He slammed her against her car, arm tightening around her neck until she was loudly gasping for breath and could feel his pelvis press into her ass. He was hard.
Don't panic. Fight him off.
But he started talking while he thrust his hips against her, each move bringing the roar of rushing blood into her ears. Her concentration splintered.
“Remember question five?” His tone was conversational, almost pleasant. “Did you read question five?”
At first she didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Too busy concentrating on sucking in enough oxygen to help her brain remember the steps for breaking a back-approach strangle.
“I bet you're glad to experience question five with me,” he said. “Grateful. You are grateful, aren't you?”
At least he didn't seem to expect her to speak, the sick fuck. He was getting off on grinding his pathetic erection into her ass, a repulsive assault that she had to pretend wasn't happening so she could overrule the building terror in her mind. Not entirely in control of her emotions, she began to thrash against his hold and fight to get her fingers around the arm at her throat.
Duck your chin. Get air.
Both his arms were occupied holding her in the chokehold, and she was able to dig her fingernails into the sinews of his forearm and force her head lower into the crook of his elbow.
At last, a deep breath. Her vision began to clear and her mind sharpened.
“Help!” she screamed. She remembered an old feminist adage. “Fire! Help! FIRE!”
Still ducking her chin to her chest, she twisted to the side and drove her elbow into his ribs. That gave her enough freedom to lift her arm for a second blow, this one aimed low and furious at his groin. But he caught her arm and yanked it up behind her back, twisting her shoulder painfully. He forced her to bend over.
“Careful, bitch,” he said, his previous, creepy calm shaken. “Save your energy for when we get home.”
Her shoulder was screaming in pain. Only moments had gone by since Paul had left—and other people were bound to come by any second. He was insane to attack her in the middle of a city street—
“In the car,” he said with another violent tug, “or I break your arm.”
Whatever you do, never let the bad guys get you in a car. In spite of the pain, she let her knees buckle and her own body weight pulled them both towards the ground. She stared at a filthy Snicker's Bar wrapper below her in the patchy grass and focused on aiming her next kick.
“Why are you fighting me?” he gasped. “I'm not going to hurt you. You're the one who hurt me, remember? You assaulted me and I got blamed for it. I answered your ad and now I have a police record. How do you think that makes me feel?”
Still shouting for help, Bonnie landed a glancing kick in his kneecap, but the man knocked her to the ground, captured her hands, and pressed his knee into her throat. He was just too damn heavy to fight off. But she tried.
“Stop struggling, girlie. Say you'll come with me and I'll let you breathe.”
He was nuts. Any second somebody would see them, wouldn't they? Where was everybody? Grateful for the years of tummy crunches, she curled her legs up and tried to hook her feet around his head. She settled for a kick to the ear instead, which just made him push his knee down harder on her throat until her vision went dim at the edges.
Focus on breathing. Just focus on breathing.
Chapter 11
Paul was several blocks away when he realized he hadn't seen her distinctive red Beetle following him. He was only going ten miles an hour; she should have caught up by now. Worried she might get lost—or worse, change her mind—he pulled over to the curb and watched the rearview mirror. But she still didn't appear.
Maybe she had changed her mind again.
You promised to be patient, he told himself.
Scowling at the empty street, Paul swore and turned the car around. “Not that patient,” he muttered to himself. “Let's be realistic.”
He sped back the way he'd come and spotted her still-parked VW right before he saw what was happening on the ground beside it. Nearly crashing his car into a parked Escalade, Paul swerved over to the side of the road and leapt out with his heart pounding in his mouth.
“Stay back, asshole, or the whore gets a lesson.” It was the dickwad that should have been in jail. He had his knee at Bonnie's neck, her wrists pulled over her head on the ground, and wore a shit-eating grin that Paul was going to smash off his face.
“You stupid fuck,” Paul said. “Now they'll really put you away.”
His creepy-handsome face twisted into a smile. “But at least it'll be worth it.” He looked down at Bonnie. “And you're going to watch.”
Paul's senses began to shift and narrow, so that all he could see was Bonnie's frantic eyes and the choking weight at her throat, all he could hear was her labored breathing, and all he could taste was the blood in his mouth from biting down hard on his lips so he couldn't lose control of himself and inadvertently hurt her. Any sudden move might make the man panic and crush her voice box. If Paul moved slowly and calmly, Bonnie's neck would be safe. He just needed a little time to get closer.
“Hey, easy,” Paul said. Obviously, the man was more than just an evil fuck, he was crazy. Insanely reckless, like a man with nothing to lose. As he approached, buying time, he pulled out his phone and pressed 9-1-1.
“Run,” Bonnie gasped. “Help.”
“Hang up! Hang up!” the man shouted, and Bonnie let out a strangled cry. Her face was twisted, darkening.
“All right, all right!” Paul made a show of pushing the phone off and tossing it into the grass beside the curb.
The man must have softened his hold, because Bonnie relaxed and sucked in a deep breath. Paul was only a dozen feet away now.
“What do you care what I do with her?” the man asked, his voice horribly calm. While Bonnie gasped for breath, he rubbed his cheek against hers. “You've already fucked her. What good is she now?”
The bastard never knew what hit him. Paul's blow to his left kidney lifted his weight off of Bonnie, who quickly rolled to the side and drove a knee upward into his groin. As he cried out in pain, Paul wrapped his arm under the man's neck and jerked him back, freeing Bonnie, who furiously kneed him again in the balls.
“Get the phone!” Paul twisted the jerk's arm behind his back and forced him face down, gasping and moaning, to the ground. “It should be on. Maybe they're still on the line.”
Bonnie lifted it to her ear, managed to give Paul a small smile, and asked the dispatcher for help. At the same time, she gave the whimpering loser another swift kick in the ribs.
“Remind me never to get in a real fight with you,” Paul said, wishing he didn't have his hands full imprisoning a violent sociopath for the police so he could take her away somewhere safe and get started protecting her forever. Or at least kiss her.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. It felt like a declaration, and his heart imploded.
Then she drew back and drove the toe of her boot into the guy's other kidney.
The police remembered both of them, and made sure the EMT's took Bonnie to the emergency room for a thorough exam and post-assault counseling.
Everyone looked her over and wanted to fuss more. But she just wanted to go home. She wasn't really hurt, just a little sore. It had all happened so fast and she had never felt as though she was at the bastard's mercy. When Paul came along she was preparing a defensive move she was sure would have freed her. But she was glad to know Paul had a few tricks of his own.
Paul refused to leave her side, through every police interview and every EMT, nurse, and doctor exam, continuously gazing at her with burning, possessive eyes that in spite of everything made her warm and distracted. Fighting off the attack had left her pumped full of adrenaline, and when she stepped out of the hospital into the waning evening light, the last thing she wanted was a quiet pat on the back or anyone's pity.
Least of all Paul's.
/> “You're going to drive me to the top of that hill next to your house, that one with the view, and then you're going to wipe away the memory of that asshole with everything you've got,” she said. “Got it?”
He hesitated as though he was going to argue, then dropped the Florence Nightingale act and slid his hand under the shirt at her waist. “Got it,” he said quietly, stroking her tender flesh.
When they got to the top of the hill she had mentioned, a deserted bend in the road that overlooked the eastern sprawl of the Livermore Valley, Paul drove the Prius onto the gravel shoulder and killed the engine. He turned to her.
“Sure about this?”
The tender concern in his face filled her with a nameless contentment she'd never felt before. She smiled at him. “Very. I was in no real danger, you know. I was just waiting for somebody to come along before I had to kill him.”
“I believe it,” he said gravely. “Not that I'd cry at his funeral, but I'm glad you didn’t have to.”
Smiling, she climbed into the backseat.
The street was deserted, but he wouldn’t have noticed a parade. Paul wiggled next to her on the seat and took her in his arms for a long, deep kiss.
His heart was melting, but his body was rigid with desire. She touched him, rubbed his erection through the fly of his jeans, kissed him, then climbed onto his lap and faced him with her knees straddling him. The sharp slope of the car pressed his head down at an awkward angle, but she was closer to the middle and was able to sit high in his lap. He gazed up at the soft, wiggling woman with her lips parted in arousal and shoved his hand between their bodies to free his cock.
“Turn around,” he said roughly.
She raised an eyebrow, smiled a smile that brought a seductive dimple to her cheek, and shifted her weight around so she was facing away from him.
He tossed his head back, banging it on the rear window, and groaned. Through half-closed eyes, he watched her lush, womanly body arrange itself over his big, hulking male one while his hands raked hungrily over her clothes seeking access.
“Just pull them down,” she gasped. “The pants. They stretch.”
Soon the swell of her ass was naked on his palms, and as he spread the lips of her wet pussy apart with his thumbs, she bent forward and cried out his name.
He remembered the condom in his pocket just in time, and she bent forward so he could put it on.
“Have a seat,” he said.
She maneuvered herself over him, reached down with her hand to clasp his cock and guided him through the soft folds of her sex. Then she pushed down, impaling herself on him.
She cried out and he closed his eyes to feel more of her.
He braced his feet on the floor to drive his pelvis higher. Heavy and soft, her body sank lower and he thrust deeper. A sudden roar from a passing car made her freeze in place, his cock deep inside her, and look out the window. Fearing her modesty would make her stop, Paul wiggled lower, below the window, out of sight.
“Now you're just a girl sitting in a back seat on the side of the road,” he said.
“Fucking your brains out,” she whispered, then grabbed the seats on either side of her and began to ride him.
Vaguely he realized his grip on her hips was probably going to leave a bruise, but he couldn't make himself let go. For moments she would ride the building tension with abandon, but then, at the sound of a passing car, she would stop abruptly with him deep inside her and he thought he would die.
“You're killing me,” he gasped.
Her muscles tightened over his cock, then slipped up and down, up and down. “You deserve it.”
He nodded, happy to agree. “I do.” Just a whisper. He couldn't breathe, let alone talk. Much more of this and he'd pass out. Time to act.
“Oh, God,” she said as his hand reached between her thighs found her clit. Her rhythm faltered, but his fingers reminded her of what she wanted and soon Bonnie was straining to ride him with quick, frenzied abandon, passing cars be damned.
“Oh, God!”
He could feel her come around him, spasming waves, wet and tight, and he shouted out with her, letting himself come and come and come inside her.
Bonnie sagged back against him and he wrapped his arms around her, nuzzling her shoulder, inhaling deep, calming breaths and savoring the unique smell of her. He ran his hands lightly over her breasts, enjoying the last moments of being inside her, and prayed she wouldn't regret what they'd done. She felt like home.
He laughed.
“What?” she asked, trying to turn around.
He held her tight for one more post-coital thrust before letting her climb off of him and pull her pants back up. “I don't know,” he said, still smiling. “I guess I'm just happy.”
The warm, bright look in her eyes as she looked at him filled him with hope. After a moment, she smiled rested her head on his shoulder. “Me, too.”
“You don't have to marry me, you know,” he said. “I'll settle for daily sex and mutual adoration.”
“Only once a day?”
He grinned, rearranging himself back into his pants. “Now you're putting words in my mouth.”
“Only words?”
He stopped her laugh with a deep, slow kiss. The car was nice, but he wanted her alone and all to himself. The threat of a passing car was a distraction now that the fire was out. As he kissed her, she reached under his shirt and lightly dragged her fingernails across his back, and he gasped, wanting her again. No, this fire would never be out.
“You didn't have to worry about me not loving you,” she said softly. “Or the rest of it.”
Heart soaring, he smiled into her neck. “You love the rest of me, too? Which parts most of all?”
She wasn't going to be deterred, and turned in his arms to place a palm on either side of his face. “The impulsive, loving parts.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, laughing. “I sure got that.”
Their foreheads fell together in an affectionate bump. They sat that way for a long minute, lightly tracing their fingers along each other's bodies.
“Your place? I'm feeling the need for some impulsive, loving parts,” she said, adding, “By the way, you got room in that big house for a pair of lesbian senior citizens?”
Paul grinned. “Sure. They'll make great babysitters for my sister's kids.” He held her more tightly.
She nodded. “You're right. We'll be too busy fucking to be much help.”
Their laughter faded away into more open-mouthed kisses, then a rushed journey home.
Quick Study
© 2011 Gretchen Galway
http://www.gretchengalway.com
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
About the Author
Gretchen Galway writes romantic comedies because love is too painful to survive without laughing. A graduate of Stanford University, Gretchen has accumulated writing material as a fit model, fashion merchandising assistant, database troubleshooter, textile designer, cottage gardener, and mother. Raised in the American Midwest, she now lives in California with her family.
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