She quickly turns to run inside and notices the building is another twenty feet away. Then she scans the brown-skinned tower standing before her, smells his clean, leafy scent on her skin, and realizes he is the brick house she slammed into, not the building. She is swiftly panicked, the mob assault around her is suddenly silent, and she does her best to escape it.
Not sure of whether to run back across the street or inside, her feet travel like a magnet toward the beautiful, dark statue, who is watching her think. She floats without breathing, and he subtly pushes out his chest, brushing against Lorna’s flushed red face as she passes. This is the same shirtless torso she has spent the last two weeks watching glisten and bake in the California sun. She has always been content with the view from behind the camera, leaving no inch of the sculpted foreign beauty unnoticed. Until today.
She gasps. She is on fire in that split second of contact, and she is finally behind the door of the liquor store, wishing she were a misty cloud disappearing into his sunrise.
There is a bell above the door that jingles upon her entry into the liquor store, signifying her presence to the worker behind the plate-glass counter and signaling Lorna’s reemergence from her fantasy. She is out of breath and rattled, and her first instinct is to lock the door behind her. The stern eye of the brown man behind the plate-glass counter warns otherwise. Instead Lorna stalks past rows of tobacco and spirits, and finds refuge in the last aisle. Her eyes dart wildly around her until they settle on a short bottle of white rum. With her camera squeezed under her arm, she opens the bottle and swigs long, a trail of fire winding down past her heaving chest. She drinks until tears form at the corners of her eyes and her sinuses clear. She can still hear the fighting outside and is worried for her husband. Worried about their colleagues and their cause. But she is more concerned about satisfying the battle raging below her belt.
The deep desire pulsating throughout her body, coupled with the pressure rising in her ears, drowns out the sound of the jingle above the door.
This time Lorna is relaxed, oddly calmed by the anticipation. The sudden seizure between her thighs is like an instinct, a sordid gut feeling of sorts. She feels him before he ever appears.
And appear he does, in all his brazen glory. He approaches Lorna in the last aisle of the shady liquor store with the swaggering stride of a sexual savior. Lorna Landry’s prayers are about to be answered.
She splashes the remains of the rum at him. Trying to buy time. Acting out. Resentful of the control he possesses without provocation. Rebelling against the se
xual Svengali that she is desperate to follow. He is unfazed. He stops just inches from her, the insteps of his work boots flanking her sensible flats. He lifts the back of his hand to his nose, inhales the brutal poison, wipes it on the back of his fading tan pants. Takes the bottle from her hands and places it on the nearest shelf. Sets her camera, still recording, beside it.
Lorna Landry has never felt a harder body in all of her thirty-one years. She is not a small woman, and she has never been so easily handled. When he pulls her forcefully to him by the waistband of her skirt, her body floats, without her feet ever moving. Instead, it is her hands that are immediately in motion. Her eager caresses of his solid chest and arms quickly turn to insistent and urgent clutches under his T-shirt. Her fingers glide incredulously over ripples and waves of flesh that far surpass even her wildest imagination.
He stands motionless for one moment more, allowing Lorna a decent introduction to his physical supremacy. Then, without warning, he cuffs her pale wrists in one hand and holds them tight. Her breath is arrested, the unending stream of wet desire confessing a list of transgressions and guilt, all the way down her legs. His lips are hot and cold, satisfying the temperament of her barren nipples. Her bra is pulled down, an afterthought, his hands effectively replacing it. Then his tongue goes beyond the surface, tracing over the lines of deep-set yearning and deprivation developed over the years, effortlessly erasing them.
Lorna’s free hands wander south of the border, first to the enticing round ass that fills out his fading tan pants, then to explore the emerging ethnic invasion behind his zipper. She fumbles, either afraid to unearth his glory or terrified not to. He pushes her colorless, idle hands out of the way and pulls down the zipper and relieves the button with one flick of his hands—hands that now carefully clear a space right there on the wine shelf.
Without warning, and with Lorna’s full breast firmly clamped in his teeth, he swoops her up by the waist and sets her down like a spirit on display. Cold, dusty, cheap table wine flanks one leg, a fine Northern California cabernet sauvignon the other. Lorna is keenly aware of the duality. She is at once an esteemed anthropology scholar of merit, and a split-legged slut in a flowery skirt with her pristine and patriotic panties pulled low.
He couldn’t be bothered to take them off. He simply slides a hand inside, shifts them to the side of her drenched lips, and enters with a force so jarring that even he pauses. She welcomes his generous girth with tight but open arms. Yet he senses that he has many walls to knock down and he immediately sets about the task.
Lorna’s legs attach themselves to his active waist. Her ankles hook like a bra behind him at the exact moment that he finally unlatches hers. Her heavy breasts weigh on his chest, her nipples screaming for attention. She lifts her shirt and he wastes no time answering them back.
Her arms slide down from his neck. The intensity of his deep thrusts cause her to mark his sprawling bronze back with bloody scratches, sanguine symbols of her primal pleading.
“Fuck me,” she repeats in his ear. Over and over, each time a reincarnation of a new appeal.
“Fuck me.”
Inquiry. “Fuck me?”
Command. “Fuck me, you bastard! Fuck me like Cinco de Mayo, you son of a bitch!”
Each time a step higher, an inch closer to her delicate borderline.
The deep desire increasing with every strong stroke coupled with the pressure of the tip of his manhood colliding with ease against her G-spot drowns out the sound of the jingle above the door. But not the voice that follows.
“Lorna!”
Before she becomes tense, before she can open her eyes and spy the tiny red spider crawling on the rusty shelf just beside her bare thigh, before another drop of sweat can drip from her bangs, before she spits another explicit curse…brawny, bronze hands lift her modest ass up off the shelf. He holds her up above the height of the highest bottles, his mighty erection pointed skyward, only a breath away from her raw lips, and slams her down hard back onto him. And holds her there for an extended stay.
Lorna has no words. Her mouth and eyes are as wide as her legs. Her inside walls leap uncontrollably around his exquisite dick and an involuntary tremor sends her foot flying, kicking a robust jug of Carlo Rossi Chablis to the cement floor.
“Lorna, are you in here?” calls Tom, limping into the last aisle of the liquor store. He is bruised, his clothes torn. He walks down the empty last aisle past aging bottles of Northern California cabernet sauvignon, in search of his wife, broken glass and a pool of white wine beneath his sensible loafers. Tom inhales a vaguely familiar scent, and follows it to the open door at the end of the back aisle.
It is clear that Lorna Landry can no longer focus on the job at hand. She can’t seem to remember to press record on the MiniDV camera. She can barely drag herself out of bed for the eight A.M. vigilante call times. She hasn’t eaten a full meal in weeks. Not since the Bronze Bomber filled her to capacity. The withdrawal is unbearable, and her husband, Tom, takes notice.
He knows Lorna better than anyone. He believes he knows her better than she knows herself. An arrogant and haughty asshole, yes, but Tom has reason. He plucked Lorna from relative graduate school obscurity and molded her into a scholar after his own heart. He intuitively pegged her for an insecure and self-conscious young woman in need of direction. He promptly assumed the role, under the guise of academic advisor and mentor, crafting a secret map for her future, then carefully pulling the strings as she traveled along.
It never occurred to Lorna that her success was prefabricated. It never occurred to her that Tom isn’t the man of her dreams, despite being twice her age and physically unappealing. They both know their limits. The roles in their marriage are clearly defined. It was never about passion and attraction. Tom would never be able to satisfy her sexually, that much he always knew. Their arrangement is about success and accolades. And together they amassed many.
They are on the brink of national, perhaps international recognition. Their vigilante efforts and staunch stance on illegal immigration are catching on. Small news clippings are now turning into features and radio interviews. Any activity on Capitol Hill involving immigration translates into attention on their cause from local media. They know it is only a matter of time before the coveted elite media like CNN and the New York Times take notice.