Sorrow and Temptation

It’s late summer, 1975 and a man walks across the heat haze of the flat desert sand and scrub of New Mexico. Lost in his own world and his spirit and soul are deadened not by the sun’s affects on his body but more by the path that lay behind him. Each footprint a reminder of what he has lost and what he had seen.

Days past and he walked into their nights on a seemingly endless trek towards himself, perhaps. On the fifth day he reached the road. What was the main highway through the state was now relegated to an unused side road. Barely traveled the last tire tracks washed away in the winds that swept the land clean each and every evening while the sun went down over the far distant hills. Morning became afternoon and the heat of the sun almost was an entity to him as he stood alone at the edge of the cracked pavements. The sun made a noise to his weary ears and in the squint that had became of his eyes he saw on the opposite side of the highway, a shack. He knew somehow that he had reached his destination. The sun spoke to him then and told him to take that step forward into the future. That step was more a stumble but he caught his balance before falling to his knees.

Crossing over to the other side he stood and tapped his knuckles on the door. There was no sound from within so he pressed his palm flat against the wood and the door swung open away from him and the force of exhaustion pulled his body inwards and it was suddenly cool.

Everything was black and dark until his burning eyes adjusted to their new surroundings.

He found a chair in the corner of the room and pulled it around and sat as though the weight of the universe had pushed him down hard. He breathed heavily and was dizzy. He could now make out small amounts of the interior of the shack on the side of the no where highway. There was a long counter and a pair of tall stools like the ones you find in 50’s dinners. But this was not a 50’s dinner he thought. He turned in his chair and looked the other direction and saw a few meager chair and tables. The windows were not clean and covered in the dust that the evening winds deposited on the frames.

Everything came clear just as he heard a sound, a banging from the back of the shack. It made him jump up to his feet and he forgot for a moment how sore they were. He stepped towards the direction of the noise and stopped in his tracks as a woman appeared from a small beaded curtain that separated the back room from the front room.

He brushed his damp hair back from his forehead.

‘Um, hello.’ He said in a dry crack of a voice.

Her name was Elise. She came north a few years back and before the new interstate was built and this was the outskirts of a thriving mining town. No one came through here now and herself and a handful of people with no where to go still live in the area. The town is long since empty and dead after the bottom fell out of the stockmarket.

She was tall, about 5’ 8” and had long black hair that fell in a mess around her shoulders. He felt she must have been in her late thirties but the sun does things to make the skin look older. There were crinkles at the corners of her eyes from smiling when she was happier. He looked at her as though she was not really there. His throat too dry to create more words, he stood with his hands at his sides for a long moment.

‘Hello yourself, sit down here and I will get you something.’ Elise said pointing to a stool by the counter.

He stepped forwards and leaned up against it as he sat carefully.

‘Here, on the house. You look like you could use it.’ She said.

He took the glass and drank most of it down.

‘Lemonade…’ he croaked.

He drank down the rest and asked for another. As she turned he glanced at her body and how it moved slowly and easily. Her sundress was clinging skin tight at the hips and waist and had a low back. The defined outlines of her ass pressed through the fabric. He felt a stirring down below at the vision.

‘Here, one more but no more or you will clean me out.’ She smiled and handed him the full glass. It was wet from instant condensation and he nearly lost the grip and placed his other hand underneath to protect from spilling any. The second one revived his senses.

‘Where is this place?’ he said more clearly now with a lubricated throat.

‘Middle of fucking no where my friend and slightly to the leftish. If you came here a few years ago I could tell you this was somewhere. Now its not.’ She brushed her hair back and tied it into a ponytail.

Elise moved from behind the counter and he followed her with his eyes as she went to the nearest window and looked out at the desert hills. Or what she could see of it through the filth on the glass.

‘Where’s your car?’ she asked seeing that there was nothing parked outside.

‘You break down on the road?’ she continued but not turning to face him.

‘No, no car. I walked here.’ He said and sipped the last drops out of the bottom of the glass. Then wiped the cool wetness on the back of his neck.

‘Walked? But it is a hundred and two out there. Come on, where’s your car?’ she laughed and came back around the counter and leaned on her elbows just to his right.

‘I walked here, um. I didn’t catch your name?’

‘Oh, I’m Elise. And you are?’ she winked.

‘Not important.’ He grunted.

‘I walked her across that desert. Five days.’

‘Really now, why are you pulling my leg after I gave ya a couple of freebies?’ she asked and poured a glass of lemonade for herself. He felt the need in the back of his throat for another but she didn’t offer one. He watched her sip with her full lips wrapped closely around the rim of the sweating glass. She placed her hands around it, cupping it like a child and lay it on the countertop.

‘I’m not pulling anything. I just started walking and here I am, where ever the hell this is.’ He said and sat up straighter.

‘Okay, so you walked five days across the desert and for my lemonade. I guess those fliers worked.’ She laughed.

‘I don’t know what happened, everything and nothing I suppose.’ he said and paused. His face turning down to the empty glass. ‘ I just started walking?’ he said standing, then pacing over to the table by the larger window. Elise stayed where she was and just watched him.

He leaned up against the frame of the window and sighed.

‘You okay?’ she asked and walked out and around the counter. Stepping carefully towards him then stopped. He turned.

‘I’m okay. It must be the heat.’

Elise went over to the door and flipped the sign to closed by the chipped edge and hit the sliding latch at the top of the doorframe.

‘Come with me in the back. It’s much cooler back there. Its siesta time anyway. Come, sleep with me awhile.’ She said in a tone that suggested everything and nothing.

He scratched the back of his sore neck and stayed leaning on the dusty window. She lifted her arm to him and offered her small hand. He took hold by her fingertips and she led him through the curtain and into the back room.

His eyes had to adjust to the soft low light. Blue curtains covered the windows and cast a refreshing light over the adobe colored walls. There was an old Oak dressing table in one corner and a double bed with two perfectly placed pillows that leaned up against the iron frame. He looked up and saw the bed had a canopy and white thin mesh drapes gathered to the posts. At night they unfurled and kept the heat and insects away. Elise pulled her hand free and released her hair again and let it flow freely about her shoulders. She moved around him and closed the top drawer of her dresser, as she needed to hide the contents. He watched her movements and she was then suddenly standing close in behind him. Her hands caressing his face and neck, tracing his jawline and chin before traveling down his chest and finding the first of his shirt buttons. Releasing it and spreading her fingers out in search of his nipple. He moaned softly as she found her desired target and flickered each finger gently across the nub.

‘Elise…’ he muttered but she ignored her name and continued to touch and explore him.

He brought his hands up to meet hers and covered them as they caressed his body. She sighed and pinched the nipple hard. He jumped and she laughed. Elise pulled her hands from under the shirt that desert grime has altered from this day onward. His hands curled and played in hers and he felt her body move around his own. She was now beside him and reaching over to remove his shirt one button after the other in slow motion finger movements. Her light warm lips pressed on his skin and she tasted the salt of him. She held him by his sides and kissed his chest more passionately now. He stroked her hair and fell more and more into her spell. He felt hot but comfortable. The bedroom was only a degree or two colder than the air outside the shack but her hands were cool and refreshed every inch of skin they massaged.

‘Come to bed.’ She said softly. The sirens call.

He followed her to the side of her bed and she wiggled slowly out of her dress and stood nude. Her skin a sheen of damp perspiration and she suddenly appeared smaller to his tired eyes. She undressed him in such slow and intimate fashion so, as he barely was aware of his nakedness and her mouth on his inner thigh. His cock was hard and full. It brushed against her soft hair and he moaned. Hearing this she moved her head so as to caress back and forth on him that way. Elise stood and kissed him. His hands wrapped around her torso and she pulled them away.

‘No.’ she muttered and placed his hands on her breasts and held them tightly against them.

‘Touch me here.’ She whispered to him and leaned against his body and felt his palms caress deeply over her. Elise felt her nipples awaken to touch and she sighed to him how good that felt.

‘It has been along time…please’ was all she said. Her soft fingers brushed against the side of his erection and he throbbed at the caress. Her hand cupped the tip and folded fingers surrounded him and massaged over his cock. His hands squeezing her breasts and fondling her gently.

Elise fell back slowly on her folded leg so he body reclined gracefully onto the end of the bed and pulling him with her so he eventually and inevitably fell on her and held her down under his weight. Her leg caught under the other and her arms pinned between herself and him. She cried out softly.

‘Are you all right, Elise?’ he asked and started to roll off of her.

‘Oh yesssss. Don’t!’ she protested and he stopped moving and lay on her and kissed her mouth softly and entering her slightly parted pink lips with the tip of his tongue. Elise followed him and they enjoyed a soft wet dance for a moment. He kissed her lower lip and sucked it into his mouth. She squirmed under him and his hands pulled hers out and pressed them down on the bed by her head. She kicked her trapped leg out and opened her body to his passions.

Elise felt the pressure of his cock onto her slit and the rubbing only made her more and more aroused. He held her down by the wrists and would let go if she asked but the sensation of power that flowed in his veins at that moment caused him to take her slowly but firmly enough that she whimpered at his entry. He kissed her brow and thrust deeper and pulled back. Holding for a minute as she watched Elise tense and relax. He pressed down and up into her sex and her back rose up to meet his motion. Her head fell back and her hands pulled against his restraint. Her long fingers stretching out to find some unseen hand to pull her free and then curling back into her palm as she moaned from his long slow push and then pull. He felt her heat, her tightness and wetness easing him deeper to her. Her chest rose and fell her belly, so soft and curved moved up and down like a piston, as her breathing became harsher and fuller with each and every thrust.

Elise lifted one leg up and traced her heel around his back and holding it just above his lower spine and with her other foot moved up over his shoulder. She was so open to him now and he took her harder. Elise cried out and moaned. Her eyes shut tightly she let him have her. His hands still closed loosely around her delicate wrists as he watched her react to his lovemaking. And it had become that for him. Trapped in her spell he had seen her and fell for her somehow in a way he could not imagine or explain to himself. He only knew that she was the one true woman to him. Soft and sensual and arousing even when she tried not to be. She turned her head to one side and began to whimper softly to herself as his cock caressed a nerve just inside her hole. Her skin glowed with moisture. He kissed her cheek and neck and held his aching cock just on the threshold of escape from her sex.

‘Ohhhhhmmmmnnnnnnn pleasssse finish me.’ She begged to him.

He pressed his hands up off her wrists and closed his fingers into hers and held her down. His thrusts became harder and firmer in intent. She shook beneath his efforts and was breathing deep into one cry and the next whimpering until soon enough she let out a long low screaming as the waves rushed hard and fast over her and up and down inside her body. He ground his hips down into her. Holding his release just long enough to see her to soft low whimpering as his cock let go and he fell over her body. They rolled to one side and he massaged her inside slowly with his softening cock. Her hands still enclosed in his. He felt a long kiss and saw nothing but blackness for a second or two.

He opened his eyes. The glare so intense it hurt and to his weary mind even made a noise. His senses burned and he felt heat like no other. He sat up. Squinting to the brightness that now surrounded him on all sides and forever he saw nothingness. In the distance he caught sight of something. Small and wavering in the heat haze on the sand. He tried to stand but fell to one knee. Head spinning for a moment he let things settle in his being and made a second and more successful attempt to get to his feet. A step and a second one and his head cleared enough to see that the small object was his car on the side of the desert highway. It’s boxy shape hovering in the winds and waving sunlight. It was only a dream and he had walked to no where but in a long sad circle to arrive right back at his abandoned vehicle. Now he sat down on his calves. Scratching a line in the dirt at his feet. He stared at the line and looked up once more to see if there was a shack, a girl, or a much desired glass of lemonade.