With This Heart

  “ No… No, just will you put some pants on?”

  I was making the cool, funny Beck uncomfortable in that moment. The second I got a taste of that power, I wanted more.

  “ I was going to look for my shorts after I changed my shirt,” I explained. “Were you watching me take off my clothes?”

  “ Of course I was,” he answered with a grin and a shrug. He was already collecting himself and I couldn’t let that happen.

  I inched closer to him on my knees so that we were only a foot apart. The air in that Camper smelled like summer rain.

  “ Because you like me?” I asked, tossing my bra onto my bag.

  “ Ah, so you did hear me say that?” he asked with amusement in his hazel eyes.

  I mashed my lips together before answering, “You kind of screamed it in the ocean.”

  He laughed and then narrowed his eyes on me. “I had to be sure you heard it.” The tone in that Camper morphed in that moment. We were being silly, and then suddenly all of the spare oxygen was zapped from the tiny space and we were left floating on unspoken lust and desire.

  “ I think everyone in the northern hemisphere heard it,” I murmured, looking up at him from beneath my wet lashes.

  I wasn’t sure where we were going to go from there. But, of course, Beck had plans.

  “ I’m going to kiss you now, Abby,” he said, bending low and erasing the gap between us.

  My pulse spiked, “Normally you don’t warn m…”

  His lips cut me off and I was no longer in the back of an old VW Camper; I was wrapped up in Beck’s touch, his mouth, his taste. He must have chewed a mint since the flea market because his mouth tasted like cool peppermint. His lips were soft and cold from the rain. My tongue traced across the seam of his mouth, and in an instant, his mouth opened for me and we were devouring one another, taking the kiss closer and closer into dangerous territory. I felt his hands glide up the sides of my legs, past my long shirt, and I welcomed it. I felt like I was inching toward bliss with every millimeter his finger crawled over my skin.

  He’d pulled me up onto his lap so that his warm skin was pressed against mine beneath my shirt.

  Our kiss never broke as his fingers reached slowly up my thigh. I wanted him. Oh, I wanted him so badly, so I inched my knees farther apart and pressed our bodies closer together. I didn’t know how far Beck would take it.

  I loved kissing him; I loved when he wrapped his fingers into my tangled, damp hair. But I wanted more. I needed to feel him between my legs; I wanted to know what his fingers would feel like there.

  Beck broke our kiss and pressed his forehead to mine. Please don’t end this, please don’t say that we can’t take it any further, I pleaded in my head. Maybe he saw the desperation written across my eyes because he didn’t cut me off. He pressed his palm to the center of my chest, above my beating heart, and pushed me gently down onto my back.

  “ Lay down,” he instructed.

  I had so many conflicting emotions in that moment. The good, prudish role I’d been shoved into my whole life was fighting to surface. But the part of me that had never experienced such a powerfully sexy experience told my conscience to shut up and enjoy the ride.

  My eyes were locked with Beck’s hazel irises as his hand pushed me down further. My elbows caught my upper body and then I slowly lowered myself back so that my head fell on top of my bag. There were clothes and unrolled sleeping bags shoved beneath me, but if you had asked me in that moment, I would have said I was lying on a bed of clouds. Every bit of my senses concentrated on the sinfully sexy look written across Beck’s features. He looked like he was about to eat me for dinner and that thought sent a shiver from the base of my neck down to the tip of my spine.

  “ Lay down and relax,” Beck whispered again with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  A nervous laugh escaped my lips. How the hell did he expect me to relax? I needed to know what was coming next; I had to prepare my body for his touch.

  Little did I know there was no preparing for Beck’s touch. His palms encircled my ankles and I arched my back in response, trying in vain to find an outlet for the delicious tingles spreading up my inner thighs. The tips of his thumbs rested over the veins of my inner ankles. I could feel my erratic pulse pressing against his hand. He knew how much he was affecting me.

  As Beck’s hand inched higher up my legs, I couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. My gaze flitted toward the camper’s ceiling, and I tried to concentrate on the rain beating down onto the metal roof. But nothing could distract me from his searing touch.

  My hips twisted in need, and the action tugged my shirt up higher so that my underwear was completely exposed. The same pair of wet underwear that I had yet to change, which meant they were practically see-through. I pinched my eyes together, telling myself to calm down. That he would have seen all of me eventually.

  His hands drifted higher and he pressed his palms to my inner thighs, pushing them apart and exposing me to him even more. Adrenaline spiked my blood like a shot of tequila. What was he thinking? Did I look like the other girls he’d been with? Did he want to keep going or was he only doing it because I wanted to?

  “ Beck, this is really intense,” I finally admitted with an exasperated breath. I needed him to know how many whacko thoughts were drifting through my brain. His hands immediately stopped their gentle massaging of my skin.

  “ Do you want me to stop?”

  I hopped up onto my elbows and exclaimed, “No! No. Please keep going. I might want you to stop…later, but please don’t stop now.”

  His hazel eyes held such earnest conviction that I wanted to tell him I loved him, just to see what he would say. I, of course, didn’t love him. That’s crazy and dumb. But his eyes were just so pretty and his hands felt like my only connection to earth.

  “ It’s just that I feel like I can’t relax because I don’t know what you’re going to do next. I don’t know if you like what you’re feeling or if you think my thighs look weird.” Who thought thighs looked weird? I didn’t know. I just wanted him to appreciate the whiteness of my skin and not think that I looked like a pale ghost.

  Beck leaned forward and propped his chin on my bent knee. His teeth bit down on his lower lip and both of his dimples made an appearance. If I had a camera, I would have snapped a picture of him sitting in that pose. He looked so fucking silly and sexy; I wanted to pounce on him.

  “ What if I told you what I was doing or thinking before I did it?”

  What? My eyes opened wide. “As in say the dirty things out loud?”

  He laughed a dark, throaty laugh that made my panties feel wet for different reasons than before. But then he pushed himself forward and stole my nerves with a sinful kiss that lingered until we were crazy for each other. His body pressed into mine, our hips rocking together. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him to me even more. His hands found my hair and he tugged gently as his tongue swept over mine. He groaned into my mouth and I shuddered at the sexy sound.

  Just when I thought I’d completely lost myself in the kiss, he broke it off and pulled back with a sinister smile.

  “ I’m going to kiss down the inside of your thigh,” he offered, right before his lips made contact with the skin just inside my knee.

  “ Ho…ly!” My spine arched and I had to clasp a hand over my mouth. “Wo…w.”

  Two more kisses toward my underwear. “You have the most beautiful skin; it’s creamy and soft.”

  He could have told me that my skin resembled a crocodile’s at that point and I would have run with it. His lips were seducing my every cell, drawing me further away from reality.

  His hand pressed down on the base of my stomach, keeping me from moving my hips, and each time his finger gently dug into my flesh, it sent a new wave of delicious shivers through me.

  “ Your underwear is still damp from the rain.” And other things , I thought, but
didn’t dare add.

  “ Mhm,” I mumbled in a high-pitched tone, finally collapsing down onto my back once again. His finger skimmed over the cotton material covering me. It was feather-light, but it was enough to split my world in two. How had I gone so long without this feeling?

  “ I’m going to kiss you here, Abby,” he murmured with a raspy voice.

  There was no time to offer a rebuttal or approval. His mouth found the cotton material and my eyes squeezed shut so tightly that I saw dancing stars. His lips pressed against my underwear and then his tongue found the same spot and licked slowly up and down. The cotton material was doing a poor job of protecting my nerve endings; if anything, the sensation of his tongue through the cotton only served to make each lick even more dramatic.

  I tried to find words to fill the silence pressing against the camper’s dewy windows, but noises of pleasure were the only sounds I could muster. My hands found Beck’s unruly hair and I braided my fingers through it, pressing him against me harder.

  Holy. Mother. Of. GOD.

  He responded to my goading. His finger found my underwear and he stroked up and down as his tongue worked tortuous magic. I knew I was seconds away from orgasming in the back of that old camper.

  “ Abby, I’m going to push your underwear aside,” Beck declared, and my mouth fell open. I pushed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trying to calm my nerves as he brushed the cotton against my inner thigh. His warm breath hit me and I was helpless to anything but my need for pure, carnal pleasure. My back arched and I dropped my hands to the floor so I could dig my fingers into the clothes beneath me. I raked my nails against the fabric as his breath fell closer to my sweet spot, to the bundle of nerves that needed attention or I would combust into a flame of unfilled desire.

  “ You’re so beautiful, so perfect.” Beck complimented me with his deep, gravelly voice as his finger found my me and rubbed in slow, sensual circles. How many times had he done this to a girl? He was good, too good, to be as inexperienced as I was. That thought should have made me feel self-conscious, but his words and touch emboldened me. I didn’t care what girls he’d learned on, I just wanted him to use his skills on me.

  “ Beck, I’ve never…” I gasped out as a crash of pleasure snaked up my spinal cord. “It feels so…” The pad of his finger found the exact spot that curled my toes under. “Ahhh,” I spoke with an uneven tone, not understanding what parts of my brain were forming my words in that moment.

  The next few moments happened in quick frames. His fingers were rubbing me into oblivion, and then his mouth joined. He lapped me up like I was the best thing he’d ever tasted, like I was ice cream melting down the side of a cone, too good to spare even a drop. I was riding each new wave of pleasure. Just as his finger pushed inside me, his tongue stroked my clit and I moaned his name again and again as he brought me to a mind blowing orgasm.

  “ Jesus…oh my…God, BECK,” I moaned, collecting small pieces of the world around me: my fingers digging into his hair, my hips pressing up to meet his mouth, the rain pelting the roof of the Camper.

  “ Did you just include me in the Holy Trinity?” he laughed, shifting to sit back on his heels so he could see my face. I took the opportunity to stretch out like a cat; the awkward confines of the Camper had finally sunk into my achy muscles.

  “ You freaking deserve it.” I smiled up at him, still coming down from my orgasm-induced high.

  “ You should take your underwear off. They’re still wet,” he offered, already beginning to drag them down my hips. The cotton slipped down past my knee and I helped kick them off the rest of the way.

  I should have felt weird about being partly naked in front of a deeply sexy guy, but he’d already done something so intimate to me that taking off my underwear seemed like nothing.

  “ I don’t want to stop yet.” I smiled up at him and shot up onto my knees. His bemused smile was all the answer I needed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “ There’s no rush, Abby. We have the rest of the road trip, plus you don’t even have the nerve to tell me your true feelings yet.” He held a wicked gleam in his eyes. He was fishing for my feelings. A hot, way-out-of-my-league guy was all but begging for me to tell him what I thought of him. What a joke. Life could be so fucking funny sometimes.

  So I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I laughed at his beautiful hazel eyes and brown hair. I laughed at the dimples that dotted the edges of his mouth, tugging at my heart in ways I could never have imagined before. I was laying there with crazy, rat hair in an oversized shirt and zero makeup. I had a scar the size of Montana on my chest while his chest was perfectly unmarred, tanned, and chiseled.

  “ Beckham,” I started in a serious tone, “you are the strangest, hottest, funniest person I’ve ever met.” I paused to let my compliments sink in, and then I cupped my hands around my mouth.

  “ I LIKE YOU!” I shouted so he’d know how I felt when he’d screamed the same words to me in the ocean. My voice ricocheted through the Camper, finding its mark when Beck’s smile spread twice as big.

  “ Have you ever said that to someone before?” Beck asked with a quizzical brow.

  I huffed and glared at him. “Don’t flatter yourself, bucko.”

  He nodded but couldn’t wipe the grin off. “Who else?” He reached out and wrapped his hands around my hips, tugging me closer to him. Our breath mingled between our mouths.

  I rolled my eyes. “Countless movie stars. Dozens of them. You are hardly special at all. I tell Orlando Bloom that I love him pretty much daily.”

  Beck’s head dropped forward as he chuckled. “Fair enough.”

  His hands snuck under my shirt, dragging across my skin and squeezing my hips. The move emboldened me and I leaned forward to kiss him. It felt like I lit a match. He pressed me down onto his lap and I rolled my hips, fighting the urge to just let him take me completely.

  “ Are we going to have sex?” I asked once he lifted his head again.

  “ Not tonight,” he answered, squeezing my hips.

  “ Then I should probably put some underwear on,” I answered.

  “ Probably so,” he relented, letting me go.

  I shifted around him and started digging in my bag for a fresh pair and some shorts. The rain was still tapping on the roof, but it had lightened up since we arrived at the rest stop. Once I had all of my clothes back on, I grabbed a hooded sweatshirt out of my bag and picked up the black urn.

  “ Want to spread some ashes with me?” I asked, cradling the urn in my arm.

  Beck had pulled on a hooded jacket as well and was still wearing his dark jeans. We looked like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, on the run from the world.

  “ What’s in there?” he asked.

  “ My dog, remember?” I answered swiftly. I feared he would ask again eventually, but I wanted to keep it private. He would make fun of me if I told him the truth.

  “ I still don’t believe you. It’s not your old heart, is it?” His eyes were glued to the urn.

  “ Ew! What? No, I don’t know what they did with my heart after the procedure. It’s in a biohazard bag somewhere probably.” The idea of spreading the ashes of my old heart was poetic, but mostly just plain disgusting.

  Beck nodded with a hint of a frown. I think he secretly thought he’d been right about that this whole time.

  “ Where do you want to spread them?” he asked, climbing into the front seat so he could exit on his side.

  “ Just around the rest stop,” I answered.

  “ That’s so gross, Abby,” Beck laughed.

  “ Not where people will walk or anything!” I exclaimed, feeling defensive. “Maybe they have a garden or something.”

  Surprisingly, the rest stop had no garden. I guess your tax dollars don’t allow for those sorts of things. Instead, Beck hummed the tune of that sad song they always play on dog adoption commercials as I dumped some ashes
onto the grass behind the bathrooms. It stuck to the ground. The rain made it instantly soggy, like a gray soup. The whole time I tried to be somber, but in the end it didn’t work. Beck made me laugh all the way back to camper. It was impossible to be sad with him around.

  While he unrolled our sleeping bags and made a little pallet for us to sleep on, I found my phone to check if I’d missed any calls from Caroline or my mom. The screen was black when I tried to swipe it open. Dead. I’d forgotten to charge it the night before and now any missed calls would have to wait for the morning.

  “ Is your phone dead as well?” Beck asked from behind me.

  “ Yeah. Stupid rain storm,” I huffed, tossing my phone back into my purse. “Can we eat our vending machine meal now?”

  Beck winked. “Only the best for you.”

  …

  The next morning, Beck and I woke up late and ended up wandering into a diner to charge our phones and get some much-needed food. Crackers and cookies could only tide me over for so long.

  Angie’s Southern Diner looked straight out of the 1950’s. The booths were covered in red and white striped upholstery. The tables had a red gloss coating. Elvis blared from the crackly speaker system and waitresses with tired expressions walked around in pink poodle skirts

  “ This place is awesome,” I said, sliding into the booth seat. There was an outlet just beneath the table, so Beck and I both plugged in our phones so that they could charge while we ate.

  “ Agreed, let’s open up a place like this back in Dallas.”

  “ I’m in,” I answered, taking the menu from the waitress and offering her a quick ‘thanks’.

  Beck ordered us two waters and then looked back toward me. “What would we call it?”

  “ A and B’s Vending Machine Emporium,” I offered.

  “ How about just: Abby Mae’s.”

  I laughed. “We can’t serve any meat though.”

  Beck’s eyes lit up. “Let’s replace all the meat with chocolate cake.”