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.
“I’ve been needing to clear a patch over there,” I said, pointing to some overgrown grass and weeds. “Eight by eight, for a flower garden. You’ll need the scythe and the shovel, maybe the hoe,” I said as I lead him towards the storage barn. “Everything you need is in here.” I opened it up, showing all the hoes and shovels and tools we used, all of them past their prime.
He took just a moment to look over the area, then the tools, then nodded.
“You got it,” he said, as he stripped off his leather jacket, and I got a look at his guns. No, it weren’t the kind of guns Marcus was worried about, I’m talkin’ ‘bout his big, bulgin’ biceps. Ain’t never seen a pair so big in my life. And those forearms? Geez! Bigger’n Marcus’ bicep and forearms put together, bulgin’ with veins.
But more’n all that, he sported tattoos all up and down his arms. Curious symbols I didn’t recognize, ‘cept for one with a sickle in it, that I took to mean he had farm experience.
Without a word, Asher went to the tools, and selected what he needed. First and foremost, he knew enough to fence off an area after measuring it, then got to work. Even though the tools were old and rubbish, he put his substantial strength into it, undaunted by the summer sun as he began to tear up the old shrubs and grass, and clear that plot of land through raw brawn.
I was trying to look a bit busy, like I wasn’t going to sit back, drink a lemonade, and watch him work, though that’s what I wanted to do. I just figured after a while it’d be awkward, so I went into the barn under the guise of feedin’ the cattle, but really it was so that I could peek through this little knot in the wood in the loft. I could see everything from there, hidden from him.
And watching him work was magnificent. Beautiful. He was precise and careful, each swing containing such power like I’d never seen.
Even pa didn’t quite match up to this guy’s strength, though pa
had more practice and finesse with farm tools than him. It was clear, despite the one tattoo, that Asher weren’t a pro at farm work, but he weren’t a slouch and nor were he an idiot, he knew what he was doin’.
It wasn’t long before the top came off though, and he tugged that grey tank over his head, showin’ off such a slammin’ hot body. Thick pecs and abs, glistenin’ in the sun with their tattoos dark and prominent upon them. He was a hardened lookin’ man, and he did the task without a fuss nor complaint.
Which was nice. Sometimes you get the big guys that think they’re too good to do anything else. But him...
Well, he was a real treat. My eyes were scanning over his body, trying to make sense of all the tattoos, my eyes wandering. Sure, he was almost twice my age, and he didn’t look like the kind of guy you should bring home to momma, but she wasn’t gonna know the difference anyways. And it was hard to care for her all on my own, keep her and the farm running smoothly.
As he was nearing finished, I went down, hoping to look like I was just inspecting his work, and that I hadn’t been spying for so long.