9

As we lay in bed together the next morning, Tom cuddled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. I woke up sore, but not in the ways I had expected. Tom had taken his time with me and, as a result, the soreness was more of a pleasure than a pain. I was grateful for that, and I felt closer to him than ever.

‘I have a job to do this weekend,’ he said. ‘The band I work for needs a crew.’

‘Who are they?’

Tom snickered. ‘Romeo Rage.’

‘That’s their name?’

He nodded and kissed my forehead. ‘I think it’s silly, but the people who pay those ticket prices don’t seem to mind.’

‘Can I go with you? See what you do?’

‘It’s boring. I stand there and watch people.’

‘So can I stand and watch you?’

Tom shrugged and cupped his hand between my legs. He leaned forwards and kissed my belly. ‘There are always ambulances standing by with a big crowd. So someone will be there when you expire of sheer boredom.’

‘Hey, I won’t be bored. I’m your biggest fan.’

Tom smiled and licked all the way down. I moaned as he spread my legs wider. He sat back and looked at me in the sunlight that streamed through the windows. His eyes took in every inch.

‘You are still open,’ he whispered. ‘I can see inside you.’

Tom slipped a finger inside. I gasped at even more newness. I was sure there were places inside my body that had been touched for the first time. He was the one who had done that, he was the one who had discovered so many new things about my body, and surely that made me closer to him than to anyone else.

Tom slid two fingers in. I was still sore but my body was waking up again, wanting more. I squeezed down on his fingers and, to my surprise, it was very difficult to do. My muscles didn’t seem to respond as quickly as they should have.

‘You’re stretched,’ Tom said. ‘Everything will be normal again in a few days.’

He slid in a third finger and I arched my hips up off the bed.

‘Again?’ he asked.

Even as I whimpered with desire, I knew not to push things too much. My body needed time to recover.

‘No,’ I whispered, and Tom immediately slipped his fingers out.

‘OK.’

‘But you can do other things,’ I offered with a wicked grin.

Tom crept up the bed until he was between my legs. One slow inch at a time, he pushed his way inside. I was open enough that his cock slid in easily.

Every nerve ending was alive, far too sensitive. Every thrust was a strange tingling sensation. It was pleasant, not painful at all, but it was also completely foreign. I felt as though I was fucking someone else.

‘You feel so different,’ I said.

‘So do you,’ Tom responded. His cock was rock hard, harder than I had felt him in a long time, and he was stroking with a speed that said he would last for a very long time, if I let that happen. ‘You’re not tight at all. It’s a strange feeling.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Does it feel like you’re fucking a different woman?’ I asked breathlessly.

Tom paused so slightly I almost didn’t catch it. But I couldn’t possibly miss the way his breathing sped up, or the way his voice dropped. ‘Yes.’

‘I want you to do that,’ I whispered. ‘While I watch.’

Tom did pause then, as surprise took over his libido. He pushed in deep and stayed there for a while, studying me. Little tingles shot all through me, and the muscles in my legs protested at the deep invasion. Soon his eyes drifted closed and he sighed deeply as he began to move.

‘You feel so good,’ he murmured.

I watched his face as he stroked in and out of me. I knew he was thinking of someone else, perhaps someone he had already been with, but more than likely a stranger. I also knew he was thinking about me, because his hands were all over my body in all the ways I liked.

‘Do you like being watched?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you like the way her pussy feels?’

Tom paused. The slightest smile crossed his face.

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me.’

‘She’s not nearly as tight as you are,’ he said. ‘She feels like she’s been fucked by a dozen guys.’

‘You like that, don’t you? You like sluts.’

Tom groaned and pushed harder. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair, caught it in my hands and pulled his head back.

‘You like me watching it, don’t you?’

‘God, yes.’

‘What’s wrong with you? If you’re going to fuck somebody else, you better make it worthwhile. You’re not fucking her hard enough.’

That was enough to send Tom past the point of being careful. He slammed me with his next thrust and, though every muscle protested, I met him with just as much force. Soon his hands were in my hair and his hips were pistoning up and down, riding me hard and fast, pushing deep with every thrust. It might have been someone else he was thinking about while he rode me that hard but, when he came, the name he uttered was mine.

He collapsed beside me. I reached down to touch myself, to feel his desire seep out of me. Tom watched with sleepy eyes. I wasn’t even close to an orgasm, but I didn’t have to be. I was learning that with sex, just like everything else, the exploration was more important than the destination.

We didn’t speak much, other than in sighs and giggles. Then we didn’t speak at all, as a late-afternoon nap started to steal us away.

‘Hey,’ he said suddenly into the silence. ‘Wanna shoot a gun?’

The smell of gun oil brought back the first time we kissed. I turned the gun over in my hands, marveling at the weight of it. It was fully loaded. I had watched Tom snap the bullets into the long black magazine, each of them making a lethal snicker.

‘Forty-caliber rounds,’ he said. ‘They are definitely enough to stop somebody in their tracks. They go in and, when they hit bone, they ricochet. The path of the bullet is hardly ever straight in, straight out. That’s why they do so much damage.’

‘Is that what shot you?’ I asked.

Tom snapped the gun closed and sighted down the barrel. ‘No. It was an M-16 that shot me.’

‘What happened?’

There was a long pause. When his answer finally came, it was very quiet. ‘I got lucky.’

His eyes took on that far-away look, and I didn’t ask any more questions.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked me now.

‘No.’

Tom laughed and nestled the earphones around my neck. He pointed to the target, which had been pulled up rather close, befitting an amateur. I tried to aim but I couldn’t seem to hold the gun steady. Tom adjusted my stance. His hands were strong on mine.

‘Don’t ever touch the trigger until you are ready to shoot,’ he said. ‘Keep your finger straight.’

I did as I was told. I tried to use the sight on the barrel and, every time I did, I felt as though I wasn’t aiming properly. Tom told me to close first one eye, then the other.

‘Which one keeps it on target?’

I tried one eye, then the other. Then I immediately got confused about what I had just done. Tom watched patiently as I went through the whole thing again. ‘When I close my right eye, it stays there. When I close my left eye, it shifts.’ I did it again to make sure, and nodded with certainty.

‘Right eye is dominant, then. That affects the way you shoot. Always remember that.’

‘Yes, Chief.’

Tom moved back and touched my shoulders. He slipped on the ear protection and moved out of the room. The door closed behind me and then the little light went on. I heard the whistle.

I pulled the trigger.

The gun recoiled hard. For something that looked so small, it packed a mighty punch. The first shot was better than I expected – I had hit just above the shoulder of the life-sized paper man. The target was still swaying with the shot.

I aimed again, remembering what Tom said about which eye was dominant. This time the shot went into the arm of the paper man. I was getting closer. I wondered how many bullets I had. Were they called bullets, or rounds? I fired again, and this time I didn’t aim as carefully. To my surprise, I hit the paper man in the throat.

Tom’s reflection was in the glass beside the booth. He crossed his arms and said something to the man beside him, then nodded back at me.

The next shot hit the paper man in the belly.

‘Good one!’ I saw Tom mouth at me through the glass. The next one went astray, barely clipping the paper. I had just shot any credibility I had gained, so to speak. I aimed more carefully and this time the paper made a satisfying ripple as the bullet sliced right through the center. I couldn’t contain a squeal of delight.

Tom flashed the thumbs-up sign.

There was a slight twinge in my forearms. I wondered if I was too tense. My shoulders didn’t ache, but they were definitely feeling the impact of the weapon. So was my heart. It was racing with the excitement. Having so much power in my hands was a heady rush.

I emptied the pistol into the target. The paper jerked and shook. By the time I was done, it was in tatters. A whistle went off above my head. From another booth came the muffled thumps of someone else firing their weapon. Tom opened the door and stepped inside.

‘Addictive, isn’t it?’ Tom asked, knowing damn good and well that he had got me hooked on the rush.

‘I want to do more.’

‘You can do as many as you want.’

I watched as he removed the magazine, carefully checked the chamber, and then reloaded the gun. Seeing my rapt attention, he assured me he would teach me all the parts, how to take it down and put it back together, how to clean it and how to load it myself.

Tom slipped out the door. I put on the ear protection. The little paper man slid into place, and I started to fire.

Later, when we were home and dinner was finished and the dishes put away, Tom and I sat down in the basement. He pulled the Glock out of its holster. He held it carefully, but with a certainty that said he was just as familiar with that gun as he was with his own body.

‘This is the slide,’ he said, as he started to take the gun apart. He named each part as he laid it on the table. There in the dim light of the basement, he introduced me to another part of his life as he taught me how to take care of a gun. He taught me to use a soft silicone-based rag to clean it, explaining that oil from a person’s hands was one of the worst things for a gun. To keep it looking the way it was intended, it was necessary to clean it after every use.

By the time he was done, I could almost put it together myself. It was amazingly simple to do, considering how powerful a weapon like that was. I held it in my hands, aimed it at the wall, and pulled the trigger. It was bad for the firing pin, so I only did it once.

‘It’s not so scary now, is it?’ Tom asked.

It wasn’t. I knew what was inside it, I knew how it worked, and I knew how it felt when it was loaded. I recognized the power behind it, and how easily that power could be unleashed if it was used improperly.

I suddenly understood.

I looked over at Tom, and he smiled at me.

‘You know exactly what you’re doing,’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’

He reached over to take my hand. The gun slid across the table between us, benign now that it was unloaded, powerful regardless of what it represented. I suddenly remembered a gun quite like that one being pointed at me the first time I met Tom, and the world seemed to tilt. Had it only been weeks since that moment?

‘I’m falling in love with you,’ he said.

The women were screaming, the men looked bored and the security looked tense. There were dozens of men dressed in the same way Tom was, but I wondered if all of them were packing as much firepower. I thought perhaps the ones in the crowd weren’t, but those with the band certainly might have been.

Tom stood at the corner of the stage, watching everything through tinted glasses. He had a radio attached to his belt. In his ear was a tiny receiver and a small microphone snaked out of that, coming halfway down his jaw in the direction of his mouth. It was sensitive enough to pick up a whisper. He wore an unassuming suit and seemed to fade into the background as a businessman who was there to watch the band build up his bottom line. The suit hid the two loaded guns and two deadly knives.

I had watched him dress and, when he saw my eyes on the weapons, he shared more of his knowledge with me.

‘This is an eviscerator,’ he said as he flicked open a knife. The blade was curved like a talon. Light glinted from the lethal edge. ‘You pull it out and the blade comes out with the same motion. Then you strike forwards,’ he said, swooping it through the air, ‘and it cuts and tears anything in its path.’

I stared at the knife. Tom’s hand was firm and confident. ‘You’ve used that before,’ I said.

‘It saved my life once.’

He said nothing more, and made the knife disappear into his pocket with a casual twist of his wrist.

Now I watched him from the sidelines, behind the curtain and down the stairs, away from the crowd and within easy distance of the bus perimeter. I watched the backstage happenings with interest – had he really said I would be bored? The roadies with their security clearance lanyards looked just as excited as I felt. I watched as they made a final check of the stage, chatted with each other and flirted with every girl they saw. The players slowly emerged from backstage. All of them looked tired.

Tom spoke into the little microphone. His lips barely moved. Within seconds a man wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt casually walked up the stairs and stood next to Tom. Neither of them spoke, but I knew that, behind those shaded lenses, their eyes were searching the crowd.

Watching Tom at work gave me a whole new perspective. Now I understood where those moments of silence came from, that stillness that was almost eerie, the calmness that made even the squirrels on his front porch railing feel safe. He was trained as a soldier and spent time in war zones where the only way to survive was to become one with the terrain. Now that short lifetime of learning served him in good stead. The idea of heading up security in a venue so big was intimidating, but surely it was a walk in the park for Tom when compared to other things he had seen.

I watched the women. It was an interesting view. There were those dressed casually, usually with a boyfriend or other women around them, talking animatedly and watching the stage with interest. There were the ones who were beautiful and bored; those were obviously the ones with the band, the ones who had seen it all before. Then there were the groupies, those with too-tight clothes and too much make-up, those who preened in front of the stage and drooled like Pavlov’s dogs at the slightest hint of a guitar string being strummed.

Right now, before the band took the stage, they were looking at Tom.

One groupie took particular interest in the security detail. She licked her lips as she looked Tom over. Her coquettish smile was ready every time he looked her way. She carefully shimmied her skirt up her thighs and wiggled her shirt down her chest. She was showing more and more skin. When she caught his eye again, she winked. There was no change in his expression, but he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and stared at her for a moment before looking away.

Was this what it had always been like? His pick of women from the endless rows in the arenas? A woman in every port, that’s what he’d said. After seeing the abundant possibilities, I believed him.

The lights went down. The crowd roared. Tom disappeared into the shadows.

The opening act was a band called Twisted Heyday. They were definitely a bit twisted; their music was an eclectic mix of everything from funk to bluegrass. The crowd didn’t seem to know how to take it. They were bored and interested by turns. They were waiting for Romeo Rage.

By the time the band did take the stage, the crowd was so rowdy I wondered how any security guard could possibly know what was really going on out there. People were jostling each other for a better space. Venue security, dressed in their bright-yellow shirts, fought to keep the hordes of people away from the stage. The place was packed, everyone on their feet, hungry for that first chord to come out of the smoke.

When it did come, the place descended into a deafening roar.

I glimpsed Tom from time to time, usually as he walked around the corner of the stage. At one point I saw him among the crowd, quickly making his way towards another man in a suit. I wondered what the problem might be.

Soon I was bored with the band – it wasn’t my kind of music. I amused myself by watching the roadies. They stood in small circles and talked quietly, the red embers of their cigarettes bouncing in the darkness. Occasionally one would fly in an amber arc, and then there would be the snicker and flare of a lighter as another was lit.

The band went out for the encore. A security guy ran by, his radio crackling. I searched for Tom but didn’t see him. By the time the last drumbeat sounded and the lights went down, there had been no real security incidents, as far as I could tell.

As the last note sounded, the roadies swung into action. The security guys slowly relaxed, talking and joking even while still alert for the groupies who would do anything to fight their way backstage. The band was whisked away to the buses.

I wandered out to the SUV. It was a huge black Chevrolet with tinted windows, one of those vehicles usually seen in movies where the good guy is in the FBI and the bad guy is being chased by a fleet of identical black trucks like this one. I unlocked the passenger door and crawled in to wait for Tom. In the overhead light I could make out a glint of steel in the backseat, a CB in the front and all sorts of electronics devices on the dash.

He had explained all of the equipment to me in his slow methodical way. The more I learned about Tom, the more I realized there were avenues of his life that were completely closed off until they absolutely had to be opened. His secrecy didn’t come from not wanting to share; it came from things that hurt him too much to be put on display.

I thought about the scars on his chest, the ones I couldn’t see but could feel when I touched him, and the one on his leg, where that bullet from an M-16 had sliced through his skin. What was that look in his eyes when I mentioned it? Where did his mind go? What had really happened to him out in that foreign land whose name I probably couldn’t even pronounce?

I watched the crowd thin out, the vehicles leave one by one, their tail-lights winking in the darkness.

When Tom opened the door, I was startled out of a light doze. He looked at me, then closed the door. He opened the one in the back.

‘Get back here,’ he said. ‘And lock the doors.’

I did as I was told. When I climbed into the backseat, his hands were on me. His erection was almost as hard as the gun at his hip. He didn’t bother with buttons; he ripped my shirt open instead. Buttons flew. My jeans were unzipped and slid halfway down my thighs before I fully realized what was happening.

‘Fuck me,’ he growled.

It took a moment to free myself from my jeans. Once I did, I didn’t waste any time. Tom had freed his cock from that suit, and I slid onto it while he cried out against my throat.

‘Is this what you want? Huh? You want a good fuck after the show?’ I hissed.

The truck wasn’t rocking yet, but it wouldn’t take long at this rate. His gun dug into my thigh. He throbbed between my legs.

‘Is this what it was like?’ I spat at him. ‘Was this it, you fucking Romeo? Huh? Fucking some stranger who would open her legs for your cock?’

Tom’s hands clamped down on my hips. He laid me down in the seat and thrust from above me. I yanked the suit jacket down his arms and lunged forwards to bite hard at his neck. His hiss of pain was followed by a thrust that drove me up the seat. My head hit the door.

‘Is that the best you can do?’ I asked.

Tom pulled one of my legs up over his shoulder. The truck was rocking now, swaying on its wide wheels, and I wondered how many people outside could see it and know what was happening behind the tinted windows. I wondered how many times Tom had done this before, with how many different women who had eyed up the handsome security guard from the front rows and settled for him instead of a band member.

Inexplicably, the thought turned me on.

‘Surely a whore like you can fuck me better than this,’ I taunted.

The words were all too much for Tom. He came with one last thrust, growling into my ear. His hands dug into my hips so hard I knew he would leave bruises.

When it was over we were exhausted, panting and covered in sweat. The leather seat made an obscene sucking sound as I sat up. Tom pulled out of me, shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over his lap. We sat on opposite ends of the seat, looking at each other in the darkness.

‘Is that what it was like?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said, almost defiantly. ‘Every damn night.’

I reached forwards and snatched the suit jacket away. His cock stood straight up in the air, glistening. Tom didn’t try to move, didn’t try to hide himself.

I climbed on.

One slick thrust and he was deep inside. He watched as I played with my nipples. I lifted one to my mouth and licked it; then I did the same to the other one. Tom didn’t touch me, just watched everything I did.

I leaned forwards and pressed my chest against his. That wasn’t enough, so I reared back and grabbed his shirt. I yanked it open, the same way he had done with mine. Tom didn’t even flinch as the buttons flew. I leaned into him and only then did I kiss him – hard, deep and wet – while I ground down hard on him, intent on my own orgasm and not really caring much if he had one or not.

‘You’re mine,’ I murmured into his mouth. ‘You won’t fuck any other woman from this point on. No matter how many groupies want you. If you ever want this, you’ll come to me to get it. Won’t you?’

Tom stared into my eyes as I rode him. ‘Isn’t that what I just did?’ he asked.

My orgasm was close. Tom’s hands clenched hard on the back of the seats. I bounced up and down on him, letting my breasts move with the motion, my hands braced on his broad shoulders. The orgasm flowed over me, from the center all the way out, the thrill filling me like light flooding into a dark room. Right after I came there was the deep and secret throbbing of him inside me, then the rush of wetness that said he was right there with me.

Only when it was over did he touch me. His arms came around me and he held me so tightly I could hardly breathe.

‘I’m yours,’ he said softly into my ear.

Suddenly I was laughing. The tension of the night, the possessive fuck, the undercurrents between us, it all erupted into a peal of laughter that took us both by surprise. Tom grinned up at me, his eyes bright with amusement.

‘You are mine,’ I agreed.