He growled under his breath. “Even if I was comfortable enough in my masculinity to be down for taking anything a lady can give me, that doesn’t make me a bottom, peaches. Far from it. And glory holes are fucking disgusting.” He forced himself to relax his hands and take a deep breath. “Though if you have a hole you’d like me to glorify—”
“Gross. So much gross.”
There they were—on solid ground once more. As tempting as it was to go back to silently stewing, that way lay madness. He had to keep her talking so he could remember that this was Aubry, red as the devil and mean as a snake. She might have a hot little body that he’d kill to get his hands on, but it wasn’t worth the price he’d have to pay when it came to her. Forgetting that was inexcusable. “So what’d you have to do to get a fancy invite to play this game?”
“Be better than everyone else.” She’d said it without a trace of ego. It was just her truth.
A truth he had a hard time believing. “I know you spend a terrifying amount of time holed up in that apartment of yours, with only the online game for company, but there are a few million other people around the world who do the same thing.”
“And I’m better than all of them.”
“Who decides that?”
She sighed. “What makes it so hard for you to wrap your puny brain around my being one of the best out there? The fact that I’m a woman? Or is it that you’re standing in the face of greatness and it makes you feel less like a man?”
That startled a laugh out of him. “Neither. I’m talking the odds, plain and simple.”
“Well, take your odds and shove them. There were exactly ten invites that went out for this alpha test, and I’m one of them. That speaks for itself.”
Yeah, he guessed it did. It was still weird to think about. “So someone ran the numbers and decided that, what, you’ve killed enough people in this game that you deserve a medal?”
“You can phrase the question as many ways as you want to and it’s not going to change the outcome. The short answer is yes. I’m very, very good at murdering people. Within the game, of course.”
“Of course.” He drummed his fingers across the steering wheel. “I guess I better watch my back around you, huh?”
…
Aubry didn’t know what Quinn was trying to pull, but she was over this conversation. All she wanted to do was bury herself in her book until the humiliation passed. Add in the fact that he felt the need to point out he didn’t actually want her and, yeah, she wasn’t getting over that anytime soon. Since she couldn’t physically walk away from him, mentally doing it would have been good enough.
Except he seemed to want to talk, even if it was to tell her how unbelievable it was that she had actually gotten an invite in the first place.
She put her headphones on again, but froze when the engine made a weird clanking sound that she could hear even over the country music he insisted on playing. “What was that?”
Quinn was too busy cursing to answer her, and the truck gave a death knell as he guided it to the side of the road. Aubry just sat there for a minute, trying to process the reality that they were, in fact, broken down on the side of the highway in Texas in the middle of June. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, and then opened them again, but nothing changed. “Please tell me this isn’t happening.”
“Oh, it’s happening.” He threw open the door, letting in a blast of heat that threatened to melt her on the spot, and moved around the truck to open the hood. She watched a cloud of white smoke escape and groaned. What were the odds of this happening to her right when she was the most desperate to be anywhere but in the same vehicle as Quinn?
Oh, right. They were in the junker he’d insisted was reliable. The odds were fantastic.
She waited a minute, and then five, but when Quinn didn’t come back around with an update, she climbed out of the truck. It shouldn’t have been possible to be hotter outside than it was in the truck, but it was just this side of searing. She shoved her hair out of her eyes and marched over to where he was talking into his cell. “What’s going on?”
He held up a finger. “Yeah, on Highway 10 just east of Clint. Yeah, that works. Thanks.” He hung up and turned to face her. “The tow truck will be here in ten.”’
“Tow truck.” She looked around. There was nothing as far as the eye could see. “If we’d taken a rental, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Now’s not the time for ‘I told you so.’”
“On the contrary, there was never a better time. You said this thing was reliable.” She marched over and kicked the wheel, and then cursed when her foot screamed in pain. “I hate you, and I hate your truck, and I wish I’d never agreed to this stupid plan.” She made a beeline for the passenger door. “In fact, I’m going to call Jules and tell her what a shitty plan this is, and that I fully expect pie to make me feel better when I get back into town.”
“Whoa, hold on.”
“There will be no holding onto anything.” She batted at him when his arm came around her waist, bringing her up short. “Get your paws off me.”
“You can’t call Jules.”
“I can and I will.” She tried to take a step but ended up just scraping off what felt like half her flip-flop on the asphalt. “Let go.”
“She’s with Adam on a plane right about now.”
Just like that, all the fight went out of her. He was right. She couldn’t call Jules, not when her friend was going to be focused on Adam and grieving. I am possibly the worst friend ever. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “If I say you’re right, am I ever going to live it down?”
He didn’t answer, and she opened her eyes. Their reflection was slightly distorted in the passenger window, but even she could see he had a seriously tense look on his face. She belatedly realized that they were pressed together, her back to his front, and that he was…
Oh my God. She couldn’t resist leaning back into him, just a little. Yep, that’s not a micro penis. A shiver worked its way through her, leaving goose bumps in its wake, and her nipples perked right up, showing through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. There was no way he didn’t feel her reaction, not with his arm creating a band across her ribs, his forearm against the underside of her breasts.
Even as she noticed, he started to release her, his hand sliding over her stomach, but he stopped when he hit her hip, his pinkie finger dipping below the waistband of her shorts, just a little. It wasn’t anywhere near anything vital, but that little intrusion made her moan all the same.
“Fuck.” The word was barely audible, but she felt it in the way his body tensed behind her.
She shivered again, torn between telling him to back off and getting the top button of her jeans all undone for him. If she didn’t make a decision—and fast—he was going to back off again. It was written all over the tension she could feel emanating from his body.
Aubry started to reach for his hand, still undecided on whether she wanted to encourage or threaten him, but he moved, bending down to brace one hand on the truck in front of them, the other still on her hip. The move brought his mouth against her ear, and his harsh exhale made her shake.
She arched against him. She couldn’t help it. Her body took over, a primal part of her knowing he could give her all the pleasure she could handle, and was only too happy to extend an invitation by rubbing her ass against his hard length.
His grip on her hip tightened, but he didn’t try to stop her. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
She knew. They had to stop for so many reasons, the least of which was that they were on the side of a freaking highway and it was only a matter of time before a car drove past.
But she didn’t want to stop.
Apparently Quinn didn’t, either, because he moved his hand, sliding beneath her shirt to splay across her lower stomach, his fingers still just inside her shorts. They weren’t anywhere close to where she wanted them, but it felt unbearably intimate all the same. He exerted the sligh
test pressure, guiding her back against him, silently urging her to roll her hips again. So she did.
He rewarded her by sliding his hand a little further into her shorts, his fingertips just beneath her panties. “Undo the top button.”
She obeyed with shaking hands, half sure she was dreaming this whole thing. But no, this was Quinn, his big body wrapped around hers, his hand dangerously close to pushing her over the edge and he hadn’t even done anything yet.
He nipped the back of her neck as his hand slid the rest of the way into her panties, every nerve she had tightening as he leisurely stroked her once, twice…
So close.
The sound of tires on the asphalt snapped her back to herself. They were on the side of the highway. She looked over to see the tow truck approaching, the driver’s face clear enough to see his wide eyes as he took in the scene they made. Oh. My. God.
Aubry shoved away from him. She did her best to ignore the way her body shook from denied pleasure. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid as to give him a clear invitation again—let alone undo her button for him—and it was that same stupidity making her want to tell the tow truck driver to get lost.
Clearly the heat had boiled her brain.