Allison's Secret
by Jack LennoxThe muffled hum of the coke machine drifted in to fill the painfully awkward silence. Her back to me, Allison was huddled defensively on the twin bed opposite, leaving me with a clangor of thoughts, but no words to express them. Perched on the edge of the adjacent motel bed, I wanted to reach out to the girl I'd really only known since that morning. I spotted a sock sticking out from the blanket she was hiding under. I found the courage and began to gently massage her foot. I suppose I could have just dropped the whole thing and gone to sleep, but we had almost 300 miles to go tomorrow and I didn't want to spend the time under a cloud of unresolved tension. Besides, the feelings that I'd developed for Allison during the first of our two-day trip were surprisingly strong. The last moments we'd spent together in this fleabag motel only made her a more provocative mystery.
* * * * * * *
It had begun about 24 hours earlier when my brother, Joe, decided he wasn't ready to leave Wheeler Springs. As planned, we'd spent the last three weeks in the little New Mexico town renovating a dump with our name on it. That's what we do--buy places, fix 'em up, then resell 'em. A friend knew of this small ranch style going for next to nothing, so we made an exception to our rule and took on a project out of state. After three weeks, the place had been transformed from mostly a gutted shell into a domestic paradise--at least as close as you were gonna find in Wheeler. The night before the blessed end finally arrived, Joe informed me that he wanted to stay another week to do some landscaping in back. We both knew I had to get back to Los Angeles, so that meant making the 800-plus mile road trip alone.
Saturday morning I left Joe the rented pickup and backed the Bronco out of the driveway. I turned left and drove down the main Wheeler drag that led to the Interstate. I took in, for probably the last time, the scenic route that made the town proud. Bye old dead tree...So long rusty water heater...Catchya later pile o' rotting tires. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Just before the ramp onto I-40, I pulled into an Arco for gas and something to drink.
As I was about to push open the mini-mart door to leave, I spotted a girl over by the pay-phones. I immediately recognized her as the waitress from Eddie's up the street, the truck-stop aspiring tribute to fine dining that Joe and I had patronized almost every evening for three weeks. I remembered her name was Allison. I considered myself a connoisseur of all that Wheeler has to offer, and the twenty-something brunette was by far the nicest sight in town. When our eyes met, I was happy to see something that could pass for pleasurable recognition on her face. As she approached I noticed something different about her. In Eddie's, she always looked so cool and in control--like a girl who's been there, done that, and glides through life with an air of self-confidence. That morning she looked lost and a bit disheveled, like she'd been out all night. We decided that a tentative handshake was the appropriate greeting.
I really didn't know Allison well. Eddie's was often decidedly unbusy, so we'd engaged in the usual scintillating banter that young waitresses endure with single guys on a slow night. Joe's the gregarious one, so I was a weary audience to most of the chatter. I knew that she hadn't lived in Wheeler long, and that she was from Ventura, California, a small seaside city less than a hundred miles up the coast from Los Angeles. I couldn't figure why she was in Wheeler Springs. She was bright, and I remembered that she painted as a hobby. She liked dogs. She had some training as a Vet Tech and worked weekends at an animal hospital in Santa Rosa.
"No sick puppies, today?" I asked her.
She looked momentarily confused, then a little surprised that I'd remembered. "No car," she finally managed.
"I'm on my way back to L.A. I could drop you off."
"You're kidding!" Her eyes lit up. "I can't believe it! ...I'm getting out of here today. Gonna stay with my mom in Ventura for awhile. I've got some gas money." She looked at me hopefully.
I paused for a moment in apparent deep thought. "Hey," I said deadpan. "I just got an idea. What if you rode with me?" She studied me looking for a sign of intelligence. Then, she returned my smile with a twinkle in her large brown eyes and let out a healthy snort. Good. I didn't want to drive eight hundred miles with someone uncomfortable traveling with an idiot. Allison directed me to a house in a slightly more upscale development on the other side of the Interstate. She needed to stop and get her things, but I could see she was reluctant. When I looked at her for an explanation she just said to wait, that everything was okay. I watched from the truck as she made her way to the front door. The lanky young woman was wearing black jeans, a tank top, and low-heeled leather boots. Her short dark hair was cut in a modern style, and I thought it looked especially cute in disarray. She cautiously went through the front door like a teenager sneaking in at night long after her curfew. Apparently, she'd already packed her one bag, because she returned moments later in a rush. I spotted someone standing in the doorway that Allison had just come out of. She was a middle-aged woman dressed like the happy homemaker. She didn't look happy. I started up the truck and in minutes we were headed west on I-40 towards Albuquerque.
A mile later I broke the silence. "Relatives?" I asked.
"What?" she responded. "...Oh...No, I was staying with someone temporarily. It didn't work out."
I left it at that. We drove in silence taking in the endless blue sky and diversely carved terrain of New Mexico. I-40 is one of the stretches of interstate highway that replaced historic Route 66, "The Mother Road" that used to run almost 2500 contiguous miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, a coastal city part of Greater Los Angeles. The highway was the setting for the groundbreaking TV show of the same name. Running sporadically within sight of the interstate, the occasional glimpse of battered concrete seemed to be all that was left to remind baby boomers of the two young drifters in a Corvette who provided rare moments of meaning amidst the wasteland of 60's television. After miles through green hills of juniper, pinion, and ponderosa pines, we drove through "The Canyon" and down onto the flat high desert rock of Albuquerque. The conversation eventually warmed up.
"Where's your brother...Joe, right?" she asked.
"He stayed behind...more stuff to do...He's a bit masochistic when it comes to work...You and he seemed to hit it off pretty good."
"Yeah, he seemed nice. Not really my type, though," she confided.
"Oh yeah," I turned to her and grinned. "What is your type?"
She thought a moment. "I don't think I have a type, exactly. Your brother strikes me as a six-pack, Monday Night Football, ‘fishing on the weekends’ kinda guy. And, of course, he likes makin' time wit deh ladies." She laughed, then looked at me as if maybe she'd hurt my feelings.
"He's a little more complex than that," I feigned a wounded look, then smiled. "But, yeah, I think maybe you've got him pegged."
She smiled back. "You and he seem very different, but you obviously get along really well together."
"Yeah, we're pretty close." I pictured him back in Wheeler digging in the backyard. The guy truly loves dirt. "He's a bit old for you anyway," I teased. I knew Allison was 26. Joe was 38.
"I like older men," she grinned at me.
"Oh, yeah. I'm old enough to be your father...if guys starting having kids when they were eight." I had attempted a joke and decided it needed more work.
"I don't have you pegged at all," she said. "Maybe part romantic rock musician, part high tech yuppie?"
I winced. It sounded like a character in a Saturday morning cartoon. "Well, I do love music...and the other day I bought a Wall Street Journal -- can you feel my shame?"
"That is pretty pathetic," she agreed. "If it makes you feel any better, I once read a Cosmo."
"I thought 'deh ladies' liked Cosmo," I teased.
"I ain't no lady," she informed me with mock defiance.
"Actually," I confided seriously. "I used to play in a band when I was younger. We started buying houses when I was about your age. Business has just kinda taken over more and more of my time. Sometimes, I feel like maybe I'm not living life to its fullest." I gave Allison a grin. No sob stories.
By mid afternoon we had passed Gallup and were approaching the Arizona border. Once we had entered the industrious state known for voting down a day off work to remember Martin Luther King, the Petrified Forest National Park with its odd looking colorful piles of stone created an interesting distraction.
"What is your type?" she asked.
"You mean, of woman?" I asked rhetorically, and tried to think of the answer. "Don't really have a type either. I guess like most guys, I've built models of the perfect woman in my head. I think when I do meet Miss Right, though; I want her to be a revelation to me. I like surprises."
"Would it surprise you to know," she said over the sound of a passing car, "between you and your brother, I was kinda hoping you would be the one to ask me out." She looked away, maybe wondering if that was something she wanted to reveal.
I think my heart did a three-sixty in my chest. Maybe I'm just a brickhead, because I hadn't picked up any signals from her at Eddie's. "If only all surprises could be that good."
By the time we got to Flagstaff, the October sky was starting to get dark. I could barely remember having driven there. Allison and I were too preoccupied filling each other in on the minutiae of our lives. She was funny, and sweet, and smart, and had a beautiful take on life--just cynical enough to tolerate me. The more we talked, the more I liked her, and she seemed to reciprocate. We stopped for dinner and ate food we never tasted. Nothing really existed outside the shell of our attention to each other. We had driven most of the day and evening covering over 500 miles when we hit the outskirts of Needles, a little town along the Colorado River on the border between Arizona and California. We spotted a motel.
* * * * * * *
The sound of the shower stopped abruptly and, soon after, Allison came out of the motel bathroom in her underwear. She sauntered nonchalantly and sat on what would be her bed that night, as if maybe she had no idea that she looked good enough to eat. I took my turn in the shower, brushed my teeth, and then did a little underwear modeling myself. I tried to pull it off as coolly as Allison, but had to settle for comical. She laughed and joined me on what would be my bed that night. She scooted herself as close to me as she could, and our faces were only inches apart. She had stopped laughing. I brushed my thumb, as softly as I could, across her pretty mouth, and then pressed my lips gently against hers. I held them there, content to simply savor their sweet contact. I drank her breath in, and continued to explore her lips as if they were maybe too precious to ever reveal the secrets they held within. She teased me quickly with her tongue, then pulled her head back abruptly with lust in her eyes, and a mouth that wanted much, much more. We continued to torture each other with quick thrusts and parries, refusing to give in completely to temptation.
Allison sat back on the bed and stripped off her top revealing small breasts that hung like perfect little teardrops. Then, she was in my face again. "You're a good kisser," she complimented me breathlessly.
I held her cheek in my hand. "Kissing is about 5 percent technique and 95 percent inspiration." I kissed her long and deep. I left her mouth and kissed her neck, shoulders, and breasts, stopping to tease a hardened nipple. By the time I got to the line where her panties hid the promise of no return I pulled back. I wasn't sure how far we should take this. When I looked at Allison I could tell that she had similar doubts.
She turned and lay on her stomach. I massaged her shoulders and down to the small of her back. Her buttocks made perfectly rounded hills as they strained the thin cloth of her white cotton panties. I impulsively grasped the elastic waistband and slowly pulled them over the encased flesh. When her cheeks had been revealed in all their glory, I stopped, startled. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. Like ripe plums in a bowl of cream, Allison had two round marks topping the crown of each buttock. Although somewhat faded, I could still make out the elliptic shape of the hard object that must have struck them repeatedly.
"Oh, my gawd!" It hadn't taken long for Allison to realize what I had seen. In seemingly one motion she twisted her neck to look back in mortified recollection, snatched her panties back up, tore herself out of my bed and dove for hers. Her blanket-covered back was to me. "Oh, my gawd," she repeated, and lay mute.
* * * * * * *
So there I was, kneeling at the bed, my fingers working the delicate muscles covered by Allison's little cotton sock. She lifted her head a bit and half-glared back at me. "You have a foot fetish?"
"Yes," I answered, "and if you don't sit up and talk to me I'm going to take your sock off and give your toes a good suck." I smiled at her.
"And that would be a bad thing?" she managed a grimace. She propped herself up in a sitting position but kept her eyes down and said nothing further.
"Who did that to you, Allison?"
"Look, Eric, do we really have to talk about this?"
"No...We don't," I spoke quietly. "It's really none of my business, unless you want it to be my business. Let's face it, the time we've known each other can be measured in hours...Still, I feel like I want there to be a time someday when you can tell me anything."
Allison sat thinking for several moments, and then spoke. "It was Mrs. Babcock...the woman I was living with...It was one of those between consensual adults things." The look she gave me said, "Figure it out, genius."
I have to admit, it took me awhile to digest that. Finally, I asked, "Where did you meet her?"
"On the Internet," she answered.
"Like a chat room thing?"
"Yes. Then we emailed for about a month before we actually met," Allison explained as if reciting a story that had already grown old for her. "We had lunch in Ventura. After a long talk we decided that I would come live with her. It was all pretty businesslike."
"What kind of relationship?" She certainly wasn't putting on an act when we kissed earlier, but a depressing thought occurred to me that I might not possess what she really needed.
"An unusual one," she responded.
"Sexual?"
"Not really...at least it wasn't supposed to be," she tried to explain.
"Then what?" I had an idea, but wasn't going to jump to any conclusions.
"More like mother and daughter...or maybe I should say Mommie Dearest and daughter. Oh, my gawd, this is embarrassing." Allison put her face in her hands.
"It's okay, Baby..." I reached out and squeezed her foot again. "Why did you decide to leave?"
"It was good at first." She related dispassionately. "Scary, but something I had wanted for a long time. Then, it just got too heavy. She was trying to run every aspect of my life...and finally she started to get more intimate than I was comfortable with...You've got to think I'm some kinda freak, right?"
I didn't think that at all. I wished there was something I could say that would make her believe it. "Ally, we're all unique..."
"Yep, I'm pretty unique," she interrupted with a tinge of bitterness in her voice.
"We're born with certain potential," I continued, "and then our environment shapes us, defining what it is that makes us each tick. The amazing thing is that as diverse as we are, people seem to follow many similar paths." I reached out, took her hand. "I understand more than you think...Would it make you uncomfortable if I told you I like everything about you?"
She gave me an inscrutable look and sighed. I pulled her toward me. We hugged for a long time, and I felt her tears damp on my shirt. Soon, though, she was more herself, and I recognized the strong woman who would be able to bear whatever emotional scars she'd taken from Wheeler Springs. I thought about the kinda-hip street-smart girl working as a waitress in a small New Mexico town and found it difficult to reconcile that with the bizarre secret life she was living at "home". I wasn't lying when I told her I liked a woman who could surprise me.
* * * * * * *
The drive west across California the following morning was uneventful. Needles to Barstow, halfway across the width of the state, is a hundred-forty miles of uninhabited desolation. A lone pimple on I-40 serves as the oasis for cars low on gas and travelers thirsty in the high desert of the Mojave. After turning south towards the eastern sprawl of L.A. county, we cut west again over the Pearblossom Highway past fields of Joshua trees lined up like alien battalions ready to march south over the mountains and attack Hollywood. By noon we had descended from the parched San Bernardino Mountains and were cutting south on the San Diego freeway through the heart of the San Fernando Valley. When I finally turned onto lush Avenue San Luis at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, I felt the comfortable joy of being home. Yes, the Angelinos do love their saints.
We had decided to go to my place without any definitive plans beyond. Allison made enthusiastic comments as I wound through the old upper-middle-class neighborhood cloaked in elm, oak, palm, and ficus accented with colorful splashes of bougainvillea, poinsettia, agapanthus, and bird-of-paradise. My little single-story 3-bedroom haven from the chaos of L.A. came into view. We pulled into the driveway.
"Nice place," Allison remarked. I agreed. It was once a project of ours that I had decided to buy even before we fixed it up. It had served me well the past six years. I showed her around. The last stop on the short tour was the bedroom, and it was early evening before we emerged from it feeling completely spent and in love. Over dinner, at an Italian cafe I liked on the boulevard, we decided Allison would be moving in with me.
* * * * * * *
It was Saturday afternoon, a week since we'd left New Mexico, and Allison was restless. I was on the couch checking listings on my laptop when she scrunched up on the chair across the room to paint her toenails. It is a uniquely feminine exercise that I find provocative. She was wearing only a half-top and skimpy shorts, so most of her was flawless pale skin. Her awkward posture nevertheless made an arresting composition of graceful curves and delicate angles. As she skillfully applied the dark, almost-black polish to each tiny recessed nail, it set off a round white toe in vivid contrast. Distracted, I noticed the decorative tattoo that formed a dark narrow band around her slender left ankle and realized it looked appropriate on my free-spirited girlfriend.
We had spent the week like tourists. After a closing on Monday morning, and a few miscellaneous business nuisances, Allison and I had driven up to Ventura to see her mom, a pleasant woman living alone but for the company of an unusually affectionate cat. Mother and daughter had greeted each other with unrestrained enthusiasm. Ally's father had passed away over four years ago, and Mrs. Lepere had relied heavily on her daughter to help her through the grief and overwhelming burden faced by a new widow who had never really had to take care of personal financial matters. We enjoyed her company well into the evening and a welcomed home-cooked dinner. A drive through Malibu Canyon to the beach, the Getty art museum, a jazz concert in Santa Barbara, and a 26-mile boating excursion to the island of Catalina kept us busy the following days. We managed to keep each other busy at night.
We had gotten in late Friday exhausted from a full day in San Diego, both falling asleep immediately. I was up before Allison and had fixed us a light breakfast. She had seemed a bit moody, but made several sarcastic remarks that had made me smile. I felt a tension between us that was not threatening, but rather a force building towards something important. I had an idea what.
Her toes dried, she was looking at me playfully. I ignored her, preferring to let the drama unfold. As I continued to peruse the net, I felt something whizz by my left ear. I looked at Allison and saw she was holding one of the knitted coasters from the small pile on the end table next to her.
"Hey, my mom knitted those," I told her, intimating they weren't to be tossed around.
"They make nice flying saucers," she replied, unimpressed.
I was interrupted again as a knitted flying saucer landed on my foot. Allison giggled, but I continued to ignore her. Moments later I was hit square in the face, and we both laughed out loud. She got up and went to the kitchen returning with a peach in each hand.
"Want a peach?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer tossed one my way. I had to react too quickly, and it glanced off my hand, falling on the coffee table. It rebounded off a vase of flowers, causing it to wobble momentarily before tipping over and breaking in several pieces. Allison rushed over, clearly upset about the accident.
I kneeled over the broken vase in mourning. "This has been in my family for generations," I lamented as Allison looked crushed. "My great-grandfather brought this over from the Ukraine," I wailed. "I was going to pass it on to my firstborn son..."
A look of amused realization surfaced on Allison's face. "Got ya!" I smiled at her.
She punched me in the arm. "It wouldn't be broken if you could catch," she teased.
I reached behind her knees, swept her up, and started to carry her down the hall.
"What do you think you're doing?" She radiated indignation like a true thespian.
"I'm taking a brat to her room for a spanking," I informed her.
* * * * * * *
The third bedroom in the house is just a spare, occupied mostly by a small bed for the rare sleepover guest. I carried Allison through the open door and then nudged it closed with my foot.
"I'm too old for this," she told me cutely, but we both knew 'this' was exactly what she needed. I continued right to the bed, sat on its edge and set her down on her feet. With a firm grip on her slender upper left arm, I pulled her forcefully over my lap, facedown. I inserted my fingers under the waistband of her pants and unceremoniously yanked them down to her knees. She hadn't been wearing anything under her shorts. I adjusted her position so that she was comfortably balanced--she wasn't going anywhere for awhile. In preparation for what was to come, I explored her upturned bare bottom with my hand, delighting in its cool smooth surface, and marveling at how nature could create something so soft but firm.
"I guess before you decided to move in I forgot to mention that, in this house, bad girls get spanked." I said.
She twisted her head to look back and stuck her tongue out to bait me. "You wouldn't dare."
I smiled. Her bottom now showed no effects from the happy homemaker in Wheeler Springs, the marks having faded to leave pristine white. The girl over my knee had submitted willingly to a wooden hairbrush, so I knew that she wasn't going to be satisfied with a few love taps. I brought the flat of my hand sharply down on the softer, fleshy area of Allison's left buttock, the one closest to me, and left my palm there momentarily to feel the warmth I'd created. I treated the other cheek to a similar experience. She didn't hide the fact that she felt each. Years of lifting, carrying, sawing, digging, and pounding fix-ups into houses gave me a strong right arm, and I didn't have to work hard to get Allison's complete attention. She had become the most important thing in my life and there would be no half-measures for her that day. The spanks I gave her rang out loud in the small room, but if the neighbors could have somehow heard the noise we were making, I didn't care.
The first of many spankings that Allison would endure under my control was a very strict one, but also a sensual one. I gave her breaks from the all-consuming sting of punishment with gentle rubbing and stroking, keeping her focused on the part of her anatomy that was being tended to so rigorously. I continued to make hard love to her bare bottom with the flat of my hand, eventually causing her to reach back in an attempt to protect herself from its intensity. I grabbed her wrist, and while pinning it against her back, delivered a volley of punishing licks that concluded her spanking with a spate of involuntary howls and threshing of legs and feet.
As Allison lay across my lap her breathing was heavy. She looked back at me with a grimace, and the look in her watery eyes told me she hadn't fully expected the stringency of which I was capable. If she had thought that a spanking from me was something to be taken lightly, it would be a mistake in judgment she would never make again. At that moment, her eyes revealed something else to me, as well. She had found someone to take care of her.
"Are you going to behave yourself today, young lady?" I asked her as I kneaded the hot flesh of her brightly reddened bottom.
"Yes, Sir." Her voice was sweetly submissive and charged with arousal.
I told her to strip completely and lay on the bed. I went to the dresser and, from the top drawer, removed a bottle of skin cream and an unused item that had once been given to me as a gag gift. The little vibrator, roughly the shape and size of a human thumb, had caused plenty of laughs at the party, but simple amusement was not to be its function that Saturday afternoon. Earlier that morning, in a moment of depraved prescience, I had removed it from its packaging and inserted a fresh battery.
When I turned back to the bed, Allison was on her stomach and gently exploring her tender bottom with both palms. "Take your hands away," I commanded, and then sat alongside her. I rubbed lotion on her angry red cheeks. From her perspective, I figured the creamy application felt cool on her skin, but from mine, her skin was just making the lotion warm. Emitting soft moans of pleasure, she arched her torso and spread her legs to show me all of her womanhood from behind. I spread her cheeks slightly with the fingers of my left hand, and studied the obsessively thorough job she had done to shave herself clean from stem to stern. I couldn't remember having seen anything sexier or more beautiful.
I turned the base of the little vibrator with my right thumb and forefinger and it came to life, buzzing like an angry wasp. Allison was about to get stung. She looked back to see what I held and groaned in anticipation. With its tip, I followed the line of her perfect slit, up from where it started, ending at her tiny anus where I teased but didn't try to enter. Her senses overwhelmed, she shuttered repeatedly.
I had Allison turn over on her back. Her legs spread wantonly; she begged me with her eyes. My head between her legs, I spread her lips with my fingers and applied the smooth hard surface of the vibrator up and down her pussy, brushing only occasionally the one spot where she really wanted it. When want became desperate need, I gently placed the hard tip of the electrifying stimulus against her clit and held it there. Something deeply profound rapidly built inside her. Her body went rigid and an urgent cry of anguish escaped her mouth from down in her diaphragm. I immediately replaced what had been cool, hard, and impassive with something warm, soft, and wet. It took a good portion of my strength to hold her down as she tried to escape from pleasure, apparently, too intense to bear. After one wave of torturous spasms ran their course, a little prodding from my tongue brought on yet another wave. I didn't release her until she was completely spent, her body limp.
I kissed her forehead, damp with sweat, and lay on my back next to her. Several minutes later, Allison rolled over and kissed me on the mouth.
"I think I owe you for that broken vase," she said amorously. After helping me undress, she left a trail of kisses from my chest southward. She took me in her long graceful fingers, and with her mouth, began to pay her debt in full.