“Okay, I will. Uh . . . thanks for doing this.” I started climbing back into my car and locked my doors.
“I’d do anything for you, Sera. In case you hadn’t noticed by now.” He hung up and suddenly I didn’t feel as cold, thanks to all the warm flutterings happening inside my body.
It was more like three minutes when I caught sight of the black car tearing around the bend. The car almost skidded to a stop and then he jumped out wearing a full black suit. I almost laughed at the James Bond-ness of this moment.
“Are you okay?” he asked, as I opened my car door and stepped out.
I nodded. “Fine.”
He eyed me. “You don’t look very fine, your lips are blue. Are you cold?” He reached down and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Shit. You’re wet.”
“Compliments of a passing car.”
“Here.” He whisked his jacket off in one very heroic-ish move and passed it to me. “You should probably take off your top and put this on.”
“Off?” I looked at him, he wasn’t being flirty and playful this time, in fact, he sounded serious.
“Well, you can’t keep those wet clothes on in this weather. Take your top off, put this on and sit in the car next to the heater.”
“My heater doesn’t really work.”
“Here,” he pulled his car keys out of his pocket and handed them to me, “I’ll sort the wheel out, you get warm.”
“Okay.” I nodded. I was really grateful for his suggestion, because by this stage, I was freezing. I climbed into his car, pressed the fancy start button and turned the heater on full blast. His windows were tinted, something I clearly remembered from the other night, but still I tried to duck down as low as I could when taking off my top. My bra was soaked too, and I unclipped it and slid it off. I wrapped the huge jacket around me and then sat as close to the heater as possible.
The heat immediately started doing the trick, and when I was a little less frozen, I suddenly became aware of the smell. His scent clung to the jacket like a fine mist, and the smell was intoxicating. I looked out the window; Ben had already lifted the car up with the jack and was now putting on the tyre and screwing it in place. Handy bothinandoutof the car, I thought involuntarily biting down on my lip as I watched him bending over.
My mind went one way,fast.To the deep, dark depths of the filthy gutter. Watching him wielding a spanner was having more of an effect on me than I ever would have imagined—who knew I loved a man with tools?Ben seemed completely unaware that I was currently undressing him with my eyes and imagining him shirtless and sanding a floor, or some such thing that required large motorized tools with decidedly phallic-looking qualities.
God, I was terrible.I mentally scolded myself for these seriously wanton thoughts. But I just couldn’t help myself when I was around him.
He finally finished putting on the new tyre and then walked back over to the car, climbing in to the passenger seat and started warming his hands by the heating vent.
“It’s cold.” He rubbed his hands together vigorously.
“Yes, sorry to drag you out in this weather.” I suddenly felt bad for asking him to come and rescue me, especially considering he’d been working today and was probably desperate to relax.
But he shook his head and smiled at me. “It’s my pleasure.”
“When you break down, I promise to come and rescue you,” I offered.
His eyes lit up slightly. “Deal. I look forward to being rescued by you then.”
“Well, don’t go and breakdown on purpose now.” I had sudden images of him sabotaging his car just to drag me out at some ungodly hour.
He laughed, “I was actually just wondering if that was possible.”
“Ben!” I shook my head and gave his arm a playful slap, but when I did, my hand decidednotto come away from it and landed up staying there. I looked at it, willing it to behave itself, but it didn’t. It gripped his arm a little tighter, and then, to my horror, it started rubbing it. Suddenly, the air and the mood in the car changed.Shifted.
It was no longer cold. We were no longer parked on the side of the road, the back seat suddenly looked very inviting and all those silly reasons about why Ishouldn’tlet anything happen with this man melted away into oblivion. My hand started traveling up his arm, to his shoulder and then up to his neck. He inhaled sharply and his whole body stiffened when my finger traced the lines of the tattoo that came out from under his collar and ran up his neck, to the back of his ear.
I looked up at him, he was looking down at me with dark, almost black eyes, and there was definitely no hiding what he wanted. The thought made me feel powerful, stirring that inner porn star of mine that had come out a few nights ago.
Don’t give in . . . stay strong . . . resist him!
The tiny voices whispered somewhere in the back of my mind, but the louder voices that were shouting the complete opposite, were inconveniently prevailing. That is, until the sound of my phone ringing squashed them all.
“Shit!” I said, snapping out of the spell I’d just been under. I reached for my phone, JJ’s number was flashing across my screen. He was probably worried after my message. And I was right. After assuring him repeatedly that I had not been assaulted, kidnapped or had befallen some terrible roadside fate, I hung up.
