Chapter 18
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
I don’t know what just happened. Or what is still currently happening, but all I know is… I don’t want it to stop.
I grab a shirt from the back and tug it down, tossing the dirty shirt on the floorboard. In the seat next to me, tugging her top down over the most perfect handful of tits I’ve ever seen, Riley Rivers smiles at me. After begging to please me and dropping down on her knees for me in the rain and letting me cover her in my cum, she’s smiling at me. I start my truck and hit the road, excitement and lust brewing in my belly.
A snugness surfaces behind my ribs, so I push my shoulders back, trying to relax into the seat as I drive. “We just did that,” she says, redoing her ponytail. My eyes slide down her lap to her knees, dirty despite my best efforts. She follows my gaze and uses her palms to rid her knees of debris, her soulful blue eyes waiting on mine.
“I liked it,” she says, as if reading my mind full of concerns. Was I too rough? Was it too vulgar? Did we do too much? Was I too much? I glance at her again after peering back at the empty road. “I really liked it. All of it,” she clarifies, and despite the fact I didn’t ask, I do want to know.
“My house is up here, on the left, you remember,” she says, motioning toward the vicinity of where I ought to be going. Town is still a solid five minutes from here, but if she thinks I could forget where she lives, she’s crazy.
“I wrote an article about safe sex and then I didn’t have any condoms,” she says aloud, her tone somewhere between harmless comment and soft laughter.
“If you have a condom on you somewhere while you were out running, that would be weird,” I tell her, finally cracking a partial smirk as she eyes me across the cab. I glance at her legs, bare and still damp, and notice the scattering of bumps. I twist the dial on the heater, and reach behind me to produce another shirt. I keep clean clothes in my truck all the time—not because I’m giving side of the road tit jobs often, but because of client fittings. Saddle fitting, leatherworking, and handling horses can be a smelly job, one that Jo Jo has told me many times she has zero interest in smelling while she’s trying to eat dinner. Thus, the spare clothes. I’m glad now that I have them as Riley slips into an overly big flannel, the delicious swell of her breasts and hips now hidden behind green and black tartan.
“Yeah,” she sighs, tugging the end of her ponytail free from the collar of her shirt. “That’s true. A house key in my shoe would be okay but a condom would be very strange.” She twists in the seat to face me, one leg curled. “Why don’t you have any condoms on you? You’re single. You could have them in your wallet or glovebox.”
I glance at her but say nothing. She reaches for the glovebox, waiting for me to give her permission and I nod. It pops open with a small bang. We both survey the contents.
A tin of Altoids, which she pulls out and pops open. She holds it open to me and I can’t help but laugh.
“ Really? A mint tin with a pocket knife and matches?” she laughs, sliding the rectangle container back into the glovebox. Next she pulls out a pair of gloves and a rechargeable flashlight.
I glance her way. “And if there would have been a box of condoms in there, how would you feel right now, hmm, Miss Riley? You’d be sittin’ there thinking you let me have my way with your body only to find out I’m active enough to need rubbers on the go.” I shake my head and she closes the glovebox with a sigh.
“You’re right. As much as I wished you’d had one,” she says, growing a little shy around her admission that just minutes ago, she was desperate to fuck me. “I’m also kind of glad you didn’t.”
Not wanting to look like a womanizing creep, while important to me, is not the reason why I don’t carry condoms on me. And for some inexplicable reason, I need her to know that.
“I don’t carry them because I don’t need them.” I lay it out between us, and take quick glances at her as I drive, waiting for the subtext to click.
She blinks, licking her lips in a way that makes my cock angry against the zipper fly. “Oh,” she says, sitting a little straighter. Something passes over her expression, making her eyebrows lift and her lips turn down. Disappointment, maybe? “So you… had a vasectomy?”
My balls crawl inside me at the mention of the v-word. “What?” I balk. “No. No, I mean, I don’t need condoms.”
Riley stares at me. The heat does its job, my skin growing dewy and warm. The engine rumbles and rain splatters lightly against the windshield. And Riley just stares.
“You don’t need them,” she finally says.
We finally arrive at the fork in the road, and picturing her little blue house, I head east. “I haven’t had a reason to purchase condoms, Riley.” I come to a stop light where we’re the only one there, but I still stop. Then I look at her, my stomach getting woozy at the sight of her clear blue eyes pinned on me.
I remember those blue eyes from the farmers market. How lit up with happiness they were with all those high school girls around her. I still remember the smile on her face when she was talking to Jo Jo, a cloud of dust around her feet, the warm sun leaving streaks of orange against her golden hair.
She was so happy talking to Jo Jo.
Hell, the reason I’m even here is because of Jo Jo, in some sick way. I never would’ve stomped over to her place to confront her if she didn’t have a bond with Jo Jo so deep that she took her to Ink Time.
I’m sure Riley could get in trouble for that, and if it were another student, I have no doubt their parents would report her.
She risked her job to make my daughter happy .
If one of us needs Riley more, it’s Jo Jo.
The light turns green, but my foot stays on the brake. She takes my hat off finally, and sets it on the seat between us. I love the way she looks in it, and I’d love to see her in that and nothing else. I’d love to tie her to my bed and watch her writhe as I drag my floggers along her virile, young skin, her tiny nipples growing hard, my name on her perfect plush lips.
In another life.
“Riley, I got carried away back there and I’m… I’m really sorry,” I start, the sentiment so awful and rotten that my eyes fall to her bare knees when I speak. “For Jo Jo’s sake, I think… well, she looks up to you, Riley. She sure as hell don’t look up to me, so that means something to me, her loving you so much.” Finally I grow a pair and meet her eyes.
They’re wet, almost spilling over, and wide, set on mine. Her mouth is parted but she remains silent, listening as she slowly wraps her arms around herself in a self-soothing hug.
“I just want to preserve the happiness she gets from you because some days, I really think you’re the only person that can make her smile, Riley.”
She looks ahead, and uses the sleeve of my shirt to swipe a tear from her cheek.
My mind is racing.
I know what I’m saying is true and right, and that me and Riley should not see one another. We shouldn’t. And I know she gets it, somewhere inside, she gets what I’m saying because she cares about Jo Jo, too.
The idea that Riley Rivers wants me so bad that the idea of not having me anymore makes her cry?
“This street,” she says quietly, tapping the window. “This is my street.”
“I remember,” I tell her, because how could I ever forget a single detail about her? Behind my chest, my heart beats heavy and hard. I turn toward her street and end up at the end of her driveway, both of us staring at her house.
“It was a one time thing,” she says as I turn the heater down. “Got it.” She grips the handle and pushes down, throwing her weight into the old door to open it more easily. On her feet outside, she smiles, readying herself to slam the door closed.
I know I shouldn’t, I know we ought to stop before anything happens, but I can’t do it.
“No,” I say, causing her eyes to snap back to mine. “Not a one time thing.” It should be. But I can’t say no, especially when her relieved and hope-filled eyes fixate on mine. “Something we gotta keep private, though.”
She smiles, bright and wide, and my chest constricts. Along my thigh, my cock gets fat and happy at the sight of her glowing face. She looks good swimming in my shirt. And she looked goddamn gorgeous in my hat.
But my spit in her mouth and my cum on her tits? Fuck. I’ll never forget that.
“Yeah?” she asks, her tone bubbling with hope and desire. I feel the same, but I only nod, and place my hat on my head. “312-8599.”
“I’ll call you,” I tell her, the words sounding foreign. I haven’t called a woman in years. Yet, I can’t wait to hear her voice fill the line later when I’m alone in my garage, all my toys on display.
She smiles, and goes inside her house. Before I pull out of her driveway, I program her number into my phone, saving her contact as ‘Health Teacher’ in the event Jo Jo ever got hold of my phone. Getting my phone would require layers of interest, both in me and what I'm doing, so it’s safe to say she won’t get this far. Still, I have to play it safe .
I fire off a text.
Lock the door and if your ex shows up, call the police. Or me.
She texts back right away, and I envision her pressed up to the back of the door, nipples poking through my shirt as she smirks, practically melting for me.
I feel that same way about her, even if I don’t wear it as visibly as she does.
Riley
Door is locked. He won’t be back, but thanks for that.
I shove my phone away, and focus on driving home safely. Or as safe as I can with the memory of this evening replaying in my mind.
When I’m inside, shrugging out of my muddy boots, hanging my hat on the wall, Jo Jo appears, in sweatpants and a hoodie, her feet bare, a mug in her hands.
“Where were you?” she asks.
I move to the sink and fill a glass of water, drinking it all in one go, eager to ease the sting of desire from my body. I can’t get Riley off my mind.
“Went for a drive,” I tell her, because that is the truth. I realize it’s stupid to be so focused on making sure I tell her the truth right now when, if I keep seeing Riley, being honest with Jo Jo will be damn near impossible.
“I’m sorry,” she says, the two words tumbling out like she’s ripping off a bandaid. I remember that feeling, how much it pains you to apologize to your dad.
I grip the edge of the sink after placing my water glass in the basin. In the window above the kitchen sink, I catch her reflection. She’s watching me, waiting to see how I respond.
With a deep breath, I turn and face her, nodding my head. “Thank you. And I’m sorry I lost my temper.” I don’t make a move to get closer to her, but I do move toward the fridge, pulling out last night’s spaghetti and red sauce. I begin reheating the noodles, and when I see her still standing there, hold out an empty plate. She wrinkles her nose.
“I’m not hungry but… I–”
She falters, as if the courage has drained, or maybe just the desire to talk to me waned. Either way, she barely glances up at me when she says, “Just, I’m sorry about the piercing.” She stuffs a bag of Doritos under her arm, grabs a Coke from the fridge and treads down the hall, the slam of her door the new equivalent of “goodnight Dad, see you tomorrow morning.”
I eat dinner alone, and don’t text Riley again.
It’s too soon.
After the dishes are done I find myself in the garage, at my work bench, a bag full of finished goods ready for Hudson. I glance at my watch and find it’s only ten after eleven. Loose strips of leather are cut, and I have a blueprint in mind.
While crafting the perfect flogger, I think about Riley and how she fell to her knees for me. I smooth my fingers down each tailpiece, the leather supple beneath my touch.
She’s gorgeous, and she’d look sexy as hell with these marks along her thighs and belly.