Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [82]
“You don’t ever get lost back in here?”
Billie didn’t reply, and they climbed back into sunlight on a dirt road carved out of the hillside. This road followed the folds of the ridge for maybe a mile, dropping back into trees and rising to hug the hill again. “I still don’t have a drip system in these older groves,” Billie said. “Until I do, it’s one pot after another crapping out.”
She stopped a good twenty yards above the orchards. The irrigation pots in question, small, squat cement cylinders extruding four spouts, resembled crude ancient fountains.
“Should I wait here?” Lewis asked, not keen to climb barefoot down the steep embankment.
“I gotta be down there until they fill. Could take fifteen, twenty minutes,” she said. “Come on.”
He followed gingerly. He’d gone barefoot all summer, his feet were toughened up, but this clay was bristling with small sharp rocks. By the time he reached the first pot, Billie was on her way to the next one, four rows away. He hurried to catch up. Water gushed up from the bottom of the second pot until it closed over itself, swallowed its own roar. The smell of wet concrete dilated his memory, bringing to mind wet sidewalks and playgrounds, the dankness of large, holy places.
He turned to face Billie. The zipper tab on her coveralls glinted like an insect wing. He pulled it down to reveal a man’s heavy blue and white plaid shirt. He reached inside and threaded his arms around Billie’s waist. She was still as a tree. He remembered to breathe. He put his face against hers. Her arms slid up around his neck and locked.
She started moving against him then, and there was nothing subtle or slow about her desire. Her tongue entered his mouth, a strong, wet muscle. His arms were tangled in her clothes. She slammed herself against him, again and again. He stumbled backward, stepped on something sharp, couldn’t regain his footing. They went down rolling. Blue sky flickered by, and the crude terrazzo of rock chips in pink adobe clay. They rolled into the moist shade of a citrus tree, lemon or grapefruit, Lewis couldn’t tell. She was on top, sucking his tongue as if drawing water from a rag. He tried to roll her over, wanting to get his bearings, to be on top. She almost allowed it, but as he was rising over her, she shifted her weight—she must have known some kind of Eastern self-defense—and again, she stretched above him, smiling wickedly.
She’d lost her hat. There were foxtails and stickers in her hair. Her cheek was bleeding. He craned upwards to kiss her. She bit his lip. Tasting blood, he squeezed handfuls of cloth and breast and she arched her back for him to unbutton her shirt. Braless, her breasts wobbled out, far, far larger than he ever dreamed, cubic feet of boneless flesh, the nipples small and dark. What to do with such excess? He cupped them ineffectively; pinched the nipples, sucked on one. Her eyes half-lidded, Billie lapped her tongue at him, a trick he’d seen only in porno movies, and he tried to feel the intended erotic force. She continued to move rhythmically, forcefully against him, her breasts swinging and looming. Desperate to please, to enter the spirit of their grappling, he grabbed crotch, breasts, ass. She grazed teeth along his chin. He felt the skin come up in thin curls.
“You’ve got condoms, right?” she said.
“Huh?” Lewis struggled to pull back, look at her face. “Are you kidding?” He wasn’t entirely sure, at that moment, if he had an erection.
As if she heard his thoughts, Billie grabbed his dick and, assessing it, frowned. “No condoms? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t even have shoes on! Jesus! I went to the store for a pack of cigarettes. I didn’t expect this.”
“No?” Her hair formed a dark bower around his face. She kissed him sweetly, for which his heart lunged in gratitude. She hovered, panting into his mouth. “Libby said the best thing about you was that you took care of the rubbers.”
“What?” He scrambled in the dirt in a useless effort