Page 23 of Shadowed Rubies
Despite how cold I was, I helped her get a towel wrapped around her body first. Our shivering made the simple movements seem difficult. Once her towel was secure, I grabbed a towel for me.
Dani was already unfolding the blanket I had brought for us. She put one end around her shoulders and held the other out for me. We quickly realized that we needed to face each other and bring the two ends of the blanket around us to help ward off the brisk breeze.
While I held the edges of the blanket together, Dani wrapped her arms around my middle. Despite our shivering, certain parts of me became aware of my close proximity to the woman of my dreams. Although I’d been concerned that my dick had shriveled into oblivion in the frigid water, he sprang to life when Dani pressed her front into me.
I tried not to think about her wiggling against me, but nothing could distract me for long from thinking about her warm, sexy body touching mine. It wasn’t long until I had a full-fledged boner pressing into her abdomen.
My mind told me that I should back away from her and hope that she hadn’t noticed my raging hard-on because the last thing I wanted was to scare her away. The rest of me, including my heart, wouldn’t have let a monster truck drag me away from my primo location in front of her right now.
When she tilted back slightly to tip her head up to face me, I felt certain that she was going to reprimand me for showing such a lack of control. She had just admitted her sexual qualms to me, and now here I was, with a cock that was ready and raring to go.
Nothing could have surprised or delighted me more than when she leaned up and tentatively brushed her lips against mine.
26
Dani
Iknew kissing Max was dangerous, but in that moment, nothing could have kept me from it. It was obvious by his manhood pressing into my stomach that he wanted me physically, and there was no denying the pull my body felt toward him.
He might not be right for me in the long-run, but he certainly felt perfect for right now.
When he raked his fingers through the wet hair at the nape of my neck and deepened the kiss, I allowed a deep, needy moan to escape my lips. Max’s kiss consumed me, like no other ever had. If the ministrations of his lips and tongue were any indication of what it would be like to make love with Max, my body was in for a treat.
After sliding my palms up his back, I realized that he had chill bumps on his skin. I’d been so consumed by his kiss that I’d forgotten that we were both wet and standing outside in the cold.
“Perhaps we should move into the truck,” I suggested.
“Good idea,” Max said, before bending to pick up his clothes.
Even though he left the blanket with me, I immediately missed the warmth of having him snuggled inside it with me. When he ran his towel over his legs and began pulling on his jeans, I couldn’t deny the surge of disappointment that raced through my system. I had assumed that we would continue our exploration of each other’s bodies inside his warm truck, but evidently Max didn’t want to do that.
Trying not to show how miffed I felt, I stooped to pick up my own clothes and began donning them. I blinked back the hurt tears as Max held the truck’s door open for me and I climbed inside.
Max had been smart enough to leave the truck running with the heat blasting during our polar plunge. There was no denying that the cab of the vehicle felt divine to my chilled body. Although my fingers and toes were tingly with numbness, the rest of me was starting to thaw out by the time we made the short drive back to my mother’s house.
Once we pulled up in front, Max put the truck in park, hopped out, and circled around to open my door. While I appreciated the polite gesture, it did little to lessen the sting that he obviously had no intention of staying, since he’d left the truck running.
It wasn’t like I could blame him, since I was living with my mom, like a teenager, but it would be nice if he at least pretended to want more than a simple drop-off from our odd date. Perhaps our steamy, nearly-naked make-out session hadn’t been nearly as pleasurable for him as it had for me.
After I made short work of unlocking Mom’s front door, I turned back to tell Max goodnight. I’d been expecting at least a brief continuation of our kissing, so his swift peck on my cheek felt like more of a bucket of cold water over my head than the ocean had earlier.
Mom tried to get me to talk to her about my non-date, but I claimed to be tired and headed straight up to my room. I needed to head back to my tiny apartment in Boston soon, or I really would revert back into the petulant teenager I’d been the first time I lived here.
The only person I wanted to talk to was Meg, but she was busy with her new-old love, Levi, and their daughter. Plus, I wasn’t sure if she’d been permitted to have a late-start to the police academy.
Deciding it was worth a shot, I dialed her number. When she picked up on the first ring, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. She told me in hushed tones all about her first day at the academy. She sounded exhausted, but thrilled to be making her career aspirations come true.
I assumed she was being quiet because she wasn’t supposed to have her cell phone. Meg wasn’t known for being a rule follower, which made it hard to believe that she wanted to be a cop and ensure that everyone else followed the rules. Once Meg set her mind to something, though, nothing stopped her. So, I had no doubt that she would make this dream a reality.
“My brain is so full,” she whispered. “I know it probably doesn’t compare to the amount of information you had to learn in medical school, but I’m not as smart as you, so it feels like my mind is maxed out.”
“You’re super-smart, and you can do this,” I assured her. The woman was normally supremely confident, so I was glad to be able to give her a boost for once.
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” she promised, sounding much more like the Meg I knew and loved so much. “You called me, though. What’s up?”
With that invitation, I opened up and spilled every detail about my passionate, yet confusing time with Max. Meg listened without interrupting. When I ended on the low point of his brief kiss goodbye on my cheek, Meg finally weighed in. “Maybe he’s intimidated by your intelligence.”
That was always her reasoning when a man wasn’t interested in me. She was a good friend, so she tried to convince me every break-up or fizzled relationship was due to a lack of confidence in the male, rather than any issue with me. One thing Max had plenty of, though, was confidence. In fact, he teetered on the edge of being cocky. So, Meg’s hypothesis didn’t work in this case.
