Copyright (c) 2013 Naoko Smith
Many thanks to Bramblethorn for the continued editing, and diolch yn fawr! to Beatnic_jazzman's family for the help with the Welsh.
Please leave comments and feedback for me so I know what works and what doesn't as I write up the rest of this story.
This series will include two kinds of chapters: story chapters, called '(story)' in the blurb and sex scenes, called '(scene)' in the blurb. The sex scenes will be diverse. You can choose to read them all or, if e.g. hetero sex isn't your thing, to skip some and only read the story chapters and e.g. lesbian sex scenes. (You can identify which scenes are what kind of sex from the tags, the category the chapter is uploaded into and description at the start of the scene.)
All characters in this story are fictional. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
A Pack of Tales Ch. 9 – Red
Red collected the gravy-dredged plates from the table with a clatter that was drowned out in a wave of beery laughter. One of the men put his hand on hers as she reached for his plate.
"I've not finished," he grunted.
Her neck bristled against her collar at the touch of his hand. She said: "Sorry," and pulled her hand quickly away.
His head tilted up to her with a glistening drunken glint of eyeball. "Not seen you before," he said.
"I just started," Red answered, backing away with the plates in her hands.
"No need to rush off," one of the other men stood up behind her, blocking her off. "Same again, lads? How about you, darlin'?" He leered at Red. He was swaying.
They had been here since mid-morning, reminiscing about the days when this would have been a working lunch – six rounds and all. They were all well beyond a reasonable condition.
The door to the carpark swung open and Red took advantage of the distraction to scuttle sideways with her pile of plates. She looked round at the door and saw, to her surprise, Col walk in to the dingy pub dining area.
Col's head had shot immediately forward and his shoulders hunched. He sniffed the reek of stale alcohol and microwaved meat meals with a scowl.
Red smiled, coming up to him with the plates still in her hands. He relaxed and said: "Came by to give you a ride home. I'll have a half while you finish up." He went over to the bar, perched on a stool and darted a suspicious keen glance around the room.
The group of drunken men were by now the only other occupants, sprawled in their chairs like flotsam the tide had left behind. Col examined them sourly out of the corner of his eye. He noted too the scuzzy dirt ground into the carpet and a light stink ineffectively overlaid with air freshener. He flicked a cardboard beer mat about in his fingers, increasingly unimpressed by how long he was having to wait for what a close inspection of the taps suggested was going to be an exceptionally indifferent beer.
He watched Red come back out of the kitchen. She had done her best with the ill-fitting skirt she had bought and a plain white shirt buttoned up to cover her collar. She looked as if she had made an effort which would always be undermined by the lumpy shapes of her body, but the men whose plates she was clearing were not choosy about female flesh even when they were sober.
"Give us a cwtsch," one of them suggested with a leer when she had to lean over him to pick up the remaining plate.
He had attempted to put an arm around her hips but his movement was suddenly restricted by Col's tight grip on his wrist. When he tried to pull his hand away, Col shoved him into the man he was sitting next to.
Red snapped into position beside Col with her lip lifted from her sharp teeth. The men were rising from their table in an ugly red-faced bunch. Col had raised his fists with an ominous tearing noise. The men seemed to realise that his muscles had shredded his shirt-sleeves open under his jacket. They looked at his stocky muscular frame and the yellowing eyes that burned like dull coals with rage. One of Col's hands was bunched in a fist but the other was loose in a claw, it was evident that Col was a dirty fighter if he was roused.
At last the landlord had appeared. He was at Col's elbow, fluttering anxiously: "No trouble, I hope, guys?" Red could almost hear him thinking that the men had not yet paid their bill.
"What the foock is this?!" Col spat sideways at him. "Foocking middle of the day and you let them maul one of your workers around, do you?"
The landlord looked at Red. She said: "He didn't see it, Col. It's the first time."
"That's foocking likely, a dump like this," Col snarled. "Happens all the time, doesn't it, but you thought she was desperate for work and would put up with it."
'I am desperate for work,' Red thought. She knew Col had lost her the job.
"Get your coat," Col snapped at her. "Give her the week's wages," he said to the landlord.
The landlord opened his mouth as if he were thinking of protesting. He looked at Col's clenched jaw and went grumbling to the bar. Col stepped softly backwards as if away from a stink of rotten fish, relaxing his bunched muscles. The men sat slowly down.
As she got into the front seat of Col's immaculate sports car, clutching a handful of notes, Red couldn't help the tear that slid down her cheek. They hadn't even made her prepare the food. She had been hoping to get some experience pulling pints and then to try for a job in a better place.
Col sat without turning the ignition key, glaring at the steep slopes of the old slag heaps around them.
"I'll give you a foocking job," he said at last.
"You can't," Red answered, managing to keep herself from crying with an effort. "You haven't got enough work for the others and you've got Bry-, Bry-, you've got other things to think of."
Col turned his yellowish eyes dully glowing with anger and suffering on her. His mouth twisted. He said: "Would you work in an office?"
Red wondered if he meant the place he used to work in, where Bryony was still employed. Perhaps if Bryony was going on maternity leave they needed someone? She was surprised that he would consider letting her go and work alongside Bryony, but delighted of course. They none of them liked indoors work but she said: "Yes."
Col got out of the car. She saw him take his mobile out, stare at it momentarily as he was in the habit of doing, and make a call. He stood square and boxy in the gravelly carpark of the dingy pub, his shoulders thrusting forward, the phone pressed to his ear as he talked. Then he came back and drove off without saying anything.
Red hadn't been in Col's car before. Col drove beautifully. It was like a balletic skill, his driving; like music, like football played by Barcelona F.C.. He went at an even speed, taking corners as smoothly as the curve of a breast, his hand on the gearstick feather-light, caressing the gears into changing. Manic Preacher was playing on his sound system but his attention was focussed on the road. Red was cocooned in her seatbelt and his driving. Her appreciation of Col was objective, yet she could understand why Max loved to catch a ride with him. The Alpha male carrying you with supreme skill in his dream machine to the tunes of House music. It was spell-binding. Down the long curving stretches wrapped about the roundabouts of the deserted Valleys roads Col handled the red sports car with exquisite skill until, to Red's surprise, he parked up in the city centre.
He jerked his head impatiently at a huge square block of government offices. She followed him through the glass doors to sign in at a tall reception desk and be checked through the metal detector gateway of security.
She stood by Col in the big lobby where people were greeting other people, looking nervously to the armchairs at the side, and at the palatial staircase which swept down from the back of the hall.
Max came strolling down the stairs like Cinderella at the ball, still talking into his iPhone while his lip lifted from his teeth in acknowledgement of Col and Red. He wore a navy blue fine wool suit that fitted him so perfectly it had to have been tailored especially for him. His blue eyes staring at them were as cool as the ice cubes floating in a martini. He had one hand casually in the pocket of his trousers while the other still held his iPhone in place.
"You and Toby can handle it," he was saying as he came up to them. He stood beside them listening to the phone. The serene expression of infinite patience sketched on his sharp fine features boded ill for someone. "The speech was vetted days ago," he said. "Something has come up. Tell the Minister I'll see her first thing in the morning." He cut the phone off without waiting for a reply and put it in the breast pocket of his jacket.
He favoured Red with a long slow raking once-over that took in her badly made skirt, shapeless jumper, army surplus camouflage jacket and Doc Marten boots.
"You seriously expect me to get that thing a job here?" he said.
Col lifted his head and glowered up at Max. It was the first time Red had realised that Max was taller than Col.
"She can use computers and talk Welsh," Col said, as if this was all that mattered.
Max pursed his lips, giving Red another offensive once-over.
"Only if I'm allowed to dress it," he said.
"Sure," Col said quickly. "You bring her home then." He was already impatiently jingling his car keys in his pocket.
"Oh it won't take long," Max answered in his bored supercilious drawl. "There's only one brand for you,
cariad
." Red looked up at him, his teeth lifted from his lip in the grin. "Jaegar," he said, "but," he went on, "I suppose we'll have to sort out the hair too."
"I'm not a Barbie doll!" Red said indignantly.
