Page 16 of Race With The Devil

Some might think it just another plan for me to get Tanner’s broad hands around my waist again, riding farther on my bike. Oh, sure, that was one of my current thrills. That, and if I sat up straight enough, I could kind of wriggle my ample ass against the inside of his thighs.

Why was I doing this? Was I a prick tease? In the past I had enjoyed using my body to tease men, knowing I’d never put out for them. I was quite inexperienced, really, in the true ways of men. If it hadn’t been for Evan the photographer two or three times, I’d still be a virgin, technically, Gary’s violence notwithstanding. So, when trying to imagine doing it with Tanner, I had to rely on things I’d seen the actors do at Triple Exposure studios while I fetched them coffee as a side hustle. Thank God I had that, or I’d have no idea at all!

And yes, thinking of sitting on a bed while unbuttoning Tanner’s 501s and sliding my fingers through his tight, smoky curls and over the mound of his pubic bone made me wet. I was so wet that when I dismounted at the BBQ place, I’d soaked through my thong and jeans and there was a definite wet spot on my leather saddle.

“Wow.” I tugged my jeans down and walked like I had to pee.

The BBQ restaurant was in a windowless basement room in a mall. I told Tanner I wanted sweet potato fries with a pulled pork sandwich and went into the Ladies. After drying myself off—I had a sopping handful of toilet paper to fling into the bowl—I had to face the fact that Tanner really did it for me. He was a fucking carved, control freak beast. Apparently after all I’d been molested and groped, that was the type I craved. Big time, according to my pussy.

Could we maybe just play around a little? There was no need or even desire to have a big dramatic fling, since he lived in St. Louis and would be gone soon. Could we perhaps just toy with each other? I could get more lessons in sex. And that built hunk seemed like a good choice of teacher.

I called my half-sister. “Lyric? How’s it going at Bellamy’s?”

“Oh, it’s beyond groovy, Unity. I’ve got my own bedroom with a fucking view over the fucking red mountains.”

“Don’t say ‘fucking’ so much. Are you going back to school?” Lyric had just started her sophomore year.

“Well yes, but at P and E High, not Cottonwood. I want nothing to do with that place. Mom hasn’t even tried to call my cell.”

“I imagine what kind of abuse she’s been getting from that pig.”

“Unity, Bellamy said she wants to adopt me. She’s your age, I know, but all that’s required is they be over twenty-five. Knoxie’s way over that. And, Unity. Is that dog rescue guy still around?”

“Yes, why? I’m about to eat lunch with him.”

“Really? How’d you score? Tell him thanks from the bottom of my heart. I’ve never seen anyone stand up to that asshole like that. Sure stopped him in his tracks. That dog guy’s a real hero.”

My heart swelled to hear this.

It was what I suspected—that Tanner was a hero. What he’d done at my childhood house was definitely not the only heroic thing he’d ever done. He’d been a pilot in the Air Force! He rescued dogs and trained them to help disabled people! But I didn’t want to start thinking like this, so I went back downstairs to the restaurant. Thinking like this only led to disappointment. Big, crushing letdown. I’d thought like this once, and it had been a disaster.

The theme of the place was Bigfoot, and half of one wall was covered with children’s crayon renderings of what they imagined the critter. Neon beer signs, checkered cloth picnic tables pushed together, and some most excellent examples of bad taxidermy gave the place its feel. Favorites were the inebriated fox couple standing on hind legs and the coyote sitting in a chair cross-eyed and knock-kneed from a full bladder. Tanner had taken a seat near the best. A poor leopard must’ve been mounted over a chair’s bolster. Shaped like a filing cabinet—or a bench—the guy’s snarl took up half its face, the bulbous tongue like a plastic Halloween liver.

“Tanner,” I said, slinging my purse around the back of the chair, “you’re sitting underneath the best—“

“I like that one.”

“What?”

Tanner lifted his chin at my arm. “That tattoo. Those flowers.”

I looked down at my elbow. “Those are opium poppies.” The goofy grin evaporated from my face. “I’ll bet you disapprove of that too. I’m a spokesmodel for cannabis extract companies. Everything natural, like smoking opium before fucktards turn it into heroin. Done heroin once. No thanks.”

Tanner shrugged. He was looking me directly in the eye, maybe figuring I’d gotten over my fear of capture. “I’ve got no gripe with ganja. It never killed anyone.”

“Unless it falls on you.” I was thinking of the time some moron tried to steal weed from the Ochoa’s warehouse. I almost laughed, thinking how the guy had been found with a fractured skull under half a ton of Critical Mass. I remembered to defend myself to Tanner. “Look, I get your beef with cutting. But tattooing is different. It’s a totally ancient and sacred art form. It’s like . . . the way chimps groom themselves. When Knoxie inks me, it’s an intimate act of grooming. The pain gives me an endorphin rush. That’s good, right?”

“I’m not saying it’s not beautiful,” Tanner admitted gruffly. He finally sucked on the baby back rib that had been dangling from his fingers, and I took a giant unladylike bite of my sloppy sandwich. “To each his own. I just could never see being eighty-years-old and stuck looking at a wrinkled, sagging anchor.”

I thought he referred to the giant six-inch anchor in the middle of my chest. I spoke through a mouthful of sugary pork. “Excuse me. My chest will never be wrinkled.”

“I didn’t mean that. I was thinking of those traditional old-timey anchors sailors would get.”

“Oh. Well. Your chest will never be wrinkled either.”

Then I felt I’d said too much. Why was I talking about his chest? As though I’d been wondering how hairy it was! How developed the pecs, how tight the nipples, how firm a bite of his deltoid . . . Oh my God. I’ve been thinking all those things.

I wagged a sweet potato fry at the lopsided pair of googly-eyed foxes. “We always say these stuffed animals look more like taxiderpy, not taxidermy.”