Fresh Meat

"She got a better offer about a year ago," he answered easily. He figured, why not be open and honest? It already felt good just saying that. "The bitch left me for some dude with mega-bucks, but the food must be pretty good because she's put on like twenty kilos since she moved in with him." It felt good saying that too. "Although the guy's huge too, so they kind of suit each other like that."

Isabel giggled. "That's funny. And now you can get a thin wife. You would suit someone with a nice figure. I mean, to look good as a couple."

The road rolled beneath the smooth, powerful vehicle. It had been an hour since Kangaroo Flat with a number of small roads branching off left and right. The signpost for Athol Grove was at a crossroad pointing right. It said fifty-five kilometres, which would be about an hour if a short stop to deliver the tractor part was factored in.

Isabel had dosed off with her legs bent up and to the side, and swayed towards Brad. Her head had rocked against the door and her lips were relaxed with a light, contented smile. Brad could see up the skirt of her dress to her chequered panties.

The girl is half my age. What am I thinking? He watched the road but kept glancing to have another look at her exposed like that. He looked up from her slender young thighs to meet her well-knowing, slightly animated gaze. He couldn't help another quick flash down to her open dress as well.

He shook his head. Oh boy...

"What?" she asked sweetly.

"Nothing. Just—" He looked her over again, glancing sideways. "You're not like fifteen or something are you, Isabel? You're not a runaway?"

"Do I look only fifteen?"

"Damned if I know with you girls. Fifteen, twenty—who can tell?"

She was fixing her hair, plucking at it in the vanity mirror on the sun-visor. With her arms raised, Brad could see her small white breast and firm little nipple in through her dress. There was actually two buttons undone, he noticed, swallowing dryly again.

"Well, how old are you?" she asked.

"Pushing forty."

Brad let his eyes lower to her thighs again. It was months since he had last been with a woman. It was twenty years since he had last been with a slender girl.

"Well I'm pushing twenty something. So is a fifteen year age difference too much?"

Brad looked at her. She was smiling teasingly.

"Well, is it?"

"Too much for what?" It was in no way too much for him. She was legal.

"Too much for what you're obviously thinking," she shot at him with eyebrows raised.

"You know what I'm thinking?"

"You're thinking the same thing you men are always thinking," she said, without meeting his sideways glance that time. "Except I don't mind you thinking that."

"You don't?"

She glanced. "No."

Brad had to watch the road, or gravel track as it was, but he managed to find time to look his increasingly interesting travel partner over again. She had moved her legs down from the seat, so he could no longer see her panties, but the short skirt of her sundress was bunched up beneath her and only just concealed them. With the two buttons at the top of her dress undone the fabric gaped and sagged, allowing him a view of a lot of pure white skin even with her sitting back as she was.

She was wearing a tiny gold leaf pendant on a thin chain. "Do you like it?" she asked, shifting around to face him and fiddling with the pendant.

"It's pretty," Brad answered. With her legs swaying back towards him her thighs had parted to reveal the crotch of her panties again. He swerved back onto the road after having veered from it momentarily. She giggled and bit her bottom lip, then applied some cherry-bomb gloss.

"Do you want to go somewhere?" she asked.

"Sure! Where?"

She pointed to a rocky hill in the distance to the left of the road. "Up there. It's a really nice view and we could stop for a while."

There was a fork in the road. "That way?" Brad asked.

She shrugged. "I forget the exact way. The roads all look the same around here if you ask me."

The fork looked like it was headed in the general direction of the rocky hill. Brad figured with the country being so flat and open he would be able to find his way back easily enough.

The girl was looking at him as much as he was checking her out. He flexed his bicep one or twice when he felt her eyes. He had powerful thighs that were nicely defined by his jeans. The vehicle was automatic, so he was able to sit relaxed with his legs open and his package bulging with the state of his arousal. While they chatted she would be watching his face, and he had no trouble keeping a smile on it.

There were three other intersections and choices of road to be taken before there was a short, steep climb up a rocky trail to a promontory overlooking the arid expanse of country they had been travelling. Brad pulled up and turned the engine off. The girl was sitting there with a light smile on her face, uninterested in the scenery it seemed.

She looked at Brad's open packet of beef jerky in the centre console. "Have you been eating that?"

"This morning. Before we met," Brad explained, remembering her aversion to meat.

"Do you have a tooth brush in your bag?" She asked, pleadingly. "Would you mind—before um—?"

Brad got out his tooth brush and quickly complied with the entirely reasonable request, spitting out his open door. The girl watched, kneeling on her seat at that point.

"Thanks," she uttered sweetly.

Brad tossed his toiletries bag into the back seat and claimed her with a hand around the back of her neck, pulling her to his mouth and kissing her. "You're welcome," he said, and kissed her again.

For all of her apparent confidence, she was very submissive. Her body relaxed and she moaned softly as he searched her mouth with his tongue. When he relented and sought her eyes he found them glazed with willingness.

She was sitting in her seat again with her legs swayed together. The back section of the car was taken up by the tractor part. The back seat had the cooler and Brad's overnight bag. That was directly behind the front passenger seat, so there was at least room to lay that seat back. Isabel just watched as Brad reached down beside her and released the catch. She touched his chest, feeling him through his shirt with delicate fingers and long lightly penetrating nails painted purple. Brad kissed her hand and placed it back on his chest as he lowered to her parted lips again, tasting them, and tasting her sweet young essence as his penis firmed.

It was a roomy vehicle with big seats. He worked one leg beneath her bottom and rested on his side with an arm across the back of her seat and one hand free to explore. He lifted her dress up over her belly and her body shuddered as she half giggled and half squealed. Her stomach tensed and quivered and her bottom lifted as he felt her belly and hips. He was kissing her again though, and her moan went into his mouth. He kissed her chin and her neck, and he slipped two more buttons open on her dress and parted it to reveal her breasts. Her firm young body then undulated as he kissed his way down and pulled a tight little nipple into his mouth. He sucked on it and held it as he reached back down with his free hand and smoothed over her quivering belly to cup her chequered panties.

"Mmm," she moaned as she gripped his head and pulled his hair. She ground against his hand and thrust her chest upward. She had arched up off the seat and Brad slipped more fully beneath her. He moved his arm from the back of the seat and reached beneath to hold her and feel a breast while sucking on the other one. He kept her in place on his lap and used his fingers to keep pace with her wild lower body gyrations against his hand. He felt into her wetness through the thin fabric, and as she neared her climax he slipped his hand down the front of the tiny garment and inserted fingers into her. He then just held her as her body convulsed, her legs clamping together and crushing his hand and her arm gripping his head and holding him to her breast.

Brad waited for the girl to come back from wherever her mind had taken her. Her eyes rolled and focused on his. She bit her lip and smile, her cheeks flushed, her body again softly convulsing as he removed his hand from down her panties.

"Um... that was... um—"

"That was fun," Brad finished for her. He was painfully erect but was thinking about where he could take her in order to meet his own desires. He could have her right then and there. The glazed look of submission was still in her eyes. He could sit her on his lap or bend her over the bonnet of the vehicle if he chose to, but he wanted something else. He needed to be pressed fully against her beautiful young body; to be on top of her and between those long slender legs.

"You can stay with me tonight, yeah? When we get to Athol Grove, you can spend the night with me?"

"Okay," she uttered softly. "If you want."

"Oh, I want," he breathed, taking her lips again and drawing in her exciting young essence. "I say we get back on the road, drop this stupid tractor part off, and find a room."

She giggled. "Okay. I like that idea."

Brad took another taste of her lips then extracted himself from beneath her. He helped her lift the seat back up and watched her fix her dress. It was still open and she looked from her breasts to meet his gaze, waiting a moment until he turned away, smiling and shaking his head, then she tugged her dress closed and refastened two of the buttons.

"Going to need to find that room fast," Brad declared.

She was smiling. "Okay," she uttered again, tucking her legs up on the seat and laying her head against the backrest, her chocolate brown eyes wide and sparkling as she rested there looking at him.

***

Aw shit. Brad had seen that look before. Puppy eyes. The girl's looking at me with teenage crush, puppy eyes. She continued staring at him as he drove down the rocky trail. He glanced at her when he could; her dress hanging open at the top and hiked up around her hips. He didn't care if she ended up with a crush on him. He needed to get her to a motel room and take her properly.

The 4WD bounced from the last drop in the trail and surged into the mallee scrub. The first intersection in the gravel road was familiar. The next one took a bit of thought to work out which way to go. The third intersection was entirely unfamiliar. Brad took a guess; the girl was just smiling at him, with no idea where they were or which way to go. A half hour later they were back at that same intersection. The alternate direction had the rocky hill on the other side of the road when they finally burst from the scrubby trees and could see where they were going.

"I think we're well and truly lost now," Brad said at that point, patting Isabel's knee and squeezing affectionately.

"I don't care. This is fun." She reached over with her foot and pressed the bulge in his jeans with her toe.

Brad drove on, determined. The road straightened. There would have to be a town or something around there somewhere. He would have been satisfied with a signpost pointing to some place worthy of a name.

The narrow track they were on finally ended at an intersection with a broader road that had a sign pointing to the left with Kangaroo Flat 120, and to the right with Westmont 86. Brad opened his mud map. "Well, there's Westmont. But how do we get from there to this Dalton Scrapyard, and then find your town, wherever that is?"

His travel companion yawned.

"I think we head back to Kangaroo Flat. At least we know the way from there. And this time we stick to the road and we should be in Athol Grove in what—three hours tops?"

"Or we could go to your place," Isabel said. "You could take me home with you."

She was smiling, teasingly Brad decided. "Tempting!" he said, and she giggled.

He swung the 4WD onto the road and surged towards Kangaroo Flat.

***

"Where you at, Boy?"

It was Papa's cross voice. Boy cringed as he called back. "In here, Papa!" There was no point trying to hide from Papa.

"What you doing there, Boy? Didn't I tell you to feed those pigs?"

Boy hurried from where he had been petting his frogs and jogged in front of Papa. Papa was short but he carried a walking stick that he would use to belt Boy across the head when he felt like it. He often felt like it when he was drunk from the peach brandy that was wafting from his skin right then.

"Where you at, Mama?" Papa called into the laundry as he passed. Mama came out and Papa poked her with his walking stick. "What you doing in there you old cow?" He poked her in the stomach and pushed her along, laughing. "The two of you got to feed those hogs, now get to it."

Boy watched his Mama try to get up from having fallen in the mud. Papa booted her bottom and sent her sprawling face-first into a big puddle, and he roared with laughter. Boy figured it was better when Papa was beating on Mama and not on him. Sometimes he beat on Mama too, to please Papa and make him laugh. Girl was Papa's favourite though. No one was allowed to beat on Girl.

Boy wondered where Girl was today. They'd had Girl since she was small, when they lived at the other place. Papa kept her after they ate her mama and papa. Boy liked Girl. He wished he could cook her and eat her, but he could imagine how cross Papa would be then.

***

The Case Parts & Service 4WD rolled into Kangaroo Flat at about five in the afternoon. It slowed for the town passing and then surged into the mallee again. "I've still got some of the sandwiches and there's chips in back," Brad was saying in response to Isabel wanting to stop for food.

She reached over to the cooler and rummaged in it while Brad looked at her bottom. Her pants were bikini style and covered her, but they looked cute so he gave her bum a pinch. She resumed her seat with the sandwiches and a bottle of water. She sat sideways, resting back against the door with her feet in Brad's lap. Her dress had slipped from a shoulder and revealed one breast.

"Do you want one?" She offered a sandwich, but when Brad attempted to take it she held it away from his grasp. She was smiling and eying him teasingly.

He glanced down at her exposed breast and gave an eyebrow flicker. "I want something."

She checked herself and tugged her dress back up to her shoulder. There were three buttons undone though and it barely hung there. She waved the sandwich back and forth until Brad caught her hand and took a bite.

"Okay—I'll feed you," she said with a giggle. "But that stuff has to go!"

Brad lowered his window and tossed the packet of jerky out. The strange, intoxicating, absolutely amazing creature he had picked up then fed him the sandwich a bite at a time. She watched him eat, sitting there staring at him with her feet massaging his constant erection and her dress again having slipped from her shoulder. After she had finished eating she reapplied her cherry-bomb lip gloss, still just staring at Brad as she pursed her lips together.

He drove on into the scrub and the setting sun. He spotted the Athol Grove turn-off this time, and stuck to the road beyond there. It was getting on dusk when the small grading of gravel became two wheel tracks and then the trees closed in and there was a huge bump before the 4WD bounced from the scrub to hit a broader gravel road. They had landed directly across and needed to decide left or right. There was no sign.

"I think, left," Isabel said. She had buttoned her dress fully and was sitting properly in her seat with her seatbelt fastened.

Brad had not gotten it right all afternoon so he decided her choice of 'left' was worth a try. The broad, smooth road entered a stand of pines where the shadows were deep and dark. There was a small stream to cross, and when the road emerged from the timber there was a driveway to what looked like an abandoned service station. The building had a glass front section that could have been a café, and it had a dull, candy striped awning. There was a house extending from the back of the service station. To the side was a large workshop with a faded brown sign on top: Dalton's Scrapyard.

"Hey look—they've even got a cabin to rent," Brad said as he pulled up in front of the awning. There was a large caravan and annex under a sprawling shade tree. It was brightly painted and had a small garden and neatly trimmed lawn.

He looked at Isabel. She still had the puppy eyes. He pulled her close and kissed her. "Should I ask if it's available for the night?"

"If you want to," she uttered softly. "You can have me anywhere you want... or just take me home to keep."

Brad kissed her again. Hard.

An old man appeared, ambling from the side of the service station. There was a huge man behind him who hung back kind of bobbing his head and shoulders, trying to see who had come to visit it seemed. The guy was massive with narrow shoulders and a barrel shaped abdomen, and knees that touched with his boots wide apart and pigeon-toed inward. He was craning his neck excitedly trying to see in the vehicle.

Brad lowered his window. "I have a tractor part here for Victor Turak of Dalton. Am I in the right place."

"That's me," the old man replied, leaning down to look across at Isabel. He grinned. His breath was like petrol fumes. "You got my new ram? Been waiting long enough," he went on gruffly.

"Sorry. It took some time to get on order. It was an older model that had to come from overseas apparently." Brad showed the guy to the back of the 4WD. The part was in a metre-long wooden box that weighed enough that help had been needed to lift it in.

There was a delivery docket that the old man scribbled his signature on. "Boy!" he called out, and the bigger man approached, still bobbing his head and shoulders and eyeing the inside of the vehicle as he got close enough to see through the tinted windows. "Get that, Boy!" the older man commanded, and Boy lifted the box and tipped it up onto his shoulder with ease.

Brad's height didn't even reach the guys shoulder. He was the biggest human he had ever seen in real life. He had buck teeth and a broad, flat forehead. His eyes were small and set too close to his nose and far too deep into his skull. At that he was also cross-eyed, Brad noticed. He lurched off around the corner of the building carrying the tractor part as if it were nothing.

"Mama's got hot meatloaf and fresh coffee brewing," the old man announced, slapping an arm around Brad's shoulder as if he was suddenly a long lost relative come to visit.

"No thanks. We've already eaten!" Isabel announced just as forthrightly. She had gotten from the vehicle and stood on the side-step looking over the roof.

"We were wondering if the cabin was available for the night?" Brad asked. "We're good for food and all but it's been a long day driving to find this place."

The old man rubbed his chin. "That right, Girl? You want to stay the night?"

"Yes," Isabel replied, kind of meekly that time.

"Just the one night, eh?" The old man included Brad in the question that time. He was grinning between the two of them and nodding his head.

"Yes. For just one night," Isabel answered him. "That's all—"

He chuckled. "Well, I suppose our fine cabin here is available for the night." He had taken Brad by the shoulder again. His grip was of iron and he was kneading a neck muscle with his thumb. "I think you young folks might find our cabin mighty comfy after a long day out on the road."

"Very good. Do we sign in somewhere? I have cash," Brad offered.

They were strolling towards the cabin. Isabel had taken Brad's hand and was clinging to it. She kept him between her and the weird old man.

"Let's worry about payment when you check out in the morning, eh?"

"Fine. Thank you." Brad waved as the old man turned and ambled off. The big guy was back but the old man turned him away and pushed him through a gate and closed it.