By Sunnybunny
The words hung heavy in the air between them, ringing out like the gong of a church bell. The confined space seemed to amplify the noise tenfold…or maybe that was Heather’s imagination. It was the second knockout blow dealt to her in just a matter of minutes. She was reeling away, still clutching the blankets against her body until she found the wall behind her. Every time the puzzle seemed to be taking shape, some great tornado of words swept it away, and Heather was forced to start solving it again from the beginning.
The money had never been missing. That much was certain. Angie had known from the start what had become of it. She might not have taken it herself, but she was certainly an accessory to the crime. Perhaps Angie’s father had sent her to scope out the new girl rolling into town for valuables. That revelation alone opened so many new conspiratorial doors in her head. How many times had father and daughter pulled off such a scheme? Were there countless travelers passing through Oasis who later realized that their luggage had been pilfered?
Then something else occurred to Heather, something that made her skin crawl. Had Angie’s father concocted their romance as a tool for blackmail in case their ploy was discovered?
She and Angie had gone to bed together now. There was no taking it back. If she went to the police and exposed the girl and her father, she’d be implicated herself for sex with a minor. All her running, all her careful planning… it would all have been for nothing.
Angie wiped at her cheeks roughly with both hands. It was a futile gesture; more tears just took their place. She saw a lull in the shouting and plowed ahead, speaking passionately, desperate to get everything out.
“My dad did it…” she repeated, quieter now. “He sent me over to check you out, see if you looked like you had any money.” She pronounced ‘money’ as if it were spelled ‘munny’. “But I lied and said you didn’t, and that’s the truth!” She held up a hand as if swearing on a Bible before a court of law. Honest Injun. “But he didn’t believe me and snuck out anyway. He come back home later that night, just happy as can be with that funny li’l bag of yours.” Her accent was getting more pronounced as she spoke, but by then, Angie hardly cared. It was now or never, and she feared that her sobs would return in full force soon, and Heather…she deserved to hear the truth.
“He danced ‘round our livin’ room like a drunk fool, ‘til he fell over and all these big bills come fallin’ out.” The images came flooding back to her. In an instant she relived the evening with her father, seeing him carrying on with the bag held up over his head like a prized trophy until he slipped on the rug and it all came tumbling out. He wasn’t mad, despite his twisted ankle. If anything, it only made him laugh all the harder.
Angie omitted a few other details from that evening, sparing Heather how he had pulled her down into the bills, stripped her naked and fucked her hard atop the little mound of stolen money, until her back was a mess of bruises and paper cuts and rug burns. She didn’t tell Heather about how after he hastily gathered it all back up and stowed it in the back closet for safekeeping, until the time was right and “that bitch leaves town,” or how he’d snatched up a kitchen knife, held it under Angie’s chin and issued a dire warning for her not to tell a soul about what he’d found.
Found.
That was the word he used. Not ‘taken,’ or ‘stolen,’ or even a fancy one like ‘purloined,’ but ‘found’. Like he’d been walking along the street and was lucky enough to pluck a five or ten dollar bill out of the gutter. She remembered settling back on the couch and watching her father work about the house, his fat gut wobbling over the band of his boxer shorts — hiding the bag in one place, then deciding it wasn’t secure enough and moving it to another. It started behind the sofa, then underneath it, then got whisked away to the little cabinet beneath the sink, where he spent a few minutes organizing the different cleaning and insecticide products around it like camouflage before giving up. He tried the broiler beneath the stove (they never used it, in fact Angie suspected her father didn’t even know what it was for) but the bag was too tall for the door to close.
As the evening wore on, the man steadily grew more agitated. He had to open the shop the next morning, and all this money was making him paranoid.
“S’pose I don’t come into work, and people get suspicious where I been?” He bellowed. “Or if the sheriff come on by to check up on me? That son of a bitch’ll rob me blind, just you wait and see if he don’t!” The irony of these fears never once dawned on him. In the end, the money was sequestered away in the hall closet, beneath a pile of Christmas decorations that hadn’t been used since her mother left.
No, Angie didn’t tell Heather any of that. Instead, she said, “It didn’t sit right with me, what he done to you, specially since I come to like you a whole lot. I knew I couldn’t let him get away with it. So I waited ‘til he got passed-out drunk a few nights later and stole the money right back, then I hid it in a secret place that no one knows anything about. He ain’t checked in the closet, not since that night. I think he’s too scared to ‘til he’s sure you left town. He rants about it sometimes, and I get s-so scared he’ll go drag it out just to look at it or somethin’ and…” She trailed off, unconsciously touching a hand to her throat where a sharp, stainless steel threat had been issued.
Heather slid her way down the length of wall until she was resting in a heap of blankets on the floor across from Angie, listening to her harrowing tale. She knew that Angie had risked everything for her, sensing that there were much uglier details to the story than the girl had been willing to share.
Her hands raked anxiously through her hair as she fought to make sense of the jigsaw puzzle of information that Angie had suddenly thrust into her hands. She so desperately wanted to believe the girl. Wanted it so badly that it was a physical ache in a heart that had already weathered too many crushing blows. She could stand it no longer and, her head buried into her raised knees, Heather broke down and began to sob.
She cried for a good long while. She cried for herself and the miserable situation her life had sunk into, where theft and forbidden love affairs and threats on her life all seemed to go hand in hand. She cried for Angie, God help her. She cried for the catalyst of all these woes, and cried harder still for not being able to hate her for it.
When Heather found the courage to look up again, she was surprised to see that the naked child was curled up into a tight ball on the floor, shuddering with racking sobs of her own. Angie looked so small, impossibly so. The girl’s bare shoulders shivered with the strain of weeping. She was so thin that Heather could make out her sharp shoulder blades, count the bumps of her spine.
Heather imagined a vast desert, great dunes of sand brazenly rising to meet the scorching sun. The middle distance was obscured by a haze of heat and the horizon swayed like a drunkard. In the middle of this waste was a single desert cactus flower, peeking up through the grain and grit of the valley, its petals defiant and dazzling with bright primary colors.
In her mind’s eye, Heather was lost amongst it all, buried up to the neck in the harsh wilderness, on the verge of sinking further still if she gave into the despair that had plagued her since fleeing Richie Valentine’s estate. She’d convinced herself that a new life awaited her out west. A fresh start with only a few miles and forged identification documents standing in her way. Heather had managed to convince herself that once she crossed these hurdles, all would be well for her. She would focus on herself, get her life together, be happy again.
And now look at me, she thought. On the floor of a crappy motel room in the middle of nowhere, in love with a ten-year-old girl. Staring at the sobbing child, she made a decision.
Working both arms free from the blankets, Heather set to crossing the room’s expanse, crawling toward that precious little flower. When she reached Angie, Heather scooped that rose up in her arms and cradled the sniffling child, shading her against the merciless sun.
Angie looked up questioningly only for a moment, her face a mess of tears and snot and sweat, then threw both arms around Heather’s neck and burst into fresh tears. Angie had seen all she’d needed to in the older woman’s face.
Heather gently rocked Angie gently in her arms, whispering sweet words into the crown of the girl’s head. “It’s okay. Oh, Angie, I’m so sorry. So goddamn sorry I hurt you.”
Angie hung on fiercely, pressing her fingers into Heather until the knuckles turned white.
In all the chaos, this was the only thing that felt right to them. Their one haven from the gathering storm. Once again Heather found herself marveling at how well their nude bodies seemed to fit together, how they melted into one another, until they felt as one warm, happy whole. She wondered what Mama Maven would say about a connection as powerful as this. The reply she got seemed to issue from all around, as if the woman were whispering in some unseen corner of the room:
Oh, child. Something this awesome could only be guided by some divine force, and I don’t mean ‘awesome’ like you young people say it. I’m talking about ‘awesome’ in the Biblical sense. The kind that Job and Paul and John felt. Something so great that you and I can only marvel at it in our limited comprehension. Do you understand?
Heather nodded into Angie’s angel-soft hair. The girl smelled of cheap shampoo, sweat and stale cigarettes. The words bubbled up in her throat and tauntingly danced on the tip of her tongue, then in a rush of breath, she confessed her own long held secret. “I love you, Angie.”
The girl stopped trembling in her arms, then she slowly lifted herself out of Heather’s embrace to meet her eyes anew. There, swimming in tears and ruddy cheeks, Heather saw so much adoration that it made her heart ache. “I love you too, Heather.”
Once started, neither could stop, and they repeated it to one another again and again, until their mouths met in another desperate embrace.
“I’ve always loved you, Angie! From the very first moment I laid my hands on you!”
“Heather, oh God, I love you so much! I think… I think I loved you even before I knew you! Does that even make sense?”
“No, but this does…”
They tumbled to the floor together, still embraced. Heather practically dragged the little girl over to the pile of bedding. The mattress had been stripped bare, the pillows, sheets and blanket in a heap on the floor and the two lovers lost themselves within them.
In a stark contrast to their first time, they ground their bodies together in a frenzy. More than once their teeth clicked together painfully as they kissed. Each time, it made them break apart, giggling before attacking each other’s mouth again.
Heather’s fingers laced through Angie’s hair, locking the youth in a desperate embrace. Angie’s small hands groped at every inch of Heather, unable to decide where they wanted to be. At first it was the small of her back, then they sought out the firm roundness of the woman’s buttocks. She moaned eagerly as her fingers fanned out around the exposed flesh, cupping the shapely ass before flying back up to grasp at Heather’s breasts.
The woman gasped, finding both pain and pleasure in Angie’s rough fondling. Taking hold of the girl, she eased her back until she had the child pinned down on their improvised bed. She peppered Angie’s neck with fresh kisses, nibbling at her neck and earlobe until she coaxed fresh mewling from the girl’s sweet lips.
“Oh, Heather, please don’t tease me,” Angie breathed, arching her hips spasmodically. “I need you so bad!” She fought against her light restraints, wanting nothing more than to press her naked flesh into Heather’s.
Heather adjusted her grip and took one of Angie’s hands. “Here, sweetheart,” she cooed, pressing that hand between her legs, letting the girl touch her arousal. “Can you feel that?” Her voice became a shudder, barely above a whisper; a secret nearly lost in the heaving breath and whisper of sheets. “Can you feel what you do to me?”
The girl’s fingers were clumsy at first, more experienced with handling a man’s unruly soldier than the tender flower of a woman. Heather still had much to teach Angie about how two women made love.
“Here, slow down,” she whispered. “Touch me here. Yes, here… now move with me.” She guided the girl’s small fingers over her own sex until she was shuddering with each pass over the firm nub of her clit. Their fingers quickly became drenched in the dew of her arousal. Finally, when she was certain Angie had the rhythm down, she withdrew her hand.
Now Angie was splayed on her back with Heather kneeling beside her. Heather looked down the length of her own body, gasping at the lascivious sight of Angie’s tight, boyish body laid out before her, tanned all over with the little knots of her nipples hardened into points. Heather’s eyes trailed lower still, following the line of hip bones to those long and very brown legs. Angie’s peach glistened in the light of the room, looking so slick and supple and inviting. A forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
Heather had never been so tempted by anything in her life. This girl and her prepubescent body, so smooth and flawless, on the cusp of womanhood… Heather had already taken her first bite, and if she was damned for it, why not have another?
“I’m going to touch you now, Angie,” Heather intoned, feeling a touch of déjà vu before she reached out to gently stroke the girl. Angie stiffened at her lover’s caress, momentarily losing the rhythm she’d been applying to Heather’s sex, but quickly recovered it.
Heather smiled patiently, rocking her hips with the motion of the child’s hand as she hummed with delight. “Oh, that feels so nice. You’re doing such a good job, Angie. Please don’t stop.”
The sigh that followed from Angie wasn’t from relief or pleasure, but a deliberate effort to regain composure. It was so easy for her to lose control in the heat of the moment, with emotions running so high.
Heather’s fingers came away trailing threads of the girl’s arousal, and she suckled them between her lips. She moaned again at the familiar taste, more intoxicating than the strongest alcohol she’d ever had. Nothing compared to Angie in her eyes. Nothing in the world could equal this beautiful child. She’d been a fool for fighting her desire for so long.
“Oh, Heather, I’m so close!”
“I know. I am too, Angie, I’m so close. Let’s try to c-come together, okay?”
The girl nodded her sweat-glazed forehead into the sheets, pursing her lips so tightly they became a white line. She was fighting so hard to wait for Heather that she trembled with the effort. The sight of Angie’s struggle was adorable and endearing and very, very erotic. It helped to drive Heather over the edge and explode in another electric orgasm.
Angie found her own release a heartbeat later, and the two cried out their pent-up desires as one, brazen voice. It echoed in the small room, amplified somehow into a cacophony better fitting a small orgy than the lovemaking of two youths. The heights they reached were staggering, peaking far higher than either ever felt or even thought possible. Heather felt as if they might smash through the roof together, shouting defiantly to the heavens and yet… for something so powerful, the coming down was amazingly gentle.
The young lovers settled easily into each other’s arms, panting and staring at one another from inches apart. So much needed to be said, would have been said if they could only catch their breath. If only they weren’t so drained. So instead of talking, they drifted into an easy sleep.
Neither dreamed.
On to Chapter Thirteen!