Yet she did.
Kissing her made sense in that split second when she parted those sweet lips to say something, my hands caught up in a kind of fevered desperation, whatever drove her to ask me to screw her at a rest area a few minutes from her hometown infecting me now.
I used my tongue to connect with her, the wet, warm taste of the coffee we'd just finished so familiar. When we kissed, it never felt perfunctory, even if it was routine.
And kissing her underneath a canopy of tree branches behind a brick rest area building, with headlights sparking against the windows like camera flashes was anything but routine.
Her hands went to my button-down shirt, a rarity in my wardrobe these days now that I'd left law school. Coming back to Peters, Ohio filled me with confusion, the shirt a formality I'd thrown on to show respect for the situation, not that her baby brother would care what I wore. In his little world, I didn't exist.
But I was about to be an uncle.
Or a – what the hell was I to this baby?
“Come here,” she said softly, slowly, pulling me down to the ground, a tree root digging into my knee as she reached under the shirt with flat, dry palms and took in the curve of my torso. Sucking in air as my abs curled in, I felt every stroke of her hands deep in the root of me, my pants suddenly tight, my body wanting.
“You make everything so real, Trevor. I don't feel quite real right now. So much is changing. Give me something that doesn't change. Something familiar. Something I know is rock solid, always there, always right.”
I wanted to make a joke, to lighten the intensity, to take the enormity of what she said and turn it into something less. Not lesser – invalidating Darla would be cruel.
But I couldn't breathe. Knowing I meant that much to her was a savage responsibility.
“I'll always be here with you. For you,” I choked out, my hands on her back, riding up to cup the back of her head, fingers in her silky hair, rooted in place.
“Then get in me. I need something other than confusion inside my bones, my blood, my body.”
My mouth found hers, hands on her ass, moving to the waistband of her pants and sliding down under the cloth, finding big handfuls of her solid self. Didn't she know how real she was, how present, how there?
How could she not? After six years – nearly seven – together, did she seriously doubt me?
“You're here. I feel you. I know you. I see you, Darla.” I squeezed, then looked into her eyes, holding the stare until I was long past being comfortable. That's where the authenticity waited between us, hard to find until you stripped out the pieces of yourself that squirmed when pushed.
Her hands undid her jeans, mine working my belt buckle, the rush of need to be in her taking hold of me like I was holding my breath, deep underwater, and needed to fill my lungs with air. The longer I spent not being in her, the more it felt I would die.
“Make love to me, Trevor Connor. Finish what we started all those years ago. Close the loop. Give me something that doesn't feel like the world is reeling.”
“I'll spin along with you, babe.” I pulled one breast out of the cup of her bra and sucked in her nipple, the taste smooth and almost sweet, a salty tang from the day's drive a reminder of her delicious humanity. I opened her pants and slid them over her wide hips, Darla lifting her ass to help me.
We kissed and kissed and kissed, as if we couldn't spend a single second not connected that way, so different from sex at home. She wanted more from me than normal, and I rose to the occasion.
Desperate kisses turned to bites, nips, fingers digging into the muscles of my back as I bent down and ran my tongue quickly between her legs, eliciting a sharp gasp, the wind deciding to mimic her, touching my bare back with a long fingerstroke that felt intentional, running from my tailbone to the nape of my neck.
“No,” she whispered, grabbing my erection inside my underwear. “Not that. This.”
Quickies weren't an aberration in our sex life. Darla and Joe often ran off for one, emerging three minutes later with silly grins and messy hair to find ice cream and chips in the kitchen, cuddling on the couch with whatever Netflix show they were bingewatching together.
I got plenty of sex on demand, too. Darla had a healthy libido, but right now, as she guided me home, my hands propping myself up on bare dirt, the shine of a discarded beer bottle cap catching my eye, I realized this was no normal quickie.
Darla needed something entirely new.
We were opening a portal to a different life.
One stroke at a time.
“Trev,” she gasped, her orgasm so fast it made me pause, which only made her clamp her heels hard into my back and pull me in deep. She shuddered beneath me and I moved quick through the thick tightness of her waves of climax, suddenly terrified I wouldn't get a chance to come.
Was this what women felt like?
Darla's hands grabbed the base of my skull and she crushed my mouth to hers, tongue parting my teeth as she breathed into me, my lungs filling with her outbreaths, my knees aching as I balanced and hammered into her, picking up the rhythm as gravity helped me push through her tightness, the sensation excruciatingly magnificent and disconcertingly unfamiliar.
My orgasm wasn't quite sure what to do with itself.
All it took was one long, slow, deep breath and the feel of her lips on mine, the suck of my lower lip between hers as she clenched so hard it was like being pulled into her so she could integrate into me and I felt it emerge, the rush of coming so profoundly insane it threatened to separate my skin and eject it into space.
Throbbing intensity is the hallmark of pitching over into an orgasm but this – this was everything in the world rolled into one big cockstroke and she was pure reality, stark and sublime under the stars as we –
“STOP! POLICE!”
Rolling to her right, Darla moved so fast my cock felt like a rubber band (a super thick one, for the record) being stretched, the shock of pain shoving my orgasm back into my balls and restraining them behind my back like they were suddenly zip-tied.
“AUUUUUUGH,” I roared, my hip hitting bare dirt, Darla on her feet, shirt open, pants at her hips as she jumped up, using her flat hand as an eye shield, looking into a cop's searchlight.
“HANDS UP!” the voice shouted, though this time, with less certainty.
“If I do that, Officer, I'll be guilty of public indecency,” Darla called back. I used the moment to tuck my bruised member back inside my pants as I kept my back to the bright light, unable to zip up, before throwing my hands in the air and hoping we didn't get shot.
“You just get them hands up,” the voice said. I saw Darla peer harder, neck craning, and then her whole demeanor changed.
“DAVEY?” Darla screamed, her voice ending with a disgusted grunt. “You have got to be kidding me. What's with this police shit?”
“DARLA?” the voice shouted, the light dropping as footsteps, heavy and a little shuffling, emerged from behind me.
I took the chance, lowered my hands, zipped up, and stood slowly, knee throbbing.
Along with other appendages.
“JESUS H. BLUE WAFFLE CHRIST ON A CRACKER, YOU MORON!”
Darla had a way with law enforcement.
Especially when the cop was an ex-boyfriend.
“Don't you go taking the lord's name in vain like that, Darla. You know better,” he said slowly, a weird smile in his voice. “I'm a saved man now and he's my savior.”