“CAN WE STOP FOR COFFEE?” Tess asked, pushing a tape into the stereo.
Their fifth day on the road should be their last. Miami was less than five hundred miles away.
“You just had coffee,” Daire said from the driving seat. “We’ve only been on the road for an hour.”
“I know,” she said, extending her arms and legs in a stretch. “But I want to be ready for tonight.”
Daire’s brief laugh warmed her. “Sex is voluntary, babe. We won’t put platonic on pause tonight and I’ll let you sleep right through. Promise.” Catching a glimpse his way, she caught him doing the same and noted the sly half-smile on his lips. “Can’t help yourself, can you?”
“I can help myself just fine,” she said, pulling out the chest strap of her seatbelt so she could twist over the center console, stretching her arms across his lap. “You’re the one who insists on using me as a workout tool.”
“Gotta keep you in my eyeline, babe,” he said, stroking her hair. “And I’ve gotta get the cardio in somehow.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. The complaints were teasing. Being with a guy like Daire meant always being ready for action. They’d done it in every position and possible place in the Beast.
In his true persona, there was no need to play down his abilities. Yes, he was amazing in bed, she’d never had complaints there. Doing it in the two hundred thousand locations he’d squeezed in since they left Vegas, he kept up a rigorous frequency. Her body was his playground and his challenge. His ingenuity was thrilling. He put her in positions she didn’t know were possible, positions which made her marvel at his strength and stamina. He didn’t say he was using her to train, but she didn’t mind being involved when it felt so good.
After extending her stretch further, she took her time about relaxing to sit up again. “Much as I enjoy being your own personal multi-gym, I wasn’t talking about sex. If that’s what I was worried about, I’d just sleep now. Not like you’re going to ask me to drive… though I have offered.”
“Many times,” he said with an accepting nod. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t driving.”
“Other than probably stress yourself about all the things I do differently.”
“Differently?” he said, glancing her way. “You mean slower and less precise.”
“I can be precise,” Tess said, but couldn’t really come up with an example.
Instead of trying to distract him with truth, she took off her seatbelt to rotate her butt in the seat and slid her bare feet onto his thigh. From the way his attention went down and up before landing on her, she could tell he hadn’t expected her impromptu massage.
“You wanna sit on my lap?”
Arching, she draped herself against the door. “Then we could both drive.”
She adored his smile. Those dimples meant the world to her; they told her he was happy. Even if all she could give him was a few days of memories, it was better than giving him nothing.
“Yeah, like that would last more than three minutes,” he said, stroking her leg. “Told you I only have so much self-control.” Taking his focus from the road for a second, he pushed her skirt up. “You wearing panties?”
“Baby!” she screeched, grabbing for her skirt to shove it back down. “You’re driving.”
“I can do two things at once,” he said, licking his fingertips before sneaking them under her skirt.
Clamping her thighs to catch his hand, she couldn’t keep the grin from her face. “You’re doing the driving, the hauling, sometimes even the singing. Still, somehow, you spend most of your time looking at everything at once. Checking out vehicles, monitoring traffic, I see how you’re aware of everything.”
Something she was failing at. Just while she’d been talking, her legs had relaxed. He’d eased them apart and as her words trailed off, he snuck his finger around her underwear and into her.
She gasped, raising her hips toward his invasion while at the same time grabbing for his arm.
“I’m aware that you’re horny and distracted,” he said, one hand on the wheel.
Somehow the air seemed to thicken and darken, closing them inside their intimacy. All she could think about was the warm luxury of his treacle voice and the sweet push and pull of his pampering fingers.
“My Heart,” she breathed, undulating her hips.
While her nails dug into his arm, her other slithered down to join his hand, massaging her clit as he finger-fucked her.
“Want to know a secret?” he asked, never neglecting any of his duties.
She couldn’t be sure but didn’t think they’d even slowed down. “Mmm.” She wanted to know the secret, though her reply turned into something much more carnal. “Baby, yes… Mmm…”
“I’m not just your heart,” he said, curling his finger to stimulate her from the inside. “I’m your soul, your breath, your being.”
She smiled, sliding her hand from her pussy past his working hand to his wrist. “You are,” she purred. “You are my whole wide world.”
When his finger pulled back, she clenched, whimpering in protest. She should’ve known better. Her Heart would never leave her unsatisfied. When he thrust his finger back in with a second at its side, she sank into her bliss again. While she was coming to resent her underwear, Daire didn’t see it as an obstacle and edged it further aside to let his thumb massage her clit while his fingers worked.
“Oh God,” she panted, gritting her teeth as her body moved and her heart rate climbed. “Daire…”
“Right there,” he murmured, shoving his fingers into her while pressuring her clit.
Like he’d found the button to her pleasure and her soul, he tipped her into the spasm of an orgasm that stole her breath so suddenly, she didn’t have the time to scream. Her mouth opened, begging for breath, for mercy, for sanity, but her speeding pulse couldn’t find a tether.
Her body was still so raw that even when his fingers withdrew, she yelped and grabbed for his wrist. Completely adrift, her wide eyes landed on his. She couldn’t remember anything, nothing about anything, not until he winked at her.
Releasing a long breath, she let him go and languished in the warmth of the ecstasy still tickling through her. How long she stayed there was a mystery. After those seconds or minutes, her legs straightened to relax across him, his hand rested on her shin.
So much weighed upon them and the prospect of Styx lay on the horizon, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything negative.
“Every time I make you come, I feel so damn proud of myself,” he said, managing to gloat while at the same time coming off as modest.
Forcing herself to move, she slid her legs from his lap to put her feet on the floor, sitting in the seat properly, which wasn’t like her. In her peripheral vision, she noted him looking her way, but chose not to respond.
Keeping her expression as flat as possible, she made sure to match her tone to her demeanor. “I need you to pull over.”
“Babe?”
The edge of concern in his words tempted her to smile. Somehow, she managed to stay the course.
“Now,” she said, ensuring to be more insistent. “I need you to pull over, Daire.”
“We’re a couple of miles from the service—”
“Right now, Daire,” she insisted. “I’m not kidding.”
“Okay,” he said, flicking on the turn signal. “Pulling over. Eight seconds to stop.”
With his usual careful and precise finesse, he brought them to a halt on the shoulder. She watched him put them in neutral and pull on the parking brake. He didn’t say anything and just waited for her to break the silence.
Instead of speaking, she acted. Grabbing her chair and the dash, she whipped around to pounce onto her knees and lunged over to snatch his face in both hands. Forcing him to kiss her, she didn’t wait for him to catch up. She plunged her tongue into his mouth, overwhelmed by her inability to show him everything he meant to her.
Tearing her mouth away, she held onto him. “You’re so much, I can’t even breathe. I wouldn’t know what to do without your love… I don’t know how I survived without it.”
Caressing her arms, he took his time about appreciating her skin before sweeping her hair away from her shoulders. “I love it when you get emotional after you come.”
Releasing her tension, her hands dropped to his chest. “I get emotional?”
He smiled, the back of his fingers sweeping across her cheek. “If you’re angry, sometimes you get angrier, but it helps you to think more clearly. After you come, you’re always more focused, less stressed.” He’d told her that before. “If you’re in a good mood…” Pinching her chin between his curled forefinger and the pad of his thumb, he drew her mouth up for a kiss. “You get playful and overexcited… I love how honest you are about showing your emotions.”
Showing him anyway, since embracing the fact that they had feelings for each other. The open admiration and pride in his expression humbled her.
“Thought men weren’t supposed to like emotional women.”
“I don’t know about other men,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “But this one likes his. Doing what I do requires the ability to detach. We have to be measured, patient… unfeeling.” That’s how he’d grown up, with strict rules and cold, remote tutors always demanding more. “In every way, you’re my release.”
Her hand descended to his groin. “You want me to be your release right here?”
Curling his fingers around hers, he picked them up to kiss her knuckles. “You requested coffee,” he said, guiding her back to her seat. “Put your seatbelt back on.”
Though she was a little disappointed that he hadn’t taken her up on her offer, she was more concerned with how he sidelined himself to satisfy her needs. Something he did in his line of work too.
They were traveling down the road before she spoke again. “You know that I care about what you want too, right?”
“What I want?” he asked with a brow raise. “I want those lips wrapped around me every minute, but we have to get where we’re going.”
If she hadn’t insisted every day, almost to the point of them arguing, that they had to park and sleep, he’d have just kept on driving. Harry expected top results from him every time, yet no one expected more from Daire than he expected from himself. Just because he was capable of going without sleep for longer than any normal person, didn’t mean he should. His happiness meant everything to her, his health too, she didn’t want him pushing his limits for her.
As far as she could tell, though she hadn’t asked him straight out, he was still adhering to the Omega regimen too. He wasn’t drinking alcohol, wasn’t eating greasy take out. He cooked for himself or ate cold, healthy food.
After the first night, she ate what he ate. It wasn’t her place to tell him what he could and couldn’t have. She would never dream of it. But the adherence showed what was inside… what he craved to be a part of again as soon as possible.
Although she joked about sex being part of his work out, he was fanatical about his fitness levels. In the back of the truck, there were weights he trained with while she slept in the mornings. He’d do workouts customized to the restricted space of the Beast. Whenever they didn’t have to worry about traffic or onlookers, he’d train outside. Not because he would be embarrassed to exercise; it was because he always had to be aware of everything around them, of any potential threats.
The service station wasn’t much more than a gas station with a diner and convenience store. Still, the central parking lot had a section for RV and travel-trailers, so that was where Daire took them.
When he popped his door open, she leaned over to grab his hand, stalling him. What did she want to say? How much she loved him. How she wished he could value himself like she valued him.
From initial concern, his expression relaxed, and he touched her hair. “Right back attcha, Little Red. Wait there.”
He left the truck and came around to open her door. They couldn’t solve each other’s problems overnight. Maybe they couldn’t solve them at all. He’d said he liked her emotional and happy because it wasn’t something he’d been allowed to be.
So she turned around, stretching her legs out of the cabin to wiggle her toes at him. “I’m not wearing shoes.”
Even simplicity made him happy, she noticed the tilt of his lips as he bent down to retrieve her heeled mules from the foot-well. “You do this because you know how I feel about your legs,” he said, slipping on one shoe and then the other.
Still stooped, he picked up her arm to loop it around his neck and hooked an arm around her waist to lift her out of the truck. Before she’d release him, she pouted for a kiss that he bestowed.
“You should eat something,” she said, capturing his hands when he scooped her body in front of his as they crossed to enter the convenience store.
With her palms on the backs of his hands, she squeezed her fingers between his, wrapping his arms around her. Spotting the coffee machine on the other side of the store, she continued toward it.
“Am I gonna need my strength for something later?” he asked into her crown, his lips lost in her hair.
“Maybe,” she said, about to select her coffee.
Daire was one step ahead of her. Reaching around, he picked a cup, put it in the machine and pressed all the buttons to get her exactly what she wanted. His specialty. Spinning around, she relished being trapped between him and the machine.
Her Heart seemed to like it too because he guided her hands to his chest and moseyed even closer. “You were sent here to destroy me.”
“I was sent here to satisfy your every whim,” she murmured, locking her hands together at the back of his neck to pull him down for a kiss.
While they tasted and enjoyed each other, the machine grinded beans and dispensed her coffee. When the sound dwindled, his kiss slowed. The change of pace wasn’t sensual, it was distracted.
She opened her eyes just as Daire broke the kiss. Already his frown was trained on the blaring TV in the top corner of the store.
“…sought after area of Henderson, Nevada, just a twenty, thirty minute drive to the owner’s hotel and casino.”
The report had drawn Daire’s attention. As she twisted to see what he was watching, his arm came around her shoulders.
“It’s understood that Mr. Balfour is out of town on business and couldn’t be reached for comment, but evidently there were people in the building before the explosion. Bodies have been recovered, though no identifications have yet been made.”
“Oh my God,” she exhaled when the picture changed from a close in shot of a blonde in the morning desert sun to aerial shots of a smoldering building.
Some walls were trying to stand while other areas were a blackened mess of rubble and debris. The devastation was astounding. It was almost impossible to identify the building as the same one they’d fled only a few days before.
Daire’s arm disappeared as he stalked across to grab a newspaper. On his own mission, he swept a burner phone from a rack and went to the counter to pay for both. Her stupor lasted until he’d presented his money for the items.
Rushing over, she got to his side as he tucked his change into his pocket. Without even looking, he snatched her hand to pull her out of the store.
An explosion. Bodies. They’d run away together. Sure, they were going somewhere for a purpose, but Harry didn’t know that. Daire had left his post. His unit. His family. He’d been caught up in temporary bliss with her. While she’d stolen his focus, his people, and possibly his father-figure, had lost their lives.