One on one, p.23
ONE ON ONE, page 23
part #4 of Nodd's Ridge Series
Fuck her. He should go to the Mill and tear that fucking hoop down. Fuck them all. He throws the truck into reverse. They don’t want it bad enough. Fuck them all.
In deference to the holiday, practice on New Year’s is at midmorning. The Mutant is at the Corner when Sam wheels through downtown, and she bears a peace offering of sorts—cocoa. Pulling over, he accepts the cups she hands him and she slings her duffel in and climbs up after it. The cab fills with the sweet comforting scent of cocoa.
“Thanks,” he says shortly.
She shrugs. “Still pissed?”
Not deigning to answer, he turns up the radio. Just the sight of her is enough to make him sick to his stomach again.
Coach’s wagon is in the lot. Pete’s Blazer too.
Rick hauls in behind them and Sam warms his hands in his pockets and waits for him at the edge of the parking lot while the Mutant hastens in out of the cold.
“How was last night?”
Rick grins. “Started the night at Kendalls’ with Sarah trying to soften up a wheel of Brie in the microwave. Frigging thing blew all over the inside like a big cheese bomb.”
Sam laughs.
“Thought I was gonna herniate myself trying not to laugh too hard.” Rick glances at Sam curiously. “Went fine after that. How ‘bout you? You look like you were up all night.”
“Yeah.”
Punching the door bar, Sam opens it for Rick and they step out of the cold into the cleaning-fluid smell of the school on break.
“You do some smoke last night, Rick?”
The quiet casual question brings Rick to a halt.
“Don’t ask me that, Sambo.”
“Is that a yes?”
Rick’s gaze is steady. “Fuck you, Sambo. I told you not to ask.”
“You signed a contract—”
“Which you know I’ve violated before, so what’s the big deal? It’s a stupid piece of paper they make us sign so we can play. Means shit. You think a little smoke’s gonna affect my game? That’s bullshit. Bullshit. So mind your own fucking business.”
Sam nods as if Rick has just given him good advice on a play.
It only makes Rick angrier and he stalks away.
The janitor has opened the gym and most of the players are already there, exchanging tales of New Year’s Eve. Todd and Pete sit on the bleachers, in subdued conversation with each other. They glance up at Sam, look down hastily. Kevin Bither pretends not to see him at all. Billy Rank squats on the floor, eyes glazed with a paralytic hangover. The entire squad is here, along with most of the girls and a fair number of ambitious jay vee players of both sexes.
Sam walks through the gym to the locker room, past Coach’s office—no Coach inside, for which he’s thankful—and sweeps the contents of his gym locker into his duffel. Going past Coach’s office again, he slips under the door the laconic resignation he printed out in his awkward hand when he gave up trying to sleep.
A silence falls behind him as he crosses the gym again, still wearing his jacket, duffel slung on his shoulder.
“Sam!” Rick calls, in sudden alarm, as the doors swing closed between them.
They slam open as Rick races after him, catching him at the outside doors. The Mutant’s only a few steps behind Woods, having paused to grab her coat and duffel.
“Where are you going? What about practice?”
“I quit,” Sam confides and steps out, smiling slightly, into the cold.
In the doorway, Rick stares after him. The Mutant slips under Rick’s extended arm, which holds the door open, to scoot after Sam.
“Hey,” she calls. “You’re my ride. You can’t leave yet.”
“Oh? See me throwing my gear in the cab? See me getting in? See this key? Makes this heap go varrooom.”
She whips around the truck and clambers in breathlessly as he throws the truck into gear and skids across the lot toward the exit road.
“Jesus!” she yelps. “Slow down!”
Sam tromps the accelerator, deliberately spinning them into a donut while she shrieks and throws out her arms in an infantile reflex. He swings them casually onto the access road and she starts to laugh.
“Hot shit!”
“You wanted a ride,” he says. All at once, he feels fine. Lighter. Needed a little relief from gravity.
Sobering, she tucks up onto the seat. “You’re nuts. You can’t quit.”
“Sure I can. I just did.”
“You’re too good.”
He laughs. “Thought you were going to tell me the team needs me.”
“That was the next thing I was going to say. Hey, if I can quit smoking and partying for the sake of my team, then maybe you can put your team ahead of whatever hair you got across your ass.”
“Quit smoking and partying? Right. What was that last night?”
“No big deal if you don’t make it one.”
Sam shakes his head. “I’m not gonna argue with you, Deanie. You twist everything around to suit yourself.”
She grins and toes his thigh. “That’s how you win arguments.”
“Not with me. Where you going? Home? Or you want me to take you back to practice?”
“I’m not going back to practice until you do. In fact, I’m not getting out of this truck until you agree you’re not quitting.”
“You’ll get out when I put you out,” Sam says. “Anyway, I was looking for a reason to quit. I’m sick of basketball running my life.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
She should know.
His hands slacken on the wheel and he drums at it restlessly. He’s free. He feels unjammed—unchained. His life is his own again. It feels so good, he doesn’t know why he didn’t do it sooner. Hours and hours suddenly his again. Hours he can turn into buckage. Another set of hands, they can take in more business at the garage. He can help his father at the same time he’s earning the insurance on the bike. He’ll have time to put into the farmhouse. It seems so obvious now, like pulling a loose thread.
A few blocks ahead is the turn that could take them to the Mill. While he was hauling her ass home after midnight, she didn’t mention finding the hoop so he guesses she hasn’t. His anger at her was so great, if she’d brought it up, he’d have swallowed his tongue rather than own up to having done diddly for her. But now his mood is as balmy as the air of the melt after a storm. He’s a free man, and heady with it.
“Been to the Mill since Sunday?”
The change of subject focuses her intently. “Why?”
“I left you a surprise there. Sort of a belated Christmas present.”
She sits up straight. “Take me there then.”
They park the truck in the playground lot. The turrets, castellations and slides are gingerbread, sugarfrosted with the recent snow. The air crackles and there is a blue cast to everything that makes him think of last night’s New Year’s moon. Sam pauses to collect his basketball from the floor of the cab. The Mutant trips down the path toward the Mill. Catching up with her as she pops the padlock, he reaches a long arm past her for the light switch.
18
A blue spark explodes the switch. The shock travels from the tip of his finger to deep in his armpit, causing him to drop the ball. The crackle and the burst of light startle the Mutant as well as himself and she jumps back and comes down on his toes. Failing any traction on his sneakers, her feet start to go out from under her. She begins to twist toward him, flailing for her balance. As he scrabbles to catch her, he takes a sharp Mutant elbow in the balls. His loss of interest in rescuing her is immediate and severe. Clutching himself, he opens his mouth and a pathetic croak falls out.
Managing to save herself, she moans in distress. “Oh ‘god!”
He waves her off. Crouching against the wall, Sam grits his teeth and waits. And cups his sack. The only known treatment, chiefly beneficial on a psychological level, he recalls his father saying after a summer baseball game in which Reuben, on the mound, caught a line drive the hard way.
After the outrage in his testicles eases, he considers the numbness in his right arm. Flexes it gingerly and feels only a shadowy ache. The shock hadn’t been strong enough to make him piss himself. Flexes his toes in his high-tops. Draws a deep breath, ignores the protest as his sack shifts. Aside from aches and twinges, he feels like somebody just jumped his batteries. Totally recharged. Buzzed.
In the meantime, the Mutant backs off. And registers the changes. Eyes widening, she wanders into the cavern of the Mill’s main floor and stares at the basketball hoop on the wall. In the harsh glare of the floods, the shadow of the hoop on the wall is a hangman’s loop waiting for the stickman’s parts to be drawn.
She clasps her hands and whoops in delight. “You did this?”
Sam nods. He essays standing up and makes it.
The Mutant scoops up the ball and dribbles it slowly over the crumbles and cracks of the cement floor. Positioning herself almost reverently at an imaginary free-throw line, she bounces ritually on her knees and lofts it up and in with a soft, smooth motion.
He applauds.
The Mutant throws herself into a cartwheel and comes out of it into a jump, prancing about with her hands on her hips like a cheerleader. She snatches up the ball. “Come on. Even ‘god can’t skip practice.”
The place is so grubby in the light. There’s no one else to enjoy her secret court with her. A few shots wouldn’t kill him. His first few shots as a free man, for whom basketball is just an occasional recreation. Then he’s out of there. Ignoring the ache in his testes, he shambles toward the hoop.
With a little use his arm comes back. And now it’s just a game again, he remembers why he loves it, the way it takes him out of himself. Sam the Sham becomes Sam the Slam. And scrawny Deanie Gauthier becomes the Mutant, superpowers flashing from the tips of her fingers. Once they are warmed up, they discard their jackets and she unwraps her headrag. She wears her chains heedlessly, though they snap and whip against her jeans and against the thin flesh of her cheekbone. At one point he stops her and tickles them questioningly. She shakes her head.
With a pretense of slapstick clumsiness, Sam mysteriously gets the ball into the bucket and then scratches his head in buffoonish puzzlement at his success. The Mutant becomes a dervish thug, mugging him for the ball, climbing his back to knock it from his hands, squirting between his legs and rolling away across the floor like a cartoon hedgehog, arms hugging it tight. He picks her up by the ankles and she yelps and lets it go.
“Too bad we didn’t have a boombox,” he says, “music to hack by.”
“Yeah.” She’s on one foot, then the other, arms crossed. Almost shyly, she says, “You got chains.”
Reminding himself by touch, he fingers the chains, the thin hard edge of braided metal warmed by his body. They are already so much a part of him he hardly ever thinks about them except when he takes them off and then puts them on again to practice. It must be the way her chains feel to her.
“All you need is an earring and a stud in your nose and some tattoos,” she says.
He can’t help grinning at the new and improved Sam she imagines. “S’pose I should shave my head too?” She reacts with genuine alarm. “Don’t you dare!” He doesn’t know what to say and a sudden awkwardness widens up between them. Slowly, stealing glances at her, Sam picks up his ball. “I should be going.”
The Mutant shuffles her feet. “Don’t quit the team.”
He studies the ball. “I’ll think about it.”
There is a sudden flutter of relief through her thin body and then she presses herself against him and slings her arms around his neck. The quickness and enthusiasm of her embrace startle and move him. Laughing in surprise, he drops the ball to hug her back. She rises on tiptoe and quickly kisses him, startling him again. Before he can react, she pistons upward, legs scissoring around his waist like a monkey up a pole. Her mouth is hard and wet on his. He grasps her waist instinctively to keep his balance and then to hold her there against him. The taste of her is irresistible. He takes his time, savoring the slick heat of her mouth and the silky hardness of her chains against his face, his mouth when he traces them with his tongue. His hands move to her bottom and telegraph the way it tightens straight to the root of his balls.
She wriggles against him and their mouths are together again. When he lets her down and their faces lose contact, she presses against him. Butts her head into his chest, rolls her pelvis against his thigh and moves his hand underneath her shirt to her breast. It is a powerful argument, reinforced by repeated sexual fantasies about her. All the words and reasons against it have gone out of his head, leaving only a numb thick protest jammed in his throat. In a dry-mouthed daze and ferociously tumescent, he lets her lead him to the watchman’s cubby.
When she sees the space heater, she raises an eyebrow mockingly. “You planned this!”
All he can do is shake his head as he scooches to turn it on. The little room is an icebox, holding the cold as if it were precious.
When he boosts her to the old countertop, she wraps her legs around him again. He kisses the tattooed death’s head on her right arm and the tearful man on the moon on her left before he lifts her shirt to taste the raspberry bumps rising to little points. When she pulls the shirt over her head, her breasts rise and fall in his hands. He buries his nose in her armpits, tasting the fresh metallic salts of her sweat. Undoing his fly buttons, she cops his boner, squeezing him and stroking him.
“You’re buh-buh-beautiful,” he says.
“Jesus,” she says, rolling her eyes and pushing him away.
A second’s confusion resolves itself; she wants to unlace the rawhide ties that wrap her legs up to her thighs. It seems to take forever but he’s grateful for a breather, respite from intense excitement. She does it teasingly and then laughs at the expression on his face when he realizes she has still to remove chains, jeans and the spandex tights underneath. Her fingers unhooking the chains rivet him. Watching her peel out of the jeans and tights, he scrabbles blindly at the laces of his high-tops and fumbles with his own clothes.
Once naked in the spreading glow of warmth from the little space heater, she cocks her hips and stares at him not seductively but with defiance. She seems smaller, softer, with her clothes off. She has scabs on her knees, like a little tomboy—in fact, she has a lot of bruises, all over. She’s such a physical player. He has bruises himself all the time, scrapes, nicks and scratches.
At the last moment, when it comes to taking off his jeans, he shies. He begins to look around desperately for his sneakers but they seem to have walked off on some mysterious errand of their own. Buying time, he stutters the first thing in his head. “Wear your chuh-chuh-chains.”
Surprised, she laughs and backs off to comply.
Her fingers have gone rusty on her so he helps her clasp the one around her waist and passes the others between her legs from back to front, his fingers brushing through the floss of her pubic hair, the heat of her vulva against his palm.
Wishing he didn’t blush so easily, he tells himself this must be the most difficult thing, taking off your pants. Having that stupid thing sticking out announcing the state you’re in. What if she laughs at him? What if it’s all just a big come-on to her, a chance to make a fool of him? He sees instead that she is unnerved herself as she realizes that with his clothes off, he is as big as he looks, and bigger. She steels herself visibly, intensifying his distress. Peeking at her from under his lashes, he swallows with a painfully constricted throat and squeezes his cock nervously before he realizes his hand is even on it.
Again she makes the first move, pressing her body against his, chains cool against his skin, a hard edge against the crest of his hipbones shadowing the rigidity of his penis against her. She sucks his right nipple, producing such an intense sensation the hair on his arms stiffens. Suddenly she sinks to her knees, taking his cock in her fist and tonguing the head. His throat closes in panic.
“No, please, don’t,” he whispers.
Seeming to take no offense, she does stop. She draws him down to the cot. It shudders under their combined weight. She’s so narrow, so much smaller than he is.
He tries to remember the mechanics as he understands them. Lubrication. The lush crinkle of hair on her pubis seems to part naturally as he rolls his fingertips through it but when he touches the small protuberance of her button directly, she jerks violently. Hastily he lifts his thumb.
She settles down against him again. His thick fingertips probe crevices, separate damp folded wings, silky inside. He closes his eyes to help visualize the structures his fingers inform. Finger finds an aperture, a slick tight channel. Oh it’s hot and slippery. With the intrusion of another finger, the envelope of muscle seems to grow wider and slicker.
To his fondling, and groping, she is astonishingly submissive, almost disinterested, as if she has something more important on her mind. She tangles his hair around her fingers, plays with his chains, tongues them briefly, but with seemingly no more curiosity than his baby sister examining an unwanted cracker.
He takes a deep breath. Coupling. Hose to coupler, executed at the proper angle. A simple principle. Parts her legs with his knees. She lifts her pelvis.
Lips close to her ear, he blurts, “Help me.”
Her fingers close around his cock and he holds his breath as she guides him between her thighs and there he is, there she is. From the first contact with her flesh, he meets resistance and she crabs against him. He freezes in a sweating panic.
“You’re not ready. I’m hurting you.”
“No, no,” she murmurs and shifts again and when he pushes, she opens a little.
And he can’t stop anymore. He sinks into the sensation of opening her. The grip of her body on his is a magnitude of difference from pleasuring himself. He feels held, possessed by the heat, the silkiness, the distinct muscularity of her cunt. He tips her face to taste her chains and she rolls her head and they are tongue to tongue. When he moves, the breaking wave of silken friction feels so fine he can’t stop. Instinctively making the necessary mechanical adjustment, he presses the small of her back with one hand, lifts her and himself simultaneously. Fills a little deeper and backs a little. Her hips roll under his easy guidance, her cunt clips his cock and he almost faints with the sudden clutch.
In deference to the holiday, practice on New Year’s is at midmorning. The Mutant is at the Corner when Sam wheels through downtown, and she bears a peace offering of sorts—cocoa. Pulling over, he accepts the cups she hands him and she slings her duffel in and climbs up after it. The cab fills with the sweet comforting scent of cocoa.
“Thanks,” he says shortly.
She shrugs. “Still pissed?”
Not deigning to answer, he turns up the radio. Just the sight of her is enough to make him sick to his stomach again.
Coach’s wagon is in the lot. Pete’s Blazer too.
Rick hauls in behind them and Sam warms his hands in his pockets and waits for him at the edge of the parking lot while the Mutant hastens in out of the cold.
“How was last night?”
Rick grins. “Started the night at Kendalls’ with Sarah trying to soften up a wheel of Brie in the microwave. Frigging thing blew all over the inside like a big cheese bomb.”
Sam laughs.
“Thought I was gonna herniate myself trying not to laugh too hard.” Rick glances at Sam curiously. “Went fine after that. How ‘bout you? You look like you were up all night.”
“Yeah.”
Punching the door bar, Sam opens it for Rick and they step out of the cold into the cleaning-fluid smell of the school on break.
“You do some smoke last night, Rick?”
The quiet casual question brings Rick to a halt.
“Don’t ask me that, Sambo.”
“Is that a yes?”
Rick’s gaze is steady. “Fuck you, Sambo. I told you not to ask.”
“You signed a contract—”
“Which you know I’ve violated before, so what’s the big deal? It’s a stupid piece of paper they make us sign so we can play. Means shit. You think a little smoke’s gonna affect my game? That’s bullshit. Bullshit. So mind your own fucking business.”
Sam nods as if Rick has just given him good advice on a play.
It only makes Rick angrier and he stalks away.
The janitor has opened the gym and most of the players are already there, exchanging tales of New Year’s Eve. Todd and Pete sit on the bleachers, in subdued conversation with each other. They glance up at Sam, look down hastily. Kevin Bither pretends not to see him at all. Billy Rank squats on the floor, eyes glazed with a paralytic hangover. The entire squad is here, along with most of the girls and a fair number of ambitious jay vee players of both sexes.
Sam walks through the gym to the locker room, past Coach’s office—no Coach inside, for which he’s thankful—and sweeps the contents of his gym locker into his duffel. Going past Coach’s office again, he slips under the door the laconic resignation he printed out in his awkward hand when he gave up trying to sleep.
A silence falls behind him as he crosses the gym again, still wearing his jacket, duffel slung on his shoulder.
“Sam!” Rick calls, in sudden alarm, as the doors swing closed between them.
They slam open as Rick races after him, catching him at the outside doors. The Mutant’s only a few steps behind Woods, having paused to grab her coat and duffel.
“Where are you going? What about practice?”
“I quit,” Sam confides and steps out, smiling slightly, into the cold.
In the doorway, Rick stares after him. The Mutant slips under Rick’s extended arm, which holds the door open, to scoot after Sam.
“Hey,” she calls. “You’re my ride. You can’t leave yet.”
“Oh? See me throwing my gear in the cab? See me getting in? See this key? Makes this heap go varrooom.”
She whips around the truck and clambers in breathlessly as he throws the truck into gear and skids across the lot toward the exit road.
“Jesus!” she yelps. “Slow down!”
Sam tromps the accelerator, deliberately spinning them into a donut while she shrieks and throws out her arms in an infantile reflex. He swings them casually onto the access road and she starts to laugh.
“Hot shit!”
“You wanted a ride,” he says. All at once, he feels fine. Lighter. Needed a little relief from gravity.
Sobering, she tucks up onto the seat. “You’re nuts. You can’t quit.”
“Sure I can. I just did.”
“You’re too good.”
He laughs. “Thought you were going to tell me the team needs me.”
“That was the next thing I was going to say. Hey, if I can quit smoking and partying for the sake of my team, then maybe you can put your team ahead of whatever hair you got across your ass.”
“Quit smoking and partying? Right. What was that last night?”
“No big deal if you don’t make it one.”
Sam shakes his head. “I’m not gonna argue with you, Deanie. You twist everything around to suit yourself.”
She grins and toes his thigh. “That’s how you win arguments.”
“Not with me. Where you going? Home? Or you want me to take you back to practice?”
“I’m not going back to practice until you do. In fact, I’m not getting out of this truck until you agree you’re not quitting.”
“You’ll get out when I put you out,” Sam says. “Anyway, I was looking for a reason to quit. I’m sick of basketball running my life.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
She should know.
His hands slacken on the wheel and he drums at it restlessly. He’s free. He feels unjammed—unchained. His life is his own again. It feels so good, he doesn’t know why he didn’t do it sooner. Hours and hours suddenly his again. Hours he can turn into buckage. Another set of hands, they can take in more business at the garage. He can help his father at the same time he’s earning the insurance on the bike. He’ll have time to put into the farmhouse. It seems so obvious now, like pulling a loose thread.
A few blocks ahead is the turn that could take them to the Mill. While he was hauling her ass home after midnight, she didn’t mention finding the hoop so he guesses she hasn’t. His anger at her was so great, if she’d brought it up, he’d have swallowed his tongue rather than own up to having done diddly for her. But now his mood is as balmy as the air of the melt after a storm. He’s a free man, and heady with it.
“Been to the Mill since Sunday?”
The change of subject focuses her intently. “Why?”
“I left you a surprise there. Sort of a belated Christmas present.”
She sits up straight. “Take me there then.”
They park the truck in the playground lot. The turrets, castellations and slides are gingerbread, sugarfrosted with the recent snow. The air crackles and there is a blue cast to everything that makes him think of last night’s New Year’s moon. Sam pauses to collect his basketball from the floor of the cab. The Mutant trips down the path toward the Mill. Catching up with her as she pops the padlock, he reaches a long arm past her for the light switch.
18
A blue spark explodes the switch. The shock travels from the tip of his finger to deep in his armpit, causing him to drop the ball. The crackle and the burst of light startle the Mutant as well as himself and she jumps back and comes down on his toes. Failing any traction on his sneakers, her feet start to go out from under her. She begins to twist toward him, flailing for her balance. As he scrabbles to catch her, he takes a sharp Mutant elbow in the balls. His loss of interest in rescuing her is immediate and severe. Clutching himself, he opens his mouth and a pathetic croak falls out.
Managing to save herself, she moans in distress. “Oh ‘god!”
He waves her off. Crouching against the wall, Sam grits his teeth and waits. And cups his sack. The only known treatment, chiefly beneficial on a psychological level, he recalls his father saying after a summer baseball game in which Reuben, on the mound, caught a line drive the hard way.
After the outrage in his testicles eases, he considers the numbness in his right arm. Flexes it gingerly and feels only a shadowy ache. The shock hadn’t been strong enough to make him piss himself. Flexes his toes in his high-tops. Draws a deep breath, ignores the protest as his sack shifts. Aside from aches and twinges, he feels like somebody just jumped his batteries. Totally recharged. Buzzed.
In the meantime, the Mutant backs off. And registers the changes. Eyes widening, she wanders into the cavern of the Mill’s main floor and stares at the basketball hoop on the wall. In the harsh glare of the floods, the shadow of the hoop on the wall is a hangman’s loop waiting for the stickman’s parts to be drawn.
She clasps her hands and whoops in delight. “You did this?”
Sam nods. He essays standing up and makes it.
The Mutant scoops up the ball and dribbles it slowly over the crumbles and cracks of the cement floor. Positioning herself almost reverently at an imaginary free-throw line, she bounces ritually on her knees and lofts it up and in with a soft, smooth motion.
He applauds.
The Mutant throws herself into a cartwheel and comes out of it into a jump, prancing about with her hands on her hips like a cheerleader. She snatches up the ball. “Come on. Even ‘god can’t skip practice.”
The place is so grubby in the light. There’s no one else to enjoy her secret court with her. A few shots wouldn’t kill him. His first few shots as a free man, for whom basketball is just an occasional recreation. Then he’s out of there. Ignoring the ache in his testes, he shambles toward the hoop.
With a little use his arm comes back. And now it’s just a game again, he remembers why he loves it, the way it takes him out of himself. Sam the Sham becomes Sam the Slam. And scrawny Deanie Gauthier becomes the Mutant, superpowers flashing from the tips of her fingers. Once they are warmed up, they discard their jackets and she unwraps her headrag. She wears her chains heedlessly, though they snap and whip against her jeans and against the thin flesh of her cheekbone. At one point he stops her and tickles them questioningly. She shakes her head.
With a pretense of slapstick clumsiness, Sam mysteriously gets the ball into the bucket and then scratches his head in buffoonish puzzlement at his success. The Mutant becomes a dervish thug, mugging him for the ball, climbing his back to knock it from his hands, squirting between his legs and rolling away across the floor like a cartoon hedgehog, arms hugging it tight. He picks her up by the ankles and she yelps and lets it go.
“Too bad we didn’t have a boombox,” he says, “music to hack by.”
“Yeah.” She’s on one foot, then the other, arms crossed. Almost shyly, she says, “You got chains.”
Reminding himself by touch, he fingers the chains, the thin hard edge of braided metal warmed by his body. They are already so much a part of him he hardly ever thinks about them except when he takes them off and then puts them on again to practice. It must be the way her chains feel to her.
“All you need is an earring and a stud in your nose and some tattoos,” she says.
He can’t help grinning at the new and improved Sam she imagines. “S’pose I should shave my head too?” She reacts with genuine alarm. “Don’t you dare!” He doesn’t know what to say and a sudden awkwardness widens up between them. Slowly, stealing glances at her, Sam picks up his ball. “I should be going.”
The Mutant shuffles her feet. “Don’t quit the team.”
He studies the ball. “I’ll think about it.”
There is a sudden flutter of relief through her thin body and then she presses herself against him and slings her arms around his neck. The quickness and enthusiasm of her embrace startle and move him. Laughing in surprise, he drops the ball to hug her back. She rises on tiptoe and quickly kisses him, startling him again. Before he can react, she pistons upward, legs scissoring around his waist like a monkey up a pole. Her mouth is hard and wet on his. He grasps her waist instinctively to keep his balance and then to hold her there against him. The taste of her is irresistible. He takes his time, savoring the slick heat of her mouth and the silky hardness of her chains against his face, his mouth when he traces them with his tongue. His hands move to her bottom and telegraph the way it tightens straight to the root of his balls.
She wriggles against him and their mouths are together again. When he lets her down and their faces lose contact, she presses against him. Butts her head into his chest, rolls her pelvis against his thigh and moves his hand underneath her shirt to her breast. It is a powerful argument, reinforced by repeated sexual fantasies about her. All the words and reasons against it have gone out of his head, leaving only a numb thick protest jammed in his throat. In a dry-mouthed daze and ferociously tumescent, he lets her lead him to the watchman’s cubby.
When she sees the space heater, she raises an eyebrow mockingly. “You planned this!”
All he can do is shake his head as he scooches to turn it on. The little room is an icebox, holding the cold as if it were precious.
When he boosts her to the old countertop, she wraps her legs around him again. He kisses the tattooed death’s head on her right arm and the tearful man on the moon on her left before he lifts her shirt to taste the raspberry bumps rising to little points. When she pulls the shirt over her head, her breasts rise and fall in his hands. He buries his nose in her armpits, tasting the fresh metallic salts of her sweat. Undoing his fly buttons, she cops his boner, squeezing him and stroking him.
“You’re buh-buh-beautiful,” he says.
“Jesus,” she says, rolling her eyes and pushing him away.
A second’s confusion resolves itself; she wants to unlace the rawhide ties that wrap her legs up to her thighs. It seems to take forever but he’s grateful for a breather, respite from intense excitement. She does it teasingly and then laughs at the expression on his face when he realizes she has still to remove chains, jeans and the spandex tights underneath. Her fingers unhooking the chains rivet him. Watching her peel out of the jeans and tights, he scrabbles blindly at the laces of his high-tops and fumbles with his own clothes.
Once naked in the spreading glow of warmth from the little space heater, she cocks her hips and stares at him not seductively but with defiance. She seems smaller, softer, with her clothes off. She has scabs on her knees, like a little tomboy—in fact, she has a lot of bruises, all over. She’s such a physical player. He has bruises himself all the time, scrapes, nicks and scratches.
At the last moment, when it comes to taking off his jeans, he shies. He begins to look around desperately for his sneakers but they seem to have walked off on some mysterious errand of their own. Buying time, he stutters the first thing in his head. “Wear your chuh-chuh-chains.”
Surprised, she laughs and backs off to comply.
Her fingers have gone rusty on her so he helps her clasp the one around her waist and passes the others between her legs from back to front, his fingers brushing through the floss of her pubic hair, the heat of her vulva against his palm.
Wishing he didn’t blush so easily, he tells himself this must be the most difficult thing, taking off your pants. Having that stupid thing sticking out announcing the state you’re in. What if she laughs at him? What if it’s all just a big come-on to her, a chance to make a fool of him? He sees instead that she is unnerved herself as she realizes that with his clothes off, he is as big as he looks, and bigger. She steels herself visibly, intensifying his distress. Peeking at her from under his lashes, he swallows with a painfully constricted throat and squeezes his cock nervously before he realizes his hand is even on it.
Again she makes the first move, pressing her body against his, chains cool against his skin, a hard edge against the crest of his hipbones shadowing the rigidity of his penis against her. She sucks his right nipple, producing such an intense sensation the hair on his arms stiffens. Suddenly she sinks to her knees, taking his cock in her fist and tonguing the head. His throat closes in panic.
“No, please, don’t,” he whispers.
Seeming to take no offense, she does stop. She draws him down to the cot. It shudders under their combined weight. She’s so narrow, so much smaller than he is.
He tries to remember the mechanics as he understands them. Lubrication. The lush crinkle of hair on her pubis seems to part naturally as he rolls his fingertips through it but when he touches the small protuberance of her button directly, she jerks violently. Hastily he lifts his thumb.
She settles down against him again. His thick fingertips probe crevices, separate damp folded wings, silky inside. He closes his eyes to help visualize the structures his fingers inform. Finger finds an aperture, a slick tight channel. Oh it’s hot and slippery. With the intrusion of another finger, the envelope of muscle seems to grow wider and slicker.
To his fondling, and groping, she is astonishingly submissive, almost disinterested, as if she has something more important on her mind. She tangles his hair around her fingers, plays with his chains, tongues them briefly, but with seemingly no more curiosity than his baby sister examining an unwanted cracker.
He takes a deep breath. Coupling. Hose to coupler, executed at the proper angle. A simple principle. Parts her legs with his knees. She lifts her pelvis.
Lips close to her ear, he blurts, “Help me.”
Her fingers close around his cock and he holds his breath as she guides him between her thighs and there he is, there she is. From the first contact with her flesh, he meets resistance and she crabs against him. He freezes in a sweating panic.
“You’re not ready. I’m hurting you.”
“No, no,” she murmurs and shifts again and when he pushes, she opens a little.
And he can’t stop anymore. He sinks into the sensation of opening her. The grip of her body on his is a magnitude of difference from pleasuring himself. He feels held, possessed by the heat, the silkiness, the distinct muscularity of her cunt. He tips her face to taste her chains and she rolls her head and they are tongue to tongue. When he moves, the breaking wave of silken friction feels so fine he can’t stop. Instinctively making the necessary mechanical adjustment, he presses the small of her back with one hand, lifts her and himself simultaneously. Fills a little deeper and backs a little. Her hips roll under his easy guidance, her cunt clips his cock and he almost faints with the sudden clutch.
