"We were face to face, me sitting in his lap, sort of sideways. “Damn,” said Rory.

Part 3 - Hollywood

Chapter 18 - Cowgirl

I put my arms against his chest and tried to push away from his kisses. His own hands were rapidly discovering that most of my curves were padding. “You got some growing to do, girl,” he said.

“Stop it, Rory,” I said. “This is—not fun.” Too sudden, too disturbing.

He sighed and relaxed his hold on me, letting his arms fall away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You were looking at me so intently, asking so many questions, you even licked your lips—”

“I did not!”

He grinned. “Yes, you did. I decided that if we both wanted something, we should have it. Hmm?” He reached up with one hand and touched my earlobe, “You’ve lost one of your earbobsie-doodles.”

I was still sitting in his lap, and as he touched my ear, a shiver ran through me. And I sensed something… throb underneath me.” I squirmed, trying to get away from it, and the most astonishing look crossed Rory’s face.

“Do that again,” he said.

But what was happening under me was not only in Rory’s pants but also in mine. My own—equipment—down there, stuffed into its tight little padded prison had responded to the situation and the stimulation, and I had the oddest sensation going on.

Marjorie had provoked something similar, but this was different. With Marjorie, I had felt my own excitement as a rather uncomfortable hard-on, essentially masculine despite what I had been wearing at the time.

But now, it didn’t feel like that at all. It felt like something internal as if I were being penetrated instead of preparing to accomplish some penetration. I squirmed again, as requested, and we both gasped.

We were face to face, me sitting in his lap, sort of sideways. A shudder went through both of us.

“Damn,” said Rory.

I moved again, straddling his left thigh, facing him without being half-turned away. His arms went around me again, and mine slipped up from his chest to his neck. His beard stubble rasped against the back of my hands, then I clasped them behind his head and pulled him toward me.

We trembled while he gently kissed me on the cheeks, the lips, my neck.

“If you keep moving, this will get messy,” he warned. He gasped again when my hips involuntarily thrust forward. I almost cried out myself, but I clamped my mouth shut on what might have been a moan or a shriek.

“Kissy,” he whispered. “Do you want to do this?” he asked against my neck.

“No,” I said, and it took effort to say so because I did want to do it. “Not now, not tonight,” I finished using willpower I was surprised to find that I owned.

Suddenly the truck door opened, and just as abruptly, we were standing on the pavement beside the truck, the chilling breeze from the ocean exactly like a cold shower. And just as painful and unwelcome.

Rory was holding me upright and leaning his ass against the truck. He laughed in between curses. “Oh, Kissy, you’re too much woman for me tonight,” he said, and he kissed me again.

To one side, the ocean roared and poured out its passion against the beach. To the other, the city lights and the traffic on Ocean Avenue pulsed and flowed in a broken rhythm of chaos and order. I shivered in the wind from the water and shook in the knowledge of what we had almost done.

It can get very cold quickly, next to the ocean once the sun goes down. “Rory,” I whined, my voice a weak, empty plea. “I’m f-freezing.”

“Sorry, Babe,” he apologized. As effortlessly as he did most things, he picked me up and put me back in the cab of the truck and shut the door. Then he ran around to his side, opened the rear door there, and from somewhere behind the back seat, produced a wooly blanket which he handed to me, reaching between the front seats.

I wrapped myself in it gratefully. “Thank you,” I said.

He was laughing again as he climbed back into the driver’s seat and started the engine up. “Let’s run the heater a bit, huh?”

I nodded.

We sat there a moment, thinking about what had happened, while the cabin warmed up. “I’d better get you home,” he said, putting the truck in gear and backing out of the space. Pulling forward into the lane back toward Ocean, he added, “Now I know what they mean by having all the fun you can with your clothes on.”

We laughed like loons all the way to the entrance to the 10 freeway.

“You’re a doof,” I told him as he negotiated the ramp in downtown Santa Monica.

He put out a hand and wobbled it. “I’m on the bubble?”

“Yah,” I said, and he laughed again. I snuggled into my blanket and giggled, wondering why I felt so happy.

Rory had chosen to use the freeway to get back to our neighborhoods, but none of them went directly there. We made pretty good time on the 10, but he got off at Western and headed north on surface streets instead of drawing the box to get closer to home, which would mean navigating the tangle of freeways around downtown LA.

Even close to midnight on a weekday, that kind of traffic could be hairy since the roads filled up with big trucks as evening turned into night. Western was pretty busy, too, but the lights are timed, and we sped along, probably averaging more than 30 mph. I don’t drive, but every Angeleno knows the traffic patterns around where they live.

I don’t know what we talked about, but we did a lot of talking. It got warm enough in the cab to throw the blanket into the backseat. I retrieved the goodie bag from Tetto di Giacomo, opened the lemonades, and unwrapped the cheesecake, and we snacked on the custardy slices as Rory drove.

When we turned off Western onto Santa Monica, I started getting sleepy. If I asked an occasional question about baseball, Rory would keep talking. I remember us turning onto Vermont and passing City College, but I must have dozed off in that last mile or so because it came as a complete surprise when Rory stopped the truck in our driveway behind Mom’s Prius in the carport.

The time on the dashboard read 11:48, but the lights were still on in the kitchen, so Mom was still up. That was unusual; she had to be at work by nine in the morning and didn’t usually stay up this late. I undid my seatbelt and started to get out. 

Rory climbed out, too, asking, “Do you want me to go in with you?”

He came around to my side and helped me down while I thought about it. “I don’t know why she’s still up,” I fretted.

He retrieved my purse from the console and handed it to me. I’d forgotten it. “If my underage daughter were out this late, I’d be waiting up for her,” he said.

“But—.” But she doesn’t know I’m her daughter, I’d been about to say. Was that true? Was I? Did she not know? I tried to think about that, but nothing was happening between my ears.

“I can go in with you,” Rory repeated. “You know, for moral support. After your cowgirl stunt, you probably need it.”

I glared at him when what he’d said sank in, but he just grinned. “Okay,” I said. “If she wants to throw me out, at least I’ll have a ride to the homeless shelter.”

He took up all the room in front of the door and held out his hand. “Gimme the key,” he whispered. “I’ve had a lot more experience sneaking in after curfew than you have.”

“The lights are on, and I don’t have a curfew,” I whispered back, but I dug the key out of my purse and handed it to him.

He opened the door with hardly a click, eased it wide, stuck his head through, and then went in, holding the door for me to follow. He had his finger to his mouth in a shh gesture, so I followed on tiptoe.

Mom slept on the couch, the afghan usually decorating the back pulled around her. The kitchen light was the only one on, and she had her face turned away from it.

Suddenly seized with the need to pee, I dashed down the hallway and into the bathroom, moving as quietly as possible. I could do most of my changing back to Davey in there. Mom had her own bath in the big bedroom in back.

I hadn’t been quiet enough. I heard Mom call out, “Davey?” Then she asked, “Who’s this big doof?”

Rory rumbled a laugh and a reply, “I’m on the bubble.”

I stripped off my pants and yanked the padded panty down to my knees. I decided it was safer to sit down to pee rather than trust my newly released member to not spray wildly in all directions. I did so, and it probably was.

Mom and Rory were talking in the living room, not shouting at each other, just talking.

“Where’s Davey,” Mom asked.

“In the bathroom,” Rory answered. “She’ll be out in a minute.”

I rolled my eyes, wondering if Mom had noticed the pronoun. I started to pull my shirt up to take off my bra, but I had forgotten about the corset. I looked at my hands. My nails, too. And my eyebrows. I sighed.

I used a washcloth to clean myself up down there; it was sticky. The padded panty would need to be washed, but I pulled it back up and my pants, too.

Mom called out to me. “Armand called from your game an hour or so ago. He said you weren’t there, that you had gone on a date.”

Shit.

“I told him you weren’t home yet. I didn’t know anything about a date, but I didn’t say.”

I stared at my image in the mirror. Davey Kissee or Kissy Davis, whoever you are, you are in so much trouble.