Jamie

Bea leaned back against the stainless steel counter so that at his vantage point, he would notice as she unfurled her body in his direction. The heavy relaxed shoulders appeared unaware, but she had felt his gaze at her back since she walked into the crew tent, and had risen to it.

He was different from the other riggers. Dirty and big, but something else too. His arms turgid with daily use, sweat clinging in the 27-degree farm heat, and road dust pooling in the nooks. A sight, she considered, that was as ancient as humanity itself. This body, these arms, hard neck and sweaty upper lip. The gentle scent of body wafted over the other larger men between them.

He was dark-haired, as she liked, and lean. His beard was just a little too long from too many days in the field without a mirror.

Over the clatter of plates and forks on tin and the scent of fried potato she heard his voice for the first time, strained to listen to what might have been an Irish accent, or Aussie. She imagined him at a wild beach wet from the waves and pressed against cool rock. Their plates full, Bea rejoined her crew, making her way to the dining area in the stuffy but shaded tent, and then waved past them gesticulating to the opening, to follow the loping form ahead of her into the fading sun and open air. She positioned herself directly opposite so he could not help but see her. He was eating, head down and evasive like a starving fox.

The long hard days up and down the scaff will do that to a man and his hunger shuddered through her. High vis vest soaked through in the burning heat, topless beneath, she could feel the sweat cool against his evening skin, as if she were touching it. His deep worker’s tan contrasting with the neon nylon as a beacon.

He looked up twice to start with and his blue eyes flashed even at a distance. Her appetite dulled by swift desire, she flicked her eyes up and down and lingered over her plate. A slow pull into her mouth and an upward holding gaze as she ate. He watched as she slowed, happily observed and playing, changing her pace, slow and fast like a timelapse, body opening as a portal. They stayed like this, locked in. He sat back in his chair and parted his legs wide, looked her gently up and down as she splayed backwards still in his eyes.

Bea watched and imagined fucking him against the sound stage, cold metal and the thud of bass, his sweat rippling over her as the sound check drifted across the fields.

Goddamn, manchild
You fucked me so good that I almost said, "I love you"
You're fun and you're wild
But you don't know the half of the shit that you put me through
Your poetry's bad and you blame the news
But I can't change that and I can't change your mood
Ah-ah, oh
'Cause you're just a man
It's just what you do
Your head in your hands
As you colour me blue
Yeah, you're just a man
All through and through
Your head in your hands
As you colour me blue
Blue, blue, blue

***

Ollie

In the cool almost-light his overconfident stride carries them both to the flimsy door with the weathered plastic clasp that swings pleasingly closed after her. Flickers of the camp drift lazily in, accompanying the sounds of swaying bass and itinerant chatter. Bea notices not much has changed. Different sheets, same genre, strangely floral. A shallow brown melamine shelf meets her at eye height on which lingers oakmoss room spray, a thick-set cologne bottle and hair oil, below which is strewn a ravaged pack of paracetamol framed in sticky patches of day-old Jäegermeister and small furrows of white, compressed into the woodgrain.

He doesn’t look at her and she watches his easy back as he discards his keys on the hob of the unused kitchenette. The air of festivals past cocoons them and the decor makes her feel like she is in another time, which she likes. Another dislocation, another escape route in this wing-clipped vehicle. As he sits his light but firm frame on the edge of the bed he places his hands behind his back, presses out his chest as he tilts his chin down and fixes her with an upward gaze. She is still by the door waiting for confirmation.

“Come on then.”

He stretches out his hands and she obliges, drawn into the dark heat of the room, toward the blooming bower. The costume party has given them an extra set of roles. His hazel eyes peer through deep black sockets and forehead, and silken dark feathers frame his preying gaze.

The druidic twigs and wilted leaves tangled in his long hair intended to give the impression he is of the land, instead make him more a dark Jesus. In contrast her skin glows with the glitter of a fairy queen too far astray, lost in this land of shadows. She is as aroused by the dancing light of her skin as she is by his facepaint, sweat and vodka-laced mouth. When they meet at the bed she watches her thigh in the sparkly fishnets meant for children, slide in next to his bare leg so he can grasp her by the hips and pull her against him hard.

He is hammered, and the kiss is strong, so she has no place in it and releases into the current letting her shoulders and limbs drop to his firm grasp. Relief floods her as a dammed tide so that as he takes her neck she is a dead swan drifting over familiar waters. Wired and alive in each other’s electricity the sex comes hard and predictably in the way she requires.

He tries to look into her red-rimmed, large pupilled eyes as he shudders and she feels him jolt inside her as she professionally pulls him close, avoids his gaze, and gasps into his ear.

***

Jamie

Wet creeps down her thigh sharp against the cold as she stumbles out of his caravan. He’d not bothered to walk her home. The 6am dawn looms cold as a finger down her throat forcing cool mist to expel in clouds that shimmer in her hallucinogenic morning. “I don’t want this to be a thing,” he had said after she’d slipped her fingers out of his ass and he’d laid back covered in himself, spent and bored. She’d rolled her eyes into the pillow and waited for first light.

The riggers are already awake. She watches them as she passes through the dew-strewn field, droplets spangled across the carpet of cool. He will be with her now, in her body for days, and she knows this will signal to the others, to the riggers maybe as they shimmy up and down their ropes to the speaker stacks like spiders. She wonders what would happen if she stopped here with no one else around, made herself available to them, stripped naked and cold and asked for warmth and nothingness. For a deep and eternal absence as they passed her body back and forth between their arms and hard flesh. They slow as she passes, and the lowest spider catches her eye. Dark as dawn, he winks.

End of Excerpt