The afternoon sun cast the big Harley's shadow across the simmering asphalt. Not a breath of wind rustled the gnarled mesquites and thirsty creosotes dotting the low hills. A few cottony clouds drifting above the distant mountains spoiled an otherwise ocean blue sky, but their presence heralded the coming desert monsoon that would break the June inferno.
The bike's pillion creaked as Claudia leaned back with her left boot planted on the parched ground and her right leg extended with her heel propped irreverently on the handlebars. She eyed her ex-Marine boyfriend David and rubbed her tattoo. Yesterday, the eyes of the black Celtic dragon entwined around her upper left arm had gained a hint of red ink, lending the beast a surly glare. On the night Claudia had summoned the courage to reveal the tattoo to David's friends, none of their tequila-soaked brains could see the dragon in the ornate design, but everyone could see a snake.
The name stuck, so pretty Veterans Administration nurse Claudia became biker chick Snake whenever she wrapped her legs around her lover's Harley Softail.
And now Snake chewed the tip of her braid, watching David relieve himself in a way that any woman accustomed to the veneer of civilization would envy. He'd turned his back, not that Snake gave a damn, while he target practiced on a conical mound of fine red dirt. Of all the roadside ant hills between Tombstone and the Chiricahua mountains, why this one? Snake stifled a laugh. It was like watching a little boy aim a toy gun.
"Sun's about down," David called over his shoulder.
"Happens every day," Snake said with a yawn. "So?"
"Good time to lose that shirt." It was the most words that David, laconic on the best of days, had strung together in hours.
Snake considered whether she'd heard a command veiled as a suggestion or a suggestion veiled as a command. Riding bare-breasted was nothing new; her first time had been on a dare David had suckered her into. She'd sat numb with her guts twisted into a Gordian knot as David exposed then lovingly kissed her. David's sure command of the bike and his strong back like a castle wall between her and the world had, in a few miles, cut through the knot. The experience had been liberating in a tingly kind of way, but only with David sure to enforce look but don't touch. Now, on rare occasions, she'd show off just for the hell of it.
But not today.
"I think I'll keep it on," Snake said, again yawning and making a show of smoothing her shirt across her chest. She saw no use in spoiling the man. And besides, they were at war in a manner of speaking.
The low-intensity sex skirmish had erupted the moment David had roared up to Snake's condo this morning. There was no particular cause. Maybe it was the heat, or that she was about to get her period, or he'd had a tough week. Some invisible demon had caused daggers to glint in their first contact. The hello kiss had been curt and icy hot: his hands hard on her body, her teeth sharp on his lip. From that moment, the day had been thrust and parry, tease and counter-tease, with each look and each touch burning their carnal fuse shorter and shorter. There was only one way it could end.
"Lose it," David said.
"No."
David hitched up his jeans and strode to the bike, a roll of his shoulders making the vertebrae in his neck crack so loud that Snake winced. Then he was on her, one hand clamped under her chin and the other scooped under her outstretched thigh, dragging Snake half off the bike. Her arms flailed then caught around his neck as David's lips claimed hers in a rough kiss. Pressure to her throat opened Snake's teeth to his tongue.
Snake countered David's kiss with her own violence as electric currents stiffened her nipples before spiraling downward to go to ground in a clenching sizzle between her legs. Just as she was working out the logistics of getting bent over the bike—the hot exhausts frightened the hell out of her—David rudely planted her back on its seat.
He grabbed her shirt, his eyes bottomless pools behind his dark glasses. "Want it ripped off?"
The threat puckered Snake's nipples tight to the threshold of pain, but she hadn't packed a spare shirt, just extra panties and a pair of tattered cutoff jeans proven to transform the man into a mad-wolf rapist should the mood strike her. Flexing her best school girl pout, Snake skinned off her black tee and stuffed it in a saddle bag.
She wiggled her shoulders. "Wanna cop a feel?" Her breasts weren't designed for a burlesque shimmy, but it was the thought that counted. David ignored the taunt and mounted the bike.
The big Harley coughed to life, then chewed into the road with David jamming through the gears like he was kicking a lazy dog. The desert blurred past as they chased the setting sun. Snake didn't give a damn about their destination so long as the ride ended with David's cock lodged between her legs.
She slipped her hands under David's shirt to play with his muscles. His skin was hot and grainy from evaporated sweat and she craved a long taste. Instinctively she traced the long scar curving from beneath his left arm to his shoulder.
Go to hell Afghanistan.
Then Snake cut f-u-c-k-m-e down David's spine with her fingernail.
The sun was melting into the horizon when David leaned the bike off the road and into the dusty lot of an ancient motel. Maybe Snake recognized the place, maybe she didn't. Two roads coming from nowhere and going to nowhere mated in the desert. And before Eisenhower built the interstates, someone put up a garage, then the motel, and finally a grease sump that passed for a diner. It hadn't occurred to anyone since to crack open a can of paint or haul away the extinct cars.
David cut the engine. "Watch the bike."
"Sure, babe," Snake said, glancing around the near empty parking lot before folding her arms across her chest.
The old lady anchored to the TV behind the motel desk didn't give Snake's exhibition a second look. All she saw was a fistful of cash and one less empty room. Life was good.
David tossed a cracked key fob to Snake and idled the bike across the blistered gravel to room eleven. Snake climbed off, stretched, and unlocked the door. From the looks of it, most guests didn't bother with the key and knob. She pushed open the door and basked in an enveloping bath of cool moist air; her nipples saluted the whirring swamp cooler.
Sweet.
"Come on, Snake," snapped David. "Move your lazy ass."
A hard boot slammed into her rear, launching Snake through the doorway and across the worn carpet. Saddle bags flew past as she tumbled head first across the bed, her momentum slamming it against the wall with a thump.
"Goddammit," yelled Snake, spinning into a jungle crouch and ready for the rumble that had been coming on all day.
David kicked the door closed, showed his teeth, and advanced, methodically working open the buttons of his fly and digging his hard cock out of his boxers. Body language told Snake they were about to have a panty drenching disagreement over which of her holes to stick it in.
"Fuck me," said Snake, tearing into her jeans.
"Suck me." David gripped his cock like the hilt of a sword.
"Make me."
Foreplay isn't always cuddles and kisses. A catch-me-if-you-can thrill pulsed through Snake's limbs. The magnificent instrument of coital delight targeting her mouth
belonged
in her pussy, and she did not intend put it anywhere else without a fight.
Yet her tactical situation was hopeless: a confined space with a former Marine intent on a blow job. She could run, but on the nil probability she did get out the door, then what? David would simply lock the door, she'd be alone and half naked in public, and God only knew what depraved bargain she'd make to get the door open. Better to make a stand.
Maybe on her feet she could distract him, wrap him up with her body, get his brain pointed between her legs. Delusional thinking at this stage in the game, to be sure, but she had nothing else. Snake feinted right, then dove left hoping to spring to her feet. Instead the room cartwheeled as she found herself flipped flat on her back, yelping like a whipped pup as David wound her long braid around his fist.
Punches and kicks bounced impotently off tempered male muscle. Coherent resistance drained away as David cinched Snake's braid drum skin tight. He knew her weaknesses.
Prey in hand, David dragged a cursing Snake off the bed, rotating her to her knees until she was eye-level to his cock. A silvery stalactite spun downward from its tip to kiss her cheek. Checkmate.
Snake glared at a condescending alpha male smirk through a haze of lust. Sometimes the only thing better than winning is losing. Her eyes dropped to his cock and, in spite of herself, she wet her lips.
"Magic word?" said David, his fist wrenched her braid tighter.
You beautiful bastard.
"Please."