Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
She spent a good half hour trying to find a signal with her phone.
But really she knew it wasn’t a signal she was looking for.
It was a way out of being too near to him.
And especially when he was still being incredibly soft with her.
She imagined he had gotten out of the truck to see if he could figure out where they were.
Instead he came back with a flask of coffee.
Or, at least, she thought it was coffee.
She was about to say, You know I don’t really like it, when she realized it was somehow still-scalding-hot tea.
She had to stop herself asking where he had even gotten such a thing, just in case the answer was I fought my way through the zombie hordes for it, just for you.
Instead of the far more normal I stopped by the hotel’s coffee bar while you were in the bathroom.
Though, either way, she deliberately got out of the truck, just so he couldn’t do anything like it again.
Any more of this, and she was going to start responding like it was real.
And she wasn’t really sure what a response to realness was going to look like.
It seemed as if it should just be softness in return. Or maybe an abrupt embrace, like she’d turned into some sort of human-shaped face hugger. But somehow it didn’t feel as if it was going to be. It felt raw and roasting hot, in a way she usually reserved for actually exciting things.
A sexy movie. A man she wanted.
One of his books. Oh god, she really didn’t want to think about his books now.
Specifically the one that made it extremely clear that he knew how to make a woman very happy, in a very particular way.
But she found herself looking for it on her phone, all the same.
Reading over it, feverishly, instead of doing anything sensible, like figuring how to get out of this.
It was not yet dawn when he came to her. Sleepless, wild-eyed.
She knew what he wanted. Or rather, she thought she did.
But damn, if he didn’t up and surprise her.
He was on his knees before she could reach up to him, his body already half between her legs, hands on her thighs, urging them apart.
He wouldn’t, she thought, he couldn’t, he wasn’t that kind of man.
He kept things plain, he offered little.
His mouth was on her before she’d even finished the thought.
Fast and brutal at first, same way he was about everything.
But then he seemed to slow. He pulled her close with those rough, unpleasant hands.
And it was different, somehow. Frustrating, it seemed to her.
She twisted on the bed, not wanting to ask for more but her body seeking it all the same.
It didn’t matter though.
He knew it anyway.
He did what it took, deepening that kiss between her legs, pushing himself into what almost seemed like lust. As if he had become someone else the moment he saw her again. All those years of denial had made him too desperate to do anything but. His restraint was gone.
This was what was left.
The rock of his mouth, his hands pressing her close, always keeping that contact exactly where it needed to be. She pushed toward him, he obeyed. She squirmed away, he listened. Sometime into whatever this was, it almost seemed that he understood before her body even told him.
He knew not to be too direct.
Just enough that it made her melt, and sigh. Her name on his lips in a way she had never let happen before: Calumn, Calumn, she said, for this fleeting moment sure that it was safe to. He wasn’t cold and austere and unworthy here. He was heated, passionate; she fumbled for his hand and he took it.
He didn’t flinch.
She wondered, suddenly, if he ever would again.
And after she was done, she thought of the first impression the scene had given her, when she’d inhaled the book years ago.
Yeah, but you would never do any of that, really, she had thought.
Now she saw him in the thin light from the truck, poring over a map he’d gotten out, those glasses on the gorgeous slant of his nose, and all she could think was:
Oh, I bet you always do.
As if he really were a different person to her now.
And not just pretending to be. He’s just faking it, she told herself. He’s not really anything you should ever want. Then he suddenly looked up from the map, like he knew she was staring at him, and he caught her gaze. He held it, in a way that made her heart start hammering.
It hammered harder, though, when he got out of the truck.
When he strode over to her, like he had business to attend to.
Don’t, she thought. But of course he didn’t.
Of course not. He just wanted to talk about deranged plans that were going to make everything so much worse.
“Bad news is, I have no clue how to get back to the road and even less idea how to do it in the dark. Good news is, we can settle here for the night just fine,” he said, and all she could think when he did was Oh, dear god, all night next to him in that truck.
But she couldn’t let it show. She shrugged instead. Then turned back the way she’d come, like it was nothing. Only to hear him call after her in this baffled sort of way. “Where you going?”
“To the truck.”
“You can’t sleep in there. Heat won’t last all night without draining the gas tank, and the cold gets into the cab like nothing else. It’ll be frostbite time by three AM, no, no, no. Come on, get back here.”
She faced him, now as baffled as he had seemed a second ago.
“So I can make a much warmer place to snooze on the grass?”
“You’re not gonna have to snooze on the grass, all right.”
“Oh, then we’re building a small fort out of twigs and leaves.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, smart-ass. I have a tent you can use.”
“That you just happen to have with you.”
“Of course. Who leaves home without one?”
Normal people, she wanted to yell. But before she could have a meltdown over the idea of them crammed in a tent together, he started toward the truck bed.
“Now get your stuff while I get it ready for you,” he said, and that was when she heard it.
The problem that was slightly more pressing than being horned up all night next to a man she shouldn’t be horned up about.
“I can’t help noticing you keep not saying we. Just me, singular.”
“Well, I’m not likely to get in with you, am I? It’s the size of a phone booth.”
“Yeah, but the other option is apparently an icebox that will fucking kill you.”
She demonstrated his untimely death with her hands.
And maybe also with a tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth.
It made no difference, however.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve done it before.”
“And how many toes did you lose?”
“Barely the end of one of them. And it’s the one I don’t even use.”
He made a scoffing sort of face. As if it were that little of a problem.
Instead of something that made her strangle the air with her hands.
“Oh my god, I was joking. I was joking, I didn’t think you really had—” she said furiously, and to her relief he looked a little uneasier about the idea.
Or maybe just confused as to why she cared so much.
It was kind of hard to tell with his face half striped by gloom, half by the headlights from the truck.
Plus he was rambling now.
Protesting more, like a dipshit.
“It’s not a big deal, all right. Better that than me and you all … wedged against each other all night long. I mean, that’s the worst kind of only one bed I can think of. It’s concentrated. Like a brussels sprout.”
“How is a brussels sprout concentrated?”
“Well, it’s basically a really intense cabbage.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Said the woman who thinks we should jam ourselves into a shoebox together,” he said, then just as she was about to call him on the ever-shrinking descriptions of his tent, he kept going.
“You really think you can stand that? You think you can bear to have my big, bulky body pressing into you for eight hours? Rubbing into things you don’t want rubbed, sliding over parts I shouldn’t be sliding over.
Probably at some point I’ll accidentally—”
But before he could finish that thought, she put up a hand.
She had to. She was already thoroughly stunned over the idea of him saying the bit about his bulky body. If he went any further, if he started talking about where his hands might end up or his mouth might go, she was liable to lose it.
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop. Enough.”
“See, you can’t even stand to hear me say it.”
“Because it’s all nonsense. I mean, you said that stuff would happen in hotel rooms, and it never has.
There has not been a single solitary butt-in-the-face incident.
In fact, we haven’t even done any of the other, lesser stuff, like comically crash into each other naked, or walk in on each other pooping.
So I think we’re safe,” she said, but she knew she didn’t sound sure. Her voice shook on the word naked.
And apparently he had heard it.
“Doesn’t sound to me like you believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do or not. I’m not letting you die of hypothermia. It’s been hard enough letting you sleep in a bathtub, quite honestly. I see you wincing when your back tweaks.”
“My back is just old. I’ve been fine.”
“Well, you won’t be here. Now get the tent.”
She pointed at the truck bed, satisfied that she’d won.
It was only when he sighed and started toward the truck that she realized what winning meant. Somehow she’d talked him into doing the very thing she definitely couldn’t handle right now. He had gotten her all turned around, same way he said she turned him around, and now here they were.
In the woods, in the ever deepening dusk.