Her laughter held a note of hysteria. She couldn’t help it. She scooted off him, flopped down on the couch next to him. “Of course not. I knew that.” Hell, she’d taken out shower insurance.
“Not completely.” He ran a hand over his shorn hair. “Condoms. In the other room.”
“Here.” She grabbed her purse from the table, pulling out her Hope Chest, the little plastic box that she kept spare tampons—and, yes, condoms—in.
That Justin Morgan smile appeared as he opened it.
She took one of the little packets out and waved it by one corner.
The little case landed on the floor as he grabbed the condom and turned to lay her back against the couch, kissing her, tongue sweeping into her mouth, tangling with hers.
“Holy shit, babe, I’m going to fuck you blind.”
She hesitated half of a second at his use of “babe.” As long as she remembered that she wasn’t special, this would be just fine. Better than fine. “It’s about damned time,” she said, pulling his shirt out of his waistband.
Chapter Twenty
Justin’s hands shook when he pushed Allie’s dress above her thighs and revealed the cotton panties she wore. No thong today. He thought these were called boy shorts or something; they were straight across her legs and belly, but made her look like anything but a boy. Thank God. She arched, undulating restlessly.
She watched him, eyes hooded, tongue peeking out to wet her lips. He must have been staring, because she said, “Here’s where you either pull off your drawers or I do it. At least I think that’s what’s supposed to happen. I’ve seen a couple of movies where they did something similar.”
God, he loved her smart mouth.
“I tell you what,” she continued. “Since you seem to be paralyzed with indecision, I’ll take care of exposing myself. You think you can handle getting your business ready?”
Squirming, she tucked her thumbs into the waistband of the panties, thrusting her pelvis into the air in order to work them over her backside.
He rocketed into action, unbuttoning his fly with a minimum of fumbling. His dick was so hard he had difficulty with the zipper, but he managed, somehow, to get his pants and boxers halfway down his thighs, almost to his ankle brace.
“That’s good enough,” Allie said.
And damn. He’d missed the unveiling. She was curled up, hugging her knees while she watched him try to undress. “Lose the dress,” he demanded. It was half off her shoulders already, nearly bunched around her waist.
And then there she was. Leaning back, completely naked except for the socks, right next to him.
His cock leaped with joy and agony. He still had the condom, so he tore it open and covered himself.
This couch was too damned short, barely big enough to hold him; it was definitely too small for two adults to have sex, but he wasn’t going to suggest they move to the bedroom.
He scooted as far to the end as he could so she could lie back. She draped one leg on the back of the couch, making room for his hips between hers, and damn if that didn’t leave her wet and open to his viewing pleasure.
But he didn’t stare at her pussy as he touched her—he watched her face, as she watched him slide two fingers along her opening, spreading the slick evidence of her desire. She sighed when he pushed his fingers inside her, and he twitched in response.
“Do you think we could save the ‘getting reacquainted with our sexy parts’ for later? I really, really need to feel you in me,” she gasped.
He moved his fingers in and out again, brushing her clit with his thumb, resting it there, feeling it pulse. “I don’t know,” he said. “What if you decide you don’t want me after this? I might never get another chance.”
She laughed, and she contracted around his fingers. “I promise. I swear to God, I’ll let you in at least one more time.”
This wasn’t like last night, hot and desperate in the dark—which had been earth-shattering for him, but he wasn’t sure about her, and he wanted to make sure this time was special for Allie.
“Gre-eg!” she moaned.
He was dying to be there, but Jesus, what if he came right away, and she didn’t get off? God, he felt like a damned virgin, but it had never been like this in the backseat of his dad’s Chrysler. No, this was Allie, and he could tell her the truth.
He slid his fingers in again, curling up, searching for her sweet spot. Moving his thumb again. “I’ve got a touch of performance anxiety,” he said. “If I go off too early, I want to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“You weren’t so worried about this last night. You were all, ‘Come now, Allie, I said so,’ and I sure managed to get off.”
He stopped the motion of his fingers, smoothed them over her pubis, finally looked her in the eye. “This is different.”
“Oh.” Damn those deep green eyes.
“I want to learn you, baby. I want to know everything that makes you squirm, pant, sigh, what makes you wet. For as long as I’m here, as long as you’ll let me, I’m gonna be the best lover you ever had. I’m going to do everything you want.”
That was the God’s honest truth. The other truth that he didn’t bother to mention—no need to totally kill the mood—was that he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage being on top with this ankle brace taking up so much room.
“Well, in that case, sit back, because I want to fuck your brains out.”
And all of his concerns about where he was going to put his damned leg brace shot out of his mind, because she pushed him back on the seat and straddled him again, grasping his cock and sliding—oh, fuck—sliding right down, all the way— “Oh, fuck.”
“Exactly.” She put her forearms on his shoulders, holding on to the back of the couch for leverage. She raised and lowered herself, her wet heat surrounding him, driving him to the top immediately.
He grabbed her hips, probably too tightly, because she gasped. But he had to hold her still, because no matter what she said, he was going to make sure she came.
“Stay there. Just like that,” he commanded, holding her a few inches above him. He began to thrust upward, slowly, building a rhythm, his thumb going back to her clit, like that was where it belonged. She quivered, muscles tensing around him.
“Yessss,” she hissed, head going back, torso arched toward him. He didn’t have a free hand to touch those breasts, but he had a mouth, so he managed to catch a nipple and suck, hard, causing her to cry out.
“I need more,” she said. Taking his hands in hers, she put them over her breasts. He caught her nipples between his fingers as he caressed her. She stared straight into his eyes as she licked her finger and lowered it to where their bodies were joined.
She was barely moving now, just a slow wave of heat pulsing around his aching cock, but he could feel her fingers moving over her clit as she said, “This is not about your world-famous stud capabilities, or who gets off when. This is about you and me, showing each other how we feel. And I’m showing you that I feel—oh God.” Her pussy contracted around him, and heat condensed in his lower spine, spreading up, forward. “Showing you—” She completely lost it then, groaning, clenching him inside her.
And then, if she said anything else, it was lost, because he was coming, blasting off, the top of his head landing somewhere north of Cleveland, the entire rest of his existence wrapped around, and in, this woman.
…
The aftershocks lasted way longer than Allie would have imagined, considering her thighs were totally cramped. Somehow she continued to move on Justin’s still-hard penis, even though he was trying to push her off him.
“Leaking,” he said.
“Oh, shit.” She wriggled backward, trying to get her wobbly legs to lift her away as he reached between them to catch the condom.
Sure enough, when he pulled it off and held it up, there was a big, gaping tear about halfway down.
“Ahhh!” Allie reached for a roll of paper towels, tearing one off and throwing it at him. �
�Wrap it up, wrap it up!”
Justin started to laugh, lying there sprawled out, mostly naked, holding a dripping condom in one hand, the other hand beneath it to catch what dripped. “It’s not a spider,” he said.
“No, it’s not, it’s a—a—potential grandchild maker for Lorena. Oh, hell no!” She leaned down to pick up the paper towels she’d thrown, which hadn’t made it to Justin. She leaned her body away and held the towel out to him. He took it and dealt with the offending article, then tossed it into the plastic grocery bag she found for him.
Justin lifted his hips, balancing on his good foot, and pulled his pants back up, but didn’t zip or button them. She was totally distracted from her freak-out. God, he was beautiful, all muscles and skin and tattoos, and muscles…
“Hey. You gonna stand there staring at me, or are we gonna bask in post-sex glow for a while?” He looked her up and down. “Although if you just want to stand there for a while and let me look, I can probably be up for round two before you know it.”
Allie realized she was standing in the middle of his family’s camper, stark naked, holding a trash bag full of broken condom. The effects of which she suddenly felt, tickling the inside of her right thigh.
“Ack!” she shrieked, bolting for the bathroom. She cleaned up, then scrambled into the bedroom to find some clothes. She wasn’t thinking about anything, couldn’t think of anything besides finding her favorite Kentucky Unbridled T-shirt. She wouldn’t think past this moment. There was sperm inside her. Probably heading upstream already, finding an errant egg, which would become…a disaster, because Justin would feel compelled to marry her, and then he would resent her, and then they would both be miserable, and the kid would need therapy, and—she was pulling up fresh panties when the door slid open.
“Don’t get dressed on my account,” Justin said, waggling his eyebrows at her. He moved into the tiny space, sucking half of the oxygen out of the room.
“I have to get dressed. We have to…do something.”
“Like find condoms that were made in this century?” From his pocket, he retrieved the wrapper from the faulty prophylactic. “How long have you had these?”
She thought. “Um…” Since right after college, because that was when she’d gone off the pill because it made her sick, and… “I guess probably for a long time.”
He leaned his crutches against the wall as he sat on the mattress, leaning back onto the pillows. He patted the space next to him. “Can you come here for a minute?”
“Maybe?” She was completely off-kilter, and clinging to Justin right now sounded a little too appealing.
“It’s okay, babe. We’ll talk about it. Later. But I’m not done with you yet.” His calm in the midst of her storm was a fulcrum to spin out of control around. But then he leaned back on the bed and reached for his toiletry bag.
Damn, she wasn’t done with him yet, either. Oh, what the hell. She could cling for a bit, deal with reality later. She couldn’t help but notice that he still hadn’t zipped or buttoned his pants, so when he turned, his shorts slid down, revealing the boxer briefs—hugging his perfect backside. And she also couldn’t help but slide her hand down inside, over the soft knit fabric—
“Hey, are you copping a feel?” He rolled to his back and pulled her with him, trapping her hand, cupping one delicious buttock.
She squeezed.
He returned the favor.
…
Several hours later, Allie woke from a dream in which she had a baby in a sling carrier, and was trying to earn a living selling lemonade from a stand in front of her house—and her mother kept driving by, looking the other way, never stopping to buy lemonade. And the baby cried, because its daddy drove by and never stopped, either.
“Justin, wake up. We have to talk about this.”
“Huh? Wha?” He shot straight up, looking around wildly. “What’s wrong?”
“We have to talk.”
He blinked at her. “I was sleeping. Like, really sleeping.”
“I’m sorry.”
He grinned, teeth gleaming through the darkness. “That’s okay. Really. I bet I can do it again.”
She wondered for a moment if she should worry about that statement, but she was having her own nervous breakdown at the moment.
“What if I’m pregnant?”
“Babe. It’ll be okay.” He lay back down.
A shiver ran down her spine. “Don’t you understand the implications?” Why wasn’t he freaking out with her?
Justin stilled, then sat back up, flipping on the light. He stared at her for one moment, then another. There was something going on behind those blue eyes, something Allie didn’t recognize, and his jaw was working, biting the inside of his cheek. He looked a little shell-shocked, but not nearly as panicked as she felt.
“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Would it be so horrible?”
“Being pregnant?”
“Yeah. Having a baby.”
Allie flopped over. “What the hell am I going to do with a baby?”
“Buy it cute little UK T-shirts? When it gets a little older, I hear you can teach it to fetch things from the fridge.”
Her world was in huge, undulating upheaval, and he was making jokes about kids? “Seriously? What is wrong with you?”
“Okay. We can get U of L shirts, too. Wildcats, Cardinals, I don’t care, as long as it’s healthy. Not Tennessee, though, okay?”
She just glared.
He sighed and pulled her against him, enfolding her in his arms. She lay next to him, but couldn’t relax. He kept talking. “We could do that. Be parents.”
Pushing away, she stared at him. “Together. You and me. Having a baby.”
He nodded, shrugging. “Why not?”
She sat up all the way then. “This is crazy.”
He ignored that. “You do know that this naked stuff”—he waved back and forth between them—“is occasionally followed by parenthood, right? You took health at Crockett County High, right?”
“God, yes. Duh. But…that’s what the condom was for.”
“Okay,” Justin said. He reached for his crutches. “My bad. I guess I thought—” He shook his head.
“Thought what?” Now Allie’s mind was traveling down paths she hadn’t dared notice before.
“Never mind.” He shook his head, but didn’t look at her directly.
“No, what did you think?”
“Jesus. Okay. That whole, ‘we can go to Vegas’ thing was a hyperbole, I get that. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t have brought you fucking flowers if I wasn’t willing to explore that possibility.”
Her heart thunked while she tried to get her lungs to function. Wasn’t this the same man who’d pointed out last night, in no uncertain terms, that she had no business counting on him to stick around? She wondered if there had been any brain surgery or hallucinogenic styling products involved with that haircut.
All of the breath in Allie’s lungs left as his eyes held her captive. “We had sex twice, and you want to get married? Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “No. Not necessarily, I mean—I don’t fucking know. But Jesus, Allie, you’re—you’re fucking Allie! I wouldn’t have gone all the way with you if I wasn’t willing to—go all the way with you!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Justin pocketed the business card that Marty handed him, then shook his hand and wished him a good trip. He wasn’t about to take him up on his offer of meeting up again in a week to visit Arlington, but he’d save the phone number and email address.
Allie shared hugs and tears with the women, whom she’d known all of forty-eight hours. How did women do that instant friendship thing? Whatever. He was glad she’d connected.
He was anxious to get on the road. Their next stop was outside Memphis, and he had a hankering for some ribs. All that sex over the past twenty-four? thirty-six? hours had completely drained him of protein reserve
s. He’d awakened craving eggs, and all they had were a few slices of leftover cheese and that box of Pop-Tarts from the other morning.
Who went on a camping trip without packing real food?
Next time, Justin was going to be in charge of provisions. Allie could be in charge of…well, it wouldn’t be condoms. Or food. Toothpaste and deodorant, maybe. And paper products. She could do that.
He had to remind himself he was leaving. Assuming that he wasn’t going to be a father in the next nine months or so. But what were the odds? Pretty slim, right?
He’d probably overshot the mark last night, talking about the future. But for some reason, when Allie’d panicked over the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy, he’d pictured a round-cheeked little girl with curly red hair and green eyes, whose first words might very well be “Dammit, Daddy!”
And the mental artillery fire that usually kicked up whenever he thought about white board fences around rolling bluegrass fields was silent.
Marty nudged Justin as Allie finally detached from the women with promises to connect on Facebook and to post recipes for something or other on Pinterest (whatever the hell that was). “Earth to Stud Muffin,” he said. “You take care of that girl, you hear?”
Justin started, hearing that request, so similar to Dave’s last words to him. “Yeah. I’m gonna try.”
“And take care of you, too. It’s okay if you do. You know, take care of yourself and live a long, healthy life.” Some of the desert sand and gunfire settled back into his thoughts, bringing things back into the gritty focus he was accustomed to.
“Yeah. All right.” He had to get away. Marty was going to want to have a group hug and sing “Kumbaya” here pretty soon.
“You ready?” Allie approached gingerly. She was moving a little slowly this morning.
“Everything’s hooked up and ready to go,” he said, indicating Marty. “We just double-checked it all.”
“You driving?” she asked, blushing.
“You okay, darlin’?” Marty asked.
“Um, yeah. I just, um, slipped and pulled a muscle,” she said. “I’m sure a couple of extra ibuprofen and a nap will fix me up.”
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