Page 33 of One Last Chance

If I thought what Kash was doing to me woke all my senses, the bang that rang through the air double-woke them as something hit the truck hard enough to knock our teeth together.

“Ow!” I pulled away and rubbed at my mouth, but my anxiety had already kicked into high gear. It’s Dad, he found us, he knows everything, he’s going tokillme. Kash must have had the same thoughts because he flung me out of his arms and peered through the window for a second before flinging the door open. I grabbed at him, but he wasn’t leaving—just sticking his head out into the rain.

“It’s a tree,” he said as he wiped rain water out of his eyes. “Uprooted sapling. Water’s rising, I better get you home, Daisy girl.”

I bit my lip hard. I knew he was right, but I couldn’t stop looking for a way around it. Home didn’t feel like the right place to be right now. In fact, tree on top of the truck, uncomfortably wet from my hair all the way to my center, this is exactly where I wanted to be. All my reservations had dissolved over the last week, leaving only this gaping maw of desire. My body ached for more, desperately thirsty for Kash’s touch.

He looked at me for a moment, eyes smoldering, then glanced out the window at the rain. “It’s up to you,” he said quietly. “Just be sure you’re thinking with your head and not your-” He paused and laughed a little.

Think with my head. Yeah, right. My head had nothing to do with my decisions just then and I knew it. I couldn’t think with him right there, looking all gorgeous and rugged and familiar. I wanted to explore him, to learn his body. I never felt like I belonged anywhere more than when I was in his arms. So I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep, cleansing breath, holding myself in a tight embrace to smother the skin-level desire. There was nothing I could do about the fire in my core. Not on my own, anyway. The only one who had the power to extinguish it was Kash.

“Kash…” His name came out a whimper and I pressed my lips tight together.

In an instant, his arms were around me again, his hands in my hair, the warmth of his body smothering the chill of my soaked clothes. His lips hovered a millimeter from mine, his breath a hot kiss on my face.

“Kash.” More a moan than a whimper, but it told him everything. I couldn’t resist him. I couldn’t be the one to put a stop to this momentum, I didn’t have the strength or the desire to break away. I wanted him like I’d want a cold drink on the surface of the sun. I clawed at his collar, pulling his lips to mine, smothering my wanton noises with his kiss. I reached for his cock, finding it firm and ready, pressing against the zipper of his pants, twitching just that much more as I made my move to unzip him.

Another displaced bit of forest bumped into the truck and this time the tires shifted beneath us. Kash pulled away and forcefully pushed me into my seat.

“Buckle up,” he said. “Whatever we do, we aren’t going to do it here. I’d be damned if I die without really getting to taste you.”

Lightning cracked across the sky and I shivered, fingers fumbling with my seatbelt. It felt like God and the universe was against us, throwing trees and electricity across the sky. Thunder roared in the background, the vibrations of it tumbling against my eardrums just as hard as it tumbled against the truck. Loud as it was, my desire was louder.

“Hurry up,” I told Kash, my voice all breathy and pathetically desperate. If he didn’t know it before, I’m sure by now he knew that since him, there’s been no one. Not on my mouth or in my bed or in my heart.

Kash fought against water and mud to get us turned around. The top-heavy truck shuddered and tipped, rocking under the force of the downpour. It was blacker than black outside now and the headlights barely made a difference. We were driving blind, deafened by the storm, unable to feel the road beneath the river of mud.

“Kash.” I said his name through gritted teeth this time as the truck fishtailed through a puddle as deep as the rims.

“Quiet.”

I clenched my jaw shut and locked my fist around the oh-shit handle. My heart thundered with arousal-turned-terror, and the rest of my body didn’t know if it was cumming or going.

Kash’s muscles bulged with effort as he spun the steering wheel. His eyes twitched with laser precision trying to see all the obstacles that remained unseen in this darkness. He could do this. Dumping all my faith and hope and terrified internal bargaining into my gaze, I turned my eyes on his temple and held them there.

He didn’t take his eyes off the road but when he spoke, it was with calm confidence. “We got this, babe.”

That last word shifted my entire being back into a state of furious arousal. We got this, babe. Babe. God, how long had it been since he’d called me that? Sinceanyonehad called me that. Would it even sound the same from anyone else’s mouth, or do the same things to my body? I doubted it. His confidence was contagious, releasing me of my fear enough to let me look out the window.

Main Street looked like the world’s longest crosswalk. Silver streams crossed black asphalt at every intersection, beautiful and deadly under dancing blue electricity. The lightening wasn’t striking so much as crackling, drawing a lattice in the sky.

“Hold on,” Kash said.

I held. The alleyway beside us was the only one not spitting water, as it ran downhill from Main. He twisted the wheel sharply and took us down, down to the pond-sized puddle at the bottom. I was sure we would hydroplane sideways, but he took us right on through. The road twisted up the side of the mountain, carved through solid rock and sheltered by ancient trees. It was also pitch black with a sheer drop on one side, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The drive to the Scenic Overlook was the longest two miles of my whole life. The truck didn’t slip, and water didn’t threaten to push us over the side, but the hairpin turns jumped out at us with no warning whatsoever. Headlights only went so far before being reflected and refracted by curtains of rain, blinding us to whatever lay beyond.

When he finally pulled over in a snug little space next to the mountain, my hands had cramped, frozen into fists and I was shaking from head to toe—I couldn’t tell anymore if it was from cold or fear. Kash blew out a long breath, then flashed his cocky smile at me.

“That was fun! Let’s do it again,” he whooped.

The utter lack of sarcasm in his tone shocked my whole system. Next thing I knew, I was laughing so hard that tears streamed down my face and I fought for air, but I just couldn’t stop. His rich, rolling laugh joined mine, and before long we were draped helplessly together, hooting and gasping.

I wiped the tears from my eyes. “Holy shit, Kash. We’re alive!”

“And nothing else matters,” he said, kissing the back of my hand. “When you’re alive and free, everything else is just gravy.”

I felt his words in the pit of my stomach and every crevice of my heart.

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