ConneXions (2 page)

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5

The Ties That Bind

I woke up this morning on fire...

At some stage during the night or early morning I'd awoken cold and shivering.  Unaware I was doing so; I pulled the sheet and blanket off my husband.  Somehow I managed to wind them tightly about myself then slumbered on in contented bliss while my lover froze his delectable buns off.

He must have felt the cold.  After searching me out in the monstrosity we call a bed and unable to worm beneath the covers and snuggle, he draped himself over and across me instead so that I awoke in a claustrophobic panic.  Struggling to get free and desperate in that moment to push the burning, crushing weight of him off of my body.  But to no avail.  I was completely trapped beneath him and not able to move at all.  So... I did the next best thing; but only because it was right there in front of me.  Honest!  I don't know why he made such a fuss about it.  Good grief!  What a baby!

I bit his ear.

Well, I say... that certainly got a reaction.

To say he woke up would be rather something of an understatement.  He roared rather loudly in indignation and leapt upright in the bed, one hand going straight to his ear lobe, and the other to his straining morning erection and nuts.  Guess he wanted to make sure things were still there and that I hadn't taken a chunk out of them either.

Considering my predicament, it would have been nigh on impossible regardless of the incentives – to which I could attest were indeed in most fine form.

All 6 foot 2 inches of him glared down at me, while he c
hecked his fingers for blood.  I sigh.
  He asked rather quietly, considering... just what in the hell I’d done that for?

God he looked gorgeous, especially in his fury!  I've been madly, truly, deeply for this man from the moment we first laid eyes on one another.  So I grinned up at him, far too busy ogling and enjoying the view to be overly concerned.  Silly me.  How I had ever gotten so lucky to attract such a magnificent man into my heart, my life, my bed is beyond me, but I never get sick of counting my lucky stars.

I couldn't help it.  I giggled and just like that, the sun came out.  I'd been trying to wriggle and wrestle free of the covers as dawning comprehension replaced the confusion and anger with a look of something else as he watched me watching him.

He was off the bed in an instant, slipping the lock on the door and returning to flip me over onto my stomach.

Bugger... now I was in for it.

“Don't move.”  Yeah babe, as if I could.

He lay over me trapping me… again, as effectively and completely as the blanket and sheet still did.  With his head next to mine, his breath a whisper across my ear made me shiver.  And then he bit down on the lobe.  Gently but firmly he increased the pressure swiping at the awakening flesh with his tongue.

A moan escaped as my eyes fluttered closed and I started to tell him, rather dreamily I was sorry, I'd just reacted in my panic.

But he hushed me, licking and nipping the skin behind my ear, against my throat, making me shiver as electricity shot straight to my nipples turning them as hard as stone.  I could feel my body heating and softening to his caress and I whined when he ground his hard cock firmly against my butt, desperate once more to be free.

Abruptly the weight was gone, and then I felt him pulling and tugging at the covers.  Finally!  Or so I thought.  He deftly exposed my lower half, while the top remained swaddled like an infant, my arms still trapped.  And then he was pulling my legs apart.  I smiled.  I liked this part...

Cool air met skin as he bent to brush his lips in a trail of heated wet kisses and nibbles across one ass cheek, his hand lovingly traced the curves and delved into the valley between to leisurely stroke and tease.

I stupidly relaxed muscles I'd involuntarily tightened.

In the instant it took to remember this was probably going to be a punishment and not the easy pleasure I’d fallen into, his lips were gone as his hand connected smartly in a stinging full-handed slap across the fleshiest part of my ass.  I yelped in surprise against the mattress and would have leapt away, if only I could.  I did manage a rather loud expletive that despite the emotion accompanying it, only earned me another loud smack on the other cheek.  Then he seemed to find a rhythm and settled in, easing the burn with a rub now and then that had me reduced to mush and quivering with need.  By the time he got around to sating us both, I couldn’t have given a fig about how it had come about in the first place.  Though suffice it to say, I won't be biting him again on his ear or anywhere else for that matter, at least for awhile.

Much later, as I made him and the munchkin some breakfast, I tried to hide it when once or twice; my hands crept up to rub at my still warm and tender cheeks.  Invariably he'd catch me, give a sly wink and a lazy smile.

Men...

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5

But Baby I Miss You

I really should be in
bed.  It's late and my
head aches and so does my knee where I tripped and skinned it earlier.  Damn.

I wander through the house after checking on our little
one all snuggled
up in his
bed, his
head buried under the covers, and his fish lamp casting liquid shadows over the ceiling.  Downstairs once more, I rummage around in the fridge, trying to decide whether or not I'm actually hungry or just bored.  Looking at the leftovers; pork ribs and
beef ribs I’d brought
home from next door's barbecue
today, nothing
appeals so I close
the fridge and head upstairs once more.

What I'm looking for isn't there either.

Standing just inside our bedroom door, I stare moodily at the empty king-size bed and think about whether or not to get naked and crawl between the sheets.

Maybe I'm
just horny – my mind filling
immediately with images of our last lovemaking before he left.  His cock, thick and hard pounding into me relentlessly from behind as he held me down over the back of the couch.  My nipples
tightened and tingled in memory
.  I sighed, getting off alone didn’t interest me either.  Yet, neither does getting into our bed and not having his body stretched out beside
me or spooned
around mine, his arms pulling me in close with his beautiful big hand cradling a breast and his cock buried as deeply inside me as possible.  I gasp against his lips that I still can't get close enough...

Only dropped him off at the airport around lunchtime, and I miss him already.  Last minute packing we've gotten down to a fine art over the
years; aloha shirts
, dress pants, dress shorts, swim shorts, T's and goggles, slip on loafers, polished and ready, and a pair of jandals they call slippers here.  I packed his iPod, knowing he'll want a story to listen to,
made sure he had his mobile, the
GPS and enough plugs and crap to tide him over for the next month.

Shit
.  I hope it won’t be that long.  He
only just got home after
being away for six weeks
.  Six long weeks away
.  Weeks during which we’d talked
into the night, in the middle of the night, in the morning and several times in between. 

I'd sing him to sleep when he couldn't get comfortable in a
strange bed or told him some
made-up story to make him smile
.  He’d tell me of the fun
he was having
teaching in the flight simulator.  How he misses flying jets.  How he hates being away from us, swimming in the ocean, trying to find us a new home and getting me hot and bothered
.  He’d driven me mad by telling me in explicit detail, everything he'd
to do to me when he finally
returned home.

Hard to believe we've been married nearly thirteen years.

Now I'm ready for bed.

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5

BIG Blue Sky Mining

I got to thinking about yesteryear and recalled a time when I sat on a porch, watching and waiting as a storm approached.  Barely sheltered beneath the overhang from the blistering heat of a summer’s day.

We were living in Kambalda, a small mining town in Western Australia, of roughly five thousand people, mostly men.  The majority were housed in the cell-like barracks of the single men’s quarters.  Because we were married, we were lucky to have a small house owned by the company, for a nominal rent deducted from our paycheck once a month.

The town itself was a little odd in that it was actually two towns, East Kambalda and Kambalda
West.  It lies approximately
380 miles inland from Perth, 80 miles north of Norseman and 35 miles south of Kalgoorlie.  The
claim to fame
of the original town of Red Hill, where East Kambalda now stands, was gold
.  In 1897, Percy Larkin
, a prospector, discovered large shoots/veins of gold that started a gold rush and produced over 30,000 ounces over the next ten years.  By 1908, the
gold, along with the
hopeful had long gone, as the land reverted to scrub and bush once more.

Not until 1964, the year I was born, when Western Mining Corporation began an exploratory drilling program to prove up and expand Kambalda's nickel reserves, discovered ten years prior, did the people start to come back.  By 1966, full production had begun at Silver Lake Mine, which sparked the great Australian nickel boom of the 60's and made fortunes for some speculators on the stock exchange... and lost fortunes for others.

I don't remember now when Western Mining Corporation began drilling for gold, but I was there in the late 80's when they were.  The people that lived and worked in Kambalda, were without a doubt the hardest working, toughest,
and some, the most
downright ornery SOB's I've ever met in my life!  They played hard too, yet were family orientated and loyal.  Once you became a member of
the mining family
you were treated as such, and it was something that we all relied
on, especially
when times got tough or when someone needed help.  A more generous, compassionate, caring and fun-loving bunch of misfits, who were far more than just the people we worked with, I've yet to
meet from around Australia and different parts of the world.  Th
ey were our friends, our neighbors, our extended family.

For recreation, we had Lake Lefroy on the
doorstep; a massive
salt lake covering over three hundred square miles, perfect for land yachting and for the optimistic contenders looking to break and set
new land-speed records
.

The first time I saw it, was on the day I arrived.  Coming from Kalgoorlie, I came over a rise and saw what appeared to be the ocean spread out before me.  It looked absolutely breathtaking, with the water glittering so brightly in the sun that I had to squint.  It went on forever disappearing into a mirage of shimmering reflected heat.

Yet I soon
learned that
most of it though is only a few inches deep and not even that
during the long
hot summer months.  The water would evaporate in the scorching heat and the top layer would dry to a thick, crispy, whitish crust that rusted metal like acid.  One lesson I never forgot as
I learned it
the hard way came at a tough personal cost to
my most tender of body part
s.  Stuck in the bottom of the goldmine pit sampling and cooking alive in the
48 degree Celsius
heat (118 degrees Fahrenheit), I watched as the water truck came down the sloping dirt road into the open cast pit, spraying down salt water on the road to lay the dust.  Desperate to cool off, I jumped on the running board of the truck as it came closer to where I was and asked the
driver if he’d give me a spray down. 
He obliged and I was duly saturated from head to toe and grinned a mile wide at the
instant relief... until I
started to dry.  An oven-like dry heat that sucked the moisture from
your body
, soon had my skin, hair and clothes dry in minutes.  But I had forgotten about the HIGH salt content.  As I dried while I worked, moving along behind the drill rig and taking samples from different depths, the salt began to crust behind and around the shell of my
ears, between
my thighs, front and back, under my arms and my neck.  It felt like ground glass with every movement, scouring the skin raw over the last hour of my workday until I could barely move from the pain.  I learned to rinse off after that in FRESH water.

There were places
we'd swim – left over
pit mines, that because they were below the water table, they'd stay filled with salt water and became pit lakes.  Some were impossibly deep yet the salt saturation was so high
you literally couldn't
sink
.  It was amazing
how quickly even the bizarre became normal. 
The pit lakes were great
for learning to swim in or how to
windsurf, even if it did
totally mess with your head.

One day, while heading between jobs, I stopped the
ute
(4x4 utility truck) by the side of the lake and
watched the Oils – the rock
band
Midnight Oil – do some
takes for their music video, Blue Sky Mine.  I was utterly fascinated by the completely surreal sight before me, as I watched this big tall bald man hopping and bopping around on the salt flats, looking for all the world like he were doing a parody of a rain dance.  The other
members of the band were beating their instruments while assistants and the like gathered around.  A track had been laid with a rolling train-like contraption that a cameraman appeared to use to pan around them.  It is a fabulous music video and shows much from the town too including the Red Hill lookout and opens with a blasting scene.

We also had the local speedway, the horses we kept and rode, and the music club.  That was fun.  A Sunday arvo (afternoon) at our place, would mean a house full of muso's (musicians) and their instruments surrounding our collective children, as they banged away on drums, triangles, kazoos, whistles, and harps.  Even a few upturned cooking pots with a wooden spoon or two made a good racket in a pinch.  We'd cook a few
shrimps on the barbie
and jam the day away until we were hoarse and the little ones had conked out.  We were pretty good too!  Even did a few gigs at several pubs.

Then there were the incredible places worthy of visiting like the run we did down to Esperance on the Great Australian Bite, with its
perfect, perfect, empty white
sand beaches and waters so clear it was like looking through glass.

So I sat on the porch after working all day.  The heat felt alive, rising up in waves to envelope and exhaust me of energy on contact.  It even seemed to displace the very air
itself.  It was so hot and dry that it always left me slightly breathless, even after three years
of living there.  I thought about how that same heat which left my skin and eyeballs parched from the extreme aridity, sucked away any and all moisture so that I rarely sweat.

On this particular day, I was minus my steel cap boots and thick socks, my cargo shorts with every pocket crammed full with tools, bits and bobs, my t-shirt, and hardhat.  Sitting there in nothing but my bra and knickers, nursing a cold brew in one hand and a cigarette
in the other.  Staring off into the horizon, watching as the storm approached.

My clothes were littered by the backdoor.  The chair I sat back in was old but comfortable, and I had propped my legs up and crossed them on the wooden railing in front of me.  I hadn't even entered the house proper to shower, but had reached through the back door instead, flicked the fridge open and grabbed a beer.  My hair, face and body where my work clothes didn't cover, were filthy with a thick layer of red dirt and dusty grime from the opencast goldmine pit where I worked.

That day I'd been a sampler, following along after the drill rig, taking samples of ore from each level and bagging them for collection.  If you check out the music video you'll see the blasting, where the holes the rigs made, drilled into the rock every few yards or so, were filled with explosives, topped with blasting caps and wired back to an ignition box by the bombing crew that came in after the samples had all been collected.  A bit simplistic for sure, as there was no doubt more to it.

It could take them up to a week, just to
fill all the holes, and scarcely seconds
once rigged, for detonation to complete their work.  Then the big dump trucks would make their way down with the huge shovel rigs that filled them to clear away the ore and
the whole process would begin once more.

Being a sampler was hot, dusty, dirty work with the sun constantly beating down upon my
back.  It was all I did for the first year.  It just about sent me around the twist!  Then I was
assigned as a Geologist’s Assistant for a month when his hadn't turned up and followed him
around everywhere instead.  I climbed up and over the huge blasted and broken slabs of
quartz, carting his charts and paraphernalia, recording notes, taking readings and the like.  Maybe he’d put in a good word for me at the end, because I was rotated regularly to
different jobs after that, going wherever I was needed – from lollipop girl, spotting for the
trucks where they crossed the road, weighbridge operator, lab assay assistant, truck driver, roller driver, and general dogs body/go-to/go-fetch/gofer girl... I loved it all!  It was great fun!

I also worked as a barmaid at the local pub that had the longest bar I've ever seen in my
life!  And I started a bistro at the local golf club and ran that four nights a week.

I guess I'm just one of those people who can't do any one particular thing, exceptionally well, but I can turn my hand to just about anything without too much fuss.  Something I've done a lot of over the years.  Lucky for me, it was a
skill
that was recognized and utilized by WMC accordingly, and I was grateful because it kept my job interesting.

But right then, at that moment, I waited for the rain.

The storm had been steadily rolling in for the last few hours.  To the east it was still
cloudless, sunny and HOT, but to the southwest and coming swiftly closer was a dense black and purple wall that stretched for miles, flashing with fire and brimstone.  It tickled me to no end that one half of my vista was bright day yet held the same space as the other half, dark as night.  A false night perhaps, but thrilling, terrifying and majestic in its fury.

And then it was suddenly here.  Everything was black now.  I could smell ozone in the air, felt the soft hairs on my body rise with static electricity moments before a huge jagged bolt of lightning ripped through the roiling, churning blackness to strike at the earth, with an
impact that I felt from my seat.  My eyes had gone
funny
from the flash.  I could literally
feel the drop in temperature as it swiftly plummeted and the first fat drops of rain thunked on the corrugated iron roof in a quickening rata-tat-tat-tat.  Then... like the breaching of a dam, the deluge poured down in an unbroken torrent,
immediately soaking
and darkening the dried and dusty red earth.  The sound of it swirling around me was a deafening roar.

I stood in the rain with my head back and eyes closed, my underwear instantly drenched
and plastered to my body.  Holding my hands up level with my chest, my cupped palms
overflowed in a heartbeat as I opened myself completely to the moment, reveling in the
maelstrom.  In the absolute chaos and pandemonium of the moment.  The sweat, the dust
and ground in red dirt of the desert and even my bone deep tiredness were dissolved,
washing me clean in the blink of an eye.  It felt incredible.  Rejuvenating.  Invigorating.

I must have looked a sight, standing in that storm with the lightning and thunder booming
and flashing all around me.  The rain was easing and catching movement, I looked back towards the porch where my husband stood with his arms and legs crossed leaning against the wooden post watching me.  We grinned at one another, no doubt for different reasons.  He, because his mad wife was laughing like a loon and standing out in a storm, and me,
because I couldn't resist the magic of it.  And just like that, the storm had passed.

Within moments, the sky brightened once again as the black mass moved off as quickly as it had come towards the north east.  The landscape around me settled heavily into a wall of rising heat making the soaked earth steam and shimmer.  The deafening cacophony of cicadas restarted and apart from the steady drips that fell from the eaves, it was like it had never been.

I knew that there'd be wildflowers everywhere soon; orchids and the spectacular kangaroo paw, milkmaid, poached egg daisies, blue pincushion, pink mulla mulla, orange
immortelle, acacia, hakea and Sturt's desert pea, transforming the red brown scrub land
into a virtual paradise overnight.