Page 36 of Drum Me Away
Along with a pair of khaki cargo shorts, I wore one of those thin, long-sleeved, moisture-wicking shirts, effectively covering all my ink except the starburst on the back of my calf, and I pulled my hair into a bun at the base of my neck. My reward, after I’d dressed, was Faith, curling herself around me like a cat and kissing and rubbing on me until I flipped her around and shoved her shorts down her legs while she bent at the waist and braced her palms on the bed.
I barely had my own shorts unzipped before I pulled out my cock and slammed into her, as desperate as an addict finally getting that hit after far too long without it.
We rocked together, oddly choreographed for as wild and uncoordinated as it was. I reached around, squeezed her breast for a moment, before moving lower to thrum her clit, and she climaxed, her inner muscles dragging my own from me.
And then she laughed as she strutted across the hall to the bathroom to clean up. “Okay, stop turning me on or we’re never getting out of here.”
I loved it when she said shit like that. She didn’t even realize the compliment she was giving me.
“The bubble hasn’t burst,” she said now, and God help me, we were on the same wavelength far more often than either of us had ever been willing to believe.
I slipped my arm around her waist and hauled her close, those breasts I worshipped so thoroughly yesterday pillowing against my chest and making me want to dip down and lick that top swell.
Later. There would definitely be some of that later.
And then I brushed a featherlight kiss across her lips. She pressed two fingers against her mouth, blinking at me in a bemused way.
“It’s not going to,” I assured her, because I believed it. At least, I wanted to.
With an impish grin, she tapped my nose and twisted out of my embrace. “I’ll drive. It’s been almost a decade since the last time I’ve driven these roads, but I doubt much has changed in this ridiculously small town.”
Fine by me. I handed her the keys and soon, she was maneuvering the rental down a meandering road through a canopy of trees that made it seem even darker than the gray clouds in the sky did.
“It’s beautiful here,” I commented, “but man, I need my sunshine.”
“I feel ya. When I was a kid, I used to wonder: if we moved to California, would my parents be less unhappy? Those silly thoughts were probably the catalyst for me convincing myself that the only place I wanted to go when I graduated was to LA.”
I sucked in a breath, trying not to express any sort of outward reaction at her confession, however small. I craved these bits and pieces of her life, because I wanted to know all of her. If I knew all of her, that meant she’d finally, fully opened to me and maybe, just maybe, a real relationship between us…
It could work.
She headed into downtown Roma—which consisted of two blocks of mom-and-pop shops in buildings that looked like they were built in the 1800s, although had been well-preserved over the centuries.
“I don’t want to be here,” she admitted as she pulled the vehicle into a slanted parking space on the street. “But we’re less likely to be recognized here than in a shopping district closer to Seattle.”
Roughly half the spots were filled with other cars. Clusters of pedestrians wandered along the sidewalk. It was late morning in July, so most of the people were kids who looked high school age and what I presumed were young mothers with their babies or toddlers, with a handful of corporate-looking folk sprinkled into the mix.
The busiest storefront was a coffee shop called Coffee A-Roma.
I reached over, cupped her thigh, gave it a squeeze. “We got this, babe. Together.” I said it to reassure her, but I was reassuring myself, too.
Not that I had any issue with being recognized while we were out and about in some small town east of Seattle; I wanted Faith to feel confident, to believe she could get through this. And if we had to be incognito while we did it, well, we’d been playacting for four years now. Hell, we were freaking experts by this point.
And it was only temporary. What we had back in the treehouse, that was real. That was where we needed to be—where I wanted us to be—all the time. But first, we needed to get through her grandmother’s funeral. And for that, we needed appropriate clothing.
Oh, and fuel in the form of coffee.
We each clapped baseball caps onto our heads and slid sunglasses on our faces, and then we climbed out of the vehicle and met on the sidewalk.
“Ready?” I asked. She nodded, and I snagged her fingers, twining mine with hers, drawing out a small, tense smile.
Wearing sunglasses indoors was a dead giveaway that the person behind the lenses was either massively hung over or famous—or both—but not wearing them was three steps closer to being recognized when your faces were splattered all over social media and magazine covers all the time.
Inside the coffee shop, a woman with bright, red-rimmed glasses sat in a corner near the windows, tucked behind a laptop, sipping her drink with her head cocked to the side, like she was eavesdropping on the couple who were heavily flirting across a nearby table. A gaggle of young girls clustered around a table on the other side of the shop, giggling and chattering. A handful of people stood in line. A man in a gray suit turned away from the counter with a travel mug in his hand, steam swirling from the top. He hurried past us with a grunted “morning” and not so much as a glance at our faces.
The line moved quickly, despite there being only one person behind the counter. But she moved with such efficiency, it was obvious she’d been doing this job for a long time, was probably a career barista. Maybe she was the owner, although she looked to be my and Faith’s age.
To be fair, thirty was in the rearview mirror, and in a small town like this, it probably wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that someone so young could figure out a way to open a business that was likely a guaranteed steady income.
