“It’s okay. I understand.”
She shifted her body closer. Her jeans pulled tight against the insides of her thighs.
“Well, you did start it with that apocalyptic stuff.”
“Guilty as charged.”
He held up his hands as if under arrest. She smiled in a contemplative way and touched her palms to his like they were playing paddy cake. Her skin was soft, like touching fine fabric. Her fingers were slender and perfectly straight, ending in clean, rounded nails.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Her fingers slipped between his and their hands curled together. She pulled him gently toward her while she leaned in. He could snap both her wrists with one, fluid jerk of his own.
She paused only a few inches from his face. Her soft flesh pulsed in shades of orange and yellow as if her blood was boiling. Her lips opened just enough to let her tongue pass slowly over them.
“Well?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you kiss me?”
He leaned toward her and she shut her eyes and her lips protruded toward him like a pair of eager worms. He stopped an inch from her face, their noses almost touching.
“You’re killing me,” she whispered.
“Maybe we should go in your tent,” he said. “So your father doesn’t have to watch.”
When she opened her eyes, tongues of fire lapped across their glistening surface.
“Not even one kiss first?” she asked.
“Once I start, I fear I won’t be able to stop.”
She kissed him quickly on the cheek and pulled off her boots. She appreciated him for another moment and then scrambled toward the tent as if something wonderful were waiting inside.
Victor approached the tent slowly. There were times to hesitate and manipulate for control. There were also times to take that control and surrender to all his desires.
His belt buckle was already swinging open when he crawled inside the tent.
THIRTY-FOUR
Mercy couldn’t believe she had taken control like that. Grabbed his hands and teased him with the tongue on the lips bit. It was corny and almost stupid, but it worked.
Tracy Runner had been one of those girls who seemed always to be at the peripheral of every conversation, though this was not because she was an outsider; on the contrary, she was accepted into every group of girls either because of envy or intimidation. She had a full head of blonde hair, a lithe body with perky breasts and an ass that bespoke hours on the Stairmaster. Everyone said she could be a model and, of course, she said she had done a lot of modeling but wanted something more challenging. Like most girls who were hot and knew it, she could also be a real bitch. She would walk into Mercy’s dorm room and interrupt a conversation to tell Mercy and whoever else was in there that they weren’t going to get any boys sitting around reading. “You could clean up really well,” she said to Mercy. “Then it’s all a tease. Lick your lips, push out your chest, bend over. Sounds stupid but it works. Boys don’t want you--they want the illusion of being with a goddess. Or a whore.” When Tracy walked on to bother other girls, Mercy’s friend remarked that Tracy was a bitch and Mercy agreed, but her advice burrowed into Mercy’s head.
And now it had worked. She laid down on the floor of the tent, which was really just laying on a piece of nylon set over hard, bumpy ground, and ran her fingers through her hair while twisting her hips and arching her chest. Like a Victoria’s Secret model sprawled on a bed in a black babydoll with matching panties.
She felt sort of stupid and ridiculous and the ground was already starting to bother her with its jagged pokes, but a kind of intoxication had seized her and would not let up. Her body flushed with warmth and she wanted this guy to touch her all over, to kiss her everywhere. She wanted to feel his hardness and then, finally, feel that stiffness inside her.
This was stupid and foolish like a teenage girl out of her mind with horniness but Mercy was a college graduate. A virgin college graduate. She didn’t need to wait for someone serious, for potential husband material. She had tried that approach and yet here she was anyway.
She was going to make Tracy Runner proud.
When Victor entered the tent, Mercy could smell the day’s sweat on him. It made her body tingle, the thought of his sweaty skin against her flesh. She wanted to grab him, yank off his pants and taste him, knowing he would be sweaty and even stink.
He whipped off his belt in one fluid motion and she imagined him slapping it across her ass, telling her that he was going to give it all to her, every single inch.
The cynical voice of caution that usually reigned in her brain was still yapping that she was being stupid, imagining ridiculous things, fantasies fit for a whore, and that if she didn’t stop now she would always regret this, might even get hurt. Mercy pushed that yapping voice as far back in her mind as she could and reached for Victor. Besides, her father was nearby if needed.
Her hands found the edges of his jeans and slipped underneath.
When she had him in her hands his whole body quivered and he groaned deeply and she thought he was going to ejaculate already, just shoot his stuff all over her chest and that filled her with even more lust. Could she really be driving a man so crazy that he would lose control like that? Joel had never been like this, so eager.
No, he had commented on her stale-smelling clothes and clammy hands.
Like Dylan who thought she was just a kid, pecked her on the check and left.
She could have lost her virginity at some frat party, if she had wanted, but she had held out for something better. Such a joke. She never meant to save herself for marriage, just someone decent.
You think this guy’s decent? He was talking about the end of the world, remember?
It didn’t matter. She wanted this. She did. Maybe Victor would still be the weird guy hiding in the corner of Rune Books or maybe he would bring her flowers, take her places. Maybe she was a whore to him or maybe this was the crazy start to a passionate love affair.
Victor thrust himself back and forth inside her hands and grew bigger and bigger and she wondered if maybe that cynical voice wasn’t on to something, if maybe this thing would hurt her, rip her up, leave her bleeding. That was a silly fear, of course. It was bound to hurt when she had never had so much as a trio of fingers inside her before but women had sex every day and of that number, how many were left bleeding and injured?
More than you think, that cynical voice said.
His mouth dropped over hers and she tried to embrace it but his tongue dove between her lips and probed toward her throat. A tickle started in the back of her throat and she knew she was going gag and that would ruin the moment. As for gagging, what if he wanted to put his thing in her mouth? If he was this violent with his tongue, he might be brutal with his thing, fucking her mouth and not caring as she choked and gagged and her eyes turned red and bulged with the pain.
Then you seize his balls, that cynical voice said, morphing into the voice of the protector. You tear into them, pierce them, rip them right off his body.
She touched them now, delicately as if they might crumble under the slightest touch. They were small and hard, pressed tightly against his body. He groaned more urgently and his tongue aggravated something inside her mouth and she was coughing violently, pushing him off her.
He let her get air and her whole body rocked with the coughs. She turned on her side and coughed harder, eyes watering, and hoped this sensation would pass. Let that be a warning to you, the voice admonished. When you try to be the whore, you end up hurt.