“You lost?”
The big, broad-shouldered man folded up his map and looked to me, and though he fell for the trap and looked down my shirt, he didn’t make out as if to hide it like all the local fellas did. He took a gander, then slowly trailed his gaze on up to mine, brazen as can be.
I liked him more already.
“Was lookin’ for some local farms,” he said, his voice deep and husky, a lil’ gravelly you could call it. Like none I’d ever heard before. “Lookin’ to offer my services, such as they are,” he remarked, tucking the paper map into a satchel along his bike. “Think you could help me, hun?” he asked, his golden hair glistening in the sun. I was amazed he could stand havin’ all that leather on in the heat.
“Well depends on what types of services you’re offering, partner,” I teased, enjoying his attention, and being his rescue.
His broad face was highlighted by his chiselled jaw, and scruffy blonde patch of hair, seemin’ like he hadn’t had an opportunity to shave in a while. He provided a wry, half-hearted sort of smile and ran a hand back through his hair.
“Manual labour,” he said simply. “You need somethin’ done, I’ll do it. And if I don’t know how, I’ll learn it. Just lookin’ to earn some money for my trip.”
He made it all sound so very simple, but only later would I discover it was anythin’ but.
At that point, I was too distracted thinking about what manual labour I’d like for him to do to me.
“Oh? You done any work like that before?” I asked, but really, I was just prolonging our conversation, leaning further and further, trying to tempt his eyes.
Though he took his first look no problem, he was a lil’ too stoic to let his gaze be drawn off again so easily. Instead, he crossed those thick arms over his hard chest and continued to meet my gaze nice and steady.
“I’ve been a dock worker, security, all kinds of things. Ain’t never worked a farm, but if it’s hard, heavy work, I’m built for it and I can figure it out,” he stated firmly, in a way that made it hard to doubt he could do anythin’.
I couldn’t help but indulge my fantasies a little of watching him get hot and sweaty on my farm, tanned and shirtless. It was clearly distorting my understanding of right and wrong, because Marcus wasn’t lying about the arsonist.
But Asher didn’t look like an arsonist.
“How old are you?” I asked. That was a totally relevant question.
He furrowed his brow a little and unfurled his arms, looking me over again — and this time, taking another peek down my shirt unabashedly — as he seemed to mull over my own age in his head.
“Twenty nine. That a factor in gettin’ hired around here?” he asked. “How old are you anyhow, hun? If it weren’t for that rack of yours, I’d swear you were too young to be drivin’ that beast of a truck,” he remarked. But somehow, his crass tone managed to convey a complimentary air rather than an insulting one.
Don’t ask me how, it’s just how it sounded coming from him.
Or maybe it was just the fact that I was eighteen, still a virgin, and had no prospects in sight until I met him. Maybe I was ready for some crassness in my life.
“Yea, it’s a factor,” I said, glancing down the road towards my farm, then back at him. “How ‘bout you come by my place for an audition, huh?”
He looked down the road where I glanced, then back at me.
“Your farm, huh?” he said, mulling it over before he got up off his bike and nodded. “Alright. You lead the way, hun. I’ll be right on behind you,” he said, lifting his leg up and straddling his hog again with a heavy thud.
He looked good like that, and I let my own eyes wander over his buff body before I sat back in the driver’s seat and pulled off the side of the road. Rocks flicked at the bottom of my Ford truck as I made my way to the farm, my body so much more sensitive to the vibrations of the old piece of metal.
What would I make him do first?
It weren’t long before we were both pulled up in front of my farm house. My ma was inside, but it weren’t nothin’. As she was those days, she had no sense of much. Any time someone pulled in, she assumed it was pa.
As I climbed out of the truck, there was Asher, gettin’ off his bike with a slight jingle of his metal buckles on leather, comin’ up behind me.
“So what’ve you got in mind, hun?” he asked, direct and to the point, his broad, chiselled face a little pinched as he looked for work. A big man like him was probably not used to havin’ to ask others for help, I reckoned.
Especially not a girl that looked nearly half his age.
I looked around at the large farm house, too big for just my ma and me, and the barn that housed a few farm animals. Most of our money was made from crops, but it helped to have a few cows and chickens around.
But I wasn’t thinking practical jobs. I was thinking I wanted to see him topless sooner, rather than later. And there was a sure-fired way to get that.