He did have a point there. Renee would skin him alive if she knew about what we’d done, and almost done, on the couch in the man cave. And then she would have given me a very long and potentially very graphic lecture about sexually transmitted diseases, complete with a condom demonstration. I’d already been through it several times, and I didn’t want to relive the experience. When it came to “the talk,” I’d gotten more than I ever wanted to know from Renee. That was probably why I was so willing to hold on to my virginity.
“I swear, Jos, I never meant to fall for you. I tried to stop it, but I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. You’re impossible not to fall for.” I stifled a laugh.
“What’s so funny about that?”
“You, saying I’m impossible not to fall for. Have you met me? Do you not see what I’m wearing right now? I’m not exactly supermodel material. I’m also not very nice, either. I’ve been mean to you on more than one occasion. I’m not that girl. The girl all the boys fantasize about when they jack off. I might have been, before, but I’m definitely not now.”
“And that, my lovely Red, is exactly why you’re impossible not to fall for. Not caring is pretty damn sexy. You don’t care what people think of you.” Oh, how wrong he was. He had no idea how much I still cared. It was why I didn’t want anyone to know about the blog, or about my new job at the paper. In my other life, I’d spent my entire existence caring what people thought of me. You couldn’t turn that off so easily.
“I care, Dusty. I care way more than I should.” Why did I feel like I was going to cry again?
“Oh, Red.” He reached out to touch my face and I flinched back.
“No. Just because you say all those nice things, doesn’t make it right. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sighing, he dropped his hand into his lap. “Because, at first, I wasn’t supposed to, and then, after meeting you, I didn’t want to. I thought I could just go along and carry an unrequited hard-on for you forever. I had it all planned out.”
“Sounds like it.” I wasn’t convinced.
“It drove me crazy, Jos. You drive me crazy. You’re driving me crazy right now. All I can think about is that you’re mad at me, and I should feel worse about lying to you, but all I can f**king think about is kissing you again and finding out what’s under all that material you’re wearing.” He had his hands covering... Oh.
“That bad, huh?” Not going to lie, I was having the same issues. I just didn’t show it as much as he did, but I was affected, too.
“You have no idea.”
“I think I have some idea.” My “ideas” were making themselves known. Loudly. I was going to have to finish what we’d started earlier. The question was, would we finish it together, or would I have to go it solo?
“I’ve told you, Jos, I don’t have the cleanest past.”
“I don’t care. I’m not all that pure anymore, either. Screw purity. I’m still mad at you, but can I just put that on hold and be mad at you tomorrow so you’ll kiss me?”
He leaned just a fraction closer to me. “If that’s what you want. Hell, I know it’s what I want, but we’ll only do it if you want.”
Oh, that was it.
“Dusty?”
“Yes?”
“Can you stop being a gentleman for, like, a little while?”
A sexy smile spread across his lips.
“I think I can manage.”
* * *
Kissing in the car wasn’t as nice as kissing on the couch. There were too many things in the way and pointy objects, like the shifter, that seemed out to get us.
“Backseat,” I said as I tried to climb on top of him and failed for the third time. We both got out of the car and met on the passenger side as he shoved me up against the car, pressing against me and attacking my mouth with everything he had. Maybe we wouldn’t even make it to the backseat. I was aware that it was freezing out, but my body was on fire.
Dusty reached around me and opened the back door.
“Oh, shit. Give me a second.” His backseat was a mess, littered with textbooks and clothes and other guy crap. He swept it all on the floor and tried to clean it up as much as he could while I waited.
“Good enough,” I said, pushing him aside and diving onto the seat, grabbing his sweatshirt and pulling him down with me.
“Shit! Did I hurt you?” Just a little, but I didn’t care. He straddled me and reached to close the door.
“I’m good. Come here.”
Sweatshirts were very good for yanking on, I’d discovered. His mouth returned to mine; his hands went back to roaming my body, dipping under my clothes and wiggling into new spaces they hadn’t been before. This...this was living. Pure, passionate living.
He paused and pulled back to look at my face in the dark. The streetlights cast everything in an orange glow. “You’re so beautiful. How are you so beautiful?”
“You’re not so bad yourself.” I didn’t want to make his head too big, but the more I looked at him, the more I realized how gorgeous he was. I’d been in some serious denial early on.
“Jos, I really, really want to continue this,” he said, pulling my sweatshirt aside so he could kiss where my neck met my chest, “but I don’t think the backseat of my car is the place for it. You’re not a backseat fling.”
“I should hope not,” I said as he kept kissing lower. Despite saying he wanted to hit the pause button, he was doing anything but. He was right, though. I didn’t want to have my first sexual experience in the backseat of a car with what felt like a pen, or something else sharp, poking into my ass the whole time.
“You’re right, you’re right.” I was panting a little, and he definitely had another hard-on.
“I don’t think my dick is ever going to recover from being around you,” he said, holding himself up on his elbows.
“Well, you could always get one of those things they used in the Middle Ages. It was like a harness that had these sharp metal points, so every time you’d—”
He kissed my mouth so I couldn’t finish. “I’m begging you. Please stop talking about it, Red.”
“I was only trying to help. If you want, I could help in other ways.” I reached for his pants, and he tried to leap away from me and ended up banging his head on the roof of the car.
“Shit!” I should have been more worried about his skull, but I laughed.