Paradise Road

The life of a truck driver is never a glamorous one.  After a while, all the cities start looking the same, and all the faces become a blur whizzing by as fast as the zipper in the middle of the black top; an unending flash during the long hours behind the wheel.

His whole life rides behind him in the sleeper.  Minimal worldly possessions, maybe three weeks worth of clean clothes tucked in the tiny closet, a television with a built in DVD player, a fridge with a half sucked down jug of chocolate milk, and a mutt in the jump seat beside him, staring out the front window as if what is zooming past is all new and exciting. 

The satellite radio flashes song titles and artists, but the stereo is turned down so no sound came out.  Voices squawk intermittently over the CB radio above his forehead, in the center of the dash.  He reached up and turned the volume down on that as well, needing to block out the overused political and religious banter that the drivers seem to love to use only to cause hate and discontent over the airwaves. 

Beau is an antique, driving over two million miles in his career, which wasn’t bad for somebody in their mid thirties,  shifting through changes in regulations more times than most normal people change the channel on the TV, and it’s getting old.  His body is battered, used and abused over the years by the various trailers and loads he’s hauled.  But it’s all he’s got, so he just keeps pushing forward.

His latest delivery takes him well off the beaten path, to a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere, Texas.  He had to call his sister to Google the damn thing, it was so small it didn’t even earn a dot on the maps.  Following the chicken-scratch of directions Lacy had given him two days prior, he shifted gears and took yet another small, two-lane highway, heading south.

The heat outside was unbearable.  Thank God the guys in the shop had charged up the AC during the last truck service they’d done, otherwise Beau and Harley would both be worse than a well-done steak about now.  He reached behind his head and flipped the bunk controls on, needing to cool down the sleeper berth before nightfall, or else there would be no sleep happening after the sun went down.  His truck could get hotter than a broiler oven set on High.  Stupid piece of crap Peterbilt anyway.  It’s always extremes with these buckets – bone boiling in the summer months, and frostbite city when the temperatures drop below zero up north.

As the sun dipped below the horizon outside his passenger window, Beau stretched his back and looked over at Harley. 

“Need to pee buddy?”

The dog looked back at Beau, yelped in response then darted back into the sleeper.  He re-emerged a moment later with his retractable leash dangling from his muzzle, and his tail wagging insanely. 

“Take that as a yes.”  He chuckled and patted the dog on the head.

Finding a wide spot on the side of a little road is never easy for a person driving a regular car, but it’s nearly impossible when you’re over eighty feet long.  But things looked good when a turn out was noted on a little roadside sign.  Dropping gears slowly, motor grinding under the strain of the “jake brake”, Beau reached over and took the leash from Harley’s mouth and hooked it up to his collar in preparation for the pit stop.

The situation deteriorated when Beau started to pull into the small turn out.  A car sat nearly dead center in the space barely big enough for two vehicles.  He slid in as close as he could without taking off the side mirror of the car, but making sure his rig was on the right side of the white line on the shoulder of the pavement.

“Well shit on a stick.  What the hell…”  He grumbled as he released the air in the trailer and flipped on all his driving lights.

Beau climbed down out of the truck, then hauled Harley out.  As soon as the dog’s feet hit the dirt, he tried to run into the underbrush on the west side of the space, but came up short when he hit the end of his fifteen foot lead.  He walked slowly around the front of the truck, doing a half-assed inspection on his way, then looked at the car beside him.  The driver seat was reclined back as far as it would go, all the windows rolled down in hopes of some kind of breeze blowing through – no such luck out here though.  A tuft of fiery red hair covered most of the head rest in the seat.

“You okay?”  Beau called, but inside he feared the worst.  He did not need the complication of a dead body mucking up his already twisted schedule. 

To his relief though, the body moved inside the car.  A face stared back at him as if she was seeing a mirage in the desert heat.  She looked to be around the same age as him, but more … cared for … was the best way he could mentally describe her, sitting there in her little Honda Civic.

“Uh…”  She mumbled, “My car overheated, and now it won’t start at all.”

“Let me get Harley handled and I’ll take a look for you.” 

“Do you happen to have any water … or an air conditioner that works, in that monstrosity?” She asked, eyeing the Peterbilt.

“Sure do, on both.”  He walked over to the car and opened the door.  What he saw inside, surprised him a little.

The girl looked down at herself, when she noticed him staring, “It’s hotter’n hell out here, what’d you expect?  A business suit and hose?”

She was sitting in her car in nothing but a wife beater tank top and her underwear.  A ball of discarded clothing sat in the passenger seat, and a pair of high dollar sneakers on the floorboard.

“Well, no.  Not exactly.”  He pulled Harley back and hooked his lead to the mirror on the car, before helping the girl out of the seat. 

Reaching the three foot span between the vehicles, he opened up the door then pushed Harley’s dishes out of the way so she could climb in.  It wasn’t very often he had two legged passengers in his truck, and even more of a rarity that the passenger was damn near naked.  He tried to wrangle his suddenly perverted thoughts to order as her butt reached face level with him.

“Uh…”  he choked.  “Yeah… There’s … there’s water behind the seat there, gallon jug, and just, ah … turn the vents toward you on the dash there.”  He stammered stupidly. 

The girl got situated and twisted the AC vent to blow on her.  At full blast, the shock of cold air made her gasp and sit back fast.  She reached over and pulled the jug of water out, setting it to her lips for long moments.  Beau had to turn away as her throat convulsed around the gulps of water.  Droplets escaped the sides of her lips, trailing down her neck to the thin white material of her shirt.  The axis of his mind jolted violently in the totally wrong direction as he turned back to make sure she hadn’t passed out from the combination of heat and cold, and saw her feet propped up on the dash, the air vents blowing up her inner thighs to her belly, now exposed as she tucked the tank through the neckline creating a scandalous little halter top.

He reached back to the mirror of her car, unwound Harley’s lead and walked slowly around the front of her car. 

“Good God in heaven… I’m overheating, Harley, and it don’t have nothin’ to do with the temperature.  What the hell did I just get myself into?”  He said in a low voice to the dog.  He kept glancing back to his truck, then shaking his head in a dumbfounded sense.  Maybe he was hallucinating.  Maybe this whole situation was a mirage and the cause was the AC unit going out again.  Maybe he was still driving on the lonely little Southern Arizona road, and maybe there really wasn’t a near naked woman sitting in his jump seat.  But then again, maybe he’d died and gone to heaven somehow, too.

After a long while, Harley finally decided he’d had enough of the heat, and moseyed back to the truck.  Beau glanced up as he walked in front of the hood, just barely able to make out the girl’s fiery mane and stark white shirt in the darkening cab.  Again, he shook his head stupidly as he opened the driver door and heaved Harley up to the floor board.  The dog wended his way around the gearshift to the sleeper, flopping lazily in the middle of the bed and panting hard. 

“You got a name there, legs?”  He asked.

“Nyla.”  She mumbled without opening her eyes.  She seemed almost orgasmic in her seated position with the air enveloping her, caressing her body. 

“Nyla.  I’m Beau.  How long you been sittin’ out here like this?” 

“The last thing I remember is breakfast in Alamogordo, around ten.”

“And nobody’s been by here since you stopped?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm…”  Beau sat in the driver seat, cracked the window and lit a cigarette.  He leaned over and shifted Harley’s water dish to the sleeper, then leaned back and let the air blow where it may, silently wishing he had an AC vent in his jeans.  He glanced down at the digital temperature gauge on the dash and marveled at how she could have survived in still 102˚ heat.  He was about to ask her when she shifted in her seat, letting the air blow across her back, her feet planted in the space between them.  Words failed him.

“I guess I took a wrong turn or something.  I’m not sure.”

“Wrong turn?  Out here?  Where were you trying to get to?”

He pulled his atlas from behind his seat and flopped it across the steering wheel, already open to the page with his delivery destination.

“Carlsbad.”

On his way.

“Well, if I can’t get your car runnin’ again, you’re in luck, I’m going through there.  I was going to stop in Artesia and catch a nap tonight even though it’s not too much farther.  I’m out of hours that I can legally drive, and the cops out here in no-man’s-land can be real pricks with log books.”

“You think you can get it running?”  A spark of hope filled Nyla’s eyes.

“Give it my best.”

With that, he flicked the spent cigarette out the window to the highway, and shoved open the door. 

Nyla sat in the cool cab while he got a few tools from his side box compartment, and walked around to her car.  The hood was already cracked open, like she’d tried to determine the problem earlier.  He lifted the hood and ducked into the engine compartment, looking everything over.  He could feel her watching him, and it made him a little uncomfortable, not being used to being watched by anybody but the dog. 

After long minutes inside her motor, he raised up and propped one arm on the raised hood, looking at her.  She had figured out where the switch for the window was on the dash, and was leaning half out of the door.

“Well?  What’s the diagnosis, doc?”  She grinned.

“D.O.A.  Your radiator has a hole in it the size of a softball.  No dice on fixing it out here.”

“Shit.”  She grumbled.

“Get your stuff if you’re going to, girl.  I got to go.”  Beau said as he shut the hood down and made sure it was secure.

Nyla grudgingly opened the door and crawled out, then leaned into her car window and grabbed her clothes and shoes from the front seat.

“Fuck…me…runnin’.”  Beau mumbled from behind her.

“Excuse me?”  Came Nyla’s voice.

“Nuthin’.”  But still he could not take his eyes off the sensual sight of her bent over like that.

Nyla backed out of the window and turned, coming face to… well… chest, with Beau.  She looked up into his face and her eyebrows rose in surprise.  The dark look in his eyes was far from anger, but made her step back nonetheless.  His eyes, usually, were a very handsome mix of green and hazel, but had turned darker, becoming heavily lidded.

Beau stepped back, allowing her to climb back into the jump seat of the truck and pull the door closed.  He walked around the back of the truck this time, doing a spot inspection on the straps and chains on his load, making sure all his lights worked, and then stood between the truck and trailer with his head on his forearms over the catwalk.

“Get your head together, fucker … can’t be doin’ anything stupid now.” 

He shook it off, put the tools back in the side box, and climbed up into the truck.

The jump seat was empty.  He turned and looked behind him and found Nyla sitting in his sleeper, petting Harley and talking softly to him.  Harley just looked at Beau like he was king-shit, and Beau was a court jester, eating up the female attention.

“You don’t mind that I’m back here, do you?  I have heard that a truck is a driver’s home-away-from-home.  I don’t want to overstep propriety. 

“Darlin’… you did that the minute you got damn near naked in the desert, then allowed somebody else to see.”  He hit the air brake release, waited for the bags to fill, then rocked the truck into gear and checked his mirrors before throttling back onto the highway.

Beau drove, white knuckled, for about ten miles before he heard giggling from the sleeper.  He turned slightly and looked, seeing Nyla and Harley laying on the bed, the dog’s muzzle was buried in Nyla’s hair and it looked like he was tickling her ear.  Her leg was propped up, giving him an unobscured view of her belly, her pelvic bones barely visible on each side.  He groaned, gripped the wheel even tighter and turned back to the road.

A squeal came from behind him and he looked again.

“I think he’s trying to eat me back here!”  She laughed.

“Lucky bastard.” 

“What?”  She sat up.

“Nuthin’.”  He turned forward again.

Silence from behind him, then suddenly, a soft touch on his shoulder and warm breath at his ear.  “I know you said something.  Now what was it?”

“Like I said.  Nuthin.”

“Mmmhmm… sure.  C’mon driver.  Don’t be shy.” 

Her breath down the outside of his ear and his neck sent a shiver of energy through Beau’s body.  She was so close.

“I don’t think I thanked you for trying to fix my car back there.  Or for the ride.”

“Yeah.  No… no prob…”  words escaped him.

Hallucinating inside the cool truck was not an acceptable explanation for what was going on anymore.  His body reacted to every whisper of her breath, and she didn’t seem to want to move away from him.  Her fingers massaged his shoulder gently.  Her cheek glanced across his ear.

“What are you doing out here, Nyla?”  Beau asked finally.

“Trying to get somewhere, just like you.” 

“Mmmhmm…sure.”  Was all he could manage.  “You keep doin’ that girl, and we won’t be gettin’ nowhere fast.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”  Her voice carried a hint of laughter.

“Yeah?”

Mmm…yeah.”  She continued to nuzzle his neck and ear. 

“Shit.”  Beau groaned, his jeans suddenly about three sizes too small for him.  This was new.  He’d had women in his truck before, but not in a long time, and nothing like this had ever transpired. 

Nyla’s hand slid down the front of his shirt between his pecks.  The muscles stiffened there and his breath caught.  He could swear there was more stars before his eyes than what the usual night sky produced.  Her fingers hooked the front of his T-shirt and dragged slowly back up, raking her nails gently across his belly.  Slowly, Nyla took the lobe of his ear between her lips and suckled gently.  The road before him disappeared and a slow sigh escaped him. 

Before he could second guess himself, Beau fought for control of the gear shift, dropping two gears and flipped on the jake brake again, scanning the road for another wide spot.

“Harley!  Seat.”  He growled.  The dog moved from the sleeper to the jump seat and laid down. 

The truck ground to a halt, and the air whooshed out of the trailer again as Beau pulled Nyla around in front of him. 

“No regrets.”  He mumbled just before he took her lips in a deep, sensual kiss, his tongue dancing across their softness, prodding her to open to him.  His fingers buried deep into her soft fiery mane, holding her tight for his plundering mouth.  Her fingers fought for purchase at the back of his neck, knocking his baseball cap off in the process. 

They were like fire and ice, heating up and melting at the same time as their hands explored each other.  Finally, unable to control himself, Beau hoisted Nyla off his lap and directed her between the seats toward the sleeper.  He stood, kicking off his boots and unbuttoning his jeans in the process.  He turned and stepped into the sleeper, standing before her trying hard to get a grip on his senses.  Nyla reached for the hem of his T-shirt and slowly lifted it over his head, placing kisses across his chest as she went, knocking the wind out of him all over again.

He gripped her shoulders and pushed her back across the bed, then dropped to his knees between her thighs, tracing the muscles across her hips and abdomen.  He leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss atop her navel and she sighed.  Her hands raking over his head, pulling him closer against her, as her thighs tightened against his arms.  He hooked his fingers inside the waistband of her panties and slid them slowly down her legs, leaning back to get a better view of what she had to offer, and groaned.  She was beautiful.  Pink and moist, waiting for him.  His jeans shrunk yet another size and became almost painful as his body strained against the denim.  He reached down with one hand, readjusting himself, while the other hand played across her soft petals. 

She shivered and gasped as his thumb found the little nub, and tweaked it slowly before dipping his mouth to replace his hand over her flesh.  She quivered against him, gasping and grabbing the blankets on either side of her body, arching her back to push herself closer to him.  He raised his hand and pressed against her chest, holding her in place as he licked slowly at her flesh before flicking his tongue rapidly over her swollen cleft, then suckling the entire area, drinking of her body like a parched man who’d crossed the Sahara desert.

He rose suddenly, leaving her whimpering and on the edge of release, to turn and close the dividing curtain behind the seats.  She shot up behind him, grabbed the belt loops of his jeans and yanked them down around his knees.  Turning him around to face her, she took his throbbing length in her hands and stroked him gently, before taking him into the hot recesses of her mouth.

His knees near buckled at the intense pleasure that shot through his body, his hand once again finding its way into a knot in her hair, guiding her as she stroked him with her tongue.  Too soon, he felt himself swelling inside the confines of her luscious lips, and pulled her away from him.  Turning her quickly to kneel across the bed, he entered her from behind, driving to the hilt with a primal growl.  Her answering groan encouraged him and he pounded her tender flesh like a battering ram.  Reaching down, he played across her clit and pulled her hair almost painfully, causing her to arch and return each volley he gave with her own body.

She came quickly, shuddering and convulsing around his throbbing shaft, each spasm inside her milking him for all he was worth.  His body stiffened and another primitive howl erupted from him as he drove home one final time then nearly collapsed behind her.  They shifted positions, both laying on the skinny bed, panting nearly has hard as Harley had been earlier.

“I’m gonna ask you again… what are you doing out here?”

“Just trying to get somewhere…”  Nyla sighed happily.

“Couldn’t wait another week for me to come home?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm…”

“Hey, a wife’s gotta do what a wife’s gotta do, right?  And if that involves driving over 500 miles to seduce her man, then so be it.”

“I guess.”  Beau laughed softly and kissed his little seductress deeply again.

“So, are we gonna roll, or are we just gonna lay here all naked and spent?”

“Hmm…”  Beau grinned before lifting her over his body and settling her onto his already hardened member again.  Nyla sighed and bent to kiss him deeply.

“It’s gonna be a long summer, driver.  What say we meet like this again somewhere?”  She asked, but before he could answer, she began to ride him hard and fast, bound for that erotic destination that only two people in love can find.

(3619 words)