“Yep.”
“A lot of lonely women in that crowd?” she teased.
A dot of dried blood stained the fabric of my pants, and I wiped at it even though I knew it wouldn’t come out. My mind was sluggish as I processed her question, but the answer surprised me a little when it finally did. There might as well have been no women at the party for the amount I’d noticed them. “It wasn’t exactly lively, but my parents enjoyed it, and that’s all that matters to me.”
“And I guess a phone call from their son at the local prison would put a damper on that.”
I laughed because she had no fucking idea. “Yeah, I’ve already put them through enough for a lifetime.”
As we approached the parking lot for the bar, I directed her to turn in. “This is it.”
She leaned forward to get a better look out the windshield and let out a guffaw. “The Sticky Pickle?” A huge sign shot out of the earth and up about twenty feet, declaring it just that.
I smiled. “Yep.”
“Good God, Thatcher. Not only can’t you put your boner away, but now you’ve got it all sticky. Is this ever going to end?” she asked through humor-induced near-convulsions, two loose strands of hair falling down and around her frisky eyes. They seemed to turn up at the corners like an extension of her mouth. Moisture formed at the very center of her lips with an involuntary flick of her tongue.
My cock pulsed.
Oh, Jesus.
As I watched every single page of her flipbook of motion with utter fascination, all I could do was answer her honestly. Put my boner away around her?
“Not fucking likely.”
After dropping my big-tire, 1964, sweet-as-fuck Chevy Nova SS off at my parents’ house, we were back on the road. I’d wanted her to come inside, but all it took was one self-scrutinizing glance at her T-shirt and the connotation of an early morning visit to make her refuse. “No way am I meeting your parents in a shirt that talks about petting my kitty before you have the pleasure,” she’d said. I’d started to ask if that meant there was a chance of it happening soon, but thought better of it.
I’d rather have her fall into my trap without realizing it.
And in the end, she’d made the right choice. After a night of way more excitement than they were used to, my parents were still in bed. A couple of quick kisses and apologetic good-byes from their bedside, and they were still none the wiser about my drama-filled night.
“Thank fuuuuuck,” Cassie moaned again as we crossed the Hudson River by way of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
Any other time, any other place, and her moan probably would have had my titty-attuned tail wagging wildly. But not right now.
I had a serious cramp in my left thigh and my knees were about to become a permanent fixture in my chest, and still, as I glanced at my watch, I knew I had no other option but to trick my beautiful chauffeur into making another detour in this tiny fucking clown car.
After a night in the slammer, I could and would skip out on almost anything but this. There was a little girl with big eyes and a bigger heart waiting for me, and I’d have to be dead or dying to break a commitment with her.
“Um, Cass?”
“What?” she snapped. Her eyes looked like an exact embodiment of the root of all of the world’s evil.
I sunk my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from laughing and looked out the passenger side window to conceal my smile. “I know you’re not exactly happy with me right now—”
“Understatement,” she emphasized.
“But I think I’ve got a cramp in my cock. Maybe you’re not all that fond of mine, but you like them in general, right?”
Her eyes narrowed as she considered my lead-in. She wanted to ignore me completely, but Cassie couldn’t deny her affinity for the D.
“What’s your boner want now, Thatcher?” she asked suspiciously.
Laughter no longer concealed, I told her a version of the truth, but I wrapped it in a multitude of flirting in an attempt to distract her.
“Oh, honey, I can assure you, it wants many, many things, a great number of them from you. But I’m actually not coming on to you right now, not trying to insult your intelligence, and not asking your tits to keep my boner company.”
“I don’t get it. What else is there from you?” she teased, and I laughed. Because for the first time ever, from maybe the least expected person ever, she didn’t sound serious when she said it. She sounded like she didn’t actually think my intelligence stopped at the head of my dick. That my titty talk and boner references were just a coating for everything underneath. It seemed like she could see it—without prodding or encouragement—and that wasn’t the norm. Most people never know more than a surface layer of each other’s personalities. They take the bolder characteristics of a first impression at face value because they’re lazy, and they carry those expectations and prejudices throughout the entire relationship. Maybe something about Cassie’s appetite for new experiences made her dig deeper than the rest.
“Please,” I begged, seeing the exit I needed approaching in the distance. “Just get off this exit and take me to the CVS a couple of blocks down.”
“I don’t know where I’m going—” she hedged, and I interrupted quickly so she didn’t have time to overthink it.
“I do. I come up here all the time. I’ll tell you where to go. Everybody wins. I’ll get to stretch my legs, and I’ll buy you a bag of Cheetos for your trouble.”
“And a Diet Mountain Dew.”
Bingo. I’d found a momentary weakness in her defenses.
“Yes,” I agreed. “And a Mountain Dew.”
“Diet!” she corrected.
“Yes. Diet. I promise. As long as the weight loss doesn’t come from your tits.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Sorry, bud. But the boobs are always the first to go.”
Regular, I thought. Definitely getting the regular.
“Turn right,” I instructed as we crested the hill of the exit ramp and approached the bottom.
As we got closer and closer, I kept expecting the car to slow, but it never did. Cruising at what had to be fifty, Cassie flew right out into traffic without even slowing amidst my screams.
“Jesus Christmas! Are you fucking nuts? Why the hell didn’t you stop back there?” I yelled, looking back over my shoulder and grabbing the “Oh shit” handle without shame now.
“Oh. You wanted me to stop?” she asked, all mock-innocence. “You didn’t say stop. You just said, ‘Turn right.’”
Holy hell, she is insane!
“The stop was implied by the giant red sign!”
Her face took on a Gru-like air—as in, evil genius. “Maybe next time you’ll be a little more specific and a lot more cordial.”
“Fuck, you’re a lunatic.”
“Uh-uh-uh,” she hummed. The red of her nail almost hypnotized me as it ticked back and forth in front of my face. Since my only choices seemed to be to concede or die, there was really no choice at all.
“Fuck, you’re a lunatic, Fair Queen Cassie?” I ventured.
“Better.”
“You scare me,” I told her with a point of my index finger. “And that’s saying something.”
She shrugged. There were no fucks for her to give. Absolutely zero. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d turned her pockets inside out just to prove it to me.
As the next turn approached, I carefully considered how to tell her. “Did you ever hear the story about Wei Wang?”
“No,” she answered. Which was no surprise since I was making it up.
“Well, all the Wangs had a history of hanging right down the middle, if you know what I mean.”
“Maybe you do only talk about cocks.”
“But not Wei. He lived up to his name, hooking way to the left,” I rushed on as we approached the fork in the road.
“Huh?”
“Stay to the left, hook left, this is your next direction, Luscious Cassie,” I speed-replied as we barreled toward the divide.
“What the fuck?” she asked, but she did what I said. She did it at high speed and quite possibly on two wheels, but she did it.
“You wanted specific directions.”
“Those weren’t specific, they were fucking convoluted and ridiculous.”
It was fair to say she was upset, but she had also been distracted, and in that moment, while trying to get her to do something she wouldn’t want to do, that was the more important of the two.
“Why the fuck are we in a neighborhood?” she asked, realizing I’d taken her off course.
I could see the house I wanted, three down on the left, and appropriately timed my response. “Just pull over right here.”
“Are you lost?” she accused and came to a screeching stop. “I thought you said you knew where you were going.”
I climbed out of the car carefully, sighing in relief when my back cracked at the moment it reached full height. If it hadn’t looked so dirty, I might have considered kissing the pavement.
The glass storm door was the only one closed on the front of the small, light blue, cape-style house, and my favorite little handprints decorated the otherwise pristine pane.
“Come on,” I said, leaning down into the car. “We’re here.”