by Karina Bliss
“Well.” His breath danced across the back of her neck as he whispered the word. His mouth must be right above her ear. Maybe if he pursed his lips and leaned a little forward, he could nibble on her ear.
She liked when men nibbled on her ear . . .
“This is tight, but it’s not too bad,” he said. “Think we can last the night?”
Between the awkward pillow and his arm, her neck was turned at a strange angle and she’d have the mother of all cricks in the morning. His legs were too long for the seat, and he’d compensated by draping one leg over her. She was completely cocooned in him.
Breathing deeply, she waited for the moment of panic to strike. The moment when she felt trapped, worried that he would take advantage of her, that she wouldn’t be able to escape or stop him. But the moment never came. Her breath slowed without her even trying to force it. She wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she was warm and safe, which was more than she’d felt in months.
“This will be great,” she said, closing her eyes. “Good night. And thank you.”
*
Marc woke up with an erection. And not regular morning wood, either. His face was full of the floral smell of a woman’s hair and his arms were hugging a soft, curvy body. He was warm. Hot, even, which he hadn’t expected, but the ski clothing, blanket, seats, and Selina’s body were providing more than enough heat to combat the cold. Even his face, which was buried in Selina’s neck, was warm. He lifted his head to get her hair out of his nose before he sneezed and woke her.
Sunlight beamed in through the back windows, glinting off Selina’s pale hair. He propped himself up on his elbow so that he could get a look at her. Her face, which had been tight even when she was laughing, had relaxed in sleep. Her jaw was soft, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she was snoring quietly.
She was so beautiful. He’d already liked the look of her when she was sour and serving him breakfast, but the pretty waitress was no comparison to the sleeping woman. This was what she was supposed to look like when she wasn’t worried about her physical safety, or money, or where she was going to sleep at night.
He noticed the moment she woke up because her eyelids fluttered. And then she stiffened. His erection hadn’t gotten any less prominent while he’d been admiring the way her lashes fell on her cheeks.
“You warm enough?” he asked, deciding that the best course of action was to pretend he wasn’t sporting a boner. He didn’t think she was actually afraid of him, but she was skittish and, from what she’d told him of her home life, she had good reason to be.
“Overly so.”
At least she wasn’t rushing to get away from him. And she wasn’t moving his top arm away, so he kept it—and the leg he had draped over her—right where they were.
“Sleep okay?”
Her mouth curved into a slight smile. “Yeah. Once I fell asleep, I slept like a rock.”
“It’s sunny,” he said stupidly. “The storm has passed.”
She laughed, blinking. “I can see that.”
Her stomach growled. “I wonder where the nearest coffee and donuts are. Where are we?”
“Still don’t know.” He shifted as well as he could, stretching his arm out in front of them. Scooting to straighten out his knees, he bumped her forward a bit. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I should move. I’m pretty sure my foot is asleep. Or it ran away in the middle of the night. One of the two. And I need to pee.”
“Right.” He held on to her until the count of ten, then opened his arms and she climbed to sitting up as best as she could.
The side of her face that had been resting on the duffel had a massive, deep wrinkle running across her cheek from her ear to the corner of her mouth. She had sleep in the corners of both eyes and a little mark of white drool that met up with the wrinkle. She looked like she had slept well, and he was sure he didn’t look much better. After a good night’s sleep his hair usually looked like loosened coils of brown yarn.
At least it distracted from the morning breath that had him wanting to smack his mouth.
She grabbed for her pack of tissues, then looked back at him, her hand on the door handle. “Um, it’s light out. Please don’t look.”
“I won’t. But do a little scoping while you’re out there, would ya? I want to make sure we’re still on the road and not snowed in. There’s a shovel in the back, though if you need to dig to find it, we’ll both be sorry.”
While she was outside, he had the chance to smack the staleness of sleep out his mouth in private and dig in his center console for some mints.
“It’s not so bad out there,” she said, climbing into the car. “It must have stopped snowing soon after we stopped. The tire tracks are easy to see, and we should be able to get out no problem.” She patted his leg. “From what I could tell, you even stayed on the road up until you pulled over.”
Her touch zinged up his body, rushing into his ears and tingling the tips of his fingers.
Fuck. He’d promised her that the trip had no cost, that there were no expectations, and he’d meant it. He still meant it. He was a man, not a bull. But not thinking about what she would feel like if they were so close had been easier before she’d been curled up in his arms, before his erection, and before she’d touched his leg of her own accord.
They’d have to get double beds in each hotel room. He would have asked for them anyway, but now it was sleep in separate beds or he’d be on the floor. Or he’d have to pull the old fairy tale trick and sleep with a sword between them. He didn’t want her to wake up with an erection pressing against her again.
“Well good,” he said, plastering a wide, innocent smile on his face. “I figure we can drive for five hours or so, then see what’s interesting wherever we stop. In the meantime, it’s my turn for a trip to our expansive bathroom.”
Her smile was big, honest, and without hesitation. “It is certainly the largest bathroom I’ve ever used, and I do like the white.”
The sun was warming the air up fast and was almost blinding as it reflected off the snow. He took care of his business, inspected his path back onto the highway, then climbed into the driver’s seat and grabbed his phone to check his messages. The first one was from Curtis, assuring him again that they didn’t need to talk. He frowned.
The second message was from one of the guys in charge of the project that Marc’s baby had become. The e-mail had a veneer of politeness, but the words didn’t cover up the point the man was trying to make. In sum, Leave us alone. We’re fine. You sold the project and declined further participation.
Or as Marc would put it, Fuck off.
The e-mail from Curtis hurt worse than the dismissive e-mail from a stranger, though. Terry was his, as much as it was Curtis’s, and brushing him off was a real shit thing to do.
You gave Terry up before Curtis brushed you off.
He tossed his phone into the console and twisted the key in the starter. A small, petty part of him was grateful that he hadn’t bought one of those cars with the push-button starter; it wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying. What he really needed was a motorcycle with no muffler to drown out the voice of reason.
“Something wrong?” Selina’s voice beside him was soft with concern.
“No,” he growled, then felt bad when she just blinked and said, “Okay,” in a small voice.
“Yes,” he said. The word came out in a huff, much like an upset, petulant dog’s would. He shifted in his seat so that he was talking to her face rather than the steering wheel. “I sold my app. It was my baby. Curtis and I worked on it for years. We did side programming jobs for money, but we spent all our spare time on this thing. No vacation. No sick days.”
He swiped his hand down his face, rubbing at the memories of being wrapped in a blanket, a bucket next to him on the floor, and a bottle of ginger ale on the desk next to his computer. He’d written the backbone of some beautiful code that day between bouts of being sick in the bucket.
She put her ha
nd on his knee. Two touches, but he was too worked up to appreciate this one. “You mentioned that at the Chinese restaurant. I can’t imagine putting in that kind of work for anything. I don’t even know what coding is, really. I was really impressed. Still am.”
“But there’s more we can do,” he said, unable to keep the whine from his voice.
“A flaw?” she asked.
“Well,” he hedged, “not a flaw exactly. I mean, it’s not going to break. And it works. But it’s cumbersome. I’ve thought of a way to bypass the biggest issue standing between us and wider adoption of the product by the general public.”
And now that he’d figured it out, that fix was all he could think about.
“And you’ve told Curtis?”
He gestured to the phone. “Curtis and some other people. I haven’t told them what the fix is. I just want a meeting to talk with them about it.”
Her mouth twitched. “Do you miss working on the project?”
“Oh God, yes.” He banged the back of his head against the headrest. “Selling the project was exciting, and I learned all sorts of things about the business of computers. I thought I’d sell the program and be done with it. That having all this money and free time would be liberating.” The reality of his situation was as blinding as the sun off the snow. “But it’s not. It’s very boring.”
“Why don’t you work on something else?”
“Oh, I will.” He waved his hand. “I’ve got all sorts of ideas about things I want to do.”
He did. Or, at least, he had until he’d gotten in this stupid SUV and driven into the mountains to find himself like he was some kind of hippie rather than a nerd who used to retreat from the sun like a vampire.
“But first I’ve got to get this solution implemented. Then I can move on to something else.”
She bit her lip.
“What?” he asked. It looked like, if she wasn’t careful, she might choke on the words she was obviously holding back.
“I don’t know you very well . . .”
He raised an eyebrow. This was not the start of anything good. Like, It’s not you, it’s me, when it was really about the way you took your coffee black, or didn’t eat eggs, or didn’t like cats. “But . . . ?” he said, drawing out the word in invitation.
“Have you considered that you’re stuck on this old thing because you succeeded at it and it’s scary to start something new that might not be nearly such a success? Sophomore efforts and all that.”
Her words pushed him against the back of his seat as if she’d shot an arrow—bull’s-eye—straight through his chest, pinning him. She couldn’t be right, could she? He had all kinds of ideas about what he wanted to work on next. Lists and lists and lists of them. Plus, all those people who wouldn’t give him work or answer his calls a couple of years ago were now coming to him with job offers. If he couldn’t focus on any of the ideas on any of those lists and hadn’t e-mailed or called any of those companies back yet, it was because he wanted the time to think. Not because he was afraid.
“It’s a valid question, but that’s not what is happening in this case. After I get this fix checked out, I’ll move on to something new. I’ve got companies contacting me all the time, as well as independent guys looking to do something just as cool.”
She nodded, but he could tell that she didn’t really believe him.
The heat from the engine had melted all the snow that had accumulated on the hood of the car, and water was now dripping down the windshield. He turned on the wipers to clear his view, then shifted the car into drive and eased his foot off the brake. The tires caught traction pretty easily and were able to inch forward until they were on the road, which had already been salted. Apparently they’d both slept through the salt trucks, and if they’d kept sleeping much longer, they probably would have been woken up by the Idaho Highway Patrol knocking on the window.
As soon as he was comfortable with the car on the road and as certain as he could be that they weren’t going to slide off into the ditch—or off a cliff—Marc took his hand off the wheel and put his palm on Selina’s leg. He wanted to feel that she was there, solid and breathing next to him, especially because he wasn’t sure what else in his life was constant. She may not be here forever, but she was here now. And now was what he needed.
She stared at the touch but didn’t push his hand off the way he had worried she would. To his surprise, after initially tensing, the muscles under his hand relaxed.
“I’m glad that you’re impressed with me and my work,” he said. “It’s an easy thing to be impressed by, I guess. But I’m impressed by you, too. You’re working, and going to school, and have a shitty home life, and you don’t trust that you’ll be able to sleep safely. Yet you’re still getting good grades, making money, and pushing on.”
She placed a hand on top of his and gave him a gentle squeeze.
“Big, splashy things like selling a product for millions of dollars in your twenties is what makes the news,” he continued. “But pushing forward in life while everything seems to be against you is the kind of grit that makes the world function. And if no one’s told you lately, I think you’re great.”
When he glanced at her face, he noticed dampness in her eyes. “No one’s told me that in a long time. Thank you.”
Chapter Six
“Have you called your mom yet?” Marc asked Selina about two hours into their drive.
“No,” she said, keeping her eyes forward.
“Didn’t you say you were going to as soon as we hit the road?” He hadn’t mentioned it last night because she’d fallen asleep almost immediately on the drive. And she had obviously needed it. But no matter Selina’s relationship with Gary, her mom probably needed a phone call as much as Selina had needed the sleep.
“I know. I wanted to,” Selina answered, though she made no move to reach for her phone.
“So why don’t you?”
She shrugged like a moody child.
The SUV rolled along the highway, between hills of snow with dead grass poking out of the white depths, occasionally meandering through places with rock faces on either side where it had been cheaper to cut through the rock than it had been to build the road around them.
Just as Marc was giving up on Selina answering, she spoke in a small voice. “What if she didn’t notice I was gone?”
Everything in the world seemed to slow down as he considered what it would be like to wonder that about your mother. Then he saw that he had lessened the pressure of his foot on the gas and they had actually slowed down. He hit the pedal a little harder, getting them back up to speed. Then, trying to concentrate on driving at least as much as he was concentrating on listening to Selina, he asked, “Why wouldn’t she notice you were gone?”
“She didn’t call me last night. She’s never called me any of the times I didn’t go home because I knew Gary would be there.” Her voice was still small, but anger rasped at the edges.
She was trying to see if her mom noticed and cared about her. That was understandable, if heartbreaking. “Are you going to just wait for her to call you?”
Selina shrugged, looking out the window. He couldn’t see what her eyes were focused on, but the view out the passenger window was no different than the view out his window. As far as he could tell, she was staring out into space. “It would be nice if she called me once.”
He paused a beat before saying anything else. “I have a pretty good relationship with my parents, I guess,” he told her. “We have a better relationship than most of my friends do with their parents, at least. But I know I can’t expect out of them what I’m not willing to do myself.”
“Thank you, Dear Abby,” she said.
He frowned. “Sarcasm is not attractive.”
She turned away from the window long enough to give him a scornful look. “You just said that you have a better relationship with your parents than most of your friends do. When you’ve met Gary at his worst, then you can lecture me about how I
should reach out to my mother.”
He opened his mouth to argue his point, then stopped himself so that he could process what she’d said. Maturity and taking a step back had served him well in the past. They would serve him well again.
“You’re right. Your home life sounds miserable. And I’m amazed that you are as put together as you are. I shouldn’t judge.”
“Thank you,” she said, turning back to stare out the window.
“But you did say that you would call her.” He struggled to make his tone nonjudgmental and supportive, even though disappointment surged through his body. Granted, he didn’t know Selina that well, but she hadn’t seemed like a coward. “So when do you plan to do that?”
“Today.”
“That didn’t sound very confident.”
“You’re talking to me as if I’m a child,” she snapped. “You’re only a couple years older than I am.”
He risked a quick glance at her. Her lips were pursed, and her face was set in the same scowl he remembered from breakfast at the diner. God, that had only been a little over twenty-four hours ago. Had he really only known Selina for such a short amount of time? If he let his mind go blank, he could still remember what she felt like in his arms, as if she had been there before and should be there again. He also remembered that her expression at the diner hadn’t been a bad mood so much as it had been physical and emotional exhaustion. One uncomfortable night’s sleep in the back of a car wasn’t going to change that. He had more empathy than this; he just had to use it.
He took a deep breath and put his hand on her knee. “What would Babe tell you to do?”
That won him another look from her, this time with her brows lifted up to her hairline. “Have you called your parents to tell them where you are and that you picked up a stranger to take with you on your little vacation?”
He could feel the hammer hit the nail with that one, though he said, “Those situations are completely different.”
“How?”
“Well . . .” His mind raced over all the differences, put them in order of importance, numbered them, and weighed which ones he should explain first. Then he stopped himself from lecturing. She was right. Not that their situations were different, but that his parents would want to know that he wasn’t driving alone. And they would be very interested to know he’d picked up a girl.