She gestures at me. “Switch. I’ll drive.”
I frown. “I do not intend this as criticism, but can you drive a manual?”
She shrugs. “Nope. But I can learn.” She gestures at my arm. “We need to get you help. We need food. We need water. We need gas. We can’t just sit here when I’m perfectly able to operate this monstrosity of a truck.” A self-conscious laugh. “Maybe notwell, but I can figure it out.”
I slide over, and she scoots over my lap. Before she can move off of me, I wrap my good arm over her thighs and pin her in place, burying my face in the side of her neck, inhaling the familiar scent of my woman.
She leans back against me, momentarily softening into my embrace. “Apollo…”
I kiss her neck, her cheekbone, her ear. “I know. I just…I had to. I need you.” I swallow hard. “Ineed comfort, Rin. Just for a second.”
Moving cautiously so as to not bump my injury, she slides off of my lap, only to twist in place and straddle me, facing me. Her arms go around my neck, her hands burying in my hair. I feel my body respond, despite pain and exhaustion and the trauma response I’ve frankly been suppressing. She pushes her mouth against mine, seeking my answer. Her tongue slides on my lips, and I open for her, tasting her mouth.
“I probably don’t taste very good,” she murmurs.
I grasp a handful of her hair at the back of her head and tug her close for a renewal of the kiss. “Don’t care,” I mutter against her lips.
A moment of indulgence, mouths fused, breath synched, bodies clinched. She grinds on me, and I ache for her, hold her against me and writhe into her, needing her, needing more.
With a gasp, she wrenches herself away and rolls off me to the seat behind the wheel. “If we don’t stop, I’m going to do something to you right here in this truck. Which…doesn’t seem advisable under the current circumstances.”
“No kidding.”
She laughs, blushing, pushing her hair away from her face. “Suddenly, I’msohorny.” She glances at me with an inexplicably awkward laugh. “Is that weird?”
I shake my head. “Not at all. For one thing, it is a totally normal response to adrenaline, in general. For another thing, we haven’t spent much time apart at all since I moved to Houston with you, beyond working during the day, so we’re feeling the need to reassert our bond, you know? Third, we’ve been through an intense, traumatic experience, we faced death and survived, and it’s a response to that as well. I think also, we are just a couple which experiences a heightened sense of sexual chemistry, which doesn’t go away simply because we are in a difficult circumstance.”
“So you feel it too? Because all of a sudden, I’m so horny I can’t even handle it.”
I smirk at her. “No, I feel the same.”
She eyes me. “You do, hmm?”
I glance in the side mirror—we’ve been sitting here for a couple of minutes and haven’t seen so much as a single car. In fact, other than the orchard workers, we’ve seen no one at all.
“Thisisa pretty deserted stretch of road…” I say, twisting on the bench to face her. “Just saying.”
She sets the parking brake and turns toward me. “Apollo, I…”
I reach for her, guide her back astride me, tug her hair the rest of the way free from the bun, and her long, thick, blond tresses tumble around her shoulders. I bury my hand in her hair, then brush my thumb over her lips—I huff a laugh as my hands find lockpicks buried in her tresses; I set them aside and sweep my hands through her hair again.
“What, Corinna?”
“I need you.”
“I know.”
“Right now.” She grinds on my lap, her hands pressed against my chest. “I just…my mind, my body, my emotions…they’re all going fucking haywire, and I need to…I need tofeelsomething besides the…” a choked sob. “Something besides the awful shit that’s banging around in here.” She raps her temple with her knuckles. “I need to forget. I need to feel like…I need to know you’re…you’re real. That I’m here, you’re here—that we’re here, now, and not there anymore.”
I lift up and kiss her, and she kisses me back, briefly but intensely, before tilting her head back to bare her throat to me. I kiss her throat, her neck, her shoulder near the collar of the T-shirt. Using my one good hand, I roughly shove her T-shirt and bra up, letting her full, heavy breasts spill out, bouncing free with a sway. I tilt her backward and capture a nipple in my mouth and suckle until she gasps.
Abruptly, she pulls away, shoving her bra and shirt down. “In the back,” she says, scrambling for the door. “I’m not fumbling around with you in this cab like awkward teenagers when there’s a whole open truck bed.” She shoves open the door and slides to the ground.
I follow her, pausing to shut off the motor and take the keys with me. I hop to the ground from the passenger door as well, rounding to the tailgate. The flap was tied open, so instead of lowering the tailgate, she climbs up and over it. It’s a harder climb for me, one-handed. But my need for her eclipses everything, right now—I feel nothing except need.
Need to feel her.
To comfort her.
