He lowers my hand and gives me a stare so full of heat he might singe the surrounding fields. “Come over here and find out.”
My breath stutters. Anyone could see us if they drove by, but what are the chances of that happening? The road we’re on doesn’t even have all that great of a vantage point as far as photos go. It’s just a spot that happens to have decent cell reception so we can check the radar as the storms initiate over the next hour or two.
Before I can second guess myself, I grab on to Wes’s shouldersand slide from the driver’s seat over to the passenger side—and by slide, I mean topple into his lap with the grace of a sack of potatoes.
He helps me right myself with a chuckle, one hand splayed low on my back. The tips of his fingers slide under the waistband of my shorts, teasing the slightly sweaty skin as his other hand cups my jaw. “I love it when you give me that look,” he sighs, stroking my bottom lip with his thumb.
“What look?” I grumble as I attempt to settle into a more comfortable position. Wes is a big guy, and while my car isn’t tiny, there’s not a ton of room when you add my long legs to the mix.
“The look you get when you know I’m going to talk you into doing something you want to do but think you shouldn’t,” he says with a wink.
I quickly forget all about finding a place for my knees when Wes tugs me more firmly into him, my thighs spread wide over his hips. His hand on my back dips further into my shorts, kneading the curve of my ass as his tongue plunges deep. He kisses me like he’s been suffocating for days and I’m his only hope of a breath of air.
“Convinced yet?” he rumbles against my ear, nipping the lobe lightly.
“Mmm, I don’t think so,” I whisper back, his playful mood contagious. He was right. I do want this. Badly. “What else you got?”
Wes growls. Honest to god growls, the sound rushing straight between my thighs. But that’s nothing compared to when he reaches for my tank top, yanks the neckline and my bra downin one rough motion, and treats my nipple to the wet, hot slide of his tongue.
“Fuck, that’s good,” I gasp. Playfulness evaporates as lust roars through me. Every drag of his tongue, every light nip of his teeth, spears me with a bolt of fresh desire. I don’t even realize I’m rocking my hips in a fruitless search for friction until his hand clamps down to keep me in place.
“Need a minute.” With a flush high in his cheeks that has nothing to do with the hot breeze blowing through the windows, Wes flicks his eyes up to mine while dragging in a ragged breath, indecision racing across his features.
Then, with a last lingering look steeped in regret, he gently tugs my bra and shirt back into place. “I don’t want the first time I’m inside you to be on the side of the road.”
I swallow hard, pushing my hand through his dark hair while struggling to contain my own lust. Between the rasp in his voice and the sheerwantin his eyes, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so desired before. Definitely not with all my clothes on, parked on the side of the road.
Wes leans into my touch like a great big cat eager to be pet and watches me through narrow slits. “Sorry,” he says with a rueful chuckle. “I know I started it.”
“Nothing to apologize for.” I press a light kiss to his mouth and start to ease my way back to the driver’s side, but he only tightens his arms around my waist.
“I like holding you,” he says softly, leaning further back into the seat and pulling me with him. It’s almost too hot for it, even with the breeze. I rest my cheek against his shoulder anyway, savoring the closeness.
I drag my finger over the top of his shoulder, skimming one of the bird tattoos. He’s in a muscle tank today that exposes the curve of his biceps and the smattering of birds I now know extend from his chest.
“I got them when I was eighteen. My parents fought a lot when I was a kid. I mean, they still do.”
Wes strokes a hand down my back, a soothing touch I suspect is for himself as much as it is for me. There’s too much of an echo of the way I talk about my own childhood in his voice, an undercurrent of old pain that won’t be dulled by words. I brush my lips over one of his tattoos and am rewarded with a soft sigh.
“When I was little, I used to hide in my closet when their fights got bad, dreaming of a way to escape,” he continues. “Things never got violent, but the things my dad would say. To her, about her, aboutme…I used to wish I could just fly away. I made the appointment mostly as a way to piss him off. Hehatestattoos. Some horseshit about real men not needing to disfigure themselves. But then I saw the birds and thought that if I was going to give the old man a big middle finger, I should do it in a way that meant something to me.”
“What did he say when he saw?”
Wes laughs bitterly, his chest vibrating under me. “That I was turning out to be the disgrace he always knew I would be.”
I jerk my head up. Anyone who grew up with loving parents would be baffled by the calm arrangement of Wes’s features despite sharing the painful memory, but it’s a look I know well—a look that says it’s not worth being upset about when it was just one of a thousand cuts from the people who were supposed to protect us.
I don’t sayI’m sorry. It feels too meaningless. Instead, I tell him I understand the only way I know how.
“I was nine the first time Mom forgot Eric’s birthday. She was out on one of her dates, and it was so late that the only thing open was the gas station, but I couldn’t let him go to school without cupcakes on his birthday. So when he asked me if she was still going to make them, I lied, sent him to bed, and used some of the money a neighbor gave me for shoveling her driveway to buy a box mix.” I shake my head at the memory with a humorless laugh. “Those poor kids were probably picking eggshells out of their teeth for days, but Eric had cupcakes.”
“He had a sister who gave a shit,” Wes says quietly, toying with the end of my braid. “Worth some crunchy cupcakes.”
We spend the next hour swapping childhood war stories. I tell Wes about helping my brothers with their homework and forging my mom’s signature on permission slips she forgot to sign. Driving her home from bars long before I got my license. Getting a job at fifteen that paid cash under the table since I wasn’t really old enough and using that money to buy my first camera.
I giggle when he tells me about the times his mom would bring him down into the kitchen and try to teach him to cook when his father was away on business, but my heart breaks when he talks about cold, formal holidays. I made the best of the holidays with my brothers the years my mom was too wrapped up in her own life to remember she had kids who still believed in Santa. Though I wouldn’t call itmerry, it was better than the icy silence Wes describes.
After a while, we fall quiet. We’re both sweaty, the breezedoing little to cool us under the heat of the sun, but it’s a long time before I climb back into my own seat.
