His fingers grazed mine as he handed it over, and my heart beat a little faster. He looked around for a second, as if hearing the noise, but then turned away and walked back to the picnic table.
I sighed, watching him go, wondering if things were ever going to be somewhat normal between us.
His sweatshirt was warm on my skin when I slipped it on over my head. The scent of his body lingered on the material. In secret, I turned my head away, burying my nose into the cotton neckline. It’s scary how obsessed I was becoming with this man. And I wasn’t sure if I was all that bothered by the prospect. It wasn’t like I wanted Niyol as a boyfriend. But there was no denying I wanted to explore his body a little more. I’d only ever had sex with Landon. And though it got better, I’d never really felt passion with the man like I was pretty sure I was supposed to. Perhaps his cheating had been a blessing in a sexual disguise.
Regardless, it wasn’t a wise decision to think about Niyol the way I was, mostly because we were two very different people, heading in two very different directions—both physically and metaphorically. Niyol was running from something, while I was simply taking a break.
Under my breath, I laughed, then walked to the picnic table, quickly readying my food before I sat beside him. Our thighs brushed together. And regardless of what I knew was right, I couldn’t find it in me to move. Niyol didn’t either, other than to eat some food himself. In fact, the longer we sat that way, eating in silence, the more relaxed I became—as did he, it seemed.
One and a half hot dogs in and hallelujah bells chimed in my stomach. Unable to hold back, I moaned when the last greasy bite slid down my throat. Niyol cleared his throat, drawing my gaze back to him.
His eyes narrowed as he spoke. “Be careful there.” He nodded to my now bare plate. “You might just bite into your arm.”
Grinning, I licked the dribble of ketchup off the corner of my mouth. His eyes zeroed in on the movement, and I immediately lost my smile. Everything this man did was sexual, and I was beginning to think he’d been planted in my life just to test my resistance. What I needed to do was move past Landon, be my own person, not lust after some bad dude. Even though one night with said bad dude would most definitely be worth it on the libido front. Niyol wasn’t all sweet innocence himself. And those super, not-so-secret, sexy stares he gave me were like tiny orgasmic explosions just waiting to happen.
“Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll be okay on my own.” I stood from my seat and brushed the mud off my jeans the best that I could.
He scowled down at the fire but didn’t respond. I knew he had to be tired, especially since he’d been the one to do all the major work today. In fact, the more I thought about things, the worse I felt. Shoving the duties onto him this afternoon and going to sleep like I had wasn’t one of my finer moments. Plus, our little argument, and what had happened between us, still weighed heavily on me.
Niyol never did answer, so I looked up at the dark sky, savoring the warmth as the fire filled the air.
The night was sticky and humid, yeah, but there was something soothing about the heat of a campfire, in hot or cold temperatures. The stars and moon were at their brightest tonight. And though my aversion to nature and the outdoors had always kept me in hotels and resorts in the past, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been missing something all those years by never going with my brothers and Dad. This was incredibly peaceful, fear of wild animals or not.
My thoughts jumped to Landon for some reason again. He always took me to fancy hotels and the finest of restaurants, never one for outdoorsy stuff either. If anything, Landon was more of a princess than I was. That thought made me smirk. It was easier to think of him as a wuss than it was to think of him as any sort of royalty.
Two days before I found him with that woman last spring, we’d just had blueprints drawn up for a house—the one he was having built so we could move in together after the wedding. Over and over, I’d told him I didn’t need to have fancy things, that his apartment was fine, but Landon was loaded—a trust-fund baby. There wasn’t anything that he couldn’t buy, except for me, of course.
I liked simplicity. I liked things uncomplicated. From life events, to the type of house I thought he and I were going to be raising our children in.
Sitting there now, eating hot dogs in the middle of the night next to an ex-con, of all people, I’d never felt more at ease. More simplistic, though I knew things were anything but. And the best part of it all? There was no more terrible longing in my gut. Not a single burn of unease in my throat when I swallowed. I wasn’t sure if I was losing my mind, or if it was just the processed foods messing with my head. Either way, I liked feeling completely content. And I liked it even more that I could do it without having Landon with me.
Smiling to myself, I leaned back and patted my stomach, then wiggled my back against the edge of the table to scratch another itch. A shower would be on the agenda soon, but the night sky was so beautiful that I wasn’t quite ready to stop looking at it. The Colorado stars truly burned brighter than any others I’d seen.
“What time should we leave in the morning?” I asked.
When Niyol didn’t answer me again, I turned to him.
His jaw flexed as he stared at the fire. Did the flames mesmerize him like they did me? I touched his arm to get his attention and he jumped a little, only to move and grab a bag of marshmallows at his left.
“Early.”
Face unreadable, he drew up two sticks from the ground and handed me one.
“Thank you,” I whispered as I grabbed it. Following his lead, I rummaged through the bag of marshmallows with my other hand. Both of us put three on the ends of our sticks. “I’ve never done this before.” I grinned, weirdly giddy at the prospect.
“What, roast marshmallows? How could you not have?” His eyebrows rose. “Even I’ve done it.”
We stood and leaned over the fire.
“Guess it’s just another thing to knock off the ole bucket list.” I nudged him with my elbow.
A bigger frown covered his lips at my words, while secrets found homes behind his eyes once more. I wanted to ask him what was upsetting him this time, even though I kind of already knew. It was me and him, together. What happened between us, most of all.
When the silence got to be too much, once the marshmallows were consumed, I found myself making a terrible decision. One that would forever haunt me.
I just didn’t know it at the time.
“Let’s play a game.” I sat on a log that served as a seat next to the fire. Once the marshmallow gunk was wiped off my fingertips, I inched as close to the flames as I could without getting scorched. Even though it was mid-July, the weather warm, I couldn’t get close enough to it.
“What kind of game are we talking?” To my surprise, he took a seat on the ground next to me.
“How about Never Have I Ever?”
“Isn’t that a drinking game?”
“Yup. But we’ll improvise.” I shimmied in place. Mostly to try and ease the itches on my back.
“And how will we do that?” he asked.
I considered my answer, thinking of all the different ways we could do this, until an idea popped into my head.
“Okay, so, see this?” I held up my marshmallow stick. With the end, I traced a line in the dirt in front of us. One side labeled N, the other S.
Niyol leaned over, eyeing my work. “Yep.”
“You know how the game works, right? One of us asks a question and if you’ve done it, you have to take a shot, or whatever.” He nodded, eyes drawn together in concentration as I continued. “Since we don’t have either a shot glass or alcohol, then I’ll mark a tally in the dirt under the correct initial instead when you haven’t done it. In the end, whoever has the least tally marks will win.”
“And what’ll the winner get?” he asked, dark brows bunched together.
“Hmm…” I tapped my chin with my finger. “How about we get to ask one major favor of the loser?
”
“Anything?”
My stomach dipped when our stares collided. The firelight reflected in his eyes, made him look beyond tempting. Maybe I should have disregarded the stakes altogether. Or figured out some other game that might not cause me to possibly wind up as his sex slave—not that he wanted me to be his sex slave. But I’d have done anything to know the person behind those dark-brown eyes of his, and this was the quickest way of doing so. Which was exactly why I said what I did.
“Yes. Anything.”
More silence followed, other than the echo of insects. His elbow grazed my thigh, and I looked the other way again, not wanting him to see how one simple touch of his skin against mine turned me into a puddle of mush.
I swallowed, then looked back at him once more—he was just that magnetic. His hair covered his forehead like always, his eyes barely visible through the strands. The stubble he’d been sporting yesterday was already thickening. I broke my gaze away once more and refocused on the dirt. My hand shook as I brought the stick to my lap and he cleared his throat, likely sensing the tension.
“Okay,” he began as I twisted my hands around the wood. “Never have I ever flown in an airplane.”
I stayed still, while Niyol marked a line. “You’ve never ridden in an airplane?” I asked.
“Nope. My turn. Never have I ever kissed a dude before.”
“Duh,” I huffed out. “Okay. Never have I ever read a book for pleasure.” I stayed still, because reading had always been a pastime of mine, but he didn’t move either, surprising me. So, I added in a clause. “A book that wasn’t required reading for school.”
Still, he didn’t mark a tally.
I frowned. “What have you read, exactly?”
“Does it matter?” he grumbled, instantly defensive.
My eyes narrowed, the word yes was on the tip of my tongue. But the challenging glare he gave me back wasn’t worth the fight.
“I spent three months in solitary. Books were all I had.” He dropped his chin to his chest causing his hair to drape over his cheeks and eyes even more.
“Why were you in solitary confinement?” I asked.
“People run their mouth behind bars, and I’ve got a temper. Beat the shit out of another guy who called me some names.”
“Do Emily and Lisa know?”
He shook his head. “No point in upsetting them if it’s already in the past.”
The silence between us grew stagnant after that, the air pressing tightly inside my lungs. I struggled to breathe. Niyol was so young when he was put in jail—just barely a man. Yet he’d been through so much. With his own father, what the man did to him, most of all.
Without thought, I reached for his hand. No matter how many times I told myself to leave him be, I couldn’t help but touch him in some way or another.
“Hey. You don’t have to talk about it anymore. It was stupid of me to even ask. I’m not even sure why I did. Sometimes I just talk and don’t know what I’m saying and before I figure it out, the questions are already out, and regrets are made and I… I’m rambling.” I bit down on my thumbnail, looking between his stick and the fire.
“You’re good.” Two seconds passed, then five, then fifteen… something flipped at twenty, and the soft mood he’d shown me briefly was eradicated. He pulled his hand away and said, “But I’m done with these sissy questions.”
He stood; tall, proud, angry.
I blinked quickly, trying to shrug it off. “We can stop playing. It’s just some stupid game.” I swallowed hard, looking away.
“You scared, Princess?” Energy radiated off him like barbed wire with an electric charge. He reached into his back pocket, grabbed his ratty blue hat, and shoved it on backward over his mop of hair. That’s when he turned to me and said, “Because I’d really like to make this game a little more interesting if you don’t mind…”
Crap. Now I was scared.
Fifteen
Niyol
“Never have I ever jerked a dude off.”
Not that I was surprised, but she didn’t reach over to put a fucking tally under her stupid box like me.
Her eyes no longer lingered on mine the way they had when she’d first woken up though—like all she could ever see was me. Thank fuck for that, because one of us had to get our shit together and it sure as hell wasn’t looking to be me.
Summer was getting to me, pushing me off track with her sweet blue eyes, pretty lips, and soft personality. And I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was.
When she was asleep earlier, I’d sat on the picnic table for a long time, trying to figure out how to tell her that I was sorry for being a dick this morning, but at the same time, I needed her to know that what happened between us was still a mistake. More so on my end than hers. I should’ve told her no, stopped her, it wasn’t right of me to want it, when she and I weren’t meant to be nothing more than two people who shared a car and a week together. But the man in me couldn’t say no. Fucker that I was, Summer’s mouth around my cock was the most beautiful thing I’d ever witnessed in my life.
Still, no matter how many ways I spun the excuse around, about her and I keeping our distance, I couldn’t let myself agree. Not when all I wanted was to figure out a way to make it happen again.
“It’s my turn now so—”
“I get five in a row. That’s how I wanna play.”
She scoffed. “That’s not how this works.”
“And I’m not one to follow the rules, don’t you know that by now?” I looked at her and winked.
“You’re being… mean.”
I laughed.
Mean? I don’t remember the last time someone called me mean, if ever. Arrogant, fucker, dipshit, douchebag, those were more the norms.
Ignoring her, I kept at it with the game. “Never have I ever given a blowjob.” I leaned forward, marking another tally, knowing damn well what her answer was. If being an ass, or as she put it mean, meant keeping her at a distance, then so be it.
Chicken-shit move for a chicken-shit guy. Apparently, I was more like Pops than I’d hoped.
“I’m not answering that when you damn well know the answer.” She stood and shook her head. “I don’t understand this. I’m trying so hard to get along with you. But it’s like, the harder I try, the more of a jerk you become.” She tossed her stick into the fire, stomping on our initials.
Apparently, the game was over. But if she were forfeiting, I won by default.
Why the hell, though, did winning make me feel like shit?
“I’m going to the bathroom to shower, and you… Just go to bed. Maybe a little sleep will help you become less of a jerk.” She grabbed the flashlight off the table and took off toward the Rover.
I stood to follow, forgetting the stakes of the game. Asshole or not, I would never let her go shower alone in the middle of the night when any random dipshit could be out there waiting to pounce.
“You’re not going anywhere without me.” I snaked an arm out in front of her.
“Yes. I am.” She put a hand on her hip, challenging me with a smirk.
When all I did was stare at her, she huffed and went to get her bag from the Rover.
I pulled the hat off my head and dragged my fingers through my hair, trying to get it together. Calm the fuck down.
“If you’re gonna shower, I’m coming, too.”
“Fine. Whatever,” she fired back, her voice now muffled inside the trunk.
Wordlessly, I dug through my duffle on the picnic table, first needing to find my knife, then my smokes. After a few minutes, I came up empty in the cigarette department. I took a step back, looked under the tables, around the campfire, but found nothing. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t had one since I got up this morning.
“Summer,” I said as I spun around. “Have you seen my cigar…” I blinked. Summer was gone. “Damn it, woman.” She’d gone on ahead without me.
It wasn’t even two minutes later that a loud scream sounded from the o
ther side of the road. I could see the lights from the bathrooms, the open door, too. I took off across the road, jumping through some low-slung bushes to get there faster. I drew my knife from my boot, ready to defend, to kill whoever or whatever the fuck was out there. An unseen threat, a pissed-off RD who wanted revenge for my dad, or even an animal looking for his latest meal. The thoughts spurred me through the woods even faster, my hands shaking as I gripped the handle of my knife against my thigh even tighter.
God, if something happened to her…
Heart in my throat, I raced through the first layer of brush and trees even faster, then I bolted through the bathroom doors, only to stop short at what I saw. Summer was curled in a ball on the floor, wearing nothing but my sweatshirt. Her wide blue eyes were filled with tears and the second she saw me, she began to sob harder.
“Are you hurt?” I dropped to the floor beside her and pulled her to my chest. When all she could do was gasp, I said, “Talk to me, Summer. Please.”
“Th-there was something in here. An animal. He was big, h-had four legs…” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I scared him away when I screamed, but I don’t know if he’s gone.”
“Hey, shhh, he’s gone. I promise. You’re okay.” I took a deep breath and let it go, thankful that was all it was.
I tucked my knife into my boot before I grabbed her hand and helped her stand. She was shaking so bad she didn’t notice I had it. Not sure what she’d say or do if she knew I carried the weapon, but now wasn’t the time to think about it. I reached around her body to yank her dirty jeans off the floor.
Her whole body trembled now as I helped wrap a towel around her waist. Against my chest she laid her head and squeezed the back of my shirt. “I’m sorry.”
Her Wild Ride: An addictive, steamy biker MC romance suspense novel Page 11