Page 72 of Hauling Ashe

We’ll say goodbye eventually and dragging out that end date does nothing but widen the gap his absence will leave in me.

Declining the invitation to his daughter’s wedding feels like the only control I have left over this situation. I need to protect my heart, but it becomes extremely difficult to follow reason and emotion when he hitches my body up on the countertop, spreads my legs wide and settles his face between my thighs. He should have been a singer. His tongue is insane and my body hums for him with each pass over my sensitive folds.

“You’re my road goddess, Mae. Don’t leave me alone on the journey of life.”

Sweet Mother, my eyes prickle at the tenderness in his tone, the plea wrapped in the passion. His tongue laps. His lips kiss. He’s delicate while demanding as he encourages the storm raging inside me. The tension is unparalleled. I hardly recognize my own body. The things I’ve done with this man. The things I’ve offered him. None of it makes sense yet I don’t want to question any of it. I just want to enjoy him in the few hours I have left. I just want to feel in the minutes that remain.

“Tucker,” I curse his name as I come to the edge once again. How is it possible to have so many orgasms in so few days? I’ve never been like this—desperate, ravenous, unquenchable. The open road has been an aphrodisiac, but we are no longer driving. This is the final rest stop only I don’t want to rest.

I don’t want this feeling to stop.

Within seconds, my body breaks again, crashing like the ocean on the beach outside this condo. Tucker is quick to pull away and pummel his shaft greedily into me. My eyes roll back. My orgasm wasn’t finished and his entrance into me prolongs the sensation of rolling waves and foaming waters. I’m a mess between my thighs. He does this to me. He makes me wild for him.

“Your body is my road map, sunshine.” His hands coast up my belly and cup both my breasts, squeezing them together as he rocks into me. “I’ll never be lost again.”

The tears threatening to fill my eyes blur my vision. Why is he being so sweet? Why is he doing this to me? Can’t he see I’m struggling enough as it is?

My legs dangle off the countertop. His hands grip my hips. I’m a ragdoll to his ministrations and then he stills. Only his cock jolts deep within me. My head rolls to the side as his leans back. He’s as seated as he can be. Then he collapses over me, catching himself on his forearms beside my shoulders. Leaning forward, he kisses me, long and slow. He takes his time until we separate. Our eyes lock and everything is said between his steely grays and my light blue ones.

Stay.

I can’t.

Don’t leave.

I must.

Did I trust him?

Fear lives deep inside me. I need to believe he wants more than an additional ride and a date to his daughter’s wedding. Otherwise, a major pothole will remain where my heart used to be. Each day will be one more day driving the wedge wider and wider. But with his body blanketing mine, and his eyes searching my face, I am almost willing to risk a crack in my surface.

Hesitantly, he pulls back and holds out a hand to help me sit upright. I need a shower, and he reads my thoughts, leading me to the primary bathroom where we take our time to soap and shampoo one another. No words pass between us. This moment is for memorizing one another. Inhaling the scent of our combined shampoo and body wash. Imprinting the feel of our flesh and the shape of our bodies. Internalizing the taste of tongue and lips and skin.

The moment is almost too much until he has me pinned against the sliding glass door to the balcony within minutes of exiting the bathroom. My shower-warm body presses into the air-conditioned cool panes and my sensitive breasts peak against the windows. With the lights off behind us, no one can see what he’s doing to me. I’m certain this is something no one else wants to witness, and yet all my inhibitions are gone. I’m naked and spread, plastered to the window while his hands explore my back, my hips and my ass. His mouth sucks at my neck.

“Keep your hands up.” I’d laugh at the directive if my body had a will of its own, which it doesn’t. I’m completely at his command. He slips a hand between my legs, toys with my clit and I respond like I haven’t been touched there repeatedly in the past few hours.

“You want me,” he says. “Let the rest of you have me.”

My head taps the glass before me, and I roll my forehead back and forth. He has no idea what he’s saying, what he’s asking.

He doesn’t rush but strings me along, flicking at the sensitive nub, drawing me closer and closer to the proverbial edge. Once I’m almost there, as if he can read my body, he slips inside me from behind again. His fingers remain on my clit while his thickness glides in and out, the tempo slow and measured. He wraps one arm around my waist and bends his knees to accommodate the height difference between us. He keeps the pace of steady taps while he plucks the trigger spot on me. The heat of his chest, the chill of the glass, the touch of his fingers, and the drag of his cock drive me into sensation overload. Then I’m coming again, spilling over him and down my thighs. My cheek presses on the window and my breath fogs the pane as I moan in a way I’ve never sounded before. Pleasure and pain. Passion and penance. My skin squeaks against the window until he stills, jetting off inside me once more.

My eyes close as we remain against the window, chests heaving, breaths heavy.

I’ll never be the same and everything I said to Jane when she convinced me to drive Tucker across the country was wrong.

I would end up needing him. I just don’t know how to keep him.

+ + +

Daylight comes too soon. We’ve miscalculated the distance to Napa Valley from the Santa Monica area, and it will take us seven hours straight up I-5 instead of six. I drive while Tucker rides beside me working on his computer once the time zones align. In so many ways, our position reminds me of when we started on this journey a week ago to the day, only he was sitting in the backseat, stewing over my annoying need to stop every so many miles.

“Sunshine?” He breaks into my aimless thoughts. The soundtrack of our trip has fallen in rhythm with the wheels on the road, and I’m numb to the sound.

“Huh?”

“Want to stop and grab breakfast? Maybe more coffee?” We hadn’t eaten anything this morning because it was early. Gas station coffee had been our only option.