Diamonds and Rust

Author's note: The title and theme of this story come from a song by Joan Baez from around 1969 or 1970, about her relationship with Bob Dylan.

^ ^ ^ ^

It was late in the afternoon in late November, already getting dark on a cold, dreary day that promised snow later that night.

I was at a particularly rough spot in the novel I was working on, and I had developed a headache from trying to work out the plot line at that point in the book.

I knew I needed to push on, because time was growing short. It had been well over a year since my last book and my publisher was getting antsy. I had hoped to have this one finished before the holidays, but it didn't look like that would happen.

Thanksgiving was a week or so away and after that the Christmas bustle would descend on the city and I'd have precious little time to devote to writing.

I think I jumped when I heard the twitter of the telephone. I'm certainly not a recluse, but I guess I was concentrating so hard on my work that the sudden intrusion of the phone startled me.

A lot of times when I'm zoned out like that, I'll simply let it ring and let the answering machine pick up, but I decided I needed a little break, so I got up and answered the call.

And when I heard the voice on the other end of the line, my heart fell to the floor.

"Uh, Janice, is that you?" said a voice from my past. "Janice? Are you there?

"Well, I'll be damned," I said after a long pause. "God, Billy, you're about the last person I ever expected to hear from. Where are you calling from?"

"The Midwest somewhere. Saginaw, maybe?" he said. "You know how it is when you're on tour. All these cities start to run together after awhile."

"Yeah, I do," I said. "Although there a big difference between book-signing tours and what you do. I see your posters up at Tower and they've got a life-size cut-out of you at the entrance to the Hard Rock down in the Village. I'd say you've made it, Billy."

"Aw, jeez, I don't know, " he said in a self-deprecating tone that I couldn't tell was sincere or mocking. "I owe it all to you, though. You were my muse, you were the one who inspired me and you were the one who pushed me back in the day."

"Yeah, I guess," I said, trying hard to hold back the flood of emotion that was threatening to undo me right then and there.

And in the awkward pause that followed it seemed like my mind took a trip down memory lane, and I found myself remembering things I'd tried to forget over the previous 10 years.

^ ^ ^ ^

The critics have long called Billy Crane, "the voice of his generation," and that much is true.

Billy's politically-charged lyrics and emotion-evoking music had captured the hearts and minds of young people all over the Western world, and his charismatic stage presence and a relentless touring schedule did the rest.

Now, after 10 years and half-a-dozen platinum albums, he's a star -- a superstar, really -- and the nice thing about it is that he's done it his way, without compromising an inch on his message or his music.

Indeed, integrity is a large part of his appeal. His records are always well-crafted, but not slick-sounding, and they always have something important to say.

Billy has a crackerjack backing band that's been with him almost from the first, and they play a unique kind of rock that defies categorizing. There's definitely a folk, even slightly country, bent to his music, but there's also a real hard edge there, with hints of reggae, jazz and even a little soul.

And his concerts are legendary. By now, he has a wide repertoire of his own material that he performs, but he always seems to throw in some really spicy covers, and he never gives an audience anything less than his best.

As far as his private life is concerned, he's kept his nose clean -- no drug busts, no boozy brawls -- with one glaring exception. He s been known to keep two or three girlfriends on a string at a time, and that has occasionally made him fodder for the tabloids.

I know for a fact, however, that he didn't have that problem until he became famous.

When he was just another struggling singer-songwriter down in the East Village, there was just little ol' me, Janice Bradley, the girl on the half-shell.

^ ^ ^ ^

Of course, when I first met him, he wasn't Billy Crane yet. He was Bill Cronovich from Davenport, Iowa, and he was literally just off the bus.

He strolled into this little club I used to frequent not far from the apartment where I was living at the time. It was really just a hole in the wall, but they had good burgers, cold draft beer and good live music.

Every Thursday they had open mike night, and anyone with the balls to do so could come on stage and sing, play an instrument, tell jokes, read poetry, whatever.

I say it took balls, because the crowd there was pretty sophisticated and they could be awfully rough on the rank amateurs. I saw more than one aspiring folkie leave the stage in tears after getting the razz from the audience.

You could tell Billy was different right from the start, though. Even though he was dressed in the standard uniform of the folk crowd -- dirty jeans, scruffy boots, a flannel shirt and well-worn jean jacket -- he walked in like he owned the place, paid the entry fee, and when his name was called, he strode onto the stage with a smile and kicked right in with his set.

By the time he'd sung for about a minute, I'd sat up and started taking notice -- and he'd noticed me, too. I was sitting pretty close to the stage with a couple of girlfriends, and he turned his head toward me, looked me straight in the eye and everything else fell away.

Billy was blessed with the bluest eyes of anyone I've ever known, bluer than robin's eggs, really, and when he cast his gaze on me I felt naked, like he was looking right into my soul.

And I wasn't the only one he captivated that night. Most of the time, performers at these open mike shows performed maybe 15 minutes, 30 minutes if they were good. But Billy sat up there and played and sang for an hour and a half, and nobody seemed to mind.

By the end of his set, the place was packed, as word had spread of the man's riveting performance.

After it was over, and he'd shaken a couple of dozen hands, he came right to the table where I was sitting, pulled a chair around so he was leaning over the back and bought a round of beers.

"So, whatcha think?" he said with a rakish grin.

"Should we call you Bruce or Bob?" I said, smiling at him.

"Nah, just call me Billy," he said. "You know you've got the prettiest eyes."

"I was going to say the same thing about you," I said. "You know how to get into a girl's soul. I bet you left broken hearts wherever it was you came from."

If only I'd known how prophetic that statement was.

We talked for a couple of hours, there and at the all-night diner down the street where we went for some breakfast. I found myself telling him my life story, and he told me a little bit of his.

I had always wanted to live and work in New York City, a desire that grew out of frequent trips to the city with my family from my home town of Rochester. My dad worked for Kodak and he made a lot of business trips to the city, so when he could, he brought along my mom and me, since it wasn't all that far.

My father was an amateur photographer and my mother was an English teacher, and together they instilled in me a love of the arts.

It more than made up for a vague loneliness I had growing up as an only child. I mean, I had friends in our neighborhood and friends in high school, and I wasn't a shrinking violet by any means.

But from an early age, when I was home, I sat alone in my bedroom, with music playing, and writing. I filled dozens of spiral notebooks with all sorts of writing -- short stories, essays, memoirs, even some poetry, although it wasn't very good poetry.

I got a lot of material out of my trips to the big city, so no one was surprised when I earned a scholarship to Fordham, then went on to graduate school at NYU, which is what I was doing when I met Billy.

I had had some relationships before, including an odd liaison with another girl that lasted off and on for about six months, but I'd really never come close to being in love with anyone, but when Billy saw me to my door and kissed me that first night, I knew I was in trouble.

He'd gotten my phone number from me, and he called me for a date the very next day.

He didn't have a lot of money, so we just went for pizza and a couple of beers. This time, it was his turn to give me his life story -- or at least the part of it that he was willing to reveal.

Billy has always been rather guarded about his background, but I did learn that his father worked in a factory and his mother was a teller for a bank. They had gone through a bitter divorce when he was in his early teens and that had left him estranged from his dad.

Up until then he'd been a typical jock, but after that, he soured on sports and turned to music. He'd played in a succession of garage bands back in Davenport, and by his senior year of high school, his band of the moment had been good enough to play some clubs around the Quad Cities.

He'd managed to save up enough money from those gigs and a part-time job bussing tables at Denny's to have a nice little nest egg built up for his move to the big city. Along the way, he'd been writing songs, most of which he'd played the night before at the club.

By the end of the night, I think we could tell there was some mojo brewing between us, and we kissed hotly right there in the booth at the pizza place.

"Get a room!" yelled the heavy-set Italian guy who owned the place, but he said it with a twinkle in his eye. I was one of the regulars there, and he'd always ask when I was going to bring a boyfriend in to see him.

"Go on, get outta here!" he said finally, when we ignored him the first time.

We were giggling as Billy paid the bill, then we laughed all the way back to my apartment, skipping and generally acting like 8-year-olds.

But we got serious when we arrived at my door. He gently pushed me against the wall, and we stared into each other s eyes, seconds before he kissed me again, this time with an intensity we hadn't shared at the pizza joint.

As we did, my mind was a jumble. Here I'd known this guy barely 24 hours, and already I was eagerly anticipating -- no, craving -- his touch on my naked body. I was aching for his cock to fill me.

Mind you, I'm not easy. It's not that men don't desire me; many do. I'm not someone whose sex appeal is out front for the world to see, but it doesn't take much for a man to appreciate what I have to offer. And I'm not bragging when I say that. It's just the way it is.

I'm a little taller than average, with a decent build -- not too skinny and not too fat -- with boobs that are just teacup-sized and an average butt. I've always kept my dark brown hair cut pretty short and I've got a bit of the Irish in my looks that some men find appealing.

However, I had always insisted on a feeling-out process in my prior relationships, a go-slow pace to sex that was all about respecting myself and my body.

That all flew out the window with Billy. I think I knew it the first moment I gazed into his robin's-eggs blue eyes the night before. I wanted him -- and it was pretty clear that he wanted me.

I reached around and pulled his body to mine, and I could feel his hardness, burrowing into my abdomen. Without even thinking about it, I found myself humping his thigh as our tongues did an arpeggio together.

"You're a dangerous man, Billy," I panted when we finally broke our liplock. "You make me want to do wicked things. Wicked things."

"And I don't think you have any idea what you do to me," he whispered back.

"Is that a clue?" I said as I squeezed his cock through his jeans.

"You betcha," he said and gave me that megawatt smile that would soon enthrall the world.

We tumbled into my cozy little apartment and fumbled with our clothes. He pulled my sweater off, followed quickly by the T-shirt I had on under it and clamped his hands on my naked breasts.

He bent down and suckled one of my nipples between his lips and casually caressed the hard little nub with his tongue, sending bolts of lust crackling through my body. I could feel the squishiness in my panties as my arousal soared from the way his lips and fingers touched my tits.

Almost frantic, I pulled him away from my chest by his hair and started working on getting to what I wanted, his naked body. His ubiquitous flannel shirt went first, then his T-shirt and I quickly got his belt open.

I kind of fumbled with the buttons of his jeans -- leave it to Billy to wear button-fly Levis -- largely because right about the time I got to the buttons, he was successful in getting my pants open and his fingers found my gushing sex.

I gasped and groaned as he sluiced two fingers between my swollen labia then swirled them around my throbbing clit. God, was I on fire!

In short order, we had our pants off and we were tumbling naked onto my bed. We didn't even take time to pull our socks off.

"Jesus, Billy, fuck me, please!" I wailed. "I want it, now-w-w!"

And he gave it to me. There was no pretense of foreplay; we were far too gone for that. We'd play later. All we wanted at that moment was to consummate what we already instinctively knew was a great all-consuming passion

As we kissed with a fierceness that shocked me, I opened my legs while he guided a nice-sized cock into my pussy. He sank into me in one smooth thrust and by the time he was balls deep, I was already coming.

My whole body shuddered as one of the most earth-shattering climaxes of my life exploded through my body. I just clutched at Billy's body and humped up blindly to meet his inward thrusts.

We were like two animals rutting away in the wild, groaning and cooing at each other in that special language that only lovers understand. Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead as my climax leveled off into a numbing state of exquisite pleasure. Our bodies were slick with the sweat of our exertion and I knew we were getting closer to meltdown.

I could feel Billy picking up the pace, fucking me harder, if that was possible, and I surrendered to his will, letting him pound me hard, just the way I wanted at that moment.

"J-J-Janice?" he panted. "I'm gonna cum. Where ..."

"Oh God, come in me," I squealed. "I'm on the pill. Please, God, fuck me like a cheap whore and ... fill ... me ... up.

That was all he needed to hear. He blistered my pussy with a half-dozen rapid-fire thrusts, then he groaned long and loud as he emptied himself deep in my womb.

We were gasping and I was panting as another orgasm roared through me at the feeling of his cum basting my steaming pussy. We were wrapped up in each other's arms as we kissed again, deeply and full of wonder at what we'd just experienced.

It was by far the most profound sexual experience of my life, and I've used those moments -- they couldn't have been more than five minutes at the most -- as the basis for two best-selling romance novels.

As we finally came down off our incredible high, we both exclaimed, "wow!" And we saw it as one more manifestation of how in-tune we were spiritually and emotionally.

In the figurative light of day, however, over a cup of hot tea, I had to explain to Billy that I wasn't a slut, that it wasn't normal for me to jump into bed with someone I'd only known for 24 hours, but that he was special and that I thought I was falling for him.

He looked far away right then, and I saw something that vaguely disturbed me, almost a sadness in his eyes, like he knew what was to come.

Maybe I should have listened to that still small voice that warned me not to let him have my heart, but it was already too late.

And if I had, I'd have missed out on an experience that not many people get to have, and that's the chance to shape the birth of a legend. For that alone, it was worth the heartache that was to come.

But that was all in the future. At that moment, all we wanted was to enjoy our lust, to explore our budding love. We spent that whole night and most of the next day in bed, and not much of that time was spent in sleep.

I was still oozing cum from my well-fucked pussy as we finished our tea and returned to bed -- without our socks this time. We kissed again, our tongues languidly exploring each other's mouths as our lust began to mount.

Slowly, I kissed my way down his chest, stopping to linger at his pebble-like nipples, then working my way lower. My hand was softly caressing his cock and it was already starting to grow.

As I got closer, I could smell the sweet scent of our commingled cum, the tangy juice of orgasm. There was something deliciously nasty about getting my mouth on his throbbing meat without cleaning up from our previous bout of sex, and I could feel myself starting to cream at the thought.

I slid my lips around the crown of his cock and enveloped his slimy flesh. I softly caressed his scrotum as I took about half his length into my mouth, then started slowly working my way up and down.

I was concentrating so on what I was doing that I only vaguely sensed him pulling my legs around, so he could get to my equally-nasty sex.

We were quickly in a classic 69, feasting on each other ... not quite like starving sailors, but certainly with gusto, sucking and slurping as were worked our mouths vigorously on each other's dripping sex.

When I felt a subtle little twitter in Billy's cock, at the same moment that I felt a strong pre-orgasmic tremor ripple from my hard core, I knew what I wanted.

I pulled my pussy reluctantly from Billy's talented mouth, swiveled back around and got up on my knees. I kept one hand firmly planted on his chest and the other wrapped around the base of his cock as I lifted my hips over the head of his dick.

I fit that head at the dripping opening to my pussy and slowly slid his cock into me. I think we both groaned long and low from the feeling of flesh on flesh.

I quickly got into a slow, sensual rhythm as I worked myself up and down on his cock. I had my hands on the sides of his chest while I felt his hands encircling my butt, helping me guide my pace. I closed my eyes and threw my head back as I wallowed in the sensations that were flowing through my body.

This was sex like I'd never experienced it before. Our first coupling had been frenetic, two lovers eager to get at each other and it was the best I'd ever had. But that was a feeling I'd had before, with other lovers, just not nearly as good.

This was different. As I fucked Billy at a leisurely pace, I felt such an intensity of feeling, a feeling of well-being, like everything in my life had fallen into place and all I had to do was relax and let go.

I honestly don't know how long I rode Billy's cock like that, totally and utterly content, but it was certainly long enough for a strong climax to slowly build up momentum in my body and certainly long enough for Billy to start thrusting up with a little more urgency.

Steadily, we increased the pace, letting the moment wash over us. I opened my eyes in that moment and stared into Billy's eyes -- we were locked together almost in a stare-down -- as we began hurtling for the finish.

My hands clenched in fists as my orgasm began to peak, like a slow volcano that wasn't going to blow, but just vented, and that was all it took for Billy to push up hard with his hips and surrender another hard load of cum.

As he did, I bent over and we locked lips again, kissing deeply as we wordlessly gave ourselves to each other in a pact of lovers that we thought was going to last forever.

^ ^ ^ ^

Over the course of the weekend -- in between bouts of love-making -- Billy shared his dream with me, his vision of where he wanted to go in life, and I have to say, he's pretty much followed the plan.