WILD RIDE Page 3

  “So, you’re rid of him for good, then?” Riley asked, over the thrumming, soulful notes of a Rolling Stones song. The bass of the stereo vibrated gently through the car and the hot air of the day and into my body, so it seemed. I could feel each pluck in every erogenous zone I possessed.

  I was lounging against the padded door of the car behind Nate. I’d taken off my sandals and propped my feet up on my bag, which sat against the far door. My hat was low on my forehead as I sipped my second beer. “Oh, my ex-boyfriend you mean? Yeah, for good. It was already over anyway. The money, the fight, those were just the last straws. We … well, we’d been drifting apart for a long time.”

  After a brief silence, Riley said, “You won’t miss him?”

  I thought of Cal. His grease-monkey fashion sense and his headed-nowhere lifestyle. We’d shared a few good times long ago but somehow the easiness he’d once promised me had gotten harder, little by little, when I wasn’t looking and where I least expected it. “No,” I assured him. “There’s absolutely nothing I will miss about him.”

  Riley was watching me. He was playful, and there was a deeply masculine willfulness about him. He paused before asking slyly, “Nothin’ at all?”

  “Nope,” I confirmed, closing my eyes, relaxed. “Nothing.”

  Riley exhaled a soft laugh. “Plenty of that to be found elsewhere, I guess.”

  My eyes were still closed. “Plenty of what?”

  Another deep, gentle huff of laughter at the question. I opened my eyes, assessing his grin.

  “Plenty of what?” I repeated, not getting his meaning.

  “Plenty of sex,” he said matter-of-factly, his blue eyes glinting in the sunlight.

  The statement struck me, for several reasons. First, because sex with Cal was not something I would miss. I was practically overjoyed, in fact, that all that avoidance and annoyance was a thing of the past. Right then and there I realized more than ever before that being this relieved by the thought that I would never have to feel his sweaty hands on my body, or wish that he would just roll over or finish up so I could go to sleep or wash my hair or whatever it was I wanted to get on with … well, that I probably should have left him a long time ago. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t ever have been with him in the first place.

  Second, Riley’s statement struck me because it was a very personal thing to say. Too personal, really. The strange thing was, I didn’t mind. His blue-sky eyes and his crooked smile as he watched my reaction were having a strange effect on me, causing my very intimate places to warm, and soften. Likewise the grip of Nate’s strong hands on the steering wheel as he shot his cousin a mildly-amused glance.

  And Riley continued. “He must’ve been a dud in the sack.”

  I could have been offended, or riled. I was neither, and I felt light-hearted, inexplicably. There was an unwarranted tranquillity to my mood, and a quiet fever.

  I didn’t want to admit it to these super-hot Texans, but I knew myself to be lacking of a certain … ability. At first it had frustrated me. But I’d read in Cosmo that some women just can’t reach orgasm all that often. It hadn’t said or at all, but I’d let it slide. There were bills to pay and money to save, and I’d convinced myself that some things just aren’t as important. “Well, I don’t have any basis for comparison, so I don’t really know … ” I let the admission drift, not bothering to go into detail on that particular subject. I didn’t want to think about the lack of satisfaction, or my own shortcomings. All I wanted to do was feel. And to listen to the husky wail of a young Mick Jagger and the tinny melody of Keith Richards’s guitar as it caressed the rugged landscape.

  Riley didn’t reply for a time, and the notes of the tune hazed through the air along with the heat and the possibilities. “He was your first boyfriend?” he asked.

  “Yeah. My first. My only … so far.” But I didn’t elaborate. The implications were clear enough.

  “Interesting,” Riley said, now assessing me carefully and taking another liberal swig of the whiskey.

  We drove in silence for another few miles.

  “I have a theory,” Riley finally said. He readjusted his hat and grinned mischievously. His hair, as he lifted his hat, caught the golden light of the afternoon in a halo-like shine. He pulled his t-shirt off, disheveling his hair further, before placing his hat back on his head. I was temporarily riveted by the sultry lines of his olive-skinned shoulders. He wasn’t as brawny as Nate – very few men were - but he was nicely-proportioned: naturally strong-looking with graceful bones and textbook-perfect abs.

  I smiled, finding it extraordinarily easy to humor him. “Oh? What’s your theory?”

  “If you ‘don’t know’ if he was good in bed or not, then my guess is he wasn’t.” Riley might have been as lucid and loose as I felt. He took another sip and passed the bottle to me. “My guess is you’ve never had a proper orgasm.”

  Nate chuckled at this, the sound ruffling me. The low, lush velvet of his laugh deepened that Texas heat. “Calm down, Riley,” he said. “Jesus.”

  Riley winked at me. “Are you wishin’ you’d hitched a ride with Ol’ Pontiac instead?”

  “Hardly,” I said quickly, not wanting to think about Ol’ Pontiac, Cal, or anything beyond the moment. “And to answer your question, yes … I’m pretty sure I have. I … I’m almost positive I have.”

  Riley laughed lightly. “No. No way.”

  “’No way’ what?” I said, shifting in my seat, which caused the hem of my dress to ride higher up my thighs.

  “You haven’t,” Riley said smugly. “You can’t not be sure if you’ve ever had an orgasm or not. If you’d had one, you’d know it.”

  I’d long suspected he might be right. But I didn’t answer him right away. If it hadn’t been for the liquid courage, I might not have asked it. “How do you know that?”

  “Trust me. You’d know.”

  I couldn’t help it. I was too curious. “Nate, do you think he’s right?”

  “Yeah.” A note of his amusement hung on. “Absolutely.”

  In fact it wasn’t the first time this realization had crossed my mind over the past two years. I’d done a fair bit of stewing over the matter, truth be told. I’d even bought a vibrator at one point, but there’d been something so … plastic about it that had made the whole thing seem far too clinical. I didn’t want my first orgasm to be manufactured. Call me a romantic, but the dreamer in me hoped that a red-blooded man might do me the honors. In the end, I’d thrown it out before Cal stumbled across it.

  Sure, it seemed unfair, that I’d missed out in this way. Of course I’d suspected it all along: that I was a frigid ice maiden or that I lacked some vital element of sexuality that other women were born with. But to have it confirmed like this, all out in the open, by these two ultra-hot specimens of virility who’d probably had thousands of orgasms, it spurred a defiant little gleam in my soul. Or, more specifically, right between my legs. I was growing wet just talking about this. Their presence and now their conversation was having its wicked way with me, like they were feeding me hot, liquid lust along with the ice-cold beer. My dress rose higher, until my white panties were barely visible. I was buzzed enough not to care about this. “Well, I think you’re wrong,” I said. “Both of you.”

  I wasn’t sure why I was feeling contrary over the whole topic. Probably because I was indulging in a private little pity party. If music videos or glossy magazines or every second movie was anything to go by, the entire human race was enjoying back-to-back stellar climaxes while I couldn’t manage to get off to save my pathetic life.

  “Nope,” Riley smiled. “Not a chance.”

  “I guess you’re entitled to your opinion and I’m entitled to mine,” I said with a light petulance in my voice that only fed Riley’s amusement. “You can’t prove it, so there’s not much point arguing about it,” I added.

  Riley’s brown, muscled arm adjusted his hat. “I could prove it to you right now, if you want me to.”

>   Nate shot his cousin another glance. Then his gaze returned to the road. I couldn’t tell if he was entertained or pissed off by his cousin’s playfulness. As usual, Nate was stoic and staunch and sexy as hell as he gripped the wheel and kept on driving. The broad span of his shoulders in that straining navy blue t-shirt really was damn impressive.

  Sure, I should’ve demanded right there and then that they pull over and let me out of that shiny convertible red Mustang, to make my way along the dusty highway, to wait for Mr. Pontiac or some other creep whose intentions were no more debauched than those of the blond, beautiful cowboy who, if I wasn’t mistaken – and I was definitely tipsy by this point but I was pretty sure I’d understood the gist of it – had just offered to give me an orgasm.

  My first.

  I was a little shocked. Sure I was. I was also instantly, shamefully wet, just at the thought. I was hardly pure as the driven snow but I had always been faithful, true to my word, hard-working. All that stuff that my mother had once told me to aspire to. God knew I’d hardly been tested, though. There’d never been anyone to entice me to be unfaithful. The only people I ever saw were the losers down at The Rusty Nail, and a few of Cal’s buddies from the gas station. Occasionally I’d meet up with friends and their boyfriends at a bar somewhere downtown, although Cal didn’t like it when I went out with my friends to have fun without him. Come to think of it, Cal didn’t like me to have fun at all.

  But Cal wasn’t here. And his opinion was no longer something I had to dodge, or even consider. I was on my own, save these two burly hunks and their off-hand offers of sexual gratification the likes of which I’d never known. And I’d almost forgotten. Cal and I were well and truly over. I could explore new frontiers and not feel guilty about it. If I wanted to.

  The light throb of my arousal pulsed gently between my legs, inspiring a warm, honeyed wetness. I sipped again at my Budweiser. “How?”

  “How what?” Riley asked, turning, looking at my face, my body, the white sliver of my panties between my legs. I wondered if he could tell how wet I was. If he could see that the white cotton was saturated, sticking softly to my body in a clingy caress.

  “How would you prove it to me?”

  He half-smiled and his expression had turned, from humor to something else. Something raw and alluring. “You’d have to come and sit up here for me to answer that question.”

  I didn’t reply immediately.

  “There’s no room. There’s only two seats.”

  He patted his lap. “Right here, darlin’. Plenty of room.”

  “Riley,” Nate drawled, but Riley smiled at him.

  “Up to her,” Riley said to him. “I’m just trying to make a point, that’s all.”

  God, I was seriously considering going with this. I didn’t really have anything to lose, after all. It seemed pretty obvious they were neither psycho killers nor desperados. These were boy-next-door kind of guys who had values and credentials and opened car doors for girls. And who were now all grown up and practically radiating hot sex.

  “What would I have to do?” I asked, half-cautious and also wildly curious.

  “Not a damn thing, sugar,” said Riley. “I’ll do everything that needs doing.”

  I chewed on my lip before asking my next question. “What would you do?”

  “Only what you asked me to do. That’s all. Nothing else.”

  I fell silent, considering this.

  Riley leaned his head back against his headrest and let his hat cover his closed eyes. “I just think it’s a damn shame. A pretty girl like you missing out on all that. I’m just offering up a big slice of enlightenment, that’s all.”

  When he put it like that, I knew I was a goner. I was tired of being the good girl, the one who paid the bills and got walked all over by drunk failures and selfish jerks. I didn’t want to be the ice maiden or the one girl left on the planet who could never quite get there. This was the new me. I was going to take what I wanted and live my life. And my life was going to start right now.

  I finished my beer, and sat forward. I touched a flick of Riley’s hair, which was damp against his neck. I felt playful, and more reckless than I could ever remember feeling. “What makes you think you could enlighten me, goldenboy?”

  Nate turned and eyed me, smiling at my question. And if I’d thought Nate Walker was handsome straight-faced, his slow smile hit me straight in that sweet heat that had already made my decision. I reached to touch Nate’s hair, too, a very-gentle light stroke that caused his breath to quicken. “Or you?” I whispered.

  “Let’s just say I – and we, if the rumors are anything to go by – have a pretty good track record,” Riley said.

  “And you’re humble, too,” I said, letting my fingers curl through the too-long locks of his straw-hued hair with one hand and Nate’s off-black strands with the other.

  “There’s a time and place for humility.” Riley’s eyes still were still closed but he was feigning disinterest, I could tell. The muscles of his jaw and his arms were coiled and there was a light mist of sweat on his upper lip. “The bedroom ain’t one of ‘em.”

  “How about the front seat of a red convertible Mustang at seventy-five miles per hour?” I said. “Is that a place for humility?”

  “No.” Both of them said it.

  I smiled, half committed now to whatever it was they were offering. I was simmering with an unfamiliar sheen of anticipation. My panties were feeling stickily wet and my sex felt soft and distractingly warm. A light humming pulse radiated from that sweet burn in my slippery depths to the tips of my breasts, which were visibly peaked through the light veil of my dress. “Well, I guess … if you think you’re as good as all that …”

  They both turned to look at me, as though shocked that I was game.

  “You’ve got me curious, is all,” I said, almost shyly. Would they be offended, that I had accepted Riley’s offer? Would they leave me by the side of the road, alone?

  “That’s a girl,” Riley said, filling me with a tempered relief. “Come on up here with us.”

  There was something comforting about the way he said it: with us.

  Leaving my reservations behind, I climbed over the seat, easing onto Riley’s lap. He exhaled a light groan when I sat down onto him, and I could feel the hardness of him, beneath his jeans. My heart was racing, and I sat still for a few seconds, adjusting to the hard, hot feel of him. The tough texture of his jeans rubbed against the skin of my thighs and I barely wriggled to get more comfortable. My softness cradled him intimately as my body shape accommodated his, and Riley groaned again as Nate watched me. Nate seemed to be having some trouble turning his eyes back to the road. Riley’s arms circled me and I leaned against his bare chest.

  It was miraculously sensuous: sitting astride Riley’s rampant, substantial erection while Nate’s eyes, when they weren’t forced to navigate, drank in the sight of my long, tanned legs, my skimpy, fitted dress. I could see that he was as turned on as Riley. His jeans were straining against a particularly gargantuan swell.

  They seemed bigger than they had from the back seat. Bigger and harder.

  I took the bottle of whiskey and took a small sip. From the look on Nate’s face, this was new territory: picking up a girl and watching his cousin get her off while considering doing more of the same. It was certainly new territory for me, in every way imaginable. And despite Riley’s cockiness, there was a second or two where he seemed almost overcome. He might have been the wildest of all of us, but he was not immune to the wanton, uninhibited looseness of what we were about to do.

  I offered the bottle to Riley, but he just tipped his head back a little and parted his lips. So I fed it to him, pouring a small sip into his open mouth. A drop ran down the stubbled line of his jaw and I caught the drop with my finger, licking it. Nate watched me do this. I leaned, then, to offer a taste to Nate. He allowed this. He could have taken the bottle, but he didn’t. He let me serve it to him. To his mouth. For some reason, I was r
eassured by this small connection. He had invited me, in this guarded way. He was part of this, whatever this was. We were together, all in.

  I had to lean closer to Nate, concentrating on fitting the spout of the bottle to his mouth. His lips were full and perfect, wet from the whiskey. Our ride was smoother than most, but the movement of the car caused a drip to spill and I wiped Nate’s plump bottom lip with my thumb, as I’d done to Riley.

  “Are you ready?” Riley said softly, sliding his warm palm against my bare thigh.

  My nerves had been soothed by the whiskey, but still, I was edgy. I sat back down onto Riley, turning towards him, fitting my dewy warmth against him. A very deep restlessness stirred me as Riley’s body seemed to swell further, pushing against secret, sensitive flesh. “I … yes. What … happens now?”

  “What do you want to happen now, darlin’?” Riley drawled. His accent had gotten thicker but he seemed to have regained control. The realization that this was going to happen: that he was going to give me my very first orgasm right here in the front of this Mustang, kicked in. His mission was clear and he was up for the challenge. In every way. I liked his control. I wasn’t sure why, but I trusted it. “Do you want me to touch you?” he said.

  “All right,” I said, sounding shy despite the blossoming warmth. My sex was plumped and pressed against the hard pressure of him and I needed to move, to ease the intensity. I began to barely writhe against him.

  Riley’s breathing had deepened. His fingertips touched lightly to the budded peak of my nipple, through the fitted, stretchy cotton of my white dress. The bodice of the sundress was designed to lightly support so the dress didn’t have to be worn with a bra. My breasts were full and tested the limits of the design. And I could feel the warm caress of his fingertips like a subtle, sexy electric current. “Like this?” he said.