by Lila Monroe
“Only that it’s cliché and old fashioned,” I told him. “If I wanted to hear some good old boys sing about tractors and pickup trucks, I’d go to the Grand Ole Opry.”
“Yeah, that would be the best place to listen to country,” 4C replied dryly, effectively de-snarking my comment. “But any music lover would know that the genre is way more diverse than that.”
I snorted, and looked at him. “Please.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me that you think Willie Nelson is cliché? Johnny Cash? Dolly Parton?”
Just then, as if to prove his point, Dolly started crooning “Jolene” over the radio.
Dammit. I loved Dolly Parton. Who didn’t? But instead of admitting that he was right, I closed my mouth and focused my attention on navigating out of the rental lot and onto the highway.
I could practically feel 4C’s smugness, and I did everything I could to ignore it. To ignore him. Unfortunately, he seemed completely uninterested in being ignored. In being quiet in general.
“Ten bucks says that if I had given you control of the radio, you would have gone straight for the pop station.”
“You’d lose that ten bucks,” I told him, not bothering to glance over. “I’m a rock-and-roll girl, thank you very much.”
“Really?” I could hear the surprise in his voice, which annoyed me even further.
I had nothing against pop music—I mean, I loved my Taylor Swift and Katy Perry as much as the next girl—but when it came to my standbys, it was rock all the way.
“What kind of rock?” he asked, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.
I rolled my eyes.
“British rock is my favorite,” I informed him. “Razorlight, Franz Ferdinand, the Libertines. I also like Joy Division.” I offered him an overly sweet smile. “Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”
“Joy Division? Yeah, I’ve heard of them,” 4C said dryly.
“Oh good,” I widened my smile. “I didn’t want to assume.”
“Is that what you were doing in London?” he asked. “Chasing your favorite bands?”
Did he think I was some sort of groupie? Ugh. This guy was the worst. Hot as fuck, but also the worst. And I wasn’t going to let him get the upper hand.
“Listen, 4C—” I started, but was cut off by his laugh.
“4C?” he asked, and I realized that just because I had been calling him that in my head, didn’t mean I should have called him that in real life.
“Your seat number,” I muttered.
He laughed again. “My name is Dash.”
“Dash?” I glanced over at him. “I think I’ll stick with 4C—it’s just as ridiculous.”
But now that I thought about it, his name and his face seemed familiar. Like I knew it from somewhere, but I couldn’t quite place it. My attempt to place him must have shown on my face because Dash let out a sigh.
“Yes, you’ve seen me before,” he said as if he had said it a million times.
“I don’t care,” I shot back. He was too damn cocky for his own good, and reminded me too much of another cute, tall guy I had known. A guy I didn’t like to think about and didn’t like to be reminded of.
“I used to be a Formula One racer,” Dash told me, as if he hadn’t heard my insistence of not caring.
But as he said that, I realized that I could remember seeing his face on the cover of tabloids.
“Must really annoy you to be in the passenger seat, then,” I said.
“Not really.” He leaned back. “I don’t mind being chauffeured around.”
“I was just afraid you’d drive too slow,” I retorted.
“Honey.” He reached over and tugged at a loose curl. “You couldn’t handle the speeds I’m used to.”
Even though a shiver went through me at the contact and the sexy sound of his voice, I pulled my head away from his grip. “Doubtful,” I told him. “And don’t you Formula One drivers just drive around in circles? That doesn’t take much skill, does it?”
“I’d be happy to show you my skills,” he said suggestively. “Want to pop your hood for me?”
I couldn’t help the laugh that sputtered out of me.
“That is the most ridiculous line I’ve ever heard,” I told him, unable to control my giggles.
He gave me a grin, one that didn’t seem to have the same cocky arrogance that he’d had before. It seemed like a glimpse of the real person. One that I liked immensely better.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged with a smile. “I think I’ve come up with way worse.”
“Doubtful,” I teased.
“You may be right.” He settled back in his seat, and the car got quiet. Even though it was what I had been wanting, I suddenly missed the conversation.
“I’m Paige,” I told him.
“Nice to meet you, Paige.” He flashed me that devastating smile again, and god help me, my knees wobbled a little and my pulse skipped. Dammit, I didn’t have time for this, but with an eight-hour drive ahead of us, there wasn’t much I could do about it.
The rain was coming down pretty hard as we entered Pittsburgh. I checked the GPS. We were still six hours away from New York City, and the exhaustion of the past several hours had begun to wear on me. I was blasting the A/C to keep myself awake, but I couldn’t help the yawns that kept coming out of my mouth.
“Maybe we should stop.” Dash looked as tired as I felt.
“I need to get to New York,” I told him, just as I had told him every other time he had suggested we stop and rest.
I didn’t want to admit how important it was for me to get there on time, because doing so would mean explaining why I needed the job so bad. Detailing the lackluster state of my bank account would probably make him feel a little bad for me. And I didn’t want pity. The poor little PA and the fancy Formula One driver. That was stuff for a rom-com, maybe, not for real life.
The highway was dark, with very few lights illuminating the road. We were the only ones out there, which maybe should have told me something. The rain kept coming down, and the soothing sound of it drumming on the roof was doing nothing to help keep me awake.
Then suddenly, and without warning, a deer leapt in front of the car.
“Oh my god!” I cried, and I swerved, barely missing the animal and driving us off the road.
I hit the brakes before we could go into the woods, leaving the car in the dirt that served as the side of the highway. My heart was pounding in my chest, my entire body shaking as I sucked in a few deep breaths.
“Holy shit,” Dash finally said, reminding me that he was there.
I glanced over at him and he gave me a crooked smile.
“Nice driving, Ace,” he told me.
I let out something between a laugh and a cough.
The deer was still standing in the middle of the road, practically begging to get hit by the next car. I rolled down the window and waved my arm at it.
“Shoo!” I said. “Shoo! Shoo!”
It didn’t move. Dash got out of the car and charged it. Immediately it took off, disappearing into the darkness on the other side of the road.
My chest hurt. I pressed my hand against it, realizing that I had probably bruised myself when I hit the brakes and jerked against my seat belt.
“Get out.” Dash was at my window. “I’m driving us to a hotel.”
I wanted to argue, but I knew that he was right.
“OK.” I handed him the keys. “But we’re getting separate rooms.”
Paige
“Welcome to the Lucky Strike,” the mustachioed desk clerk sighed. He scratched his beard and let out a burp. “What can I do you for?”
Ideally, nothing, ever in my life. It was the grossest motel I had ever seen, but it was the first one we came across, and beggars could not be choosers. Especially beggars that had escaped a potentially serious crash by my fast foot and some damn good luck.
“Two rooms, please,” I said loudly, before Dash got any ideas.
The clerk scratched again. “Fifty each.”
“We can only stay a few hours,” I told Dash as he handed me a room key.
He had insisted on paying, and even though I hated the idea that it might be charity, I was too tired to argue. Besides, if it was just me, I probably would have slept in the car and possibly gotten murdered by ax-wielding psychopaths, which I assumed happened every time a young woman stopped along the highway.
We reached our rooms, which were right next to each other. The whole motel gave off a really creepy vibe, with flickering lights in the hallways and what I hoped were water stains along the carpet. It became immediately clear that the walls were paper-thin, because I could hear the television in the room across the hall. Since it was nearly five a.m., I really didn’t want to know the kind of person who had ended up in this hotel and felt the need to watch TV this early in the morning.
“I’ll knock on your door at eight a.m.,” I said to Dash, who visibly winced at the early hour.
“That’s not enough time to rest,” he told me.
“Sure it is,” I responded. “Three hours is the perfect power-nap time. Trust me, I’ve done it before.”
He gave me a look that said that he definitely did not trust me, but he should have, because I was right. Three hours was more than enough for me—I’d had plenty of times in college where I was balancing three jobs and school and had to survive on that amount of sleep.
“Sleep well,” Dash told me, and we both disappeared into our rooms.
The inside was no better than the outside. Knowing that I really couldn’t trust the bedspread at this place, I immediately stripped it off, hoping that they at least washed the sheets on a regular basis. Even if they were a little gross, it wasn’t anything that a hot, hot shower in the morning wouldn’t fix. I’d slept at some pretty questionable places all over the world, but this one was definitely in the top five.
It didn’t matter. I just needed a quick nap, so I changed out of the clothes I had been traveling in for the past twelve hours and put on a mismatched cami and boy-short set and crawled under the sheets.
I had just closed my eyes when a loud BOOM shook the room. I leapt out of bed. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
My heart pounding, I realized it was coming from the other side of the wall—not the one I shared with Dash, but another room. Someone was banging on the wall.
Wait, was that a scream?
I sat there, shaking. What the hell was going on? Was someone getting jiggy—or being decapitated by the aforementioned ax-wielding maniac?
Then there came another sound—and I jumped—before realizing that it was someone knocking on my door. My heart stopped.
Was it the psycho?
Had he come for me too?
I nervously inched closer and checked the peephole. Dash was standing outside, his arms filled with vending machine snacks.
I threw the door open and nearly tackled him with a hug. He stumbled back a little, but recovered instantly, hugging me back.
“What did I do to deserve that?” he asked, his voice close to my ear.
It was then that I realized a) how little I was wearing, b) how closely we were pressed together and c) how we really didn’t know each other at all. Immediately I extracted myself from his grip and stepped back, my arms crossed over my body. It wasn’t that I was self-conscious about the way I looked, it was just that I was nearly naked and he was fully dressed.
A damn shame that was.
“I brought snacks.” He held up his bounty. “Thought you might want to eat something before going to sleep.”
“Come in,” I told him, grabbing a sweatshirt from my suitcase and yanking it over my head and down my body. My legs were still mostly bare, but at least Dash wouldn’t be able to see my nipples, which were incredibly happy to see him.
Dash dumped the junk food on the bed and knelt down in front of the TV, where he uncovered a mini-bar in the TV stand.
“Hmm,” he said, his head in the fridge. “Not a lot of options.”
I heard the clink of glasses as he rooted around and came up with a few dusty-looking bottles of vodka. Not my drink of choice, but suddenly, I was more than eager for a stiff one.
A stiff drink, that is.
Though, I couldn’t help the way my eyes swept over Dash’s body. This was really the first time I’d gotten a good look at him when we weren’t shoved together in an airplane or sitting in a car. And there was a lot to look at.
I liked that he was tall. And broad. And clearly in very, very good shape. Through his tight T-shirt, I could see the muscles in his back flexing as he tossed the tiny vodka bottles on the bed with the snacks. I could also see the way his biceps strained against that same shirt. Everything he wore was practically molded to his body, something I appreciated on behalf of all of womankind. As he stood, I got a great look at the way his jeans cupped his rather fine ass.
And he got a great look at me staring at his rather fine ass, as was indicated when I looked up and realized he had noticed my observations. My face got hot, but I refused to let him see my embarrassment, so I lifted my chin and settled myself on the bed, sorting through the food he had brought. “A veritable cornucopia of vending machine delights,” I quipped.
“Five star all the way, baby.”
He sat down across from me and went straight for the booze, opening one of the bottles and downing it like a shot. I decided on a bag of M&Ms—peanut—and ripped it open, pouring the whole thing into my hand. A few overflowed, and Dash grabbed one that rolled across the sheets. Tossing it up in the air, he caught it in his mouth.
“Show-off,” I told him.
He grinned at me and did it again. I rolled my eyes, and then, unable to help myself, tossed one of my own M&Ms up in the air—making sure it went higher than his—and caught it with my mouth.
“Now who’s the show-off?” he teased.
I popped some more candy into my mouth. As I did, I realized exactly how hungry I had been. The M&Ms were gone quickly, and I moved on to the other options, snacking on some Skittles and Kit-Kats. Dash polished off another bottle of vodka and then opened up a bag of chips, while I finished off the remaining bottle of booze. I felt myself relaxing, truly relaxing, for the first time since I had left London.
As the alcohol warmed me up, I couldn’t stop looking at Dash. That thick, dark hair that I had noticed on the plane was still tousled charmingly, but it was clear from this distance that it wasn’t the result of styling or product. It was all him. And it looked quite touchable. A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead, and emboldened by the vodka, I reached over and pushed it back for him.
He stilled as my fingers brushed his forehead. When his eyes met mine, all the cockiness and teasing was gone. His face was serious. Intense. Hot.
His gaze dropped down to my lips, and without thinking, I licked them. Dash let out a sexy, low groan.
My entire body felt warm and tingly, heat pooling between my legs, my nipples taut against my shirt. It had been a long damn time since I’d had a guy look at me the way Dash was, and it felt really, really good. For a moment I hesitated, reminding myself that he was basically a stranger.
But maybe it was better that way. I wasn’t looking for anything serious—not when I was just about to start a job that was going to occupy my entire life for several months—and I was pretty sure Dash didn’t even really know what a relationship looked like. Perhaps this was just what I needed. A night of hot, unbridled passion with someone I never had to see again. With someone who was incredibly hot. And apparently hot for me.
“Penny for them?”
I blinked. Dash was still staring at me, and I could tell he was waiting for me to make the first move. I found that unbearably sexy, and I made a decision. I was going to throw caution to the wind. I was going to enjoy myself and take a risk. Without a word, I reached for the hem of my sweatshirt, and pulled the whole thing up over my head and tossed it aside. Dash’s eyes widened, and I smiled.
“Just getting comfortable.” Then, in my mismatched cami and boy shorts, I reached across the bed, hooked my hand around the back of his neck and drew his lips to mine.
I felt his surprise as I kissed him. But his surprise lasted barely a second before he was kissing me back, his hands coming up to tangle in my hair, tilting my head so he could deepen the kiss.
The moment his tongue touched mine, I felt like I had gone up in flames. His kiss was so hot. His lips were warm and firm against mine, as he took total control, his fingers tightening in my hair. My own hands slid down his muscular chest and I fisted my fingers in his shirt and pulled him closer. I could feel him smiling against my lips as he cupped my head, his tongue tangling with mine.
He tasted like vodka and chocolate. I wanted more.
Everything that had happened that day—the cramped, nausea-inducing plane ride, the hellish crowd of unruly passengers at the airport, the harrowing car ride in the rain and near miss with Bambi—seemed to fade away. All I knew was Dash. Dash’s hands, his body, his mouth.
And I wanted it all. I needed it.
I didn’t even care that a few hours ago I had found him too cocky and too confident. Because right now, oh damn, cocky and confident was working for me. It was really, really working for me.
The man knew how to kiss. And I was happy to follow his lead, his tongue teasing mine, his teeth nipping at my bottom lip, his thumbs tracing the length of my jaw. Still, it wasn’t enough. Lifting up on my knees, I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. He responded with enthusiasm, dragging me onto his lap so I was straddling him. It was then I realized that he had good reason to be cocky. And I could feel that reason—hard and long—pressing against me in the most delicious way.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, with my tiny shorts and his jeans as the only barrier between us. Still, it was too much, and already I was eager to remove some of the layers that kept us from being completely skin to skin.
It was clear Dash felt the same way as his hands left my face and settled on my waist, one of them skating up and under my shirt. His fingertips dragged against my spine and I shivered, the sensation too much and not enough at the same time. I arched my hips against his, and reveled in the rumble of his groan. He tore his lips from mine, his gaze practically burning my skin. We were both breathing hard, but I was nowhere near satisfied. My greedy hands grabbed at his shirt, trying to get it up and over his head. He shot me a grin and, reaching back, pulled it off in one swift movement.
