FFMM Foursome.
Two days later, Mick still hasn't returned from Port Hedland.
I find out from a static-crackled call. New lease. Better terms. A fresh start somewhere the red dirt doesn't get into everything, into your lungs, into your bones.
He'll be back tomorrow to load what we can salvage.
The Desert Edge Hotel will close its doors for good.
End of the month. Last day of the lease.
No fuckin decent reception since they took out the phone tower yesterday.
Janna and I stand in the empty bar, the morning sun cutting through the dust motes. The beer taps are dry.
I ran the last of the Carlton Draught yesterday, pouring foamy dregs for the final mining tick-off the town team made before they packed their Utes and headed south.
Now the handles hang loose and useless, metal mouths gaping at nothing.
"We should pack the glasses," Janna says, her voice pitched low in the hollow space.
I nod, pushing my sleeves to my elbows out of habit. The bar rag hangs limp from my belt, useless now.
No spills to wipe. No rings to polish from the worn wooden counter.
The glassware waits in shelves behind the bar, rows of pint glasses and wine stems and the heavy tumblers we use for spirits.
I pull down a stack, wrapping each in newspaper as dry as the town itself.
Janna works beside me, her movements efficient and sure. We've done this before after functions, after wakes, after the mine's farewell party.
Damn good night. Plenty of cock to spare.
But this is different. This is final.
"Remember when your mum caught us stealing rum?" Janna asks, her lips twitching. "Made us polish every glass in the place."
"Twice," I say, and something loosens in my chest. "Said thieves needed to understand the value of what they took."
"She was hard on you."
"She was fair."
I wrap another glass, the paper crackling. "Taught me this place isn't just wood and bottles. It's..."
I gesture at the empty room, the stacked chairs, the generator outside that still hums its mechanical song.
"It's holding on. Even when there's nothing left to hold."
Janna stops wrapping. Her dark eyes find mine, and I see the same weight there, the same fear of becoming untethered. We've been each other's anchors so long I don't know how to float alone.
"We'll figure it out," she says, but her voice cracks on the last word.
"Crap, they'll bulldoze the place next week."
I reach for her hand, and she lets me take it. Our fingers twine together, newspaper rustling between our palms.
The door opens.
Four officers in uniform, their boots heavy on the floorboards. The lead one—older, grey threading his temples—scans the room with practised efficiency. His badge catches the light: Police, the kangaroo emblem worn smooth at the edges.
"Checking the town's empty," he says, not quite a question.
"Council and Mine Authority orders. Final sweep. Everyone out by tomorrow."
"It bloody is," I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intend.
"Fuel depot pumped dry yesterday. We're the last ones."
The younger officer behind him—a woman with her hair pulled severe—makes notes on a tablet. The other two fan out, checking the cool room, the toilets, the spaces where people might hide. As if anyone would hide here. As if there's anything left to stay for.
"Desert Edge Hotel," the lead officer reads from his clipboard.
"Licensee Michael Brennan. You the manager?"
"Barmaid," I say. "Josie. This is Janna. We're packing for the move."
He nods, making his own notes. "Any residents unaccounted for? Anyone refusing evacuation?"
"Just us," Janna says, and there's something in her tone that makes the officer look up. A challenge, maybe. Or an invitation.
"And we're not refusing. Just... gonna be the last out."
The female officer emerges from the cool room, shaking her head.
"Clear."
The others return, similar confirmations. The lead officer studies us for a long moment, two women in a dead bar, hands still clasped together amid newspaper and glassware. I wonder what he sees.
Partners? Friends? Something less nameable?
"Twenty-four hours," he says finally. "Then the power gets cut. Water too. Don't be here when it happens."
They file out, boots tracking more mud, the door swinging shut behind them. The generator hums on, oblivious.
Janna's hand tightens in mine. I feel her pulse through her wrist, rapid and insistent.
"Ghost town," she whispers. "Before it even is."
I should keep wrapping glasses. I should call Mick, confirm arrangements, do something practical and necessary. But Janna's looking at me with that expression, the one from the pool, the one that says she's about to break something and wants me to break it with her.
"Janna—"
She steps closer. Her free hand finds my hip, thumb pressing into the worn denim.
"One last time, Josie. Before it's just memory. Before we're somewhere else, someone else."
"There's no one left."
But I'm already scanning the room, my body knowing before my mind catches up.
"There's us." She releases my hand, but only to move toward the door.
She throws the bolt, the metal sliding home with a finality that echoes.
"And there's them."
She gestures toward the window. Through the dust-streaked glass, I see two figures approaching from the road.
Jack and Joey Williams, their work clothes still dusty from whatever contract they're fulfilling today, their bodies moving with that loose-limbed confidence of men who've learned to take up space.
They must have seen the police vehicle leave.
Must have known the town was officially, finally empty.
Jack pushes through the door first, his tattooed shoulder catching the light. Joey follows, and I notice he's wearing the same singlet from the pool, thin cotton clinging to the muscle beneath.
They stop when they see the bolt thrown, the empty bar, Janna standing in the centre of it like she's holding court in a ruin.
"Thought we saw the last of you at the pool," Jack says, but his eyes are moving over us both, cataloguing the dishevel, the flushed skin, the way we stand too close.
"Thought you were rounding up strays," Janna counters, and her voice drops half an octave, honey and gravel.
"Town's empty," Joey says, and he sounds almost wondering.
"Officially. We were heading out tomorrow."
"So were we." I step forward, my hand finding Janna's again, our fingers slotting together like they belong there.
"One last night. No rules. No future. Just..."
"Just now," Janna finishes.
The air shifts. Jack's jaw tightens, muscle jumping beneath the skin. Joey's hand rises to his belt, not adjusting, just touching, a nervous gesture that betrays his calm.
"You two," Jack says slowly, "are trouble."
"You're just figuring that out?" Janna's laugh is low and dirty, the sound she makes when she's about to do something reckless.
She releases my hand, but only to cross to Jack, to press her palm flat against his chest where his heart hammers beneath scarred skin.
"We were trouble at eighteen. We're dynamite now."
She rises on her toes, her mouth finding his, and I watch him break.
Watch his hands come up to grip her hips, fingers digging into denim, pulling her against him with a force that makes her gasp into his mouth.
Joey's looking at me. Has been looking, I realise, since he walked through the door. His eyes trace the line of my throat, the sweat gathering at my collarbone, the way my breath has gone shallow.
"Josie," he says, and it is half question, half promise.
I go to him. It's that simple, that inevitable. My hands find his singlet, pulling it up and over his head, revealing the work-hardened body beneath. He lets me, arms rising, and when the fabric clears, I press my mouth to his shoulder, taste salt and dust and something uniquely him.
Behind me, I hear fabric tearing. Janna's tank top giving way to Jack's impatient hands. The sound makes me reckless, makes me push Joey back against the bar, my fingers finding his belt buckle, the metal warm from his body heat.
"Here?" he asks, but he's already helping me, working the leather free, the button of his jeans popping under our combined pressure.
"Everywhere," I answer, and I mean it.
This bar has been my whole life. Every significant moment—my first legal drink, my mother's wake, every ordinary Thursday that blurred into the next—has happened within these walls.
If I'm leaving, I'm leaving my mark. We're leaving our marks.
Janna guides Jack to the worn wooden counter, the same counter I've polished ten thousand times. She hitches herself up, denim shorts sliding down her thighs, and Jack steps between her knees, his jeans already low on his hips.
She arches back, her spine curving against the wood, and I see the moment he enters her from the way her mouth opens, the sound that escapes her that isn't quite words.
Joey turns me, his hands at my waist, lifting me to sit beside her. My shorts are loose, easy to push aside, and his fingers find me first, testing, finding me wet and ready from nothing more than the look in his eyes.
"Fuck," he breathes, and I feel the word against my ear.
"Yes," I tell him. "That's the idea."
There we are, two chicks, two besties, screwed side by side on bar stools.
He pushes into me in one long stroke, filling me, and my head falls back against the mirror behind the bar. I see us reflected there, four bodies moving in the dusty light, and the image is so obscene, so perfect, that I laugh, the sound breaking into a moan as Joey thrusts again.
Janna's hand finds mine on the counter, our fingers intertwining as we're both fucked, our grips tightening with each impact. I turn my head to find her watching me, her dark eyes glazed, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
Our eyes glaze and roll together. Legs spread high. A competition to see who can be spread-eagled the most.
Fuck, the guys are in us deep. We can see each other getting one hell of a decent shagging.
"More," she says, and I don't know if she's talking to me or Jack or the universe itself.
Jack understands. He pulls back, still hard, glistening with her, and turns her roughly. She goes willingly, bending over the counter, her cheek pressed to the wood where so many drinkers have rested their weary heads. He enters her again from behind, and the angle makes her cry out, makes her hand clutch mine with desperate strength.
I'm dogged too. Side by side, heads over the counter. Cocks slapping into our arse cheeks. Our sweet pussies pummelled together.
Joey matches his brother's rhythm, his hips snapping against mine, the sound of skin on skin filling the empty bar.
Janna has to turn back, and I follow.
"Muss our arses big boys," she instructs.
A tongue dives into my arse. Another shovels into my besties' puckered starfish.
Spit globs glaze our doughnut holes. Our sweet tushies are rimmed.
A finger follows. I hear it pop in and out of her starfish.
Two fingers are gaping my back door.
Janna moans. I moan.
"Oof"
"Hnnghh"
Her arse gets pecker. My arse gets pecker too.
Two buttholes ram raided in sync.
Two meat swords ferreting deep. Burrowing like fucking wombats.
"Both. She wants both."
Hell, did I just say that!
He stills inside my arse, and I feel him pulse, feel his arousal spike at the suggestion.
"You sure?"
"Ask her."
He doesn't need to. Jack has already slowed, reading his brother's hesitation, the energy shift.
Janna lifts her head, her hair wild, her eyes fierce.
"Do it," she says. "Both of you. I want to feel full. I want to feel everything before there's nothing left to feel."
Jack's hands spread her cheeks, and she pushes back against him, shameless, demanding. He spits in his palm, works the moisture against her, and she whimpers, the sound going straight to my core.
Joey pulls out of me slowly, leaving me empty and aching.
He moves to stand beside his brother, and I watch them position her,
Jack at her cunt, Joey at her ass, the two of them working in tandem like they've done this before, like they were made for this moment.
"Josie," Janna gasps, and her hand reaches back, searching.
I'm there. I press against her side, my hand finding hers, my other hand sliding beneath her to touch where Jack enters her, to feel the stretch of her around him.
She's so wet, so open, and I spread my fingers to make room for Joey, to guide him in, to feel them both push into her at once.
The sound she makes is inhuman.
"Ooff! Sheezz! Fuck! Uhh! Uhh!"
A cry torn from somewhere primal, somewhere beyond language.
Her body trembles between them, impaled, stuffed full, and I keep my hand there, feeling the friction of their cocks moving inside her, separated by nothing but thin membrane.
Everything fuckin moves. Two thrusting peckers. The ring of her arse. The swaying sheath of her pussy lips.
"Fuck," Joey grunts, his jaw clenched, his whole-body rigid with control.
"She's so fucking tight. I can feel you, Jack. I can feel you moving."
"Likewise, brother." Jack's voice is strained, his hips working shallow thrusts, careful not to hurt her.
"She's taking it. She's taking it all."
Janna's hand in mine is crushing, bones grinding, and I welcome the ache.
I press my mouth to her shoulder, taste the salt of her sweat, whisper nonsense against her skin.
"I've got you. I've got you. Let go, Janna. Peak for me."
She does. Her orgasm crashes through her as the bulldozers will through this pub next week.
I feel it in the spasms around my fingers, in the way her whole body locks and releases, in the scream that tears from her throat and echoes off the empty shelves.
Her eyes glaze.
But the bitch gasps out, "Fill that tart too."
And I'm assailed. Double dipped just like that.
If I thought about it, maybe I'd hesitate.
"Hnggh! Ooff! Oh, My God! Yes! Yes! Mmm, mmm! Aahh!"
The sweetest ache. The tightest smarting. The wince. The second of discomfort. The euphoric double clutch. My tooshie expanding. My pussy stretched. Pleasure everywhere. Pleasure growing. Inescapable pleasure in the double thrust, the double pull.
The guy's strain to contain their loads.
Jack first, his hips stuttering, his head falling back with a groan that sounds like surrender.
My pussy is creamed.
Joey seconds later, buried to his balls in my ass, his whole-body shuddering as he empties himself in me.
Cum leaks from my back door. Jizz seeps from my fanny.
We all sit naked at the bar. Janna pours shots.
Hell, we sit on the veranda nuddy, sculling shots.
We race up and down the main street in our birthday suits under the stars.
I take Janna's hand.
Jack takes mine.
Joey takes Janna's.
We'll remember this town and each other long after the desert reclaims it.