The Pickup
T. H. Barker
The Pickup
T. H. Barker
Copyright 2011 T. H. Barker
License notes for the Smashwords Edition
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This book contains adult content – and it crosses various boundaries even for that. If you are too young to be reading depictions of sexual activity or have limited tolerance for such content, including activities that are, well, not ‘vanilla,’ let us say, perhaps you should look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you consider yourself to be open-minded, well, let’s see... There is nothing here that hasn’t been done before, after all...
As I have indicated before, my characters are what they are, and they speak for themselves, not for me. Don't assume that because one of them presents an attitude that you find offensive, or whatever, that I'm providing you with MY opinions – look around and you'll see another character with a differing viewpoint.
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Every character who engages in sexual activity in this tale is eighteen or older.
Enjoy!
T. H. B.
"Great!" Margot groaned, kicking off her broken flip-flop. It was a cute, dressy thing with a little flower on it for decoration between the first and second toe, but that apparently didn't keep it from being cheap. Her junker of a car -- also broken -- was about a hundred yards away; that was all the farther she'd gotten before she managed to roll 'snake-eyes' for the second time in ten minutes.
Unfortunately, it wasn't her second time that day, by a long shot -- basically, the car contained all of her worldly possessions, as she'd departed her apartment probably fifteen minutes before the constable arrived to evict her. She'd lost her job three months before and unemployment benefits had been slow in coming and then petered out -- and by the time they resumed, she was behind on everything...
Margot was twenty-seven, and had been out on her own since she was nineteen, having left home to make her way in the big city. You didn't LIVE in the big city, though, and she'd been slowly drifting to the fringes of the suburbs while she moved from job to job, constantly looking for something better. That left her without much time in her previous job when layoff time came, and when she went looking for a replacement, things had more or less dried up...
Similar things had happened on the relationship front. Margot was somewhat pear-shaped and plush, but not huge. She had a lot of fashion sense and knew how to make herself presentable, so she overcame the handicap fairly regularly. She had a pair of decent-sized, but not oversize, breasts that presented themselves well in low-cut blouses, well-formed arms and legs and if she had a little cellulite on her upper thighs and her belly pooched a bit, well, a guy probably discovered the cellulite, in particular, during sex, and that generally wouldn't stop one. Margot could get sex regularly enough -- she had the personality and her looks and poise scooted her just over the line for a lot of guys -- but things didn't stick, probably because she was somewhat self-centered and that surfaced pretty rapidly. Margot was aware of that failing when she took time for introspection, but it was part of the moxie that was the initial draw for guys, so it never occurred to her to control it.
That flaw also led to other problems -- Margot couldn't pass up the latest fashions for queen-sized women, her light brown hair required regular styling and streaking to provide blonde highlights and her nails had to be perfect -- and her charge cards were maxed out at ridiculous interest rates because she didn't pay enough or on time. Being laid off brought her entire personal house of cards down around her ears in short order, so when she sighed and said to herself, "I guess I'm not walking away from this," it had more than one meaning. She kicked off the other flip-flop and minced back to the car, her soles burning on the hot pavement, but a quick foray to the shoulder led to the discovery that the gravel was worse, so she endured it, "Ooh! Ah! Ee! Uh! Ow! Shit!"
Her cell phone was broken, of course. Besides, who would she call? The auto club she hadn't paid the annual dues for? One of her 'friends?' Maybe she should just push the car off the road and take up residence in it... A cop would happen along sooner or later to add insult to injury by giving her a ticket she couldn't pay. "I'm going to end up living in a place with bars wearing an orange jumpsuit," she mused. "That will be a bitch to accessorize..." She parked her butt on the trunk of the car and began to wait for either deliverance or the next disaster, fully expecting the latter.
Cars came by, but there weren't many, and they didn't stop -- probably because Margot wasn't projecting much. She looked like she was waiting for a friend or the auto club, so other drivers went on their way. Margot didn't realize what she was doing, so she got irritated after a while -- and that didn't help. She also got hot and started looking frazzled -- something she had a knack for detecting -- so she dug in her back seat for a low-cut white halter and circled to the far side of the car and changed into it. Nobody was around to notice. She cursed the fact that she'd decided to drive secondary roads, thinking that the cops might put out an 'APB' on her when they discovered that she'd skipped out of her apartment -- there just wasn't a lot of traffic on this road!
The rainstorm sneaked up on her -- she was concentrating on the direction of the oncoming traffic and it was so sweltering hot and muggy that she didn't see the clouds building in from behind her. She was busy putting sunblock on her milky-white thighs, having just oiled her neck and cleavage, when the first drops came pattering down from a sky where the sun was still shining brightly. "What the--?" Margot looked up just as things shifted from a tentative sprinkle to a gullywasher, soaking her almost instantly as the rain blasted down as if from a shower head! "Oh, for God's sake -- what next?" Margot yelped, running to the shelter of her broken vehicle.
The rain lasted maybe five minutes, the first ninety seconds of which it drummed down on the car heavily. Then it faded to something more normal and kept dimming until it stopped totally. The sun, strangely, shined through it the entire time, only filtered by the massive amounts of water falling from the sky. When it was gone, the inside of the car was almost foggy in the steamy heat; Margo stuck her head out the driver's door and decided, 'I'll let the sun dry me -- otherwise, I'll just get this towel oily...' and tossed the towel she'd spent much of the shower looking for back into the back seat.
She'd just settled her wide butt against the trunk again when a somewhat work-worn pickup came over the top of the hill, slowed, and finally pulled onto the shoulder in front of her car and a nondescript but similarly work-worn, balding male came out of the cab to ask, "Trouble, miss?"
He was looking, so she vamped him -- not that she needed to. "My car broke down. Frankly, I don't know what I'm going to do about it, but it has all of my stuff inside..."
The guy looked at her like she was a little dense. "You probably oughta get it fixed."
Margot grimaced. "That takes money, and I'm fresh out. Actually, I've been out for a while."
"Purty young thing like you will find work," the guy opined. He was trying hard not to ogle her breasts, but she wanted a commitment from him, so she wiggled them just a tiny bit -- nothing obvious, just enough to make sure they moved...
"That's gonna take time, and meanwhile, some cop is going to give me a ticket for sitting here..." Margot sighed.
"There's a garage in the town up the road," the guy offered. "They'll probably be the ones to fix it, so we can take it there. They'd charge you for the tow -- but I've got a kit I use to move a tractor. It might mess with your bumper a little, but..." He eyed the car, which wasn't pristine, by any stretch. Margot had given up her BMW and its expensive car payment three months before...
"That would be great!" Margot bubbled.
"Okay, then." The guy started digging a bar out of the bed of the truck and affixing it to the tow ball on the truck's bumper. "I'll hook you right up..."
Margot spent the next ten minutes gushing out her tale of woe to the guy as he attached the bar and some chains to her car and the bumper of his truck. He would ask her to hand him this and that, particularly when he was under her car, and while Margot was aware that he was taking advantage of his position and her bent posture to ogle her cleavage and probably her thong under her short, pleated skirt, she wasn't about to begrudge him a little look in return for the free assistance. Margot LOVED being ogled -- it played to her vanity. If this was all she had to do to get her car towed for free, she was all for it!
When it was done, he waved her up into the cab and they set off, slowly at first and then more and more quickly until they were actually running at the speed limit. Margot continued to prattle on, unloading detail after detail of her plight and the guy made sympathetic noises and would glance over at her when it was safe. Finally, she ran down. There was a little silence and then the guy asked, "So, where are you gonna go once we drop off the car?"
Margot quelled a sneer -- clearly, the guy was going to offer to 'put her up' at his place! Well, free looks were one thing, but she wasn't sleeping with some dusty old farmer! "Something will come up," she said confidently.
Margot never saw it coming -- the fist came out of nowhere, bashing her jaw and driving her head into the doorframe! There was an impact, a bright flash, and the lights went out...
* * * *
Ed Grover had topped the hill, headed back to the farm that had been in his family for three generations that afternoon, coming from the farmer's market at the county seat, and beheld a vision out of one of those fantasy movies -- a woman in a soaking-wet white top that showed her boobs as if it was transparent and a short skirt, her hair all wet and frizzy, leaning against the trunk of some old beater Japanese car! Ed had slowed down to take it all in and man, she was HOT! She was chunky, but in Ed's limited experience, the skinny ones were shrill and high-strung and turned rapidly into wrinkled old bags -- not to mention the fact that they were always at the doctor and you couldn't get shit out of them for work... Ed was thirty-three and his pool of available females consisted of this or that friend or relative's homely sister who hadn't been snapped up at seventeen or eighteen -- usually for good reason -- and drunken bar sluts, when he could afford to go to a bar; this woman would be a feature of his private jack-off sessions for the foreseeable future, Ed had no doubt! He slowed way down to take in the whole picture and when she smiled at him tentatively, he took the sucker-bait, hook, line, and sinker, pulling off the road and getting out of the truck to ask her if she needed help.
The woman was positively breathtaking -- and didn't have a brain in her head, apparently. The very first thing she told him was that she had no money and no place to go! Ed offered to tow her to the local garage, anyway, just to be able to see more of her -- and she accepted gratefully. She didn't seem to mind him looking at the merchandise, either -- he caught her shifting her posture so he could see how big and soft and round her boobs were. She didn't seem to realize that her nipples were poking tents in that top and her areolas -- big, brown ones -- were almost as visible through the wet fabric as if she had nothing on at all!
He got the bar he towed the tractor with out -- and he warned her that her car might take a little paint damage, but she was clearly of the same opinion as he was about how much THAT mattered. He deliberately went to more work hooking up her car than he had to, getting down on his back to hook up the chains and asking her to bring him the hooks and clevises so he could see up her skirt -- and DAMN! She had a THONG on! Ed had never seen a thong in real life and he thought his cock was going to tear a hole in his jeans! She HAD to know what he was doing, but she seemed to get off on being looked at, so he took every opportunity to make movies with his eyes that he planned to play back while jerking off, probably until the day he died!
Meanwhile, she kept gushing out the details of her sad lot like she was making confession to a priest or something. It was clear to Ed that she'd needed very little help to paint herself into a corner, living high and spending big bucks to look like a wet dream and making stupid decisions regarding money. Ed didn't have much money, but he had a decent-sized farm inherited from his folks -- and it was free and clear, no mortgage. He had a couple of charge cards for emergencies, and that was it -- he paid them off as soon as he could and had under a thousand dollars in debts hanging over him at present after the tractor transmission repair. From what she said, she was broke and had no place to go and no way to get there -- and no one but bill collectors was looking for her, but she felt obliged to hide out...
They were heading up the road toward Aiken's Garage, in Fordville, which was another good ten miles -- but the turn-off to the farm was coming up. Ed gathered himself and tried to be casual as he asked, "So, where are you gonna go once we drop off the car?" -- but hope had flared...
It might have been that little curl to her lip that did it -- but it might have been that drop of water that rolled down the inside slope of her left boob and disappeared into the dark valley between them. But when she confidently announced, "Something will come up," clearly dismissing his implied offer, something snapped in Ed. All of the crap she'd been spouting rolled through his mind and the unthinkable suddenly seemed not only possible, but easy! 'It already has!' he thought to himself -- and his gnarled fist lashed out on its own to connect with the point of her chin! The woman went, "Uuh!" as her head thunked into the doorframe and she collapsed. Ed pulled her over into his lap to check on her, but it didn't appear that her neck was broken or that she was bleeding, although she was growing a good-sized lump on the side of her head.
Ed slowed down and turned the corner onto the road that led to his farm on automatic. He was dazed and confused -- amazed that he would do such an insane thing as to kidnap this woman! 'What the fuck was I thinking?' It had been a spur of the moment thing, driven by his lust and her gentle spurning of him -- but now he'd hit her and was taking her home -- and the future was murky, but his feet were firmly on the path. He palmed one of her boobs, gently squeezed it and thought, 'If I go to Hell for this, it'll probably be worth it!'
* * * *
Thirty minutes later, he pulled into his yard, driving past the house to the barn and beyond to a spot near where he parked the tractor and other farm equipment that was conveniently out of sight of the house. 'I hope Pa is still taking his afternoon nap,' he thought. Ed's Ma had passed away unexpectedly the year before and his Pa was alive, but he'd injured his back to the point that his mobility was shot and he was a near invalid, moving around using a walker on good days and a wheelchair on bad. Ed hadn't really 'inherited' the farm -- technically, he'd become the trustee of the trust set up for it, and then the beneficiary, in order to keep the government or a nursing home from taking it. That made him the owner, and kept things from deteriorating.
Ed had never even thought about leaving the farm -- everything he'd ever done pointed him at doing what his family had been doing for generations. He got more modern with it and kept up, but it was still farming -- which he'd been introduced to when he could barely walk. The down-side of such things was the loneliness and isolation -- Ed's opportunities to collect love and comfort from a woman had petered out when he finished high school and he'd missed the boat. Now, though... he stroked the damp hair of the woman whose head lay in his lap. 'Now I have a woman -- until the police come, anyway.'
She was still out -- the door frame had amplified the effect of his shot to her jaw. Since he didn't have any plan for her, that was probably a good thing; if she slept while he dithered, maybe he would have his shit together when she woke up...
She wasn't going to be particularly grateful when she woke up -- that was for sure. That meant that he was going to have to keep her penned up like livestock. She would be a wild animal, and would likely hurt herself if she got free -- Ed was under no illusions that she might know how to handle herself on a farm, or in the woods and fields she would have to cross to get back to civilization, if she got loose. No, it was best to restrain her, like a wild filly...
He picked her up and lugged her into the barn, then went down to the end stall and arranged some hay bales for a bed for her and covered it with an old tarp. Then he got some rope and tied her wrists off to the stall corners along the wall. 'That won't be comfortable,' he thought, so he went up to the house for a couple of things.
"What's up, Ed. How did you do?" Pa asked.
"Oh, fine," Ed replied. "Got a deal on a new filly. I'm settling her in." Ed grinned to himself at that one. He went back to his room and collected a couple of pair of socks and wet a washcloth in the bathroom, then got a blanket from the hall closet.
Pa watched all this in vague confusion from the kitchen table. Some parts of it he didn't catch, but the blanket and the socks made no sense. "What are you up to, son?"
"Nothing," Ed replied. "I was just thinkin' I might want to keep an eye on her overnight until she settles in, so I'm takin' out a few things."
"Well, okay," Pa grunted, thinking, 'It's JUST a filly... Ed needs a woman -- he ain't thinkin' straight.' For the record, Pa was probably right...
Pa's nosiness led Ed to decide to rifle the woman's car for supplies rather than the house, so he took back the blanket. Pa watched this, not particularly mollified, because the socks made less sense than the blanket! Ed rubbed his neck with the washrag, which eased Pa's mind on THAT score, and headed outside.
The vet wrap was in the barn medical kit already, so he had no prying eyes around while he collected the sticky stretch bandage. He undid the woman's wrists and stuck her hands in a pair of socks, which he anchored to her forearms with the vet wrap, and then stopped...
The plan was to re-tie her wrists, but... Yeah, he had to see... Ed gently pulled the halter off Margot, exposing her upper body. "Beautiful..." he sighed. He was going to get arrested and go to jail for the rest of his life and lose everything over this, so it might as well be worth it... Unable to resist the temptation, he undid her skirt and pulled it down her thighs and off, then, after gazing at her thong for almost a minute, he revealed the tiny patch of fur she kept trimmed beneath it.
He gazed on the wonder of the woman's female parts for a full five minutes before reaching out to gently ruffle her pubes with a calloused finger. Then he rubbed his face and gave out a small sob. 'There's no stopping this,' he thought. 'I'm going to do it with her, and I'll be a rapist and a kidnapper and I'll probably get shot and killed somewhere -- but it's gonna happen, anyway...' He gathered himself in and finished with her hands, wrapping the rope binding her just firmly enough to hold, but looping it around her wrists eight times each to distribute the pressure and maintain her circulation. Then he prepared her feet the same way, celebrating them first, examining her immaculate pedicure in a way that he really hadn't thought to look at her hands. She had pretty feet, not that he was into such -- her ankles were a little thick, but everything was well-formed. He taped the socks to her lower calves and bound her feet similarly to the manner in which he'd done her hands, and tied those ropes off to the corners of the stall facing the interior of the barn. This presented her woman parts, open to his gaze between her splayed legs; it was the first thing you saw from the stall door.
That done, not trusting himself to leave her alone, Ed left the barn and rifled Margot's car, finding a pillow and sheets and blankets and numerous other items Margot had collected for her departure from her apartment. He brought the things in and worked a sheet under her and set a blanket aside for her and then went out to the well to draw a bucket of water to rinse the washrag in. The woman had been out for quite a while at this point, and Ed was beginning to worry.
Bringing the bucket back, Ed settled on a hay bale beside his captive and got it wet and began washing her face and feeling around the knot on her head. After a couple of minutes, she began to groan...
* * * *
Margot swam to consciousness with a massive headache. She opened her eyes to light that, although dim, appeared to be too bright. "Owww! God! What happened?"
"You took a lick and got a pretty good lump on your head," the guy who'd picked her up replied, "You've been out for a while. Just relax and close your eyes..." Ed didn't bother to mention the fact that he'd provided the 'lick.'
"My head is killing me!" Margot groaned and tried to reach up to rub it. "Hey! I'm tied up!"
"Yeah," Ed grunted. "I didn't want you hurting yourself or anything..."
"What? Why?" Margot was still disoriented. 'Why would I hurt myself?' Closing her eyes to slits, she examined Ed's bindings on her wrists and then... "I'm NAKED!"
"Yeah. Sorry about that."
"What?"
"Look, you're real confused right now. I'm gonna put this rag over your eyes. You just rest," Ed soothed.
"Why am I tied up?" Margot whined as Ed blotted out her sight.
"I don't want you goin' nowhere," Ed replied softly.
"B--but..." 'What is this guy up to?' Margot worried, 'I'm naked and staked out spread-eagle and I've got a lump on my head and probably a concussion...'
"Just relax," Ed soothed, running a work-roughened hand gently along her ribcage, deliberately missing her left breast, "You're safe here -- nobody will find you. Besides, you didn't have nowhere to go anyway -- you told me so yourself!"
"Oh, shit!" Margot whined. "This isn't right! You shouldn't be doing this! Now let me up and we'll say no more about it, okay?"
Ed sighed. "You're right -- this isn't right. I don't know how I'm gonna fix it, either, but I'll be thinking about it for a while and see what I can come up with. In the meantime, though, you know and I know I can't let you up, Honey. I want you to work on being reasonable, here. You wouldn't get fifty feet if I did, anyway, so just lie back and rest."
"Ogod! You're gonna rape me, aren't you? That's why I'm like this..."
"Let's not think about all that," Ed soothed. "I don't plan to hurt you -- but you could hurt yourself and I don't want that."
"Oh, SHIT! HELP! HELP! HE--ulp!" Ed shut her up with a sock in her mouth, which he held in place while he picked loose the end of some vet wrap with his teeth from a roll held in his other hand and wrapped it around her mouth a few times. Margot struggled and tried to scream and howl, but it didn't work very well. Ed sat back and watched her thrash and screech, managing to knock the washrag from its perch over her eyes, after which she watched him, her eyes fear-widened.
"Okay, now, stop," Ed said quietly, "You're getting all worked up and red in the face and you're gonna hurt yourself! Settle down!" Margot, however, was well on her way to hysteria, and sweet reason wasn't getting through, so Ed went through his options and selected reaching out to pinch her nostrils shut.
Margot was INSTANTLY in trouble, because she'd been panting like a freight train and needed that next gasp -- and it wasn't coming! She turned red and fought even harder -- which burned what little oxygen she had! Meanwhile, Ed leaned up and said, "Now stop it! Settle down! You're hurting yourself!" Margot's lungs burned and things started to get hazy; she stopped more because she couldn't go on than out of any voluntary response. When she stopped struggling, Ed released her nose and said, "Okay, now, concentrate on breathing and settle down!"
Margot did it because she had to -- breathing was top priority for a minute or so. Then she started crying hopelessly -- clearly, there was nothing she could do about all this! "That's better," Ed soothed. "The only person you could disturb by yelling would be my old Pa -- and he doesn't need that kind of excitement. Otherwise, there's nobody for probably a mile or so in any direction. Besides, I'm trying my damnedest not to hurt you! Why do you have to get all wild?"
Margot eyed him in surprise. Didn't he get it? This was kidnapping -- and if it wasn't rape yet, it was CERTAINLY assault! What universe was this guy from, anyway?
Ed watched her, pretty clear on what was going through her head. "Look, if you want to talk, I'll undo that -- but if you start yelling again, well, you're disturbing the livestock." 'And me,' he added to himself.
Margot lay there, sniffling and snorting. Ed brought up a handkerchief and wiped her nose, causing her to flinch away for a moment, not that she could duck him effectively. "Just relax. You're all worked up and nothing has happened, even." Margot's expression conveyed 'Are you nuts?' as clearly as the grunt that went with it. Ed sat there, watching her; she was beautiful, even with her hair in disarray and her makeup ruined and with tears and snot running everywhere. No, he couldn't give her up -- and he wasn't going to -- but he needed for her to settle down and get used to it...
That look on his face scared her to death! This wasn't going to end -- he wasn't going to see sense and let her go. It was as clear to her that he planned to keep her as it was to him -- but for how long? Did he have a lime pit out back or would he cut her up and feed her to the pigs when he was done with her? How long did she have?
"I can see you've got questions," Ed said calmly. "If you want, I can undo the gag -- but you have to behave yourself and keep it down. Do you want that?" Margot nodded. "All right. I can put it back anytime, you realize..."
Margot nodded. She could bide her time. Hopefully, this guy's father wasn't as demented as he was. If she could get the old man's attention, maybe he would call the cops -- and maybe not... 'One thing at a time,' Margot promised herself.
Ed peeled the vet wrap off and Margot spit the rolled sock out into his hand. It was one of hers, not one of his --- an ankle sock. Margot licked her lips to bring up some saliva so she could talk and approached the thing in as low-key a manner as she could, since the guy was handling things that way...
"You know this is nuts, right? You know it's wrong and it's gonna end badly..." she ventured.
Ed surprised her with, "Yeah, I'll probably get killed for this one way or the other, or thrown so deep in the jail that they'll have to pipe in sunshine. But I was screwed the minute I clocked you in the truck, wasn't I? Nothing I can do will fix that now. Besides, part of this is YOUR fault!"