by Liz Crowe
As he trudged up the slight incline of the jetway, he sensed himself sinking, falling into a mire of quicksand filled with shitty decisions and ill-considered actions. The ever-lingering exhaustion stopped hovering and pounced on him as he emerged into the much less busy terminal in Lexington, Kentucky. A town in a state he’d never once had a reason to visit. He blinked in the bright light streaming through a wall of windows opposite the gate and stumbled, nearly tripping over something before grabbing onto the back of the ubiquitous, ugly, black plastic airport seats.
“Hey,” a newly familiar voice called out. “You all right?” Paige’s voice forced him to shut his eyes and repeat the mantra he’d invented on the short plane ride to her hometown. “Joey?”
She grabbed his arm. He opened his eyes and stared at her a few seconds, then smiled. “I’m good. Sorry. Tired. It’s been a long few weeks.”
“Oh,” she said, digging through the mess of her shoulder bag until she pulled out her phone. “I’ll call and let them know we’re here.” She stopped and bit her lower lip, which made Joey have to swallow a groan. He wasn’t going to be able to do this. He couldn’t trust himself not to act so completely out of character around her. She confused him and even scared him a little.
Frowning at him, she put the phone to her ear. After a few seconds, she ended the call. “Everybody’s at the barbecue by now.” She perched on the edge of her suitcase and ran a shaking hand down her face. “Shit.”
Joey watched as her eyes took in the smaller airport. He could practically see her mind whirring, coming up with excuses to bolt. That gave him a fresh sense of purpose. If he did nothing more this weekend, he’d get this messy girl to her sister’s wedding. He wouldn’t let her run away from it.
“Let’s rent a fun car,” he suggested, holding out his elbow. She sighed and glared down at the floor. “Come on, Paige. We’re already late for the first big event. Let’s not make it worse than it is.” He raised his eyebrow at her. She stuck out her tongue at him, then rose and slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.
They made their way down the wide hallway, turning at the sign that said “rental cars,” hopped a shuttle and got out at the Hertz building. Paige stayed silent, gnawing on her lip and fingernails in turn. He accepted the upgrade to a convertible, declined the overpriced, unnecessary insurance, let the desk clerk fawn over him for as long as he could take it, thanks to his platinum status, then turned to find Paige standing outside, pawing inside her giant bag for something.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the key with its outsized keyring and the little folder of information.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Preston. Your Mustang is right there.” The clerk pointed behind Joey. He spotted the red convertible he’d noticed on the way in and smiled.
“Perfect.” He stuck his wallet in his pack and shouldered it, spotted the cigarette Paige had just stuck in her mouth and snagged it on his way past her. He broke it in two pieces, and then stomped on it, shredding it under his boots.
“Hey,” she said with hands on her hips.
“Hay is for horses. Get in.” He held open the passenger’s side door. “Come on, Paige. Your chariot awaits.” He stared at her, half irritated, half horny.
She blew out a puff of air, grabbed her suitcase and rolled it toward him. He took it from her with a frown. He had to get this thing back under his control, or he was going to flat out lose his mind. After slamming the door shut, he tossed her suitcase and his backpack in the trunk, climbed in behind the wheel and turned the key.
As he waited for the top to fold back, he allowed a small tickle of fury at her. Cigarettes? Really?
“No girlfriend of mine smokes—cigarettes, anyway.” He gripped the wheel, unable to look at her. “Got it?”
“Okay,” she said, her voice soft. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. As long as we have an understanding of that issue.”
Keeping his fingers wrapped around the wheel, he looked down at the hand she’d placed about midway up his thigh. She pulled a pair of Raybans from the depths of her bag full of God knows what and leaned back, letting her fingers rest even closer to his crotch. “Nice car,” she said as he gunned the throaty motor. “Can I drive?”
“Is your name on the rental agreement?” He signaled left in her direction and pulled into the light, late afternoon airport traffic.
“No,” she said, turning to him as they waited at a light.
“Well, there’s your answer.”
“You sure are prickly all of a sudden, fake boyfriend.” She lifted her sunglasses at the same moment he turned to look at her. “All because of a little cig?”
“My parents both smoked like chimneys. I thought everybody’s house, hair and clothes smelled like an ashtray until I went to my first of four grade schools and found out that wasn’t the case. They died within months of each other from lung cancer.”
She took her hand off his leg, thank God. Joey forced himself to relax and enjoy the ride. It was hot but not terribly humid, with a decent breeze. He propped his left arm on the open window and signaled to exit the expressway when she told him. They waited at the bottom of the exit, the empty intersection mocking the need for a traffic light. Joey’s heart rate was slowing after the twenty minute, open-top car ride. He turned to smile at her. She was glaring at him.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you drive like somebody’s grandma? Blow off the light already, Preston. I’m late.”
He frowned at her, glanced back at the admittedly superfluous light, then gunned it, tires screeching, into a left turn. Mashing the accelerator, he reveled in the car’s power and the sound of Paige’s squeal of pleasure. They were on a mostly empty two-lane road, with just enough hills, twists and turns to make the next fifteen minutes an utter joy to drive. He braked and accelerated, focusing forward, only looking at her once to see she had both arms raised as if she were in the front car of a roller coaster.
“That’s better,” she said, reassembling her hair. “Pull over here. I should change clothes.”
“Where?” he asked, honestly confused. All he saw were a couple of unassuming houses set back from the road at the end of long driveways.
“Right there,” she said with a flap of her fingers. “It’s a friend’s house. They’ll all be at the party already, but I can change in their driveway.”
He turned into the drive, the gravel crunching under the tires, breathing heavily as if he’d just run a fast mile. Paige hopped out and grabbed her suitcase from the trunk, then tossed it into the backseat, humming under her breath.
After a few seconds spent digging through a tangle of unfolded clothing, she seemed to find what she wanted. He watched in the rear view mirror as she slipped out of her jeans and lifted the T-shirt over her head.
“Don’t stare at me,” she grumbled, glaring back at him in the mirror. “Fake boyfriends who kiss like you do but don’t follow through do not get to ogle my goodies.”
Joey averted his gaze, his ears humming, his face burning hot. “I plan to follow through,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just not in a damn airport. Why can’t you get that through your stubborn, thick skull?”
She made a snorting sound as he stared through the windshield. He felt like his every nerve was on high alert, making him quiver like a tuning fork. Within about half a minute, she was clambering over the middle console, her firm, tanned, very bare legs right in his face. He sighed and watched her, trying to summon anger, but finding only a sort of amused indulgence.
“What?” she demanded, once she’d gotten back in her seat—a seat she could have easily reached by getting out, opening the front door and climbing in that way. She had one knee bent as she fastened the strap of a high, wedge-heeled sandal around her ankle. He reached out before he could stop himself and wrapped his fingers around her ankle. Keeping his eyes fixed on where his hand connected with her leg, he slid his palm up her taut calf, stopping when he got to her bent knee.
“Is this our first fight?
” he asked, mesmerized by the spray of freckles on her thigh revealed by the too-short skirt of the sundress she’d put on in the backseat. She lowered her leg, forcing him to remove his hand from it. She bent the other knee and put on her right sandal. The top of his head was burning hot, exposed to the late afternoon sun, but Joey’s skin had broken out in goose bumps.
Once she was done, she put both of her feet on the floor and tried to smooth some of the egregious wrinkles out of the skirt. Joey watched her hands move around randomly with no obvious purpose. He could smell her—the sweat, nerves, and pure femaleness of her. He put his hand on her thigh.
“Calm down, Paige. It’s gonna be all right.”
“Would you . . . I mean, could you kiss me again, right now? Like you did—”
He slanted his lips over hers, shutting her up and bringing a sort of peace to his rattled psyche that he required, lest he spin out into the universe like an untethered satellite. She parted her lips and her thighs at the same time. As he penetrated her mouth with his tongue, slowly but surely, tasting as much of her as could, he slid his hand up to her panties. She grabbed his shoulders as if encouraging him to breach the console barrier and take her, right there in some strange driveway with the top down.
Everything in Joey was screaming at him to stop, to wait, not to touch her pussy, no matter how badly he wanted to right then. This was too much like the sort of sexual encounter he claimed not to like.
Then why did it feel so fucking good, he wondered, as his finger found its way inside her panties, making him groan into her mouth as the warm, wet flesh met his touch.
She shifted forward and spread her legs, giving him more access as he deepened the kiss and got serious with it, his zipper about to explode with the pressure of his raging hard-on behind it. He broke from her lips when he discovered her clit, already plump and ready for him.
Watching her eyes, he stroked it, loving the way her hips moved, thrusting forward into his hand as he lowered his lips to her sweaty neck, then the tops of her half-exposed breasts. Her nipples strained against the fabric of the dress, making him want to blow in his jeans at the concept that she hadn’t even bothered with a bra.
Here he was, Mister Romance, Joey Preston, fingering a girl—a total stranger for the most part, and an annoying one—in some driveway in a small town in Kentucky, and loving every hot, breathless, sweaty minute of it.
“Come for me,” he rasped as she slipped one of the thin straps of the dress off her shoulder and released one small, firm, hard-nippled breast into the evening air. “Oh God, Paige,” he moaned as he leaned forward and took that nipple into his mouth, sucking gently at first until realizing that her hips were now moving faster.
“Oh, Jesus, yes,” she squeaked, digging her fingertips into his biceps as he stroked faster. “More,” she gasped. “Harder. Inside . . . Oh God!”
Joey smiled into her breast then latched on hard as he slid two fingers into the warm, velvet grip of her pussy, keeping his thumb pressed against her clit. She came in a glorious pulse of energy around his fingers, a soft gush of fluid on his hand, and with a loud cry that made him pull his fingers out of her and sit back, gasping, staring around them. He was sort of glad he’d done that because it gave him a full view of her, her legs spread wide, her skirt hiked up, her eyes closed, her hands gripping the armrests, and that hair . . . dear Jesus, he loved that hair.
Her breathing calmed as he watched, willing his dick to soften so he could perhaps walk, talk and function for the next few hours. She heaved a huge sigh and stretched like a cat on a windowsill.
“Better?” he asked, feeling a tad pissed off that he had to wait, but knowing there was no way in hell he’d go any further with her like this, without the four walls and shut door of his hotel room around them.
“Very,” she answered, looking up at him from under her thick, dark lashes. “So nice,” she purred as she leaned over and stroked his dick through his jeans. “My turn,” she said, as she slid his zipper down.
“No,” he said, putting his hand over hers. “You’re late, remember?” With every ounce of self-control he possessed, Joey pressed her back into her seat and reassembled himself.
“You’re a prude,” she said as she wiggled out of her panties and held them up. “Look what you did to me, you bad, bad boyfriend.” He grabbed the soaking wet scrap of silk and heaved them into a row of shrubbery at the foot of the driveway.
“I’m not a prude. And you’re welcome, by the way.” He turned the key in the ignition with a shaking hand. “For the make-up orgasm. It’s what couples do after a fight, or so I hear.”
She leaned over the console into the backseat, making his head spin at the proximity of her pussy to his face. He closed his eyes, waiting until she found a fresh pair of underwear and flopped back into the seat.
“Okay, you’re not a prude. And that was a lovely make-up orgasm. Thank you.” She pulled the panties up her legs, then crossed them and put her sunglasses back on. “Let’s go then. We’re late, remember?” She slid the Raybans down her nose and shot him a look that melted what small remaining bit of reserve he owned.
“You’re a mess,” he said, pulling her hair back and trying not to kiss her again. “Fix your hair so you don’t look like we just made out in the driveway like a pair of teenagers.” She grinned and grabbed the hand he’d had inside her, putting his fingers in her mouth and sucking hard. “Jesus, Paige. Cut it out, or we’ll have to skip this whole thing and go straight to the nearest hotel.”
She grinned broadly now. “That sounds way better. Let’s do that instead.”
“Oh no, you don’t,” he said, pulling his fingers out of her mouth and giving her a fake punch to her bare shoulder. “Nice try, though.”
As he backed out onto the still deserted road, he admired her flushed profile as she fixed her hair. “I will need to find a place, you know, for me to stay.”
She shot him an arch look. “Don’t be silly, boyfriend. You’ll be staying at Casa DiFerrari. We have, like, six bedrooms in our house. Don’t worry. You’ll be made to feel very welcome, especially once my mama gets a load of your extreme cute factor.” She put her hand over his still achingly hard boner. He winced and pushed her hand away.
“Well then, you’d better wrap your pretty head around the fact that we won’t be consummating our whatever the hell this is between us. I am not gonna have sex with your father sleeping down the hall. No way. No how. I did way too much sneaking around girls’ parents as a teenager, and now I’m grown up and can afford a decent hotel.”
“You are so damn cute,” she said, leaning over and kissing his cheek, then his neck, before placing her hand firmly back where it had been a few seconds before. “And you won’t be able to resist me this weekend. I promise you that.”
He snorted and drove, making himself ignore her, and her murmuring and stroking, unwilling to admit that she was probably one hundred percent right.
“Here we are,” she said and withdrew to her seat as he turned onto a side street in a more populated area. The houses looked newer, circa 1980s most likely, and were closer together. “Better park back here,” she said, indicating the long line of cars on the street. He did, and then raised the car’s roof, securing it in place before walking around to her side. As he opened the door, he caught sight of the long, bare line of her leg, ending in the sky-high wedge heels. Her toenails were painted a bright, candy-worthy pink.
“What’s that?” he questioned, touching a scar that ran down her right kneecap.
“That’s what kept me from playing soccer after my junior year,” she responded tersely, brushing his hand off her leg and getting out. Joey sensed the anxiety pouring off her like visible heat waves. He shut the door and grabbed her before she could move past him. “What?” She tried to sidestep him. “Don’t, Joey. Please.”
But he held onto her, pressed her up against the warm car door and kissed her slowly, softly, gently, trying to share his own innate calm with her thro
ugh osmosis. When he ended the kiss, she was breathing slowly again. Her eyes shone with the sort of happy mischief he’d first fallen for—this morning? Dear God, had he only known this amazing creature for a day?
She smiled and touched his lips. “I hope you’re ready for the onslaught, boyfriend.”
He kissed her fingertip, then the dip of skin where her collarbones joined at the base of her neck. She shivered and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You are really taking this whole farce pretty damn seriously,” she whispered.
Something about that made him stop and pull away from her.
A farce.
That’s right. That’s what this was. A big, fat, fake boyfriend weekend for her parents’ sake.
“What?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he said, putting a firm choke hold on his looming emotions. “Let’s get this farce on the road, shall we?” He extended his elbow. She took it, and they made their way down the street toward the noise at the biggest house, situated in the cul-de-sac end of the road. At one point, Paige froze. She clutched at his arm.
“Let’s not, okay? I mean . . . I don’t know if I can . . .”
“Don’t be silly, Paige.” Joey patted her arm. “If anyone can pull off this farce, it’s you.”
Chapter Eight
Paige had the distinct sensation of shoving her foot even farther down her own throat every time she opened her mouth with Joey. She’d have given anything to ponder this, to discuss it with him, to explain why she kept deflecting him and reminding him that this whole weekend was a giant lie. As they approached the noise emanating from the backyard of her childhood home, she slowed, then stopped. Not on purpose—her feet simply wouldn’t carry her any closer.
“What’s wrong?” Joey asked. She tried to answer him, but her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth. He was so—damn—cute. And hot. And good with his fingers. She could hardly believe she’d only known him half a day.
Paige put her hands on her hips and looked up at the almost painfully bright blue summer sky. Joey waited patiently, looking so at ease, so comfy in his skin at this strange-to-him location, it infuriated her. And made her want to grab him and make a mad dash back to the airport.
