“You’re going to get me there,” I panted against his mouth.
“Yeah. That’s it, baby. Come for me.” He jacked me faster and faster. I’d already been right on edge, and his filthy demands and dirty kisses were getting me there in record time.
“Fuck. Cash. I—” My warning was cut off by another of his blistering kisses, and then I was coming so hard I legit saw stars, vision swimming until I had to squish my eyes shut and simply ride out the overwhelming wave. He milked me with his fist, and it felt like I came gallons, like I was wrung out and parched after making it to the other side of all that pleasure.
“Fuck. That was something.” He kissed the side of my head, still holding me tight.
I made a happy noise. “So good my vision’s still blurry from it.”
“Seriously?” He sounded mildly concerned, so I blinked a few times. Yep. Dusty and blurry and—
“Oh. Fuck.” Understanding rushed in. “I lost my last contact.”
Leave it to me to end the best orgasm of my life with an unmitigated disaster.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cash
“You don’t have any others?” I asked as Danny popped his lone remaining contact out of his eye, looking miserably down at the dirt where he’d been kneeling. No contact was surviving a roll in the dusty dry earth. I did a quick check of my clothing and his, but I didn’t spot it lurking on the fabric.
“No.” Danny sounded so mournful I had to sling an arm around his shoulders. “My prescription was up for renewal, and I kept putting it off because they wanted me to come in for an eye exam. I grabbed what I had from my bathroom when you had me pack up, but it wasn’t enough.”
“How bad is your vision without them?” I squeezed him closer, and he sank against me, his frustration palpable.
“Bad enough to need contacts even after LASIK in my teens. Bad enough to always travel with glasses even though I hate them.”
“Okay. You have glasses. Good.” Happy to have something resembling a plan, I steered him back to the house.
“I look like Danny Love in them.” He made this sound like the worst thing in the world.
“You look like Danny Love all the time,” I countered, opening the back door to the house. “Which is to say, pretty damn cute.”
“No, I look like the glow-up. Danny Love got hot.” He thumped a hand against the kitchen counter. “I had to beg my mom for the LASIK surgery, which didn’t even fully work. Even after Geek Chorus ended, she didn’t want me to change my look because the glasses were so associated with me. Ditching them and finding my own identity was a huge part of why I sued her for control of my money.”
“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t much, but it was what I had. Not for the first time, I wished for a few minutes with Danny’s mom to give her a piece of my mind. “Are your glasses in the loft? I’ll get them.”
“Yeah.” He sank down in one of the chairs near the woodstove, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Some days, I really wish I could be Daniel Lubov, ordinary guy. At least Duncan got to keep his last name. Mom legally changed my name to piss off my dad and to sound more Hollywood. I haven’t bothered to change it back. Maybe I should.”
“No big decisions right now.” I raced up to the loft, retrieved his shaving case, and brought it to him. “Are they in here?”
“Yeah.” He extracted a pair of glasses, cleaned them, and put them on while frowning deeply. “Hell. My prescription really has changed. These are better than nothing, but I’m gonna get a headache. Fuck. Do they even have optometrists in the middle of nowhere?”
“Maybe. But you’d have to show ID. And that’s—”
“A risk we can’t take. I know.” He rubbed his temple. Taking a hint, I came to stand behind the chair and rubbed his shoulders. I didn’t have the first clue what I was doing as far as massage, but I couldn’t not touch him.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, truly meaning it. “I’ll call Duncan in a bit if I can get a signal. We should call the detective too. See if there’s any updates. We’ll get your glasses and contacts situation sorted out. Promise.”
“I hate this.” He tipped his head way back to grimace at me. “I hate being on the run from real life. I’m keeping you from living yours and putting off mine.”
“Hey now. What happened to playing pioneers forever?” I laughed to try to recapture some of that silly mood from hanging laundry when he’d seemed all about staying as long as we could. The days were already starting to run together, and God, I loved that happy blur where time had less meaning and existing felt so damn good. I’d liked his vision so much my chest had ached with wanting even before he’d kissed me like his life depended on it.