Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted Read Free Page B

could help her up. He glanced at it and ignored it, putting his eyes to the slatted window that afforded him a view of the fair beyond. They’d missed the view from the apex.
    Mick could feel the last of his cum drying in his underwear like concrete. It always hurt to clean that off later, but it was worth it. After a moment of waiting, Mandy sat up on her own and fumbled to fasten her own bra. It took her a minute, and Mick wondered idly why they didn’t make them fasten in fucking front.
    “Ohhh,” Mick said, like a man who’d just let a huge burden off. He had, really. He put his arms up and folded his hands behind his head, and watched Mandy fumble back into her underpants and shorts out of the corner of his eye while he sat like a fucking king who’d just gotten crowned. “Damn, that was good.”
    Mandy was looking at him; he could see that from the little he was watching her. Looking at him like she was a dog he’d kicked, not sure if she should come around him again. “Was it?”
    “It was,” Mick said, nodding. He could feel his sweaty, tangled hair against his hands, and the faint aroma of her pussy was still on his fingers, he could smell it all the way around the back of his head. The whole Ferris wheel car smelled a little like sex, and Mick fucking loved it. There was nothing like these moments after the urge was relieved. If he could have taken a nap right now, he would have and loved it.
    “Was I …” Mandy’s voice was small, “was I … good?”
    “Hell, no,” Mick said, almost laughing, “you were terrible. You just lay there, like a dead body or something. That ain’t sexy.”
    Now he looked at her full on, and that innocence, it was all damned gone and replaced by a stricken look that turned to horror in the eyes that had been so sweet before. “I … I …”
    “Don’t worry about it,” he said breezily as the car clicked down to the last position between seven and eight o’clock on the wheel. “It’s not like I needed you to be amazing or anything.” He thought about petting her on her tousled hair but didn’t want to move his hands from cushioning the back of his head against the metal car wall. “Still, learn to move, baby. Get into it so you’re not so boring for the next guy.”
    “Next guy?” Her lip quivered with her voice.
    He shrugged. He could say something fiercely mean and utterly truthful to that, but what was the point now? He’d got his rocks off, she’d let him use her to expand his mind, and it was all good for him. She was sitting there with her pants halfway pulled up, little trail of blood and other ooze working its way down her inner thigh. He stared, thinking about how he’d like to do that again but knowing he couldn’t because even if she’d wanted to—and he was under no illusions she would—he was leaving town in just hours.
    “I thought you … felt something for me,” Mandy said quietly. It was all hurt from her, like she’d got shattered by what he’d said and did. Mick could pick up on it; hell, a deaf and blind man could have picked up on it from this distance.
    “I did,” Mick said with a laugh, “and it was called a raging hard-on.” He waggled his crotch at her from where he sat. “Thanks for helping me take care of it.”
    The Ferris wheel started to move that last time, ratcheting down to the six o’clock starting point. Full circle. She started to speak again, but the sound of Richie unlatching the door from outside stopped her, and she turned her head like a rabbit toward its hunter as the door opened.
    “Hope you had a good ride,” Richie said with a knowing smile. Mick knew if Mandy had been a little older and a little wiser, she’d have figured out it was all a big setup. “Everybody out.”
    She wasn’t that old, though, and she wasn’t that wise, though she was getting there now, Mick knew. She looked crushed as he stood up and hopped out of the car. His feet hit the solid ground, the subtle rocking motion he