Ashes - Book 1 (5 page)

He gives me a confused look, but I ignore it and focus back on my task. I place the condom on the head of his cock and then lean forward and use my mouth to roll it down.

“What kind of movies have you been watching?” He groans and strokes my hair back so he can watch.

My mouth is full, so I don’t answer, just attempt to get it down to the base. I’m close, but have to pull away, gasping for air, and use my fingers to roll it the rest of the way down.

“Impressed?” I say, laughing up at him when I’m done and he claps his approval.

I stand and lift as far up on my tiptoes as I can manage. He still has to lean down to kiss me. He turns us and falls backwards onto the bed, bringing me down on top of him.

I’m grateful he doesn’t argue about our position this time. We’ve fought about it before, about my need to be on top. How he sees it as a lack of trust. Or as me being a control freak, which I kinda am.

I’ve tried to explain, but have been unable to get him to understand why I need it this way. Probably because I don’t understand it myself. I don’t know why I’m so terrified — no, that’s not the right word; I refuse to be afraid.

The thought of anyone holding me down, or making me vulnerable in any way, is unacceptable. So no doggy. No missionary. No bondage. It’s me on top or I walk out the door. End of discussion.

“Hey… what ya thinking about?” he asks, his fingers pulling my nipples and I realize I’ve been staring down at him, lost in thought.

I don’t answer, just pull myself back into the moment and lift up to my knees. Reaching behind me, I position him at my entrance and hold myself there. I love this moment when just the tip is inside, pressing me open, causing those nerve endings to come alive.

“Beth.” My name is raw, needing. I hold his eyes as I slip further down.

When he’s fully inside me, I give my body a moment to fully accept him. Then I move my hips in circles and lean forward, grinding my clit against his pubic bone. This is what I love, grinding down, moving back and forth. I don’t know why the girls in porn flicks bounce up and down when this feels so good.

Especially with Gage. His dick is so long, so thick, that he touches everything. I clench my insides and watch Gage’s eyes roll back into his head. He loves that.

I clench them again, harder, longer, tighter and grind back and forth on him faster. He curses and places his hands on my hips, moving me faster than I could move myself .

Leaning forward, I take one of his nipples between my teeth, sucking and pulling it into my mouth. His hands tighten onto my hip bones, causing the nerves there to dance. I cry out as the first wave of orgasm washes over me.

I curse our height difference, I need his lips on mine. I need his tongue in my mouth and mine in his, so I suck harder on his nipples, digging my fingers into his arms.

He moves me faster, back and forth and I can hear the wet sound of my body sliding against his. Then he lifts me and forces me down, impaling me, then doing it again.

When I’m able, I help him, giving him the friction he needs of me riding him. I bounce and slam down hard and come again.

He doesn’t let me catch my breath. He doesn’t give me a break. He bucks up and into me, then explodes.

He curses and continues to buck, his hands on my shoulders, forcing me tight against him. His body twitches, his eyes tightly closed as I watch him come unglued beneath me.

Slowly, he begins to relax and I lay my head down on his chest. His breathing is labored and I feel the rapid beat of his heart under my ear. I don’t move, just lie on him, still connected. When his fingers begin trailing up and down my spine, I fall asleep.

Chapter 5 - Gage

“Ken, my frickin’ truck won’t start again.” Turning the key, I’m only rewarded with the telltale click, click, click. “I think the alternator is bad … again. I just bought a battery not long ago.”

“You really should buy a new truck. That thing is gonna nickel and dime you to death. How many times has it been in the shop in the last year?” He points to his Harley. “My Kawasaki is at Stephanie’s place. Want to borrow it?” We’ve been at his apartment watching the game, and I am about to head home. If I can get home.

“Yeah, sure. That would be great, but I’ve got warn you, I haven’t ridden one since I about killed my ass when I was a kid.”

Ken laughs. “I think we all have one of those ‘almost killed my ass’ stories,” he says as we walk back into his apartment to grab his truck keys.

“No shit,” I agree, and catch the bottle of water he tosses me. I drink half of it, then the rest in a long, gulping sip. It was too damn hot outside to be tinkering on a truck.

“So, what did you do?” he asks and tosses me another bottle. “Road rash from hell or end up with a tree up your ass?”

Following him from the apartment, I remember that terrible day. “I’d just turned sixteen and I had a little Enduro, a Suzuki 250. I used to ride the shit out of that bike.”

We pile in his truck, which feels like a sauna. “Go on,” he says, turning on the truck and rolling down the windows. He flips the air conditioner on high and I am blasted in the face with hot air.

“Yeah, thanks. Encouraging me to bring up my painful past.” I am joking, but silently shiver at the memory.

“Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Rainbow, but not much has changed. All kinds of avocado farms, and I had to ride to Fallbrook to go to high school. That was about a ten mile drive. We had to take the bus to school. Not a big bus, one of those ten seaters. I hated it. Getting up early, getting home late. The day my father got me the motorcycle was heaven. Freedom at last. My mother hated it and claimed it was my father doing it just to piss her off.”

We are at a red light and I notice Ken staring over at me. I take another drink of water. “They divorced about a year earlier.” I grin over at him. “Don’t think it was the bike’s fault, it had been coming for years. Don’t ever … ever… stay married ‘for the sake of the children’.” I air quoted the words. “Divorce is better than living in hell.”

The light turns green as we move forward, then Ken slams on the brakes and a police cruiser hits his lights and siren and makes a u-turn, flooring it in the opposite direction.

“Anyway,” I continue, “back then, Highway 15 wasn’t built like it is today. It was Highway 395 back then, and the section between Rainbow and Fallbrook was called Blood Gap. There were no on-ramps. You basically had to haul ass out of the street onto the highway.”

“I was driving home from school one day in October. I still remember the date. October 13; it was a Friday.”

Ken snorts.

“Yeah, Friday the 13
th
. But of course, I was just a kid and thought old wives’ tales and superstitions were stupid. Not anymore.”

“I bet not.”

“Of course, I wasn’t thinking about it being the 13
th
or about which stretch of the road I was on. I had a date that night. Girl named Melissa, and I was crazy about her. I was hurrying to get home and shower so I could pick her up and …” I grin, remembering Melissa. I thought I was in love. I was such a dork.

“So …?” Ken urges me on.

“So, I was just passing the southern entrance to Rainbow and a truck pulled out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, but there was no time. I couldn’t even swerve. I knew what was going to happen. Dead silence. Then the front fork hit the left side of the back bumper. One of the corrugated thick ass country truck kind. Seemed like it took forever for my leg to also hit the bumper as I somersaulted across the turn lane about ten feet. It was a complete 360. I was flying through the air, but not spinning anymore.” I laugh and finish off my bottle of water. “I felt like I was on a magic carpet ride. Sitting and watching the pavement go by.”

Ken pulls the steering wheel hard to the right and we pull into a fast food restaurant and get behind a line of cars at the drive-thru.

“Hungry?” I ask, not knowing how he could be. We killed a huge plate of nachos and half a dozen tacos each while watching the game.

“No. Thirsty as hell. Looks like you are too. What do you want?”

“Chocolate shake.” I pull out my wallet and toss him a couple dollars. He tosses them back at me and I leave them on the seat.

After he places our order, he looks at me expectantly. “What happened after the magic carpet ride?”

I grin. “I’m telling you, man. I was in the air so long, I watched the rear spring land in front of me. Then I saw these mailboxes. There were four of them on a board, held up by a four-by-four on each side. I remembered the judo class I had. I tried to will my body to miss them. Don’t think it worked because next thing I know, I’m waking up after being knocked out for don’t know how long. When I woke up, I was lying in the gravel. I thought for sure I had to be dead because, strangely, I felt no pain.”

I stop talking while Ken reaches for our shakes and pays the cute, blonde girl at the window. She blushes bright red when I give her a little wink. I take my shake and puncture the top with a straw, then take a big sip. Or try to.

“Damn it all to hell. Why do they have to make the shakes so fucking thick you can’t suck it through the fucking straw?”

Ken laughs and then his cheeks hollow in while he tries to suck up a drink. “Damned if I know,” he says with disgust and sits it in the cup holder to wait for it to melt. I don’t give up that easily. I take the lid off and use my straw as a spoon. The ice cream is brutally cold and delicious. Heaven.

“Since I can’t drink, you can’t either,” he grumbles. “Talk.”

I grin and shovel in another bite before continuing. “At some point, I sat up and as I pulled my right leg up, I noticed the rip in the lower leg. How the hell did I hit that bumper and only rip my pants, I remember wondering. There was no pain, but I noticed a tiny trickle of blood running down and that’s when I noticed it. I was going into shock and I saw the gash. It was about six-inches long and open to the bone. My shin was laid out like a perfect fillet. No pain, and almost no blood.”

As if the description of my injury had woken his own injury up, Ken leans forward and scratches the place on his leg that’d gotten cut open when a crazy man almost ran him down last year.

“I then noticed the motorcycle parts all around me,” I go on. “The spring, the bike itself was almost cut in two. Still don’t know how the hell I lived through it. The mailboxes were scattered for about ten feet. I figured the bike must have hit them. I still had my helmet on. I was starting to hear again and I noticed people coming out of the houses that were nearby.

“A hand grabbed my left hand and I heard a voice telling me to ‘lie down, you’ll be fine, we called the ambulance.’ It was my friend’s sister, Barb; she was hot and a couple of years older than me. I didn’t mind holding her hand, that’s for sure.” I laugh at the memory. “You’ll love this. I took another look at my leg and asked her if I was going to lose my leg. She started crying and that’s when the pain hit.”

Ken laughs. “Bet you thought it was a goner for sure.”

I nod. “Damn straight. Turns out, it wasn’t my bike that broke the mailboxes. My right foot went right the fuck through one of the four-by-fours.”

“Shit.”

“Shit is right; guess it was better than my head. I could feel my shoe getting tighter. It was like a knife twisting and turning and stabbing all at the same time.”

I don’t tell Ken, but I cried like a little boy. Barb wiped the tears off my face. I’d thought she was hot before; she was like a goddess after that.

We are close to Stephanie’s house now and it is time to wrap up the story. “The ambulance came and the rest is a blur. I remember my mother coming to the hospital thinking I had just cut myself and then her look of surprise when the doctor showed her the x-rays of my foot. All told, I had seventy stitches on my shin and three displaced fractures in my foot. I was on a shit load of pain meds and had a cool cast for about six months. Haven’t been on a bike since.”

“Damn, dude, that sucks. You gonna be okay getting back up on that horse?”

I nod. “Yeah, no problem. I always planned to ride again, so I kept up my license. Just never bought another one. Might be a little rusty to start, but I’m sure it’ll come back to me.”

“Yeah … like riding a bike,” he smirks. “Come back by my place tomorrow and we’ll get your truck back to the shop, see if they can patch it up again. Seriously, you really need to think about trading.”

My ice cream is finally melted enough to almost be a shake. I stick the lid back and slurp at the straw again, this time with a little success.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Maybe get a Jeep this time, something like Beth’s. I love that thing.”

“You should,” Ken agrees. “Then you two would have matching cars.”

I shoot him a look. “Well, that just sold me off the idea. Thanks a lot. She’d freak the fuck out if she thought I did anything that might even smell like we were a matching anything.”

Ken slaps the steering wheel, roaring with laughter. “That is true. That girl is something else.”

I snort. “You don’t know the half of it. We’ve been hooking up for, what, eight, nine months now? She still has no trust. Still won’t let go of the reins. It’s getting a little annoying — a lot annoying, actually.”

We pull into Steph’s driveway and head back to the garage. He throws the truck into park, but doesn’t kill the engine. Turning to me, he looks at me with all seriousness. “Don’t give up on her. She’s special.”

I suck at my straw and remember sucking at her tits. My dick twitches. “Yeah, I know that. There’s so much to like about her, but …”

“But?”

“But I can’t see it working out. I’m not some little pansy ass who follows a woman around and does what she says.” I smirk at him. “Like you.”

Ken rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe this is coming out of my mouth because, as you know, a year ago I was as anti-relationship as anyone. But … man, having that one woman that fits you like a glove … it’s …” he blows out a breath, “special, and sexier than all those women I used to fuck.”

I think about that for a minute and do a quick comparison between Stephanie and Beth. Stephanie is sweet and loving, a caretaker who makes certain everyone around her is okay. She’s beautiful and strong, but in a really gentle, wallflower kind of way.