24

Lexie pulled up to the back entrance of the Thorny Rose, easing her truck bed to the loading dock. The cold morning cast the scene in a glaring gray. The building, which weeks ago hadn’t left much of an impression beyond industrial shabbiness, appeared downright seedy in the daylight. The gravel parking lot extended for yards in all directions, keeping the forest at bay. The red bricks had been painted and repainted, the motley hues worn and peeled away, coloring the warehouse the shade of a particularly brutal kind of vomit.

Randy greeted Lexie with a sheepish smile. “Is this how I make it up to you?”

Lexie stepped down from the driver’s seat and half-smiled. “It’s a decent start.”

“I don’t know if this will work, Lex,” Randy said, leading Lexie through the roll-up and into the dungeon. The cage lay deconstructed on the wrestling mats.

“Well, it’s the only plan I have,” Lexie said.

The smell flooded Lexie’s brain with memories of their night together here, and the awkward and shitty goodbye disappeared in the fresh memory of their shared sensations.

“The hardware is all in this box,” Randy said. It rattled when she kicked it. “My buddy emailed me the specs and assembly instructions. Here.”

Randy leaned in close to show the paper to Lexie. She smelled of cologne, laundry detergent, and motor oil—the antithesis of the forest. That foreignness mixed with her sex nearly made Lexie swoon. She could feel Randy’s tug on her, but she didn’t care. She knew it was a bad idea, but she didn’t care about that either. “The steel is stress-rated to forty-thousand PSI, but I’m not so sure about the fatigue life, especially at these joints. After reading about that Rare attack on campus, I really don’t know if it’ll hold one.”

“It’ll work,” Lexie said in an attempt to convince them both.

“Just don’t get yourself killed for a science fair project, okay?”

“I might. This could be the last time you see me.”

“That’s not funny, Lex.”

It wasn’t, and Lexie’s face said as much.

“Oh,” Randy said. “Then can I apologize again?”

Lexie was about to tell her no and turn away, but the gentle pleading in Randy’s eyes held her gaze. It was the human equivalent of a tucked tail, and Lexie found herself excited by the submissive posture. She grabbed the back of Randy’s neck and pulled the other woman’s mouth to hers.

Randy flinched, then relaxed into the kiss. She wrapped her wiry arms around Lexie and pulled their bodies together, tight. Randy nearly matched Lexie in her leanness, and Lexie exalted their similarity. Randy felt different from the only other two bodies Lexie had held against hers. She didn’t have Renee’s round hips, or Archer’s rolling muscles. Randy was scrappy, and Lexie delighted in the novelty.

“I thought—” Randy started.

“Shut up.”

Lexie seized Randy by the arms, stroking her hands up her bare shoulders and burying her fingers in her cropped, grizzled hair. Randy let Lexie lead, looking as surprised as a teenage boy getting lucky for the first time.

Lexie pushed her to the ground, straddling Randy’s body, and pulling off both their shirts. Randy was wise to keep her mouth shut, no doubt trained by a lifetime of loving complicated women. She seemed content to let Lexie take what she needed, and this time, Lexie was fully present.

The sunlight through the open loading dock cast white diamonds on Lexie’s bare skin. Randy sat up, taking Lexie’s breast into her mouth, stroking and sucking, rocking their bodies together, her thigh wedged between Lexie’s legs.

They released one another only long enough to remove the rest of their clothing, and then they were back at each other, the wrestling mat serving as padding to cradle their crashing bodies.

Lexie dove onto Randy, pinning her down, biting her flesh, drawing her nails across her skin.

“Easy, tiger,” Randy laughed, and Lexie relented just a bit before pressing into her again. Randy gasped, “You’re stronger than you look.”

Lexie smiled and traced paths with her tongue that she followed with her teeth. She caught sweat and sex in each taste, rolling it in her mouth, swallowing, and making it hers.

Lexie grasped at Randy’s groin, which bore the same salt and pepper coloring as her hair. Lexie felt Randy’s warmth move into her hand. Randy squeezed her eyes shut, looking both nervous and enraptured.

Lexie bit and scratched, gripped and pinned, searching out where Randy’s muscles relented and where they resisted. Randy’s small sounds became words: Shit, shit, shit, she repeated like a mantra. Then the words cycled back into sounds: Shuh, shuh, sh, uh, uh, uh, uh, in time with Lexie’s stroking.

Lexie loved feeling the tiny muscles in her hands work so hard, as though she were learning to use them for the first time. The muscles fatigued but then re-upped to offer more cycles of pleasure and tension.

Lexie expected a burst, a scream, a singing moan. Instead, Randy’s sounds faded to silence, and even her breath stopped. Her body clenched from head to toe, shaking like a seizure before falling into lassitude.

Lexie’s hand didn’t stop until Randy reached for her wrist. Randy’s eyes were still squeezed shut, and she had yet to exhale. At Randy’s touch, Lexie relented. Randy exhaled, a long, hissing sigh.

 

The weak sun had barely moved when Lexie eased into the driver’s seat of her truck.

“We good?” Randy asked, squinting.

Lexie smiled weakly. “Nothing’s good, Randy.” The truth nicked her like a razor. “I’m a mess; you’re a mess. I’d like to just survive the next month, and we can figure out where we stand after that, all right?”

Randy flinched, but she nodded.

“Just no more drunken aggression, okay?”

Randy reached into her pocket and pulled out a white AA chip.

“Good girl,” Lexie said with a smile.

“Let me know if I can help in any other way, all right? And … thanks.” She winked. Lexie returned it with a flirty smile and a nod. She eased her truck out of the gravel drive, the cage clattering in the bed like a steel skeleton.