There’s a Small Motel (F)

Ed Killian was a lonely, wandering ex-Army lieutenant, looking for something but never able to identify it.

Until now.

When he saw Angie singing in the restaurant, he was drawn.  No woman had really interested him for some time.  Memories from Korea were always poisoning his thoughts and making any sort of beautiful daydreams turn black.

Yet tonight, for the first time since he’d seen combat, he sensed something blooming inside him, like hope, or excitement, or… desire.

He’d be friendly, of course, and go introduce himself to the attractive singer when she finished her rendition of “There’s a Small Hotel.”  She fit so well with this place.  It was a cheery joint, run by a genial Irishman and his family who served G.I.s for free and provided clean entertainment.  Angie Garth had the same blithe appearance and pureness of character.  Ed couldn’t believe he hadn’t discovered this place before.  He thought he knew Laguna Beach.  But then, this was on the outskirts, and he’d been at war.

Meeting Angie had only increased his interest and attraction.  Her speech was just as bright and kind as her singing, and her crystalline blue eyes met his gaze openly.  Besides, she was slender, tall for a woman, and filled out her green-black dress in all the right places.

They had dinner together at his invitation, then took in a movie.  A little theatre was playing “Casablanca”, and since Angie was a big Bogie fan, she simply couldn’t resist.  Ed liked it too.

For some reason, during the scene when Ilsa explains her betrayal to Rick and they reconcile in an embrace, Ed’s eyes strayed to Angie’s face.  She was glued to the screen and didn’t notice.  Emotion stirred in his soul as he noticed her—what to call it?—her femaleness.  A hot flood gushed through his veins, making him want to pull her into his arms and feel her, vibrant and warm and feminine against him.  Manfully, he resisted and forced himself to watch the end of the film.

They walked out and headed for Ed’s car.  Angie stopped to thank him and give him her hand.  Just the touch of her fingers in his made him flush.  That’s when he made his proposition.

Angie at first said nothing, only gazed up piercingly into his eyes.  She was attracted to him too.  He was strapping, slim, over six-foot-three, with big shoulders and a lean waist, dark hair, keen dark eyes, and a post-shave shadow on his cheeks.  The weariness under his eyes had caught her and filled her with compassion, as had the little scars here and there on his neck.

But would she? Ed couldn’t believe he was even suggesting what he’d just suggested, and to an honorable young woman that he’d just met.  She had every right to slap his face and walk away.  Yet she didn’t.  In fact, she seemed to be studying him, studying his face, letting her eyes wander to his mouth, his chest, his hips…

And then she agreed.

Now he was here, in a little motel cabin, waiting.  The night was warm and rainy, adding an air of cozy mystery to this out-of-the-way spot.  Hardy pines, scarred by the violence of coastal wind and spray, hid the buildings almost entirely from the highway.  Only a few cabins were occupied, as evidenced by the handful of cars parked out front.  Inside the cabins were comfy, if plain.  His solitary bag sat on the dresser, his cap tossed beside it.

Then he heard a motor outside.  He strode to the window.  Yes, a little auto was pulling up beside his old gray Chrysler.  And… yes, a woman was at the wheel.  Through the misty twilight he couldn’t make out the face, but the first thing he saw was her curvaceous leg when she stepped out onto the asphalt.

It was Angie.

With a nervous swallow of the saliva drowning him, Ed went to open the door before she could knock.  For a second, both stood there as if sizing each other up.

“I came, Ed,” was the first thing she said.  The words were simple, yet her tone bespoke an indescribable trust, trust in him.  He sensed a chain suddenly binding her to him, a tie that he couldn’t explain but that he wanted to be real.

“I’m glad,” he answered with the same simplicity.  He held the door open for her and offered to take her bag.

“Thank you.”

Now that she was here, not just alone with him but in his motel room, Ed’s heart rate picked up.  What he had proposed to her seemed almost wrong.  Everything about her proclaimed goodness.  So why was she here?  He decided he had to find out.

“You don’t usually go… along with the first guy who picks you up, do you?” he asked fumblingly.

She turned to him.  “No.  I never have.”

“Then why…”

“The way you were looking at me while I was singing… I felt like you were taking my clothes off.”  It was said in a near-whisper, yet Ed’s ears received it like they would receive a gunshot.

His keen eyes roving over her helplessly, Ed stated, “A guy fresh off the killing-fields can get mighty mixed up, Miss Garth.  He wants things that… that maybe other times he wouldn’t think were right.”  A step closer and he was almost touching her.

“I know what you are.  A brave, good man who’s tired and haunted by the war,” Angie said gently.  “And he needs something… someone.”

“Miss Garth, I haven’t been around a woman in almost a year,” he confessed hoarsely.

“Won’t you call me Angie?  Please say it.  I want to hear your voice say my name.”

“Angie.”  He couldn’t keep it back.  She was so tempting in her quiet, graceful beauty.  She stood before him, her chin just below his shoulder, gazing at him with unmistakable desire.  Just her look aroused him.  “It’s selfish.  I’m selfish.  I… I want you very much.”

“Ed, I sent my husband off to war a year ago too.  I know what it’s like.  This loneliness.  This… this hunger, this need,” she confided, reaching out to softly trace her fingers across his shirt.  “It’s like a dope addict.  They have to have their fix or they go crazy.  Sometimes I wanted a man’s touch so bad I thought I’d lose my sanity.”

“I could get rough, Angie,” Ed warned her.  “War will do that to a guy.”

“I read your character when I first saw you,” she returned.  “There’s no viciousness there.”

“My word, I want to make love with you, but only… if you’re willing.”

“More than willing!”

“Oh, Angie…”

Ed caught her against him, imprisoning her lips with his mouth.  His hands were full of her, reveling in the sensation of soft, supple flesh beneath her clothes.  Her arms, her back, her hips… nothing was left untouched, unexplored.

They kissed in a fury of craving for long minutes.  Ed just about fainted when he paused once to look into her eyes.  She was so sweet, so frank and giving, ready to bless his empty, war-beaten body.  To himself, he vowed that he would give her everything he had.  A woman like this was worthy of all the pleasure in the world at the hands of the man she’d chosen.

Finally, she broke the kiss, smiling faintly as she wiped off the lipstick smearing his face.  Then she raised her eyes to his for another of those searching gazes.

He stroked back a loose wisp of her dark hair.  “Come to the bed with me,” he said quietly.

But she held back.  “No, you get undressed and comfortable.  I’ll get ready in the bathroom.”  Before he could argue, she had picked up her bag and slipped past him.

He was quick about taking his clothes off, throwing them over the back of a chair before he climbed into bed naked.  Drawing the sheet just up to his waist, he half-reclined on the pillow and waited.  A thick excited throb vibrated his heart.

The bathroom door opened, and Angie stepped out.  She’d removed her lipstick and let her hair down, and now wore a black silk robe tied around the middle.  The V-neck revealed just a shadow of the crevice between her breasts.  Ed rose on one elbow, eyes glued hungrily to her.  Her hips swung lazily, womanly, with each step.  A gentle yet piercing look lit her eyes and sent a passionate flush to her cheeks, giving her a gloriously wild appearance.  Everything about her drove Ed to desperation.  He could feel the tautness of his body.  He wanted her so badly.  Why was she taking her time?

Pausing a yard or so from the bed, she deliberately loosened the robe and opened it, letting it fall to her feet.  Underneath… she wore nothing.  Ed’s delightfully startled eyes roved over her body, drinking in the beauty of its unashamed nudity.  A surge of blood boiled in his loins.

She came up and lazily crawled next to him into bed, desire in her eyes.  Yet instead of kissing his mouth, she touched her lips softly all over his chest.  There were many tiny dark scars slashing his pectorals, and the sight filled her eyes with tears.

“Oh, baby…” Ed said hoarsely, his hand wandering to her hair.

Looking up at him, her face so close to his, she said tenderly, “I know you must’ve gone through hell.  I heard about the things done to prisoners…” and she broke off, gently running her fingers over his bare chest.  She swallowed and started fresh.  “I’ll do everything I can to make you forget it.  All of it.  Oh, Ed, I so much want to make you happy again!” Abruptly she kissed him, forcing him to suck in breath through his nose.

“I feel it already… that… that old feeling,” Ed whispered, his mouth nuzzling her jaw.  “The way I used to feel when I was… with my wife.”

“Where is she?” Angie asked softly.

“I pray she’s waiting for me,” was his reply, given in a tone so broken that Angie’s love was stirred and she pressed herself passionately into his embrace.

“Even though it’s only been a little while, I think I love you,” she confessed.

“I’m a stranger to you, and you know it,” he argued, continuing to make love with his lips and his hands.  “Angie, what if I hurt you? What if I’m so rough and inconsiderate that you can’t bear the sight of me?”

She sat up, her movement quick and firm, and proceeded to lay a warm hand over his mouth while gazing intently into his eyes.  “Stop trying to fill us both up with doubts.  I’m here because I want to be.  Because… somehow, it’s like I’ve been waiting for you.”

The emotion in Ed’s face couldn’t be described.  It’s sufficient to say that his taut jaw muscles trembled and a mist wet his eyes.  Then he tenderly, longingly pulled her down to him again and kissed her.

They were slow, drawing out the glory of loving and bathing in the passion.  Yet each felt a wildness building within, a thirst for oneness.  When Ed could no longer satisfy his hunger for her with mere kisses, and Angie beckoned him with her eyes and her scent, the heat erupted in long, deliberate lovemaking.  For a while Angie contentedly accepted Ed’s hard, heavy body as it filled her, giving him the freedom to release his bottled desires and ease his physical and emotional tension; then she took command and ravished him with her twisting hips and warm roaming hands and hot mouth, receiving pleasure while giving it.  The act morphed and swelled and simmered, nearing that delicious brink, again and again, only to throttle back and stoke the flame for another exciting burst.

Neither noticed that outside it had grown dark, or that rain had begun to spatter against the windows.  In that little motel room there were rarely words, only sighs, and groans, and gasps, accompanied by the creak of the bed.  The bedcovers were askew and tumbling to the floor, revealing their sweating bareness.  Yet nothing could keep them from their goal.  Desperate and drunk in their united need, they clung closer, loved more fiercely, moved as one body.  And the wrenching delight soon poured forth.  It drowned them, so completely and so marvelously that they wished to know the feeling a million times over.

At last, they were still.  Ed was on his back, one hand under his head.  Angie lay partly straddling him, her smooth leg over his hairy bronzed thigh, and her fingers aimlessly caressing his chest and belly.  For several minutes after the great climax, they still spoke no words.  Ed only nuzzled her hair now and then, breathing deeply of its fresh natural fragrance.

Then Angie raised her head and met his eyes with a look of adoration brimming in hers.

“I love you,” she whispered.

His expression would be hard to describe.  All the words of love ever invented by man overflowed his heart and clearly burned in his eyes.

“I love you,” he answered, a little brokenly.  “I can’t thank God enough for giving me a wife like you.  You’ve waited for me all these months, and then you… you give all of yourself to me when it must feel like I’m a stranger.”

“Oh Ed, that’s what marriage is!” Angie explained.  “Loving each other so much that no matter what happens, I only want you and you only want me.”  She touched his lips.  “Though I have to admit… I wondered if you’d think I wasn’t…”

“What?”

She hesitated, a shy blush tinging her cheeks.  “As good as I was before.”

Lifting himself on his elbow, he laid her down on the pillow so he was gazing right into her eyes.  “You were grand,” he averred, the wander of his gaze to her mouth and breasts reinforcing the conviction of his words.

A bit of a smile curved her lips.  “Was it fun? Playing that we weren’t married?”

He touched her face, then stroked down her arm.  “Made it pretty raw.  But I liked it.  Did you?”

She nodded contentedly.  “So much that I want Lieutenant Ed Killian to meet me in this motel again sometime, and do to his wife what he did to Angie Garth.”

His neck muscles flexed with desire and he lowered his head to kiss her.  “You’ve got a deal.”