A violently orange vintage VW bus plastered from bumper to bumper with stickers. The front end is pointed west, away from me, the tail and the engine compartment in the rear facing me. Bent over, head and shoulders in the compartment, is a woman.
I mean, all I can see is her ass, but Good Lord above and all his precious saints, what an ass it is. Full, round, taut, and firm, it’s spread in a beautiful curve as she hinges at the waist to get deeper into the engine compartment, swaying and jiggling as she bends her knees and twists and flexes in an attempt to reach something. She’s wearing an ankle-length skirt of some thin, slippery material that clings to her ass, stretching around the lush curves of her hips, thighs, and butt. The skirt is royal purple paisley, the comma-shapes of the paisley pattern in every color under the sun. She’s barefoot in the dirt, and I can see her toes digging and flexing as she reaches for whatever is giving her fits in the engine compartment—each of her toenails is painted a different color.
Even though all I can see is her lower half, I can tell she's pretty short.
I get out of my truck and head for the van. She doesn't seem to have noticed my last-second stop or my approach on foot. Is she deaf? Or maybe has earbuds in?
I rap my knuckles on the side of the VW and step back, so as to not crowd the woman and scare her.
At my knock, she jerks backward, cracks her head, and emerges more carefully, cursing floridly.
"Goddammit, motherfucking piece of shit, that hurt you ass-fucking pile of moldy dicks…" The stream of creative invective continues until she’s fully upright.
My heart stops beating entirely, my mouth goes dry, and swallowing becomes impossible.
She's the most gorgeous creature I've ever laid eyes on.
Barely over five feet, maybe five-three or -four at most, she's all soft, luscious curves. That incredible ass is just the beginning. The wind swirls, lifting her thin skirt up around her hips, baring momentarily short, thick legs. She’s wearing…I don’t know the word for it. It’s not a tank top or tube top, but something like it. A band of stretchy fabric around her chest. That’s it. It covers her boobs, but that’s about it. And those things are…fuck. I can’t rip my eyes away. The white fabric strains in a futile attempt to contain her enormous, perfectly teardrop-shaped breasts. Her nipples are pert and obvious, poking against the fabric, stiffening as the wind knifes past.
With a shake of my head, I force my eyes shut to break the spell and then open them again to get a look at the rest of her. Her belly, waist, and upper torso, bare, are tanned to a dusky golden brown—the color of naturally pale skin that's been tanned from long hours outside under the sun. She has a glittery purple bauble piercing her belly button, with thin gold chains wrapped around her waist, connecting to the piercing and vanishing up under her top to loop around her throat, a few inches of chain hanging down her chest, another smaller purple pendant dangling just above her cleavage.
Bracelets of infinite variety are stacked on both wrists halfway up her forearms—jelly bracelets, Pandora bracelets with dozens of charms, hand-braided friendship bracelets by the dozen in every possible color and pattern, jangly silver and gold hoops, some with dangling charms and some without.
Her hair is white-blond—not dyed platinum but rather so naturally pale it's nearly old-person white; it's been done in a thick, elaborate braid that wraps around her head like a crown, with feathers, charms, and beads worked into the braid. Gold hoops line her ears from tip to lobe, and a third purple piercing glints on the left side of her nostril.
Her eyes…fuck me.
Silver.
I mean, technically, I suppose you'd call them extremely pale hazel, but the downrange effect is silver. Shocking, vivid, piercing. Assessing, intelligent, wild, proud…
And full of sorrow.
And anger.
Her face is heart-shaped, with high, sharp cheekbones and plump, kissable lips with a pronounced Cupid's bow. Not a speck of makeup, her lashes are as white as her hair, her lips naturally pink, her skin golden and smooth and clear complected.
"What the actual fuck, dude?" She glares at me angrily, her voice too loud—she does have earbuds in her ears.
I point at my ears, and her eyes fly wide.
"Oh shit! Forgot I had them in." She plucks the earbuds out of her ears, tugs her top away, and drops them between her breasts. Her eyes finally go to my truck, angled across the road, less than a foot from her, and understanding washes over her expression, swiftly changing from anger to mortification. “Oh. Um. My bad?"
“Yeah, your bad," I snap. "I almost hit you. Parked in the middle of the road at the top of a blind curve? To quote you—what the actual fuck,dude?”
Her expression goes back to thunderous. "Okay, well, a couple of things here, Kayce Dutton on steroids—one, I’m notparked, I’mstopped. As in dead. It just conked out and died, and I couldn’t even get it to the side of the road. Which leads me to point number two: Do I look like I can push this thing to the shoulder by myself? Number three, this road goesfromnowheretonowhere, and there’s not so much as one actual house on it, so I wasn’t expecting some bro in a jacked-up truck to come flying around the curve like an asshole."
Kayce Dutton on steroids? The fuck?
"I'm not on steroids." Stupidly, it's the first thing that comes out of my mouth.
Her lips thin and pull in as she bites down on a laugh. "That'syour comeback?"
"Don’t know who Kayce Dutton is, either."
She gives me a puzzled, disgusted look. "Yellowstone? Luke Grimes? You look like him, just bigger and beefier and bro-ier."
"Bro-ier is not a word."
