Goode Vibrations

by Jasinda Wilder

  I smirked at her. “I didn’t notice any smell.”

  She grinned, snorting. “You weren’t licking my armpits.”

  “Yeah nah, not my kink, but if that’s what you like, I’ll give it a go.” I leaned into her, touched my nose to her arm near her armpit, and gave a sniff. “But, I will say, a shower wouldn’t go amiss first.”

  She cackled, shoving me away. “Ew. Jerk.”

  I just laughed. “I’m gonna get all the expensive stuff out of the caravan. It’s got locks, but they’re not the best and I’d rather not take any chances of my kit being nicked while we’re sleeping.”

  “Is that your polite way of giving me privacy to get in the shower?”

  I shrugged. “If you want it to be.”

  She held my gaze. “I mean, I won’t be using the bathroom in front of you, but I’m not going to be weird about modesty at this point.”

  “Right, because once you’ve had your mouth on someone, privacy seems a bit silly.”

  She hesitated. “About earlier…”

  “No worries, really.” I stood up, headed for the door. “Take your time in the shower. I’ll just be uploading today’s shots from my camera.”

  She just nodded and began rummaging in her bag. “Okay.

  When I got back to the room with my various bags of photography gear—my many lenses, spare cameras, SD cards, my iPad, power adapters, card reader adapter for the iPad and the camera connection adapter, cell phone and charger, Poppy was already in the shower. She’d left the door partly opened, enough that I could see the tub with the shower curtain drawn closed, and steaming escaping in coiling banks and swirls. She was singing quietly in a smooth and pretty alto, an old Taylor Swift song, by the sound of it.

  I connected my camera to the iPad, waited for Photos to load and synch today’s shots. I got some good ones, some crap ones, and a couple gold star ones that I moved to a different folder to edit and add to the ongoing project file. Then I got to Poppy’s section, particularly the macro stuff, and my brain about exploded. Fucking spectacular. And she claimed photography wasn’t even her main bag? I’d give just about my left arm to see her canvas work, if that’s the case.

  One shot in particular of the caterpillar was just wicked good. She’d caught it mid-arch, with a flare of sunspots behind it, casting its own shadow in the golden hour light. It was in perfect clarity, filling the frame, caught with a sense of motion, as if at any moment the photo could become a video. Without even thinking about it, I transferred the shot to Lightroom and started touching it up, brightening the light, punching up the colors, smoothing out the edges. Nothing noticeable, until you saw the final version next to the original.

  I heard the shower shut off, the curtain rings rattle as she tugged the towel down, and the rings scrape against metal as she dragged the curtain back. I couldn’t help but glance up, and my breath snagged in my throat. Dripping wet, hair was pasted to her cheeks and slicked back against her head and around her shoulders, fabulously long. Droplets of water dribbled down her forehead, dotted her upper lip, beaded on her shoulders…slid down her cleavage where she had the white bath towel wrapped around her torso over her breasts. It was a small towel, and barely covered her ass, leaving all of her thick golden-tanned thighs bared.

  I swallowed hard. Had absolutely no ability to look away.

  Had I ever seen such beauty? Never. She was fucking perfect—female beauty at its nadir, feminine allure crystallized and refined and shaped into the body and person of Poppy Goode.

  She caught me staring. “What? Never seen a girl just out of the shower?”

  “Seen the sunrise from Mount Fuji, sunset in the Gobi, seen the midnight sun in the Arctic Circle, seen glaciers crack off and slide down mountainsides, seen ice calve off the shelf into bergs the size of cities. I’ve seen flocks of birds so thick the sun goes dark, seen a lioness give birth in the wild, seen the bottom of the ocean and the top of the world. Seen some of the most beautiful women from just about every country on the globe, seen ’em anywhere from totally nude to garbed in the full panoply of state.” I couldn’t, didn’t try to look away from her, from the way the water caught the light and the way the towel both hid and revealed her curves all at once. “Never in my life have I seen anything so beautiful and breathtaking as you, right now, just like that.”

  She huffed, shaking her head. “Jesus, dude. What the hell do I say to something like that?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t have to say anything.” I forced myself to swallow, to breathe, to look away. “Just the truth, as I see it.”

  A brief but taut silence. “Errol?”

  I looked up. “Yeah?”

  She shrugged, embarrassed or awkward or…something. “Thank you.”

  I smiled. “Just the truth, Poppy. You’re so fuckin’ beautiful it’s hard to look at you for too long, sometimes.”

  “People have told me all my life that I’m beautiful. But when you say it, especially like that?” Another shrug, her voice quieter now. “I guess I…feel it. Feel beautiful, in a way that I don’t always feel.”

  She was within touching distance, and I had to touch her. I swiped a fingertip down the outside of her arm, through water droplets that still trickled over her skin, here and there.

  “You ought to feel beautiful always,” I whispered. “You ought to feel like the queen of the world. Like…like Venus, or Diana, or Aphrodite.”

  I wanted to touch her, to pull that towel off, to lick every last droplet off her flesh. But now she was clean and I wasn’t.

  “I’m…I’m gonna rinse off, too,” I said.

  She nodded. Glanced down at my lap, at the iPad. “Whatcha got there?”

  “Oh, this.” I turned it to show her.

  She tucked the edge of the towel in tighter between her breasts, and then took the iPad. “Wow.”

  “It’s yours. I edited it.”

  She stared at it for a long time. “I…wow. It’s actually…not bad.”

  “Not bad? Pop, it’s fuckin’ brilliant.”

  She smirked at me, bemused, or amused, or both. “Pop?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno. Sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s just…” She turned away, but not before I caught something.

  “What?”

  A shake of her head. “Like you with that playlist. That nickname is just a…a thing. I haven’t heard it in a long time.”

  “Sorry, then. Won’t say it again, if it bothers you.”

  A hesitation. “I don’t know if it does, actually. It’s been a long, long time. Since I was little.” She turned back to me, smiling, and it only seemed a little forced. “Maybe try it again sometime, and see how I feel about it.”

  I wanted to know, but considering how I’d avoided discussing my shit, it wouldn’t be fair to press her on hers. I pushed off the bed, headed for the bathroom, peeling my shirt off as I went. She was watching me, and I felt her gaze as sharp and intense as mine had been when she got out of the shower. I paused just inside the bathroom, contemplating shutting the door. Instead, I reached in and turned on the water to heat up. Glanced at Poppy, and then shucked my board shorts. Stood naked, facing the shower but looking at Poppy.

  She was motionless, eyes roaming me. Standing near the bed, iPad in one hand. Eyes wide, mouth slightly open. “Is this one of those moments where you’re trying to make the ice cream last longer?” she asked, after a moment.

  “Actually, this time, I think it’s more about getting clean so I can get dirty again. You’re all clean, wouldn’t want to get my grime on all that nice clean skin.”

  “Oh.” That answer seemed to appease her.

  I stepped into the shower and drew the curtain closed.

  As I showered, I kept wondering if I’d hear the rasp of the curtain rings, feel her step in with me.

  I never did, and it only made me hungrier for her.

  Poppy

  I didn’t want to get dressed. I wanted to stay naked, catch him fresh out of the show
er, dripping wet and steaming.

  I found excuse after excuse to not get dressed, to stay wrapped in my towel, even when the air conditioner’s icy blast made me shiver.

  Eventually, the water shut off—and by eventually, I mean half the time I was in the shower, and probably because I’d already used most of the hot water. He tossed the curtain aside and stepped out. He had forgotten or not bothered to bring a towel closer than from the rack over the toilet, and with the layout of the bathroom, that meant he had to either get one from inside the other end of the tub, or get out and reach over the toilet—which is what he did.

  Naked, water sluicing off of him.

  At the sight of a naked Errol, my nipples tightened, hardened to points, aching with intense and immediate need, and my center pulsed with damp arousal. He was a god. Every inch of him was lean and hard and corded with ropy muscle. He wasn’t…how should I put it? Neither Instagram fitness model shredded nor Mr. Olympia bulky. He was a whole different kind of fit—he was lean and hard from a life lived doing hard things. His arms would stretch a T-shirt sleeve, and his abs were cheese-grater defined, his hips angular, his chest flat and hard. His thighs spoke of an ability to hike miles on end carrying all his gear. His hair, wet and flat, hung to just past his shoulders—it would curl up and shrink as it dried into wavy locks just shorter than shoulder length.

  He grabbed a towel, let it drop from his hands to open it up, patted his face dry, his beard, and then dragged it over his head, grabbing the ends to shimmy it over his back, his buttocks—and holy moly, that ass was tight, so hard, so round, I just wanted to bite into it like a fucking apple. He whipped the towel around front, scrubbed off his abs and palmed his junk with it. And the way he handled his manhood was with rough familiarity, obviously, but I felt he should have been more reverent with such beauty. It was so gorgeous, his cock. It needed to be carved out of marble and displayed as the paragon of male glory—this is what a real man is hung with. Just my opinion, obviously, and no man is less of a man because of what he may or may not be packing between his legs. I’ve had as much fun with a small dick as a big one, but…it is true that size matters. It’s just a matter of subjective opinion, woman to woman, what that perfect size is.

  Errol was perfect, for me.

  So perfect. I wanted to hold it in my hands, pet it. Kiss it. He had such a pretty penis that I just wanted to snuggle it. Even slack, it was beautiful, which was quite a marvelous trick, since most limp dicks were nothing short of comical. His was just…pretty. This morning’s activities rampaged through my mind as I watched him finish toweling off.

  His fingers between my thighs, under my skirt this morning. His cock in my hand, filling my mouth until my jaws ached to take all of his thick, turgid, salty inches. His mouth on my pussy, the way he made me come, as if he was greedy for my orgasms.

  I knew I was for his—I wanted to feel him come again. And again. I wanted to make him shout the way he had, out of control, riled and wild. I wanted to do such dirty things to him, and all of them were in my mind, all at once.

  The towel held in front of him, draped from chest to dangle tantalizingly in front of his sex, he swaggered into the bedroom. Blueblueblue eyes on me.

  “You’re looking at me funny, Poppy.” His voice was low, rough.

  I nodded, distracted by my thoughts and by the ravaging need I felt to yank that stupid towel out of his hands so I could resume ogling his body, which was, in short, a work of art along the caliber of Michelangelo's David. In fact, now that I think of it, Errol was a living embodiment of that sculpture…just with a way bigger cock and his own unique facial features and hair. But the body? That was Errol.

  “What are you thinking, Pop?”

  That nickname.

  It didn’t hurt. Just…twinged a little. But in a good way. It’d been so long since I’d heard it that it was just…interesting. And the way Errol said it? It made me shiver. That fucking accent. Jeez, until him, I hadn’t known just a voice, the timbre and the accent, could make me tingle with desire.

  But that intimate tone, just then? Whaddya-thinkin’, Pawp? It set my skin to pebbling.

  I met his eyes. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, still in my towel. Cold, and now shivering from desire as much as chill. Nipples so hard you could cut diamonds with them, the metal making them tingle until a single breath on them would have made me quiver with near-climax.

  “What am I thinking?” I repeated.

  He stood in front of me, towel still held casually in front of him. “Yeah. You know, penny for your thoughts kind of thing.”

  I gazed up at him. “I’m thinking…you don’t need this.” I yanked the towel away. Tossed aside. Immediately, his cock began hardening. At face level, too. Yum. “I’m thinking…well, a lot of things. None of them…wholesome.”

  He lifted his chin to stare down at me with arousal and ego and curiosity and heat all stampeding in his expression. “Is that so? Do share, then, please.”

  “Details?”

  “Every last one.” The roughness of his voice, like a file across stone, caressed my skin, made my core feel hot and taut and heavy with need.

  “I’m thinking of all the things I want to do with you.” I let my eyes linger on his cock as it unfurled, lengthening and thickening to a full and glorious erection before my eyes. “To you, to be more accurate.”

  “I wonder if we’re thinkin’ of the same things,” he growled.

  “I’m thinking about shoving you onto the floor right where you’re standing and riding you until your cock hurts. I’m thinking about bending over this bed and begging you to pound me from behind.”

  “Ohhh you dirty girl, you,” he snarled, his grin sinfully eager. “That last one you mentioned has my interest.”

  I stood up. “Does it, now?”

  “Sure does.” He stepped close. His hands slid around to my backside, lifted the towel to palm my ass cheeks, one in each hand. “I’ve got this image, see, of you bent over that bed so I can see those big tits of yours hanging and swaying, and doing exactly as you said—pounding into you from behind.”

  “How would you do it, Errol? Slow and gentle, or hard and fast?”

  “Bit of both, I’d say.” His grip tightened. “What I’ve been picturing is going in nice and slow at first, just so you can get used to me, you know? Then a bit faster, a bit harder. Then I’d pound you until that thick, juicy ass of yours starts shaking.”

  I laughed. “Thick and juicy?”

  “Please, take it for the compliment I meant it as, yeah?”

  “You make my ass sound like a steak.”

  “Well, I can’t think of anything I’d rather eat than a nice, thick, juicy steak. So, yeah. Your ass is exactly like a steak, in a complimentary sort of way.”

  I laughed. “I’m complimented, don’t worry.”

  He gnawed at his lower lip, and I wanted to take that lip from his teeth and soothe it with my tongue. “One problem, though, Pop, and I just thought of it this second.”

  “What problem?”

  “I don’t have any frenchies with me.”

  I cackled. “You don’t have any what-now?”

  “Frenchies. Frangers. Jimmy hats.” He laughed. “Y’know. Condoms.”

  “Frenchies, though?”

  He shrugged, laughing harder. “Yeah, a bit weird, I guess.”

  I frowned at him. “You don’t have any?”

  He tilted his head, thinking. “Well, I might. In a bag I carry my extra stuff in. The random shit I might need but don’t bring into the hotel with me all the time.” He shrugged. “I’ll go look.”

  I glanced at him. “I’m more dressed than you are.”

  “You’re in a towel.”

  “And you’re naked.”

  “You’re all but.”

  “What’s the bag look like, and where is it?”

  “Back of the caravan, behind the seat. A red backpack. Old one. One strap is almost off.”

  “I’ll get it.”
He just nodded. “I’m not sure there are any in there. It’s, um, been a while, if you know what I mean. And, ah, the last time I needed one, I didn’t provide it.”

  I just smiled. “It’s okay. We’re both adults, no need to be weird about it. I haven’t needed them myself, either, so I’m certainly not carrying any with me.”

  I tightened the towel, opened the door and set the latch bar so it wouldn’t lock behind me, headed for the van. It was a hot, sticky, humid night, the air thick and moist and close. Bugs fluttered around the parking lot lighting, and a shred of grayish clouds floated lazily past a quarter moon. The parking lot was empty but for our car and one other near the office—the night clerk. The clerk himself was outside, on a cell phone, a cigarette in his mouth. He eyed me without curiosity, and turned away, walking back inside, tossing his butt aside with a spray of orange sparks.

  I opened the rear hatch, where Errol’s other nonessential gear was stowed. A middling-sized black duffel bag, half-open, showing a dirty pair of running shoes and a pair of rubber rain boots. A small bag that contained some kind of headphones, by the look of it. The red backpack, which I shouldered.

  And a violin case. Fiddle case, rather. Black. Old. The silver clasps were tarnished with age. Scratches, rends, stains. A tag attached to the handle, newer leather, with a name scrawled inside—B. Sylvain. Under that, in smaller, neater letters—E. Sylvain.

  Weird.

  I flipped up the latch, feeling like I was prying, digging into secrets. Opened the lid. Within was, well, I’d call it a violin. A fiddle. It was dark cherry, glossy and warm with age, yellower streaks here and there. Soft strings, exquisitely carved head. God, the thing was old. You knew just by looking at it. I touched a string, the largest one, and the sound that emerged was honey and sunlight.

  The bow was nestled in the lid, held in place with a swiveling knob. Aged, fraying horsehair, radiating elegance and art.

  “That’s sort of a private thing, there, Poppy.” Errol’s voice behind me. Tight, upset.

  I jumped a foot in the air, letting the lid close with a soft thump. “I’m sorry. I know, I just…” I turned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”