by Jenna Barton
And from there, I was given a tour of Justin’s life so far since graduating from Central North Carolina University. He was nice. He was attractive. He was employed as an accountant and was on good terms with his entire family, earning him a first round win in the nonthreatening sweepstakes. As he talked, I sipped the drink he bought for me, and nodded and tried to make sounds and expressions that looked like interest, which had to have been quite a farce for anyone watching.
Across the bar, the door swung wide, and like a vacuum had opened, everything around me—including Justin—disappeared. Walt stepped in, his head ducking a little as he always did when entering a room, even when the doors extended well past his head. He paused there to make a quick scan of the room. When he found me, he grinned and stepped to the bar where he stood for nearly seven minutes, watching me listen to Justin’s account of his most recent trip to Myrtle Beach for a golf weekend. Walt’s eyebrows rose and he inclined his head toward my tablemate.
What do you think?
I brought my empty glass to my mouth, glancing down at it as I shrugged my shoulders, and looked back to him.
After another stretch of observation by Walt and small talk from Justin, I cleared my throat lightly, because Dani and my mother always seemed to do that when they wanted to break into a lengthy stretch of talk.
“Damn, I’m just running at the mouth, aren’t I?” Justin looked sweetly, gently embarrassed.
“I need to step away for a minute,” I said, gesturing toward my empty glass. “Two drinks.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” He nodded as if I’d imparted the wisdom of the ages.
“But…erm, Justin, I should be honest with you. I’m here on a mission.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not really a mission. A task, actually.” I was certain I heard Justin telling himself the crazy train had just arrived at his station. Disappointment pulled at his kind face and he began to gather his now-empty pint glass. “Wait, please.” I gave him my most non-threatening, conciliatory smile.
“Uh, okay…”
“Justin, I’m dressed like this and by myself in this bar because my boyfriend told me to dress like this and come to this bar. By myself.”
Justin picked up his glass.
“No, that didn’t sound at all safe or sane. Please…let me try that again.” He waited for me to continue, but kept his glass in his hand. “I can’t believe I’m telling a stranger this. My boyfriend—no, this is really about me. I’ve not dated much. Mostly I’ve been friends with men I’ve worked with or, before that, men I went to school with. And we had sex occasionally. Not all of them, just a few.”
“Uh huh,” Justin said. “Well, Erin, I’m sorry to hear that but sounds like you were a good friend and a great coworker to those guys. So I’m going to head out—”
“Oh, no, please. Please give me a chance to say this right. Um…can I get you another pint? I owe you, after all.”
“No. I’m good.” He sat the glass to his side and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why didn’t you date? You’re h—I mean, you’re attractive. Obviously very smart.”
“Awkward.”
“A little,” he said, too fast for comfort, and shrugged apologetically when he realized it. “Sorry. I don’t think you’re really awkward, just maybe a little too nervous. You just need some social skills.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I don’t get why you’re by yourself in a place like this, though. You said you have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, I do. He’s—” I paused and decided to keep that information to the side. “I’m too nice.”
His eyebrows crumpled. “What? I mean, yeah—you’re nice. Why is that a problem?”
God, I was going to have to tell him. In detail. “It’s not that my behavior or the way I treat people is a problem. There are words and um…things…I’m not good at saying—er, being them.”
Justin went quiet, clearly piecing together what I’d babbled to him. And then, his head tipped back very slightly and something, an air or affect around him, went rigid. His voice dropped. “I see.”
Tension knitted between my legs and I crossed them, shocked and loving the sensation of pressure at the sudden knot of arousal there. “You do?”
“You have always been the good girl, right?”
“No, not good in the puritanical sense,” I said, pushing at my glasses. Which weren’t there. “I’m not stunted or blocked about…things—”
“Sex.”
“Yes, that.”
“Don’t you like fucking?”
“I…um, excuse me?”
“Do you like fucking?”
“Yes. Of course I do.” A waitress appeared from the dark aisle with another pint of stout and a glass of water. Without a word, she set them on the table and was gone into the shadows again. I glanced across the bar and found Walt’s stare waiting. “I like it.”
“You like fucking.”
“Yes.” I squeezed my knees together and glanced to Walt again, finding him engaged in conversation with a tiny brunette in a tinier dress. His eyes flicked to mine. Tight, tingling heat surged down my thighs.
Justin took a long drink of his stout. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s at the bar.”
“Where? The guy in the Panthers hat?”
“No, the one in the blue shirt. Dark hair. Tall.”
Justin’s eyes went wide. “Shit. That’s a big dude.”
“Oh, don’t worry. He’s harmless.” I shook my head at myself. “God, that sounded ridiculous.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He grinned at me. “You two looking for a third? I’m not sure I could take him, but I’d sure like to try while you sucked my cock.”
I choked on my water. Before I’d regained my breath, Walt was at my side, introducing himself to Justin in a particularly low-pitched tone.
Walt leaned toward my ear. “You okay? He didn’t—”
“No. No, I just surprised myself. Too much at once.” I pointed to my half-empty water glass.
“Erin was just telling me about her assignment for the evening.” Justin’s eyes never moved from Walt’s.
“Was she now?” I felt his chest expand. His arm slipped around my waist. “Right then, when she got all choked up? She was telling you about some kind of an assignment?”
The air between us all pricked and hummed, charged by them taking each other’s measure. Justin’s body shifted, so slightly I wasn’t convinced I’d seen it happen. When he spoke, though, I knew. He’d enjoyed one, maybe two seconds of an illusion of holding the power between the three of us. But some insistent, elemental thing in Walt asserted itself and put it to an end.
“Yeah. Um…about being too upright in bed or something.”
“Uptight?” Walt chuckled and raised a pint of deep amber beer to his lips. “She tell you that?”
“Not exactly. Something about words and not dating much.” His eyes glinted. “But she did admit she likes to fuck.”
“Well, I know that.” Walt settled me closer to his body, resting his hand on my thigh. I wobbled a little at the pressure of his hand, so close to the throb that was increasing with each exchange between them. He looked down at me, sending me blooming, wide open and reeling, right there in a dark, loud bar. Right there in front of Justin. Walt pitched his voice lower so his words would be just between us. “You doing okay, sweetheart?”
I shifted my head so my hair fell across my cheek, screening my face. “Yes, Sir.”
“This isn’t about that. You’re running the show.”
“I’m okay.”
“All right,” he said and kissed the top of my head as his hand moved higher on my leg. His fingers were so maddeningly close, and I shivered at their nearness. “You look beautiful. I knew you would look amazing in that dress.”
“Thank you, S—I…thank you. I like it. I’ve never worn this color.” It was a filmy, deep coral fabric, accented with white and gray cabbage roses tha
t managed to look retro without being a costume. The short skirt fell in a flippy circle above my knees—much shorter than I would have chosen, but not so short anyone would know Walt did not include panties in the stack of clothing he’d left on my bed. I leaned toward him and slid my hand over his. “I like all of it.”
“It looks good on you,” Justin added. “The dress is hot on you.”
Walt smiled down at me. “You think so too, huh?”
“Yeah, she looks…” He swept his hand toward my chest, then toward my legs. “Well, you can see it, man. Right? She’s totally fuckable.”
Totally fuckable?
Never mind giving him a fake name, I should have checked his ID.
“Totally.” Walt chuckled and inched his hand higher, bunching the layers of thin chiffon under his palm. So close now to the open, uncovered part of me he’d made wet and eager for his fingers. It must have registered against his fingertips because he made a low sound in his throat. His thumb crested over the bare flesh under it. When I looked down to my lap, I saw skin—his and mine. “You okay?”
He’d bared me to his hand and I didn’t care, so much so that I let my knees fall apart enough to give him better access to me. “I’m fine,” I said. Purred. That sultry purr was my voice, and those were my hips wiggling toward his hand while a stranger watched us. Justin’s eyes caught mine from across the table.
“Is her pussy wet?”
Walt’s index finger dipped along the inner ridge of my labia and I squirmed again. “Oh, God…”
“What do you think?”
“I’d like to find out for myself.” Justin looked from me to Walt. “You want to go somewhere?”
“No.” Walt dragged his finger along inside me again. “Not particularly. You good with that?”
“What? Just watch you? Here?”
“Sure,” Walt said and circled—finally—my clitoris. I gripped his hand, whimpering. “She waxed her pussy for me.”
Justin’s eyes widened a little, and he sat back against his barstool, apparently settling in to enjoy the show. “I don’t like bald pussy. I like hair on balls and pussy, both.”
His hand tensed, minutely, for a second against my body. Clearly, Justin had surprised him. Walt’s answer was his middle and index fingers sliding into a V around the tight flesh between them. Stroking, so slow. He drew them together a little, coaxing my clitoris between his rough knuckles, and I gasped again. “She left a little strip. I don’t like girls waxed all the way bare either.”
“She’s gonna come if you keep doing what you’re doing,” Justin said. “I don’t mind. I’d like to see her.”
“She will.” My hips agreed, pressing toward his hand. “Pretty soon, too.”
“So what’s her problem with words?”
“Erin, you want to tell him?”
I looked up at him. My breath was coming in quick pants across my open mouth and Walt’s fingers kept teasing, stroking, tipping toward my center, and all around us people drank their beer and listened to the competing sounds of a baseball game from the television over the bar and the music blaring, and not one person besides Justin knew. I glanced around the cavernous space, squinting into the darkness. No one looked back.
“Um…okay,” I said. “It’s pussy.”
“What? Really?” He wrinkled his brows at me. “Why?”
“It sounds—” I rolled against Walt’s hand again, nearly moaning out loud. He knew where to touch, for how long and how much, just how to draw this out for Justin. For me. And for him. “It sounds dirty.”
“The way you said it right then? It sounded hot. Really fucking hot.”
“It did, didn’t it?” Walt agreed. “Say it again, baby.”
“Oh…” God, so close. “Pussy.”
“Damn.” Justin groaned softly. “Say it again.”
“Go ahead,” Walt whispered beside my ear, dragging his fingers in perfect, unrelenting circles around the hard, swollen crux of me. “Say it.”
“Pussy.”
“You sure you don’t want to go somewhere, man?” The table bounced in time with his jittery legs. As loud as the music and crowd around us were, I could hear the empty glasses in front of us rattling.
“Nope. We’re good here. Aren’t we, sweetheart?” Walt looked down at me, again, smiling. He liked this. Liked seeing me like this and didn’t care if Justin or the bartender or the little brunette he’d talked to before saw me falling down into an incoherent, whimpering mess, because he was the only person who mattered. And me. Together, the things we could do with his will and my body when it was his—dirty, filthy, fierce and hard, and animalistic, and so, so sweet with love—this was us, too.
“Yes.” Yes, Sir. “I’m good.” I shifted forward and swirled my hips for him. Them. I met Justin’s gaze and ground against Walt’s hand again. “So good.”
Justin stared, unblinking, as his jaw clenched. “I bet you are.”
He wanted me. He’d wanted me before, too, but that was in the context of social niceties and pleasant talk and maybe a night together that would lead to a few dates. This was about fucking me. Justin had ceased to care about my interests and thoughts and routines. The simplicity and unpretentiousness of it made me laugh a little. I sounded drunk.
Walt wiggled his finger against my clitoris, making me gasp and giggle and flinch far too much for discretion. He laughed too. “What’s so funny?”
“It really is just about that, isn’t it? For men? It’s pussy.”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “It is, when it gets down to this. You ready?”
“Yes, please, Sir,” I whispered. There was no one and nowhere else but us, and his hand working into me, a private universe within a crowd. Leaning close, he rubbed hard and fast.
“Say it and come for me.”
Turning to his mouth, I whined hard and came into his hand. “Pussy.”
I was still shuddering through my orgasm as Walt pulled me to my feet. There were a few words between him and Justin, and then we were moving toward the door. His hand was firm around mine, and sticky-wet musked with my arousal. I was all over his fingers. I could smell myself over the scents of beer and sun-warmed wood and old brick.
A concrete sidewalk, and then gravel sounded under our feet as we crossed under the hazy orange light of a few streetlamps, and then his hand was in my hair, clenching it in his fist at the base of my neck. Smooth, cool metal skimmed my cheek and I leaned forward into it. Around us, it was dark. We were at the distant corner of the city parking lot. Secluded.
“It’s not always pretty, is it, baby?” His breath washed hot over my neck and I wiggled my ass into his hips, his thick, heavy cock pushing against me through his jeans.
“No, Sir. But I like it.” I drew my skirt to my waist. “Please.”
“Please? What, please?” He wrapped his arm over my hip, cupping between my legs and lifting me to my toes. “Please, what, in this parking lot, where anyone could catch you?”
“Sir, please fuck me.” I swayed against his truck and whined in a voice that hardly resembled my own. “I can’t wait until you take me home. Please, now. Here. Please.” The final, throaty, sounds had barely echoed into the air when Sir pushed me forward, spreading my legs apart with his muscled thigh and pinning me against the cold metal door in front of me.
He was inside me, to his hilt, his balls swinging forward into my thighs, held where he wanted me with a fist full of my hair. A hard orgasm coursed through me, making me spasm around his cock, and a hoarse cry escaped from me before I could swallow it back.
“Someone might hear, huh? Tell me what this is,” he growled into my ear. He thrust faster into me, his thigh still pressed against mine, and ground his palm against me in time with his hips.
“My pussy, Sir.” Another orgasm began to flare, this one from somewhere deeper, calling me to strain toward it as warm, wet coursed over his hand and beneath us.
His fist tightened around my hair, bowing my neck. “Yours? Or is it
mine?”
“Yours,” I keened, twisting my mouth toward his. “Your pussy, Sir. Yours. Yours.”
“Mine.” His arms circled me and he crushed me against his chest, whispering into my ear. His thighs trembled behind my legs, and he came hard, deep into me. “Mine.”
Chapter Eighteen
AUGUST WAS GOOD. Hot and humid, because it was August in North Carolina, and besieged with day-trippers from Charlotte, looking for cooler air than the frequent one-hundred-plus-degree days down south in the Piedmont. Sawtooth Falls was fed by cool spring water and under a thick tree canopy that shielded the forest floor from the stark sun. Many days, it looked like half of the state had finally discovered Poplar Branch State Park existed, decided to pack a picnic lunch and come visit. Walt even hired Tate as a seasonal employee, which made Lucy howl with laughter, but there weren’t many other applicants he would consider trusting to guard Poplar Branch.
Despite busy, sweaty days and longer shifts taking care of his filled-to-capacity campground, Walt hadn’t felt this good in a very long time. He didn’t bother to pass it off as anything but her, and anyone who knew him knew anyway. Erin was the reason for his very improved mood, and platitudes for it shouldn’t be set anywhere but in the sweet, soft lap of his girl.
It was sneaky and selfish, but a benefit of being the guy in charge was being the guy who decided who worked when. Walt scheduled himself and Tate to cover most of the first weeks of August’s overnight duty, which bought him a couple of Sunday nights away from his cabin and down in Callahan in Erin’s bed. But Sam still groused about being scheduled for a Saturday night.
“Sam Cross bitches and moans more than my Great Aunt Jeannie,” Tate said as he took Walt’s toybag from him. “In fact, he looks damn similar to old Jean. I’d nearly call him her drag king doppelgänger.”
“I’m not sure who should be more offended, Sam or Aunt Jeannie.”
Tate leaned into the truck’s open window. “Well neither one could touch that picture. Hello again, Erin. Isn’t that a pretty dress you’re wearing.”
Walt peered over Tate’s shoulder at her, still sitting in the passenger side, wearing the same dress she’d worn to Travis’s Taproom. He’d told her to put it on for him, and without a second’s hesitation over his motives or what message he was sending her because she knew damn well what that dress did to him, especially when she grinned up at him and answered with that pursed-lipped “Yes, Sir” as she padded off to the bedroom to change into it. Those were the times it felt right to lead her.