25
Best View in the Desert
“You sure this spot you found is—”
“Yup.”
“You sure you, uh, still feel like . . . Because you ain’t gotta—”
“Jack. I’m sure.”
Click. Click. Click.
The turn signal clicked until they made the turn, and she tried to fight back a smile at how nervous they both were, like teenagers rather than adults in their forties.
Tires hummed on the road, so much louder when they weren’t bald.
“Just . . . don’t expect anything spectacular, okay? I’ve never been all that good at it.”
“I don’t think there is any bad where that’s concerned. But just because I said there was no sense in trying to go all the way, don’t want you to think I was fishing for this instead.”
“I know.”
“Mari.”
“No, it’s not that! Really. It’s fine. I don’t want you to worry.”
Click. Click. Click.
“Don’t pull over.” He was definitely still pulling over, maybe even turning around. She laughed. “Oh my gosh, you’re so sweet, sometimes it still surprises me. I’m nervous, but I’m fine, really. Don’t pull over.”
His hand inched across the seat. It didn’t quite make the whole journey before she met him in the middle. She laced her fingers together with his, and then the cab of the truck was quiet again.
Mari gave him directions, and eventually he had to let go of her hand to shift, and to wrangle the steering wheel as the dirt roads they bounced over got increasingly rocky and less traveled. The sunlight slanting in the windows was finally starting to ease in intensity, and she clicked the AC down a notch. They were close now.
She’d been looking forward to this time alone with him all day; clinging to it, really, after the tension-filled, short conversation with Rod. She hadn’t yet told Jack that Rod was going to transfer her off his crew. She’d have to tell him later tonight, because the change was coming tomorrow, but she really didn’t want to see his expression when she admitted that she’d given in. Not that she had had a real choice, but somehow that only made it seem more like a failure.
What Mari wanted was just to forget about terrible, pushy men and concentrate on the one she was with, who was kind and uncertain and twice the man his boss would ever be. She wanted to think about consummating her fantasy of driving Jack wild with her mouth. Except now that they were so close to their goal, she was remembering that in real life, she wasn’t the seductress she could be in her imaginings.
How was this going to work? Maybe she was supposed to undress. A blow job in a car was something he’d fantasized about, too, she could tell. But she wasn’t sure he could stutter his way through an explanation of how he pictured the logistics. Should she kneel on the seat, or maybe try to get down in the footwell on her side . . . The stick shift was in the way, that was for sure. But didn’t men like the on-the-knees thing?
Brad had, but sometimes she wasn’t sure if that was just because he knew it hurt her kneecaps. Or because he could yank her hair more easily from that position.
She ran a hand through her hair, thinking of how many times she’d thought of shaving it down to her skull.
It was funny—she’d been having so many dirty thoughts about doing this with Jack. About using her tongue to make him gasp. About running her hand down the whole, impressive length of him. But now that she was so close to getting her fantasy, she was remembering how little she’d liked it all the times she’d done it in real life. The way her jaw would get tired and she’d wish for a break but couldn’t take one. The way Brad always finished, but a minute later he’d be telling her all the ways she’d done it wrong.
“It’s right here,” she said, spotting the boulder she’d chosen as a landmark, tucked down in a small valley, along the faintest side track off a little-used four-wheel-drive road. On a midweek night when the rowdy weekend crowd wasn’t likely to even consider going dirt biking.
Jack parked, and just like that it was time. And she still wasn’t ready. Suddenly her heart started fluttering, stumbling over itself with its own speed. Her throat tightened, her scalp screaming with the phantom pain of her hair being gripped and pulled.
“Mari?”
She inhaled a long breath and took hold of her courage with both hands. This was her present, not her past. She was safe, and this had been her idea, and in this new life, her choices were supposed to be her own again.
“I don’t think I want to—”
“Okay.” His agreement tripped out before she was even done, and something soothing and nice flooded through her tensed chest. She peeked up from his dashboard to his green eyes. “Thought it was weird,” he confessed with a rueful twist of a smile. “That you’d wanna.”
“No, I do.” She fumbled, not sure how to explain her contradictory emotions. “I really do. Just . . . not right now, I don’t think.”
“Yup.” He glanced around. “Wanna go back or . . .”
“It’s nice out here. We might as well watch the sunset, since we came all this way,” she suggested, trying to salvage the night.
“Yup.”
They both looked out the windshield, where the pinks and oranges of early sunset streaked the sky, framed in the rising curves of the small valley they were parked in. The spines on the cactus caught the sun and made a glowing halo that was almost romantic.
Inside the truck, the only sound was the rush of the AC. Mari felt guilty leaving the truck idling—emissions and all—but they’d roast for sure without air-conditioning. Even with twilight coming on, it was topping 90 degrees.
Two empty feet of truck seat separated them. Jack didn’t say a thing, just watched that sunset like it was his job. Mari bit her lip, relief and tension warring within her.
“Can I, um, come over there?” Even her murmur sounded too loud in the silent truck.
“Yeah. Course. C’mere.” He raised his arm in invitation and she scooted over, nuzzling into his side with a noiseless sigh. “You all right?”
She tucked her head in under his chin, his collarbone warm beneath her cheek. “Mm-hmm.” It was okay. They were okay.
They could fool around another time, and she was glad she hadn’t ruined her own fantasy by trying to do it on a day when her head wasn’t fully in the right place. She hadn’t really thought Jack would protest her saying no, but it was nice to know he wouldn’t take it personally and get weird about it, either.
While they watched, the shades of the sunset began to deepen, like they were settling into their true colors, and it was utterly beautiful.
Jack ducked his chin and kissed Mari’s head. Her hair was soft and tickled his nose. He liked sitting out here with her. Hell, maybe his fetish with cars and shit wasn’t even sexual, because even cuddling in a truck was turning out to be better than he’d expected.
She turned a little and kissed him back, in the bare scrap of skin above the first button of his shirt. A quiver ran through him, and she laughed.
“Ticklish?”
“Yup,” he agreed instantly. It was better than the truth, which was that he was basically a teenager where she was concerned. He was half-mast hard and his heart was speeding at even that tiny kiss, which was miles away from his mouth or any more-sensitive parts.
Her free hand stroked over his ribs, patting nicely against his buttons. “I like this shirt.”
“You do?” He’d got it three for ten dollars at Walmart, all different colors of blue plaid. It wasn’t what Leroy would have called a “gittin’ laid shirt.”
“I do.” Her fingers started to toy with his first button, and he had the notion that perhaps she hadn’t bought the ticklish explanation after all. Her lips rose, touching his throat this time, and he considered if it’d be worth it to pull away for long enough to turn up the air-conditioning.
Instead, he just started to sweat.
“It’s such a nice sunset,” Mari murmured.
“Mmm. Yuh-huh.” His eyes had fallen closed, but he didn’t think she could tell from where she was cuddled down into his side. His ribs on that side were tingling, every gentle brush of her body waking them up all over again. He could feel the slim curve of her shoulders, her long, pretty back. His hand curled into her waist, holding her into him.
His chest loosened, and it took him longer than it should have to realize the sensation was one of his buttons. Now he was afraid to open his eyes.
Her cheek skimmed the exposed skin, and he stopped breathing. Two buttons, three. Shit. Hell. Unborn illegitimate son of a—
“Mari!” he blurted and she paused.
“Mmm?”
His eyes had popped open, and he was rather discomfited to note it wasn’t even close to full dark yet. “Maybe I oughta—” he mumbled, not sure what he meant to say.
He worked hard, kept fit, but his chest wasn’t anything to write home about. Scattered with tattoos as faded as his jeans, and most of them were crooked because his cousin Wicket hadn’t often been sober when he was in the mood to get his tat gun out of the closet. Even when Jack was twenty, he’d never had one of those stomachs like you saw on women’s paperbacks in the grocery store, like six dinner roll tops poking up in individual bulges.
“I can stop,” she whispered. “I kinda felt back in the mood, but it’s okay if you didn’t.”
“No! Nuh-uh, you don’t have to stop.” He paused, but before he figured out how to explain the situation he was having, she kissed him again. In that hollow, hard spot between his nipples. Damn, that felt good. And when she undid another button and kissed that spot, too, he forgot all about abs and grocery store books.
“Jack . . .” She wiggled in protest, and that’s when he realized his hand had clamped closed over her side with all the strength of years of climbing towers.
“Sorry.” He let go, then rubbed the spot in case he’d hurt her. She gave a little shiver he recognized and the corner of his lips kicked up. “Ticklish, huh?”
“Not a bit.” She tipped her head back and gave him a smile so wicked that he suddenly remembered it’d been her idea to drive all the way out here so she could get in his pants.
And, okay, she’d decided she’d rather not, but he certainly wasn’t opposed to the chest kissing that had started up. He petted her back more softly now, letting his palm stroke over her bare skin where her shirt started to pull up.
That seemed to only make her more enthusiastic about uncovering more of his chest.
Jack was starting to think this sex thing, much like the conversation thing, was just not the same with Mari as it had been with other women. She and Jack seemed to maybe have similar taste in stuff. Or maybe it was just that everything she did appealed to him one whole hell of a lot.
He got bolder, letting his hand slip up under the back of her shirt. When she arched her spine and let out a little huff of breath, he wandered lower, past her belt line. To her pocket. He faltered a little but she pressed closer and his hand ended up filled with the delicious curve of her ass.
She had slipped sideways to where she was almost lying in his lap now. His shirt was unbuttoned and her position the same as all his fantasies. The sight of her lit up something in his chest that felt halfway between pride and some crazed, masculine energy that demanded to be released. It was Mari here with him. So much more impressive than all those faceless fantasy women.
He hauled her up to his mouth, a growl building in his chest that he didn’t fully understand. That fevered aggression that always seemed to take her over had infected him now, too, and it made him want to use his tongue. On her mouth, her breasts, her . . .
His brain got a little foggy, possibly because she was letting him support her weight while her hands had snuck inside his shirt. His belt buckle had loosened, and her kisses had gotten hotter and more out of control. He became very bold then, whispering things to her and nipping at her neck just beneath her pretty little ear and the wink of her tiny earrings and she was saying yes. Yes, yes, yes into his ear. A lot of things happened then.
One of them involved her losing her pants, which apparently talked his shirt off as well. His fantasies about trucks had taken a sharp, interesting turn, and Mari was all on board with his whispered idea of what he wanted to do to her.
A few grunts and his too-wide shoulder honking the horn later, he got his back to the driver’s door, and stretched out across the bench seat with Mari spooned between his legs. Her head lay against his shoulder, her bare legs pale and pretty against his new seat covers.
His hands found their way back to what was becoming familiar ground between her thighs. Mari’s went to her own buttons, opening her shirt and popping her front-clasp bra so that he now had the best view in the desert.
And it didn’t have a thing to do with sunsets.