Chapter Fifteen. Temperance
They made it out of the festival grounds without incident, but they’d barely been on the road more than five minutes when the rain made visibility plummet to near zero.
Temperance’s brain went a little haywire, juiced on adrenaline and emotion. She felt kinship with the chaos of nature on the other side of thin glass and aluminum, and the raw power of the big truck beneath her made her feel reckless and invincible.
The steering wheel shuddered in her sweaty hands.
“Slow down,” Duncan said.
The truck hit a dip in the road where rain had pooled, sending a sheet of water up over the hood and the windshield. The wipers were already at peak speed. Their frenzied back-and-forth matched the thundering pace of her heartbeat.
“Do you know how a combustion engine works?” Duncan snapped. “It needs oxygen. You hit another flood in the road like that, you’ll replace the air with a bunch of fucking water.”
Temperance could barely see the reflection of headlights shining off the double yellow line in the center of the road. Again, the wheel rocked in her hands.
“Pull over.” He shouted over the sound of the rain. “Now.”
Her sense of caution overrode the toxic flood of adrenaline that lit through her bloodstream. She slowly braked and pulled over. The truck tilted side to side as it dropped into the steep shoulder. She hit the gas to bring them back parallel with the road, but there was only the futile, dinosaurian roar of the engine and the spin of tires in waterlogged mud.
She tried again.
“Stop.” Duncan’s voice was low, but the single clipped syllable had the piercing power of a bullet.
Temperance took a shuddery breath and put the truck in park. She lowered her hands to her lap.
Shit.
Their labored breathing seemed to echo unnaturally loudly between the close walls of the truck’s cab.
Temperance took a surreptitious glance toward the passenger seat. Duncan was utterly motionless.
The storm outside had carved itself into an avatar of bone and flesh, and she was trapped with it inside this glass-and-metal cage. His pale gray T-shirt clung to muscle-topped shoulders and the broad convexities of his upper arms. His nipples jutted in sharp relief beneath the wet fabric. Goosebumps lifted the fine hairs over his tattoos.
A starved and primitive thing stirred inside her. Sweat trickled between her breasts. Slicked the small of her back. She knew this darker Duncan, but she hadn’t seen him in a while. When he went quiet like this, it meant only one thing. He was moments away from completely losing his shit.
This Duncan was a spool of chaos, and she knew exactly where to yank to unravel him entirely.
Headlights from an oncoming car illuminated half his face, painting his cheeks in shadowy streaks from the rain on the glass. Like tears. The road was soon deserted again in either direction.
Finally, he moved. He took his phone from his back pocket, then tossed it up onto the dashboard with a sound of disgust. “No signal.”
She checked her own phone—also no signal.
Duncan unlatched his seat belt and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did you say, earlier? Two hours? After drinking?”
“Yes.” She unlatched her own seat belt.
“Well, we’ve got one hour down. So, we’re going to sit here for another.” Every word was quiet and measured, but his big chest heaved under the wet shirt like a locomotive wheel. “Then I’m going to push us out of this mud. Then I’m driving us home. Do you understand?”
“Duncan—”
“Do you—” He paused to take a long breath in through his nose. “—understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Abruptly, he reached across her and hit the button that locked all the doors at once. Then he twisted the keys in the ignition and yanked them away to cut the power. Tiny console lights remained on standby power, but the headlights winked out. With the side of his fist, he hit the button on the dash to activate the truck’s hazard lights.
“This is why nobody drives my truck,” he growled. There was something else in his voice, too. A tremor under the rage. He was shaken, but he hid it well. He hunched forward with elbows on thighs, head in his hands.
For an eternity, they simply sat there as the rain squalled against the roof and windows. With the truck turned off, the windows quickly went opaque with condensation.
Duncan’s voice was muffled when he spoke again. “Did you ever really want me, Temperance? Or was I just convenient?”
Wind rampaged against the truck, pressing in tendrils of chill.
Temperance’s good judgment was irreparably fucked. Her most inviolable rule was busted clean through: don’t be horny, emotional, and alone with Duncan Brady.
“All the time, I want you. It’s constant.” She barely recognized the sound of her own voice.
Duncan was shaking. His eyes were closed. She could barely make out his whispered string of filthy, frustrated words: “—fucking killing me—did I do to deserve this—I’m in actual fucking hell—”
Then he looked up.
Her self-control collapsed like a landslide. They both burst into motion at the same time, and everything happened in a few chaotic beats.
Her, half-standing, the back of her head hitting the cab’s ceiling, knocking the rearview mirror askew with her elbow.
Him, yanking her into his lap by her forearm with one hand, tossing the fabric of her skirt high around her waist with the other.
Her, activating the turn signal with her ass, hitting the horn with her foot.
It was a frantic choreography of sexual desperation.
Her heart felt like it might beat free of her chest. Duncan’s fingers dug into her waist to pull her down to his lap, crushing the aching knot of nerves between her legs against the bulging seam of his jeans. Her sweaty knees squeaked against the vinyl surface of the seat.
Her head fell back. She could come like this, and he wouldn’t even need to move.
“Wait,” she said.
Duncan froze.
“You’ve been drinking. Duncan, you can’t consent—”
He dragged his thumb along her damp jaw. The friction of it made her mouth sag open. “I am excruciatingly aware of what is happening right now.”
Duncan drew his bottom lip between his teeth to dampen it with his tongue. He cupped the back of her neck, his jaw angled in a way that would guide them right into a kiss.
Temperance leaned away and pushed her fingers against his mouth. Outside, wind whipped the rain into a slash through the air. It battered the doors, and the truck swayed with each powerful gust.
“No. No kissing,” she said. “That’s not what this is.”
Duncan groaned so loud she felt the vibration of it in her pelvis. His lips were drawn tight across his teeth, and his eyes were so black they reflected all the tiny pinpoints from the dashboard standby lights.
This man stripped her down to her most base sensation-seeking self—and that was only half of it. What frightened her more were the feelings his kiss would churn to the surface—and how much she’d inevitably want more. Kissing Duncan Brady was more than sensation. It was an intimate emotional exchange, and she was already dangerously close to giving all of herself away again.
Hot breath washed down the skin of her inner forearm. Goosebumps rose in its wake. Duncan set his teeth against the pad of her middle finger and tugged it into his mouth. He sucked the sensitive tip with a rhythmic pulse of his tongue. It amplified the throb at the opposite end of her anatomy.
Temperance pulled her finger free and scored her short nails through his beard.
“You’re killing me,” he said.
She pressed her palm to the center of his chest. His heart banged hard beneath it. “Still beating.”
“Temperance.”
She tore her tank top over her head and threw it aside. She had no idea where it landed.
His big hands came up around her ribs, thumbs skimming the small lower curves of her breasts.
“You walked around—all day—wearing this under your clothes?” The bra was a creamy La Perla confection, expensive as hell and far fancier than the day deserved. Duncan closed his hand around where the shoulder strap met the upper edge of the cup, and one of his fingers burst through the lace. “Goddamn it—I’m sorry—”
“Stop talking, Duncan.” She shrugged out of the straps and let the cups fall away from her breasts. The band stayed hooked around her ribs.
He buried his face in the tender concavity beneath her jaw, gasping and greedy. The feel of his beard against her skin disoriented her—it felt like someone not Duncan, even though her body and mind knew the scent and feel of him as intimately as she knew her own.
Her heart knew him, too.
Outside, a truck roared past, firing a surge of rainwater and road debris against the driver’s-side window.
His teeth closed around her collarbone. “Tell me to stop.”
“Do you want to stop?”
“God, no. Green flag.” A moan rolled into his words. “Tell me what to do.”
“Stop talking.”
The heel of his palm skidded down her sweaty spine like the teeth of a zipper. With his other hand, he grasped the bottom of her braid and wound it around his palm, once, twice, three times. Each twist drew her head further and further backward. Her back arched, lifting her breasts right to his mouth. He pressed his lips against an urgently hard nipple, dragging it tight with suction and teeth. Temperance lifted high on her knees, pressing her pelvis into his belly, scoring fingernails across his shoulders.
His mouth went soft and hot, easing the ache with an indulgent drag of his tongue.
“Tell me,” Duncan demanded. He let her braid unravel and tipped his head back to meet her eyes.
Outside, the hazard lights marked time to the rhythm of the rain. Tick, tock, tick.
Fluid looseness seeped into her muscles. Her hip joints felt heavy and weak. Busted hinges, desperate to drop her thighs wide. “Touch me.”
His rough palms settled against her knees. So gentle. Tentative.
“Touch me, damn it.” She clapped her hands down over his and pressed down hard, guiding them beneath her dress. “I’m not going to break.”
At the bend of her hips, Duncan verged both big thumbs downward, pressing tight against her pubic bone, tracing the vee of her bikini line. Temperance arched against him, taut as a bowstring, aching for release.
She was beyond turned on. She was turned all the way up. Packed to the top with tension, filled to bursting.
Between her legs, two big fingers tugged elastic aside. Her panties had to be soaked.
“Oh, god,” Duncan sighed. He dropped his forehead to her collarbone.
For a moment, the wind and rain hushed, like the storm itself paused to pay attention.
Tick, tock, tick.
“Do you have a condom?” Temperance whispered.
“No,” he breathed into her skin.
“No?”
He met her eyes. “I’m not in the habit of fucking people in my truck, Temperance.”
She started to sit back. “I—”
“We’re not done yet,” he said. His right hand palmed the cheek of her ass to anchor her in place.
Between her legs, Duncan twisted his wrist to slide two fingers inside her in one aching, fluid motion. Out again, with that slippery back-and-forth tug he knew she loved. The perfect pattern of thrust and rhythm and friction.
It didn’t take long.
Temperance gripped the seat behind his head for leverage, slapping her other hand hard against the window. She came apart with an orgasm that bent her backward. It bloomed upward into her belly, pounded along the backs of her thighs. She collapsed downward, momentarily pinning Duncan’s fingers inside her. In one slick movement, he repositioned, splaying his free hand against the small of her back. The other gripped the bend of her hip, fastening her down against the straining bulge inside his jeans. She was shameless, grinding out the rest of the sensation against that telltale heat.
Duncan’s own hips rocked in an instinctive echo of hers, and his jaw was clenched tight. A tremor went through his hips and thighs. His eyes squeezed shut and his head tipped back. Through bared teeth, he panted her name like he was in pain.
Temperance knew those sounds he made. That agonized, whisper-soft mmmmh fuck growl and the quiet ahhh god exhale that followed it. The way his legs shuddered between her own.
Duncan Brady just came in his jeans.
When he stilled, she folded forward and pressed her forehead into the seat behind him. Her arms hung limp, her braid slithered down his shoulder. For a few moments, she simply breathed against him, riding the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His mouth was wide open and hot against her shoulder.
On one of the distant county roads, a siren wailed. The sound was as desolate and desperate as the sudden ache in her chest. How naive she’d been, to think she was safe as long as he didn’t speak or kiss her on the mouth. Like always, he’d respected every one of her demands. But it hadn’t mattered.
He’d used body and breath to paint emotion on her like a canvas. For Duncan Brady, words and kisses were amateur hour.
“Temperance.”
Don’t look up.
Don’t.
She did.
“I am”—he blew out a sharp breath—“obsessed with you. And I hate it.”
Colors suddenly flashed through the back window of the truck. Red, blue, red, blue. High-beam headlights flooded the interior of the cab.
“Oh my god,” she groaned. She launched herself off Duncan’s lap, tugging up her bra, smoothing her hair, yanking her skirt down her legs. “Shit, shit! Where’s my top?”
Duncan twisted around to reach into the truck’s narrow back seat. He flung the tank at her and snagged a flannel to throw across the dark stain in his lap.
“Well. This should be fun,” he drawled.
Temperance barely had her second arm through her tank top when the deputy appeared at the driver’s-side door with his flashlight. She lowered the window.
“Evening,” the officer said. He was wiry and serious looking, with more hair in his mustache than on his head. “Everything okay here?”
“Doing fine, thanks.” Temperance gave him a tight smile. “We were just waiting out the storm.”
The deputy swung the beam of the flashlight up to the night sky, as if he was searching for rain to confirm her claim. “Looks to be about done.” Then he shone it on Duncan.
Squinting, Duncan nodded and said, “Howdy.”
The deputy shone the light in the footwell of the driver’s seat. “Where are your shoes, ma’am?”
Temperance’s bare toes curled. “They’re—ah, in the truck bed. Back there.”
The flashlight beam swung away as the deputy confirmed. He returned with a tight smile. “Why’s that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“You folks been drinking tonight?”
“I have not,” Temperance said.
“Few hours ago,” Duncan said. “That’s why she’s driving.”
Again, the deputy moved his flashlight between them. His face gave Temperance a little tickle of recognition, but she couldn’t place him. “I saw quite a bit of movement through the rear window as I pulled up. You two do a driver’s-seat switcheroo on me?”
“No, sir,” Duncan said.
“Absolutely not,” said Temperance at the same time.
“Huh.” The deputy’s mustache twitched. “What was I seeing, then?”
Temperance looked over at Duncan. Expressionless, he inclined his head ever so slightly.
“I was—” She sighed. “On his lap.”
The flashlight beam returned to Temperance. “Is that right?”
“Look, man—check the seat, check the mirrors. They’re obviously adjusted for her, she’s half my size—”
The deputy moved the light to Duncan. “So, we’re talking about lewd conduct instead of driving under the influence, is that what you’re saying, sir?”
“Neither, Deputy,” Temperance quickly said.
“Can I see your license and registration, ma’am? Yours, too, sir.”
They both complied.
“Madigan.” The deputy sucked his teeth. He came closer to the window and shone the flashlight into the cab at a gentler angle instead of in their faces. “Temperance. Temperance Madigan. I’ll be damned. I’m Nolan Doyle—I dated your sister all through high school. You probably don’t remember me; you were so young—”
“Nolan, oh my gosh, yes.” Temperance had to grind her teeth to keep in the hysterical cackle that climbed up the back of her throat. This kept getting worse and worse.
The deputy shone his flashlight on his head. “Had a lot more hair back then.” His mustache tipped like a seesaw when he smiled.
Deputy Doyle looked at Duncan’s ID. “Brady—well, hell, there’s another name I recognize. Your brother is the guy Maren married, isn’t he?” He grinned and handed their licenses back through the window.
Duncan nodded. “He is indeed.”
“Lucky bastard. You two—ah, keeping it in the family?”
“No, no—we’re just—”
“We’re friends.”
“Friends.”
“Well.” The deputy winked, then thumped the side of the truck with his hand. “You two be safe tonight. You need help getting off the shoulder? I can call it in—”
“I think we’re fine. Thank you, Nolan. Good to see you.”
“We’ll tell Maren you said hello,” Duncan called after him.
Temperance slumped in the seat as he walked away. Her heart was a medicine ball between her ribs, so heavy it was a wonder it could still beat at all. The tag of her tank top grazed her chin.
Great.
“Remind me to thank Maren tomorrow.” Duncan got out of the truck and came around to her side once the deputy was out of sight.
“I hope you’re joking,” Temperance said as he swung her door open.
Clouds had cleared and the rain turned to mist, catching moonlight and falling around him like glitter. He gripped the upper arch of the doorway and leaned into her face. “Move over. I’m driving.”
“Duncan. Promise me you won’t say anything to Maren about this.”
“Now.”
She scooted across the seat and yanked her seat belt across her waist.
“I won’t tell Maren about this. I can’t guarantee Deputy Mustache won’t be in her DMs tonight, though.”
“Oh my god.”
“Why does it matter? We’re consenting adults.”
Temperance pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and laughed. She sounded as unhinged as she felt. “This isn’t me, Duncan.”
Liar.
This was exactly who she was. Daring and unbound and utterly his. To the center of her bones, she knew.
“Then who are you, Temperance?”
“We’re permanently linked, whether we want to be or not. We didn’t choose that—our siblings did. And now Rowan and Harry.”
“Why the hell does that matter?”
“Duncan. If—when—we end it, even if it’s friendly, we still have to be around each other. Forever. Imagine, someday, we’re at Alice or Grey’s birthday party, or one of a thousand other family gatherings Maren and Nate or Rowan and Harry want us present for. You introduce your wife to me. ‘Hey, sweetie, this is Temperance. She’s kind of an in-law through marriage, but not really, and thank god for that because I used to rail her in my parents’ coat closet and go down on her in the bed of my truck. More charcuterie, honey?’”
Temperance tipped her face into her hands to smother a frantic laugh.
Now, rain on the roof whispered like a rumor.
“We have to do better, Duncan. This tension between us—” She met his eyes. “We have to try to be friends. It’s the only thing we’ve never tried.”
“You and I are not friends.” The emphasis he put on friends made the word sound profane.
“Don’t you think it would be easier?”
“Easier.” His voice fell flat. “For fucking whom?”
“We have to try. For peace. At least until the wedding is over.” Temperance hesitated. “For Rowan and Harry—they’ve been through so much—”
“Wait.” Duncan went still. “What did you just say?”
“I said we need to try to be friends until the wedding is over,” she repeated.
Something odd passed over his features then, but whether it was the darkness or the shadows of rain on his skin, Temperance couldn’t decipher it. Whatever it was, though—it was the visual manifestation of Duncan Brady making up his mind.
“Okay, then,” he said, simply.
He didn’t look at her again until they got back to Cloud Tide.