TWENTY-FIVE
CHASE
My head hits the seat rest, my insides on fire as Serena takes me deeper, her mouth sliding hot and wet around me, tongue running along the length of my dick. Every nerve ending is alight, every muscle straining with the pleasure that’s tearing through me. A part of me wants to pull Serena onto my lap, slide my hand into her panties, feel that wetness I know is there, and fuck her right here by the side of the road.
But I know if I do that, my head is gonna be on all the ways I want to make her scream, and even with my haze of this moment dominating every thought, we’re not gonna be alone on this highway forever. So instead, I grip the wheel with one hand, and bury the other one in her hair, fighting the urge to lose control completely. It’s raw and consuming, and for the first time since I got into this truck, the hollow ache inside me is replaced by something alive.
One of her hands moves to cup my balls as the other tightens its grasp, her mouth moving faster, like she can sense how close I am to the edge. Pressure builds low and urgent, a coil winding tighter with every stroke, every slick pull of her lips. I can’t stop myself pushing deeper into her mouth as each movement sends a white-hot surge of pleasure straight to my groin.
“Serena.” Her name feels damn good on my lips. “I’m going to come. Fuck!”
She draws her mouth up, tongue flicking my tip, and I think she’s going to pull back, keep working me with just her hand, but instead her breath whispers over my tip. “I want to taste you.”
And fuck if it isn’t the most erotic thing anyone has ever said to me.
Then her mouth is back on me, sliding me deeper and deeper into her mouth. Working me with her hands and her tongue, slick and fast, until I can’t think of anything but the edge I’m hurtling toward. I groan out her name as I’m hit with the force of my pleasure, spilling myself into her mouth. She takes every last drop of me before slowly working her way up, my body shuddering under every movement.
“That was…” I start to say.
“What you needed,” Serena finishes, moving back to her seat as I do up my jeans.
“I was going to say incredible, but yeah. It was.”
We stay like that for a moment, sharing the silence that no longer feels loaded, but intimate.
“So I’m pretty sure what we just did counts as breaking the rules.” I smirk.
Serena shoots back without missing a beat, “After last night, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any rules left to break.”
I laugh. “Ready to carry on, or is there anything else you wanted to do to me? Because just so we’re clear, I’m your willing stable boy over here.”
“Don’t say it?—”
“Princess,” I finish, and she bursts out laughing.
“Let’s go.”
I start the engine, and music fills the cab. This time I tap along to the beat. I thought I wanted to do this on my own. Thought I could shoulder the weight alone. But I didn’t protest when Serena jumped in the truck beside me back at the ranch, and now it feels like she’s taken some of that weight for me, and I’m glad she’s here.
An hour later, the highway is a blur of dark asphalt and fading lines. My eyes sting with tiredness and the kind of exhaustion that makes it hard to think straight. I’ve been driving for eight hours with only a few stops. It’s dark. It’s late. And I’m running on empty.
Ahead of us, the glow of headlights catches a green-and-white sign just off the shoulder.
LAKE VIEW INN—VACANCY.
I squint through the windshield. Torn by indecision. One more hour, and we’ll be on the outskirts of Oklahoma City and the address for Leanna the landlord gave to Mama. But I don’t have another hour in me. My hands feel glued to the wheel. My body heavy and stiff. Whatever awaits me in Leanna’s apartment, I can’t deal with it tonight. Lake View Inn feels like a sign.
Serena shifts beside me. I can feel her eyes on me, even before she speaks.
“You OK if we stop for the night?” I ask.
“Of course. But I could’ve driven, you know.”
“You’ve caused enough trouble on this road trip,” I reply lightly.
“And you love it.”
I chuckle, but don’t explain the real reason I turned down all her offers to take a turn behind the wheel. The truth is, I needed the focus. Because the moment I have to sit with nothing but my thoughts, all the guilt and feelings about my mom and her death start creeping in, and I don’t know how to begin processing them. I don’t know how I feel. Only that I’m not ready for it.
We exit the highway and wind our way through the edge of a town that feels quiet and small. The horizon is flat, framed by telephone wires and the sprawl of one-story buildings. Without the Denver foothills and the Rockies, the sky feels too open, too vast. The Lake View Inn is a three-story hotel with a half-empty lot. I kill the engine and climb out from the truck, rolling back my shoulders. There’s no sign of a lake, but I can smell the metallic tang of water in the air.
Inside, the lobby is small but clean with faux-wood floors, small potted ferns, and red velvet armchairs positioned around a coffee table and a roaring fire. The woman at the check-in desk is in her fifties, wearing a plain white blouse and a kind smile. Her name badge reads “Helen.” There’s a strange pang in my gut at the sight of her. A reminder that normally when I see women that age, passing on the street, or in the crowds, a part of me always wonders if they could be Leanna. And how I wouldn’t know if they were. But now my mom is dead, and this is just a woman who works nights at a hotel.
I must be spaced out from the hours behind the wheel because it takes me a moment to register that Serena is talking to Helen, answering questions, checking us in.
“And how many rooms would you like?” Helen asks.
There’s a moment of silence. Serena hesitates, her eyes flicking to me.
“One double please,” I reply for both of us. I shoot Serena a look. If she thinks after what she did to me in my truck back there I’m gonna let her sleep anywhere but beside me, she’s wrong.
Our eyes meet and linger. Even through the exhaustion and the shadows I’ve been dragging behind me all day, heat rises to the surface. A low thrum of want that feels like thirst and hunger and need, curling low in my gut and anchoring me to the moment. I can see it in her eyes too—the way the blue in them has darkened.
Helen taps away at her keyboard, humming to herself as she fills in her forms. “The bar and restaurant are closed now, but you can order room service until midnight.”
We say our thanks, and I let Serena take the key as I grab our bags. In the elevator, I rub a hand over the back of my neck. The quiet hum of the lift feels charged, like static in the air. Serena leans close, brushing against me, and my senses fill with the sweet blossom of her perfume. I’m hard in seconds.
She smiles, coy and teasing. “I need to get one thing straight before we go into that hotel room together.”
I raise an eyebrow in question.
“I’m starving, Sullivan. And you must be too, so the first thing we’re gonna do is shower and eat and watch a movie.”
A laugh breaks out of me. I move toward her until she’s up against the elevator mirror, my straining cock pressing against her through my jeans. I dip my head, brushing my mouth near her ear. “Whatever you say, Hayes. But let me get one thing straight too—when we’ve showered and eaten and watched your movie, I’m going to make you forget every rule you ever tried to set.”
Her breath catches, and even though she rolls her eyes like I’m impossible, her body shifts the tiniest bit closer to mine. “In that case, I’ll even let you choose the movie.”
“I can promise right now, it’s gonna have zero plot and a hell of a lot of explosions.”
“Can’t wait,” she replies, voice dripping with sarcasm but there’s a softness in her tone too, like she doesn’t want to be anywhere else but here beside me. I know we need to talk about what this is between us. Even with the weight of why we’re on this road trip together, I can feel the questions humming beneath the surface.
The elevator opens onto a corridor with soft lighting and big room numbers on the doors. Serena opens the door to our room. It’s simple, with a king-sized bed, two nightstands, a dresser, and a sliding glass door that leads to a balcony. Beyond the glass, outdoor lights illuminate a walkway down to a lake, stretching out into a darkness as black as the sky.
I have a sudden stab of longing for Oakwood Ranch, for Mama and Dylan and Jake and the noise and distraction of my family. A lump hits my throat. I don’t owe my mom anything, so why am I suddenly wondering how many people she had in her life? How much time she spent alone. Whether she had anyone to laugh with and watch trashy movies with. If anyone is grieving her the way we all grieved for my dad when he died.
“I’m gonna take that shower,” I say, grabbing a clean tee and my basketball shorts from my bag and disappearing into the bathroom before I can choke up. A minute later, I’m stepping under the spray, hoping the heat will wash away the ache inside me.
I didn’t know her.
She didn’t know me.
She never came for me. Never tried. Not once in the twenty-six years since she left me at the ranch. And still, there’s a strange, jagged pain that doesn’t make sense. How can I feel anything for someone I have no memories of? No connection to. Just blood. Just genetics. But somehow that’s enough to leave me hollowed out.
I scrub my hand over my face and turn off the water. Too tired to think anymore. By the time I step back into the room, Serena is sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing one of my sweatshirts, the sleeves bunched at her wrists. One of my favorite action movies is paused and ready to play and a tray of fries and cheeseburgers sits in front of her.
Her face breaks into a smile when she sees me. And God, I don’t deserve her.
“Do not eat all my fries while I grab a quick shower,” she says, jumping up.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” I reply, stealing a fry from her plate as she swats at my hand.
“You picked the perfect movie,” I say five minutes later as she steps out of the bathroom and moves to sit on the bed beside me, her long legs bare. I agreed to a shower, food, and a movie first, but now all I can think about is those legs and what she’s wearing beneath my sweatshirt. I didn’t know it was possible to be jealous of a piece of clothing until now.
“Hard to go wrong with Bruce Willis,” she replies.
I let the movie and exhaustion wash over me, and when the food is finished and the tray is outside the door, we squash together under the covers, her feet resting on mine, my arm around her. The soft rise and fall of her breathing teases me with the nearness of everything I want and don’t know if I should have. If I can. Desire and comfort tangle together inside me, until I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.
And then I open my mouth and ruin everything.