Slow Train Coming Remix by Artemis2050
He sees her when he first walks into the bar, partly because it’s in his nature and partly because some long-forgotten training drilled it into him always to know when the parameters shift. Change can mean danger, and even if there’s damned few things in the world that really pose a threat to him, he can no more keep from noticing her entrance than he can keep from knowing that the leather-jacketed guy at the end of the bar is high on more than just liquor, or that the tempers at the table playing poker have just ratcheted up a notch.
Her arrival is just something to register and file away as he turns back to his drink, but then there’s something about the way she stands in the doorway and sweeps the room with a vaguely scornful gaze that intrigues him enough to keep watching. He doesn’t know if it’s instinct or training that makes her assess the situation before she strides across the room and settles herself onto a stool at the bar, but something in the way she moves tells him that vigilance is second nature to her too.
She’s not as good at it as he is, because she didn’t notice him.
She looks tired, and even before she catches the bartender’s eye and orders her drink he knows she’s on the move. Whether she’s running from something or someone or on her way to somewhere else he doesn’t know, but for the moment she’s here, and when her drink comes and she picks up the glass he can see her settle in, relaxing her awareness, letting herself forget whatever brought her here in that long first swallow. The drink is gone before she even sets her glass back down on the scarred wood of the bar and turns her head to gesture for a refill.
She doesn’t see him, intent as she is on getting that second drink, until he leans on the bar beside her as it arrives. “Might wanna slow down a little, darlin’,” he suggests a little maliciously, because he knows even before he sees the slight flare of her nostrils and the tensing of her shoulders what her reaction will be.
She knows she’s let her guard down. “I’m fine,” she tells him without looking up, and he can hear something in the way the words lengthen and slide into each other that lets him place her background a little more precisely. He’s a little curious as to what brings a girl from the American South this far north into Canada.
But he doesn’t ask. She’s back on the alert now, and while she sips her new drink he knows she’s aware of his gaze moving over her. She’s no stranger to men’s interest, and he doubts she consciously realizes the way she alters the tilt of her chin as she takes another sip of bourbon, the way she leans forward a little more over her glass when she sets it back down to give him a better view of the way her breasts swell against the tight shirt she’s wearing. It’s automatic, he thinks, and that makes what he sees in her eyes when she finally lets a little smile touch her lips and glances up at him from under her lashes all the more surprising.
There’s cold hard calculation behind that look, and more of a challenge than can be explained by the simple give-and-take of casual flirtation. It’s unexpected, and it takes him a second to understand the reassessment he’s already made.
She isn’t on the watch for danger to herself.
“What’re you runnin’ from?” he asks, and her expression changes completely. He doesn’t know if it’s the long trip she’s had or the alcohol working or just the fact that he saw through the act, but he wonders what she’s done to herself to be able to smile instead of cry when she answers.
“Ghosts. Memory.” She turns back to her drink, and he knows he ought to walk away. Those two words send a warning directly through his spine, a signal he doesn’t know what to do with, that for once he’s not the only loaded weapon in the situation and strategic retreat would be the smart choice. But before he can move she crunches through an ice cube and looks back up. “What about you?”
“Ghosts that I can’t remember,” he answers, and watches intently as she turns that over in her head, accepting the truth of his words even without knowing what they mean. It’s a moment of complete honesty that she’s bought and paid for, and he’s curiously disappointed when she chooses to take her winnings off the table. Her eyes drop to his crotch and she shifts her hips against the worn leather barstool.
He’s under no illusions about her attraction to him. He knows damned well that any woman in this place would consider it a successful night if she left with him, and this one is no different. But that’s just biology, and whatever it is about this girl that made him answer her question makes him wish she’d chosen differently. She’s making the same choice he’d make, and the only thing she wants now is to know how he wants her to play it—do they share another drink and banter for another minute or two before she heads for the bathroom and he follows, or does he just tell her how he wants it?
She’s used to male attention, used to the little games civilized people play so they can pretend afterwards that the fucking wasn’t the goal from the outset. She isn’t pretending that, but she’s still young enough to think the game still needs to be played, and that pisses him off a little, because either way, it makes her too much like him. And not enough.
He reaches for his wallet and drops a bill on the bar. “Pay for your drinks,” he tells her, and he can see the corner of her mouth turn up when she realizes he’s already paid all he’s going to for this encounter. “Outside. My truck.”
He doesn’t wait to see what she’ll do. There’s always the chance that she’ll surprise him again, wait to see if he’ll come back, try and negotiate a little more. The weather’s turned even uglier since he entered the bar and the storm howls around him, the snow swirling through the parking lot and erasing the footprints he makes by the time he’s a step further on. He doesn’t look up until he’s inside the cab of the truck, but he already knows she’s coming, making her way through that fierce wind and bringing another rush of cold air in with her as she opens the door and climbs in beside him.
All he wants, suddenly, is to have this over with. He doesn’t bother with turning on the heat or even warming his hands before reaching for her, lifting her onto his lap and shoving her knees apart so she fits against him for an instant before he raises her hips so he can push her pants and underwear out of the way. She gasps when he simply thrusts two fingers inside her, whether from the cold or the roughness of the gesture he isn’t sure at first, but he grins a little when her head falls back and she moves her hips forward against his hand.
She’s hot and slick with desire already, and she wants it rough, so he doesn’t waste time with foreplay; he pulls his hand away to reach for the condom in his wallet and release his cock from the denim it’s straining against. But she takes over where he’s left off, sliding her own hand down to give herself the pleasure he’s temporarily denying her, and he loves that this isn’t some little display of sensuality for his voyeuristic benefit. She just wants to be fucked hard, and she isn’t going to wait for him to get around to it.
He jerks her hand away roughly as soon as he’s got the condom on, gripping her wrist tightly enough to hurt, to punish her a little for trying to do his job for him. She likes it, he can tell, and she likes it even more when his hand closes over her hip to pull her down against his shaft, hard and ready for her. She reaches down with the hand he’s not holding and an instant later he’s inside her, thrusting up as hard as he can into that wet heat.
He lets her hand go so he can control the motion of her hips against his, and her head drops back again as she gives in to his rhythm, his direction. It’s surreal, the intensity of this purely physical connection, and the wildness of the storm and the mist of fog creeping over the windows of the truck as the heat of their bodies meets the cold air makes it seem even more like the world outside doesn’t exist.
Then her knees slip a little, between the slickness of the cheap vinyl seats and the force of his thrusts against her, and her hands land on the back of the seat beside his head. Her eyes meet his, open wide and glazed over with lust and something more. It’s incongruous that it isn’t until then that he feels exposed; they’re still almost as fully clothed as they’d been in the bar, even though he’s fucking the living daylights out of her, but in that instant something looks out of her eyes and if he gives himself another second he’ll be wondering whether the ghost he’s seeing is one of hers or his own.
And he doesn’t want to know. So he pulls out of her and throws her off his lap, onto her back on the seat beside him, because this way he can hold her down and thrust into her even harder, forcing her open and pounding into her until every vestige of control is given over, until all she can do is gasp for breath and accept what he’s making her feel. He knows when she’s close to coming, and he needs her to get there so he can lose himself in his own climax and stop thinking about the way she looks, giving herself over to the pain and the pleasure that are all she wants from him. Then she cries out, her muscles tightening and spasming around him, and he stops thinking about anything at all.
But he can’t get away from his own overcharged senses, and he’s still aware of her hands clutching at his arms and the whimpering moans that he’s forcing from her throat with every stroke, and the scent of her sex that won’t ever be gone from the truck. Fifty thousand miles from now, he knows he’ll catch it unexpectedly when he opens the door, and that thought sends him over the edge, his whole body jerking with the force of the sensation, driving even deeper into her until he’s not sure he can still tell where he ends and she begins.
When he’s aware of anything again, it’s that he’s probably crushing her ribs with the way he’s collapsed on top of her, and that her cheek under his forehead is chilled and damp with their combined sweat. It’s over, and he slides out of her and sits back, pulling his jeans back up and ignoring the way she has to shift around on the seat to adjust her more-disordered clothing.
He knows she isn’t going to say anything else. He wrote the fucking book on being a ship that passes in the night, and he can see she’s learned that lesson as well. Maybe it’s because he knows the rules of this game so well that he decides to break one as she finishes with her clothes and reaches for the handle of the door. “You know…” She holds still, but she doesn’t turn back to him, which is probably the only reason he finishes the sentence. “You’re gonna hafta learn to trust somebody sometime.”
He has no idea where that came from, and he sure as hell isn’t the right person to be telling anyone about trust. But she frowns a little and stays where she is for another moment before she answers, as though she understands what he means even if it’s nothing personal to either of them.
Her eyes meet his again, hard and clear. “Lookin’ for somebody to trust is a long wait for a train don’t come,” she says quietly, and that Southern drawl makes the cheap metaphor work, somehow.
“Some trains are just slower than others,” he says, and wonders why in hell he’s following her lead, talking about nonexistent trains instead of watching her leave. “But they all pull into the station eventually.” It isn’t until the sentence is hanging in the air between them that he recognizes it for the offer it is. It’s only because of what he sees in her that reminds him of himself that he’s said it, and he wonders if he’s hoping harder that she’ll accept or that she’ll turn him down.
But she is like him, and though her eyes soften a little she still shakes her head. “Sometimes ‘eventually’ is too late,” she tells him, and he knows all about that kind of clear-sighted reality. She leans close for a second and brushes a kiss against his cheek before she’s gone, and the rush of wind and snow that makes it into the truck before she gets the door closed is almost enough to obliterate her scent.
He watches as she takes a few steps, and then she pauses for a moment, apparently weighing the advantages of returning to the warmth of the bar against those of getting back on the road. The road wins.
He lights a cigar and watches as her taillights disappear into the swirling snowstorm, aware that he’s probably added one more phantom to the inventory she carries with her. He takes his time, cracking the window to let the smoke curl out into the storm and not reaching towards the ignition until it’s been plenty long enough for her to take any of a dozen possible turns, until the temptation to follow is futile even if he feels it.
Ten years ago she wouldn’t have left, he knows. But he wouldn’t have asked the girl she was ten years ago to stay, so maybe that makes them even.
He’s lived long enough without regrets not to collect them now. But as he crushes out the cigar and turns over the engine, his hand reaches up to rub against his cheek where she touched him last, and he smiles wryly to himself.
If their paths ever cross again, he doubts like hell he'll be the one to notice first.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I am honored to present my first EVAH officially authorized remix.
This is from the gorgeous Slow Train Coming by MJules, which you absolutely must read first if by some mischance of fate you haven't seen it yet. It's here: http://wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/viewstory.php?sid=2091&chapter=1.
Then come back and see what you think.
This is from the gorgeous Slow Train Coming by MJules, which you absolutely must read first if by some mischance of fate you haven't seen it yet. It's here: http://wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/viewstory.php?sid=2091&chapter=1.
Then come back and see what you think.