35. Kara
35
KARA
I clutched the keys in my fingers, nervous laughter bubbling up my throat. “I can’t drive your truck! What if I crash it? I don’t even have a license!”
But Hayden was already out of the truck and rounding to the passenger side to open my door. “There’s nobody out here. Everyone starts in an empty parking lot. And we have one of those. We won’t go out on the roads.”
A swirl of excitement formed inside me. “Really?”
He eyed me. “All you had to do was ask. You want to learn how to drive? No sweat. You want to learn how to make a perfect duck breast with apricot chutney? I can show you. You want to learn how to crochet? Well, I don’t know how to do that, but I can figure it out with you.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I didn’t know we were holding you back. I didn’t mean to. And I know Hawk didn’t either. We just…overdid it. We thought we were protecting you.”
“I know.” I smiled at him, anticipation spreading through my body. “Better put your seat belt on. You’re the one who needs protecting now.” I slid out of the seat and trotted past him to the driver’s side.
He got in, making a show of putting on his seat belt while I adjusted the seat. My legs were about half the length of his.
“Could you get any closer to the steering wheel?” He sniggered.
“Hey! I have short legs, okay?”
“Fine, fine. I hope you don’t crash into anything because the airbags are really going to be painful at that distance.”
I glared at him. “Super reassuring.”
He laughed. “Put the key in the ignition—”
I was already three steps ahead of him, the engine turning over and rumbling to life, aided by my foot on the accelerator.
Hayden’s fingers slid to the handle above the window. “Why do I get the impression you’ve done that before?”
“I haven’t,” I assured him. “But I’ve watched you and Hawk do it enough times to know how.” I revved it again, the truck vibrating beneath me. I grinned at the feeling it gave me. “Parking brake off. Gear shift moves to drive. And—” I widened my eyes at the truck lurching forward. “Aaah!”
Hayden tightened his grip on the door. “And you’re driving. Don’t forget to steer.”
I shot him a dirty look, but the reminder probably wasn’t in vain. I had taken my hands off the wheel for a second. I clamped them back down, fingers tight on the hard plastic and giving it an experimental tug as we crept along at a snail’s pace, just letting it move off its own car magic. My foot was nowhere near the accelerator, too nervous to move it in that direction when having it hovering over the brake felt a whole lot safer.
Hayden’s hand landed on my thigh, warm and reassuring. “Relax. You’re doing fine. Give it some gas.”
At the end of the lot, I dragged the wheel around, maneuvering the truck into a wide U-turn to trundle back in the direction we’d come. Knowing he was there, and he wasn’t going to let me steer us off the cliff or into a tree or oncoming traffic, I settled down, even daring to push my foot on the accelerator a little.
A thrill shot through me when the truck responded. We were barely going ten miles per hour, but it felt like flying.
It felt like freedom. Or at least the promise of freedom.
It had been easy to focus on all the bad things the world outside Ethereal Eden’s gates offered. But there were simple pleasures here too. Like a man teaching you to drive his truck, just because you’d asked.
All I had to do was ask.
We drove around the lot for twenty minutes, practicing the very basics of driving. I even reversed at one point, though that was kind of terrifying.
Breathless with giddy excitement, I stopped the car.
Hayden glanced at me, watching me put it into park. “Had enough?”
“For tonight.”
“How’d it feel?”
I grinned. “Like freedom.”
Like a reminder of everything I’d be giving up if I went back. Josiah would have never let me drive his truck. I wouldn’t have dared to ask. It would have ended in a punishment for forgetting my place.
I was as guilty as Hawk and Hayden. The boundaries I had here weren’t only of their making. I had a role in them too.
They weren’t mind readers, and I no longer had to let a man make every decision for me.
I could ask for what I wanted.
What I needed.
Hayden rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, not doing a good job of hiding the satisfied smile tugging at his lips. “Good. How about I drive us home though? It’s getting late.”
I could ask for what I wanted. What I needed.
And what I’d always needed was him.
“Not yet.” I crawled over the center console and settled myself on his lap, knees either side of his legs, not caring that it wasn’t terribly comfortable. “There’s something else I want first.”
His hands settled on my hips, and he laughed. “You know, most people pay their driving instructors with cash…”
I ran my nose up the side of his neck. “Do they? One small problem with that. I don’t have any.” I kissed the spot beneath his ear.
His fingers tangled in the back of my hair, pulling it enough that my head tipped back, exposing my throat.
“No?” he murmured. “I suppose I could call this a free first lesson then…”
The stubble of his short beard scraped over my skin, tantalizingly different than the softness of his lips and tongue as he worked his way from my chin to my collarbone.
“I think I’d rather pay in another way.”
He pushed the neck of my shirt aside so he could kiss my shoulder. “Okay, if you’re really intent on paying, I accept cash, check, or sex in my truck.”
I laughed, slipping my hands down his chest and then underneath his hoodie. I ran my fingers along the ridges of his abs and flicked the button on his jeans. “What if someone parks beside us?”
He unbuttoned my shirt. “Then I’ll put my mouth over your nipple so nobody sees it.”
I looked past him as he pushed aside my shirt and groped my breasts through my bra. “Oh no. Someone’s coming.”
There wasn’t a hint of sincerity in my voice. The bluff was as empty as it had been ever since we’d come up here.
Hayden chuckled into the swell of my breasts and dragged off my bra straps, flipping the cups down and kissing his way across my skin. “Oh no.”
His tongue rasped over my nipple, sending a shiver of pleasure down my spine. He switched to the other side, tending to that breast as sweetly as he had the first, building my nipples into stiff, needy peaks that begged for more.
He delivered. He raised my breasts to his mouth, alternating between long licks and sucks with his mouth, and tweaks and pinches between his thumb and forefinger.
Like they had a mind of their own, my hips rocked over his, and I leaned back, supporting my weight by holding on to his knees, offering him better access to my body.
He groaned at the sight of me like that, face and breasts pointed toward the roof, hair dangling down my back, hips slow winding, a sensual tease of what was to come. “You’re always beautiful. But fuck.” He kissed the soft, flabby skin across my belly that was deeply scarred with the evidence of having carried a child. “Confidence looks good on you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you as sexy as you are right now. Lift your skirt, sweetheart. Need to feel your hips move like that while I’m inside you.”
I moaned at the thought of him penetrating me. At the thought of the long, slow slide into my body while his heated gaze burned a path across my skin.
I raised myself up, all weight in my knees, craning my neck so my head didn’t hit the roof.
Hayden dropped the passenger seat all the way back so it lay almost flat. He watched me intently as I raked up my skirt so it bared my thick thighs and all the cellulite I’d tried to hide. I didn’t care anymore. Not tonight.
He wanted me just the way I was. He always had. Hawk, too. It had been me who’d had the problem with it.
Hayden’s fingers brushed the inside of my thighs as he undid his fly and dragged his jeans and underwear down low enough to expose his cock. He was already hard, thick, and straining toward me, like his dick knew where it was supposed to be and what it was supposed to do without any guidance from his hands.
I tugged my panties to one side, knowing it would be too hard to get them off in the confined space.
I couldn’t wait.
I wanted him.
I’d always wanted him.
I swiped the head of his cock through the wet arousal pooling between my folds. Coated him in it while he hissed in pleasure.
“Ride me, Kara,” he groaned, fingers digging into the flesh at my hip. “Sink your sweet, wet pussy down on my dick and ride me before I fucking come all over myself just staring at you.”
He didn’t have to ask twice. I was already on my way.
We both shouted when I dropped down onto him, his dick a thick spear of pleasure inside me, stretching me wide at the base. I rocked my hips, getting some friction for my clit, grinding over his pubic bone, feeling the delicious scratch to his hair, before rising up to sink back down deep.
I slid my hands along his stomach and chest, taking his hoodie with me. I didn’t bother taking it off him, it was too difficult in the cramped space, and it wasn’t necessary for what I needed. But I delighted in the hard ridges of his abs and pecs, so completely different to the softness of my thighs either side of him.
I kissed his mouth, tangling my tongue with his, and sliding up and down his erection. His hands trailed from my back to my ass, holding on tight, not controlling or even guiding my movements because tonight was mine.
Mine to control. Though I doubted I was suddenly about to become dominant in the bedroom, I liked the expression on his face, the sweet agony where he was barely inside me, the torturous wait before I plunged back down, offering him relief from the need building behind his eyes.
He kissed every inch of me he could get his mouth to, craning into odd positions to touch and suck my breasts, his lips trailing hot, sweaty paths up my inner arms. Every now and then his hand grasped the back of my neck, hauling me down so he could kiss my mouth. Stealing my breath in passionate kisses that would have fueled my dreams for a lifetime if I didn’t have him right there beside me to act them out in person.
Every time he did that, he loosened his grip on my neck, like he’d remembered that tonight, he didn’t get to be the one calling the shots.
At least not all the shots.
I was there for those deep, drugging kisses as much as he was. They connected a part of me to him that wasn’t physical. They cemented that feeling that had always been there between us.
The one that felt like coming home when I was near him. That felt like peace and calm when the rest of the world felt out of control.
It was him I needed tonight. Him I needed while my clit sang the pleasures of friction, sending an orgasm ripping through my body. I shuddered and shook around his erection buried deep inside me. My inner walls clamped down on him, holding him as tight as the fingers I had tangled in his hair.
He groaned into my mouth as his orgasm took hold. His fingers bit into my flesh in the most delicious way, and he whispered all the sweet words I’d spent years dreaming of hearing him say.
That he saw me.
That he wanted me just the way I was.
That I was his.
I pressed my face into his neck, licking his warm skin, tasting him and committing it to memory. My hips slowed their pace, but neither of us stopped completely, our frantic thrusts to get off turning into agonizingly slow glides that were sweet torture to us both.
I sighed into his neck, so content in his arms I didn’t want to remember there was a world outside.
One that wanted me hurt.
One that wanted us apart.
“Please don’t leave, Kara,” he whispered.
He didn’t ask me for a promise.
Because we both knew it was one I couldn’t make.