by Ruthie Knox
“Don’t move, sweetheart,” he murmured in her ear. “This is my favorite part. The way you feel all wrapped around me when I’m finally inside you, quivering and sucking air into your lungs like you can’t possibly take in enough oxygen to feed the burn.” She whimpered, and he bit her earlobe. “I think I could make it last if it weren’t for those noises you make. You want me to tell you what those noises do to me?”
She was way beyond being able to answer that question. Instead of telling her, he kissed her long and deep, and he began to move, pulling out, thrusting slowly back in. As his tongue swept into her mouth and his cock pressed in and out of the clench of her body with an exquisite drag over her clit, he kept talking, his words echoing off the walls inside her head. Tom was absolutely everywhere, surrounding and overwhelming her, and she had no choice but to listen and believe whatever he told her, to give him whatever he wanted. She’d been keeping her besotted heart packed carefully away in a crate, but now he’d pried the crate open with a crowbar, and she was as naked as she’d ever been—except he was covering her, wrapping her in his voice, comforting her with his mouth, arousing her with his body. It was the most terrifying, wonderful thing anyone had ever done to her.
“You’re going to come soon,” he said, brushing his lips over her cheekbone, still moving in and out of her with preternatural control as her belly tightened in anticipation of the orgasm he was calling up. He kissed her again, harder this time. “I changed my mind. Making you come is my real favorite part, the way you moan and beg and tense up around me until finally you can’t take it anymore.”
His voice was getting ragged, a sign that even Tom couldn’t keep this up forever. “When you come, I want you to say my name and hold on to me so tight you leave marks.” They were moving together faster now, the slick skin of their stomachs meeting each time with an audible smack, and she tossed her head restlessly from side to side, unable to take much more of the tingling burn building up between her legs or the things he was saying to her, the way he was crawling inside her soul and making room for himself there.
“Tom?”
“What is it, baby?”
“Shut up.”
“Not until you come for me.” He brought one hand to her breast and rolled the nipple between his fingers, making her buck. “I know you, Lex.” He was breathing heavily, and every phrase came out short and forceful as he drove into her hard. “I know your body. I know your mind. I know what you want, and I know what you need. And right now—” He groaned and pushed her hair off her face, capturing her head in his hand. “—Right now you need to let go, sweetheart. Open your eyes and let go. I’ll keep you safe.”
He wouldn’t let her look away. When she came, his gaze held her in place, his eyes huge and black and unspeakably tender, and he didn’t allow her to shrink back from the tsunami of sensation that swept through her. He held her there and made sure she felt every last unbelievable second of it, and then he blinked and came himself with a helpless sound that was almost a roar. She watched him, holding on tight until it was over.
Still shuddering, her hot cheek pressed against his shoulder, Lexie closed her eyes and cursed him. Because now it was no longer possible to pretend.
Tom was going to break her heart, and she was going to let him.
16
Vicinity of Elizabethtown, Illinois. 3,188 miles traveled.
“I always wanted to see Death Valley. What’s it like?”
“It’s flat,” Tom said, smiling at the young restaurant manager. He gestured to the open space in the booth next to Lexie. “Have a seat, I’ll tell you about it.”
They were in southern Illinois, tucked away inside a pizza place while it rained buckets outside. It was only ten A.M., and the restaurant wasn’t open yet, but Tom had knocked on the glass door and sweet-talked his way inside. Now Lexie was curled up in a booth, both palms wrapped around the mug of free coffee Jason had brought her, trying to make sense of the sight of Tom willingly regaling the manager with stories from his travels.
Jason was whip-thin, with a shaved head and those horrible rivets stretching out his earlobes. He clearly wanted to look frightening, but his friendly brown eyes reminded her of the golden retriever that had trailed her and Tom for three miles yesterday before Tom had finally sent it home with an authoritative “Get!” Jason seemed similarly inclined to follow Tom to the ends of the earth, and her normally reticent riding partner was indulging him, patiently answering all the questions they’d heard a thousand times before—questions he usually left to Lexie because he didn’t like talking to strangers.
Except that wasn’t really true anymore, was it? At the bike shop in Carbondale the other day, he’d strolled in, introduced himself to the guy manning the counter, and—within two minutes—convinced him to let them borrow a stand and some tools. While Tom changed Lexie’s rear tire and replaced their chains and cassettes—normal maintenance against the wear and tear of the road—he’d made friendly small talk with the two shop mechanics about touring. He’d mentioned his Outback trip along the Canning Stock Route, and the mechanics had pressed him for details of the thirty-day ride across the desert.
Lexie had heard about most of it already—how the route was so remote and punishing, Tom had needed to use a handheld GPS to locate wells for fresh water, and he’d spent the middle hours of each day inside his tent to escape the blistering sun. How he’d gotten the tattoos in Sydney afterward, the Maori-inspired design meant to symbolize his rejection of all things corporate and his connection to the harsh desert environment of the Outback.
But he’d also told the mechanics things about the Outback ride that were news to Lexie, including the fact that he’d lost almost forty pounds because he hadn’t been able to carry nearly enough food to keep up with his metabolism, and how there was only one outpost of civilization along the twelve-hundred-mile track.
For the first time, it had dawned on Lexie that Tom’s touring history didn’t just put him in the “more experienced” category. It put him in an entirely different stratosphere from her. She’d been preparing to ride the TransAm for most of her adult life, but for Tom this ride was a walk in the park. When they left the shop, the two mechanics had shaken Tom’s hand like he was some kind of celebrity. Maybe he was. Afterward, she’d waited for him to make a bitter remark about having been put on the spot in the shop, but he hadn’t. He’d been in a good mood all afternoon.
And then yesterday at a convenience store, she’d spotted him dropping a bill into one of those countertop coffee cans that carried a plea to help some family of strangers with their medical expenses. When the woman at the cash register had thanked him and explained the kid who needed money for treatment was her niece, Tom had stood there chatting with her for five minutes before meandering out to meet Lexie. The woman had watched him go with the dazed look of someone who’d been stricken with lust, but Tom was just being his friendly self.
He had a friendly self now.
She stared out the window at the rain, letting the sound of Tom’s voice wash over her without really listening to him. He was changing, rediscovering what it felt like to be part of humanity. It suited him. The longer she loved Tom, the more she could see how much there was to love—his intelligence, his courage, the goodness in him. He was a caring, considerate man. He’d been that way all along, of course, but when she’d met him he’d been going to some lengths to conceal it. Not now.
The more Tom opened up to other people, the less she felt like talking to anyone. In the week since her birthday, she’d been struggling to live in the moment, to enjoy the rest of their time together. She didn’t want her feelings for him to cast a pall over every mile that remained.
It was happening anyway. She lay awake at night in the tent, listening to him breathe and wondering whether he was ever going to figure out that he loved her, and what he would do about it if he did. She’d thought a hundred times she should just tell him, but there wasn’t any point.
They’d
made a deal to be companions and nothing more. She’d be the first to admit it was a stupid deal, but they’d both had their reasons for making it. Tom’s wife’s betrayal—and whatever else had happened to him—had caused him to erect some pretty thick ramparts around his heart. If he found out she’d managed to scale them, he’d just shove her back out and shore up his defenses. Tom wasn’t going to let himself love her. It would disturb the whole loner bike mechanic thing he had going and force him to admit he was an actual human being with actual emotions and a part to play in the world. She had no idea what had happened to him to make him the way he was, but a few days of being nice to strangers couldn’t change the fact that he was running scared. The man couldn’t run and love her at the same time.
It didn’t matter. Even if Tom did by some miracle figure out how he felt about her, even if he did decide to rejoin the human race, she couldn’t stay with him. She’d picked the wrong guy again. Tom always needed to be in charge. He kept challenging her to change, to grow, to trust him, but he remained a closed system, unwilling to trust her with whatever secrets he was carrying. He thought of her as his responsibility, not his partner. She could never spend her life with a man who wouldn’t meet her halfway, trust for trust, risk for risk.
And what kind of future could there be for the two of them anyway? Tom moving into her apartment in Portland, getting a job at a local bike shop, making dinner with her after she came home from a long day in the classroom—she couldn’t see it. She could only see him on the road. When she pictured herself trying to fit Tom into her tidy schoolteacher’s life, it was worse than the vision of herself in the kitchen in an apron. Because at least in that vision, the husband had been happy. In the Tom vision, they were both miserable.
Better to imagine them on the trail together. They’d hit Yorktown and keep going, tour all over the world. Tom could show her South America, and then they could visit all the other continents one by one. Until the money ran out.
Very mature. All that would do was postpone the inevitable breakup until it wasn’t possible to postpone it anymore. No, they were going to stick to the agreement. They’d rip off the Band-Aid in Yorktown, get it over with.
She sighed and sipped her rapidly cooling coffee. It tasted like her mood—burned and muddy. All wrong. The rain was starting to ease up. Across the table, Tom was encouraging Jason to buy a decent bike and go somewhere, start seeing the world. Lexie wanted to tell the kid to stay home where it was safe. Adventure wasn’t for twenty-year-olds with motorcycle boots and puppy-dog eyes. Adventure would chew this kid up and spit him back out. Adventure really sucked.
After the rain stopped, the day heated up so fast she could actually see the moisture baking off the road. Between the heat and the humidity and the hopeless resignation that now accompanied her wherever she went, Lexie was not really in the mood for another of Tom’s lessons in spontaneity.
Unfortunately, he didn’t ask her permission. He spotted a brown-and-white sign reading BIG TREE—2 MI. and turned off the route with nothing more than a wink and a sly smile in her direction.
Ten minutes later, they crested a steep hill and began a fast, winding descent. Tom looked over his shoulder to check on her, unintentionally drifting out into traffic in the process. She’d asked him before to knock that off. She could take care of herself, and it drove her crazy to see him casually endangering himself to make sure she was safe. As they bottomed out and started up another hill, she put on a burst of speed to catch up with him.
“If you won’t quit checking on me, let me go first.” Her voice sounded whiny even to her own ears. She couldn’t seem to help it.
“All right, if you want to.” He slowed down so she could pass. “Did I do something wrong?”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I meant other than that. Do you not want to go see the Big Tree, Marshall? Because in my experience, going to see the Big Tree is always worth it.” He smiled, trying to charm her into a better mood, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile back.
They crested the hill, and there it was: a big tree. It sat on a small patch of grass with a fence around it. Next to it was an empty gravel lot big enough for two or three cars. A sign informed them they were looking at the largest pin oak in Illinois, seventy-five feet tall and twenty feet around.
Tom got off his bike and crossed his arms over his chest, appraising the tree. He gave it an appreciative whistle. “That’s a big tree.”
“It’s dead,” she replied. It was, mostly. Only about a quarter of the branches had leafed out.
“Nah. But it’s seen better days, I’ll give you that. Maybe it’ll rally.”
Tom walked over to the fence and sat in the grass with his back against it. “Give me a drink, will you?” he asked. “I ran out of water half an hour ago.”
In the humid heat of the Midwest, Tom was always running out of water. You’d think he had no sense, but this was a guy who’d carried his own filtration system and special ten-gallon water bags across the deserts of Western Australia. He didn’t bother to worry about water in Illinois, because what was the big deal? You run out, you’re thirsty for a little while, you get some more water. It wasn’t like it was dangerous. Losing forty pounds in a month while crossing one of the most remote places on earth—that was dangerous. That was the act of a reckless man. The idiot.
She sat down beside him. “Maybe you should get another bottle,” she said, handing him the tube to her water bag.
“Who needs another bottle when I have you?”
She frowned. She didn’t like it when he didn’t take the ride seriously. It felt like he wasn’t taking her seriously. He was leaning his head against the fence now, eyes closed, soaking up the sun, so he couldn’t have seen her expression, but he must have sensed her mood, because his smile faded and he looked over at her.
“Are you ever going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Which was to say, no, she wasn’t ever going to tell him.
“Something’s wrong. You look like you want to bite my head off.”
“It’s hot, and I’m crabby, okay?” She silently willed him to drop it. She didn’t have the energy to convince him everything was peachy-keen right now, not in this heat. Not when it wasn’t.
He shook his head. “You think I don’t know you better than that? You’ve been unhappy for a week. I wish you’d tell me why.”
“You don’t want to know.”
He sighed. “I do. That’s why I’m asking you.”
Lexie picked up a stick—no doubt a cast-off limb of the beleaguered Big Tree—and poked at a bare patch of ground with it. The earth was still soft from the rain, and she pushed the tip of the stick in as far as she could and then levered it out, flinging a divot of turf into the air. A senseless act of destruction. It didn’t make her feel better, but she kept doing it anyway.
“I thought we were partners, Marshall,” Tom said quietly.
Partners. Christ. Why not just rip her heart out and stomp on it, already? “Maybe I don’t want to be your partner anymore, Geiger,” she said, sending another clod of dirt into the air with the stick. “What are you doing riding through Illinois with me anyway? Why aren’t you risking your neck crossing Mongolia or Siberia or something?”
He reached out quickly and tugged the stick out of her hand, tossing it over the fence toward the tree. Then he captured her chin in his hand and made her look him in the eye. “Why are you mad at me?”
Because I love you. Because you won’t tell me anything important. Because you’re going to leave me. Take your pick.
“Why did you do that stupid Outback ride?”
If the question surprised him, he didn’t show it. Which was interesting, considering how much it surprised her. It wasn’t until it came out of her mouth that she understood how badly she wanted to know the answer—to this question and to all the others she’d kept to herself. She needed desperately for him to open up to her. She couldn’t g
o on with him like this anymore.
Tom dropped his hand from her face and sat back against the fence. “I could give you about a dozen reasons,” he said after a short pause. “But there’s really only one that matters.” He stopped to take a deep breath and let it out slowly with his eyes closed. When he opened them again, he’d clearly steeled himself to tell her the truth.
“You ever hear of Vargas Industries?” he asked.
“Sure.” Everyone in Oregon who followed the news had heard of Vargas Industries. It had once been the largest privately held company in the state, employing thousands of people in lumber and millwork jobs, as well as half a dozen subsidiaries. Several years earlier, the company had run into trouble for violating a bunch of environmental regulations, and after a trial that had been splashed all over the front pages of the papers for the better part of a year, the company president, Tomás Vargas, had negotiated a settlement in which the firm paid a tidy sum to the government. Vargas Industries had subsequently gone under, slowly and painfully, throwing dozens of Oregon cities on hard times.
Tom was watching her with narrowed eyes, and she had the distinct impression he could see all the thoughts running through her head. “That’s where I worked,” he said. “Back when I had a corporate job.”
“You were next in line to run Vargas Industries?” She was trying to piece together the fragments he’d revealed over the past weeks with what he was telling her now, but she knew she wasn’t seeing the whole picture yet. “I thought it was a family-run company.”
“It was. Right before I went to Australia, I changed my name. Geiger is my mother’s maiden name. I was born Tomás Enrique Vargas Jr. Named after my father. Heir apparent to the throne of Vargas Industries.”
That was the fragment she’d needed. Now she understood what Tom had run all the way to Australia to get away from.