Drive Me Crazy

by Jenna Bayley-Burke

  “No way. That’s in South Dakota. North of here. We are going west.” She snatched the map from his hands. It was getting scary how well he could read her. “Wyoming and then Utah.”

  “Mt. Rushmore today, maybe we’ll head to Yellowstone after that. Or Las Vegas.” He brought his legs over to the side of the bed and stood, stretching his well-used muscles.

  He stalked toward her, his gaze flicking from the golden skin of her bare shoulders to her cheeks lifted in a smile she seemed to be fighting. Maybe she wanted this, wanted an exciting lust-filled adventure, only she didn’t want to be responsible for not taking the straight and narrow.

  Fine by him. His shoulders were broad enough to be the cause of her dalliance. He reached for her and framed her face in his hands for a searing kiss.

  No holding back, no doubts remaining as he tasted her whole mouth. Cinnamon, milk and the spicy sweetness of cloves. He pulled back and licked his lips, trying to place the flavor.

  “Chai tea,” she responded to his unasked question. She tried to turn from his grasp and he opted to let her. Instead of fighting, he went for the win. His fingers found the side zip of her sundress, freeing her before she had the chance to protest.

  “We need a shower.” His hands brushed the straps from her shoulders as if they were feathers.

  Jaime moved to cover herself. “I already showered.”

  “That was last night. I’ve dirtied you up since then.” In seconds, she was as bare as he was, and his body temperature rose at the sight. “You have the most beautiful skin.” He brought her to him, tasting her where her neck met her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she whispered on a breath, her body responding. Unfortunately, her mind was still working overtime. She raised her hands to his chest and tried to push him away. “I need to pay my ticket.”

  “I need you wet and slippery.” He nudged his erection against her to illustrate how much as he lifted her off the clothes piled at her feet and walked them backwards into his adjoining room.

  “Wait, where are we going?” Her fingers gripped at his shoulders as her feet tried to keep up.

  “To the condoms.” At the door to the bathroom, he paused long enough to throw it open and then kissed her, hard and full. “I am going to spend the next two weeks making you amazingly happy and trying to kill you with orgasms. No maps, no plans. Just pleasure.”

  “Wait,” she turned her head from his kiss. “I can’t do that. It’s running away from my life.”

  “It’s called a holiday. If one of your students had the chance to explore the country, wouldn’t you tell them to take it?”

  “It’s more than that,” she said to his chest, her words shrinking as she said them. “If my family finds out I spent my summer on a road trip instead of looking for a job and an apartment, they’ll never cease to remind me of how irresponsible that was.”

  “You don’t have a single responsibility, except to yourself. There’s never going to be a better time to take a vacation.”

  “If they find out that I did this just to have an affair, whenever anything goes wrong in my life it will be because I spent weeks having sex with a stranger.”

  He tipped her chin up to look him in the eyes. “Hey, you know me.” He knew she didn’t mean for the words to sting, but they did. He gripped her buttocks, lifted and pressed her against his erection, grinding it against her sex.

  “J’aime, you want this to happen. I’m giving you permission. But if you don’t want them to know, then you best stop trying to run back home. Because this won’t stop until we’re on separate continents.”

  “That’s it?” Jaime stared down at the receipt in her hands. “It took two minutes.”

  “What did you think was going to happen?” With his hand at the small of her back, Xavier steered her down the courthouse steps and to the car.

  “I thought they’d yell at me. Make me watch a video with horrible crashes, a kind of scared-straight thing.”

  “Jaime, you were only ten miles over the speed limit. You weren’t street racing.” The car sparkled a shiny red in the morning sun as he held open the passenger door, taking her hand to help her into the car.

  “I know, I just thought it would be some awful thing.” The clerk who’d helped her had been nice and friendly, greeting them with a, “Hi there. How are ya?” and a, “Let me just take care of that for you, hon.”

  “Why?” He slid into the car and started the engine.

  “Because I broke the law.” She never broke laws, rules, anything. And she was certain people weren’t supposed to be this nice to her when she did.

  “You didn’t rob a bank. Your foot got a little heavy on the gas. What is it Trent says? No harm, no foul.” He maneuvered the car through the one-way streets of quaint downtown Ogallala.

  “It just doesn’t feel right. It’s like I’m getting away with something.” So many things–speeding, an affair, running away from home. In the span of twenty-four hours, she’d turned into a bad girl, and she hadn’t even meant to.

  “They did take two hundred dollars for their trouble, but if you want to be punished we could play a little game later. I could be your jailer and you could show me how sorry you are.”

  “Woah, slow down.”

  “I’m going twenty-five.”

  “I mean the…” She swirled her hand in the air, unsure if she could say the words out loud. “I can’t play…games.”

  “What?” He pulled off the road right before the highway onramp. “Are we having another language problem?”

  “No, I know what you mean. I just don’t think I can do that.”

  “I was only thinking it might help.”

  “I’d feel like a total freak.”

  “Okay, we’re definitely having a language problem.” He knit his brows together and said in Spanish, “We can have a play where I am the police and you are the fugitive.”

  “Fugitive?”

  “Wrong word?”

  “Yeah.” She laid a hand on his knee and rubbed her thumb along the hem of his shorts. “I’m not a sex-games kind of girl.”

  He grinned when she whispered the word sex.

  “I mean it. I’ve had, you know, in two positions. Okay, three thanks to the shower today. But that’s it.”

  “How awful.”

  “It’s not awful, it’s fine. Normal. I’m just not very adventurous. Most people–”

  “Most people use three positions every time they make love.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Oh, trust me.” He slid his hand over hers and squeezed.

  “It doesn’t even last long enough for that.”

  He reared his head back, his nostrils flaring. “It had been a very long day, and you rushed me this morning.”

  “Not you, geesh. You’re great, but it’s usually over in half that time.”

  He nodded his head. “That’s understandable. You’re very good.”

  Jaime felt the heat of her blush from the top of her head to the low-cut neckline of her yellow sundress. A strange blend of pride and mortification at Xavier saying she was good in bed had her stomach fluttering and clenching.

  “I can do much better. In fact, I’d love to take you sprawled out on the hood of the car. And from behind, you have the most amazing ass. And–”

  “Stop!” Jaime yelled, covering her face with her hands as desire dampened her panties. She wanted all those things too, but she didn’t dare admit it.

  “Are you uncomfortable talking about sex?”

  She peeked out from behind her fingers. “You think?”

  “Then calling you from Paris for phone sex is going to be out.”

  “Ay caramba, I could never.”

  “You see, now that is a challenge.” He pulled back onto the street, exiting onto the highway. “I’ll have to call you as soon as I get home and see how long it takes to get you talking dirty with me.”

  The whir of the highway silenced any response she would have had, if she’d
been able to speak.

  “Carhenge? Come on, this is your idea of seeing the country? A circle of old cars piled on each other? This is the kind of thing American’s don’t want tourists to see.”

  “Someone thinks it’s worth seeing.” He took a few steps away from her, not because of her attitude, but to try and catch her with the camera. She kept jumping from the frame, but the image of Jaime Cruz at Carhenge was too funny not to memorialize.

  He rarely took pictures anymore. As a teenager he’d thought he’d become a fashion photographer, but when his father had explained he needed to run the company and not work for it, he’d set the camera aside. During this trip he’d taken more shots than he had in the last decade.

  “I just don’t want you thinking this is America.” Her akimbo stance drew a sexy silhouette on the ground at her feet. Finally, he had his shot. “I feel like it’s my responsibility for you to see America at its best, and this is…”

  “Something a family did for their reunion.” He pointed to the plaque detailing the history of the site. There’d been a road sign advertising the place, and for some reason he’d wanted to see it, just because they could. “Besides, America is as much my country as it is yours.”

  “Still, I’d much rather you think of the U.S. as the Statue of Liberty or The Smithsonian, not haunted hotels and stacked cars.”

  He sidled next to her, leaning close so he could whisper in her ear. “I like haunted hotels.”

  She turned so quickly she nearly knocked him in the nose. “No more haunted hotels. I’m not playing.”

  “You’ll play along.” He reached between then and twined her hand in his. “There are haunted hotels and replicas of Stonehenge all over this country. Maybe we’ll see every single one.”

  She pulled their hands between them and he wondered if she realized that her knuckles grazed over the fly of his shorts. “You’ve seen one pile of vintage cars, you’ve seen them all.”

  “Fine, then I guess we’re done here.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. How he loved her laugh floating on the air as they walked back to the car, their clasped hands swinging between them. His lips curled as he wondered how many states he’d get laid in on this trip.

  “I still can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “This? Actually seeing something on the drive?”

  “No. This us. Well, there is no us.” She shook her head. “You’ll have to teach me how this works. I keep telling myself it’s okay, that I won’t get attached to you because this is just a vacation, a fling. We both have lives to get on with that have no room for a relationship. Still, sometimes you are so sweet.”

  “You’d rather I were rude to you?” Carla’s warning about Jaime being a hopeless romantic echoed back to him, and he prayed he hadn’t crossed that line.

  “No, of course not. If you were, I wouldn’t even consider this.”

  “You think too much.” Once they reached the car, he used the remote to unlock the doors and put down the convertible top. “We’re adults. We’re having a good time.”

  “You’re right. And I’ve always meant to see Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone.”

  “And the Grand Canyon.”

  Her eyes widened. “Xavier, no. There is enjoying ourselves on the way to Oregon, and there is driving around aimlessly. We don’t have time to drive two days south and then backtrack. Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, not both.”

  Without a word, he walked around to his side of the car, climbed in and started the engine. No point in worrying about a fight that was at least a day away, or wondering what he’d want to do then. He’d be able to talk her into anything.

  Because they wanted exactly the same thing.

  Chapter Nine

  “We are not staying in South Dakota for four days.” Jaime’s whisper had the passion of a scream and she punctuated her tirade by shoving him squarely in the back.

  Xavier continued to ignore her rant and climb the stairs in the remodeled flophouse. According to the package he’d signed them up for, they’d be staying in a suite crafted from five flop rooms used by miners, complete with period décor. The lobby, doubling as an antique mercantile, had been perfect Old West, so he was eager to get to their room and see what they’d envisioned for the Mayor’s Suite.

  “We’re only halfway across the country. We cannot stew here forever.” Her voice rose into the audible region as they climbed the second flight.

  “It’s a package deal, J’aime. Four days lodging and unlimited attractions.” He reached the landing and turned to watch her dark ponytail sway while she climbed the final few steps. He forced a stern look on his face to keep from smiling at how flustered she’d been when she found out what he’d booked. “You could try to be gracious about it.”

  “I’ve got a deal for you. I’ll be gracious if you’ll be reasonable.”

  “I don’t make out well in your deals.” He turned and pushed the antique key into the lock.

  “This place is giving me a serious case of déjà vu.”

  “Relax, there are no ghosts. We both asked. So, if you want to spend the night in my bed you’ll have to think up a new excuse.”

  He pushed the heavy door open and felt his cheeks lift in a smile as he stepped back in time. From the vintage photographs on the walls to the wide-plank wood floor, the owners had spared no detail in creating the perfect image of the life of a very affluent Old West official. The suite wasn’t large, but every inch had been employed to create the effect.

  A long bar hugged one wall, polished to a gleaming shine with two burnished barstools beneath. An ornate wooden accent table sat between two leather-upholstered wingbacks. But the bed had been what called him to this particular suite. A king-sized round mattress with custom upholstery. It made him want to scour the town for burlesque lingerie so he could talk Jaime into completing the feel of decadent opulence.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Jaime dropped her bag to the floor and slipped past the bedroom to a narrow bathroom and back again. “There is only one bed.”

  “We only used one last night.” He stepped to the wall to get a better look at the elaborate stained-glass window. “And the night before that.”

  “Other worldly influences caused the first incident, and you were being nice and rational last night. Today, you’re anchoring our forward motion in South Dakota of all places.” She put her hands on her round hips, pulling the material of her buttery cotton sundress tighter across her breasts. “We don’t have to stop here at all. We could head out to Mt. Rushmore right now and have an hour of exploring before sunset. I don’t mind driving to Yellowstone tonight.”

  “J’aime, you need to slow down. You’re not ready to go back to Oregon.”

  “You don’t get to decide that.”

  He shrugged. “You have the means to get home on your own at any time. You don’t want to. I don’t want you to. So why bother going until you know why you’re going back there.”

  “Listen Mr. Introspective. Don’t start psychoanalyzing me unless you’d like the same treatment. There’s buckets I could say about a man whose attention span changes faster than the numbers on a stopwatch. You’re avoiding going to this wedding as much as I’m trying to get to it.”

  He leveled his gaze at her. “That is ridiculous. I flew across an ocean to get to Trent’s wedding. I’ll be there in plenty of time. You’re the one looking for any excuse not to have to spend the summer prepping your sister’s wedding.”

  “I am not! It’s not my fault my car was stolen.”

  “J’aime, you worked summer school instead of heading back. And we both know that if you truly wanted to be there, you’d have made it happen. So stop being so disagreeable and decide what we do next.” He slid his bag to the floor and set the folder with their passes and information on the attractions on the bar. “I’m up for anything.”

  “Oh, I just bet you are.” She gave a promising smile, but it froze on her face. “For the record, I am not disagreea
ble. I just don’t agree with you. Sightseeing along the way is a road trip. Stopping and buying package deals is a vacation.”

  He shrugged again. “Perhaps we are having a language problem.”

  Jaime groaned and looked at the ceiling. “I swear, you’re giving me a brain cramp.”

  He knit his brows. “Okay, we’re definitely having a language problem.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she stepped toward him. “Don’t give me that garbage. You speak English as well as I do. And you know we’re heading to Oregon. I don’t know what you think you’re going to gain out of stranding us in South Dakota. If you wanted a four-day sex-fest, you should have headed for a spa. Hiking around a dusty ghost town does not make me horny.”

  “You’ve just never hiked around with me.” He stepped close, expecting her to back up, but she held her ground as only a whisper of space separated their bodies. “Whenever you try something new with me, you like it.”

  “I didn’t like the haunted hotel and I didn’t like getting a speeding ticket and I guarantee I won’t like being stuck here for four days. This hotel is a museum. There is so much memorabilia downstairs I was afraid of knocking over something valuable.” She let out a sigh and stepped away, then sank onto the burgundy velvet-covered bed. “If this was black satin it would belong in the Playboy mansion.”

  He let out a bawdy laugh because he’d been thinking the same thing. “There is too much to see in one day. Wild horses, gold mines, mammoth fossils, sex museum, Rushmore cave, Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument. Which reminds me, we need to get moving.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

  “Excuse me, sex museum?”

  “In a former brothel, but don’t get too excited. I’m going to make you wait for it.”

  Haunting music surrounded them as the laser-light show animated Native American history in a series of moving cave paintings along the side of the Crazy Horse monument. Before the sun had set, they’d seen the enormous sculpture-in-progress of the famous Lakota chief, his head and chest emerging from the scarred rock. The sunset had painted his features, and the visitor’s center had highlighted the history, proudly displaying a model of what the sculpture would look like when finished.