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“This isn’t a game show. I don’t play around with sex.” She felt really strange having a conversation with him while he was on top of her, but though she rested her hands on his sides she didn’t put any pressure on him, didn’t try to push him off. Considering everything she’d just said about sex, feeling him lying heavy and warm on top of her was a guilty pleasure, one she had no intention of letting him know she felt. What made her pleasure even more guilty was the fact that he had an erection. She wanted to spread her legs, let him nestle it against her, but wouldn’t that be using him the way she didn’t want him to use her? Or was it just part of sex, the taking and giving of pleasure? At the moment she was too distracted to decide.
“Good, because I’m not playing, either.” He settled more heavily onto her, moving his legs in a subtle, or maybe not so subtle, adjustment that widened her thighs just a little, letting his erection push further between her legs, nudging hard against her clitoris. “My deal is this: If I can make you come while we’re fucking,
no hands or mouths allowed—though I gotta say, to me the important part is coming, not how you get there—then we have our fling for as long as you’re here. Who knows? In this economy, that could be months. I don’t know if my bank would okay a loan for the amount you’re asking.”
She drew her head back as far as she was able, which wasn’t very far considering she was lying on her back, and stared at him in disbelief. “You’re using the economy and a bank loan to try to talk me into having sex with you?” She was actually talking, carrying on a conversation, and she had no idea how because almost all of her attention was focused on the pressure he was putting between her legs. Her heart was literally pounding away; he had to feel it against him, because her rib cage was rattling from the force of the beats.
“You’ve ignored or rejected everything else.”
“Dare, we’ve had one kiss! One! What gives you the idea that I’m anywhere near taking a risk like that, even if I were the risk-taking type, which I’m not?”
“That one kiss,” he replied, and kissed her again, but this time the kiss was light and soft, cajoling instead of demanding, tender instead of intense. Angie tried to hold herself distant from it, to not respond—for about two whole seconds. Then the utter sweetness of the kiss, the temptation of it, completely swamped her willpower.
She felt the same way she did when she really, really wanted chocolate ice cream but told herself no, then opened the freezer door and there it was, right in front of her, and she grabbed the carton out and in three seconds flat was eating the ice cream as if it were a gazelle and she a starving lioness. Like that. She wanted him like that. The fierceness of the way she felt took her by surprise, because she’d never really lusted after anyone before. She’d had teenage crushes, and she’d thought, would have sworn, that she’d loved Todd, but she’d never before felt this ache to touch and be touched.
Then he was releasing her and sitting up, and she stared at him in bewilderment, trying to get her pounding heart under control, trying not to reach her arms out for him. She literally ached between her legs, and deep inside, an ache that made all her inner muscles clench, made her nipples feel pinched.
“I’m not going to push,” he said. “Not too hard, anyway. You can trust me in that, at least.”
“Of course I trust you,” she immediately replied, then felt troubled by her own answer, not only because it was the truth, but because he had so closely mirrored what she’d been thinking just a moment before.
“In some ways, yeah, but that isn’t what this is about, is it?”
He was far too astute for her comfort, but then she’d opened herself up to him more than she ever had to anyone else. She’d told him the most embarrassing stuff about herself, and anyone with half a brain could read between the lines to find all the things and places where she had the most doubt, where she was the least confident. “Do you want to know what I think this is about? I think it’s about you being horny, and nothing more complicated than that. You’re horny, and I’m conveniently here—for now. Regardless of anything else, I’m leaving in the not-too-distant future. We don’t have a future, and I’m not interested in temporary.”
“You don’t have to leave,” he snapped back.
“To make a living, yeah, I do.”
“Ah, hell. I wasn’t going to throw this at you so soon, but—”
Suspicion made the bottom drop out of her stomach, and she sat bolt upright, her gaze narrowed. “Throw what at me?”
Clearly annoyed at her tone, he said, “Nothing horrible. Shit, you’d think I’d just suggested robbing a bank. It’s something for you to think about, is all.”
Still wary, she said, “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Let’s get something to eat, first, and have another cup of coffee.”
He was stalling. The realization worried her, because Dare was about as blunt as a person could be and not get locked up. But it wasn’t as if they weren’t going to be there all day, with plenty of time to talk. While she wasn’t really hungry, another cup of coffee would be welcome.
His stockpile of food from the locker included instant oatmeal, breakfast cereal bars, trail mix, jerky, and the instant soup and stew mixes, as well as a few individually wrapped muffins. She chose cinnamon-flavored oatmeal, then brooded over the bowl while she ate, wondering what he had up his sleeve. He’d said she didn’t have to leave, but she had to make a living, and it wasn’t as if their little community in the back of beyond was seething with job opportunities.
“Before we talk, I want to get some clothes on,” she said when she was finished with her oatmeal. She cradled the warm cup of coffee in her hands, relishing the comfort of hot food in her stomach and coffee to drink even if she did have other things on her mind. One thing she did know: Even though she knew it was completely psychological, she’d feel better if she was fully dressed when they had this serious discussion. Sitting around wearing his thermal underwear bottoms and one of his flannel shirts was comfortable, but she didn’t feel capable of handling a lot. She also wanted to brush her teeth again. For some reason, good grooming felt essential.
He shrugged; maybe he was glad of more time to marshal his argument, whatever it was. After collecting their trash and drinking his third cup of coffee, he stepped outside the sleep area and drew the privacy curtain closed. “While you’re changing, I’ll rinse the mud out of your other clothes and hang them up to dry. You might need them when we start walking out of here.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She listened to him go down the ladder, heard the sounds from below as he donned his slicker, then the sound of the door opening and closing. Hurriedly she stripped, she used a couple of wet wipes to freshen up, and brushed her teeth. She’d love to brush her hair, but a hairbrush was one thing she hadn’t stuffed into her saddlebags, so she settled for briskly massaging her scalp with her fingertips, then raking her fingers through her hair.
Dare came back in, presumably with the bucket he’d set out again to catch more rainwater. With the sound of rain on the roof, she could barely hear the sloshing of water as he rinsed out her sweats.
Putting on underwear and her own shirt felt fantastic. Her bra was nowhere in sight, but what the heck, she didn’t really need one anyway. She didn’t have enough to jiggle; mostly her bra was to keep the imprint of her nipples from showing through. Working her jeans on was a chore. She couldn’t flex her right foot enough to point her toes and work her foot through the opening of the pant leg, so she carefully bunched the fabric and worked it up and over her swollen ankle.
When she fastened her jeans, she realized they felt loose in the waist. She’d lost some weight, probably when her body was burning calories like crazy trying to stave off hypothermia, not to mention the effort she’d been putting out. Dare would have lost weight, too, from carrying her for miles, and from his own body fighting to stay warm.
That horrible night seemed unreal now, as if she were thinking about a movie she’d seen instead of something that had actually happened to her. The contrast between then and now, when she was tucked inside this snug little cabin, her world narrowed down to this mattress on the floor in a partitioned area maybe two feet wider than the mattress itself, to just herself and Dare, was so great her mind seemed to have let go of “then” so it could completely hold on to “now.” Her subconscious had dealt with it by dreaming about it, and now that she was awake the reality seemed even further removed.
