Chapter Eight

“Don’t fall asleep on me again,” he chided, moving up her body so that the silken heat of her pussy taunted the tip of his cock.

Instead of speaking, Jaime rolled her hips, pressing against him mercilessly. He needed to hold off and calm himself if he had any prayer of lasting, but when her fingers gripped his ass and pressed him to her, his control snapped.

Only pleasure mattered as he slid into her with a barely reined-in thrust. He wanted to make this good for her, to make sure she wanted more.

In the morning.

Tomorrow.

Every day he had with her. Because being with her felt incredible. Better than he’d imagined. Better than he knew possible.

Bracing himself on his elbows, he began to move slowly, finding the rhythm. Still she teased him, her fingers tracing his biceps, his back and his butt while she made the most glorious moans and sighs.

His skin came alive everywhere she touched him, tingling with exhilaration. She slid soft hands over his shoulders, firing his blood as she touched the muscles of his chest. His heart thundered in his ribs, so hard and fast he wondered if it might burst when he climaxed.

Sensations flooded his body and his mind spun, trying to push aside thoughts of what could possibly be happening. Never had he felt such depth, such unbridled need. Even breathing seemed secondary to pleasure, his lungs filling slowly and rushing out frantically.

Beneath him, Jaime gasped, arching her back as her fingernails dug mercilessly into his shoulders. It was the only warning he got before her inner muscles clamped down on him with a grip of pleasure that held for an intense, blinding moment.

A cry of animal lust ripped from his throat, his hips driving ahead. With all of his strength, he pushed deeper, trying to dive into the sweltering bliss. His own climax timed his thrusts, his toes curling, his body shuddering as he gulped for air.

When oxygen finally returned to his brain, he looked down and smiled at her glassy-eyed expression. With her face flushed, her rounded cheekbones were even more prominent, her smile on the disarming side of silly. Deep brown eyes stared up at him, long lashes feathering with every blink.

“Xavier? Are you okay?”

He shook his head slightly, trying to bring himself back to reality. Rolling off her and onto his side helped, but he still felt enveloped in a glorious fog. He sat up and stretched his shoulders, amazed his muscles could feel so tight and so languid at the same time.

At the foot of the bed, he turned and saw her already curled beneath a sheet, grinning as if she felt as intoxicated as he did.

“Will you get me a glass of water?”

“Good idea.” He disposed of the condom in the bathroom, wondering if he should head back to his room for another. Maybe she’d want him to go to his room anyway. He swallowed down a glass of cold water that brought his wits back to him.

It was sex. Just sex. Good sex. And it had been a while. Natalie had made her debut as the lead designer with the spring season, and they’d been sprinting ever since. Everything had taken a back seat to her success. No one had graced his bed in nearly a year. That’s all that had happened out there. A physical reaction to abstinence.

He refilled the glass and turned, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He didn’t wear the flush of release as attractively as she did. What hair he had was plastered to his head, his chest and the rims of his ears a telltale red. It was as if he were a teenager, getting laid for the first time.

How ridiculous.

Gripping the glass, he stalked back to the bedroom. Jaime had moved to one side of the bed, the one with the alarm clock.

“Merci.” She took the water from his hand and drank greedily. She set the glass on the nightstand and flopped back on the pillows. “I’m allowed to fall asleep now, right?”

“You can do whatever you want.”

A wicked grin lit her features. “Yes, we just demonstrated that.”

He glanced at the door connecting their rooms, wanting both to find some privacy and to climb in bed with Jaime and start it all over again.

“You can sleep in here, if you want.” She lay back on the pillow, plumping it beneath her head. “Actually sleep. Or your own room. Whatever.”

Indeed. He walked to the door and reached through to flip off the light. He needed to get his head together, but he wanted to touch her again.

Rounding her bed to the empty side, he said a silent prayer, thankful that vacation was a time for wants. He could deal with what he needed later, when there wasn’t a warm and willing woman waiting for him in bed.

…

“Tell me you don’t want to go to a petrified wood gallery or a cowboy museum.” The savage cheerfulness in Jaime’s voice broke his slumber.

He’d been having such a lovely dream too. She’d been there, at the beach in St. Tropez, her golden skin darkening in the warm sun. Xavier opened one eye at the smell of coffee wafting through the room.

The bed dipped beside him as Jaime sat, already dressed in a flirty yellow sundress showcasing her curvy legs. She dropped a handful of brochures on the bed and then took a long sip from a steaming paper cup.

“Coffee?” Xavier croaked.

From the nightstand, she produced another cup, this one with a lid. The promise of coffee was enough for him to sit up. He reached for the cup, but she pulled it back.

“I did the best I could with what I had, so no complaining.”

He quirked an eyebrow and reached for the cup, wishing they really were in St. Tropez where they could wake up and enjoy the morning properly.

“How do you take your coffee normally?” She turned to face him, leaning against the headboard.

Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he rubbed a hand across his face. Why did this woman have to wake up as peppy as popcorn?

“It depends.” He cleared the gravel from his throat and took another hot sip. Coffee and cream, a little cinnamon. “Never with that powder people keep putting in my coffee. What is that, anyway?”

“Vile is what it is. I wasn’t sure if you took milk or cream.”

“Milk in the morning, black during the day, cream after dinner. But this is good. The cream covers up the bitterness of the coffee.”

“That was the goal. I asked the front desk where I could get espresso and they stared at me like I had two heads. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest certainly spoiled me. And got me through college.”

“Sorry?” He needed more to wake him up than something to drink. His gaze drifted to her bare legs stretched out on the bed.

“I was a barrista in college. And a bartender. If you can drink it, I can make it.” She gave a nod, her high ponytail bouncing.

Two jobs and earning her degree. His university days had been a vacation from the world of fashion. He’d even taken a year before he started and come to the States as an exchange student. He rarely thought of how lucky he was to have been born a Moreau, but it hit home sitting next to a woman who worked her way through school and then signed away five years of her career to forgive her student loans.

“How long until you think you’ll be ready?”

“Depends on what I need to be ready for.” He set his cup on the nightstand and reached for her to run a hand along the smooth expanse of her thigh.

She jumped at his touch, standing up quickly. “If you do that, we’ll spend the rest of the day in Nebraska.”

And the problem with that would be?

Finally awake, he looked at her as she stood beside the bed like a jewelry box ballerina, her foot resting on one leg.

“I need to pay my traffic ticket this morning, and then we should get moving. We’ll stop in Salt Lake tonight, get an early start tomorrow and be in Medford by midnight Thursday.”

Two days. For some reason, he thought that after last night she’d want to take the trip at his pace. Was she just being Jaime, or now that they’d had sex could she not wait to get away from him?

“I told you. I’m not zooming across the country without experiencing it.” To punctuate his statement, he picked up one of the brochures she’d set on the bed. No, he didn’t really care to see cowboys or petrified wood, but he would to prove a point. He flipped open the brochure of Nebraska, which had a map of the surrounding states.

“What are you hoping to experience? As long as it is on the way I have no problem with stopping. You’ll like Salt Lake City at night, I promise. The Mormon Temple looks awesome in the evening with its lights blazing.”

The smile was involuntary. He had to derail this plan of hers or he’d find himself in Oregon with two weeks to burn before the wedding.

The map reminded him of one of the things on the list. His mother had written she wanted to show him the seven wonders. She didn’t mention if it was the modern, ancient, forgotten, natural…really, the seven wonders idea must be a travel agents’ dream.

“Mt. Rushmore.” He brought the map closer to his face, quickly making note of the route there.

“No way. That’s in South Dakota. North of here. We are going west.” She snatched the map from his hands. It was getting scary how well he could read her. “Wyoming and then Utah.”

“Mt. Rushmore today, maybe we’ll head to Yellowstone after that. Or Las Vegas.” He brought his legs over to the side of the bed and stood, stretching his well-used muscles.

He stalked toward her, his gaze flicking from the golden skin of her bare shoulders to her cheeks lifted in a smile she seemed to be fighting. Maybe she wanted this, wanted an exciting lust-filled adventure, only she didn’t want to be responsible for not taking the straight and narrow.

Fine by him. His shoulders were broad enough to be the cause of her dalliance. He reached for her and framed her face in his hands for a searing kiss.

No holding back, no doubts remaining as he tasted her whole mouth. Cinnamon, milk and the spicy sweetness of cloves. He pulled back and licked his lips, trying to place the flavor.

“Chai tea,” she responded to his unasked question. She tried to turn from his grasp and he opted to let her. Instead of fighting, he went for the win. His fingers found the side zip of her sundress, freeing her before she had the chance to protest.

“We need a shower.” His hands brushed the straps from her shoulders as if they were feathers.

Jaime moved to cover herself. “I already showered.”

“That was last night. I’ve dirtied you up since then.” In seconds, she was as bare as he was, and his body temperature rose at the sight. “You have the most beautiful skin.” He brought her to him, tasting her where her neck met her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she whispered on a breath, her body responding. Unfortunately, her mind was still working overtime. She raised her hands to his chest and tried to push him away. “I need to pay my ticket.”

“I need you wet and slippery.” He nudged his erection against her to illustrate how much as he lifted her off the clothes piled at her feet and walked them backwards into his adjoining room.

“Wait, where are we going?” Her fingers gripped at his shoulders as her feet tried to keep up.

“To the condoms.” At the door to the bathroom, he paused long enough to throw it open and then kissed her, hard and full. “I am going to spend the next two weeks making you amazingly happy and trying to kill you with orgasms. No maps, no plans. Just pleasure.”

“Wait,” she turned her head from his kiss. “I can’t do that. It’s running away from my life.”

“It’s called a holiday. If one of your students had the chance to explore the country, wouldn’t you tell them to take it?”

“It’s more than that,” she said to his chest, her words shrinking as she said them. “If my family finds out I spent my summer on a road trip instead of looking for a job and an apartment, they’ll never cease to remind me of how irresponsible that was.”

“You don’t have a single responsibility, except to yourself. There’s never going to be a better time to take a vacation.”

“If they find out that I did this just to have an affair, whenever anything goes wrong in my life it will be because I spent weeks having sex with a stranger.”

He tipped her chin up to look him in the eyes. “Hey, you know me.” He knew she didn’t mean for the words to sting, but they did. He gripped her buttocks, lifted and pressed her against his erection.

“J’aime, you want this to happen. If you don’t want them to know, then stop trying to run back home. Because this won’t stop until we’re on separate continents.”

…

“That’s it?” Jaime stared down at the receipt in her hands. “It took two minutes.”

“What did you think was going to happen?” With his hand at the small of her back, Xavier steered her down the courthouse steps and to the car.

“I thought they’d yell at me. Make me watch a video with horrible crashes, a kind of scared-straight thing.”

“Jaime, you were only ten miles over the speed limit. You weren’t street racing.” The car sparkled a shiny red in the morning sun as he held open the passenger door, taking her hand to help her into the car.

“I know, I just thought it would be some awful thing.” The clerk who’d helped her had been nice and friendly, greeting them with a, “Hi there. How are ya?” and a, “Let me just take care of that for you, hon.”

“Why?” He slid into the car and started the engine.

“Because I broke the law.” She never broke laws, rules, anything. And she was certain people weren’t supposed to be this nice to her when she did.

“You didn’t rob a bank. Your foot got a little heavy on the gas. What is it Trent says? No harm, no foul.” He maneuvered the car through the one-way streets of quaint downtown Ogallala.

“It just doesn’t feel right. It’s like I’m getting away with something.” So many things―speeding, an affair, running away from home. In the span of twenty-four hours, she’d turned into a bad girl, and she hadn’t even meant to.

“They did take two hundred dollars for their trouble, but if you want to be punished we could play a little game later. I could be your jailer and you could show me how sorry you are.”

“Woah, slow down.”

“I’m going twenty-five.”

“I mean the…” She swirled her hand in the air, unsure if she could say the words out loud. “I can’t play…games.”

“What?” He pulled off the road before the highway onramp. “Are we having another language problem?”

“No, I know what you mean. I can’t do that.”

“I was only thinking it might help.”

“I’d feel like a total freak.”

“Okay, we’re definitely having a language problem.” He knit his brows together and said in Spanish, “We can have a play where I am the police and you are the fugitive.”

“Fugitive?”

“Wrong word?”

“Yeah.” She laid a hand on his knee and rubbed her thumb along the hem of his shorts. “I’m not a sex-games kind of girl.”

He grinned when she whispered the word sex.

“I mean it. I’ve had, you know, in two positions. Okay, three thanks to the shower today. But that’s it.”

“How awful.”

“It’s not awful, it’s fine. Normal. I’m just not very adventurous. Most people―”

“Most people use three positions every time they make love.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Oh, trust me.” He slid his hand over hers and squeezed.

“It doesn’t even last long enough for that.”

He reared his head back, his nostrils flaring. “It had been a very long day, and you rushed me this morning.”

“Not you, geesh. You’re great, but it’s usually over in half that time.”

He nodded his head. “That’s understandable. You’re very good.”

Jaime felt the heat of her blush from the top of her head to the low-cut neckline of her yellow sundress. A strange blend of pride and mortification at Xavier saying she was good in bed had her stomach fluttering and clenching.

“I can do much better. In fact, I’d love to take you sprawled out on the hood of the car. And from behind, you have the most amazing ass. And―”

“Stop!” Jaime yelled, covering her face with her hands as desire dampened her panties. She wanted all those things too, but she didn’t dare admit it.

“Are you uncomfortable talking about sex?”

She peeked out from behind her fingers. “You think?”

“Then calling you from Paris for phone sex is going to be out.”

“Ay caramba, I could never.”

“You see, now that is a challenge.” He pulled back onto the street, exiting onto the highway. “I’ll have to call you as soon as I get home and see how long it takes to get you talking dirty with me.”

The whir of the highway silenced any response she would have had, if she’d been able to speak.

…

“Carhenge? Come on, this is your idea of seeing the country? A circle of old cars piled on each other? This is the kind of thing American’s don’t want tourists to see.”

“Someone thinks it’s worth seeing.” He took a few steps away from her, not because of her attitude, but to try and catch her with the camera. She kept jumping from the frame, but the image of Jaime Cruz at Carhenge was too funny not to memorialize.

He rarely took pictures anymore. As a teenager he’d thought he’d become a fashion photographer, but when his father had explained he needed to run the company and not work for it, he’d set the camera aside. During this trip he’d taken more shots than he had in the last decade.

“I just don’t want you thinking this is America.” Her akimbo stance drew a sexy silhouette on the ground at her feet. Finally, he had his shot. “I feel like it’s my responsibility for you to see America at its best, and this is…”

“Something a family did for their reunion.” He pointed to the plaque detailing the history of the site. There’d been a road sign advertising the place, and for some reason he’d wanted to see it, just because they could. “Besides, America is as much my country as it is yours.”

“Still, I’d much rather you think of the U.S. as the Statue of Liberty or The Smithsonian, not haunted hotels and stacked cars.”

He sidled next to her, leaning close so he could whisper in her ear. “I like haunted hotels.”

She turned so quickly she nearly knocked him in the nose. “No more haunted hotels. I’m not playing.”

“You’ll play along.” He reached between then and twined her hand in his. “There are haunted hotels and replicas of Stonehenge all over this country. Maybe we’ll see every single one.”

She pulled their hands between them and he wondered if she realized that her knuckles grazed over the fly of his shorts. “You’ve seen one pile of vintage cars, you’ve seen them all.”

“Fine, then I guess we’re done here.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. How he loved her laugh floating on the air as they walked back to the car, their clasped hands swinging between them. His lips curled as he wondered how many states he’d get laid in on this trip.

“I still can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“This? Actually seeing something on the drive?”

“No. This us. Well, there is no us.” She shook her head. “You’ll have to teach me how this works. I keep telling myself it’s okay, that I won’t get attached to you because this is just a vacation, a fling. We both have lives to get on with that have no room for a relationship. Still, sometimes you are so sweet.”

“You’d rather I were rude to you?” Carla’s warning about Jaime being a hopeless romantic echoed back to him, and he prayed he hadn’t crossed that line.

“No, of course not. If you were, I wouldn’t even consider this.”

“You think too much.” Once they reached the car, he used the remote to unlock the doors and put down the convertible top. “We’re adults. We’re having a good time.”

“You’re right. And I’ve always meant to see Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone.”

“And the Grand Canyon.”

Her eyes widened. “Xavier, no. There is enjoying ourselves on the way to Oregon, and there is driving around aimlessly. We don’t have time to drive two days south and then backtrack. Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, not both.”

Without a word, he walked around to his side of the car, climbed in and started the engine. No point in worrying about a fight that was at least a day away, or wondering what he’d want to do then. He’d be able to talk her into anything.

Because they wanted exactly the same thing.