Pedernales Rising Ch. 02: The Dare

It has been two weeks since our third date--the one in which we broke through the sound barrier of our budding relationship and discovered a universe of sexual compatibility. Two weeks since a tortuous political fundraising event took a left turn and ended in mind-blowing sex on the side of a lesser-used Austin highway. I haven't stopped thinking of Travis since, but our schedules have been difficult to align. "Double-Divorcee Connections" should be its own category on dating apps because of the hoops one must jump through to accomplish something as simple as a lunch date. "Big block" things like work and kids and other commitments of adult life, it turns out, are difficult to move around to accommodate even the steamiest of affairs.

After we bailed on his schmoozy friend's elbow-rubbing fundraiser, and he fucked me within an inch of my life on the hood of his car, I had hoped to keep the momentum going.

I think he likes me. I mean, he has to, right? I recognize the fact that my ego desperately wants it to be so. From my perspective, we have always had great intellectual and conversational compatibility, and then after discovering the depths of pleasure possible together... It has been hard to concentrate on anything else. I must have gotten off no fewer than five times since he dropped me off at my door that night, recounting our time together. But we struggled to put a date on the calendar for a subsequent get-together. There was a lot of apologizing on both ends, which began to feel a little pathetic. A wet blanket thrown onto the fire of that evening. And finally, when we are able to make a meet-up happen, it's for breakfast. Breakfast.

"My 2pm just got moved to noon. I'm so sorry." he texts.

"It's fine--I really do get it. Clients always seem to wait until the end of the year for last minute urgencies." I write back, trying to make my empathy louder than my disappointment. We had originally planned on lunch, and I had an outfit picked out for the occasion, but things happen, and we were just going to have to roll with it.

"Can you meet at 8 for coffee instead?"

"Yes, if you don't mind seeing me in workout clothes."

I have a spot reserved in one of those painfully inauthentic "barre-inspired" fitness classes at 9:30, so I figure a quick hello before a workout is better than nothing to keep a little spark in the kindling of this thing we have going. And I'm absolutely going to come off as desperate, even if just to myself, if I move my plans to accommodate this last-minute rendezvous.

We meet at 8am. I show up early. Typical Type A personality shit. Perhaps I should play it a little cooler, I muse. I'm wearing a pair of mid-rise, figure-flattering black leggings that emphasize the curves between my ass and my small waist, and a black and white printed sports bra under an semi-translucent white tee for a teasing peekaboo effect, tied at the waist. My hair in a low ponytail. No makeup. Whatever, I think, it's weird to wear makeup to a workout, so if he needs a woman who does so, better to find out now.

I had actual real-life stuff I should be focused on, but seeing Travis eclipses whatever I have going on, like the upcoming Creative Review for our behemoth banking client's spring campaign. I work for an ad agency as a Creative Director, having risen through the art direction ranks. My writing partner is junior to me and his stuff isn't quite connecting yet, but I feel like an asshole leaning on him to improve it since my internal self-doubt kept telling me "You're not the writer--what do you know?" I Slack him a little self-effacing feedback to kill time, but my mind is on the scrubby cedar-lined highway and the eye-rolling orgasms Travis delivered three times weeks ago.

I was mid-Slack when Travis showed up a respectable 5 minutes late. I tried to pretend like I hadn't spent the last 10 minutes thinking about where I was sitting, and how my legs were crossed, and with what I was busying myself when he arrived.

He walks up and sits down in the chair beside me, saying nothing. He just looks at me. I try for a hot second to play it cool, but his unexpected move lights my extrovert tendencies on fire and I have to fill the void.

"Hi. How's your day so far? Are you caffeinated? I mean, you've been so busy lately." Even my attempted second-gear response seems overpowered for the occasion.

Travis just looks at me.

Jesus. What do I say? Why is he so quiet? His 6'3" figure is clad in cool weather athletic gear (probably to make me feel more comfortable in mine)--basketball shorts and a DriFit half-zip pullover that's casually revealing of his masculine features.

"So... have you eaten? Do you want to..."

Travis leans forward and takes my face in his hands as I'm finishing my awkward sentence and quiets me with a sensual kiss, barely appropriate for 8:05am. His tongue teases my lips and begs me for more but then pulls away sweetly like he's "off to work" in a 60s sitcom.

It does shut me up, which I'm sure is the intention.

"I'm sorry I'm late. I've been looking forward to this." Travis offers with sincerity.

"I... me too." I say like an idiot. All the words escape me now.

"Have you eaten?" He asks.

"Yeah, I have breakfast at 6am with my coffee before getting the kids off to school." I confess.

"Ah, ok. Then I guess it's Double Espresso Day for both of us."

I'm still blushing from the kiss as we stand to enter the modest cafe. The place sells itself as a tea shop, so despite the coffee joke, I go for an iced white peach tea, because November in Texas feels like May everywhere else. Travis orders tea as well, black. We make small talk about work while in line.

I lead us over to a long, unoccupied table and take a seat. Travis sits opposite me, which feels miles away, especially given our recent time together. I make a fumbling pseudo-apology, and move to the end of the table to sit 90 degrees to his left. He seems vaguely amused by the move. I wonder if I'm coming on too strong.

"You just... you seemed so far away." I admit.

Why am I such a wreck today? I realize I'm nervous because I like him, but I'm also probably overcaffeinated and under-slept.

My response seems to delight him a little, and the pressure of his calm quietness returns, and builds upon itself as he smiles at me.

"You're an interesting person." I deliver, deadpan. His cool intensity draws me in to a degree I've never experienced before. I want to know more about what makes him this way.

"Oh? What makes you interested?" I hate that he turned it on me; put my desire for him in such bright light. And it's no accident--he's a smart man of few words, so those he chooses matter. But what the hell, I'm into him. I'm just going to go for it.

"You're a walking contradiction."

Travis sits back in his chair with a slightly bemused expression. "Oh. How?"

Seriously? We are going to do this first thing in the morning? Ok then... I take a breath and consider how far to take this.

"Well. There's your whole cowboy-meets-city-boy foil, but that's just obvious surface level stuff," I explain, "Anyone can wear boots and drive a beemer." I watch him shift almost imperceptibly at the characterization. "You have this other quality. This stillness that's vaguely frightening. It's like a deep, cold river that beckons you to sit beside it, dip a toe in, wade in. It may be so deep it'll whisk you away. Or it may feel like heaven. But you'll never know until you take a swim."

He just regards me, taking in my observation. Maybe too deep for 8am, I wince. This is when he finds a work excuse to bail and lose my number.

"Want to play a game?" He asks. A total non-sequitur.

YES! No--shit, Erin, stop being so excitable. It's 8:30am on a fucking Tuesday. Relax. But I love games of every kind, and I'm relieved by the notion of guardrails for our conversation so I don't make things weird again.

"Sure, what do you have in mind?" is all the chill I can muster.

"How about truth or dare?"

Invigorating. Playful. Decidedly not a Tuesday morning activity. I love it.

"I'm game. Lay one on me. Truth."

My teasing pun isn't lost on him. His eyes sparkle deviously as he considers how to open the game.

"What do you wear under the Lulus?"

I blush. "First of all, I'm insulted that you think I spend $200 on leggings. They're decent knock-offs."

My joke lands relatively flat. He's waiting for his answer.

"You already know. Stretchy lace thongs are my undergarment uniform. They're comfortable, go with everything, show nothing, and leave enough to the imagination."

"So that wasn't just a stunt for our night out?"

I'm mildly put off by the implication of inauthenticity.

"Not a stunt. Just personal preference."

I can feel him take that in. I wonder what he's wondering about.

My turn. Since we started seeing each other, I've noticed a ring he wears on the middle finger of his right hand. It's a simple silver band, like an almost-wedding-ring. Totally nondescript. But still, jewelry doesn't seem to fit into his rancher-meets-city-boy thing. So the band stands out.

"What's that about?" I only have to gesture with my eyes. His eyes follow mine to the ring.

"This?" he says, holding up his hand.

I smile and raise my eyebrows in confirmation.

He laughs and looks away. I wonder if I've touched a nerve. Maybe a gift from an ex. Or worse, a current?

Travis takes his ring off and slides it across the table to me. I take it slowly in my hands. He watches me.

I examine the ring. It's just a simple, rounded-edge silver band... But then I notice a little stamp on the underside. It looks like a yin-yang at first. The 90s kid in me leaps with recognition but then sits down as I realize that it's a circle composed of not two but three identical pieces. I've never seen it before, but I'm sure it means something to Travis.

I look up at him with a questioning look.

"You don't know what that means?" He asks.

Should I know what it means? I feel like a child. "No." I confess.

"It's a triskelion."

I stare at him, waiting for the rest.

He's holding back gentle laughter, or something else, and I feel like the only one in a large group not in on a joke.

Travis leans closer, his elbows crossed on the table. "It's a BDSM symbol. It means different things to different people, but to me, it vaguely translates as 'the physical is not enough.'"

I swallow hard. I've entertained BDSM fantasies for as long as I can remember, but I've never met a card-carrying member so to speak. And now, some elements from our night together on the side of the road make more sense. He must really subscribe to the lifestyle to wear it on his person daily.

"...oh" is all I can speak. "How... How interesting."

Travis is looking at me like he's considering having me for breakfast. My knees are weak even though I'm seated. I feel positively ridiculous for ever questioning if this man had an edge to him. He has enough for both of us. Maybe more.

I hand the ring back to him and he slips it back on his finger, adjusting it by the feel of the symbolic imprint, without breaking his gaze on me.

"My turn." he says as he looks at me across the table. "Truth or dare?"

I am all in. "Dare." I immediately begin regretting it.

Travis sits back in his chair looking at me, maybe surprised at my selection. I'm absolutely positive that my prominent freckles are disappearing into the flushing rose of my cheeks right about now.

Smiling, he leans forward again and rests his left hand deftly on the inside of my thigh. "I'm going to take you out sometime in the next week. We'll meet downtown. I want you to get together with a friend or a colleague first. We can meet up after. Sometime between when you see this person and you come to meet me, I want you to remove your underwear... and give them to me when I see you."

What the fuck. The idea of this is so hot I can barely sit still.

"Will I get them back?"

"Nope."

I pause and consider if I can do this... "Ok." I hear my mouth say before my brain can catch up. I cannot believe I just agreed to that.

Travis' phone dings, which breaks the tension momentarily. He silences it after a glance. His focus is on me. I feel a little guilty knowing how busy he is, but also grateful for the attention.

"Truth or dare?" I ask him, keeping the momentum going.

"Truth."

Damn. I was hoping to get him back, but fair enough.

"What are you afraid of?"

"You mean aside from small lizards?"

"I mean... how big do the lizards have to get before they're not scary anymore?"

That cracks him. He laughs heartily and admits, with surprising honesty... "I don't know, maybe longer than a foot?"

I think he's kidding at first because I don't expect small lizards to be the kryptonite of a large, athletic, native Texan, hunter-type. but I find it especially endearing for that very fact.

Travis' phone vibrates again and he half-picks it up to read a note this time.

"I'm sorry, I really need to take this. It'll just take a moment."

I waive my hand in a "no problem" way as he picks up.

I feel like it's time I let him go take care of his business of the day. It's nearing time for my class anyway.

I gesture that I'm going to head out, in a "no hard feelings" sort of way.

He looks at me with a little regret, but also expectation. He wants confirmation that I'm good for my dare. That I'll show up and hand him my thong when we see each other later this week.

I offer a smile and a pantomimed 'shoo-shoo' gesture that tells him it's ok to take care of business. We'll see each other again soon.

As I walk to my car, I can feel his eyes on me. I shut the door and exhale, my stomach still churning with butterflies. I show up at my class feeling like I've already warmed up.

The workout is good to clear my head, and I arrive home sweaty and invigorated for the day ahead. I decide to shower quickly before jumping onto my first call. As my hands run over my body, all I can think of is Travis' hands, his ring and it's meaning, his intense gaze, and our plans to meet that week. A long, hot shower is one of my guilty pleasures, and I relax into the running water massaging my body. The steam builds and I tip my head back, diverting the stream to run over the contours of my face and pull the weight of my hair down my back. I close my eyes and exhale deeply. Thinking of how our kiss felt, I caress my neck and décolletage. I allow myself a fondle of my nipples standing firm in contrast to the soft fullness of my breast. Thoughtlessly, my right hand slips down my belly and finds my pussy. The slippery warmth of my excitement feels wonderful in combination with the water enveloping my body. My engorged clitoris is begging for touch.

I do not have time for this. Damnit, why did I cut the class so close to my first meeting? I'll just take a couple more minutes...

As my middle finger glides over and around my clit, I realize a quick orgasm shouldn't be difficult to achieve. My left hand teases and pinches my nipples. "Mmm" my satisfaction echoes around the shower. The hot water elicits a sense-memory of the heat of the hood of Travis' car. I think about the delicious sensation of his warm tongue between my legs. My hand picks up speed with my excitement as I rub myself faster, my orgasm building within me.

"Aaaah," the sound of my pleasure resounds around me, as if my voice belongs to someone else. I slip my fingers inside and recall the ecstatic agony of Travis' big cock reaching my g-spot again and again, relentlessly. My own fingers can never quite get there--a majorly stupid flaw in "intelligent design".

My legs are shaking now as my orgasm builds. My left hand releases my breast as I lean on the wall of the shower for support. The pressure within me rises and my breathing quickens. My hand on the wall, my legs weak, I'm reliving that night on the side of the highway. I remember the force with which Travis flipped me onto my belly and threw my dress up; how my breasts and hands and cheek felt pressed onto the hot car hood while his persistent cock filled me. I press myself against the wall of the shower and rub myself desperately. "Uuuuhhhh yes!! Please take me," I cry aloud. I'm going to come.

"MISS CLOSE?" I hear outside my door. I nearly jump out of my skin as I whirl around to face the bathroom door.

Shit! What? Oh my God, I forgot I had scheduled the housekeeper for today. There is a 100% chance she heard me. I'm mortified. And also late for my call.

I yank the faucet off and fly out of the shower, haphazardly wrapping a towel around me. I open the door and stick my head out.

"Roberta I'm so sorry! I completely forgot about today!"

"No problem, miss. We start upstairs, ok?"

I'm grateful for her discretion. When she closes the door, I race into the bedroom, and with some difficulty, pull clothes onto my damp body, my wet hair spraying drops of water around the room. My swollen clit is screaming for release but I tell it to shut up--it's caused enough trouble already.

I curse Travis for his distraction. Thank God my call is cameras-off.

Throughout the rest of my workday, my need takes a back seat, but remains present at attention, like smoldering coals of a fire ready to reignite with a little stoking. I finally shut down my Mac at 6:30pm, go to check out the fridge and consider what to make for dinner. Something simple. I feel worn out. I pour a glass of wine and reheat some leftover chili from earlier that week. It's so quiet in the house on days the kids are with their dad. I miss them, but I'm simultaneously grateful for the break to recharge, which is a little guilt-inducing.

I check my texts and see one from Travis.

"Sorry for having to take that call. There are some people at work I just can't side-button. How's Friday to get together? I know a place downtown that will be perfect."

Friday was a whole three days away, and I typically avoid driving downtown at all costs, but I'll make an exception for this one.

"Friday sounds great. Tell me when and where."

I navigate over to social media and idly scroll while I wonder where he has in mind. My attention wanders back to the subtle throb between my legs. I have the house to myself, and the time to take care of it. But the sensation isn't exactly bad. In fact the longing is sort of exciting--a small high. I wonder if I can deprive myself until Friday. Hmm.

"Bzz Bzz" goes my phone. A text from Travis.

"7:30. I'll tell you where to go on Friday after you meet your friend, and take care of the first part of your dare."

There are the butterflies again. The idea of depriving myself of orgasm until Friday, and then meeting Travis without underwear on solidifies my decision. Hands off until Friday.

"Deal."

I set my phone down, finish my meal, tip the remainder of my wine between my lips, and turn in for the night wishing time would hurry up already.

But it doesn't. Wednesday and Thursday crawl by. Keeping busy with work and exercise help, but I'm daydreamy and distracted. My desire for release and determination to avoid it don't help either.

But Friday does arrive, at last. I make plans with a dear girlfriend I've known since high school whom I had been meaning to catch up with for some time. Despite us both living in Austin, we struggle to make time for visits because of the fact that she lives far north of town, while I'm far west, and there's a lake obstructing the expanse between us. That makes downtown the closest "in the middle" spot for us, which is convenient given my necessity to find a friend to make good on my dare. We decide to meet at 5:00 for happy hour at the Driskill, a beautiful old hotel and longtime Austin landmark. It's slightly stuffy, but comfortable and not too raucous to catch up with my friend.