“Only a few days left.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question, but she took it as such. “Well, yeah. I mean, obviously my putting limitations on this was a mistake. We’re like fire and gasoline, and it’s stupid to try to stop before we burn ourselves out.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “But, seriously, if Jules knew what we were doing, she’d start getting stars in her eyes and meddling and planning our wedding and our kids’ weddings, and it’s just exhausting to think about.”
His stomach tied itself in knots, but he couldn’t say for sure if it was because she was putting a limitation on them or because she’d just mentioned a wedding and kids in the next breath. He tried to sound amused, but he knew for a fact he didn’t pull it off. “She gets excited.”
“Yeah, she does. Which is exactly why we can’t keep this up. I mean, I’m not going to lie and say sneaking around hadn’t occurred to me, but that’s a whole lot of effort, and Jules has a nose like a bloodhound when she thinks I’m keeping something from her. And she always knows when I’m keeping something from her.”
He wasn’t all that into the thought of sneaking around, either. Quinn wasn’t sneaky. He wasn’t underhanded. Fuck, he was about as subtle as a two-by-four to the side of the head—and so was Aubry. What she was saying made sense, but damn. He’d had every intention of exhausting his attraction to her and then going their separate ways once that happened. What was the other option? Dating? He almost laughed at the thought. They matched up in bed and that was it.
What would it even look like if they tried dating? Yeah, they’d managed to hold down a conversation or two since they started this trip, but that didn’t mean a damn thing in the grand scheme. They were like two actors that fell for each other because of forced proximity and an affinity for orgasms. The fledgling attraction he felt for her wasn’t likely to last them settling back into their normal lives. He had the ranch and his friends and, sure, their group of friends overlapped a bit now, but she would go back to being closeted up in her apartment or Jules’s shop. The thought of spending all his free time in front of a screen was almost enough to make him break out in hives. It wasn’t his thing. And it was her thing.
They were too different, even with the handful of things they shared in common. It worked right now, in these exact circumstances, but it wouldn’t keep working indefinitely. He’d be smart to just enjoy the time they had and let it go when they hit the Devil’s Falls town limits.
Quinn took a deep breath. “Okay, yeah, you’re right.”
“Yep. Totally right. So right, it’s actually painful.” She sounded like she was reading from a script.
He tapped her on the top of her head. “And you say I have a big head.”
“You do.” Her palm settled over his cock and his body instantly responded, his dick hardening and his hands itching to pull her into his lap. Aubry stroked him. “A big, big head. Massive. Just plain giant.”
Despite everything, he laughed. “Now you’re just teasing me.”
“Only mostly.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and ducked under his arm, reclaiming her seat on the other side of the cab.
Quinn took his eyes off the road long enough to look at her. “What the hell?”
“Remember that torturous drive where you withheld orgasms and then made me come over and over again until I could barely walk? You should since it happened like two days ago.”
“I remember,” he gritted out.
She laughed. “Payback’s a bitch.”
…
Aubry tried not to focus on everything circling around her head. Like how Quinn admitted to liking her but then agreed they would never work in the real world, or that he’d tried to give her an out for the wedding. She tried really freaking hard. So hard that she spent the next several hours brooding on the most immediate issue—the wedding. It was clear the very idea of her attending now made him uncomfortable and there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it.
He said it was because his family is complicated.
Sure, that sounded great—on the surface. Like maybe he wanted to protect her, which meant maybe he had feelings. But that logic only lasted on a surface level. The more she thought about it, the more she was sure he was having regrets about agreeing to this whole thing in the first place.
And why wouldn’t he?
As she’d pointed out time and time again, she wasn’t nice. She wasn’t poised or put together. Honestly, she was a bundle of nerves and issues wrapped up in a gamer girl package. Not the kind of girl a guy wanted to bring home to his fancypants family who probably had gold plated utensils and thousand-thread-count sheets and whatever stupid crap rich people spent money on.