So she was playing it this way.
“Fine,” I said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “You don’t have to take part in the conversation, but I’ll just say again that it’s not that I don’t want you.”
She sniffed and turned the page of her paperback.
“Damn it.” I shifted in my seat. “I’m dying here. I can’t just sleep with you and then go about my life. It’ll kill me. You need someone who can fall in love with you, and I’m just not made that way. But I still care, and it’s easier for me to never have you than to get a taste and then lose it.”
She looked up from her book, eyes narrowed and lips pressed together in an angry line.
“What?” I asked. “What’d I say wrong?”
“A taste? That’s crude, Aiden. You mean a taste of my—”
“No! Christ, that’s not what I was saying. You see what I mean? I don’t know shit about communicating with women outside the bedroom.”
“Well, we never even made it that far, did we?”
I shook my head. “This is why I’ve been single forever.”
She glared at me again. “So you’ve never had anything but one-night stands? Ever?”
“Mostly. I’ve had multiple one-night stands with women, but I was clear up front that it was only sex. We didn’t date or snuggle or any of that shit.”
“How ironic that only sex is what I’m asking for.” The hurt in her tone created a tug in my chest.
“It wouldn’t be that simple with us.”
“Are you worried about breaking my heart?”
I turned away and looked out the windshield at the gray pavement of the road. “Yeah. But I’m also selfishly worried about my own heart.”
She sighed softly. “Oh, Aiden.”
“I get hard when you say my name,” I said, shaking my head with disgust. “How fucked up is that? You’re…I don’t even know how to say it, but you’re more than just a woman to me. So much more. If I was cut out to make something work with any woman, Drew, I’d want it to be you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
She reached toward my arm but pulled back at the last second. “I have to apologize. I’ve been hoping we could at least have a just-sex thing since we’re here together and there’s obviously chemistry. I don’t know what’s next for me, but I’m not looking to fall in love and get married. I feel like that ship’s sailed. I want to discover me, because I never got to do that. It was stupid of me to think there wouldn’t be emotional fallout from us having sex. I care about you, too.”
The pleading in her sky blue eyes ripped a hole in my chest. She was telling me she cared, so why did it hurt so damn much?
Never in my wildest dreams had I thought I’d go from having Colby in my truck last year to having Drew next to me now while we discussed our attraction to each other. It was supposed to be the secret I kept buried deep inside forever. I was supposed to smile through the pain while I stood next to Colby as his best man at their wedding.
“In another life, you’d have been my girl,” I said softly. “I’ve wondered what might’ve happened if I’d been the one to run into you that day at the grocery store instead of Colby.”
Drew let out a soft exhale. “Even back then…when he was alive, you—”
“Yeah. I was a piece of shit who wanted my best friend’s girl.”
Her low hum was sympathetic. “You’d only be a piece of shit if you’d acted on it. And, Aiden…I had no idea.”
I felt a sick churning in my stomach and decided on a whim to tell her something I’d never shared with anyone.
“It should’ve been me who died that night.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”
“No, I mean…I was gonna go back home with Colby. I’d have been right behind him that night. We both would’ve pulled over. And knowing him, he’d have been chatting up the driver of the car while I changed the tire. I decided not to go home because they needed cleanup help so bad and it wasn’t like I had anything to get home to.”
“You can’t think that way, Aiden.”
I glanced at her. “I usually don’t. But occasionally it creeps in, you know?”
My phone buzzed from the cup holder with a new text.
“Will you check that for me?” I asked.
Drew grabbed my phone, swiped the screen, and read me the message.
“It’s from Tex. He says ‘This storm is a monster. The radar gave me a boner.’ ”
I smiled at Tex’s unfiltered message. “Can you grab my iPad and look up the radar? I need to know what we’re going into.”
We were all business after that, discussing the forecast and my plan to launch more probes if we saw a twister. When we were an hour out from the storm, we stopped for gas and I watched Drew run into the gas station to pick up some sandwiches.
A guy in a baseball cap and a Georgetown T-shirt held the door open for her when she was walking out. He made a comment and she smiled.
My reaction was the opposite. I had a strong urge to punch the guy when he moved closer to her and started up a conversation. His gaze roved up and down her body like a wolf eyeing its dinner. I jerked the gas nozzle out of my truck as soon as it was full of gas and shoved it back into the pump with more force than necessary.
Drew was walking toward the truck and waving at the college boy, who was still talking. He was also still looking, and my muscles tightened with tension.
“Hey,” she said, grinning as she approached the truck. “Chicken salad or ham and cheese?”
She held up the plastic-encased sandwiches and I cringed. “They look equally disgusting. I’ll take whichever one you don’t want.”
A breeze picked up her hair and blew it across her face. The sky was darkening fast. I got in the truck and headed for our destination, hoping to get there before shit turned bad.
“It’s not the worst sandwich I’ve ever had,” Drew said.
“Yeah?” I took a bite of the chicken salad one she handed me. “What was the worst sandwich you ever had?”
“My mom once made us honey sandwiches. We were out of peanut butter and jelly. I think that was the worst. What about you?”
I thought about it. “I can’t think of a sandwich any worse than some of the MREs I ate in the Middle East. The day I got home I ate several pounds of fresh fruit because I hadn’t had it in so long.”
“My friend Dot calls you G.I. Joe.”
I furrowed my brow, confused. “Who’s Dot?”
“She’s staying at the campground with her husband, Herb. And she says if she was forty years younger she’d be all over you.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventy-one.”
“Damn. Tell her I’m flattered.”
A gust of wind whipped at the truck and I tightened my hold on the steering wheel as I held it steady. I hadn’t seen winds this strong all season.
“You look nervous,” Drew said.
“Nah, I’m not.”
“That crease between your brows only comes out when you’re nervous.”
I held back a smile. “Maybe a little. This wind’s gonna be a bitch if it keeps up.”
Not only did it keep up, it was gusting even harder by the time we got to the rendezvous point where the others were waiting. Murph left me and Drew to keep an eye on our spot between an open field and a wooded area while he took his team up onto a bluff.
A light drizzle started and got heavier within a minute. The wind whipped it in sideways sheets, making it hard to see.
“Drew!” I called.
“Over here!”
Her voice was close but I couldn’t see her. The rain was pouring down now, and my instincts kicked in. We weren’t safe here.
“I left my purse over here, it’s got to be soaked.” Her voice got farther away and my heart kicked up a notch.
“Drew, hold on. We need to be in the truck.”
I followed the direction her voice had g
one, the wind blasting rain into my face and making it impossible to see.
“Drew! Talk to me!” I cupped my hands around my eyes so I could see.
Nothing. My heart pumped hard as I raced in the direction I’d last heard her.
“Aiden?”
I made her out through the rain and covered the twenty feet separating us. I had to yell over the powerful wind.
“In the truck!”
A deep cracking noise sounded and I felt the vibration of part of a tree hitting the ground. This storm was going bad fast. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face anymore. The wind howled around us and the rainfall was so heavy it was already pooling at my feet. My truck was more than fifty feet away now, and there was a huge tree next to where I’d parked it. We’d be safer in the drainage ditch running alongside the road.
“In the ditch,” I said, pointing.
Drew didn’t hesitate. She dropped her purse and got in. The ditch was already filled with a couple inches of water.
“Lie on your back,” I said, stepping down behind her. A gust of wind hit my back as I got down and lay on top of her, wrapping my arms around her head.
The wind howled through the trees and I said a silent prayer. Not her, too.
Drew’s heart pounded rapid fire against my chest. She was scared, and damned if I wasn’t, too. Not much did that to me, but feeling her fear warm and sure against my body and not being able to take it away…that was terrifying.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I said in her ear. “Just hold on to me, Drew. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
It was a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep. I knew all too well that when Mother Nature wanted to exert her wrath, nothing could stop her. But I also knew I’d die before I let harm come to Drew, and that brought me a measure of peace.
She wrapped her arms around my back and held on. My cock twitched and firmed, oblivious to the natural disaster overhead. Having Drew warm and soft against my body was too powerful a turn-on to be denied. Considering I’d never even touched her, this was a hell of a place to be.
The wind died down and the rain let up a little.
“We can head for the truck now,” I said in her ear. “Stay close to me.”
She turned her face just an inch, enough for her cheek to brush against mine. Her skin was soft and tempting.
But we were still out in a hell of a storm, so I had to think with the head on my shoulders. I pushed myself up and reached for her hands to pull her up.
I dropped one of her hands and she squeezed my fingers with the other one. She was silently asking me not to let go. I squeezed back with a promise that I wouldn’t.
How could I? Now that I’d felt her against me, how the hell could I ever go back?
She picked up her soggy purse and I led her back to the truck. When I reached for the handle to the passenger door, she pushed her back against it. I looked down at her upturned face. There was something in her eyes I’d never seen before.
Her chest rose and fell, her white T-shirt plastered to her skin. I didn’t even want to breathe, because any movement would spoil the perfection of this moment.
When she raised our intertwined hands up to her face and put my hand on her skin, I groaned softly. I brushed my thumb over her wet cheek, my eyes never leaving hers.
No fucking way was I going back now. I wrapped my other hand around her waist and pressed it to the small of her back, pulling her against me. And then I lowered my mouth to hers, just tasting her soft, sweet lips for a couple seconds. After that, my primal urge for more took over.
I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her body flush against mine. Then I kissed her deeply, finally giving in to what I’d wanted for so long. She moaned into my mouth and I lost all sense of the wind and rain. There was nothing but us, and I’d never felt something so undeniably right.
Chapter 15
Drew
Aiden wasn’t just kissing me—he was claiming me. From the heat of his mouth to his powerful erection on my stomach, I felt a passion I’d never seen in him before. He cupped my face with one hand and pressed his other one against my back, molding my body against the hard, muscled lines of his own.
And the deeper he kissed, the dizzier I became. I’d never been kissed like this, in a way I felt with every inch of my body. In a way that brought on a deep, insistent throbbing between my legs.
I wrapped one arm around his shoulder and wound the other hand into his wet hair, rain rolling through my fingers as I squeezed it.
Breathing didn’t compare to this kiss. I hung on to him, savoring it until I had to pull away and gasp for air.
A fire swirled in his hazel eyes as he looked down at me. I clutched him tighter, fearing he’d break away and call this a mistake.
Instead he lowered his forehead to mine and wrapped his arms around my waist. The downpour didn’t matter. I put my hands on his lower back and pressed myself against him. I couldn’t get close enough.
“Drew,” he said, his voice hoarse and his coffee-scented breath warm against my lips.
I tipped my face up for another kiss and he pressed his lips to mine again. This kiss was slower, more sensual. The urgency was still there, though. Every inch of my body was buzzing with the same urgency.
Beeping noises sounded from inside the truck and I felt a deep groan rumble in Aiden’s chest.
“What is it?” I asked softly.
“Murph. Worried about us.”
I eased back an inch and his hold on me loosened. I wanted to cry out and throw myself back at him.
“You okay?” he asked, his eyes on mine.
“More than okay.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “The ditch jump. You didn’t hurt yourself anywhere, did you?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s get in,” he said, reaching for the door handle behind me.
I gave him a serious look. “Wait.”
His hand stopped and he waited, brows arched in question.
“Say that wasn’t a mistake. Tell me we’re not going back to you not touching me. I need you to say it.”
His expression softened. “I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. And I don’t.”
I let him open the door and I stepped up and into his truck. He walked around the front of the truck and I felt a measure of pride and a rekindled desire when I saw his erection straining against his jeans.
He got in the truck and reached into the backseat for a flannel shirt, handing it to me. “Closest I’ve got to a towel.”
I took it. He ran a hand through his hair and over his face to clear away the water. Then he picked up his radio and pushed a button, his eyes on mine as he spoke into it.
“Murph, we’re okay. You guys all right?”
There was static on the radio as Murph told Aiden he’d run over something he hadn’t seen in the road and had a flat tire.
“Ping me your location,” Aiden said. “I’ll be right there.”
I’d dried my face and arms, and I reached over with a sleeve of the flannel and wiped Aiden’s brow off.
“Put it on,” he said as he put his arm around the back of my seat and looked behind him before driving in reverse.
I furrowed my brow with confusion. “The shirt?”
“Yep.”
“I’m not cold.”
He turned the truck around and then glanced at me. “You’ve got a white T-shirt on. I don’t want the other guys seeing you like that.”
I looked down at my chest and saw my nipples, pink and prominent through my thin bra and the wet shirt plastered to my body.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered, my cheeks warming.
“You don’t mind me seeing, do you?”
“Uh…no, I don’t.”
“Then just put the shirt on. Your tits are the stuff dreams are made of, by the way.”
I looked at my lap and smiled. “I always wanted bigger ones.”
“They’re perfect.” He glanced at my chest. “N
eeded one more look before you get that shirt on.”
I warmed inside, hoping he’d do more than look at them soon. He pushed buttons on his truck’s GPS and headed up a hill.
The Funnel Finder came into view on the shoulder of the road. Tex was adjusting the jack and Murph was zipping himself into a bright yellow raincoat.
Aiden pulled in behind the station wagon and parked.
“Gonna go help,” he said. “Just sit tight.”
My pulse raced as I looked at him, soaked to the bone. His muscles were outlined by the wet fabric of his T-shirt. Calm and collected as his expression was, I was thinking of the way he’d kissed me just minutes ago, showing me his hidden, passionate side.
I wanted more of him. I tried to calm my thundering heart by reminding myself he’d said we weren’t going back to before. For now, I had to be patient.
Aiden put his hand on the door handle but then paused and turned to me. He reached for my hand and took it in his large one, stroking his thumb over my knuckles. I tried not to break out in a stupid grin, but damn, was this nice. It was a simple gesture, but from the man who’d refused to touch me before, it was like a salve on the burn I felt inside.
He pulled my hand up to his mouth, kissing my knuckles and then returning my hand to my lap. I sighed softly.
Aiden left the truck and dismissed Tex, lying on his back in the road to change the tire.
I swallowed hard as an image of Colby flashed through my mind. Even when I squeezed my eyes shut, it wouldn’t go away. He’d been killed doing this very same thing.
Millie got out of the Funnel Finder and ran back to the truck. It was still raining lightly, and she covered her head with her hands.
“Hey,” she said, getting into the truck’s backseat. “That was crazy, huh?”
“Yeah. We got too far from the truck and had to jump in a ditch.”
“Drew! You okay?”
I nodded, my eyes still on Aiden. “What about you guys?”
“We were right next to the car so we jumped back in it. Still scary, though. We couldn’t see a thing. I was waiting for a cow to come flying through the windshield.”
Tex leaned against the Funnel Finder and took out his smartphone, covering it with his hand to protect it from the rain as he scrolled.
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