Ride with Me

She turned around and clicked up a few gears so she could exaggerate the sway of her hips as she leaned on the pedals.

Tom groaned dramatically and came after her. When he’d almost managed to pull even with her, he hauled off and smacked her on the butt. Laughing, she took off like a shot, and they were racing. Lexie was in it to win, sprinting as hard as she could, but it was tricky to pedal and breathe and laugh all at the same time, and eventually she had to put on the brakes and get her feet on the ground before she fell over. Tom came to an abrupt halt, dragged her off her bike, and tackled her, sending them sprawling into the grassy verge by the side of the road.

They were both panting, sweaty, and grinning like fools. Their eyes caught, and she raised her hand to his temple, running her thumb lightly along his deep laugh lines. She loved it when he smiled like this.

He planted butterfly kisses on her nose, her chin, her cheeks, their helmets bumping and making her laugh. She became aware of his weight pinning her to the ground, the pressure of his hipbone low on her belly, and another pressure that encouraged her to shift around until she had it squarely between her legs. A rock was poking between her shoulder blades, but she wasn’t sweating it.

The wriggli

ng move must have got his attention, because the smile faded and Tom kissed her again, this time with enough tongue to make her forget all about the rock. A little moan escaped her throat, and she was just sliding her hands inside his shirt when a car went by like a freight train and scared the bejesus out of both of them, startling them into sitting up.

Tom scanned their surroundings slowly, as if he couldn’t quite figure out where they were or how they’d come to be there. “One more thing to dislike about Kansas,” he remarked finally. “There are no good places to have public sex.”

Lexie was forced to agree. There wasn’t a tree or a boulder in sight. Even the drainage ditch was too shallow to do them any good.

“It’s very inconsiderate,” she said. “There ought to be a law.”

Tom nodded seriously. “There should be little shacks by the side of the road every twenty miles or so.”

“Four walls, a lock on the door, a condom machine, and a flat surface,” she said, no longer able to keep from smiling.

“I see a real opportunity here,” Tom said, rubbing his stubbled jaw and grinning wickedly. “What do you think of the name ‘Tom’s Sex Shacks’?”

“You want your customers to think about you while they’re doing it?”

“Who said anything about customers?” he asked in his tent voice, dragging her over and settling her between his legs. “I’m going to build them for me and you.”

She settled back contentedly against the wall of his chest. “Oh, Tom. That’s the most romantic thing anybody’s ever said to me.”

“I aim to please, babe,” he replied, planting a kiss on the nape of her neck.

And for a few minutes, they sat together in the gravel by the side of the road in the Middle of Nowhere, Kansas, and she was perfectly happy.

He’d started asking her questions in the tent at night. Personal questions.

Did you have braces? What were you like in high school? Do you enjoy being a teacher?

They weren’t the kind of questions your riding companion asked you after you’d put in a couple thousand miles on the road together. They were the getting-to-know-you questions your new boyfriend asked right around the time he figured out that getting into your pants had made you more interesting, not less.

The questions both thrilled and terrified her.

She wondered if he even knew he was doing it, if he was aware of how different he was from the prickly, angry man she’d met on the beach in Oregon. How different even from the mercurial lover he’d been in Wyoming and Colorado. Whole days went by when she didn’t so much as catch a glimpse of that Tom. In his place, there was a smiling, witty, thoughtful guy who treated her like … well, like his girlfriend.

So maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised when he asked her the most classic new-boyfriend question of all.

They were lying side by side in the tent, naked and sweaty. There was at least an hour left before sunset, and the heat of the day hadn’t eased up one bit. Their lovemaking had been slick and hot and had nearly blown the top of her head off. Now she was just praying for a breeze to come along and cool her down, but as usual, Kansas wasn’t cooperating.

Propped on one elbow, Tom was gazing at her stomach, tracing lazy circles around her navel with one finger. She could tell a question was coming by the slight frown between his eyebrows and the abstracted look in his eyes. He always thought about the questions for a long time before he could bring himself to put them into words. Lexie wondered if he knew she knew that.

Finally, he spit it out. “Why aren’t you married?”

She couldn’t help it—she laughed at him. Tom stiffened, and she knew she risked wounding his pride, so she composed herself and rose up to kiss his jaw where it was clenched tight.

“Relax! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed at you,” she said. “It’s just, that’s such a Trojan horse question. It’s supposed to sound like a compliment, like, ‘Why hasn’t someone snapped up a wonderful girl like you yet?’ But really guys ask it when they’re fishing for all the sordid details of your romantic past.”

The kiss had loosened him up a little, but he’d tensed up again quickly.

“I wasn’t fishing,” he insisted. “I was asking a simple question.”