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A Perfect Storm
A Redrighthandcreations/reddeadandrollups ficlet
By Benjie Havard Ford
He’d seen the makings of a storm like this on the horizon when they took off from camp that morning, when the Lemoyne air clung to his skin, felt it in the way the scarring from past injuries nagged at him like a sore tooth.
Any reasonable person would have stayed closer to the main camp—but while Arthur Morgan thought himself to be a reasonable man most of the time, the best game hunting was around fifteen miles out into Scarlett Meadows and into the Heartlands.
His companion did not appear to be bothered, however, as she sat astride her dun Mustang, head turning this way and that on the lookout for their quandary.
She oozed a certain power from her being, one he couldn’t quite put a finger on, but it was ever present about her like an undercurrent of lightning on the edge of a storm—the sense that something so beautiful and awe-inspiring could have the potential for danger just below the pretty exterior, thrumming away lazily, waiting for the call to be unleashed to rain Hell down on its target.
Much like the situation they now find themselves in, soaked to the bone and ducking into a small and abandoned-looking cottage to escape the deluge and furious cracks and rumbles above their heads.
It must be a winter cottage, tucked away here in a small holler as it is with a stack of dry red oak wood stacked neatly by the hearth, abandoned as it is in the middle of summer—not that Arthur can blame the owners for wanting to escape the oppressive heat, seek it back out when winter drove the ache into your bones.
“You’ll catch your death,” his companion comments as his teeth chatter while he starts an orange glow simmering in some kindling.
“Get this off ya,” she adds, tugging at his over shirt, and something in her tone commands respect, an authority that demands to be obeyed.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies with the hint of a tease to his low voice, the trace of a smirk playing on his lips, barely paying attention as she bustles around the single room cabin. She pulls out a folded blanket she finds at the end of the bed, bringing it to the furs on the floor in front of the now-blazing fire.
Arthur takes notice that she’s stripped down to her chemise, her soaked jeans discarded with her top, draped over a chair by the fire to dry out.
The firelight casts her ebony skin in a warm orange-gold glow, throwing off caramel and umber tones across her cheekbones, setting an amber glint sparkling in her eyes as she watches the flames lap and dance along the logs, and Arthur internally bemoans not having an artist’s palate to properly capture the full glory of her being—simple graphite would not do her proper justice.
“What’re you lookin’ at, cowboy?” she asks softly and he doesn’t realize he’s been staring.
“Nothin’, jus’...thinkin’ z’hall…”
“What about?”
It’s an innocent enough question, shouldn’t catch him as off guard as it does, though maybe that has more to do with how she’s drawn herself closer and wrapped the blanket around both of their shoulders.
“Ah, y’know,” he laughs it off, turning his gaze briefly to her before it returns to the fire. “Jus’ stuff.”
She simply arches an unbelieving eyebrow at him, worming her way under his arm to snuggle into his side with murmured concerns that she’s shivering and she can feel Arthur trembling next to her.
“You must be frozen, ‘cause I know this ain’t the first time you’ve been close to a pretty gal,” she teases, laughing gently.
“Not for a while though, I ain’t, ‘til right now,” comes the soft admittance.
Silence seems to last an eternity when tension is as palpable in the air as when a score’s gone bad or the moments between seeing the bolt and hearing the crack of thunder overhead.
Much like now, as he counts the breaths they draw as soon as he sees the bolt dance across the blackened horizon.
Roughly four, then the rumbling roar washes over them and then the question he’d been waiting for.
“So you do think I’m pretty, Mister Morgan?”
Arthur blinks his eyes open, doesn’t remember shutting them, when he feels a shift next to him, warmth on his drawn up knees and the gentle taps of inquisitive fingers awaiting an answer against the damp and cool cling of his denims.
Nearly gasps when he’s met with the sight of her face mere inches from his own and she laughs at his expression.
“Easy, cowboy,” her voice coos from above him, the edge of a giggle to it still as she leans over him where he had startled backwards comically to lay blinking up at the cabin roof.
“Spooked me, z’hall,” he retorts weakly, nearly frozen on the spot as she braces herself on her forearms, smiling so softly down at him with her plush lips and doe eyes.
He swears his heart will beat its way through his ribs, striking against them like frenzied, caged hummingbirds’ wings as she whispers against his ear that she thinks he’s “mighty fine” himself—Is sure the poor muscle gives out for a few breathless moments before it quickens and jumpstarts to life again as her lips meet the hollow just behind his ear in a warm, gentle kiss.
“You’re shakin’ again, Arthur.”
He hadn’t noticed, was he?
He reaches a hand up—shit, it is trembling a bit, he notices with chagrin tinging his cheeks another few shades warmer pink—to where she’s sat back and looking down at him with concern, brushes the backs of his knuckles over her cheekbones.
“I’m fine...jus’...just tryin’ t’have some self control.”
Now her delicate fingers have him by the chin, pad of her thumb brushes over the dual scars there as a playful smiles dances over her features.
“Don’t,” she replies, her voice a purr. “Let me have it instead.”
Arthur blinks a few times, draws a shaky breath as the implications of her words send heat low in his belly. He nods, moans softly when the simple action is rewarded with a slow and sensual kiss.
He’s not sure how long they continue with only the sounds of the storm and the whisper of their lips filling his senses, but he knows he’d have died a happy man should the Lord take him there and then. It’s when her hands brush along the skin just above the waist of his jeans that he raises his own between them, the question bubbling it’s way up and out before he can stop it.,
“With me? Yer sure?”
His answer is her lips capturing his again, her legs on either side of his hips and a tantalizing roll of her own that pulls a low moan from his chest.
“I’ve wanted you for a while,” she purrs. “Hard not to, just look at you, love.”
Arthur feels the heat rising to his cheeks, brow scrunching as he stares up at her like she’s lost her damn mind.
That’s the problem, he has looked at himself, and he can’t see past the scars, pale pink and silver alike that decorate his skin—tanned and freckles where the sun has been able to kiss it, a paler complexion where clothing covers him.
Can’t see how anyone could call a man who has lines on his face that age him beyond his not even forty years on this mortal coil anything close to handsome…
And yet, here she is, looking at him like he’s something exceptional, like he’s a chest of glitter and gold or a dazzling sunset that paints the skies as if the Fires of Hell itself set the western horizon ablaze.
Arthur can’t help but cup her face in his palms, pulls her down for another deep kiss in reply, his hips meeting the next roll of hers and pulling a throaty sound from one of them, though he ain’t too sure which.
He can taste the nips of his bourbon she’d had on the trail earlier as their tongues brush against one another, an extra layer to the already heady intoxication the feel of her hands all over his body and their now-bare skin against each other has created.
She manages to pull a small whine from him when she parts, though it’s swiftly followed by a low growl of want as her thighs straddle his face, his hands gripping her hips and pulling her slick core to his waiting and eager tongue.
For all the pitiful sounds she had pulled from him, Arthur is determined to wrench twice that from the goddess on her knees above him. Each languid swipe of his tongue draws a shiver when he brushes over that bundle of nerves, a keen and a fist in his hair when he ever so gently draws it between his lips to softly suckle at it until she comes undone with his name on her lips, murmured like a prayer.
“Not fair,” she pants, standing on shaky legs and offering a hand down to him.
“Why?” he shoots back, licking some of her slick release from his lips as she tugs him to his feet.
“‘Cause”—she playfully shoves his chest, pushing him towards the bed in the far corner—“I said to just give up control for a bit.”
The backs of his knees hit the bed and he lays himself flat back, backing up till he’s practically against the headboard as she crawls after him like a panther stalking her prey—a thought that sends another jolt of want straight to his cock and has him biting his lip as she drapes herself over his thighs.
“This alright, Arthur?” she asks permission to continue, her fingers wrapped torturously loose around him, her eyes like swirling pools of melted chocolate flecked with gold dust and amber crystals—and looking at him with such wonder and adoration and desire that he can’t help the quaking exhale that escapes.
“Fuck me,” comes the reverent whisper, the granted permission, the quiet plea all wrapped in one—and the answering smile full of the promise to do just that is almost enough to end him on the spot.
She makes good on her silent promise and Arthur Morgan reckons it’s the hottest thing he’s ever bore witness to, feeling akin to a deer trapped in the maw of a wolf hellbent for its next meal.
The way she holds the backs of his thighs and fucks herself on his cock—though the way he’s almost pinned under her she might as well be the one fucking him…
The thought has Arthur slapping a hand over his own agape maw to try and stifle the choked noise that claws it’s way from low in his chest and up roughly through his throat, threatening to betray just how erotic he finds all this with a woman in control of the entire ordeal, of tiptoeing him along, bringing him to the edge of the chasm only to slow or stop completely and bring him back down.
He’s overstimulated, now, nearly sobbing each time she thrusts her hips down on his, her hands pinning his own on either side of where he’s thrashing on the pillows.
“Say it, Arthur,” she purrs in his ear, her lips nibbling along sensitive skin. “Admit it and I’ll let you cum.”
“I—I deserve this. Jesus, please, darlin’.” It sounds wrecked even to his own ears over the humming, thrumming rush of his heartbeat.
“Good boy. Now”—she sits up, leaning back to brace her hands on his knees—“take your pleasure, love.”
Sweet permission, granted at last, has him surging up to wrap his arms around her waist tightly, his mouth going to tender skin on her neck to leave a bouquet of morning roses as the cabin fills with the staccato slaps of skin on skin, gasps and moans.
“Shit-I-fuck-I’m—“ he tries to warn her, lift her off, but she pushes against him and grinds her hips against his, throws him off the edge of the canyon she’s been dancing him on for so long, catching his mouth with hers when her name leaves him like a ragged, broken prayer.
“Gotta take you hunting more,” he chuckles when he can think without the edges of his thoughts feeling blinded by white hot light, his thumb going to her bud and stroking till she follows him off the precipice, clenching around him and almost dragging another orgasm from his oversensitive body—slightly thankful she doesn’t, reckons it would have killed him.
“Told you,” she giggles. “Shoulda taken me sooner.”
His grip on her tightens, a devilish grin on his lips.
“Oh, gimme a minute and I’ll take ya alright…”
Fin