I learned something really quick. The girl could fish!
She was fishing me under the table and having a great time doing it. That was okay because I was getting a first-class look at who she really was.
She was funny and yet she could be serious, but not too serious. She laughed with uninhibited delight, as I let on about how badly she was smoking me.
It was a test. Most importantly, I could see she was behaving around me like I hadn't seen her do with anyone else.
That said, I knew she was a girl with a history. There was no getting around that one. I either had to accept it or move on.
The bigger question to me was would the girl get tired of someone like me with not much life of the party in him and move on to flashier game? It didn't seem like it at the moment as truly the infatuation of early romance had to be playing its game of cover-up as well.
Why would God expose me to someone like her who I could easily fall in love with, when I could tell that she was volatile of emotion enough to leave me in as big a hurry as she was in a hurry to be with me?
Intrinsically I sensed that she had been hurt by something. A past breakup, maybe? Was I the rebound?
"You're very serious over there. If the gears grind any louder you might blow a piston." She teased from her spot on the bank of the stream.
I smiled and glanced her way. She was giving me a serious look.
Then precociously as it was her nature to be like she said, "You're thinking about me."
I nodded. She went back to fishing and seemed content to do only that.
Curious, I asked, "Aren't you going to ask about what?"
She shook her head, "Nope. In a way it's enough to know you find me worth thinking about so deeply. But I won't lie; I would love to know your every thought."
Sincerely I said, "You're beautiful, in fact you're the most beautiful woman I've ever met."
She glanced at me and smiled hesitatingly before she said, "But?"
"You scare me." I said telling her up front just how I felt. I didn't believe in hiding my emotions and that was one of the reasons that I was so easily hurt by others, but there was no other way that seemed right to me other than to be the way that I was.
She said nothing for a long moment. I glanced at her and saw that she was staring at the horizon. Tears were slipping down her cheeks.
Quietly I laid my pole down and came up behind her. Reaching around her I took her pole away and then pulled her into me as I hugged from behind.
Her body shook with a heavy sob that seemed to be the great opening of a sudden floodgate from within and she turned within my clasp and sobbed openly against my chest even as she held tightly to me with her own arms. I said nothing and did nothing but hold her. For better or worse, I'd made a choice and already I confessed to the fact that I loved this fiercely emotional whirlwind of a woman that had flown into my life and was now turning everything upside down.
Her crying had abated some, when with a sudden movement, she lifted her head to look up at me. I had been enjoying the smell of her hair, but now I focused in on her face as she emotionally said, "I will pack up my stuff and leave if you want me to."
Smiling wryly I shrugged and said, "Why would I want you to do that?"
Her eyes were twin pools of question and I explained. "I may have been a coward for the first several weeks of your stay here, but at no point did I want you to be gone. Arwana I'm pretty sure you've noticed how attracted to you I am. The reason I've held back is I didn't think there was a chance with a big city girl like you and I don't like to make an embarrassment of myself."
"What's changed?"
"Well… you. You came hunting for me. You want me. I find that both humbling and amazing. I have very little to offer you."
She shook her head as she wiped tears at the same time, even as with passion she said, "That is absolutely not true! Women where I come from would kill to be with a man like you. You're everything that men used to be like, but aren't anymore. You're very much like my father in some ways and I really don't want to hurt you. Some may think you're weak to be the way you are, but I know how valuable you are. You're rare Cliff. I…. I've been attracted to and what you are as much as I've been admittedly in lust for your body."
She looked down and softly added, "I have a lot of baggage and I'm not a very good person. I've done things I'm ashamed of. I want to be different. That's why I came so far in order to get away from what I had become. I…. I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but I was on the verge of committing suicide."
She glanced up at me then as if to see if I thought she was crazy.
"What stopped you?" I asked softly.
The look in her eyes was full of truth as she whispered, "I don't know. Maybe it was God."
I nodded and she looked back down. I said nothing, but continued to hold her.
She felt like heaven against me and silently I prayed that I would remain unexcited as this was too personal of a moment to have spoiled by the awkwardness of an erection. My loins remained still and with quietness of soul, I listened as she said, "I was very promiscuous in high school. My dad died the year I graduated from middle school. My mother was already long gone from sometime in early childhood. I can't really remember her. She left my father. When he died, I fell apart. I went to live with my uncle, but I wasn't right in the head. I slept with a lot of men and... and a few women. I got back on my feet sort of in college when I met this man. I thought he was perfect or at least he seemingly had his life together and the attention he gave me was flattering so I hooked up with him. I was with him for four years. As bad as high school was the time spent with him was hell on earth. He used me and yet I didn't leave even though he was beyond mentally abusive. I just didn't see it. I kept trying to please him, hoping that my life would stay together. Finally, I couldn't take it and I dumped him and ran. After six months of working myself through things and trying to get a grasp on life I took this job and now here I am in the arms of a man I truly don't deserve to be with."
She looked up and the tears were back as she emotionally said, "You're right to fear me. I'm messed up inside. I meant what I said. I will go. I don't want…."
Leaning forward I kissed her, cutting off all her words. She gasped in surprise against my lips and then moaned as my mouth opened on hers.
Her hands came up to clasp at the back of my neck even as her thigh drifted up my hip. Seemingly lost in the kiss I still retained a communicative link to God and right now it was blaring, "What do I do?"
"Love her son." Was the response and to the best of my heart, I let myself do exactly that. My hands found her bottom and lifting up, she obliged by wrapping her legs about my waist. I backed her in against a smooth barked tree and kept kissing her.
She was seemingly as hungry for me as I was for her and aggressively she kissed me and ground herself up against me. I sensed the moment that her self-stimulation of rubbing into the pressed ridge of my shaft outlined against the front of my pants became too much and brokenly she cried out with passion, "What have you done to me! Ohhh!!!"
Her body bucked in my grasp even as I pressed against her pelvis and ground her back into the tree. When I felt that her orgasm had run its course I let her legs fall down and I stepped back a little from her.
She leaned back against the tree looking utterly spent. She had a look of awe on her face as she gazed at me. Glancing away, she said, "I suppose it would do no good to tell you just how badly I would love it for you to rip my clothes off and make me yours would it?"
Breathing heavy and fighting the desire to orgasm myself, I said, "No, no it wouldn't. This is a date. One we should probably end right here. I find that I've come to appreciate the understanding of a much greater awareness of you. The future, if God wills there to be one, between you and me is far less scary and more one of excitement by the moment."
She glanced back to me, "Do you involve God in everything to do with your life?"
"Yes, I do, especially when it comes to picking out a mate." I held my hand out to her and she put hers in mine.
"Do you have a problem with that?" I asked.
She looked up at me and I saw her puzzling on something, and as if discovering something new for herself, she said, "No, I don't. I want you to be you as much as I want to be who I am. Can I be who I am with you?" She finished with almost pleadingly, as if she was a little girl begging for permission to go outside and play.
"Yes, Arwana. I don't want you to be any different than who God made you to be."
She gazed at me for a long moment and then in a clear shift of changing tides she said, "I'm hungry. Does this date include a meal?"
My mind immediately leapt to what I wanted. I wanted to feast on her, but schooling away the desire she effortlessly evoked I said, "Of course it does; only Warbly's finest diner will do."
She laughed and leaned into me as we walked back to the truck. I opened her door and before she got up into it, she leaned in and kissed me. It was quick and then she was up on the seat that I had cleaned off, especially just for her so she didn't get grease on her clothes.
*********
The rest of the evening went well, very well, and I found myself relaxing with her. It seemed in a way that we were free to be each other around each other now and it was that way for the next two weeks. I saw her almost daily in one way or another, whether all it was, was a quick hello or an hour-long kiss.
School had started and she was now quite busy, but she always took off from what she was doing in the evenings as if I was the antidote to what was wrong with life. It was humbling and yet exhilarating.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted her. Not just the outside that I'd been stirred to arousal from the very first sight, but I liked the affable and kind person that was blooming out of her the longer she stayed in town.
I didn't want her for just an hour or a day or even a year. Forever was my goal and that was why for the past three days I'd been caring my mother's wedding ring around in my pocket.
It was one of the very few things I had left of my mother and for me it had always been a source of treasure beyond the value of the components that made it up. It lay heavily in my pocket as I fought for the courage to ask what I had of God for the past three nights.
I had Arwana pressed back into one of the front porch pillars and I was kissing her face off even as I used my knee riding up between her thighs to drive her crazy. She clutched at me and moaned wantonly into my mouth as I felt her come apart at the seams.
It never got old watching the look of sheer pleasure that washed across her face. I removed my pressing knee and exhausted she slumped in against me.
"Why do you torture me like this?" She whined against my chest.
"I want you!" She begged.
Silently I asked my question of God, "Tonight?"
No answer. Receiving nothing for an answer was always an answer.
Signing I pulled away and she groaned, but in the end she let me go.
She frowned at me, "It's not fair. You drive me insane and make it so that I can't even think straight."
I chuckled, but kept backing away. "Same time tomorrow night?" I asked.
She sighed and her frown broke away into a smile, "You know the answer already so why do you even bother to ask?"
"Because I was raised to be a gentleman."
Gazing serious eyed at me she said, "You don't have to be gentle with me Cliff. I want everything. As much as you drive me nuts you're driving yourself nuts. I'm actually a little worried about you."
"I'll be all right." I said, but she was right. Every unfulfilled evening after I left her was one of tenseness. A tenseness born out of frustration of holding back from pushing her down and making her mine.
I had to trust though that God knew what He was doing and until I knew what to do I shouldn't do anything. He'd told me to love her and that I was doing.
He'd tell me when to make her mine or just maybe He'd tell me to leave and never see her again. The latter was a reality I had come to face as a possibility.
In any relationship I had in life God came first, but that was by no means always an easy thing to acquiesce to. Doing life the right way in any regard was rarely, if ever the easy thing to do.
I got in my truck and drove away already aching to be back in her presence. I was about a mile down the road when my phone rang. Smiling, I answered it, "Want it to be tomorrow already honey?"
"Cliff! I…. come back!" The tone of her voice was one of panic and fear and the phone slipped from my hand to clatter to the floor as I spun the wheel and about flipped the truck in the process.
Gravel went spewing as I awoke all the horses under the beat-up hood up. I went tearing back up the graveled incline wondering what could be wrong at the same time praying that nothing was wrong.
*********
I slammed the truck to a stop and flew out of it as Arwana quickly hurried to me from the front porch. I didn't miss noticing the fact that she held my gun in one hand.
I hugged her and felt rage course through me as I felt the tremors of fear that were shaking through her still. What or who had caused this?
Wordlessly she pointed to the open door of the house and letting her go I walked forward with the awareness of a big cat ready to spring upon anything that moved and rip it to death. I stepped through the door and felt the essence of her imbibed in the very atmosphere.
I loved her smell. She wore perfumes, but beyond that there was a smell that was just hers that I adored.
Cautiously I walked about not sure what it was to be cautious of. I stepped into the cabin's lone bedroom and scanned it.
All seemed fine except for one thing. The piece of paper lying on the makeup table situated before the room's lone mirror.
Slowly I approached until I could read the note and as I did my hands knotted into white knuckled fists. The crudely written note read, "Your hair sure is cute just like you. I'd like to grip it in my fist and make a knot to hold you by so I could make the rest of your pale body as red as it. I won't harm a hair, just the rest of you."
An automatic threat assessment began firing off in my mind of the possible candidates in a small logging town that could have done something like this. What I didn't like most of all was that what should have been a short list wasn't.
Logging towns always attracted crud and Warbly was no different. I employed the most normal ones, but truly there were a few I had I wouldn't put something like this past from doing.
The handwriting was not familiar, and in fact, it was quite poorly done, almost as if the writer had used his opposite nondominant hand to do it and that possibility troubled me the most as it showed a deeper level of calculation than anyone wanting to just pull off a bad joke.
Everything about this was serious. Arwana had come into the room.
"Did you call the town office?�� I asked.
She nodded.
I put my arm out and she stepped quickly into my grasp and I led her back outside. I felt powerless and yet I wasn't.
Out loud as we both gazed sightlessly at the beautiful fall vista before us I said, "Dear God, please help end this situation well. It's not good and one can feel powerless, but tempering the unknown is that You are in control. I humbly ask that You would take care of the situation and keep Arwana safe and free from fear. In Jesus name even so let it be."
Sirens were growing louder and soon the scene was a virtual flood of excitement. Things like this didn't happen in Warbly and being a small town, it seemed like everybody wanted to get in on the action.
I hung around for a while and then left. Arwana watched me go and it broke my heart a little to see the woeful look that was about her. What she didn't know was that I would be back.