Chapter 1: Stranded with a Hung Stranger
The car died with a sound like a sigh, a final shudder that ran through the steering column and up into Naomi’s hands. She let go of the dashboard, her knuckles easing from white back to pale pink. For a moment, there was only the whisper of dry grass against the cracked asphalt and the slow, ominous tick of the engine cooling.
“Oh, god. No, no, no,” Alan muttered. He turned the key. The starter clicked, a hollow, hopeless sound. He tried again. Click.
“Stop it,” Naomi said. Her voice was flat. “You’ll drain the battery.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, honey. I guess… I guess it’s the alternator? Or the fuel pump? I read online that—”
“I don’t care what you read online, Alan.” She leaned her head against the window, watching the sun bleed orange into a bruised purple sky. One month. He’d been fired one month before the wedding. Caught in his cubicle, pants around his ankles, some milky puddle on the cheap industrial carpet. HR had been gentle, almost pitying. ‘Inappropriate use of company time and resources.’ The fancy Cancún package, the all-inclusive with the swim-up bar she’d pinned on her vision board, vanished. Poof. Replaced by this: a ‘rustic mountain getaway.’ A tent, a cooler of warm soda, and a sleeping bag that smelled of basement.
The wedding itself had been fine. Pretty, even. She’d smiled. Her bridesmaid, Sarah, had pulled Alan aside during the reception. “She’s beautiful, Alan. Just remember, she’s got moods. Deep ones. Don’t let the pretty face fool you.” He’d just nodded, his eyes glazed with champagne and terror, watching Naomi swirl on the dance floor, a vortex of raven hair and lethal curves in white satin.
Last night, their wedding night, had been spent in this same car after the campsite disaster. The temperature had plummeted. The tent pole snapped. They’d fought, voices sharp in the thin, cold air, about the kindling, about the can opener, about everything. Huddled in the backseat for warmth, he’d fumbled with the clasp of her bra, his small, cold hands trembling. She’d helped him, a sigh of impatience fogging the glass. It was awkward, cramped. He’d entered her with a desperate little thrust, and she’d felt… nothing. A faint pressure. A minute later, maybe less, he’d shuddered and gone still on top of her.
“Are you…?” he’d whispered.
“It’s fine,” she’d said, staring at the fabric of the car roof.
“I was just so cold, and nervous, and—”
“I said it’s fine, Alan.”
But in the grey morning light, as he’d apologized again while trying to pump the camp stove, she’d snapped. “Just stop. Just shut up. It was a useless little prick in a useless little situation. Stop talking about it.” He’d shrunk into himself, disappearing inside his wrinkled khakis.
And now this. The dead car on a deserted back road, thirty miles from the nearest town called Dewdrop.
“We have to walk,” she said, opening her door. The wind caught her hair, whipping the long, glossy strands across her face. She didn’t look back.
“Naomi, wait! Maybe someone will come!”
“No one’s coming, Alan. Walk.”
They trudged in silence for forty minutes. Her heels, impractical and beautiful, were long ruined. She carried them. The silence between them was a physical weight. Then, a vibration in the asphalt. A diesel growl. A lifted, mud-spattered pickup truck crested the hill behind them, slowing.
It rolled to a stop beside them. The window powered down. The man inside leaned his elbow on the sill. He was big. Not tall, but dense, layered with sun-baked muscle that strained his plaid shirt. His eyes, a piercing, assessing green, went over Alan—the apologetic slouch, the cheap glasses—and dismissed him. They landed on Naomi. They took in the torn stockings, the grass-stained skirt clinging to her hips, the way her fitted blouse gaped where a button had come loose. They didn’t blink.
“Trouble?” His voice was a low, easy rumble.
Alan stepped forward. “Yes, sir, our car broke down about four miles back, and we—”
“Wasn’t askin’ you,” the man said, his gaze never leaving Naomi. “I was askin’ the lady.”
A slow heat, unexpected and ferocious, uncoiled in Naomi’s belly. It spread, liquid and heavy, making her thighs press together. She felt her breath catch. “Yes,” she said, and her velvet voice found a new register, breathy and just a little rough. “We’re in a real bind.”
“Name’s Hank.” He smiled. It was a slow, knowing thing. “I’m headed into Dewdrop. Can give you a ride to the motel there. Got a garage, too.”
“That would be a lifesaver,” Naomi said. She walked around the front of the truck, opening the passenger door before Alan could move. The cab was high. She hitched her skirt, revealing a smooth expanse of thigh, and hauled herself up onto the worn leather seat. It was warm from his body. She caught his scent: engine grease, cheap soap, pure, uncomplicated male.
Alan stood on the roadside, blinking. “Oh. Um. I’ll just…”
Hank jerked a thumb toward the back. “Bed’s clean enough. Got a tarp back there.”
“In the… in the truck bed?”
“Unless you’d rather walk, sport.”
Alan looked at Naomi. She was already buckling her seatbelt, settling in, not looking at him. Her profile was a serene, beautiful mask. He shuffled to the back and climbed over the tailgate.
The truck pulled onto the road. The cab was a world of its own. The dashboard was littered with receipts, a packet of beef jerky. Hank shifted gears, his large, calloused hand covering the knob effortlessly.
“Quite a spot to break down,” he said, his eyes on the road, but his energy tilted entirely toward her.
“The story of my life lately,” she murmured, shifting so her body angled toward him. The movement pulled her blouse tighter across her chest.
He glanced over. A long, deliberate look that traveled from her ice-blue eyes down to the deep cleft of her breasts, outlined so clearly by the straining fabric. “Seems to me your luck might be changin’, darlin’.”
Through the narrow, clear strip at the bottom of the rear window, Alan saw it happen. He was jostling in the bed, the wind ripping at his hair. He saw Hank’s big right hand leave the gearshift. It didn’t wander or hesitate. It went straight to Naomi’s thigh, landing high, his fingers digging into the tender flesh just beneath the hem of her skirt.
Alan’s breath froze.
Naomi didn’t push it away. She let out a soft, audible sigh. She curled her body toward Hank, her head tilting to rest on his broad shoulder. Hank’s hand began to move, stroking upward, under the fabric of her skirt. Alan could see the bunched material, could see the thick, working muscles of Hank’s forearm.
Then Hank’s hand disappeared completely under her skirt. Naomi’s back arched, just a little. A tiny, reflexive jerk. Her own hand came up and rested on Hank’s wrist, not to pull it away, but to hold it there, to press it deeper into her. Hank turned his head, his stubbled jaw brushing her forehead. He said something Alan couldn’t hear. Naomi laughed—a low, throaty sound Alan had never heard before—and nodded.
Hank’s hand began to move in a slow, unmistakable rhythm. His fingers were working her, right there, in the open cab. Naomi’s hips shifted on the seat, grinding down against his hand. She turned her face, nuzzling into Hank’s neck. Then, as if feeling the burn of Alan’s gaze through the glass, she looked back.
Directly at him.
Her ice-blue eyes were heavy-lidded, glazed with a pleasure he had never given her. Her full, red lips were parted. And she smirked. A cruel, victorious, beautiful smirk. She held his horrified stare for three long seconds before turning back, burying her face in Hank’s flannel shirt, her body undulating to the rhythm of his hidden fingers.
The ‘Dewdrop Motel’ was a faded, L-shaped strip of rooms with flickering neon. Hank parked. Naomi slid out, smoothing her skirt down. Her legs were unsteady. Alan climbed from the bed, his body numb.
Hank got two keys from a bored clerk. “Rooms seven and eight. End of the row.”
“Two rooms?” Alan’s voice was a squeak.
Naomi took one of the keys from Hank’s large hand, her fingers brushing his. “Thank you, Hank. For everything.” The meaning dripped from the words.
Hank just gave that slow smile. “I’ll be in seven. Garage opens at eight.” He walked away, the sheer bulk of him blocking the dying light.
Alan followed Naomi into room eight. It smelled of mildew and bleach. The door clicked shut. The silence was deafening.
“Naomi… what… what was that?” he choked out.
She tossed her ruined heels into a corner. “That was a ride into town.”
“He… his hands were all over you! You were… you were letting him…”
She turned on him. The desire was gone from her eyes, replaced by something harder, sharper. “I was getting us out of the middle of nowhere. Which is more than you managed to do.”
“He fingered you! In front of me!”
“And?” The word hung in the damp air. “What are you going to do about it, Alan? Hmm? You going to go knock on his door? You going to fight him?” She took a step closer, her body radiating a terrifying, electric energy. “Look at you. You’re shaking.”
He was. He couldn’t stop.
“I am tired,” she said, each word a razor blade, “of being stranded. Of useless little pricks and useless little men. I want a hot shower. I want a real bed. And I want you to be cool. For once in your goddamn life, be cool.”
“What does that mean?” he whispered, tears of humiliation brimming behind his glasses.
“It means you shut up. It means you stay in this room. It means you don’t knock on that door.” She leaned in, her breath hot on his face. “My parents didn’t pay for that wedding for me to come home a divorced woman in a week. But I will. I swear to god, Alan, if you aren’t cool, I will walk out of this motel and out of this marriage, and you will be the sad little joke who got fired for jerking off and lost his wife in the same month. Do you understand me?”
He stared into her beautiful, merciless face. He saw no fear, no guilt, only a furious, imperious demand. He saw his own reflection, small and shattered, in her blue eyes.
“Do you understand?”
His shoulders slumped. The fight, what little there had been, drained out of him, leaving a hollow, aching shame. He nodded.
“Good.” She picked up her purse. “I’m going to take that shower next door. This one’s probably ice-cold. Don’t wait up.”
She opened the door. The neon from the sign outside painted her in sickly pink light for a moment before she stepped out, closing the door softly behind her. Alan stood alone in the center of the ugly room, listening to the faint sound of her footsteps on the concrete walkway, the soft knock on the door of room seven, the murmur of a low, easy rumble, and the definitive click of a lock.