences decorated with hubcaps, mossy trailers with satellite dishes on top, barns covered in antlers, yards crowded with rusting cars, toilets hosting wild plants. A yard full of hand-painted plywood figures flashing bloomers, patterned boxers, and hairy butts took the prize. Somebody went to a lot of effort to create that effect, a mass-mooning ritual. I wasn’t sure if it was meant as humor or contempt.

  Someone should create a guidebook, like what you’d take to Mexico to help figure out what you’re looking at. Trish’s responses made me laugh so hard it hurt. She had a biting humor that made it all seem more ridiculous and human than painful and bad. I needed that perspective to keep from having too many bad thoughts at night. Without the breaks of humor making the misery smaller, I’d be on the train into the dark that never reaches light.

  Dad might have some purpose in his madness, some reason to bring me to this hell aside from a desire to wreck my life, but I couldn’t fathom it.

  Taking away my car was the worst thing he could have done to me. I broke curfew our first week in this hell. I drove to the nearest attempt at civilization a couple hours away. In my relief at being with people I could relate to—and watching blood dripping down a muscled torso—I lost track of time at the tattoo place. Dad confronted me on the porch and confiscated my keys.

  So I was not only living in a hell hole that made my girlfriends laugh, I was without wheels, too.

  It made me want revenge.

  Callum

  “This is the driveway to the house. We’re just about there.”

  She hung on to the seat as we bounced down the track. Pretty sure wagon wheels made the first ruts. She bounced more than I did. I kept an eye out.

  No place out here for for her to go. Our house, my house now, sat way out in the woods with just this long dirt track to it. If you didn’t know the house was there, you probably wouldn’t find it. We didn’t ever clear the witches broom back from the sides none, just drove through it.

  The soft branches closed over the driveway as I took Sy home for the first time. Provided good cover. There was no sign of a turn-off unless you knew where you were going. The tall, dusty green bushes got covered with yellow flowers in their season. Their seedpods popped and let out little black flecks. They’d done that, and their branches hung limp from drought.

  Even if someone followed us, they wouldn’t find where we went. No one saw me pick her up, and we didn’t pass no one on the way, so no one would think of her being with me. I never approached her all those times I saw her in town, never messaged her on Facebook. Nothing linked her to me at all.

  Learned a lot of useful things on TV. I liked crime shows. Weren’t no crime to claim the woman who’s meant to be yours. I just needed time for Sy to appreciate that fact.

  I parked Betsy right in front of the door. Quick as a flash, I jumped out and let Sy out of my truck, hustled her inside.

  She rounded on me, and I picked her phone out of her pocket and slipped it into my hunting jacket next to the door. Trick I learned from my third brother Jacob before he left for the city to try his light-fingered ways on bigger crowds.

  Sy didn’t feel me lift it, just stood there with her hands on her hips telling me to take her home. I let her talk the way I saw Pa do with Mama for years.

  She’d understand things soon.

  Pa was right, you get to a point where you don’t have to hear none of it, just nod and make sounds here and there until she winds down and stops.

  I opened the fridge, a big thing that stood where Great-grandpa’s ice box used to be.

  “This old fridge keeps going strong.” I patted the top of it. “We still have a pantry, and we have a deep freeze.” I made conversation like natural. I wasn’t going to let her worries ruin our first date. One look in the deep freeze and Sy’d know she got picked by a good provider. I’d put by ple
nty of meat for winter. I started preparing for more mouths to feed soon as Sy moved to town.

  I got out the pitcher of iced tea, slices of lemon, a tray of ice cubes. At the counter, I fixed up the glasses and poured the tea. The whole house gleamed from being cleaned for her visit. I felt proud.

  Disappointed me she went right for the door while my back was turned.

  Sy struggled with the door bar. She stuck her finger in her mouth. Hot. Must of got a splinter. I could of warned her, but she hadn’t stopped talking since she walked in the door.

  “Come on, now. Have a seat. Just a little hospitality. Of course I’ll take you home. Relax, Sy. Keep me company a few minutes, and we’ll be on our way.” I pitched my voice to match the earnestness of her favorite actor. I nodded to the seat across the table.

  I had a clean gingham cloth covering the scarred table Grandpa made. I kept the place ready for company. I learned that from Mama. We didn’t have company much, but we were always ready.

  Sy sidled over and sat. I pushed her iced tea closer to her.

  The look on her face was all suspicion. I took a long pull at my sweet tea.

  I thought of telling her there weren’t any drugs in it, but I didn’t want her to think such a thing would cross my mind.

  Pa wasn’t school smart, but he was a crafty man. Taught me to know when to keep my mouth shut. It was hard for me. I was like my old man. I could talk a blue streak, and being alone so much, I ached to talk to the pretty lady. It took all my willpower not to stare at her. Her fast breathing had her top swelling and gapping.

  I leaned back and drank my tea like I had a stunner from up the hill sitting across from me every day. With her eyes darting, she put me in mind of a raccoon in a cage. The more so because her eye makeup smeared. Put me in mind of those girls in the magazines wearing so much makeup they looked like they was in a fight. Gave me bad thoughts, their swollen mouths and bruised-looking eyes.

  Sy took a sip of her tea. Her lips marked the glass. Her tongue slipped between her lips.