Redemption For Two (3 page)

“I told you,” she said. “Nobody wears stockings, Mickey.”

“Don’t make such a big deal about it,” he said. “You look fine. Sexy, too.”

She gave him an uncertain little grin. “I got the flowers,” she said. “It was sweet of you, honey, but we can’t afford that kind of thing.”

He shrugged it off, and said, “I hope you liked them.”

“Of course, I did, Mickey, but...”

“Let it ride, Sandy.”

They went past the rest rooms and out onto the narrow board walk. Half a dozen people were on the beach, and Mickey went around to the tables and picked one with shade. It was the warm side of almost cool enough to get out of the weather, and the ocean smelled of rain and drying seaweed.

“How’s life in the big city?” He meant work.

Sandy shrugged, chewing a bite of sandwich and looking out at the glittering ocean. “I had to work up two castings this morning,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to Mr. Davidson, but he didn’t come.”

Mr. Davidson, my ass, Mickey thought. And yeah, Mr. Davidson
did
come this morning, or cum at least. But he wasn’t going to be doing it again anytime soon.

Linus Davidson’s part-time retirement work was making plaster casts of people’s teeth from the impressions Dr. Benson took. Their orthodontic appliances would be designed around the cast, and then put on the real teeth. They weren’t plaster anymore, but the idea was the same as it had always been. It was a job that Sandy had done for two years in the office before things got so busy the doctor decided on an outside vendor. She was better at it than Davidson.

“You ought to do those things for a living,” he said. “You’ve got a flair for it. Dr. Barker always said so.”

“Linus has the market pretty well sewn up,” she said.

“Raise your hemline. You’ll blow him out of the water.”

“Mini-skirts don’t cut much ice in the lab,” she said dryly. She glanced at him but looked away quickly. She said, “What’s up with you, Mickey?”

He took a drink from the water bottle and passed it over to her, watching the movement in her throat when she swallowed. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Last night. This morning. You’ve been acting...”

Mickey chuckled.

“You mean the sex?”

“And the, um...” She motioned to her lap, meaning the stockings. “Well, you know. It’s been a long time since you asked me to wear...”

“Maybe that’s part of the problem with us,” he said, like he’d just thought of it. “Is it a problem, me asking you to...?” He shrugged. “You know, asking you to do something new for a change?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Is it?”

“Are you wearing that g-string?”

“Yes,” she said, and blushed for some reason.

Mickey enjoyed looking at Sandy. She was tall, only two inches shorter than his six feet, and she had a sort of grace to her, an unconscious elegance. She moved well, and there was that leggy stride with the handsome roll of hips that drew the male eye like nothing else. Something about her that just shouted woman in all the right ways. Sandy didn’t see it, herself. She thought she was plain and maybe not too bad if she fixed up a bit. She was wrong. She was beautiful all the time, and just flat-out spectacular with make-up and her hair done.

“You don’t like it?” He meant the g-string.

“It’s not very comfortable for everyday wear,” she said.

He grinned. “Okay, take it off.”

“I don’t have anything else...” Her voice trailed off and she cut her eyes around toward him. “Oh, no. I’m not going without, Mickey.”

“Sure you are,” he said, wondering if she would.

“You are such a bastard,” she said. She’d said the same thing to Linus Davidson ten hours earlier.

“Most bastards don’t love you like I do,” Mickey said. “Be good you remembered that, Sandy, unless maybe you don’t care about it like you used to.”

She gave him a blank look. “What are you
talking
about, Mickey? Of course, I care about it. I’m your wife, remember?”

“And you love me, right?”

“Jeez,” she sighed.

“Right?”

“Yes, I love you, damn it. What do you think?”

“I think take the g-string off,” he said. “And I think I’d like to bend you over this table here and fuck your brains out.”

She laughed, startled, and said, “What would the neighbors think?” Meaning the six or eight people who could see them.

“In the bathroom, then,” he said, getting up. “Come on.”

“We
can’t
,” she said, giving him the desperate little no, no, no expression.

“Up, Sandy.”

Just as he held out his hand, a fat woman in a black bikini walked by and went into the ladies. She ignored them, but the lock clicked behind her. Mickey pulled Sandy to her feet and took her around the building to the men’s. It was empty.

“You’re crazy,” Sandy whispered.

“In here,” he said, and locked them into a stall and kissed her. He unzipped her dress in back and ran his hands over her skin, feeling the tautness of her bra across her back. She pressed herself against him, breathing hard through her nose. When the kiss broke she hugged him and giggled.

“Oh, my God. How nasty can you get, Mickey?”

“You have no idea,” he said, and tugged at her dress.

“No,” she whispered desperately. “No! Mickey, please.”

He ignored her shock at his behavior and worked the dress off her arms, and then reached back around her ribs and unhooked the bra so that her breasts slid out underneath bare and pale and beautiful. She had bruises on the left side that Mickey hadn’t put there. He cupped them in his hands, caressing her, and she groaned and when he kissed her again, her mouth was open and wet and wanting.

Mickey thought about taking the dress off her completely, but hiked the skirt up instead, and tugged the g-string down. Sandy hooked her thumbs in the elastic bands and wriggled her hips to get it over her thighs. He bent to pick it up and stuck it in his pocket, and while he was down there, kissed Sandy’s crotch, using his tongue to get her labia wet.

Instead of kissing her again when he stood up, he turned her in place and put his hands on her shoulders, bending her forward. She reached for the plumbing pipes to brace herself and made that warm, muffled little yelp of welcome and need that she made for Linus and then three times for Mickey and now again, all in one day. He pressed into her, not easing back and forth but just sliding into her the hard way. She squealed and covered her mouth with one hand to stop the noise. Mickey slapped her behind sharply and started to move his hips.

He loved the feel of the garter belt and the way it framed her soft ass and the pinkness from hitting her. Sandy had to brace her hands against the wall as he pummeled her and yipped when his hand came down not playfully, but hard. He knew how hard to spank her. He knew she liked it if he was playful and that she liked it a good bit harder as things went along. This time he didn’t bother. He started hard and went harder, and she was making a lot of noise before he finished.

Mickey loved that she came, and that made him do it, too, right afterwards. Sandy turned in place when he finished and sat on the toilet to clean herself up. Mickey looked down at her for a moment and pressed his hips forward.

“Clean me, too,” he said. She reached for more tissue but he gave her a look. “No,” he said. “Do it with your mouth.”

“You’re such a baby,” she said, not unkindly, and took his cock in her mouth and sucked him gently for a moment and then sat back. “There, all better?”

Chapter Four

Outside, another beach goer stood off to one side and gave them a look. Mickey grinned at him and Sandy blushed furiously. The guy had obviously heard, and been waiting for them to finish. He gave Sandy a sort of wistful look and went into the bathroom as they walked away. Sandy covered her face with her hands, mortified, but laughing anyway. When they got to her car, she asked for the g-string.

“It isn’t much,” she said. “But it’s all I have.”

“Nope,” Mickey said.

“I am
not
going to work without underpants!”

“Sure you are,” he said, smiling.

“Come on, baby, this isn’t funny anymore.”

“Deal with it, Sandy. No g-string today and no panties tomorrow.”

“You’re impossible,” she said, miffed and showing it. “What do you want me to do, beg?”

“I want you to get in the damned car.” He’d been about an inch away from giving in to her, and changed his mind on the spot. “Come on, it’s nearly one. You don’t want to be late for work.”

“I told you,” she said in a controlled voice. “I’m not going to work without...”

“Okay, play hooky, then. Call in sick this afternoon, and we’ll go swimming up at Juno Beach. Maybe pick up a six-pack on the way. I brought your bathing suit, so you don’t even have
that
as an excuse.”

“I can’t...”

“Will you just stop telling me what you can’t do, for once?”

She took a breath. “This job is all we’ve got,” she said.

That was the ultimate reasoning, throwing the responsibility back into his lap. If he made her lose the job, then they’d have nothing. That was the inference, and the accusation. Mickey felt the knot of muscle forming in his belly. Nothing like a little guilt trip to ice the cake.

Sandy’s expression said very clearly that she had made her point, and the conversation was over. She started the car and drove away with a quick little flip of her hand as good-bye. Mickey watched her go, thinking that she hadn’t won shit. He still had the silly leather thong in his pocket, the thing she had refused to wear in the first place, and then dug her heels in to recover.

“Got’cha, sweetie,” he said with no little satisfaction.

Midday was no time to fish the beach, and it was too early to go home. He went back out to the table where they had eaten lunch and balled the paper wrappers up and put them in the trash. He wondered what to do for a minute and then got back on the bike and went over to the metal shop where he had worked for three years before the big layoffs.

“You could spend a couple of hours straightening out the yard,” Donnie Ponz said in his laconic way. Ponz owned the place. He was talking about the lay down areas where he stored metal and scrap.

“Fifty bucks,” Mickey said.

“Your ass, fifty,” Ponz said with his sour laugh. “Nine bucks an hour for labor, sport, cash in hand. Best I can offer.”

Mickey wished he had the baseball bat, but said that would be fine. Ponz flapped one hand toward the yard, and said, “You know where the forklift is.”

It was the first time in two months that Mickey had sweated, and he liked the feeling. Shifting steel and balks of timber around was scut work, and he was no laborer. He was a fabricator. No one had asked him to do anything else and he grumbled in his head about it, squinting behind his sunglasses out there in the sun. He thought about it, realizing that he hadn’t asked to do anything else, either. Maybe that hadn’t been too bright, after all.

The job took three hours and a little bit, and in the old days, Mickey would have made seventy-five bucks in that time. Ponz made him shift a couple of more things and then gave him a crinkled twenty and a five and two ones from his own pocket.

“What’s up with you, Mickey? You always figured this kinda shit was too good for you, didn’t you?”

“Not doing it for me,” Mickey said, straightening the money and folding it carefully into his pocket.

Ponz grunted, hearing that. “You still got your CDL?”

Mickey has had a commercial driving license since he was seventeen. “I got it,” he said. “Not doing me much good these days, though.”

“You want to do a delivery down to Miami for me on Friday?”

“Same pay, Donnie?”

Ponz shrugged. “Nah, we can beat that, Mick. I can’t pay the going rate, but I can kick it up some. How about fifteen an hour for the trip? Be five hours or maybe six by the time you unload down there and get back.”

“Sounds like a hundred bucks, cash money.”

“Yeah, you fucking gold brick, it does,” Ponz said, laughing. “Be here at seven.”

Mickey knew it was a cheat. Ponz would send him down for a hundred bucks, but whoever it was in the shop who
didn’t
spend all day in Miami traffic in a rattle trap truck would be working in the shop, so Ponz made more money paying Mickey out of petty cash and keeping his boy’s nose to the grindstone. So be it. A hundred bucks was a hundred bucks.

While he was getting on the bike, Darrel Jones waved him over and he put the side stand back down and went to see what he wanted. Jones had always been a good guy back when they worked together.

“Hey, Mick, you fuck head,” Darrel said with a grin.

“How’z it?” Mickey asked.

“You still diving?”

Mickey shrugged. “I got the gear, that’s about all I can say.”

“You want to pull some props for me?”

“Sure.”

“Three boats,” Darrel said. “One here in Riviera Beach, two out on the island.”

The island meant the island of Palm Beach proper, where the big yachts lay. Pulling propellers for cleaning and repair was one of Darrel’s side jobs. Clean a few bottoms, wire brush the running gear on people’s yachts, change anodes. And pull dinged propellers, take them in for repair, and then put them back on. It saved the owners having to haul their boats.

“How much?” Mickey asked.

“Twenty-five apiece.” He grinned at the look on Mickey’s face. “Hey, don’t blame me, pal. The economy is in the fucking tank.”

“Why you asking me, Darrel?”

Jones shrugged. “Saw you doing the side job out there for Ponz. Thought if you’re doing that, you might be up for something else. Man’s got to make a living, right?”

“You’re killing me,” Mickey said. “Twenty-five bucks. What kind of shit is that? You get ten dollars per inch of diameter for prop work.”

“Going rate,” Jones said with a shrug.

“Twins or singles?”

“All three of them are twins. That’s a buck fifty to you.”

“You’re gonna pull, what, fifteen hundred on those three jobs, and you want to give me a hundred and a half? You think I’m stupid?”

“A pair of twenty inchers, and a pair of twenty-threes,” Jones said. “The Palm Beach one has thirty-twos.”