Turning up the heat

Chapter 10 — Wide White Sky

Her horse was ground tied. He stood with his head low, eyes closed, flap-lipped whiskery muzzle twitching in equine dreams. A pack was thrown carelessly onto the sagebrush, a Navajo blanket spilling out, a water bottle, and the military-surplus rucksack she used for collecting.

Calamity sat with her back resting against a pinyon pine. The ground around her was covered with cones, nuts and husks, gnawed by squirrels and small things that creep. I sat and watched her for a moment from the back of my horse, an elderly and arthritic animal, the only one that the ranch would consider lending to an untried, middle-aged city woman to roam the high desert alone. I dismounted stiffly, my inner thighs aching in protest, and let the reins fall. The stock horse understood and drooped his head to dream with his companion.

She was watching me, her dark unfathomable eyes intent on my face, cataloging my awkward gait. "I knew you would come," she said.

In truth, I had wondered at my foolishness. A woman my age was supposed to be established in her career, successful in her marriage, grown children maybe. She was not supposed to leave them all behind to pursue some nebulous dream of the west. Utah was a long way from New Jersey. A fractured mirror universe of possibilities and paths to be trodden.

The small Utah town had one motel and one bar. Calamity worked the bar; stalking the sagging timber floor with intent, flirting with the few customers, seducing them into leaving larger tips. She was a child of mixed-race, whose heritage had given her not the smooth olive skin and curling hair that is so beautiful, but a patchwork of skin tones, a tapestry of birthmarks and pigmentation. Calamity. A name her mother had given her in anger and despair. The hurtful name she had made her own.

Of course, I was lonely, the sad aura of a woman alone, whose dreams of escape were crumbling into reality. I did not know what I was doing here; I would not find myself in Utah, whose white respectability was safer and more straight-laced than my three thousand square subdivision in suburbia. So I sat at the bar, nursing my gin and tonic and watched her. And then she touched me and flirted with me as indiscriminately as any of the jowl-faced ranchers mumbling into their beer. And the evening promised heady excitement, far from home.

"I harvest pinyon nuts," she said. "I beat the sage for the Bureau of Land Management. Cut firewood. Come with me tomorrow."

Her eyes spoke of more than gathering seeds. So here I was, sitting awkwardly on the ground, my hair streaked with dust; leather and horse sweat ingrained in my jeans. Calamity licked her lips, a fey gesture of momentary doubt, then leaned forward to kiss me on the lips with the bravado of an orphan.

It was why I was here, of course, to take some comfort from this strange child, she of the sad little name and piebald skin. At first it was experimental. I had never kissed a woman before, the confines of marriage and respectability had kept me from indulging. I cataloged the sensation. Yielding lips, sweet with honey and bitter with coffee. Small lips coaxing mine apart, rimming mine, softer, less assured than a man. Icy from the air temperature, cold little nubbins of flesh. Satisfied with my response, Calamity rose to spread the blanket, a splash of color on the hard ground.

I watched her, the slight frame blending into the harsh landscape, her body golden in the weak wintry sun. Puffs of dust from her feet, as she moved around, shedding her clothes almost as an afterthought. Angles of elbow and shoulder, dried yellow sagebrush tangled in her coarse black hair. The air was sharp, but she seemed impervious to the temperature. I saw the jut of her ribs as she pulled the flannel shirt over her head, nipples pebbled with the cold.

I mimicked her movements, pulling off my fleece and layers of cotton, fumbling with the clasp of my bra, underwires and ribbing, designed for support, not seduction. Her eyes were on my breasts. I knew what she was seeing; blue veins on white, breasts for nurturing, no longer exciting. She crouched and small fingers touched me, tracing the weave of veins and fine lines, circling a nipple. She cupped one, testing its turgid weight with the flick of a callused finger.

I suppressed a small gasp as she bent and put her mouth to my breast. Warm wetness, cool lips, swirling tongue. Gently she pushed me back on the blanket. I felt sharp stones digging into my back, saw the crisscross of branches against the washed sky, smelt pungent sage and something else. Arousal, the sharp scent of excitement: mine and hers, strong in this place.

She used her mouth as others might use their fingers. Crawling over skin, learning textures, imperfections and taste. Her lips mumbled over freckles and moles, She suckled me, moving to the waistband of my jeans, tickling her way over the creases of my belly, scars and lines of childbirth. I closed my eyes and let her work, seeing the kaleidoscope of sunlight behind my closed eyelids. She tugged at my jeans and I raised my hips and let her remove them, leaving me naked and ridiculous on the geometrically patterned blanket.

I sucked in my belly, trying to flatten the folds, so that the fast-food curves were minimized. She traced her lips over my C-section scar, still keloid and livid after more than twenty years.

"You don't have to do that," she said, and poked me so that my exhalation was rapid and my belly expanded. "You have an honorable body."

The appreciation in her eyes gave the truth to her words. Is this what it is always like with a woman? I wondered. This unconditional acceptance?

She shifted to lie next to me, and my hands moved to her body, tentatively fingering the small ribs, tracing the mottled skin tones, the patches of pigment, shades of chestnut like the horse who dreamed nearby. I stroked one nipple. It was dark, a hard little coffee bean, fine hairs around the nipple. It hardened, sharp little cone-breast, rigid peak. The other nipple was pink, dusky ashes of roses. She closed her eyes and moaned, a breathy little sigh. I continued to tease, gentle circles with my fingertips, watching the shadows of the branches make further patterns on her skin. Sunshadow shapes.

My fingers moved down to the waistband of her baggy pants. They were loose enough that I could slip my hand underneath them, over the concave planes of stomach, down to the elastic of her underwear stretched tight over the narrow span of her hips.

Tentatively I undid the drawstring on her pants, and dipped my fingers down between her legs, over the cotton underwear. The undulations of her hips encouraged me, and I moved a finger under the gusset of her panties. My finger touched curls of hair, as coarse as the hair on her head, springy and resilient like the sage brush she harvested. I explored, feeling my way around familiar anatomy. It was not like touching myself. Oh, she was younger, firmer, skinnier, but it was the subtle little differences in folds and creases that I noticed. I pictured what she looked like through my fingers, feeling creamy wetness, a landscape of textures.

My wrist was straining at the angle. She gently removed my hand and shed her remaining clothes. Pinto girl.

I started to shake slightly, desire warring with uncertainty. "Show me what women like," I said.

"You already know," she replied, and straddled me, shifting around to lower herself to my mouth. She dipped her head. Her hands cradled my buttocks, raising me to her mouth.

I grasped her and used my thumbs to spread her open, to see her, then explored with my fingers, tentative movements, trying to please. She had no such reservations, and buried her face between my legs, so deeply I wondered how she could breathe. And the pleasure was abrupt and intense. I could see her in my mind's eye as if in a mirror. Folds of my sex mashed against her checks, her mouth pressed up against me, her tongue lapping around the small folds, secret valleys, the small pointed tongue flickering around the hood of my clit, not too hard, not too direct, just that slight off-center stimulation that I like. Quick laps, teasing points and then unbelievably the gentle scrape of teeth. Ah, the shock, the instinctive withdrawal. She drew me closer and the scrape became a suckling, gentle suction on my clit and I came, a gasp, a shudder, a tightening of thighs around her head.

When sensibility returned, I found I had been grasping her skin so tightly that I had left individual prints. Cloudy, crushed-purple marks on the hues of her skin. Two of my fingers were inside her. I felt immediate guilt for my selfishness and moved them gently, a pistioning action so beloved of male lovers. She wiggled upright on top of me, moved around, settling herself firmly on my face. A lap, an exploratory movement of tongue. Salty sage taste, different from my own. I circled my tongue, flickered, tasted. It was hard to breathe, the musty smell of her pussy surrounded me. I wondered if she had taken one of the self-righteous ranchers into her bed last night. The thought was both repugnant and exciting. How could she, I wondered, be so careless with her body? How could she, I wondered, be so free and unfettered? My tongue savored, trying to pick the familiar thick taste of semen, but I couldn't. My senses were filled with everything that is intrinsically female. There wasn't room for anything else.

Calamity moaned a little, and I lapped harder, striving to give her a fraction of what she had given me. It was difficult; my tongue ached and she was wriggling around so much that I couldn't keep a steady rhythm. I kept trying, soft flickerings, more forceful rubbings. I used my fingers, my tongue, even teeth, trying to emulate the feelings she had roused so carelessly in me. And still, she ground herself on my face, grunted, sharp little animal squeals, tightened her thighs around my head. But she didn't come.

My concentration started to waver. I opened my eyes and studied the patterns of the tree boughs above my head. There was a sharp point of a rock digging into my back under the blanket and I jerked convulsively when some small insect skittered over my thigh. But still I persisted. I wanted to give her something purely for herself, and this was all that was within my power.

And just when I was about to stop, when my discomfort was so great that I couldn't last any longer, I felt the first clench of muscles around my fingers, felt the ripples of her orgasm and heard her long wail. I opened my eyes, She was arched up into the light, the curve of her body silhouetted against the wide, white sky, her head thrown back, her mouth open as she panted. The tangle of hair fell in static disarray over her shoulders, covering the deep chestnut nipple, the pale shell one still visible. And she was beautiful.

Much later, we dressed, and she shook out the blanket releasing a shower of horse hairs, throwing the scent of our lovemaking into the breeze. Her horse had wandered off. We rode back together on my borrowed elderly pony. She curled trustingly into my body, riding behind me, her head resting on my shoulder. Her hair tickled my nose.

I was content. A relaxed permeating comfort that went far beyond the euphoria of climax. I held the reins confidently and pretended to guide my horse home. Calamity murmured into my shoulder, reaching around to cup my breast.

I knew that tonight she would don her false cloak of self-assurance and play the sassy flirt for the ranchers once again. Maybe she would come to my room afterwards and we would make love in the sagging bed with the faded sheets. Or maybe she thought that to show that need was a weakness she couldn't allow and so she would stay away. But for now, at this moment in time, she was mine.

I curled my hand back around her thigh and moved my body to the horse's rhythm, letting the friction of the saddle build the memories of Calamity that I was already storing away.