“That was some damn good pie,” she said.

She was leaning against the trunk of the Pontiac Townes had been caressing and cussing into running condition a couple hours a day over the past few weeks.  It was still a little rough around the edges, with patches of compound around two of the wheel wells contrasting the original, jet black finish.   The moment he’d driven it out of barn and pulled to the front of the house, she looked excited, but he could tell she’d already seen it.  It didn’t surprise him to realize she’d get curious and explore while he wasn’t around.

         The T shirt hung over her body like an ill-fitting dress, and the brain paralyzing shorts she was wearing were completely concealed.  Still, people noticed her.  The heart of town went four blocks in one direction and three in the other.  Townes’ presence was well known, and as much of an anomaly as Siren was in the context of the tiny, post card village, just being seen with him was enough to raise questions.

         He’d become something of an unofficial constable.  It was one of the reasons Cutler had helped set him up there, sending him into Nessa’s shop to ask her about renting the bungalow where he was living.  Where the girl leaning against the back of the car was presently living, too.  The county covered too wide an area for the sheriff to take care of.  Very little ever happened, but when it did, the residents had to fend for themselves in emergencies.

It had taken months for people to get used to Townes.  In the beginning, no one looked him in the eye on the street on his infrequent trips to the center of town.  No one but Nessa had spoken to him except cashiers telling him the cost of things he needed at the market or hardware store.

But then he’d gotten that call one night from Emma Johnson.  She also owned the tavern adjacent to the diner, and when a fight broke out that snowballed, she rang his phone.  He didn’t even know she had his number, but she’d told him Cutler said she should call if she ever had a problem.  It hadn’t taken him long to get there, and by the time he did, there were six people involved in the fight.  It was over about ninety seconds later.  He’d almost been disappointed.

         “Pretty good for half good pie,” he nodded, leaning beside her.  He crossed his beefy arms in front of him. 

         “You mean somethin’ to these people.  Can’t tell what, zackly.  But somethin’.”

         “They’re just curious.  Especially because of you.”

         “Kinda figured you wasn’t out for pie dates much.”

         “Yeah, well…just wanted to see what normal feels like a little.”

         “Few minutes a normal?  Like that?”

         “Like that.”

         “How’s it workin’ out?”

         “Everything felt like normal ‘til we got here.  But driving over…just in the car…it was like things I remember.  Flashes of moments.”

         “Times ridin’ around with a girl like me?”

         He shook his head and looked at her.  Her eyes were already on his, as if she’d been following them all along.  “No such thing as a girl like you.  I never saw anything like you at all,” he said.

         “That a good or a bad thing?”

         He frowned, surprised she couldn’t tell.  “I wish I’d known a girl like you.  I wish…just wish.”

         “You know me now,” she said.

         There was a strain of something both musical and foreign in her voice.  Something dangerous.  It sounded like the kind of hope he’d felt bleed out of his body that night in a ditch on whatever planet he once lived on.

         “Guess I do at that.”

         She leaned against him.  “That was some damn good pie.”

         He almost laughed.  “No it wasn’t.”

         She laughed, and that pushed the laugh out of him, too.  He looped his arm around her.  The feel of her laughing body against his made him feel lighter, but it wasn’t long before her laughter faded into a sigh.

         “T?”

         “Yeah, okay.”  Emma Johnson was watching them from inside the diner where they’d just had pie.  People on the sidewalk turned to notice them and kept moving, pretending they hadn’t.  They separated and got into the car.  Before he had a chance to start it up, Nessa’s pale blue 318 came down the street and stopped in the middle of the lane.  The window rolled down.

         Nessa greeted each of them in turn, and when Townes looked back and forth between them, he realized they’d met.  Nessa’s eyes grew narrow and dark.  Siren’s jaw tensed.  No one had anything to say out loud.  Townes finally started the Pontiac.  It sounded like the face of the mountain sliding off.

         “Stop by when you can,” Nessa said.  Then she rolled up her window and drove on.

         Townes pulled into the street and headed back toward the bungalow.

         “Is she the reason you don’t wanna fuck me?”

         He eased up on the gas, looking at her and trying to keep his eye where they were going.  When he reached the turn onto the road leading to the lookout at the highest point in the area, he took it and pulled over.

         “Whatever gave you that idea?” he asked.

         “She come over last night while you was out workin’.  Studyin’ me mostly.  She din’t say nothin’ much.  Pleasantries and such.  Asked me how I was getting’ by.  How’d I like the clothes she sent.”

         “And?”

         “And…she figures you’re fuckin’ me and don’t like the idea much.”

         “She told you this?”

         “Naw.  Not in so many words.  She’s just one a them ain’t as good as she thinks she is at hidin’ what she says with her face.”

         “She shouldn’t have come around without telling me.”

         “Ain’t no harm in it to anybody but her, I s’pose.”

         No one said anything for a while.  The V8 sounded anxious.

         “Siren…I was hoping you understood.  I couldn’t live with myself if I thought I’d took you out of that situation with Cray just to end up doing the same thing to you all over again.  Caging you like something you aren’t.”

         “Don’t take it personal, but ya ain’t doin’ such a great job livin’ with yourself now.”

         Townes nearly slammed the car back in drive and bolted forward, driving toward the lookout.

         “You know how I come to be with Cray?”  He didn’t answer.  Just waited.  “Poker game,” she went on.  “I know I never had to stay, ‘cept he woulda beat the poor fuck who lost the game if I hadn’t.  So okay, you walked me outta there so I could choose whatever…whoever…for myself.  But you don’t wanna let me.  Seems like something’s wrong with me choosin’ you.”

         The gravel turnoff to the lookout came up and Townes took the turn faster than he should’ve.  He kept going until they reached the weedy area at the top of the grade that served as a parking lot.

         “I figure you musta had somebody before you got shot.”

         “I did,” he nodded, eyes on the steering wheel, knuckles turning white.

         “S’okay if ya don’t wanna talk about it.”

         “I don’t.”

         “Kinda figured.  And I kinda figure sometimes maybe you think I’m stupid…I mean I know ya like me and all…but s’okay, most people do cuz I don’t talk like them that had books and such to grow up with.  But I keep thinkin’ about that sunrise back in the desert that day.  Then later.  ‘Member what we said?”

         “About a few minutes of love, you mean?”

         “Zackly.  And you wanna know what’s really stupid?”

         “You’re gonna tell me even if I say no.”

         “Damn right I am,” she snickered.  “Stupid is just wantin’ a few minutes when you can have more.  And the only thing to stop ya havin’ everything is all that fear and pride.  Pure stubborn is what you are.  But fuck it.  You don’t even stop to think past them fuckin’ scars you got.”

         “Siren….”  His voice turned to jagged ice, and he turned on the seat to face her.  “You are way over the….”

         She shifted on the wide, bench seat, rising onto her knees and leaning toward him while she held onto the headrest for support.  “You don’t even know how safe I felt even that first moment ya squatted down in front of me back at Cray’s.  Didn’t matter I didn’t know you.  Big and nasty as ya looked.  Safe, T.  Safe.”

         She knee walked on the seat.  Closer.  She hadn’t even noticed how the rest of the world seemed beneath them from there.  Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.

         “Sometimes…I go wet just cuz ya walk in the room and look a certain way.  Touch me now, T.  I want ya to know.”

         She kneed closer, and Townes slid his hand under the blousy hem of the T shirt and searched out the shape of her pussy through the thin, tight shorts.  She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip when his fingers brushed over the saturated patch of fabric between her thighs.

         “Aw, yeah, this is what safe means, T.  You touchin’ me.  Takin’ me into your house.  Pie.  You wanted a few minutes of love and I want a few minutes of safe, ‘cept it’s all the same thing and dammit if we both don’t want a helluva lot more than a few, stupid minutes.”

         He slipped his left hand under the T shirt and ran his hand over the smoothness of her graceful spine.  Her pussy continued to seep its slick honey into the fabric of her shorts while he gently ground his fingers against her.  His cock was rapidly growing thick with demanding heat.  She rocked her hips slightly, urging his fingers.

         “I know ya like touchin’ me, T.  I can tell.  You don’t touch me like none a them others ever did.”

         She swung one knee onto the seat between his legs, putting herself between him and the steering wheel. 

         “The whole thing about touching you is that it feels like something else.  You have this way of wearing your skin like an attitude.”

         As he spoke, his left hand slid around her body, over the satin trail of her torso and ribcage, until he was firmly cupping her breast.  His right slipped under the leg hem of her shorts where his fingers slid along the flushed, petal-thickened furrow of her pussy.  He ground the pads of his fingers against slit, tightening his squeeze on her breast at the same time.

         She took in a sharp, quick breath, and then peeled the oversized shirt over her head, revealing one naked breast and the other caught in the grip of his large hand.  She took his face in her hands and stared at him with dark lightning in her eyes.

         “Everybody touches me.  Only you ever felt me, and you did it before ya ever laid a finger on me.”

         She looked at him for a long time.  He caught her swollen nipple between his thumb and index finger, squeezing and rolling while his slid a finger up inside her honey coated sheath.

         “Give me your mouth,” he said.  She started to say something about more than a few minutes, but he cut her off.  “Stop talking and just give me your mouth.”

         A quick smile flashed across her lips as she leaned down toward his face.  Their lips converged and opened, their tongues sweeping and probing, all in one gesture.  She tasted like apples.  Townes felt the sweet torture of that continually feeds on itself, yet he was feeding on her – tasting her – every one of his senses diving off the edge of the pure, raw thing she was.

         His cock strained with broiling demand against the confinement of his jeans.  It seemed a crass statement of his desire for freedom.  Freedom from pain, anger and violence.  Freedom to fall and drown in his gathering love for this angel-waif who was wiser than he.  He drove his finger deeper inside and scuttled his other hand to fondle her other breast.  He took the breath from her mouth deeply into his body and felt alive.

         As he drove his finger deep, he let it curl forward to massage the wet velvet tissue inside.  The thick pad of his fingertip swabbed in circles while she suddenly threw back her head with a gasp.  Her nails dug into his solid shoulders while her body was suddenly gripped with spasms that nearly scared him.

         “How…,” she strained.  “How…do…you…do that?”

         He moved his hand from her breast to her throat, holding only firmly enough to keep her steady.

         “It’s just my finger inside you,” he said.  Then he curled harder and stirred.  Her nails dug harder and broke his skin while her eyes narrowed as if she were seeing him for the first time.

         He eased his finger out of her pussy and released his hold on her throat.  She lowered herself onto his legs and leaned against him.  His hands soothed across her back.

         “Lotta mean have me do things to ‘em, T.  Dirty things.  Some’re okay.  Others not so much.  Guess it all depends.  With the wrong one even a kiss ain’t right.  But I wanna do everything with you.  You don’t scare me no more like I said that time.”

         “Not so many dirty things as just dirty spirits,” he told her, dipping his hand inside her shorts to cup one side of her ass.

         “Am I a dirty spirit, T?”

         “You know better than that.”

         “Back there when we was eatin’ pie and that lady kept lookin’ us over, I kept thinking about that time in the tub when you was rinsin’ your cum off me.  That lady…she was lookin’ at me like somethin’ she just scraped off the bottom of her shoe.  But I thought about bein’ covered up in you and how nobody but you or me could ever unnerstand.”

         “Siren?”

         “Yeah?”

         “How are you gonna feel about me falling in love with you…and such?”

         “I swear, T, sometimes you can be dumb as a bag a hammers.”

         She moved aside, scuttling back to the passenger’s side, and leaned back against the door.  Townes gripped his cock through his pants as he hungrily eyed the dark stain of honey in the crotch of her shorts.  As she peeled them down the lush, smooth contours of her legs, a grin crossed her face that nearly changed her into a creature he’d never seen before.  Driven, yet full of impish exuberance.  She planted one foot on the floor and the other up on the back of the seat.  Her pussy had a dainty ferocity, and she reached between her open thighs and splayed herself with her fingers.

         Townes’ cock oozed precum into his briefs as she watched her finger stroke her pouting slit.

         “My pussy,” she said.  “My choice.  Ain’t no thank you note.”

         After a few moments more watching her tease him by teasing herself, he opened his door and got out.  He watched her finger slide in and out of her wet core while he took off his shoes and pants.  He yanked off his T shirt and stroked his aching cock.  Watching her.  Following the contiguous flow of her flesh and sinew.

         He watched her finger-stroke her pussy until his prodigious cock was completely slathered with precum.  Then he walked halfway around the car to her side.  He was beyond considering the prospect of another car coming up to lookout.

         When he opened the door, she leaned up and turned, getting on her hands and knees across the seat.  He stroked her face while she looked briefly up at his, then pressed her cheek against the heated spine of his cock.  His fingers laced into the softness of her fine hair while her tongue lashed out to wet a trail along his rigid shaft.

         When she caught his slick dome between her lips, she pulled him into her mouth while he groaned her name.  He laced the fingers of his other hand into her hair and started rocking his shaft in and out of her mouth.  He thrust carefully at first, straining to remain conscious of not forcing himself so deeply as to plug her throat.  But she accepted the cautious plunges of his cock so naturally, covering his flesh with the wet heat of her swirling tongue, that his caution lost out to his need.

         He was lost, fucking her lips with steady strokes as she took the lion’s share of his length every time.  His hands slid through the strands of her hair onto her back, sliding along her body until his fingers sank into the pliant flesh of her ass.  The firm tightness of her muscles took him by surprise.  He pulled his cock free of her mouth and raised his hand, then landing a sharp, sudden smack on one cheek.

         When she looked up at his face, her eyes were glazed.  Distant, yet tracking his face as if she were the predator and he were the prey.

         “Still feel safe?” he asked, his chest heaving with breath he could barely control.

         “Oh, yes, sir.”  Her tone had a crystalline ring of defiance.”

         “I told you to call me T.”

         “Yes, sir,” she purred.

         “Turn around,” he told her, holding her eyes while his hand glided over his cock.

         He caught the smirk on her lips just before she moved.  She rose up on her knees and faced him a moment, running her hands over her breasts as she watched him stroke the cock left soaking wet by her mouth.

         “Gonna set me right, sir?”

         “Turn around.  Present your ass correctly.”

         The smirk came back just before she rearranged herself on her hands and knees, facing away this time.  Townes let go of his cock and ran his hand up the inside of her thigh.

         “You give silk a bad name,” he told her as his hand came into contact with her slick pussy.

He dragged his finger over the lips, smearing her moisture all the way to her rim.  He massaged the tight bud with a slippery fingertip, then leaned down and licked her clean again.  A softly strangled gasp betrayed her surprise.  He then reared back upright and gave her three solid smacks on both spheres of her ass.

“Still feel safe?” he asked again, burrowing his fingers into the slippery nest of her pussy lips and wetting them fresh.

“More than ever, baby,” she said without a second’s hesitation.

He smeared more of her honey over her rim, then slid his fingers back toward her pussy to collect more.  No one had called him baby in years, and then it had been strained – his ex-fiancé trying to tell a bullet pocked junkie how he’d turned into something she could never be around.  Who could blame her?  But now, the word fell through Siren’s lips like cream dripping over the side of a tiny pitcher.  He closed his eyes hard as he smeared fresh honey over her asshole blind.

“Baby,” he repeated.  Eyes clamped.  No mountain or sky surrounding them.  Only the taut resistance of that tiny ring of muscle where he touched her.   Heart like a stone fist trying to punch its way out.  “Ever call any of those others baby?”

He opened his eyes and she was looking back at him over her shoulder.  “Never called nobody baby…baby.”

“Baby.”  It came off like a soft cry this time.  He pressed his finger through the firm ring of her asshole, sliding slowly into her channel.  “Baby.”

“Ffffuck…baby…”

He gripped her left cheek with his left hand and pulled her open as far as he could, rhythmically sliding his finger in and out of her.  He released his grip on her cheek and reached under her to find her pussy, grinding the pads of two fingers over her clit while his other finger continued its gently insistent glide in her ass.  The moment the garbled yowl rose from her throat, he pulled his finger free and smacked her ass with an open hand on both sides.

“Ain’t ya gonna fuck me?” she mewled.

He replied with a groan as he pulled his left hand from her pussy, gripping his cock with the right and grinding the flared tip against her dew lathered sex lips.  She was wet to the point of oozing, but his cock slid inward by slow degrees as the astonishing tightness of her pussy slowly molded to the shape of his imposing shaft.

It was as if her body were challenging him.  Challenging his cock to claim its rightful place inside her.  He wanted to split her open like a piece of juice dripping fruit and yet cradle the broken parts in rough hands that would love them and let her nectar cleanse his tainted spirit.

         “You…,” he groaned.  Breathless.  Grinding his stone shaft deeper.  Harder.  Embracing the challenge.

         “Baby?  Baby?”

         “…are…”

         “Oh god, just fuck me!”

         “…the nastiest masterpiece I have ever seen.”

         When he finally sank his shaft completely inside her, he clutched her flaring hips and began stroking in and out of her pussy.  Still, her body’s grip on his cock was so hard his entire body held tight as he fucked into the sweet, creamy resistance of her sheath.

         “Just…do it hard,” she growled, her voice husky enough to sound like someone else, her body vibrating from the inside out.

         He gripped her hip on the left and smacked her ass on the right as he drove his cock into her with ardent lunges.  Dull scarlet handprints were beginning to appear across her ass.  He clutched a fistful of hair at the base of her skull and grimaced with strain while her body drove back against the the hard thrusts of his cock.  He was pulling back nearly to the tip and giving her body the full stroke of his hot length with every push.

         Before long, he was driving into her hard, rocking her body with the force of his lunges, but his thrusts had become careful as the tight, rippling grip of her pussy held him on the edge.  He finally pulled away, and she turned to look back at him over her shoulder.

         “Baby?”  She was half breathless and looked disoriented.

         “I need your face.”

         He held his hand out toward her as she scrambled around to take it.  He led her out and around to the back of the car.  Without a word, she sat up on the trunk with her thighs open wide.  As he stepped into place, she started to reach for his cock, but he dropped low before she could take hold.

         His palms slid along her inner thighs.  Her entire slit and mound were lacquered with moisture.  He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the slick hollow between her thigh and pussy, smearing his mouth, then licking the soft skin.  It was the pure taste of pure woman.  She was sweet with a faint tanginess.  He repeated the gesture on the hollow on the other side of her pussy, filling his head with her scent and taste until he believed that purity was seeping into his bones.

         “T?  T?  Are ya really gonna shove your tongue where your cock already been?”

         He gazed at her pussy.  It was mere inches from his face.  The particular delicacy of her pouting shape would never be repeated anywhere in nature.  He spoke to her without looking up.

         “I need you…every last thing you’re made of.”  Then he kissed her open pussy and listened to music of sighing above him.  The next time he spoke, he looked up at her face.  “I’d thought this region of being alive was forever cut off to me,” he told her.  “But you…Jesus, Siren, you….”

         He drove his mouth back against her pussy.  Smooth.  Slick.  His tongue dragging and exploring every dip and contour of her.  He lapped at her clit as if his tongue were battling the retracted hood for ownership.  Trapping her blood red pearl under his lips, he sucked and dug his fingers hard into the flesh of her hips.  Her heels beat lazily against his back as she rocked herself against his mouth.

         “Dammit, fuck me,” she cried.

         He finally rose back to his full height, his engorged cock strutting forward while his mouth was covered with her dew.  They looked at each other, but then down at the same time, and both watched as his thick cock sank back inside her pussy.

         She wrapped her legs around his middle and her arms around his neck.  He massaged her prominent breasts as he began to pump his shaft into her body, but finally let his hands settle behind her at the base of her spine.  They held each other’s gaze, occasionally kissing, but the needful rock of their bodies and mutual fight for breath broke their kisses too soon.

         “How do you do this?” she said.

         He groaned, having no idea what she meant.

         “Just cum with me…now…fuck…cum…now!”

         Townes drove into her pussy without restraint, his cock throbbing with hard spasms of release.  As she whimpered and gasped, Siren’s pussy tightened so hard on his cock it felt like she was squeezing the cum back down his shaft.  He drove harder and let the broken pieces of his soul pour into the raw purity of her body.

         She hugged him with both her arms and legs while he tightened the circle of his arms around her.  He was still buried inside her.  Snug.  Swollen but beginning to relax.  He closed his eyes to memorize the feeling of the tiny rushes of her breath against his shoulder.

         “T?” she called softly after a long while.

         His cock finally slipped free of her body.

         “Yeah.”

         “There’s, um…somethin’ I need.”

         “Okay.”

         She pushed at his body with her hands and he stepped back, giving her room to slide off the trunk of the car.  Taking his hand, she led him back to the wide open passenger door and sat down, facing out with her feet on the ground.

         “C’mere, baby,” she said.

         He stepped close and she placed her hands on his hips, drawing him closer.

         “We can keep each other safe,” she said.  “Like they say it’s s’posta work.”

         “Baby, I think we already do.”

         She smiled, but before he could smile back, she took his wet cock in her hand and put him inside her mouth.  She closed her eyes and he felt her tongue swirl as she sucked their mixture into her mouth.

         He understood.  Stroked her face and sighed.  He remembered the serenity of being just another man.  Any man anywhere in any town on any street.  Except to her.  She could’ve been any woman.  Except to him.  They could be any couple walking down a sidewalk where someone could brush by and forget them, as if they’d never been seen at all.