HEAT
WITH MORE IN THE FORECAST
Fred’s truck kicked up a cloud of dust that hung over the dirt road long after he’d turned onto the highway, and the sound of the engine faded. Still, Maria stared after him not believing he was really gone for the day. The heat wrapped around her face and body like a blanket. The unfamiliar freedom made her giddy.
A metallic clanging down by the barn finally broke her trance. Steve had spent the entire morning trying to get Fred’s old tractor to run with little success. As he crawled over the old machine, she stared at his shirtless body, the chiseled contours and hard edges of his muscles. Did Fred have any notion of the thoughts in her head? She scarcely admitted them to herself.
She went back to the kitchen and threw together a sandwich and a glass of iced tea and carried them down to the barn. When she was halfway there Steve saw her coming and stopped what he was doing, just leaned against the tractor and watched her.
“I thought you might like some lunch,” Maria said. “You been working hard.”
“Appreciate it,” said Steve, taking the glass and drinking half in a gulp. They hadn’t spoken much since Fred hired him as a general assistant and maintenance man earlier in the week. They’d gone to elaborate lengths, actually, to avoid noticing each other. Now he just stared at her, a frank open expression that made her feel like his eyes were crawling around under her frail print dress.
“Hot day,” he said.
“Supposed to get worse…” Maria replied, meeting his gaze.
“Usually does.” Then: “I kind of got the idea you don’t much like me.”
“I don’t.”
He laughed at that.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t be decent,” she said.
He took a bite out of his sandwich.
“I’d say that’s the least of your worries, Ma’am. I’d say you’re damned decent.”
“I’d say you’re impertinent, you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask.” He took another sip of his tea. “Why’d you wait till your husband left before coming down here?”
“What I do’s none of your damned business.”
A half smirk at that one. “I’ve treated dogs better than he treats you.”
“What if I tell him what you just said? What do you think he’ll do?”
“Nothing. ’Cause you won’t tell him.”
Then he took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and carefully wiped beads of sweat from her forehead and around her eyes, along her cheek where they’d been gathering, getting ready to fall between her breasts. She scarcely dared make a move, never took her eyes off him.
“How come you don’t like me?”
“Don’t much like men.”
“How many you tried out?”
She stared a moment longer.
“Maybe not enough.”
Steve grabbed her dress in the front and pulled her close. She let herself be pulled. His fingers brushed her cheek and eased a stray strand of hair off her face. Then he noticed the mark that hadn’t fully faded yet.
“That sorry sonofabitch,” he said. “He ought’a be shot.” And then he kissed her.
Everything she’d held tight and close for so long turned to syrup inside her. She started shaking as small whimpers forced themselves past her lips.
“Good God…” he said in wonder, as if seeing her for the first time.
His hand went to her dress and pulled it up her thighs, then slipped in between them. He touched her between her moist lips in a way she’d never been touched.
“Did you pull your panties off before coming down here, or did you just not put them on at all this morning?”
“Didn’t bother. I knew he was leaving.”
“Good woman.”
He pushed his fingers against her, opened her, found magical places that made her legs go soft and her mind blank. Inside, a space opened up, an empty space full of light and heat, that grew until it drew all of her into it. She spun madly out of control, falling, it seemed, spiraling down, lost to time and space with his hand working between her legs and turning her wetter than she’d ever imagined.
He opened his jeans and let his cock flop out in broad daylight. She stared at it, shuddered at its size, couldn’t imagine what it would do to her. As if guided by its own will, the thing twitched, stiffened, enlarged. God, how big would it get?
His fingers were still inside her, working all manner of mischief. She reached for his cock now, fearing it, wanting it, wanting to squeeze its firmness, stroke it. She wanted it in her. A bead of clear liquid formed at the tip. Was that what it looked like, what happened when they got hard? She knew nothing about cocks, only that Fred hurt her with his. She touched the liquid, rubbed it over the tip, felt like a little girl with a new toy.
Then Steve reached between her thighs and gripped both her cheeks, lifted her like she was a feather as her legs opened and she settled on his arms like into a sling. He leaned back against the tractor, placed her at the tip of his engorged shaft and held her there. Then he chuckled.
“I suppose I could fumble around, trying to find my way without any hands, but it sure would help if you stuck me where I belong and aimed me in the right direction.”
“You men, can’t never find nothin’, can you?” Then she wrapped her delicate fingers around his rough slab of flesh, ran it between her lips, and guided him to her.
He pushed inward, just enough to open her, then held her there, balanced at the tip like an acrobat.
The pressure within as he eased forward frightened Maria at first, but by the time he was buried in her, she was far gone, past words, thought, everything. Then he lifted her off him, almost until he slipped out, but he held her there, suspended in a place where time patiently waited and thoughts found no focus. And then he was moving in her, again and again, and all the world pulled down to that exquisite sensation, the friction of flesh on flesh. No words, no purpose, just a mad craving and a thirst never before slaked until this moment. And he kept it up, thrusting harder now. Each time he pushed into her, each time he slowly pulled back out, resting just inside her lips, it was torment, a madness greater than anything she’d thought possible. How could she never have known this?
At the end Maria lost herself completely, everything dissolving except for that stiff rod up inside her and the electricity it shot through her. She had no idea how long it lasted, only that he sent her someplace that felt like forever, like coming home.
But, of course, the blinding light eventually faded. As her thoughts gathered themselves, she rubbed her thighs together and spread around the sticky goo he’d shot into her. She felt dirty and she loved it. She kept him in long as she could, his arms holding her close, her head resting against his chest. Everything had changed.
At last he said, “What about Fred?”
Maria stayed silent a long time, hugging him tighter. Then she said, “Don’t know. What are you thinking?” This was the time. Now. She felt it. The kind of moment that comes along once and you grab it or it’s gone.
Steve rubbed over the mark Fred left on her cheek. “This can’t go on.”
Maria kissed him. Then said, carefully, as if the thought just now popped into her head for the very first time, “I’ll tell you what: he’s got one hell of an insurance policy on him.” She let it hang there, like the ever-present cloud of gnats. Just a small germ of an idea, nothing more.
And then she wrapped her fingers around his cock, pressed herself against him, let herself draw him in, let a fertile field come into being — a warm place, a welcoming place, a place where seeds of all sort might take root, grow and thrive.
