Page 40 of Bram

With the wind pushing me into Bram’s chest and the desert stretched open like a throat in front of us, the rest of the world peeled away. I focused on the one square inch of denim at my waistband, the slow rise and fall of his ribs against my back, the way the road vibrated through my thighs and up into the soft meat under my breastbone. If I turned my head just so, I could catch the phantom of his beard scraping the edge of my ear, the faintest electrical charge of skin on skin. If I listened, really listened, I could almost feel the blood moving under the surface of his arms where they boxed me in.

We rode like that for ten, maybe fifteen miles. It was enough that the other lights died off, that the noise of the town shrank behind us to a pinprick, and that the dark itself became a thing I could taste on my tongue. After a while I stopped thinking and just let the engine noise override the memory loop in my skull. Even my knuckles, white and aching from the first stretch, learned to let go.

And then Bram’s right hand left the throttle. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t slow. Just reached down, worked the brass button on my fly, and slid his large hand inside.

For a split second I stiffened. Years of being watched, judged, followed—my body had a whole archive of flinches and recoils. But the bike didn’t swerve. He kept his left hand steady on the grip, and his right moved like he’d done this before, like there was nothing unnatural about fingering me through their soaked panties at sixty miles an hour.

He pushed inside me, his two fingers warm and a little rough, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood. I could hear my own heartbeat over the wind. My hands slapped the tank, palms flat, and I leaned forward, arched, trying to keep balance and keep from coming apart in public, even if our “public” was now just the two of us and a strip of abandoned road.

My cunt pulsed and ached for more and I pressed down against his fingers, urging him, fucking him, my brain beginning to swim, my body so relaxed that I feared I might fall off the bike. But what a fucking way to die.

“That’s it, baby,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m gonna make you come at sixty miles an hour.”

“Fuck, Bram.” I leaned my head back against his shoulder and looked up at the stars, the moon, and a universe that had finally brought me comfort. The world was finally right, even if just for a moment.

He worked me slow. Not gentle, but deliberate, with a rhythm that was almost cruel in its patience. I bucked back against him, couldn’t help it, and he clamped his thighs tighter to hold me steady. I looked down at the battered speedometer and saw the needle holding steady at 64, the numbers blurring as my vision tunneled.

“I’m gonna…”

He cut me off with his teeth against my neck, his fingers splayed inside me, the soft cushiony spot pulsing against the intrusion.

“Yes,” I said.

“No, not yet,” he growled. “Not yet.” Though I couldn’t see the grin, I knew it was there, devilish, demanding, a grin that said I own you and your cunt. Don’t you dare think otherwise for one fucking second.

I gripped the tank until my fingers went numb, until the rawness started in the center of my spine and radiated out. He kept going, didn’t speed up, didn’t back off. Just stayed with me, his chin ghosting the top of my shoulder, his breath falling into a pattern I started to match without thinking. The engine roared under us, the wind clawed at my jacket, and for a second, I thought I might fly apart like a cigarette ground out on concrete.

“Do it,” he said, lips against my ear, fingers greedy and insistent. “Come right now, Julie. Come, baby.”

“Fuck you, Bram!”

And then I came, hard and loud, the sound whipped away by the slipstream before it could embarrass me. I jerked so hard my helmet banged the base of Bram’s jaw, and he just held me there, arm locked, palm pressed between my legs until the shudders went all the way through. When I finally caught my breath, I realized my cheeks were wet—not tears, just the reaction of my dumb lizard brain to a flood it hadn’t prepared for.

He pulled his hand back, zipped me up, and put it right back on the throttle.

He kept us moving for another half mile, then signaled with a squeeze on my knee. He steered us onto the shoulder, then down a rutted side road lined with barrel cactus and the skeletons of old telephone poles. At the end was a wide gravel turnout and, beyond that, a bluff overlooking the empty valley. There was a rusted oil drum at the edge of the pad and a couple of busted beer cans stacked like a shrine. Bram rolled us to a stop and killed the engine.

For a second neither of us moved. The silence was so thick I could hear the settling of the engine as it cooled, the tick and ping of metal losing heat. My legs shook a little. I forced them steady, swung a leg over the seat, and turned to face him.

He watched me, the way animals watch each other in the half second before they decide whether to fuck or fight. He still hadn’t spoken, and I didn’t plan to break the streak. I just settled onto the seat with my knees spread, boots planted in the dirt on either side of his. I looked down at his hands, the calluses on his knuckles, the patch of dark where he’d wiped his fingers on his jeans. My chest was still heaving, my voice shot.

I reached for him. He didn’t stop me, didn’t flinch, just sat there while I undid the buckle of his belt and the top button of his fly. I dragged down his zipper and then reached in and pulled him out, hot and thick and already hard. He stared at me, jaw tight, eyes narrowed, like he was daring me to go soft. I spat in my hand and wrapped it around him, working him slow at first, just the way he’d done for me.

“It’s my turn,” I said and gently pressed my forehead to his.

“Nobody’s stopping you,” he said, daring me.

His breath came harder, but he kept his hands on the bars, knuckles bone white against the chrome. I got a little rough with it, twisted my wrist, and he exhaled through his nose, the sound as tight as a gunshot in a closed room. I watched his face the whole time, the way his mouth pinched at the edges, the way his eyes never left mine. When he was close, he tipped his head back and let out a sound that wasn’t quite a groan but wasn’t nothing either.

He came in a hot burst, splattering both me and the seat. For a moment, he just stayed like that, head tipped back, breath slowing to normal. I wiped my hand on his jeans, zipped him back in, and then leaned forward until my forehead pressed against the notch of his throat.

When the silence had done its work, Bram reached for the key and started the engine. I got back on, this time not behind him but wedged between his arms, my back to his chest, his chin over my shoulder.

We rode home without a word. No one needed to explain anything to anyone.

When we hit the back gate, he killed the lights and rolled the bike behind the outbuilding, out of sight from anyone inside. I peeled off the helmet and didn’t wait for him to say goodnight. Instead, I turned, found his face in the dark, and kissed him, teeth clacking together. Then I went inside, fingers still trembling, and let the night keep its secrets.

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