Along for the Ride

by Michelle M. Pillow

  Sure, it was a little depraved to think that way, but she wasn’t romantically minded Zoe, optimistic Ella, free-going Kat or over-thinking Sasha. She was her own person – instinctual, controlled, decidedly unromantic if not slightly pessimistic in her views. And, if her detective side needed an excuse, she could always consider it like an undercover assignment – doing what needed to be done to solve the mystery that was Ryan Lucas.

  Comfortable with the logic, she walked to the bathroom door. A damp lock of hair stuck to her neck, still wet from her bath. She didn’t care if she was already clean because she suddenly felt very, very dirty.

  The door opened easily and she heard a startled movement in the tub before her gaze reached his. He appeared surprised to see her and she couldn’t blame him, considering she’d not invited him in when she bathed.

  ‘Did you miss a spot?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Without hesitation, she dropped her towel. Ryan’s eyes devoured her, lingering on her breasts before travelling down to her hips. His shoulders straightened as he sat forwards. Megan kept her gaze steady as she walked towards him. Her feet fell silently against the chilly floor tiles. ‘You did.’

  ‘Oh, did I?’ Ryan stared up at her.

  ‘Are you going to make room for me?’ Megan asked, raising a brow.

  As he moved over, the expectant gleam in his eyes caught her notice. Shades of uncertainty and hope spread over his features, as if he searched her for more than she could give. The raw intimacy of it terrified her. Ryan tried to hide the hopeful expression under a smooth sexy façade but it was too late. She’d seen it in him and had to wonder what it was he looked for in this strange relationship of theirs. Megan hesitated.

  ‘Are you changing your mind?’ He matched her earlier demeanour, lifting a playful brow in challenge. All tender sentiments were gone from his face, replaced by the confident, if not slightly cold lover. She wouldn’t call him emotionless in his passions, but the way he looked at her now was more distant than before.

  Was that a challenge? Had she been mistaken in the hopeful look? Was he daring her to play his little game? She just wished she knew what they were playing for.

  Megan stepped into the tub, kneeling before him in the hot water. It was large enough for both of them to sit comfortably. Ryan pushed the button to turn on the side jets. The water began to churn, bubbling and rippling over the surface. She ran her hands over his thighs, caressing them up to his strong hips.

  The heat from the bath stirred her already aroused blood. Every nerve ending tingled, reaching out to touch him. She wanted contact, wanted to feel him inside her. Dipping forwards, her breasts rubbed against him as she brushed her lips to his. Instantly, his tongue delved forwards, licking the inner edge of her lips as he moved his mouth against her. The easy light pressure deepened with each measured movement.

  Hands slid over her sides, curving over her ass and squeezing. With a hard confident jerk, he pulled her against his fully aroused cock. Knowing he was as eager as she, that he wanted her as desperately as she did him, only pushed her desperation over the edge. She rubbed her sex along his shaft to stimulate her clit. Everything was so wet and hot and she couldn’t quit from squirming against him.

  Ryan massaged her chest, pinching her nipples. His mouth moved down her neck, licking her flesh, grazing his teeth as he pushed her back. With better access, his grip on her breasts tightened, his fingers slithering to encircle her tight nipples. The cool damp length of her hair against her back was an erotic contrast to the heat. He kissed her throat, then captured a nipple with his mouth, sucking and moaning.

  Megan drew her hands along his arms, scratching his skin. Ryan made a weak noise, so she did it again, harder. She rocked her hips, keeping his shaft tightly locked along her soft folds without allowing him entrance. Though she wanted him, she forced herself to hold back, keeping him outside her body, waiting for the moment when she would be mindless with need.

  ‘Megan,’ Ryan whispered, sending a shiver over her with desperation in his voice. ‘I need you.’

  ‘What do you need?’ she asked, taking a small measure of the power he had over her.

  ‘You,’ he groaned.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I want to be inside you.’ He took her by the hips and lifted her up. ‘I love the feel of you on me.’

  Megan panted weakly as the tip of his shaft found her ready beneath the water’s surface. As she seated herself on his lap, impaling her body, his hands slid once more to her breast. The jets bubbled, punctuating their soft moans. She clutched the tub’s edge on both sides of his head, using it for support.

  ‘Mm, so tight,’ Ryan mumbled, nipping at the breast lodged between his teeth. ‘I can feel you clenching me.’

  Megan tightened her muscles around his shaft, gripping him with her pussy. ‘Like this?’

  ‘Ah, you have to stop that or I’m going to come.’ His actions countered his words as he dug his fingers into the tops of her thighs and kept her on him.

  ‘Stop what?’ Megan did it again.

  ‘Oh, fuck, fuck.’ Ryan’s hands flew to the tub’s edge, holding on as she rode him. He let her have control and she took it, setting a slow rhythm.

  His eyes closed, his head back, Ryan was a gorgeous male specimen. Water clung to him and the overhead light hit the small bead, gleaming like diamonds along his tanned strong flesh.

  Megan tried to hold back, tried to keep from coming as she enjoyed the build, but the pressure became too much. She jerked, her hands slipping only to find a hold on his shoulder. Unable to move by her own will, she let the orgasm have her, trembling with his cock deeply embedded.

  ‘Mmm, I can’t stop.’ Ryan groaned, blindly reaching for her. ‘Pull off. I can’t keep from – ahh.’

  The moan was pained and he tensed with the beginning release beneath her and, instead of pulling her off, his hips jerked up, ensuring his thick arousal stayed right where it was.

  ‘Fuck, fuck,’ he repeated over and over before groaning incoherently. ‘You do things to me. You make me forget myself.’

  Megan took several deep breaths, attempting to calm her racing heart. When the feeling gradually came back to her limbs, bringing with it her sanity, she pushed up. His body glided from hers. She felt him watching her, but didn’t meet his gaze as she stepped out of the tub. Pulling her towel off the floor, she faltered briefly as she saw the unopened condom resting beneath it. She couldn’t believe they had done it again. Where was her head at? Slowly, she walked to the bathroom door, not bothering to pick the condom up. ‘You should hurry. They’ve probably decided on what we’re going to do today and are most likely waiting on us to join them.’

  Ryan watched her walk out of the bathroom. Did he just get used for sex? He would have been upset if he wasn’t so sated.

  It was all he could do to finish his bath. Not remembering if he washed his hair before she came in, he lathered it up and quickly rinsed. Everything about this woman was a mystery, one he wanted to spend the rest of his life solving. Getting out of the tub, he grabbed a towel and began drying off. The gleam of a condom wrapper caught his attention and he had a small sickened feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realised they’d forgotten protection again. What was it about Megan that made him lose all sense?

  As he left the bathroom to get dressed, Megan was already gone, her towel crumpled on the floor. He dropped his own on top of it and hurriedly grabbed something to wear. If he wasn’t quick, it was quite possible Megan would convince her family to leave without him and he needed every second he could get to woo the frustrating woman.

  ‘We should talk.’

  Megan glanced from the giant reproduction of a Tyrannosaurus Rex to Ryan and then back again. Under her breath, she said, ‘I agree. We need to start using condoms.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he answered. ‘Though I do think we need them. It’s only responsible of us.’

  Megan didn’t stay to chat as she walked towards the end of the l
arge display to stand by her father and Sasha, who insisted on reading each and every plaque that hung by the reproductions. The two were taking the scholarly approach, while Kat forced Vincent to play with her in the kiddie area. The last she saw of her mother was as Beatrice headed towards the gift shop with her father’s credit card.

  ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex was named in 1905 by US palaeontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. It means “tyrant lizard king”,’ Sasha said, reading the information plaque. ‘Living in the late Cretaceous period, sixty-five to eighty-five million years ago, this meat eater was a fierce predator.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Megan lied, forcing herself to look towards the plaque and not to where she’d left Ryan.

  ‘. . . humid, semi-tropical environment,’ Sasha was still reading. ‘Until recently, they were thought to be the biggest carnivorous dinosaur.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Megan mumbled distractedly, chancing a quick peek to the side. Ryan was coming towards her.

  ‘Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus are bigger.’ Sasha made a small thoughtful noise, as if she found it to be utterly fascinating information.

  ‘You don’t say.’ Megan was barely paying attention. She felt Ryan next to her and forced herself to listen to her sister.

  ‘Their serrated cone-shaped teeth are continually replaced.’ Sasha ran her finger beneath the words as Douglas leant over to read silently along. ‘Their arms are only about three feet long with two fingers on each hand.’

  Megan turned abruptly to Ryan and said under her breath, ‘OK, you win. I can’t take the info-junkies. Let’s go somewhere and talk.’

  As she walked away from her father and Sasha, the two of them didn’t seem to notice the abrupt departure as they became engrossed in their discussion of what they’d just read. Megan knew she could only stand so much academic dialogue on dinosaurs. That’s all the two brainiacs had talked about the entire drive to the museum. Stegosaurus this and Zuniceratops that. It was as annoying as watching two people speak Ancient Egyptian and having no way of beginning to translate them.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘Why would something be wrong?’ Megan grumbled. She stopped at a display unit set in the middle of the room. Two reproductions of vicious-looking beasts gnawing on larger small-headed creatures were surrounded by what looked to be ground-up car tyres. She picked up a piece of the black thick rubber only to toss it back down in disinterest.

  ‘Dinosaurs not your thing?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ve been dead a little too long. I like concentrating on the present mysteries, not ones scientists have been trying to solve since the dawn of time.’ Megan shrugged, turning her back on the creatures to look about in slight boredom. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the things; they just don’t hold my interest for hours on end, especially when they’re giant toy models and not the real thing.’

  ‘There are some old bones over there.’ Ryan pointed across the room to glass displays.

  ‘We got plenty of old bones in the forensic lab back home.’ Megan gave a small laugh. ‘And those I get to touch, if I want to.’

  ‘I’d offer to break the glass and get you one, but something tells me you wouldn’t think twice about having me arrested.’ His sheepish grin reminded her of the look he gave her when he’d been trying to ask her out on a date to her parents’ house.

  ‘Tell me something. That night at the big museumrobbery crime scene . . .’ Megan paused, frowning.

  ‘What about it?’

  She’d been about to ask about the photo he took of her at the crime scene, but thought better of it. ‘Did you actually think you were suave asking me on a date to my parents’ house?’

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘I mean, it’s a little sad, don’t you think? Asking a girl out to hang with the old folks?’

  ‘I like to think of it as gentlemanly,’ he said. ‘Chaperones and all that.’

  ‘Do I look like the type that needs a chaperone? I can more than handle myself.’

  ‘Oh, don’t I know it.’ His look said it all. ‘You more than proved you can handle yourself in the alleyway outside your parents’ building. And in the bathtub. And –’

  ‘Ah!’ Megan punched his arm. ‘That is real gentlemanly of you.’

  ‘What?’ He reached for her hip, drawing her closer. His tone dropped, becoming seductive, like a lover who shared an intimate secret. It was a rare occasion when any man ever used that tone with her. Part of her liked it, but a bigger part of her wanted to run away and hide. ‘I only said I like how you handle yourself.’

  Megan’s breath caught. She pulled back, in what she hoped was an artful attempt to end the familiarity of the moment. ‘I wonder what Mom’s buying. She’s been in the gift shop for a long time now.’

  ‘Megan.’ Ryan tried to stop her, but she didn’t stay to hear what he had to say.

  ‘So, how is it going between the two of you?’ Kat slid next to Megan on the picnic-table seat. They had pulled over alongside the road on the way home from the museum. Sasha was busy reading the dinosaur encyclopaedia their mother had bought her from the gift shop. Everyone else got a T-shirt and little geodes they could hit with a hammer and break open to see what kind of crystals were formed inside.

  ‘Do you think Sasha will ever graduate?’ Megan mused, intentionally changing the subject.

  ‘Because I think you two looked pretty cosy earlier,’ Kat continued.

  ‘I wonder what her major is going to be.’ The warm day borderlined on the hot side and Megan lifted her arms over her head, trying to draw whatever comfort she could from the cooler breeze. ‘All she does is study.’

  ‘I think you look good together, too. Both dark and pretty.’ Kat leant her elbow on the table.

  Green paint chipped from the top, weathered from years outside in the elements. Trees shaded the area, saving them from the direct sunlight. Small paths wound into the forest that was only metres from the main road. Ryan, Douglas and Vincent had disappeared, their father with a birdwatching chart, Ryan with his camera and Vincent with a bug catcher’s net.

  ‘Do you think she’s scared to graduate? I know it sounds silly, but I’ve always gotten the impression she’s frightened of starting her life for real so she keeps finding excuses not to leave school, like if she decides on a career she’ll be stuck forever doing the same thing.’ Megan stared at her college-bound sister, watching Sasha twirl a piece of her dark-brown hair as she followed the page with her finger.

  ‘Ryan is a nice guy,’ Kat said.

  ‘I don’t understand why she doesn’t just pick a subject and go with it.’

  ‘He’s smart and just mellow enough to put up with your ways.’

  ‘She’s got so much going for her.’ Megan refused to look at Kat and refused to acknowledge the whole other conversation her sister was trying to have with her.

  ‘You need to take it easy on him. Don’t worry, he hasn’t complained. He wouldn’t. But I saw his face when you walked away from him at the museum to join Mom in the gift shop. Whatever you said to him hurt his feelings.’

  ‘I wonder how Ella’s doing. Have you heard from her?’ Megan turned a pointed look to Kat.

  ‘You’re not going to talk to me about this, are you?’ Kat sighed heavily, shaking her head in what looked to be a cross between irritation and exasperation.

  ‘I’m going to go see if Mom needs help with the picnic baskets.’ Megan stood up.

  ‘You know, Miss Megs, you can’t run from the happy side of life forever,’ Kat yelled after her. ‘It’s going to bite you in the ass someday whether you want it to or not.’

  ‘How about them Yankees?’ Megan answered, not bothering to turn around.

  ‘Ornithologists say this area is renowned for its unusual bird species,’ Douglas said, lifting his binoculars and pointing them towards a tree. ‘But I’ll be damned if I’ve seen a single one in these woods. I can hear them, I just can’t see them.’

  ‘We saw a golden eagle
this morning,’ Ryan said. ‘Megan and I.’

  ‘Did you?’ Douglas lowered the binoculars in excitement. ‘I would have loved to have been there.’

  ‘I’ll bet you have some luck back at the cabin this evening, when it’s cooler,’ Vincent said. His net rested against the bench he’d found along the path. Douglas moved to sit by his son-in-law. ‘There was a humming-bird feeder on the deck. No hummingbirds, but there was a feeder.’

  Douglas chuckled, before turning an expectant look at Ryan. ‘Are you getting some good shots?’

  Ryan felt mildly guilty about how he came to be on the trip. He liked both men a lot and found Douglas to be an interesting combination of doting father and distracted scholar. ‘Yeah, I think so. I plan on taking my equipment out with me tomorrow at dawn.’

  ‘I think he meant are you getting some good shots in with Megan.’ Vincent laughed.

  Douglas snorted. ‘Out of all my daughters, boy, you sure did pick the spitfire.’

  Both men didn’t bother to contain their merriment, as they laughed harder.

  ‘I suppose she can be a handful,’ Ryan admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Try two fistfuls,’ Douglas corrected. ‘Megan has always been strong willed and law abiding.’ He made a soft noise of amusement. ‘She used to throw the biggest tantrums if she saw me speeding in the car, or if I rolled past a stop sign. Got to the point I made sure to put her right behind the driver’s seat so she couldn’t see what I was doing.’

  Ryan laughed. He noticed Megan always took the seat right behind her dad in the rental. Seeing movement out of the corner of his eyes, he instantly lifted his camera and waited.

  ‘You got something?’ Douglas asked, standing.

  ‘Bird. Up there.’ Ryan adjusted the zoom on his lens until he could focus on the small animal on a tree. It was high up, but the camera lens afforded him a good look at it.