Page 80 of Sinful Temptations

“What?”

“I have to pee.”

He glanced around and when he looked at me with bulging eyes, I burst out laughing again. “Oh shit.” Squeezing my legs tighter, the giggles took hold. “Shit.” I couldn’t stop, yet I had to. I was on the edge of a major catastrophe. “Where’s the restroom?”

Roman remained silent.

I rolled toward him. “Hey, you okay?”

He raised what was left of his joint to his lips, inhaled deeply, and then said, “Hell yeah. I could not be better.” When he smiled through a cloud of smoke, he had achieved his mission. I now had a new memory about marijuana to replace one of the horrible old ones.

He rolled his head toward me. A dopey grin was on his face. “You should kiss me again.”

I squinted at him.Had I heard that right?

“Kiss me.” He puckered his lips like a giant goldfish. A sexy goldfish. If that was such a thing.

I imagined a sexy goldfish and burst out laughing. “Shit, if I don’t pee soon, I’ll wet my pants.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Ewww. Gross.” Scrambling to my feet, I scanned the area. A clump of bushes near the lake offered my only cover.Impatient bodily functions required desperate actions. I grabbed his hand. “Come on. I need your help.”

“To pee?”

“No. To keep a look out.”

It was a mammoth effort to get him upright. With our arms around each other, we giggled and staggered to the bushes. “Turn around.”

“Awww, but I wanna see.”

“Oh, no you don’t. Look that way.” I pointed at a dog that was racing across the field in the distance.

He turned in that direction so quickly, he stumbled sideways and in weird slow-motion, he did a wobbly crab-walk toward the lake. Every misplaced step took him closer to the water, and I should have done something like tried to stop him, but my arms and legs wouldn’t move. All I could do was giggle and cross my legs harder. Roman managed to stop in a patch of reeds just shy of the water’s edge. He turned to me, gave a double thumbs-up signal, and I burst out laughing again.

Oh God, this was not good.

Waddling to the bike, I grabbed the small packet of tissues that I always carried. I’d been to enough toilets in Europe to know that toilet paper was a luxury, not a given. When I turned to Roman, he was leaning sideways, giving a great impersonation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, except he was the leaning tower of perfection.

By the time I got to the clump of bushes, I was in agony. Yet I was still giggling. In fact, I was laughing so much I could barely pull my leggings down. Jiggling from foot to foot, I hooked my thumbs into the elastic at my waist but when I glanced at Roman, he was looking my way. “Hey, no peeking.”

“You’re so mean.”

The second he turned I yanked my leggings down. I only just made it. The relief was instant.

I pulled myself together and breathed a sigh of relief.

That was close. Way too close.

By the time I returned to Roman, the adrenalin rush that had shot through me was now mingling with my marijuana brain, and I felt like I was in a weird fog.

He grabbed my hand. “Come on. We gotta find food. I could eat a dozen triple-cheese, triple-pattie burgers.”

I scrunched up my face. “Is that such a thing?”

“I don’t know, but it should be.”

I poked my tongue out. “Sounds like a heart attack on a bun.”

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