Slow Ride (6 page)
“I think Diesel has them.”
Tuesday sighed. “He’s so fucking cute, Kendall. Would it be bad if I had sex with him tonight?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. That was not the answer she wanted. “Why? I bet he rocks the sheets.”
“I have no idea if he does or not, but you’ll be too drunk to appreciate it.”
It wasn’t possible to be too drunk to appreciate that hunk of man flesh. “Oh, please. So I’ve had a little too much champagne. That just means I won’t be trying to hide my dimply thighs from his view.”
It might also mean that she’d be slurring her words, because her tongue seemed a little larger than normal, but that could be worked around, she was sure.
Kendall put her hands on her shoulders. “Tuesday. Look at me. This is not a good idea. If you want to have sex with Diesel next Saturday after a date, you go for it. But tonight is not the night. You’re more likely to vomit on him than have an orgasm.”
Just the word “vomit” made Tuesday’s stomach slosh around a little. “I don’t know . . .”
“Picture his erection coming at you for oral sex. Do you want that in your mouth right now?”
Yikes. That was telling it a little too much like it is. Tuesday clapped her hand over her mouth, her gag reflex firing up. She shook her head. “No.”
“There’s a time and a place for everything. Tonight you need to sleep alone.”
Kendall might have a point. “Can I cuddle with him though?” She had this idea that those strong arms would feel really nice wrapped around her in bed, her head resting on his chest. It seemed like a super solid chest.
“Of course you can if he’s cool with cuddling only. Make sure you’re clear on that. But in my experience, most men don’t want to cuddle unless they’re guaranteed to get some.”
“This is complicated,” Tuesday complained. Getting naked would be so much easier. “I’m leaving.” Before her brain started to hurt. “Love you.” She leaned over and kissed Kendall loudly on the cheek. “Congratulations again. You know you’re a beautiful bride.”
“Thanks, you nuttyhead. I’ll see you tomorrow for brunch.”
Brunch. Eew. Tuesday did not want to sit around a round table with all the women in Kendall’s family, making small talk. The only bright spot would be the mimosas. “Right. See you then.”
With a wave, she walked over to Diesel, wishing that she could manage a slightly sexier walk. Instead, she just felt like she was working really hard to maintain a forward motion in something of a straight line, because her body wanted to pitch and weave in a zigzag pattern.
“I’m leaving,” she told Diesel. Something about her sentence didn’t seem quite right, but she wasn’t going to worry about it. She suddenly wanted out of the dwindling crowd, out of her orange dress, and out of consciousness.
But he seemed to take it in stride. “I guess we’re leaving.” He shook Evan’s hand and said good night.
“Where are my shoes?” she asked as she headed toward the door, managing a cursory wave in Evan’s direction, but feeling like anything more than that was too much effort. If she leaned in for a hug, she just might keep going and knock him down onto the floor.
“They’re in my hand.”
That seemed weird. She was having a hard time even processing why she’d taken them off in the first place. “Maybe I should put them back on. There’s probably like broken glass and shit in the parking lot. I don’t want to slice my tender feet.”
“If you put these shoes back on you’re going to break your ankle. I think I’ll just carry you to the car.”
That sent a thrill zinging through her. How hot was that? “Really? You’re going to carry me? But I’m too heavy,” she said, because that’s what you were supposed to say. It was a compliment-seeking ploy that all women knew.
Unfortunately, Diesel didn’t know the conditioned response, which should have been something like “Are you kidding? You’re light as a feather.”
What he really said was, “Don’t be stupid.”
They were hovering in the doorway of the reception hall, the muggy night air hitting Tuesday in the face and making her instantly feel sweaty. The parking lot was an island of blacktop stretching out for a thousand miles, her car somewhere at a distance that felt frankly insurmountable. It would be nice to be carried, even if Diesel didn’t how he was supposed to tell her she was teeny tiny, barely weighing anything.
Then she remembered his knee. His bad, bum, sucky knee, which he tried to pretend didn’t really bother him. There was no way he could carry her. So grabbing onto his sleeve with one hand and yanking one of her shoes out of his hand with the other, Tuesday leaned over and crammed it on to her foot. Her little toe wound up on the wrong side of the strap, but she didn’t give a shit. It was on. She wasn’t going to buckle the strap. She was just going to walk carefully.
“You’re the one being stupid. I’m perfectly capable of walking.”
“Don’t get attitude,” he told her. “I said I’d carry you. Or smarter still, I can just go get the car and pull it around.”
She paused. “Now that, my friend, is freaking brilliant.” She grinned at Diesel. “Two heads are better than one, eh?”
“Especially when one is soaked in liquor.” He handed her the other shoe. “Don’t impale yourself with this. I’ll be right back with my car.”
“What about my car?” Tuesday hopped as she struggled to cram her foot into her shoe. The motion made the parking lot sway a little and she swallowed hard.
“Two cars are not better than one. We have to leave yours here.”
There was probably a reason that should bother her, like the potential for vandalism, and the issue of retrieving it the next day, but she found she just didn’t care. Her feet hurt stuffed back into her shoes, there was sweat accumulating between her breasts, and she was so thirsty she would drink from a rain puddle if she could find one.
As she watched him walk away, Tuesday tried to remember why it would be a bad idea to have sex with him. He was super cute. Tall. Lanky. Muscular arms. Scruffy, even dressed up for the reception. A man’s man. Which had never been her particular type. She’d always gone for the metrosexuals with good fashion sense and an extensive knowledge of wine. But there was something about Diesel . . . it started with his name and ended with his butt.
When he pulled up in a black sports car, he got out and came around to open the door for her. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” she asked, a sudden image of him over top of her flashing through her head.
“Like you don’t know what the hell you’re looking at.”
“Don’t be stupid.” She repeated his words and climbed into the car. Or fell in, if you wanted to get technical about it. “Do you have a grocery bag in here? Or a box maybe?”
“No. Why?”
In case she felt the sudden need to puke. “No reason.”
He popped his head into the passenger side to study her. “Do you want to lie down in the backseat?”
Lolling against the seat with a sigh, grateful to finally be off her feet, Tuesday said, “Are you going to lay in the backseat with me?”
“No.”
“Then why would I want to be back there?” Duh.
Diesel pressed his lips together, like he was holding back a laugh. “Of course. Why don’t you just close your eyes, sweetheart?”
That sounded like a good idea. But when she rested her head back, eyes closed to stop the spinning that had started up, the heavily hairsprayed bun prevented her from relaxing. It was like she was jutting three feet out from the seat, pins jabbing her scalp. “Damn it.” Sitting forward again, she reached up and started yanking at the pins.
Diesel had slid into the driver’s seat. “Do you really need to do that right now?”
“Yes. They’re bugging me.” But she wasn’t having much luck. For some weird reason, her fingers didn’t seem to be working correctly. All she was doing was pulling on her hair, causing her tear ducts to fire up.
“Here.” Diesel reached over and efficiently extracted five or six pins from her hair. He unwound her bun. “Better?”
Using her hands to massage the hair free and relieve her scalp, she sighed. “Much. You’d better quit being so nice to me or I might fall in love with you.”
Somewhere, in the part of her brain that had sense, an alarm bell went off that maybe that hadn’t been an appropriate thing to say, joke or not. But she barely noticed it, deciding instead to take his advice and lay down. Across his lap.
“Uh . . . how am I supposed to drive like this?”
Tuesday looked up at him, his thighs beneath her head and shoulders. From this vantage point, his hair looked even longer, his chin strong and sharp. She reached up and scratched his beard. Very soft. “Oh, come on. You’re a professional. This is no big deal. And don’t tell me you’ve never gotten a blow job while driving.”
“Not while professionally driving.”
That struck her as hilarious. Tuesday snorted. “No, dork. I mean, just while driving around town. Every guy has had that at least once, right?”
“I don’t think I have.”
“Really?” Tuesday thought about rolling over and showing him how much fun it could be, but that seemed like a lot of work. Plus her mouth was dry and she was really sleepy. It would be a poor show and that would defeat the point.
She wasn’t really sure what the point was, but she knew it was a good one.
“Really. And no, I don’t want you to fix that for me right now.”
Well. Fine. “Pfft. Who the hell says I was offering?” But if she was, she was damn sure he’d take it. So there.
“You’re right. You weren’t. I apologize.”
That was nice. She settled better into the seat, curling up a little on her side as he shifted gears and pulled out of the parking lot. “But you kinda want me to, don’t you?”
“In theory, yes. But in reality, it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Why, because you don’t have an erection?”
There was a beat of silence, and Tuesday’s eyes started to drift closed. But they flew open when Diesel moved her head just slightly to the left, and she felt an obstruction that was not his wallet.
“Not exactly,” he told her, his voice tight.
“Oh.” Tuesday wiggled around, getting a sense of its length—long. And its width—thick. Wow. She started to rethink her decision to not go there. Or had she really made that decision? Maybe this was just really doing what she’d wanted to do all night. Her mouth was very close to penis. It was very hard. Big.
She stroked the length of him lightly through his pants. Up and down, feeling it swell even more. It was a really nice erection.
Diesel was similarly stroking her hair, his masculine fingers surprisingly gentle as he worked his way from her roots down to the tips of her hair, petting softly. Arousal stirred to life, her panties dampening, breathing going languid and heavy. She stroked. He stroked. A slow, easy, steady rhythm that felt normal and intimate and safe.
So slow and steady that before she was even aware it was happening, Tuesday fell asleep.
CHAPTER
THREE
THREE
“GET
your head out of my crotch. How many times have I told you that’s rude?” Diesel nudged his dog, Wilma, out of the way and went back to the engine he was working on.
your head out of my crotch. How many times have I told you that’s rude?” Diesel nudged his dog, Wilma, out of the way and went back to the engine he was working on.
This car was his pride and joy. A 1963 Chevy driven by that year’s champion driver. It had taken a beating racing, and had fallen into disrepair as it had been passed from hand to hand, and ultimately left to rust in a garage, but Diesel was giving it life back. When he was done, it would be running, dressed in the colors and number of its original driver.
He’d been working on it for two months and he figured another month and it would be good to go. He had a mind to donate it to Tuesday Jones’s cancer benefit. It was worth a hell of a lot and there would be plenty of people in attendance who would want a classic piece of stock car racing history.
Diesel wondered how Tuesday was doing this morning. He was tempted to send her a text but realized he didn’t have her number. It wouldn’t be cool to contact Evan for it since technically this was the morning after his wedding, even if they’d been married for four months already. But he was worried about Tuesday. She was going to have a pounding headache, no doubt about it.
“Hey, kid, how’s it going?”
Diesel glanced up from under the hood to see his uncle, Johnny Briggs, strolling into his garage. “Hey, Uncle Johnny, what’s up?”
“Not much. Just thought I’d stop by on my way to the cardiologist and see what you’re up to.”
Looking down the driveway, Diesel didn’t see anyone else, but he asked, “Aunt Beth with you?”
“Nope. She’s volunteering up at the grandkids’ school this morning.”
“Everything okay with your appointment?” He had to admit, he worried about his uncle. He had been like a father figure to Diesel growing up, the closest he’d had to a positive male influence after his father had run out on his mother when he was four years old.
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