Make Me Beg for It (5 page)

Madeley grinned. “I guess if you’re going to be that intimate with me in the bathtub, it’s no big thing to have you in bed, too.”
I’ve had vibrators that worked wet or dry,
Madeley thought, trying to conceal a smile,
but none of them talked.

Though she was afraid she might crush him, the frog snuggled up right next to her under the covers. “Good night, Madeley.”

“Good night . . . Ian.”

She had forgotten to pull the curtains fully closed, so Madeley woke earlier than usual the next morning. She felt so snug under the covers, she debated whether to actually roll out of bed and close them or just turn away. Opal’s snores reverberated from the sitting room. Madeley grinned. Turning over, she touched something warm and suddenly remembered the frog.

Except he wasn’t a frog.

Lying next to her was a slim, muscular man with a swimmer’s physique.
Of course, of course
, her jumbled and somewhat hysterical thoughts blared. His olive skin was smooth and warm and very much
not
amphibian. Golden strands shot through his dark brown hair, as if he had recently returned from a Benedorm holiday. His ass was perfect. Madeley lifted herself up on one elbow. His cock was just as promising as her visions had suggested, though it looked like it might need a little help to get going, still resting in its turtleneck.

She caressed his bum and he stirred a little in his sleep. Moving stealthily, Madeley reached around to take hold of his balls, touching them gently until he rolled toward her, his still sleeping mouth open. Seeing him untroubled, she slipped her hand around his penis and stroked the velvety skin. He sighed happily and at once, his cock started to stiffen.

His eyes popped open. “What?”

She lay her finger across his lips and gazed into his eyes. “This is real,” she whispered and his eyes rolled back under their lids and he groaned happily. His cock was rigid in her hand and she knew she just had to taste him. Madeley scooted down and took him in her mouth and it was wonderful. Her tongue circled around his nice fat cigar and she sucked at the head, tasting his pre-cum and getting so excited. With her other hand, she slipped a finger into her cunt and felt the slick wetness, and she knew it was time.

Madeley threw her leg over Ian and looked into his eyes. Unlike the expressionless eyes of a frog he had once had, his bright green eyes seemed to register a wealth of emotions in a tumble. He was grinning though, and Madeley leaned in to plant her lips on his. The electricity was still there, sparking between them like a welder’s arc, as she cupped his cheek with her hand. He reached up to caress her breast and she sighed happily and sank down upon his proud erection.
Ohhh, that’s nice.

“Madeley, I don’t know what happened!”

“Shhh. It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “Love me like a reptile, Ian.”

“Amphibian!” He laughed.

She was too busy moaning with delight to argue. Every jab of his cock seemed to find her g-spot, and in no time at all that familiar feeling rose up from her toes. The orgasms rendered her inarticulate, and all she could say was “Oh, oh, oh!” as she bucked and gasped.

Shortly thereafter, she felt him heave beneath her as he came, roaring out his joy in a long cry of satisfaction.

We should’ve used a condom,
Madeley thought belatedly, but she was too wiped out to care.
What could a frog have picked up, anyway?
The thought made her giggle uncontrollably.

“What is it?” Ian asked, enclosing her in his arms. His embrace felt warm and comforting, nothing like the cool frog skin.

“Are you really a human again?” she asked, running her hands up and down his flesh as if to test her eyes for lies.

“I am, thanks to you.” He kissed her quickly, three times.

“This is magic . . . .” She breathed the words softly into his ear.

“Yes, it is.” He smiled. “You rescued me. Thank you, Madeley. I knew you were the one.” He squeezed her tight.

I have never felt so good
. “My frog-man,” she laughed.

“What shall we do?”

“Make sure you stay human.” Madeley said. “But first, let’s go surprise Opal.” She laughed and laughed and her heart leapt high.

Sometimes you just have to believe.

The End

Ella closed the hood and wiped her hands on the rag hanging out of her pocket. “She’s ready.”

With a grin spreading like sunshine across her face, Ella looked over at her friend Jeri, whose lips contracted into a moue of concern. “No, not really,” Jeri said at last, watching her friend buff a stray grease mark from the gleaming hood of the cherry red Ford. “You are so not going through with this!”

Ella put her hands on her hips. “You think I’ve spent all year rebuilding her engine and shining her chrome just to drive to the mall?”

“Hey,
I
shined most of that chrome, sister,” Jeri said. “But the South End? You think that’s a good idea? Your gran isn’t going to be pleased.”

“Shut up!” Ella’s gaze darted toward the kitchen window, but her grandmother did not appear. Since she could remember, the woman had had an unnerving habit of popping up whenever the two were about to get into mischief.

Jeri couldn’t help looking over her shoulder, too. “You know she’s going to find out. Somehow, someway, you know she will.”

Ella tossed the oily rag at Jeri who dodged it while making another disgusted expression. “Not this time, girly girl. I’ve got it all planned. I’ll make my debut and I will blow them all off the road. What’s the good of having a sweet kustom hot rod if we can’t show it off?”

Jeri shook her head. “I hear the cops busted a bunch of draggers up there. You don’t want to get mixed up in that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Jeri sighed. “This isn’t about your dad? Still?”

Ella crossed her arms. “It’s what he would have wanted.”

Jeri snorted. “Did a little bluebird fly by and tell you that? Did it say, hey, Ella, your daddy whispered to me in heaven and he said, by all means, girls, risk your life drag racing in the streets so you can come up here and join me real soon.”

“I’ll be fine.” Ella sneaked another peak up at the kitchen window, but there was no sign of her gran. “You know he would want the Cherry Bomb to be triumphant once more.”

Jeri threw herself down into the lawn chair on the gravel beside the driveway. It squealed noisily. “Ella, it’s not as if he died in the car—”

“I know,” Ella said, her voice low. “It might have been better for him if he had. He would have loved going out like that, instead of the, the—straw death he got.”

“Straw death?” Jeri cocked an eyebrow at her friend.

Ella smiled and blushed a little. “I see you weren’t listening in English class this week.”

“Yeah, surprising, isn’t it? Less than a month left of our last year of high school and you think I’m listening to anything? Besides, that woman scares me.” Ms. Fountain had been the bane of Jeri’s existence this last year.

“But don’t you just love the stuff about the Vikings? That’s what they called dying when you weren’t in battle. A straw death. Dying in bed instead of in a fight. It was the biggest disappointment.”

“What, they lived in barns?”

“Their beds were made of straw, silly.” She grabbed Jeri’s arm. “Now c’mon. We have a little story to concoct for gran.”

*

Sure enough, the two of them joined the massive rumble of engines in the South End that night. Ella looked around, her gaze as jumpy as the feeling in her heart. So many cars! And there were some real beauties. “Just look at that powder blue T-bird!”

Jeri was less impressed. “There is no way all this hot rodding is going to go on without someone getting busted. I think half of Hartford’s here. Let’s get back to Hazardville before we’re arrested.”

“Not a chance, Jere. I gotta let my Cherry Bomb show her stuff.”

“Why do you care what this bunch of bozos thinks?” Jeri sighed. “Bunch of scrubs,” she added as they rolled past a bunch of young guys with beer cans in their hands, hollering and suggestions in their general direction.

“It’s not what
they
think. I just want to make my pop proud.” Ella looked over at her friend. “You might want to hop out now. This is the queue for the starters.”

“Starters?” Jeri squinted into the murk beyond the last set of streetlights. Just visible was a guy and gal with big pirate flags on sticks. “You can get anything at the party stores.” But she opened the door and stepped out. “Don’t you go getting hurt.”

Ella nodded and smiled, but she knew how stiff the expression was. Her heart beat a tattoo against her ribcage. “I’ll be fine. I want to hear you cheering for me.”

“Oh, you’ll hear me,” Jeri promised. “I’ll be yelling my head off. I’ll be shouting, ‘don’t you go killing yourself because I am
not
going to be the one to tell your gran’.” Muttering, Jeri started toward the finish line where a thick crowd surged around a pair of barrels painted neon yellow.

Waiting for the line to shorten, Ella watched one pair of cars after another squeal off toward the finish line to the cheering crowds. Her stomach decided to climb up her esophagus toward her throat just to be on the safe side. She swallowed but she had no spit. Just ahead of her was a bright white Mustang, looked to be a ’66. The guy driving it seemed to be listening to music, bobbing his head.

Maybe that’ll calm me.
Ella started to hum
Mustang Sally,
which seemed to help some. Her daddy was right, there were no songs like the classics and the same went for cars.
No one’s got a car as pretty as my 49er.
With a start she realized the Mustang and the green Camaro were at the start now. Before she knew it, they squealed off, the Mustang quickly pulling ahead. Ella glanced to her left. She hadn’t even dared look to see who her competition was.

The very idea terrified her.

A black Trans Am revved beside her Ford and she had to scold herself to keep from feeling a surge of contempt for the hideous car.
Now, now, just because I don’t like them . . . .
but the loathing did its job. Her stomach had dropped back down where it belonged and Ella leaned forward to anticipate the starter’s flag. The woman held the skull and crossbones aloft for what seemed an eternity, then dropped it.

Ella jammed her foot down on the gas and moments later, shifted into second, keeping her hands firm on the wheel and her eyes fixed on those neon barrels. Ella slammed into third and felt her car dig into the asphalt like a racing cheetah. Fourth gear and she’d passsed the finish line . . . and there were cheers and people jumping up and down, and there Jeri cheered, too, and Ella realised she had no idea who’d won.

Slowing enough for Jeri to hop in, Ella pulled around to the pit area, where the competitors met after the races—those who didn’t go off sulking.

“You did it—you did it—you did it!” Jeri smothered her in a hug, shrieking in her ear.

“I won?” Ella shook her head. The roar of the race still echoed inside her skull: or was that the sound of the next pair of competitors taking off?

“By a good car length or more, girlfriend.” Jeri laughed. “C’mon, you have to show off now. And I need a beer.”

“They sell beer?” Ella asked, finally loosening her seat belt and setting a shaky foot on the ground.

“Somebody’s bound to give you one, you’re aces, girl!” Jeri beamed.

“And you didn’t want me to race.”

A hand tapped her on the arm. “Good race.” A rough looking guy with an incongruous baby face stuck out his hand. He’d driven the Trans Am.

“Uh, thanks.” Ella figured she probably shouldn’t say it was her first. “This was my dad’s car.” She patted the Cherry Bomb’s shiny curves.

“It’s sweet,” the guy said, smiled briefly then walked away.

“You should have told him it was your first race ever.” Jeri pouted.

Ella laughed, but before she could answer, another voice broke in. “Then you deserve this drink even more.”

Turning toward the offer, Ella met a guy with the blackest hair she had ever seen, its shine as glossy as the Cherry Bomb’s finish. “Thanks.” Below his Elvis-like quiff set a pair of eyes as blue as a summer sky—not to mention a crooked smile that showed his amusement at her careful scrutiny. He was a bona-fide classic hot rod heart-throb.

Ella’s cheeks burned with embarrassment, but her gaze didn’t drop before she noticed his broad in the chest and the beaten leather jacket over his
Witch’s Dungeon
T-shirt. Ella wished she wasn’t wearing her most dilapidated pair of jeans and a paint-spattered hoodie.
Oh god, what does my hair look like?
“Um, thanks.” She took the beer, her hand already clammy.

He didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t recall seeing you around before. My name’s J.D.”

He stuck his hand out toward Ella, but before she could find words to respond, Jeri stepped in.

“I don’t know if my friend really needs to get to know some random, unemployed street dragger.” Jeri gave him the hairy eyeball. Ella didn’t know whether to punch her then or wait until they got back in the car.

“Who’s unemployed?” His raised eyebrows telegraphed surprise, but the crooked smile was still in place. “I’m chief mechanic at the Backstreets Garage in Rockville. You can ask Henry. He owns the place.”

Jeri folded her arms. “Yeah, well, we can check on that.”

J.D. looked down at Jeri with evident amusement. “I might have a check stub in my pocket.”

“Jeri,” Ella said, grabbing her friend’s arm. “Knock it off.”

“For your own good.” Jeri regarded J.D. as if he were some kind of unknown but poisonous snake. “We don’t know what he’s after.”

“How about some history on your car? She’s a beauty.”

Ella grinned though Jeri continued to glower. “It was my dad’s.”

“A ’49?” J.D. stepped around the car in the opposite direction away from the two of them, his attention glued to the Cherry Bomb’s glossy paint job, which looked a lot like blood under the glow of the streetlights. “My uncle had one like this when I was a kid, but he sold it before I was old enough to drive.”

“My dad chopped the top and dropped it, but he’d only started on rebuilding the engine when he died.” Ella’s eyes glazed over for a minute, thinking of the long, rainy afternoons watching her dad weld the roof onto the body.

“Patience, little girl, that’s the ticket,”
he’d say and ruffle her curls. Ella loved watching his careful concentration as he worked his way around the car, the smell of the molten wire and the tense strength in his arms. She fell in love with the whole kustom culture, always feeling out of step with the rest of the kids, but Ella didn’t care: her dad would be so proud.

“Sorry about your dad,” J.D. said, his voice quiet. “My mom died when I was ten.”

“My dad died two years ago.” Ella looked over at J.D. who was running a hand across the curve of the
C
-pillar, examining the joining.

He nodded as if approving the bodywork. “It doesn’t ever stop hurting, but you get used to the pain.”

“I suppose,” Ella said, running her own hand across the Cherry Bomb’s hood. The surface retained the engine’s warmth. Jeri looked at her with something approaching suspicion and shook her head.

“Did it take a lot of Bondo to smooth out the joinings?” J.D. had walked back around the car to stand next to Ella. “You can’t even see a line.”

“A lot of sanding,” Ella said. She could smell the leather of his jacket and the lingering scent of some kind of aftershave. His hands were nice: big, strong, the nails rough but clean. “We choked on the dust even with the masks.”

“Girl, we got to go.” Jeri’s voice sounded firm. Her arms were still crossed.

“It’s not that late,” Ella said, but her watch said differently.

“You coming back next weekend?” J.D. said. He maintained a nonchalant tone but Ella saw his jaw tense.

“You want to go against me?” Ella asked, her voice huskier than she intended.

J.D. looked right at her and smiled. Ella’s knees filled with sand. “You know I do.”

“We got to go.” Jeri got in the car and snapped on her seat belt.

“I got to go,” Ella said, her cheeks warming under his steady gaze.

“A kiss for the winner,” J.D. said, diving in to press his lips to hers.

Ella hesitated for a fraction of a second, then gave back as good as she got, meeting his lips with eagerness, darting her tongue into his mouth. Something electric bloomed between them. Her nipples popped out as they brushed against his chest. A violent urge to be crushed against that broad expanse filled her as their kiss continued. His tongue slipped around hers, probing deeper.

Just as dizziness threatened to overcome her, the horn blared and the two of them jumped like they’d been shocked.

“We have to go!” Jeri glared, her jaw tight.

J.D. grinned that lopsided smile. “Next week?”

“You bet.” Ella grinned right back at him, hoping she didn’t look like an idiot with that smile plastered across her face. She got in the car and started her up. J.D. waved as she pulled out through the thinning crowds and rolling cars. “I am on
fire
. He is so hot! God, I’m going to melt.”

Jeri snorted. “I could tell.”

“Then why’d you make us run off like that?” Ella glowered at her best friend. “I could use a few more hours of that kissing. Whoa, baby!”

Jeri looked at her open-mouthed. “Do you know anything about that guy? He could be a serial killer or, or—unemployed!”

Ella laughed. “You’re crazy, you know that? He said—”

“He said . . . .”
Jeri mimicked. “We check him out and then we see about what ‘he said’ to you. Girl, you’re like a babe in the woods.”

“I never understood that phrase,” Ella said as she merged onto 91 north. “What’re those babes doing in the woods anyway?”

*

Ella wasn’t thinking about the babes in the woods anymore when 6:00 a.m. rolled around, and she had to be in the bakery. She and Jeri had worked for the Fontanas for three years now, making dough on the weekends and turning out armies of cupcakes for catering. Mama Fontana paid them okay, but it didn’t make dawn come any later.

“We are not going back next weekend.” Jeri announced as she plopped another round Italian loaf onto the baking sheet. “I can’t do this again. We’ve got less than a month left of school, and we are
free
. I could do without the drama.”

Ella thought of J.D.’s kiss, his broad shoulders, and his strong hands. “Oh yes, we are.” She rolled the warm dough with her fingers, adding extra flour to get the consistency elastic. “We’ll just look him up online and make sure that he’s an okay guy.”