Page 20 of Impulsive Saint
She gaped but he only chuckled as he flipped off the kitchen light and then disappeared down the hallway towards his bedroom. She cursed him under her breath as she forced herself to stand and pull apart the sheets and blankets in an attempt at making the couch more comfortable. He didn’t have bedbugs so she pushed that awful thought out of her mind instantly. Then again, who was she to say whatever motel they were forced to stop at on the way to Vegas, wouldn’t? She shivered in disgust as she finally managed to make a small sleeping bag out of the items he’d given her and then crawled inside.
Bedbugs. Roadside motels. A trip to Vegas on the back of a motorcycle with a man she barely knew but wanted to more with every moment that she spent in his company.
Clearly, she had lost her mind today but she wanted this trip more than she’d wanted anything in a long time. She wanted to check off all those seemingly simple items on her bucket list. She wanted to prove that she could and then, once she did, she’d decide if it was just the heat of the moment and her need to be anywhere but married to Aaron. She’d decide if she was ready to come back home and settle down, or if she should add some far riskier activities to an all new bucket list.
Like mountain biking in Bolivia.
She bit her lip and stared down the dark hallway at the open bedroom door. She couldn’t see anything on the other side of it. The room was dark but she knew that somewhere in there, Tyler was curled up in blankets as well, probably wondering why the hell he had brought a crazy woman home with him.
Who was Tyler? That was the question that kept her awake until late into the night when her eyes finally grew too heavy to keep open. When she drifted into sleep, she still didn’t have any concrete answers.
All she knew was that her first guess had been wrong. He wasn’t a friend of Aaron’s, no way. He didn’t seem like one of her father’s friends either, but maybe he knew someone in the bridal party? He did seem vaguely familiar though she was certain they’d never met before today. She fell asleep knowing that she’d figure it out eventually.
For now though, all that mattered was that she felt safe with him, that and he’d agreed to take her to Vegas tomorrow.
6
They’d been on the road for over 3 hours and were nearing Memphis. Tyler couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe that they’d made it this far and his passenger had given no indication that she wanted him to stop, turn around, or take her back home. If he’d put money on her changing her mind about this whole stupid road-trip after a good night’s sleep, he’d have lost his entire bank account. She’d been dressed, packed and ready to go by the time he stumbled out of his room and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
For the first hour, he’d all but held his breath, waiting for the tap on his shoulder that would tell him to stop. He knew that riding on the back of a motorcycle was not the most comfortable form of transportation and considering she’d only been on a motorcycle once, the day before, there was no way she was ready for a days-long trip.
By the second hour, he’d been relaxed enough to realize how in tune she was with both him and the bike. She moved when he moved, leaned when he leaned. He’d known then that she was a natural, which annoyed him to no end.
She shouldn’t feel so at ease on the back of his bike. She shouldn’t feel so good tucked behind him, wrapped around him, occasionally resting her head against his back as if he was giving her comfort. She was a high-society debutante and she had no right to fit against him so damn well.
That was what annoyed him the most.
She was beautiful, there was no denying that. He was a red-blooded man so of course he’d noticed. But he hadn’t expected his body to react to her so viscerally. Having her wrapped around him for hours on end, her breasts pressed to his back, her legs straddling his, had begun to fray his nerves somewhere around hour three and he needed to get off the damn bike, stretch his legs and get some space from her for a little while.
Only he didn’t want to be the one to force them to stop first, so he kept driving.
He was almost on the other side of Memphis, the city traffic fading behind them, when he finally felt that tap on the shoulder that he’d been hoping would come. He almost sagged in relief as he signaled to take the next exit and coasted the bike into the gas station at the bottom of the hill.
Once the bike was stopped near one of the pumps, he put down the kickstand and pulled his helmet off as he muttered, “About time.”
“What?” She slid off the bike behind him, remarkably adept at it without that billowing white dress to hinder her movements.
She pulled her own helmet off and his heart gave a weird kick that unsettled him more than this whole stupid trip did. She’d braided her long blonde hair into a thick rope that morning but as she pulled off the helmet the top showed whisps and strands that stuck up all over the place. It was pretty damn adorable considering she didn’t seem to know or care, instead grinning at him as she ungracefully shook her legs like she was trying to get feeling back in them.
“You know, you could have warned me about the vibration.” She pursed her lips but her blue eyes twinkled with mischief.
He frowned, “Vibration?”
“Yeah, straddling a bike for hours on end? The hum of the motor and the vibration of the bike. I thought I was going to have an orgasm for the first half hour.” She laughed and Tyler stared at her, completely dumbstruck.
“I… uh… sorry?” he finally managed to squeak out.
She only laughed again, “No apologies needed. If you’d managed that feat, I’d be thanking you, even if having an orgasm with a motorcycle would be horrifying.”
Tyler blinked at her but couldn’t find the words. They were standing in the middle of a run-down old gas station on the outskirts of Memphis talking about orgasms. Never in a million years could he have predicted this. She just kept surprising him and he couldn’t be sure if he liked it, or hated her for not being at all what he had imagined.
He finally cleared his throat, “So, you wanted to stop. Does that mean you’re ready to head back?”
Ashtyn’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows hit her hairline, “What? No! Of course not, I’m just hungry and could use a bathroom break.”
“Oh…” He felt wariness creep back into his expression and knew she saw it when her pretty lips pursed again.
“Did you really think I was going to give up so easily?” she harrumphed. “Don’t answer that. It’ll make me like you a lot less and I don’t want to have lunch with someone I dislike.”
