No way she could learn to drive this car with his voice and his body making her want to push and rub against the bulge in his lap, so it was good she’d studied internet how-to videos on manual transmissions. It was better that he’d backed into the garage months ago.
He stroked one hand along her thigh. “Clutch, left foot.”
His thumb crossed the seam of her jeans, and she dropped a hand to her lap, but he intercepted her.
“Said hold.” He returned her palm to the wheel. “Listen up.”
The interior had felt spacious, but now it shrank as she focused on the row of houses across the street and tried to remember the video.
Forget the video, she had to remember to breathe. This early in the morning he smelled fresh from his shower. She wanted to wiggle around and bury her nose in his neck, especially now that she caught a rising hint of the musk of his body heat.
“Gas and brake.” His other hand spread on her right thigh, and she felt the need to tighten and lift her hips, but there was nothing to press against. “This foot.”
“The same as…same as my car?” She knew the answer, but she needed to speak, as if it would be a release valve for the tension in her chest.
“Push clutch.”
She did. She hadn’t noticed him insert the key and turn the ignition, but the car purred under her, its vibrations rocking them closer to each other. Her core moaned for her to abandonthis lesson and turn and rub her body, especially her breasts, against his chest, but his left hand squeezed her thigh.
“Then shift.” His right hand covered hers on the stick and pushed and moved in a zigzag pattern. “First,” he whispered in her ear, and her imagination tacked on the wordbaseand zipped right back to flipping over and kissing him.
“Gas.” He revved in his throat and squeezed her right leg, so she pushed the pedal without considering the amount of force, and one of the dashboard arrows whizzed up. “Lift clutch.” He raised his left hand but pushed her right leg harder. “Andgo!”
She raised her left foot, and they bounced forward. Five feet. The force of the stop whipped her chin down and up, and the Perfect Ten choked and died.
“First stall.” He laughed in her ear. “I lived.”
“Barely.” When her heartbeat slowed enough to permit speech, she said, “I’m not sure this is the most effective teaching method.”
“But it’s fun.” And then he finally kissed her neck.
Chapter 16
Kentucky – Illinois Border
By the time theyreached Paducah, fourth gear felt natural enough that Grace wanted music. “If your historically accurate dashboard isn’t compatible with my digital music, what do you listen to when you drive?”
“Radio.”
“Seriously?” The chrome dials were gorgeous, but she doubted their usefulness.
“’Fraid so.”
“Then your mission is to find stations for the next two thousand miles.”
“May-beee,” he warbled.
“You cannot imagine how deeply I regret forgetting to disable that alarm.”
So they both laughed like people who’d spent the morning parked in a garage kissing, not like respectable thirty-year-olds, while she realized the road trip was dissolving the boundaries she usually set on her behavior.
Iowa
The Kansas City radiostations had blurred to static the next day as they cruised across the line into Iowa.
“Behind on your job,” she told Rey. Over hundreds of miles of greatest hits and pop stations, he’d proved he could sing. She joined him to finish out the fading bars of the ABBA song. Somehow, laughing, her foot depressed on the gas more than she’d intended and they surged up the wide middle lane.
Colored lights filled her rearview mirror.
