by Katie Allen
It felt kind of nice, having him gently pulling the tree debris free of her hair. She restrained a snort, feeling a bit like a chimp was grooming her for fleas. He tugged her ponytail holder until her hair fell loose around her shoulders and down her back. His fingers combed through the strands, giving a little shake to knock any stray bits of bark out of her hair.
“All gone?” she asked.
“Perfect,” he said, before something touched the top of her head.
Did he just kiss her hair? She glanced up, but he’d already grabbed the duffel and turned toward the motel entrance. Lauren hurried to catch up to him, ducking under his arm as he held the door to the front office open for her.
“Pony.” She held a hand outstretched toward Cal.
“We talked about this,” he said, walking past her to the desk clerk. “No matter how much you beg, Daddy’s not buying you a pony.”
Rolling her eyes, Lauren stepped up next to him so she could poke a finger into his side. As soon as she did, she resisted the urge to cradle her jammed finger. When would she learn that poking, shoving, punching, smacking, and otherwise trying to hurt the Bionic Man would only lead to her own pain?
“Ponytail holder, smartass,” she clarified, holding her hand out again.
“I like it down.” As if that settled it, he turned back to the motel clerk. “We need a room for tonight. Double. Non-smoking.”
Giving up on containing her hair for the time being, she shoved it back over her shoulders and idly examined the meager and dusty display of “Welcome to Kansas!” postcards.
“Look at her one more fucking time, and I’ll rip your dick off.”
Cal’s tone was so quiet and even, it took Lauren a moment to process his words. When what he said finally registered, her head jerked up and she stared. The skinny, greasy-looking desk clerk looked as if he’d swallowed his own tongue, and his hand shook as he slid the key across the counter. Lauren noticed his eyes didn’t even flicker toward her.
She looked at Cal, at his still face and flat, deadly eyes, and she swallowed. She was used to her road-trip companion—teasing, occasionally funny, often annoying, rough and impatient, sure, but never quite so...killer-like.
He met her eyes and jerked his head toward the door. Silently, she walked out of the office in front of him, feeling a bit like she was turning her back on a rattlesnake, poised to strike. Once the office door banged shut behind them, she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Rip his dick off?” She risked a glance at him and was relieved to see the predatory look in his eyes had softened a little.
“Didn’t like the way he was looking at you.” He guided her to the far side of the building with a hand just barely touching her lower back. Even after the eyes-of-death display, the light contact made her breathing speed up in a slightly shameful, definitely turned-on way.
“Wouldn’t a more appropriate threat have been to poke out his eyes, then?”
The touch of his hand on her back disappeared, and she looked over her shoulder to see that Cal had stopped, staring at her.
“What?”
With a short, harsh laugh, he just shook his head and starting walking again, steering her toward the door marked with a “20.”
“I just don’t know what his penis had to do with him looking at me,” she continued as he unlocked the door. Lauren knew it was a goofy train of thought, but she couldn’t stop babbling or she’d start thinking about the way his eyes had gone dark and dead.
He shoved the door open and nudged her inside in the same motion.
“Stay here.” Latching the dead bolt and chain, he dropped the duffel onto the floor. He moved to the bathroom and looked inside. Lauren waited just inside the door until he emerged from the bathroom with an “all clear” nod.
She took a couple of steps in, looking around. It was a typical motel room, although Lauren figured it could have been worse. It looked clean enough. Her musings were interrupted by a heavy arm yanking her back against Cal.
“His dick was the issue. That fucker was looking at you, thinking about putting his cock inside you,” he growled, his mouth almost touching her ear. “I’m the only one who gets to be inside you.”
Her heart was beating so fast, Lauren saw black dots crowd her vision. “It was just his thoughts,” she managed to say. “I’d never have slept with that icky guy.”
His other arm circled her hips and clamped her tighter against him. The feel of his erection pressing against her ass, so hard and hot despite the layers of clothing separating them, cranked her heartbeat up another notch.
“Doesn’t matter.” His teeth closed on her earlobe for a painful, arousing second. “No one’s allowed to even think about you like that.”
“That’ll be hard to enforce...” Lauren really didn’t know why she was still talking. She wished she could stop it, but the flow of words just poured out of her mouth like her vocal cords belonged to someone else, someone really inappropriately chatty. Once his lips found her neck, however, she lost her ability to breathe, and that took care of the blabbering problem.
As his lips and tongue and teeth worked their way down the side of her neck, Cal nosed the collar of her jacket aside and bit lightly on her shoulder. With a hard, sucked-in breath, she grabbed the arm circling her chest with both hands, her nails digging into his skin. It wasn’t in protest but just because she had to hold on to something, something solid, and Cal’s arm was definitely that.
Lauren moaned as his tongue eased over the spot he’d just bitten, tipping her head to the side to give him better access. He lifted his head, and she groaned again, this time in disappointed protest.
“Still no goddamn condoms,” he rasped, his arms squeezing and then releasing her. “If this goes any further, I’m going to be inside you in about five seconds.”
“Right.” She swayed a little and Cal’s hands cupped her shoulders, steadying her. “No condoms. No sex. No babies that crazy scientists can stick with needles.”
“Exactly.” Cal let her go. Somehow, she managed to stay on her feet.
“I’ll...um.” She ran her fingers through her hair and found yet another tiny twig. “I’ll take a shower then, if that’s okay? For me to go first, I mean.” Great. A few minutes earlier she couldn’t shut up, and now she couldn’t put words together in a straight line.
“No problem.” He unzipped the duffel with a rough jerk of his hand. “I’ll just stay out here thinking about you all wet and naked and steamy. Go ahead.”
“Not helping!” Lauren almost wailed, darting for the bathroom before she hurled herself at Calvin. “My balls are just as blue as yours, so quit acting like you’re the injured party here!”
As she closed the door behind her, she heard Cal’s rough, short laugh.
* * *
Lauren opened the bathroom door a crack. The shower had been too cold to be pleasant, but at least she was pretty confident all the woodsy crap was out of her hair. Despite the libido-crushing water temperature, it had felt good to get clean all over. There was something about being on the road for so long that made her feel grimy.
“Cal?” she called through the barely open door.
She couldn’t see him but heard a grunt in response.
“Could you toss me the duffel bag? Or turn your back so I can grab some clothes?”
There was a slight pause. “Come out. I’m not looking.”
Lauren hesitated. “Are you ‘not looking’ like you were ‘not looking’ last night in the VW? Because that doesn’t really count as not looking.”
His snort sounded amused. “I’m really not looking. If I look, I’ll grab you, and you know where it’ll go from there.”
Tightening the small, threadbare motel towel around her, Lauren opened the bathroom door and stepped out hesitantly. Cal was sitting in o
ne of the two chairs next to the small square table and his back was, as promised, facing her.
“No run for...necessities while I was showering?” she asked, digging through the duffel for clean clothes.
The back of his head shook. “Wasn’t going to leave you alone in here.”
“Oh.” She yanked on a pair of panties. They’d gotten a package of them with the rest of her winter clothes, just plain, unsexy cotton, but they were clean. She wished she’d had the foresight to pick up bras, as well. She’d rinsed out her underthings in the shower, and they were currently drip-drying on the curtain rod. With a mental shrug, she yanked a long-sleeved shirt over her head, figuring there was no sense in crying over wet bras. Although she was decently sized in the chest department, she wasn’t huge. Lauren figured she could go braless for one night without getting arrested for indecency.
As she tugged on her jeans, hopping a little as she pulled the denim over her hips, she felt her breasts bounce and frowned at them, reconsidering.
“Okay, so no hopping in public,” she muttered.
“Why not?” Cal asked. His head was bent over whatever he was working on at the table. His electronic gadgets, including what looked like a small printer, were arranged in front of him.
“Never you mind.” She sat on the other chair and pulled on a pair of woolly socks. “Just a private conversation with a couple of my body parts.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up as he glanced right at the body part in question. “I like that shirt.”
Lauren glanced down. It was a dark-red Henley that was fairly snug but she wouldn’t really describe it as sexy. Under Cal’s gaze, her nipples hardened, pushing against the fabric. Clearing her throat, she crossed her arms over the betraying bumps.
“Thanks.” She cast around for a different topic, one more calming to her nipples. “What’s all this?”
“This—” he handed her a plastic square “—is you. The new you.”
She looked at the driver’s license in her hand. It looked just like her old Florida license, same picture and everything, but the name was different.
“Misty Dawn Lincoln. Seriously? Misty Dawn? What kind of hippie parents did I have?”
Cal ignored that. “Here. Birth certificate, social security card, credit card. I even made you a library card. Empty out your wallet of anything with your name on it, but keep the generic stuff—coffee punch cards, shit like that. Makes it more authentic.”
“Wow.” She examined the documents. “You’re really good at this.”
“Memorize your birth date and your new social.”
“Okay. What’s your name?” Lauren leaned over to look at his stack of documents.
“Daniel Robert Lincoln.”
She grinned. “Are we married?”
His grunt was affirmative.
“Do we have kids?”
He stared at her. “Do you see any fucking kids?”
“So no kids.” Examining her new license, she held back a grin. “Do I like your parents?”
“What?”
“In-laws can be tricky.”
“You’re straight-up, balls-out nuts.”
She shrugged. “Probably. With a name like Misty Dawn, do you blame me?”
Cal just shook his head.
“Is she a real person?”
“Yep.”
“Huh. Is she a stripper?”
“No fucking clue.” He eyed her for a moment. “Why a stripper?”
“With a name like Misty Dawn, she’s either a stripper or a yoga instructor. I mean, really—what were her parents thinking?”
He laughed and shook his head again. “Grab your wallet, you nut. I’m taking a shower.”
Lauren dug through her purse for her wallet. “Hurry up. I’m starved.”
“Why am I not surprised,” he grumbled, grabbing some clothes from the duffel and heading for the bathroom.
* * *
When he emerged after his shower, shirtless and damp and utterly distracting, Lauren concentrated on her fingernails. Her bare fingers reminded her of something.
“We need rings,” she told him without looking up.
“We’ll get some at the next town big enough to have a jewelry store or a pawn shop,” he said. “Ready?”
“Sure.” She risked a glance at him, relieved to see he’d put on a shirt. It was hard enough not tackling him and having her way with him when he was fully clothed. Having to look at his bare skin and keep her hands to herself was just impossible. She touched the spot on her shoulder where he’d bitten her earlier and sighed.
“You’re killing me,” he muttered.
“What?” Lauren glared at him, her hands fisting at her hips. “I’m being really good. I haven’t grabbed you or tackled you or even stared at you too long.”
He just looked at her with those hot, hot eyes. “It’s your fucking smell. I can tell you’re excited.”
“Smell? Seriously?” Closing her eyes, she mashed the heels of her hands against her eyelids. “Can you please turn off your superpowers? Just for tonight?”
“Doesn’t really work that way.”
When she opened one eye, she saw he was smiling. “Great. That’s great. Can we go eat, then? At least I can satisfy one appetite.”
He gave a short bark of laughter as he plucked her jacket off the back of a chair.
“Ready?” he asked, holding the coat so she could slide her arms into the sleeves.
“As I’ll ever be.” She zipped up and grabbed her purse. “Let’s go, husband.”
His sigh was loud as he pocketed the room key. Lauren just grinned.
Chapter Seven
The Myron Bar was exactly what she’d been expecting—a slightly dive-ish, small-town, there’s-nowhere-else-to-go-within-twenty-miles-so-deal-with-it type of place. Since they offered bar food, Lauren didn’t care. At that point, she would have entered hell to eat something besides jerky or candy. They grabbed a grungy table against the back wall and gave their order to a bored waitress with blonde streaks in her dark-brown hair and an unfortunate muffin-top creeping over the waist of her skinny jeans.
The food came fairly quickly. Lauren fell on her burger and onion rings with a little too much enthusiasm. Cal’s eyebrow and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“That good?” he asked, taking a bite of his own burger.
“Heaven,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food. “It’s meat, and yet it’s not dried. Amazing.”
He laughed and took a drink of his beer. Despite Cal’s relaxed pose, Lauren noticed his eyes were constantly scanning the mostly empty bar.
“Does that—” she nodded at the bottle in his hand “—affect you? Like normal people, I mean.”
Cal snorted. “Normal people?”
Rolling her eyes, Lauren took another bite of her burger and waited for him to answer.
“I don’t know.” He eyed the beer. “I probably have a higher tolerance than most people. I don’t remember how alcohol affected me before, so I could’ve always been an expensive date.”
She grinned around a mouthful of onion ring. “So I can’t even get you drunk to get you to put out?”
His eyes went narrow and molten. “You want me to put out? Let’s go. Fucking now.”
Lauren was very, very tempted, but her burger tasted so good. She curled an arm around her plate and hugged it toward her. “Not quite yet. Just let me have a few more bites.”
“Seriously?” He sat back, taking another drink of beer. “I’ve lost out to a hunk of ground beef?”
“Very tasty beef,” she corrected, taking another bite. “That’s not dried.”
Cal just smirked and then went back to eating and scanning the bar. A few more people were wandering in, and
the noise level went up a few notches. A schmaltzy country song blared from the jukebox, and a few couples shuffled together on the tiny dance floor. Lauren finished her food, washed it down with a drink of her beer and then sat back with a groan.
“I’m so full,” she complained. “Why’d you let me eat so much?”
“You would’ve bitten me if I’d tried to stop you.”
“True.” Lauren winced as another song came on and started digging through her purse. “Someone has really sucky taste in music.”
“Where are you going?” He grabbed her wrist as she stood.
She opened her fingers, showing her handful of quarters. “I’m going to save my ears.”
“I’ll go with you.” Standing, he pulled a few bills from his wallet and dropped them on the table.
“Just to warn you,” she said, slanting him a sideways look as she slung her purse strap over her shoulder, “there may be dancing.”
“I’ve been trained to withstand torture.” He shrugged. “I’ll probably survive dancing.”
Lauren punched him in the arm and then shook out her hand, wincing. “One of these days, I’ll learn to stop doing that.”
He laughed, grabbed her throbbing hand and headed for the jukebox.
The selection wasn’t great, mostly country and classic rock, but Lauren found a few songs that didn’t suck quite so badly as the previous selections. The first was fast and bouncy, and the other couples on the dance floor whooped their approval of her choice. With a laugh, she tugged Cal to the middle of the floor.
Lauren had a moment of shyness that instantly evaporated when Calvin started moving to the music. He was good, dancing unselfconsciously in a way that made her stare for a moment.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She started moving with him, grinning. “Didn’t think I’d get you to dance, that’s all.”
Looping his hand around the back of her neck, Cal pulled her in close so his mouth was touching her ear. “I have lots of hidden talents. You’ll see.”
She could feel the flush starting at her toes and burning all the way up her body to her face. “I’m sure I will,” she muttered, trying to keep from panting.
