Three Weeks on the Road Ch. 17

Keannadiid came for me first, as he always did in my dreams. Maybe that's because I'd seen him around school, interacted with him. Maybe that's because we'd been fighting face to face when I shot him.

Of all the attackers at the cabin three years ago, his was the only face I remembered, the other men I'd killed were nameless, faceless silhouettes in my mind. But the security guard, Nina's cousin, the man with the access to cameras and computers and the desire to use them against me, he stood out.

And he always came for me first in my nightmares.

I pushed the drill forward, the bit whining and thunking as it drove the last screw home, and I stepped away, panting. The day was hot, and Jessie and I had been wrapping up the bedroom remodel. That was the last piece of drywall in the ceiling. Whole room walled in a day, tomorrow we'd plaster, and then put the floor in.

We stepped back and looked around the space, gray-green with unfinished wallboard. "Hard to believe this is gonna be our room," Jessie whispered.

I winced as I peeled the sling over my head, then put my arm around her. "Ours. And we built it."

She turned to look up at me, and mirth and sentimentality fought for dominance in her eyes. "When you showed me the house you bought, I was skeptical. Very skeptical. Now... Now I can see what you were thinking. This is gonna be our home..."

I leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Didn't think you'd ever end saying that, did you?"

"Nope. You either?"

I almost said "Not here, not with you," but I fought down the memory of Tori's beautiful, smiling face. "No, I didn't." I looked at my watch. "It's like seven at night. Let's go get some subs from Ashley's, and then I want to stub outthat sink before we call it a day, ok?"

"You're the boss, boss."

I bumped into Keannadiid as we walked out of the bedroom. He said "You cannot see the tapes" and I wrestled with him for control of the AK47 in his hands. My arm burned with exertion, but I wrenched it from his grasp, hit him in the face with it, and kicked his unconscious body away as he fell. "Take my Sig from my holster. On me."

Jessie wasn't behind me. I looked around for her, and I wasn't in my bedroom anymore. I was in a deserted gas station. Outside, it was night, and lightning strobed constantly, wind whirled little dust devils around the empty parking lot.

"Gary, where are you?" Jessie screamed from nearby. "Please, I need you! Help! GARY!"

I dropped the AK as fire lit up the nerves in my right arm and I looked over to see it dangling useless by my side, shredded meat and bone above the elbow, streaming blood. I felt faint as my heart pumped my life away, and I crashed into a display of magazines as I staggered towards the back of the store. They all had pictures of staircases on the covers.

Somewhere nearby, Jessie screamed in terror.

I woke up, heart pounding out of my chest and my right arm burning with unholy pain. I didn't recognize the dark surroundings, and panic blew through my mind when my hand didn't fall on my Sig on the nightstand. Fuck, we'll do this old school. I rolled off the bed, going for the knife in my pants pocket. No pants.

Light exploded into my world from behind, and I raised a hand to shield my eyes as I turned. A shadowed figure I didn't recognize, dark against the bright reached for me, and I dragged them down off the bed by their arm, and pulled them back to front. I got my forearm over their throat and locked in the choke with a hand behind their head, falling backward and pinning their legs with my own.

"Gary...Gary... It's me..." a little voice fought for breath and speech, swatted ineffectually at my face.

McKenna.

Dammit.

I let go immediately and helped her up. She rubbed her throat furiously and I tilted her chin up delicately, looked at the skin there. "You're fine. No marks. I'm sorry. Really, really, sorry."

The small, naked woman reached out and put her hand on my shoulder, pulled it away immediately when she saw me flinch. My arm burned. "Another nightmare?"

I hunted up Tylenol in the bathroom, drank from the faucet. "Yeah. Three years ago and then that fucking gas station in Wyoming."

She shuddered. "Anything I can do for you?"

I shut off the light and lay down, tried to will my hammering heart to slow. "I think I've already hurt you enough for one night."

"Nothing permanent." McKenna propped herself up on an elbow on the bed beside me.

"You wanna talk about what we did? Cuz I...I feel like we should."

She shrugged. "I think I've said this before, but what's the to talk about? You spanked me and then fucked me. Several times. Mouth, pussy, and ass. We both had fun. It was great sex. End of story."

"I was drunk and angry and I used you."

"I helped get you drunk, and I asked you to use me. Why are you overthinking this?"

"Cuz I don't usually get that rough with someone not Jessie. And never when I'm not in my right mind."

McKenna scooted closer, put her hand on my chest. "We both got what we wanted last night. There's nothing to feel bad or weird about. If anything, I'm gonna try and come back for a fucking like that at least once a month when we get back to Milwaukee."

I looked at her in shock, and she giggled, nuzzled my nose with hers. "Relax Gary, I'm not falling for you. I'm not gonna try to steal you from Jessie. I don't want to join a harem. I'd just like to join you guys in bed occasionally, get worn out like that again. That was fun."

"Talk to Jessie. If we're still together, I'm sure she'll be ok with it."

"Ok. Goodnight, Gary."

I lay awake a long time, staring at the ceiling, with McKenna's head snuggled into my neck. I didn't want to go back to sleep. I didn't want to imagine what I would find there.

McKenna rose well before me, and I saw light flare briefly in the bathroom, heard the toilet flush, heard the shower run. I briefly considered joining her, but decided against it. Instead, I watched dawn rise over the mountains, the city lights slowly turning on in the predawn blue.

Yesterday had been painful. A lot more painful than any recent day I could remember.

Today wasn't looking a lot better. I'd have to confront Jessie, make her see reason. Argue it out with one of only two people capable of hurting me. I tried to imagine what I would say. Tried to imagine what I COULD say, that would get through. She was hurt and lashing out. I was hurt and my desire was to lash out.

We were two strong people, and sparks could fly.

I heard the hairdryer running in the bathroom, heard feet moving around on the tile. I felt like shit about last night. Not just the rough, drunken sex, but choking McKenna. Whatever she thought about our carnal pursuits, she hadn't yet seen me lose control. Locking in a rear naked choke in a blind panic - that was losing control. I hated that I wasn't better than that.

The door eventually opened and McKenna walked out, looking like a million bucks. Gray skirt, black dress shirt unbuttoned to show a hint of cleavage, gray dress jacket. Long glossy brown hair tied back in a severe ponytail high on the back of her head. Makeup highlighting her eyes and lips in a professional manner. She really was pretty.

She leaned against the doorframe, looked me up and down, a smirk creeping across her youthful features. "Daddy?" she said exaggeratedly. "I think I did something bad."

Oh.

"What did you do?" I put a note of disapproval in my voice.

"While I was in the shower, I started thinking about last night and everything you did to me, and I...I started touching myself... Down there. I think that was bad?"

"Very. You're supposed to wait for me to do that, or do it when I can watch."

She looked down, a glum expression on her face. "I guess that means you have to spank me now?"

"No, we'll let it go this once."

Her stride was long and purposeful as she crossed to stand in front of me. "Are you sure? Without IMMEDIATE punishment...I might do it again..."

She gave a little giggling gasp as I pulled her over my knee. Damn, this woman weighed hardly nothing. Her skirt was tight, restricting the movement of her legs, and I had to shimmy it up her thighs and over her round ass. Beneath were very unsexy panties, and I pulled it down below the curve of her rump. Her taut skin was marred with light bruises, faint purple and yellow, and she groaned softly as I ran my hand over the firm globes. "I thought you didn't like this part," I stated.

"I don't..." Her voice was a whine that climbed to a yelp when I brought my hand down on her right buttock. It wasn't pain, just surprise. I hadn't struck her very hard. She looked back impishly and wiggled her bum.

By the time her yelps were of hurt, she wasn't teasing me any more. Chances are, she was regretting her decision. My hand came down in escalating slaps, harder and harder, and a dark part of me enjoyed her cries, the way her skin reddened to my harsh touch. She quit bucking and fighting to get away when I seized her ponytail and yanked her head back.

I paused, stroked my fingers down her swollen vulva, peeking between her thighs. The delicate inner lips shone wetly, and I gathered her leaking lubrication up on my index finger before gently probing deep into her pussy. I hadn't needed any lube, she was incredibly wet. "You might say you don't like being spanked, Mickey, but your body says otherwise."

"I don't, it hurts..." McKenna twisted her head in my grip to look at me with an open-mouthed expression of total lust. "It's just that... Every time you do this to me, it's like my body knows it needs to get ready for your cock. Like, laying over your lap is a sign I'm going to get fucked soon." Her voice was low and dark with arousal, like she was saying the words to turn herself on. "My cunt gets so wet and it feels so hot and it throbs... UHHH!"

I turned her ass a light red again, alternating my strikes between cheeks, up and down each jiggling globe, from high thigh on up, occasionally smacking across the center and making her moan with pleasure. Eventually, I stopped, tugging her ugly briefs up and her skirt down. McKenna slid off my lap to kneel before me, reached for my semi-hard member. "Thank you, daddy."

I moved away, once again growing pissed off to hear words Jessie should be speaking.

"What, you don't want a blowjob?" The little programmer looked at me with disbelief.

"You need to get going."

Another lustful grin. "Not for at least half an hour, forty-five minutes. Would you rather fuck me instead?"

I dragged her into a kiss with a hand tangled in her thick hair. She gasped into my mouth as our tongues tussled, a pulse-accelerating slide of wet firmness and relaxing softness. "Go bend over the bathroom counter."

I made her wait. I wanted her thinking, anticipating, needy.

She was bent over the counter, in front of the mirror no less, likely so she could watch us. I stepped up behind her and ran my hands up and down her back and sides, pulled her ponytail to make her arch her back and neck, ground my crotch against her ass. "You're mean," she whispered.

"I thought we established that last night." I roughly tugged her skirt up again, then pulled her underwear down to her knees and nudged her ankles apart. McKenna inhaled sharply as I dragged the crown of my erection over her slit, pushed in slightly, pulled away, kept teasing her.

"You can take either one," she said submissively. "I made sure I was ready for you in case you wanted this."

"Which would you prefer?"

"Nuh uh, I don't get to choose, you're the master. When I send you photos of my bruises today, do you think it would be hotter to see your cum leaking out of my ass, or my cunt?"

McKenna gave a little pleasured moan as I sank my prick into her wet depths with one slow slide. "Oh yeah... Right there, daddy, right there..."

I leaned over her back as I picked up the peace, crushing her to the counter as I hammered her slick box. "DON'T call me daddy."

"Uhhhhhnnn..."

I pulled her up far enough that I could get my hands on the buttons of her shirt, undid them far enough down that I could free her bra-covered tits, and then pushed that piece of underwear up her chest so I could cup and squeeze her large mammaries as I fucked her from behind. Her laughs at having her nipples tweaked and played with turned to cries of pleasure, and I felt her tunnel squeeze me rhythmically as those cries amped up and up and up. I pushed her flat on the counter again, yanking her head back with her hair and working one hand beneath us to run hard circles over her clit.

She didn't stop cumming, squealing loudly as she watched our reflections screwing in the mirror inches away from her nose.

"Cmon, you can do it... Let it go...Shoot that wad up inside me daddy..."

A few more strokes and the spunk rushed out of me in hard pulses, my cock throbbing as I painted her vaginal walls with ejaculate. I remained bent over her for a few moments to catch my breath, and then stepped away.

"You are insatiable."

McKenna pulled up her underwear and unrolled her skirt from her waist, straightening her bra and rebuttoning her shirt. "And you're hot, and a great lay." She put one hand on the muscular slab of my pectoral. "This has been fun. Now fix your relationship with Jessie."

I smirked at the tiny woman trying to comfort me. "Yes ma,'am."

"I'll text you today. Have a good one." Clothes straightened, she grabbed her backpack and headed out the door, leaving me standing naked in the middle of the bathroom.

What was going on in my life?

McKenna texted me as I was stepping out of the shower, a selfie of half her face and the busy Denver street behind her. She was biting one index finger and looking illegally young. "I paid the hotel bill. Thank you for a wonderful night."

I stared at the message for a long while, hoping it would reveal some hidden meaning.

It didn't.

I dressed, screwed around on my phone for a while, and then let myself out, took the stairs down like sixty stores to the street, and walked aimlessly, enjoying once again the feeling of anonymity that came from moving in a mass of humanity. The day was warm and humid, the sun rarely peeking through gaps in the heavily clouded sky, and pretty soon I'd worked up a decent sweat just from walking. I ate a breakfast burrito in an air-conditioned fast food joint, checked my phone obsessively.

I was trying to avoid going back to our hotel.

And I was waiting for communication from Jessie.

Our shared hotel room was dim, the curtains pulled. I let in the gray light from outside and looked at the rumpled bed. Evidence of only one body, sheets twisted in one spot, only one stack of pillows mussed. I felt heat creeping up from my heart to the back of my throat.

So much pain could've been avoided if there were two, three indentations of bodies in that mattress this morning.

I put in an angrily violent workout, straining at heavier sets and making my movements faster and more forceful than usual. After the weights, I dove into the pool, stroking back and forth with heavy splashes, cutting through the water at speed. The pool wasn't nearly as long or deep as I would've liked, but I managed to wear myself out with some cardio.

My phone dinged as I sat on one of the patio chairs next to the water's edge, drying off. The notification was loud in the dim, vault-like brick room, and I jumped slightly. I didn't want to look at my phone.

It was McKenna, again. Her message read "Jessie is here and she looks like a mess."

I read that message over and over and over. I wished I could see the object of it. What I wouldn't give...

The phone dinged again, and a picture popped up on the screen. Obviously standing in a cramped bathroom stall, it was of McKenna's rear end, taken up from between her legs. It showed off the red and purple and yellow on her bottom, and moisture on the smooth, hairless lips of her pussy. Another picture arriving moments later showed me the dark patch in the crotch of her underwear.

I looked around guiltily. Didn't want anyone else seeing these pictures. But the small pool and exercise room was still deserted, just like it had been for the last, what, two hours? I'd never seen anyone even venture towards the staircase down here from the lobby, much less exercise or swim on my trips to lift.

I showered in the room and thought about what I wanted to do. Thought about my life. Thought about how lucky I was, how depressed I was.

Thought about the specific series of steps in my path that had led me to love and share my life with a lean, pale woman that I now couldn't imagine wanting to live without.

I dressed, rummaged through Jessie's bags, and laid out what I wanted her to wear tonight on the bathroom counter.

I woke up to the beeping of the hotel room door lock. My heart hammered instant clarity into my sleep-numbed mind, and I sat up in bed, swung my feet to the floor. McKenna walked in first - looking as youthfully hot as I'd seen her this morning - followed by Jessie.

Jessie looked like death.

Black slacks, black blouse, she'd washed the color out of her hair days ago, but her lack of makeup made it look even more severe, her light scattering of freckles standing out prominently. Her expression was drawn, resigned, and only a flicker of...something...crossed her eyes when she saw me.

"Gary," McKenna said guardedly.

Jessie said nothing, just looked at me for a long while before slinging her bag on the floor.

I felt anger. Sadness. A perverse, violent joy to see that she was depressed. That was not unnatural after her treatment of me yesterday, but I wished I was a better man.

"Jessie," I said.

Her eyes flicked towards me from where she stood in the corner by her bag.

"Gary, I'm - "

"We're going out tonight. I set out clothes for you in the bathroom."

"Ok. Can I get some work done first?" Her head hung, hair hiding her sad eyes.

"Sure. McKenna, I hate to ask this of you, but could you check into another hotel tonight?" I fished in my wallet for cash, handed her the bills necessary to repeat last night's stay.

She took them, looking unsure where this was going. "I'll, uh, call if I need anything."

I flipped through the web on my phone while Jessie worked on email at the desk by the window. Shoulders hunched, head bent over her computer, avoiding looking at anything other than the screen. McKenna moved around the room, gathering up clothing and supplies for her stay elsewhere. She waved a pink wand at me and grinned before tucking it into her bag, kissed me on the cheek and gave Jessie a few squeezes on the shoulder and a few whispered words before departing.

The sun had not only sunk into the sea of buildings, but had been covered with heavy clouds of varying shades of gray by the time Jessie finished with her work and stepped into the bathroom, moving quiet as a mouse around the bed where I reclined with my phone. She took another half hour to get ready, coming out to stand in front of me as if waiting for my approval. I'd set out a fairly conservative sleeveless black dress for her, and she'd accented it with her black lace choker. No makeup, no change to her hair - it seemed like she wanted to appear as waifish and distressed-looking as possible. Maybe to punish me. Maybe to punish herself.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Yeah, let's go."

The wind had picked up, blowing through the downtown canyons with a vengeance, rustling trash in the gutters and blowing Jessie's hair around her face. The outdoor restaurants were full of people trying to keep napkins and half-empty glasses from blowing away, and the stink I'd noticed in the air seemed to have lessened.

Jessie didn't reach out for my hand, fingers fidgeting by her side or kneading her small purse. She took long strides to match my pace, dress fluttering around her knees.