Drive

by Stephanie Fournet

  She could hear the gentle tide of his breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the masculine perfection of his feet and toes. His hair was still damp from his shower, and Rainey would have sworn that she could smell his sandalwood soap scent and the clean dampness of his hair from six feet away.

  Unbidden, she remembered his hand on the small of her back the night of their first kiss. The way he’d pressed it there, the span of it claiming her, and the way he used it to draw her into him.

  She thought of their very long day. It seemed like weeks ago that she’d called him in distress upon hearing back from Ray Charles’s mother. How quickly he’d proposed a solution to her problem, one that he could deliver on. He’d come to her rescue. Again. And he’d brought a first-aid kit with him, she thought, smiling. He was right. He was so full of surprises.

  She glanced over him out of the corner of her eye. And found Jacques looking at her.

  Rainey quickly pulled her eyes back to the TV, her pulse kicking into a faster rhythm, her smile unstoppable.

  “Rainey.” He spoke her name like a command.

  She looked back. “Yeah?”

  A smile played on his lips. “What were you smiling at?” he asked.

  She felt her brows lift, and she reached for the nearest camouflage. “It’s a funny show,” she said, pointing to the TV with her crochet hook.

  The look in his eyes changed a fraction, and Rainey knew he didn’t believe her. Still, he didn’t challenge her or call her bluff, but his eyes held hers with piercing focus. Holding his gaze was too hard. She had to look away.

  “Rainey.”

  She looked back, and Jacques pushed himself up on the bed beside hers and turned to face her, his elbows on his knees.

  “What?” she asked, her throat suddenly dry.

  The commanding note in his voice remained, and a matching look held her captive, but then a shade of vulnerability passed over them. “Could I… Would you let me come over there with you?” he asked, nodding to her bed. “I won’t try anything. I just want to be close to you.”

  She felt his words move through her chest and land in her heart. It beat with a sudden strength. The thought of saying no never crossed her mind, but it was near impossible to say anything at all.

  “Y—” she tried, but her throat was stuck together. She swallowed, her eyes never leaving his. “—yes, of course.”

  And just like that, he was off the bed and moving to hers. Rainey had time only to toss her yarn and hook off the side of the bed and scoot to give him room. For an instant, she pictured him peeling back the covers and slipping in with her — a thought that made her heart race and her breath stall — but he simply stretched out on top of the bedspread, tucked his left arm behind her shoulders and pulled her against him.

  Jacques looked down into her eyes. They were close enough to kiss now. The distance between their lips could be easily closed. And Rainey knew she couldn’t stop him if he did. Not because she was powerless, but because she didn’t want to.

  But he didn’t kiss her.

  Instead, he held her gaze. “Is this alright?” he whispered, tightening his hold just a fraction. His embrace had tipped her onto her side, and her head rested on his shoulder. The length of their bodies pressed against each other so that even with the blankets between them, Rainey could feel his heat and pressure and solid presence.

  She couldn’t imagine opiates felt any better.

  He let go a sigh, and his body sunk a little deeper in the bed, taking hers with him, so it was necessary to lay her hand on his chest to keep herself in place. At least, that was what she told herself. Through the thin cotton of his white T-shirt, she could feel the strong beat of his heart. It was a steady cadence under her palm, not the runaway horse that sped inside her own chest.

  She should have said something. Friends didn’t lie together like this. But for all the life that stirred in each of her cells, Rainey couldn’t even answer his question.

  Chapter 21

  “All I ever wanted… All I ever needed… Is here in my arms.” Rainey’s Depeche Mode lyrics echoed in his head.

  Even as Jacques held Rainey against him, he couldn’t quite believe she’d allowed him this close. He wanted to kiss her. How he wanted to kiss her! He could kiss her for days. He’d spend tonight on the cupid’s bow of her top lip. Tomorrow would be for the ripe fruit of her bottom lip. Then Tuesday and Wednesday would belong to her tongue.

  It would probably take a year to cover her body.

  But if he let himself think like that, even the blankets that lay between them wouldn’t be enough to hide his imaginings. She’d let him hold her. It felt amazing, and it needed to be enough. He also needed to stick to his word. Jacques wanted at least to press a kiss to her forehead, but he didn’t trust himself to move in any closer. Instead he gave her another little squeeze and turned his eyes from hers back to the TV as though the antacid commercial was the most riveting thing he’d ever seen.

  Her hand lay on his chest, and, every now and then, one of her fingers would come alive and brush against him. Just a fraction. But those subtle touches felt like the shifting of the earth.

  She lay in the curve of his arm, and his hand rested on her elbow. The fourth time one of her fingertips stroked his chest, Jacques let the tip of his middle finger move an inch over her inner arm and back. Maybe her touch wasn’t intentional. Maybe it was just unconscious. But it felt so damn good, Jacques didn’t want to miss returning it.

  “Friends don’t really snuggle like this, do they,” she whispered, not taking her eyes from the TV, and not pulling away from him. Rainey didn’t say it like a question, but there was a question in her words nonetheless.

  Jacques considered before answering. Saying no might prompt her to stop. Saying yes, at least in his experience, would be a colossal lie. He’d never lain on a bed with a girl in his arms whom he’d called merely a friend.

  And Rainey was no exception.

  But, of course, she was exceptional. In her beauty. In her solitude. In the way she believed in him. Even in the way she fit in the crook of his arm like she was made for it.

  “We can do this,” he said, answering her question the only way he knew how. It was an answer made for the moment and an answer made for the future.

  She lifted her eyes to his then. “You mean we can do this within the boundaries of friendship?”

  He nodded slowly. “We can do this whenever we want.” And that was true. As far as he was concerned, they could live like this. It might drive him to madness with desire, but he definitely didn’t want to go without this.

  She hadn’t taken her eyes from him, and he saw something at their edges warm and soften with a kind of sadness, yet she wore a hint of a smile. “This feels really good,” she murmured.

  The urge to roll on top of her grappled with him, but he smothered it, instead nodding again and stroking her elbow in affirmation. “Yeah, it does,” he whispered.

  She turned her face into the curve where his neck met his shoulder and closed her eyes. He felt the pull of her breath tickle his skin. “You smell like…” Her voice trailed off, but even her hushed tones didn’t disguise a note of disbelief. “…like a place I’ve never believed in but really want to see.”

  His grin was immediate. “What do you mean? Like Narnia or Middle Earth? Some place in one of your books?” he teased.

  Only the side of her face was visible to him. He saw her half smile and felt the shake of her head. “Like heaven.”

  The words sucked the breath clear out of him, and his right arm, which until then he’d managed to keep still by his side, locked around her.

  “Rainey.” Jacques stopped himself on her name. It was all he could do not to beg her to trust him. He held her tight, and he wasn’t alone.

  She held tight right back. Her face was hidden from him now, completely buried in his shoulder.

  He rubbed a hand — a comforting hand — high on her back. After a moment, when she had
n’t moved from her hiding place, he spoke her name again. She still didn’t budge.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked gently.

  She took her time answering. “You know what’s on my mind, Jacques,” she murmured into his neck.

  He shut his eyes and let his hand move between her shoulder blades. “I do and I don’t,” he admitted. If she felt anything close to what he did, her mind was a tangle of thoughts, desires, and questions. He could only hope she felt the same. If that were so, he had reason to hope.

  But he knew Rainey well enough to know that, more often than not, the first thing she felt was fear. And maybe that was what she was trying to tell him now. This was harder for him to relate to. The only thing he feared was that she’d never trust him. That she’d eventually push him out of her life.

  “I can’t be with you,” she whispered. “Not the way I want to be.”

  This was good news and bad news all in one. She felt what he felt. Rainey wanted to be with him. She’d said as much before, but hearing it again stoked his hope.

  “But do you want to be with me like this? To be close? To share something we’ve maybe never shared with anyone else?”

  The words seemed to speak themselves. Whatever he had with Rainey, Jacques wanted to protect. Whatever ground he gained, he wasn’t about to surrender. If she was content to lie in his arms, he’d take that victory today and hope he’d be able to claim more tomorrow.

  She lifted her face from his shoulder and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  He gave her a gentle squeeze. “I mean I love the feel of you in my arms. I love having you close. So what if it’s more than what most friends have?” he argued softly. “We both like it, and I’m not asking for anything more.”

  Not yet, anyway.

  She raised a brow at him, her hazel eyes flashing at him like he was the dumbest guy in the world. “Jacques, that’s a slippery slope.”

  He couldn’t help it. He laughed. Her brow arched higher, and Jacques realized he’d be okay if she looked at him like that for the rest of his life. Maybe he was the dumbest guy in the world, but he was the one beside her.

  He shook off his humor. “Tell me to get out of your bed,” he said, and her immediate look of shock and distress gratified him to no end. When she said nothing, he prompted. “Go on. Do it.”

  He watched her swallow, uncertain. Her hesitation thrilled him. She opened her mouth, and for a moment no words came out. Then she tried again. “Get… get out of my bed.”

  Even as Jacques slid his arm out from under her and moved off the bed, he prayed he wasn’t doing something he’d regret. He turned to face her and lowered himself to the edge of the empty bed beside hers, looking into her eyes, which peered at him beneath a frown of confusion.

  She pushed herself up so that she sat facing him. The blankets that had covered her slipped into her lap, and for an instant, Jacques’s gaze fell to the silhouette of her breasts beneath the fabric of her tank top. The top, a pale blue, reached over her shoulders with thin straps that begged to be peeled down, and it gaped just enough in the front for him to glimpse a shadow of cleavage that he knew he needed to taste before he could die a happy man. But he yanked his eyes back up to hers when she spoke.

  “Wh-what’s going on?”

  Jacques’s shrug was calculated. “I moved out of your bed — like you told me to.”

  Rainey stared at him. “So, I’m in control? Is that what I’m supposed to understand?” she asked, skepticism now entering her eyes.

  He gave her a rueful smile. “You always have been.”

  Shock replaced skepticism. “When we were down in the lobby, you could have fooled me,” she quipped.

  It was hard to shut down his laugh, but he managed. “That’s different.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” The sardonic line of her mouth and the crook of her brow were so bewitching, he wanted to dig out his phone and snap her picture.

  She tilted her head to the side, and the light in her eyes changed. “So, if I’m in control, does that mean…” He watched her swallow. “…if I asked you to come back, you would?”

  The inside of his body became volcanic. “I would.” His voice came out somewhere between a rasp and a whisper. He tried to keep his features even. “Are you asking?”

  Rainey nodded.

  Jacques pushed off the spare bed and moved back to hers, taking the same position beside her on top of the covers. But instead of lying down in his arms again, Rainey remained sitting, eyeing him doubtfully and chewing her bottom lip.

  He propped himself up on his elbows. “What is it?”

  The expression on her face shifted three times before she spoke. “You’re really okay with whatever… whatever…”

  “Whatever you want,” he finished for her. It was the truth. He wanted everything, but whatever she wanted from him, he wanted to give it.

  Her lip disappeared between her teeth again. “So, if I asked you to get in with me and just hold me…?”

  She didn’t finish, and Jacques didn’t make her. In two deft moves, he was beneath the blankets, pulling her down into his arms. Rainey settled into his embrace, and his body knew the joy of her soft weight, her delicious warmth.

  Again, her head nestled against his shoulder, and she wrapped her arm across his chest. Without the blankets to separate them, the silken skin of her legs pressed against his, her feet only reaching to his calves, but the newfound intimacy awoke every fiber of his being to the feel of her. Cradling her in one arm, he ran his other hand lazily up and down her shoulder, and since this seemed to be allowed, he kept doing it. The softness of her bare arm was a new addiction.

  “And if…” she began on a whisper, her voice still tentative. How could she still be uncertain? Didn’t she already know he’d give her anything? “If I just wanted us to stay like this — just for tonight — would that be okay?”

  In answer, he switched off the bedside lamp and closed her again in his embrace.

  Rainey gave a sigh, and he felt her warm body relax.

  And at this clear signal, Archie stood, twirled three times in the space behind her, and then flopped down with a satisfied moan.

  The only light in the room came from the flickering TV, and when Jacques glanced down at Rainey’s shadowed face, he found that she was gazing back at him.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He drew in a breath and inhaled the floral sweetness that lifted off her still damp hair. “What for?”

  “This… the trip… everything.” She spoke softly, but he could hear the gravity in her voice. “I haven’t gone anywhere without Holi or Mom since… In a long time.”

  Jacques squeezed her against him. Questions lined up in his mind. He went with the first one. “Do you like to travel?”

  She drew in a long breath and let it go before answering. “You know, I don’t really know.”

  He frowned in the near darkness. “You don’t know?”

  Rainey rustled beneath the covers, rolling more onto her back so she could look up at the ceiling. “Yeah, I don’t know,” she said, sounding just as mystified. “I used to think I hated it because we toured so much with my dad when we were growing up. Did you know I completed fourth through seventh grade on a tour bus?”

  Jacques turned onto his side, keeping her encircled in his arms, so he could see her better. “Seriously?” he asked, stunned.

  She nodded. “Yep. We travelled with my dad, so we had a tutor who toured with us.” Jacques watched her blink up at the shadowed ceiling, her eyes tracking the flickers dancing and stretching along its length. “And that really wasn’t so bad. I mean, every time we stopped in a new city, Mom would plan little educational field trips.”

  She brought her eyes to his, and even in the dim light, he could see the glint of fondness. “I mean, if you’re going to learn about the Battle of Bunker Hill, what better place to do it than at Bunker Hill, right?”

  A smile captured his face. “You actually did that?”


  “Yeah,” she said, smiling at the memory. “It was spring. Spring in Boston is amazing.”

  “I’ve never been,” he murmured. “Love to go, though.”

  Rainey was quiet for a minute, and he watched her smile disintegrate. “After my dad’s show that night, he didn’t come back to our hotel suite.” Her voice was flat, her eyes hard like black buttons in the darkness. “I didn’t know until I woke up the next morning, and Mom was crying. We were supposed to leave first thing, but Dad didn’t come back until after lunch. Larry found him. He told us kids he’d gotten lost after the show. I think John Lee was the only one who believed him.”

  A sour burn ignited in Jacques stomach. “How old were you?”

  She brought her eyes back to his, a look of almost startled surprise in their depths, as if she’d lost her way in the memory. But she blinked twice, and the hardness in her eyes softened.

  “I was ten.” Her brows shifted up in a wry expression. “Do you know he had the gall to include a song called ‘Lost in Boston’ on his next album?”

  Jacques swore under his breath. Dylan Reeves was overdue for a beating.

  “Yep.” Rainey heaved a sigh. “So, I don’t really know if I like to travel. Maybe I do. Maybe if my memories of visiting new places weren’t tangled up with shit like that, I’d love to travel. I mean…” She paused and pressed her lips together before locking eyes with him. “…I mean, I’ve really enjoyed today,” she said softly.

  Satisfaction soaked through him. He’d thought she was having a good time, but hearing her say it gratified him more than it should. Jacques knew that the trip was something she felt she had to do. Of course, he wanted to help her, but he also wanted her to be unafraid, and, more than anything, he wanted her to be happy.

  Lying with her in his arms, Jacques certainly was.

  Rainey stifled a yawn and rolled back onto her side to face him. He snuggled her closer, the sight of her sleepy, soft face irresistibly cute. How he would manage to resist placing a kiss on her lips, he did not know.