Page 6 of Heavy Equipment
I glare at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you want me to show you?” He reaches across the console, and I make a high-pitch sound of protest. He laughs softly. “Then touch yourself.”
I move my finger slow and crude, not like I would if I were in bed alone. This isn’t really for my own pleasure, my hand between my legs. It’s for his. “I meant the shopping center.”
“Right, the story you’re telling me. About how you got out of the town car and walked up the steps, not knowing that the men were on shift change. They started whooping and hollering at you soon as they saw you in that plaid private school uniform, didn’t they? Gave you an earful.”
My mind flashes to that day, so many years ago. I can smell diesel in the air, feel the overbright glint of sunlight off the exposed metal beams. Looking fine, sweetheart. You need directions? I can show you were to go. Look at that chest. Flat as a board. Bet your nips are bright pink though.
A thrill of fear ran down my spine in that moment. The same fear I feel now in the truck. Blood races through my veins. My mouth opens on a graceless pant. That afternoon I had kept running down the hallway until I left them behind. This time there’s nowhere to run.
Asher’s eyelids look heavy now, his expression hard. “That’s right, beautiful. You remember.”
Only then do I realize that I’m touching myself harder, faster, worrying my clit between my forefinger and middle finger, pressing together to send sparks of pleasure through my body. “Were you one of them?” I say, my voice thready.
“You could say that. I was coming up the stairs after you, planning on telling you that you weren’t allowed in the construction site without a hardhat. Safety precautions. Then I heard the men hassling you, talking about your teenaged body.”
Oh God. I’m working myself harder now, getting hot when I shouldn’t be, shouldn’t be. My hips are moving against the stiff leather. I remember how warm I’d felt between my legs. “I never saw you.”
“I was the foreman, even back then. I didn’t mind the men giving a beautiful woman a whistle, letting her know she’s appreciated, no matter how rude it is. But I wasn’t going to let them give shit to an underaged girl. Not on my watch. Made it up the stairs and laid Jimmy DeLuca flat on his back.”
My cheeks are probably red as a fire hydrant. “Is he the one who said—?”
“He’s the one who said your pussy was probably tight enough to bend steel if he tried to shove some inside of you. Is that what you meant?”
“Oh God,” I whisper, slipping my forefinger lower, to where liquid desire pools at my sex. I spread it over my pussy lips, rocking my hips against the slippery friction.
“Broke his nose,” Asher says, his voice conversational. “And the other guys backed off real quick. Then I went after you. Figured you’d be upset. Might find you crying in the ladies room.”
Every muscle in my body locks up, because I know exactly what I did in that bathroom as a seventeen year old in a half-built shopping mall. “You didn’t find me,” I say, desperately, needing it to be true.
“Those little sounds you were making. I knew you weren’t crying.” It’s a small comfort that his expression borders on pain, his gaze flicking to me before he returns it to the road. The truck barrels down the freeway, same way my body rushes toward climax. “What were you doing, June?”
“I can’t,” I whisper, my hand pressed hard between my legs, my eyes squeezed shut.
“You wanted to tell the story,” he says, his voice low and coaxing.
“No—I can’t.” My fingers can’t find purchase in my slick and swollen sex. There’s not enough friction, not enough time, not enough humiliation in realizing he was there. “You saw me?”
“If I would have gone inside I could have made you do anything. And if one of those rough fuckers had heard you? They might have done that.”
The thought is like a thousand pounds of dynamite. His large body across the cab of the truck, the scent of him, the strength of it, is the match. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I don’t touch underage girls. I went back into the hallway and made sure no one else came in. You finished finger fucking yourself and then washed your hands like a good little girl. When you walked out you had no idea I was around the corner.”
I’m so close it almost hurts. That’s how it feels not to come right now—painful.
“I think you would have liked it if I’d gone in, though. Wouldn’t you?”
“No,” I whisper, but it’s a lie. The pulse beating in my sex right now proves that much. This whole story has turned me on beyond bearing. Being trapped in this truck, heading to God knows where makes me burn.
