She stabbed the end call button on her phone and then slid it into her jeans pocket.
“How are we going to get the ring to her?” I asked.
“Fill up the car and get us to a hotel first. I have an idea but I’m not doing a damn thing about it until I spend at least an hour in a shower.”
I pointed across the street. “Why not just stop there if you can’t stand a little dirt?”
She shot her hand across the console and fisted my shirt. Before, she’d done it with a fierce grip but less of a sinister scowl on her face. I held my breath at her sudden move, unprepared since she’d apparently been lying in wait to pounce on me for the last forty-five minutes.
“You call this a little dirt?”
As she gritted it out, a fine dusting of muck escaped from her eyebrow. She blinked it away, not ceasing her snarl at me.
Her fury didn’t scare me. In fact, with her so absolutely filthy, she looked…cute. It was just so… Do not laugh. Do not even smile. If you want to keep your balls, do not give in and laugh.
“A little dirt?”
I leaned back slowly. Only then did I notice the stick stuck in what was left of her stubby ponytail. A broken twig with a stringy weed at its end, standing at an angle like one of a pair of devil horns.
And a spider crawling on her shoulder.
I flicked at it and she jumped.
“You had a— You— Never mind.”
She whipped around in her seat and found it steadily climbing the upholstery, a squeal in her throat escaping like an eerie caterwaul.
Nearly cramming herself into the dashboard, she kicked at it.
“That’s the hairiest fucking insect monster I’ve ever seen!” she yelled with wide eyes.
“Spiders aren’t insects. They’re arachnids—”
“I don’t care what it is! It’s hairier than Chewbacca with a bloody goatee and killer eyes. Get it away!”
I swatted at it and it jumped to the floor. She took her order herself—getting away—and lurched for the door handle. In no time at all, she damn near jumped out of the SUV and slammed the door shut. Outside, she clenched her teeth and inhaled a long breath. Eyes closed like she was desperately summoning some form of calm.
Since I still had the driver door open, I stood up and leaned my forearm on the windshield. I watched her and waited.
Her baby blues peered at me once again, the fury still there but restrained. “I’m going to go over there and get a room.” She bit it out like she was point nine percent near a nuclear explosion of frustration.
I saluted her and turned around to the gas cap. A room. Not two. As if she’d be interested in sharing anything but her wrath if we roomed together…
“May God have mercy on my soul,” I whispered.
She hadn’t texted me or explained how to know which room she’d gotten, and I didn’t want to entertain the idea she’d ended up asking for two. Even if she did, I had to find her. To offer to scope out her room for spiders. Check on her blisters. Anything that might make her less…volatile.
Groveling. This was it.
Nature wasn’t her thing. Eight-legged predators were her enemy. Fine. To each their own. Her level of upset fueled my drive to help her, try to make this a little less hellish.
Turned out, she’d left an easy trail. Dried chunks of mud showed where she’d set her shoes. From the lobby, down the salmon-pink carpet of the hallway, all the way over to room eighteen.
My lucky number.
And I’m sure as fuck not getting lucky tonight.
Regardless, I knocked on the door and she answered a moment later. No words. No greeting. Just opened the door and slammed it shut after I entered.
“Got your bag,” I offered and set it with mine on the table.
“Uh-huh.”
She stalked over to the bathroom. With the door open, I could see she’d started to make some progress. Instead of brown darkening her skin like she’d walked out of a mud-bath at a spa, the vanity, sink basin, mirror, hand towel…they were dirty. Her plaid monstrosity was on the floor, and even her arms were filthy. How mud got under and up her sleeves…
I wanted to pity her. She’d hate me for it.
In that tiny wife-beater that was more beige than white, she scrubbed a bar of soap along her forearm. Dangling from her neck was a necklace chain with Richard’s engagement ring and her solid Harry Potter band.
I glanced at the shower, wondering why she wasn’t just using that to clean up. Then I noticed the inch-size chunks of mud she was rubbing off her skin and figured maybe she was doing a preliminary cleanup at the sink before clogging the shower. “Can I help?”
She threw the soap down to the murky rinse water in the sink and turned to me. “Help?”
I nodded.
“You could have helped by never insisting we go camping in the first place. Do you realize how much I want to strangle you right now?”
All bark, no bite, I bet. Still, I hid a smile. I dipped my hand in the water and grabbed the soap. “It wasn’t all bad.”
She gawked at me with a cute huff. “How the hell can you possibly say that? Look at us!”
I brought the wet soap to her forearm and began rubbing it in. Now my arm was darker brown with mud in contrast to her semi-cleaned one. “Everything before the tent fell was…fun.”
“Fun.”
I stepped closer to bring the bar of Dial over her elbow and to her bicep. “I was enjoying myself.”
She coughed a sound like a snort and shook her head. “That’s beside the point! Because of your domineering attitude, we went the crappy route on that ledge and ended up like this.”
“At least we’re together again.” I tilted my head at her as she stared at me. “I was worried about you.” For the longest three fucking hours of my life.
“As you should have been. It’s a miracle a roving band of criminal raccoons didn’t surround me and hand me over to a harem of spiders as I crawled free from quicksand mud. I have zero survival skills.” She shoved at my shoulder and I held her hand in place. “Which you shouldn’t have tested.”
“All right, that time, I wasn’t teasing or testing you. I honestly did—and do—think Felicia was on that part of the trail.”
“I really want to hate you right now.”
But she didn’t. I doubted she ever had, and that idea was likely harder for her to get over than her muddy state. I started to smile. “Carly, haven’t you ever heard of the saying, Make love, not war?”
The intensity of her stare slayed me. Like maybe she kind of enjoyed bickering with me as much as she might like riding me.
I slowly caressed her arm, slick with the soiled, soapy water. I’d dropped the soap and I wouldn’t dare to lose her steady gaze locked on me.
“Maybe once and for all, you can show me how that’s done.” Then she grabbed my neck and hauled me down for a kiss.
Thirteen
Carly
Mav growled as he spun me to the sink, jamming the small of my back to the edge. It was just as hard of a break on my front. A solid, panting, powerful wall of a man kissing me stupid.
“I meant”—I gasped as he ripped his lips from mine—“after I shower.”
He’d pulled back only to drag his shirt over his head and toss it to the floor. Then he gripped the hem of mine and removed it in a blur.
“After you shower?” He scoffed and around grating, fake laughs, he said, “I don’t think so.”
I reached for his jeans at the same moment he grabbed mine.
“Because…what if you miss a spot?” he challenged.
I’d gotten him unzipped and forced his boxers and jeans at least down past his ass. They could fall the rest of the way. Gravity had to take care of that because I had better things to do. With my left hand, I framed his face to bring his lips back to mine. With my right, I fisted his hard cock.
“Fuck. Me,” he rasped at my mouth. I grinned at the rush of his hot breath.
Oh, I plann
ed to. So what if we were a little dirty? What I wanted to do was just as filthy.
I burned under his lips claiming mine and I struggled to focus on what else I needed to do to take this man as mine. Right now. There was nowhere else I wanted to be than in this man’s arms, under his fierce kisses, sinking down on his—
Oh. My jeans. Panties. They were stuck still at the ankle. I’d stepped out of one leg. Now I whined a sound as I tried to kick and get the stupid things all the way off.
“Wait,” he said as he broke our kiss.
“I’m done doing that.” I reached for him again, reveling in the sting on my lips and wanting more of the searing torment.
“I’m not going anywhere far,” he said as he hoisted me to sit on the edge of the vanity. Cool Formica chilled my bare ass but the shivers had more to do with the cocky confidence in Mav’s smug smile. He spread my legs apart and lowered. And lowered. Until he was on the floor and all I saw was the top of his curly, muddy mess of wavy hair.
What a sight that is.
I tried to catch my breath as he…oh. My foot jerked to the side. He was getting my clothes off. First my jeans, then my panties. As he stood, he ran his hands from my feet, along my calves, up my thighs. Firm, massaging pressure until he reached between my legs and teased at my entrance.
“No. No more waiting.” I widened my legs and grabbed his neck. He grunted as I slammed his lips back to mine, open-mouthed and tongues ready to resume the duel.
He pistoned his fingers in me with a frantic urgency and stopped abruptly to pick me up from the vanity. I was already clinging to his neck and I completed the deal by wrapping my legs around his waist. Together, we entered the shower.
Once I was on my feet, he leaned around me to turn the water on and I did my best to distract him by stroking his rigid length. I must have done too good of a job of preoccupying him because a freezing blast of water shot out at us from the showerhead.
“Ahh!” I screamed as he yelled something fancier and filthier.
I turned to find the hot water handle and he returned the favor. Pulling me back so his erection slid against my ass, he reached around and played at my aching core.
“Let me”—I ground my ass back at him and he groaned—“think.” How do these damn handles work? Two blue? Which one’s hot?
We were both still shivering, but his thick, strong arms enveloping me helped. He nuzzled my neck. “If you’re thinking at all, I’m doing this wrong.”
Finally, warm then hot water cascaded over us. I turned to face him and he resumed our kiss. In a desperate, needy rush, he lifted my legs, pressed my back to the vinyl-sheeted wall, and notched his cock to my entrance.
“No condom,” he said with hesitation.
“Pill. And I’ve been clean for ten years.”
His jaw dropped. I pull a Mav move and pushed it closed with my finger. Then opened it again with a long, probing kiss.
He reared back. “Since—”
“Since I had Violet.”
“That is a hell of a drought.”
I wiggled closer to him. “And it’s been a hell of a wait. For you. The wait of which I’m over with. Now.”
He still stared at me so deeply, water streaming in steady rivulets along the lean angles of his tanned face.
“Like right now.” I pushed my hips further.
He shook his head like clearing his haze. “I’m clean too.”
I winked. “The hell you are. You’re dripping mud.”
“I mean—”
“Oh, my God. I know what you meant. Please, just—”
He eased into me. Not fast like a punch to reach my lungs, but not a gentle poke like feeling for his limit.
Then again. And again. He thrust into me and all I could do was hold on and fall under the spell of a good old-fashioned quickie in the shower. Steam swirled around us as though we weren’t burning each other up enough already. Coiled tension snaked and grew inside me, threatening a combustive meltdown that’d shake me to my toes.
And it did. Oh, it did. With a loud cry that Mav muffled with a wet kiss, I came in a torturous firework of an orgasm. He drove into me, his hips snapping harder and faster a few more times, and then he stilled with a roaring groan.
As he held me against the shower wall, he tucked his face to my shoulder. He rested his forehead to the vinyl and I lay my cheek on his shoulder. I reveled in the afterglow and I’d forgotten how earth-shattering it could be. If he didn’t heave out a long, hard breath after he’d finally calmed down from panting, I could have fallen asleep in his arms and on his dick.
He turned his head to press a tender kiss to my temple and I slowly loosened my hold on him. I winced as I stood, realizing I’d just exercised a whole slew of muscles that had gone dormant in my man-free life for the last decade. Pleasuring myself once in a blue moon didn’t require this amount of physical finesse.
Without a word, I stood and he began rubbing the bar of soap between his huge hands. A bubbling froth of suds came from his lathering and he brought it to my shoulders. My neck. My breasts…
I licked my lip and smiled so bright I didn’t care that he saw.
“You’re not sore?”
When he was caressing and kneading my boob like that? Then tweaking and pinching to make me jump? Nope. Not sore enough for another round.
“I might be. But I still don’t grasp this making love not war deal. It could take a while to stick.”
And so we tried again.
No woman safely steps from one reality of not having sex for years to another reality on an entirely different universe of making love in a cramped, crappy motel’s bathroom three times. The human vagina wasn’t meant for fasting and then binging on a hard dick like that. Women weren’t that pliable.
Okay.
I guessed that was a lie.
They could be. Some were. Mine was. But dammit, I was sore. So sated I might not wake from the post-coital coma for a week.
Hours later, though, Mav woke me on the bed. We were still entwined, our legs and arms draped around each other. Naked. Kind of cold from the heater turned too low. Sheets still wet—from the shower or sweat. At least we were mud-free now. Soaped up, rinsed off, and licked clean.
“So, in other words,” I said, rolling into his warm embrace and sighing at the perfection of him wrapped around me, hugging me tight and protecting me from the big, bad world. “All I need to do is keep on fighting with you and we’ll keep having awesome sex. To teach me this make love not war concept.”
“For the sake of education,” he suggested.
“Okay.” I smiled at his laugh.
“Then I propose we should fight about food next. Because I’m starving and might wither away if we don’t get something soon.”
He heaved onto his side and rained soft but pushy kisses from the corner of my eye, along my cheek, and down to my mouth. “I won’t argue that plan.” In a swift gladiator move, he dove over me, dragged me up and out of the bed with him, and hugged me next to the bed. One last kiss and he went to retrieve clothes from his bag.
“Speaking of plans, I never told you how we should get Felicia.”
“Yeah?” From across the dimly lit room, he jammed one leg into boxers and I stared at his god-like body. Muscles and taut flesh. I’d enjoyed every inch of it all and maybe food could wait…
I stepped forward to get my clothes, reluctantly, and whimpered. My thighs cramped and I wondered if I’d be able to sit down ever again.
“How many muscles does it take to have hot monkey sex?” I whined.
He returned to me and held me tight, kneading his firm fingers into my butt and upper thighs. “We’ll go easy next time.”
“Okay.” Can’t wait. I kissed his shoulder and continued past him.
“How about I order some food and explain?” I offered. He pulled a shirt on and I wrapped the sheet around me like a toga.
“Sounds good.”
I sat—OW—at the table and searched for the nearest
place to get a late dinner. The last window I had open on the screen was the airline website. I swiped that page over and talked as I browsed for a menu.
“When I was looking at her posts about staying and then not staying at Dunton, I’d scrolled past and found a few interesting ones. People had tagged her in posts and she’d put up some of her own. Tomorrow afternoon, she’s volunteering at some charity fundraiser thing in LA.”
Mav had sat on the edge of the bed and was putting socks on. Jesus. Such a simple mundane thing to do and he looked like he could be in a magazine ad.
“Go on,” he prompted.
I shook my head to clear from zoning out and staring at his forearms as they flexed.
“Uh… Oh. Okay. So we know where she’ll be. It’s supposed to be a star-studded event. Actors, musicians…Chris Hemsworth…”
He frowned at me and I shrugged. “For a children’s hospital. My idea is to fly out there and wait for her at this thing. Give her the ring and…” I wiped my hands off. “It’s done.”
Done.
Done?
But how would Mav and I be able to continue this bliss when we were back at home? I stumbled with my thoughts, dropping my gaze to the threadbare carpet.
“One step ahead. Smart thinking.”
Smart thinking would have included at least some forethought into what would happen next. Make love, not war. Yeah, yeah. We liked to fight. We always had. Yet it was only now, on this crazy weekend away from our routine lives, that we’d managed to come together—literally.
Would the magic of our attraction fade once we were back on home turf with the crap of our daily lives to clutter our time and energy? What about Violet, and Amber, on that note? How could we—
“Did you order the food yet?”
I’d lowered my phone to my lap and I hastily unlocked it. “Yeah, uh kinda.”
“I’m going to walk over to the convenience mart at the gas station first. You need some bigger Band-Aids for those blisters. And I need some gauze for my arm.”
I nodded absentmindedly at his words, but I sank a little deeper in the lost sea of ga-ga-ness he blanketed over me whenever he set his still-cut lips to mine for a quick, hard kiss.
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