Grease Monkey Jive (38 page)

“Risky, not degrading.” She pushed her hand into his hair and kissed him hard on the mouth. He heard her. There’s no way the Alex he knew would go willingly with a man down a dodgy alleyway unless she was very much in control and secure with the situation. The look on her face was like a plunger full of lust in his veins and he held her chin to rain kisses over her lips and jaw, trailing up to her ear.

“No.” He heard his own voice raw and cut through with want. He tried to stop her argued, “Yes,” with his hand, drawing his thumb across her top lip as though to rub the request out.

She said the words, “I want,” and he had to bite down on his back teeth to hammer out the impulse to give in. He knew that alleyway. He’d often shared it with other couples frantic to pleasure each other. It’d never bothered him before, made things that much more interesting, but he wasn’t going to share Alex with anyone no matter how oblivious they might become.

He shook his head. “I want too, but not here.” He hustled her out to the street where there was laughter from the line of people waiting to go into the bar and clattering from the wait staff packing away the outdoor tables of the Thai restaurant next door.

She said, “The Valiant,” and it was a second shot of heat and want.

He pulled her past the restaurant, “Not the Valiant.”

“You’re not telling me you’ve never...” she was dragging on his hand, laughing and couldn’t finish the sentence.

“No, I’m not, but I want to get you home.” He stopped outside the front of a bank and drew her into his arms. “Chicks I had in alleyways and the back of the Valiant never came home with me. Not once. You’re different. Don’t you get it? You make me want to be different too.”

“Oh, Dan.” Alex dropped her head to his chest, resting her ear over his thudding heart. She had to get it. Making her understand was suddenly critical.

They were hit by a blast of music when the front door of Son of a Beach Bar opened. He wrapped his arms around Alex and dipped her and she laughed up at him, surprised by the sudden movement. He righted her then twirled her away from him and they danced in front of the bank to the hook of Chitty Bang’s
Ray Charles
and when Dan glanced sideways, he saw them reflected in the bank’s window – a stunning beauty and a man who was once blind to his feeling, who couldn’t see the meaning of having a woman permanently in his life, the value of love, or the truth of himself.

The song shut off as suddenly as it first sounded and he hauled Alex close for another hug, this gorgeous woman who’d changed his life, opened his eyes, and given him a reason to be different.

“What are you looking at?” Alex followed his eyes to their reflection.

“Us,” he said. He recognised in the articulation of that one small word, a world of meaning. Not Jimmy. It was relief and elation. Not Jimmy.

If the Valiant hadn’t been parked under a bright white street light, if the look Dan gave her when she leaned against its back door hadn’t been so conflicted, lustful and guilty at the same time, Alex would’ve insisted on making out in the back seat before they went home.

Dan yanked the front passenger door open. “Ten minutes. We’ll be at my place in ten minutes.” He caught her expression, shamelessly wanton. “Seven if I floor it.”

She took his hand and let him ease her down onto the seat and when she was sitting she brought it to her lips and bit his knuckle. She wanted him. Hard. Fast. Now.

“Ok, five.” It came out strangled, making them both laugh. He leaned in, eyes alight, “Are you trying to make me lose it?” He kissed her quickly before shutting the door and going around the nose of the car to the driver’s side.

When he got in, she reached across the seat and spread her hand over his thigh. “This is a reminder you promised me gratification.”

His eyes flared in the dash board light. “I did.”

“And I’m keen to collect.”

His hand came down over hers, pressing it against the muscle which hardened under her fingers. “I can see that. What exactly do you want to collect?” He fired the engine. It burbled, a deep, throaty, powerful sound that rippled though her body. She slid across the sculptured vinyl to his side and pressed against the flex of his arm and the ridge of his hip. She licked his ear. “I want you.”

“How?”

He was making her mad, recklessly wild for him. “Anyway you want.”

He cupped her chin. “No.” Brought his lips close but not close enough. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“You know what I want.” She said it softly, a breath over his mouth, but a look of disappointment flittered across his features and he dropped his hand. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to be different with her. It made her want him more. She stroked his cheek. Tapped down her disappointment. “It’s alright. I get it. I understand.”

She shifted to slide back into the passenger seat but he stopped her. “You trust me right?”

“Of course. You know I do.”

“You trust me enough to have rough sex in a public place with me.”

“Yes.” She said it without hesitation, tiny flames of excitement lighting in her chest.

“Have you ever done it before?”

“No.”

Air whistled through Dan’s teeth. “Is that all it takes – trust?”

“What do you mean, all?”

Why didn’t she just say ‘yes’? Now when he was offering, she was stalling. Back at the club she’d used the word love. It’d felt right to say it in the club, after their make out session on the dance floor, after a day of thwarted desire, the video, his change-up on the dance floor, her slap. And there was always the chance he wouldn’t hear that one word above the meaning of the sentence and the noise of the club. But he’d heard. He knew and now he wanted it said again without the distractions.

He brushed his palm down her arm and waited and, when she couldn’t say it, he reached for his seat belt and motioned for her to take hers. He flicked the blinker on and pulled out from the kerb, swung around a corner, changing gears on the column.

She was back across the seat now, but desire was an electric cable keeping her connected to him though he’d scared her with his desire to know what she felt for him. He coasted through a roundabout and Alex watched him focus on driving.

God, he was so undemanding. He’d never asked her for anything. Not like Phil with his expectations about how she should be. Dan deserved to know how she felt, if only because he’d never put her under pressure. If only because he’d become so important to her.

Why was this so hard to say? Why was she fencing around? She spoke to the silver trim on the dash. “It’s not just trust. I’d need to love a person before I’d take that kind of risk.” Why couldn’t she just come out with it, tell him she loved him? Love wasn’t a construct. It was real and vital and wrapped up in the body and mind of the man sitting next to her with a shy, hopeful smile on his face.

He said it for her. “You’d need to be in love?”

And even now the words stuck in her throat. “Yes.”

He shot her a look that might have caused earthquakes, toppled nations. “If I took you somewhere outdoors where we might be seen and I undressed you, bent you over the hood of the car and fucked you till you screamed, would that be what you wanted, Alex?”

Inside she was already arching, shaking, screaming. “Yes.”

He U-turned with a screech of rubber so fast Alex was rocked sideways, the seatbelt tightening on her chest.

His voice was thick black coffee, a hard shot of adrenaline. “I want to kiss you so badly, but if I pull over, that’ll be it, we won’t make it to the outdoors bit.” He looked at her with molten lava eyes. “You’ve got two minutes to change your mind.”

She had two minutes to wonder if she’d done the right thing. She trusted him. Despite that slightly reckless piece of driving, despite the suggestion of rough, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. She knew the risk was manageable. None of what they were about to do frightened her. It probably should’ve, would’ve done with anyone else. All it did was excite her beyond anything she could remember. All of what she felt for him terrified her. She loved him. There was no beginning, middle, or end to that and it felt untamed, out of control, and dangerous beyond thought.

They’d climbed the hill at the north end of the beach, silent with each other, constrained by anticipation. Dan nosed the Valiant down a steep, almost concealed driveway and they emerged in the car park of a derelict lawn bowling club. It looked out at a panorama of the beach with the amber glow of its night time safety lighting, making Alex gasp with wonder at the view and Dan’s knowledge of this place. She wasn’t the first person he’d brought here. She only cared to be the last.

They weren’t the only car and Alex felt fear surge inside the bubble of her thrill. Dan was out of the Valiant, pulling his wallet from his back pocket as he walked across to the other car. In minutes, four teenagers piled back into their battered Suburu and took off up the driveway in a roar of gears and blasts on the horn.

Alex was out of the car before Dan made it back to the Valiant. “How much did that cost you?”

“Cheap for what it buys.”

“What does it buy?” She was stalling again. Gratification so close yet she was twitching with hesitation. Nothing in her previous relationships had prepared her for this. The suburb was laid out at her feet and they were enclosed in an abandoned place. The night was warm, velvet dark, and starlit, and an unbelievably sexy man was looking at her with such intensity and desire she was lightheaded.

Dan was surveying her. Marking her body with his gaze. “It buys me you. Safety. Privacy. I’m never going to share you and, after today, I’m friggin’ sure I don’t want anyone watching you when you come except me.”

She took a step towards him. “The video wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t, but no one is going to see anything hotter than that. And I’m going to set us both on fire right now.”

Her whole frame was trembling, waiting for him to light the match.

“Are you sure you want this? We can go home still if you....”

“I want you.”

“God. Alex!” He advanced the last two steps, stood close but didn’t touch her. They were both breathing heavily in the humid night, the overgrown marraya bushes perfuming the air with their orange jasmine scent.

Dan unbuttoned his shirt. “Lose the dress.” The command in his voice caused a sudden heat surge. The way she dragged her dress over her head was her answering cry to his abrupt U-turn. She faced him in heels and underwear. If he asked she’d lose those too, but he closed the distance between them and lifted her in his arms, walking with her to the front of the car where he laid her down.

She saw stars and a fingernail slice of moon and braced a heel against the front bumper to stop sliding down the engine-warm duco of the Valiant, and then he was with her, between her legs, his shirt off, his belt undone, his jeans unzipped. “You’re incredible. I never thought to have you like this.”

She arched under the stroke of his hand, her ribs vaulting up from the bonnet, her head rolling back as he brought both hands to her breasts, smoothing his fingers around her ribs to snap her bra catch then pull the silk and elastic from her arms.

He said, “Fuck,” when his hands came back to her naked breasts, whispered as though a sacred word, the end to a prayer. “I never knew there could be this.”

Her own answering groan and the way she slammed her hips into his was agreement. She no longer knew who she was. She was only feeling, only sensation. Her body danced for him.

His lips were on her sternum. “You are my heart, Alex.” He licked down to her belly. “You are my life.” His hand was inside the silk of her underpants. “You change me.” His fingers were inside her, his lips hovered over hers. “I will never stop wanting you.”

The car park was abandoned so there was no one to witness what they did, how she cried out. She was safe and treasured. Dan’s touch and tongue and lips and hands tuned her body like a car, had her vibrating with energy and passion, left her purring with joy.

Alex watched Dan fly apart inside her and spin out, crashing into an oblivion of pleasure and release that humbled her with its rawness and honesty.

She wasn’t supposed to need this man. She wasn’t supposed to love him, but he’d made it impossible not to.

Dan was a lather of sweat, hands braced on his knees, dragging in a breath like he’d attempted some feat of Olympic merit when Mitch walked into the studio.

“It’s not Monday, is it?” He dragged a hand over his face, droplets of sweat scattering off his fingers. Monday was when they had their regular class. He straightened up. It was Thursday, why was Mitch here?

“Dan, need to talk to you.” Mitch was focused on him, but acknowledged Scott and Alex with a tight nod, nothing friendly about it.

“What?”

“Your phone’s off.”

“Must be out of battery, sorry, mate. What’s happening?”

“It’s Jimmy.”

Dan groaned, “Oh God, what’s he done now? Why did he ring you?”

“He’s in the hospital. Hospital rang McMurty. When Mac couldn’t get you, he rang me.”

“Why?”

“It’s bad, mate. Jimmy’s bad.”

“How?”

“Crashed the semi. There are other people hurt, a family, two kids. It’s bad, Dan. You need to come.”

“Quit saying it’s bad and tell me what happened.”

“He’s got two broken legs, some ribs, internal injuries, but the people in the car… it’s not looking good.”

“Fuck.” He swung around to Alex and Scott. Found Alex had his gym bag in her hand. “I gotta go. I’m sorry.” He caught her in a quick, rough hug. “I’ll call you.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll come to you.”

“St Vincent’s casualty,” said Mitch over his head.

Dan tossed Alex the keys to the Valiant. “I’ll go with Mitch.”

In Mitch’s ute the hot sweat on his body made him feel cold with fear and worry. If Jimmy was at fault, if he was driving drunk, if anyone died, he couldn’t bear the idea. He pulled a shirt over his singlet, towel dried his hair, voiced the question he feared the answer to. There was no point asking if Jimmy had been drinking – he was always drinking.