Getting to Me

The room was hot; much hotter than it should be, considering that it was only the middle of November and the temperatures outside were at lease subzero, if not colder. Steam clung to Mandy’s window as if it were a hand delicately placed there, and her sheets were twisted on the bed around two groaning bodies.

“You’re so beautiful,” his voice panted into her ear, his breath heating her skin and sending cold shivers down her spine as she arched her back off of the mattress to press herself flush against his smooth, muscled chest. Her hands snaked underneath of his tattooed arms and grabbed his shoulders, her short nails digging in to his pale skin as he made another thrust of his hips, filling her to capacity and making her moan softly in response.

He hadn’t called her hot, and he hadn’t called her sexy. He had called her beautiful. It was a word that meant more than the other two combined; one that made her heart melt even with the cold weather, and it made her body ache with need. She turned her head to the side as he softly kissed her sweat-dampened skin, his tongue tracing whimsical patterns into her tanned skin as he continued moving slowly and deeply.

“Oh, God,” she panted as he reached a place inside of her that she hadn’t even known could be touched, sending shocks from the tips of her toes to the very last dark brown hair on the top of her head, making fireworks explode from behind her eyes as she gasped again as her walls clenched tightly around him.

“Say my name, Mandy,” he requested into her other ear, not stopping his movements as he kissed his way down her throat and then back up her jaw to her lips, taking her bottom lip in between his own and sucking on its plumpness for a few moments before letting it go. Her hands held tightly to his body as he continued moving in slow motions.

“Zacky,” she whispered, the word filled with so many emotions that she hadn’t yet given voice to as he grunted in response to his name falling off of her lips. She opened her doe-brown eyes to meet his green gaze, her mouth parted as she looked at his expressions.

“Say it again,” he asked her softly, kissing the side of her face as he shifted slightly to reach new places inside of her. She squeezed her eyes shut as the pleasure that he was giving her became almost too much for her body to handle as she fulfilled his request yet again.

“Zacky,” she moaned again, moving so that her lips were pressed against the green bat with skulls that was tattooed onto his chest. “Zacky, you’re…Oh, God, do that again,” she squealed as his movements became sloppier. His response was yet another buck of his hips as he slammed in and out of her now, his hands moving to hold her hips in place as he began making deeper strokes.

“Fuck, Mandy,” he breathed. “Mandy…Mandy…”

“Mandy, wake up,” Brian whispered to his sister, shaking her arm roughly and wincing as she moaned and writhed around on her bed, clutching tightly to her sheets. He knew what his sister was dreaming about, even if he didn’t know the details—which he had no desire to know.

“Zacky,” she groaned in her sleep, causing him to jump back a few feet from her bed before his eyes narrowed, turning his gaze out of her door before he looked back at his sleeping sister. She was dreaming about his best friend? What in the hell had happened between the two of them while he wasn’t watching?!

“Mandy, come on, wake up already! I don’t need to hear your wet dreams!” He exclaimed loudly as he shook her again. When that didn’t work for the second time, he rolled his eyes, becoming more irritated than anything. He knew that he could leave her to carry on her sick little dream in peace, but there were two reasons why he couldn’t do that.

The first reason being that their father had told him to wake her up so that she could go to Dickinson with him to pick up a new colt. That reason paled in comparison to his other reason, however. The second reason was that she was having a wet dream about his best friend! And that was wrong on so many levels that Brian wasn’t even sure if there was a level for it. He tugged on the blankets, trying to get them off of her body and smirking satisfactorily when she fell off of the bed with a thump, following the blankets as he pulled them away from her. Her moans stopped, and her eyes cracked open as she glared up at her older brother.

“What the hell, Brian?” She growled at him, pulling the blankets back from him and moving so that she was sitting on her bed, rubbing the spot on her head that she’d hit when she’d fallen off of the mattress.

“First of all, don’t look at me like that,” he rolled his eyes. “Dad wants you to get dressed. You’re going to pick up that new horse today. And second of all…what in the hell were you saying Zacky’s name for?”

Mandy thought about it, and then blushed when Brian’s words reminded her of the dream he’d just woken her up from. The blush deepened when she realized that she must have been muttering in her sleep while having the dream, and then she groaned before glaring up at him. “Nothing’s going on, alright? It’s just a dream, Brian.”

“About my best friend!” He roared. “That’s…That’s so…I don’t even know what it is, Mandy, but it’s wrong.”

“Well if you hadn’t sat in my room the entire time watching me sleep, you wouldn’t have had to hear it,” she snipped at him. “And if you even think about telling him about it, I swear to God I’ll feed your balls to the hog.”

“Why in the hell would I tell him?” Brian retorted, glaring at his sister. “I’m a guy, I know exactly what he’d think if I told him. And there’s no way I’ll fucking let that happen. You’re my little sister!”

“I’m nineteen!”

“You’re still littler than me, therefore you are my little sister!” Brian retorted. “And as such, there is a rule stating that neither you nor Zacky are allowed to have those kinds of relations. It’d be like incest.”

“Grow up, Brian,” Mandy rolled her eyes as she stood up and shoved her older brother towards the door. “And get the hell out of my bedroom so that I can get dressed.”

-x-

“So, what do you think?” Brian Sr. asked Mandy as they leaned against the metal fencing that held the feisty colt that he was picking up. Mandy studied the animal for a few more minutes. He was a dark bay color, and his dark brown color would most likely turn him into a black bay when he got older. His legs were strong and lean, his hooves filed smooth with no cracks, signaling that he’d been well-taken care of for his eight months of life. There was a white blaze across his long nose, and his big brown eyes seemed curious as he pranced around the corral that contained him.

“I think he’ll be a good addition to the stock,” she nodded, smiling at the horse. This was something she’d always enjoyed doing with her father, spending time with him and bonding over horses.

“Alrighty then,” he nodded over at the current owner of the horse, who moved into the corral to attach a lead rope to the young horse’s halter to lead him over to the Haner’s horse trailer to load him up. They watched in silence for several minutes while the horse was loaded before they started walking over to the truck. Her father paid the man in cash, and then they drove out of the yard, making their way towards the interstate to begin their drive home.

“So, you and Zacky have been getting kind of close, haven’t you?” He asked her in a conversational tone as they drove along the highway, no cars on either side of the interstate as they crossed out of Dickinson. Mandy looked over at her father. How had he noticed that she and Zacky were hanging out? It wasn’t as if it was a big deal, was it? The conversation from the day before at the grocery store with Kasey came back to her mind, and she blushed as she looked at the floorboards of the truck.

“He’s just a friend, Dad,” she tried to convince him, the soft sound of the old time country music crooning out of the speakers the only sound in the cab of the truck for several minutes before her father laughed, shaking his head.

“Nah, there’s more to it than that, Mandy,” he sighed softly, his brown eyes smiling as he turned to her, a grin on his face. “And so you don’t get worried about it later on when you’re willing to admit it, I’m alright with the two of you.”

“Dad, there’s nothing going on! You and Kasey seem to have this weird idea in your heads that we’re…interested…in one another or something, but we’re just friends,” she sighed at her father, pushing a hand back through her hair and rolling her eyes. She knew that she was overreacting by just a little bit, but she didn’t want to admit to her father or to anyone else that she might possibly have started having a crush on a boy that was older than her by at least six years; a boy that was more of a man than he was a boy. And to top it all off, he was one of Brian’s best friends. Somehow, that entire mixture didn’t seem to sit well with her stomach, no matter what her emotional side was telling her.

“I’m just saying,” her father said in a defensive tone. “He’s a good guy, Mandy. He’s smart. He knows how to treat a woman. That boy’s got respect, and he’s earned mine.”

Mandy didn’t say anything else to her father as he kept his eyes on the iced-over concrete highway in front of him, her own gaze directed out of the passenger seat window, watching the Badlands pass by them as he drove. Strangely enough, she wasn’t thinking of the scenery, or of the horse that was in the trailer as she normally did when she went on these trips with her father.

She was thinking of Zacky.

-x-

The rest of the night was uneventful. Once they got back to the ranch, Mandy and her father bedded the colt in the horse barn in one of the unused stalls before going about feeding the other horses. Brian Sr. then went to check the cattle in some of the pastures that were further away from the ranch, leaving Mandy in the barn by herself. She didn’t want to go back into the house just yet, not wanting to deal with her older brother. She doubted that he’d gotten over the dream she’d had this morning, and she didn’t’ want to put up with his yelling at her about something she wasn’t able to control.

And then there was the fact that she didn’t want to face Zacky yet, either. She was still thinking about the dream, even if it was only subconsciously. She could have sworn that it was reality rather than fantasy; in the dream, she’d felt his callused hands on her skin; she’d felt his pierced lips burning across her flesh as he left a trail of kisses all along her body. And she’d definitely felt everything he was doing to her down below.

“Isn’t it a bit cold to be out here by yourself?”

Mandy’s head jerked up at the sound of Zacky’s voice, and she blushed as she stood up off of the frozen ground, dusting off her bottom as he walked over to him. His face looked as if he were deep in thought about something, and for a moment, she wanted to ask what it was that he was thinking about. She refrained from voicing her question, however, and instead stood there, a small smile on her face.

“You get used to the cold,” she shrugged. He let out a small chuckle that made her stomach do somersaults, and she blushed when she felt the butterflies fluttering against the cage of her ribs, making her feel almost itchy. Zacky smiled as he reached up to push some hair out of her eyes. The action proved to be too much for Mandy to handle at the moment, and she let out a small squeak as she tried to move around him to get around him so that she could head to the house. Being in the horse barn alone with him was definitely not good for her current frame of mind, and she gave him a confused look as he reached his arm out to block her from leaving.

“Zacky, what are you doing?” Mandy whispered as Zacky blocked her way from leaving the horse barn. Over the past few weeks of his staying at the ranch, they had gotten a lot closer, and had flirted on more than one occasion. She recalled the time that she’d leaned up to peck his cheek goodnight in the hallway the second week he’d lived with her, and her cheeks flushed red despite the warmth of the horse barn at the memory. Zacky saw her flush and smiled as he reached up to carefully push some of her dark brown hair out of her face.

“Something that I’ve wanted to do for about a week,” he answered her. Mandy didn’t know how to react to his words, and gasped as he lowered his face so that his lips were only centimeters away from her own. Before she could say anything else, he pushed his lips onto hers, melting them together as he gingerly grabbed her narrow shoulders with his hands, stopping her from hitting the ground of the barn as her knees gave out.

The kiss was something that Mandy had never felt before. She’d kissed Roy, and she’d kissed other boys before that, but this kiss was something in a completely different realm. It was something from another world. It seemed as if fate had been the one to push Zacky into kissing her almost; as if their lips were meant for one another. She sighed against his mouth as he broke away lightly for air, sucking her bottom lip into his mouth softly before letting her go, smirking down at her. His normally jade-green eyes seemed darker, the hazel around his irises standing out more as he put his hand on her cheek, rubbing his thumb over her skin lightly.

“Hey, Mandy, the horses need—” McKenna’s voice called from the other end of the barn, stopping when she saw Zacky and Mandy standing so close to one another. “Never mind, I’ll just tell you later.”

Mandy blushed red and looked at the ground, embarrassed to have been caught kissing Zacky by her little sister. He saw that she was embarrassed and chuckled lightly as he put his fingers on the bottom of her defined chin, lifting her face up to look at him. Her eyes widened when she saw the flashes of emotion passing over his smooth face—it wasn’t just lust she saw there, as it had always been with Roy and the other boys. No, Zacky’s face was showing something almost love-like. Something deeper than just wanting a sexual relationship.

“What…was that?” She asked carefully, smiling as he tilted his head to the side at her words. He shrugged after a moment before reaching down to grab her hand with his. He didn’t care anymore if Brian knew how he felt about Mandy. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he felt for Mandy.

“It was a kiss,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. Mandy rolled her eyes at his easy answer before reaching up and pushing some of his own bangs out of his eyes.

“I meant…Well, you know what I meant,” she giggled. He sighed, stopping walking as he looked down at her, trying to figure out the right way to say it. How did he put into words the feelings he was starting to feel? He wasn’t sure there really was a way to say it. He didn’t know if it was love; he had never loved anyone in a romantic way before. But it was a helluva lot more than anything he’d ever felt for other girls. Finally, the right phrase came to him.

“You’re getting to me,” was all he said as he let go of her hand and gave her a smile, turning around to walk out of the barn, leaving Mandy speechless, her mind reeling with thoughts of what had just happened as she reached her finger up to touch her lips softly.