Lucky Penny

Let me tell you about the penny first; otherwise it won't make sense later. I was the only girl taking metal shop one year in middle school, and I found this penny. Someone had been practicing using the metal shop tools, and had sawed a piece off it, and drilled three little holes in it on the drill press, bent it, hammered it, put a brass rivet through it, and a lot of other abuse. Being a girl, I felt kind of sorry for it, so I decided to make it into jewelry. I put a jump ring through one of the holes and threaded it onto a steel ball chain, and wore it as a necklace. The next day, I got asked out by a boy I had liked for a long time, and I attributed this stroke of luck to the penny. From then on, I called it my lucky penny, and wore it whenever I wanted some extra luck.

Well, there was this tornado. I know what you're going to say, but hear me out, this does get better. It was pretty soon after I graduated college. I was in a strange town, and I was driving back to my hotel from a job interview on a stormy afternoon when I saw the tornado, so I pulled off the road into a shopping center parking lot and ran into the only store that was open, a Toys R Us. I told the store manager that I had seen a tornado outside, and right then the tornado siren started to sound outside, so she announced over the PA system that everyone had to get to the fitting rooms in the center part of the store and huddle together. So that's what we all did. And it was during this terrifying experience that I ran into the guy.

I guess to most people he was about average-looking, but to me, handsome is as handsome does. He was a young guy, tall, kind of thin, with dark, almost black, hair and heavy eyebrows over dark eyes. His jaw was strongly square-shaped, chin cleft. He had large, bony hands with long fingers, but they were clean, the nails trimmed. He was right next to me in the huddle. Our eyes met, and he smiled reassuringly at me. Then the power went out.

Now that the muzak was off, and the fluorescent lights had quit buzzing, all we could hear was the tornado siren and the hammering of the hail that had begun to come down. A little kid next to me began to cry; a boy about seven or eight. I picked him up into my lap and wrapped my arms around him protectively. Then I felt strong, warm arms wrap around me in a similar fashion, from behind, and legs stretch out on either side of my hips on the floor. I felt breath on my ear, a heartbeat, rapid, anxious. It had to be him, he was the closest man to me in the crowd; and whoever was holding me was definitely a man. I could feel his uneasy sex shift half-hard in his pants, just at my lower back.

The wind and rain outside whipped the roof more and more violently. There was thunder and lightning. There was a deep, ominous rumble, shaking the ground; "like a freight train" doesn't quite describe it. Maybe like a freight train, times a hundred. Then there was all this crashing and banging against the outside of the building, crunch of glass and metal. Cars, unmistakably. It was in the parking lot. It would come for us next. I started to pray, not for myself, but for the little kid in my arms. I know that sounds cheesy. This next part is even worse. All I could think of was that line from the Lord of the Rings movie that Arwen says when Frodo is about to die: "What grace is given me, let it pass to him." So I thought that over and over and over.

It must have worked, because the tornado passed us over and dissipated soon afterward. We didn't know that's what happened; we just heard the rumbling fade and go away, and the rain continued like nothing had happened. Outside there was the siren, and car alarms. Inside there was anxious silence.

A sweaty, fidgety half-hour or so later, the siren stopped, which people took as their cue that it was safe to go outside and see what the damage was. I gave the little kid back to his mother, from whom he had been separated in the confusion of the huddle. We all looked outside and saw what turned out to be eight cars piled up against the side of the store, one of them mine. I went outside to call triple-A on my cell phone, but there was no signal. I learned later that the tornado had taken out the only two cellular towers for a hundred miles.

"Do you need a ride somewhere?" A guy said from behind me. I turned and looked, and it was the same guy who had wrapped his arms around me in the store.

"Yeah," I said. I told him the name of my hotel.

"That's my van." He pointed out a blue-green Honda minivan, dimpled all over from the hail. "It's unlocked, you can go ahead and get inside out of the rain. I'm going to see if anyone else needs a lift."

I went out and got in the van. A couple of people joined me there, and then the guy came back and got in the driver's seat. He drove them home first. After the others were out of the car, I got up the courage to say something. "Thanks for holding me," I said.

He blushed. "Well, you were holding that kid. It seemed like the thing to do. You're welcome."

I smiled. He was cute. I said, "You want to go out and get a drink with me?"

"I don't drink," he said. "I'll buy you dinner, though, if you'll let me."

So he took me to this good steak restaurant and we flirted over a couple of sirloins with grilled vegetable skewers. I had planned to pay for dinner, but he was sneaky and paid while I was in the ladies' room. We lingered over coffee for a little while, and he asked me about my necklace.

I had forgotten I was wearing the lucky penny, but I had put it on for the job interview earlier that day. I told him about it, and then I said, "I guess it's not so lucky today. Tornado. Wrecked car. And I don't think I got the job."

"But you're alive," he said. "And maybe it's lucky for me, too. I got to meet you."

Okay, I'm a sucker for a line. I said, "Want to get out of here?"

We got out of there. He drove me back to my hotel and walked me to my room, and I let him in, and let him see me put the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside of the door.

He raised his eyebrows at me and grinned, and as I closed the door I grinned back and said, "Yeah, that means what you think it means."

He said, "I guess today is my lucky day."

I bolted the door and put my arms around him. He bent down and kissed me. His breath was warm, and his mouth tasted like the coffee and after-dinner mints we'd had at the restaurant. I reached up and unbuttoned his shirt from the neck down, and put my hands on his chest, ribcage and stomach, feeling the textured, haired skin and the heated flesh under it with my palms. He parted his mouth from mine long enough to pull my sleeveless sweater off over my head, and then fiddled with my bra hooks for a few minutes before giving up and pulling that off over my head, too. We kissed for another minute, bare chest to bare breasts, and he touched my erect nipples lightly, feeling them like he would a fold of delicate silk between his fingers. I undid the side zipper on my gray twill pants and guided his hand down inside the waistband, and between my thighs. He felt the damp crotch of my panties, and then eased the fabric aside to touch the skin, run fingertips inside my wet folds. I moaned, feeling shaky at the knees, and he wrapped his free arm around my waist to steady me. His hips were pressed tight against mine, and through my pants and his jeans I could feel how hard he was, how much he wanted me. He fingered me and kissed me again, always gentle and slow. Then he did something no man had ever done before; taking his hand out of my pants, he lifted me off the ground just like a character in a soap opera, cradling me with an arm under my shoulders and another under my knees, and carried me to the bed.

He laid me down and pulled my pants and panties off. He finished undressing, too. I was impressed at the size of him. It seemed out of proportion; he was tall and lean, but his cock was long and thick, and though it looked a little strange, I was excited at the thought that he was going to be inside me with that big thing, thrusting until the friction was just excruciating. The anticipation made me that much hotter; I reached for him and he lay down next to me in the bed, kissed me again and rubbed that big cock against my hip until I groaned out loud with impatience. He laughed. "We're just getting started," he said.

He put his mouth on one of my breasts, fingered the other one, and teased me until I thought I would scream. Then he moved his hand down to my sex. He found my clit and teased it like he had my nipple, rubbing it between his fingers gently and rhythmically, his lips and tongue still at my breasts, my nipples, licking and sucking, one, now the other; and his fingers felt so good. He kept going, slowly increasing the pressure and urgency of his caresses and kisses, sucking, twisting and gently biting, rubbing harder and faster, until I climaxed under his capable hand, gasping and crying out. It wasn't until then that he entered me, riding the slick wave of my orgasm smoothly into my body, and I could feel my skin and flesh stretch to accommodate him, and a little pain, but the sensation of that big cock stuffed inside me, so deep my lungs felt crowded, was absolutely thrilling. I moved my hips to take as much of him inside myself as he would give me, and he began to thrust into me, strongly and with great skill, pressing his pubic bone against my still-spasming clit with each push. My heart was beating so fast and the physical sensations were so intense, I thought I would die there in the bed with him, in his arms, with his body thrusting into mine, and I thought it was a great day to die.

He sped up, fucking me gradually harder and faster, until his hips slapped against mine loud enough that I was sure my neighbors could hear us. I moved with him, pressing up to him in time with his strokes, feeling my abs and thighs begin to cramp with exertion while he seemed to move effortlessly; I had time to think that I had never had two orgasms with a man before, and then I came again, moaning through clenched teeth and gripping the bedsheets in both fists. Once again, it seemed to be what he was waiting for. He fucked me even harder and faster, faster even than my heartbeat, and then stopped with his body deep inside mine, frozen for a split second, and then groaned out loud, mouth open and eyes squeezed shut, and I felt him seize and spasm inside me, throbbing and pulsing. He relaxed and laid his head on my shoulder, rested his weight on my body. We panted in time with each other, sweating and trembling. I lightly rubbed his back, he stroked one hand up and down my upper arm. We took some time to catch our breath.

After a while, he gently withdrew himself from between my thighs and rolled off of me to lie on his back. We were both quiet for a minute. Then he said, "If you don't get that job, are you still going to stay in town?"

I told him, "No, probably not."

He said, "I hope you get it. I want to keep seeing you. If that's okay."

"Of course," I said. "I'd like that."

He smiled at me.

My lucky penny did its thing. I got the job, and they even decided to pay me more than the original offered salary, because I had other skills they wanted to use. The guy and I never stopped seeing each other; we dated for two years, and got married last year in Las Vegas.

When we went surfing in California on our honeymoon, I lost my lucky penny. I wiped out and it came off over my head in the ocean. I looked for it, but it was dark by then and I gave up. I don't mind, though. One day, someone will find it, and it will bring them as much luck as it did me.